Page 22 of Dina's Favorite Mistake

Not trusting that the man wasn’t armed, Steve approached as carefully as possible. He assessed the situation as best he could in the shadows. No jacket or hoodie or anything else to hide a weapon. Steve quickly patted down the man’s legs and ankles before checking his T-shirt.

As he finished his weapon search, Steve ran his hand along the man’s belly. The guy screamed in pain, and Steve decided therewas some serious internal trauma happening. “You’re probably bleeding inside. Did you hit your belly on the dash?”

“I need a doctor! Please! Help me! I don’t want to die!”

“You didn’t seem to care if we died,” Steve growled, feeling no sympathy for this asshole.

“I didn’t have a choice! They made me!”

“Hey! Steve!” Beto called from the ditch, exactly where Steve had told him explicitly not to go. “I got a signal! Police are on their way!”

“We need an ambulance!” Steve called back, not taking his eyes off the injured man. If there was any hope of finding out who had sent these two would-be assassins and why, they had to keep him alive.

“Okay. I’ll tell them!”

“You have any first aid in your truck?”

“No.”

Steve hoped that ambulance was driving fast.

Chapter Seven

Clutching her iPhone, Dina flew down the stairs in her pajamas. She swallowed the lump of panic blocking her throat and prayed her trembling legs weren’t about to give out on her.

A vehicle ramming Beto and Steve? Trying to drive them off the road? Shooting at them? A man dead and another dying?

This is all my fault.

It’s happening again.

My mistakes are never going to stop hurting us.

Guilt-ridden and ashamed, she made her way across the house. As she neared the front doors, red and blue lights flashed through the windows and open doors, turning the entry into a scene from a police TV show. She found Beto arguing loudly with two police officers and a detective. Steve stood nearby, cuffed like a criminal. His forearms and shirt were stained with blood, and she hoped it wasn’t his or her brother’s.

“What’s going on in here?” Dina demanded in her haughtiest voice. She pushed by the family’s night security team who had formed a wall behind Beto and faced off with law enforcement. “Why is the captain in handcuffs?”

The detective in charge made a face. “Señora, this is standard procedure after a murder.”

“A murder?” The panic that had been trying to choke her vanished. Fury replaced it. “The captain acted in self-defense!”

“You weren’t there, señora” the detective insisted. “You can’t possibly know that it was self-defense.”

“You weren’t there either!” Dina stormed closer and stepped between Steve and the officers. “My brother was! He told me what happened. Are you calling my brother a liar?”

The detective nervously glanced at Beto. “No, señora, but your brother and the captain fled the scene—.”

“We didn’t flee!” Beto cut in angrily. “We were told by the officers on the scene that we should come back to the house and wait.”

“They were wrong to tell you that,” the detective argued. “They should have kept you on the scene for questioning.” The detective glared at Steve. “Which the captain knows fully well as a police officer who has investigated many crimes!”

Having heard enough of this back and forth, Dina interrupted the two men. “Call your superior. Right now. I want to talk to the person in charge of you and the person who is in charge of that person. I don’t care if you have to wake up the attorney general and our senators and the governor! Get them on the phone right now!”

“What’s all the shouting?” Soila demanded from the grand staircase that was rarely used by the family. Like a queen surveying her court, she stared down at the small crowd disturbing her rest. She looked like a Frida Kahlo painting in herwhite cotton nightgown with a hand embroideredrebozodraped around her shoulders. “What’s happened?”

“I’m sorry, Mama.” Beto hurried to their mother’s side as she stepped off the staircase and onto the tile floor. “Steve and I were attacked on the road back to the city.”

Soila reared back in shock before glancing between her son and Steve and then the police officers and Dina. “Why is he in handcuffs?”

---