Page 3 of Mortal Desires

I gulped when I realized I was looking at Abuela and not Elisa. Correcting my mistake, I stood up quickly. “I’m getting ready for school.”

I squeezed myself between the dusty ground and the rotten wood. Something brushed against my cheek, making me drop the flashlight with a yelp.

“Can you see it?”

“I think I felt a spider,” I replied instead.

“Keep going.”

“Or at least a web…” I murmured to myself before moving once again. “If there’s a web, there’s a spider.”

I was never athletic, I only passed high school gym because everyone was too scared of my last name to fail me. No one wanted me or my family lingering much longer. But now, despite the million reasons I shouldn’t, I was slithering under a porch, ignoring my own self-preservation.

I looked back, staring at the yellow patchy grass through the gap, the sun unforgivable today. With a sigh, I swung the flashlight around, going back to my task.

“Are you sure it’s here?”

“It’s there,” he replied, not leaving room for discussion.

He sounded certain and lucid, so even with my reservations—and most of them were about crawling under someone’s porch—I continued to search.

I twisted my nose when I found the third piece of unidentifiable garbage, swearing under my breath.

“Did you find it?”

I moved a little to the right, trying to get a clear view, knowing I had to be quick. If anyone caught me here, I was toast.

Instead of shouting my reply, I just moved forward, angling my body another way, trying to find the little box he—

“Found it!” I yelled louder than I should.

I pushed my body using my elbows until I reached the small wooden box, opening it straight away. My eyes landed on the jewelry set—an engagement ring and an emerald necklace.

“Really?” he asked.

Instead of replying, I just worked my way out of there. It wasn’t the first time someone convinced me to do something ridiculous. I sneaked into a nursing home after hours once and had to explain myself when the nurses caught me. Another time, I crawled between the file cabinets in the office of a chain restaurant. And one especially ridiculous time, I got caught breaking and entering into an abandoned house to save a litter of kittens from a collapsing floor.

“Pilar, do you really have it?”

I squeezed out, brushing my clothes with my hands, aware it made no difference. Dirt and grime covered my jeans, my T-shirt was now brown, and I could only imagine how my thick, curly hair looked.

But I had the box.

“Is everything there?”

I nodded. “The engagement ring and the necklace.”

“Good, good. Give it to her.”

I chewed on my lip. This was my least favorite part. Not that I loved explaining to the police how I knew a floor was about to collapse before it did. Or how I found the perfect evidence for the murder case they’d been working on for weeks.

Still, it was better than this.

“Pilar, please.”

Why couldn’t I just ring the doorbell and leave it on the front steps?

Instead of voicing my displeasure, I nodded and rounded the house, fixing my askew ponytail as I went. Before going up the steps, I made the mistake of checking my reflection.

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