Haunted Read Free

godfather of the Mexican drug cartels,” Max says.
    “Godfather?”
    Culebra nods. “Gallardo was the first to organize the Mexican drug business. Started in the late eighties when he realized he was getting too well known and the narco business was getting too big for him to control by himself. He called together a select group of henchman in Acapulco and designated territories to be run by bosses not yet so well known to the Federales . Men who he could trust to report to him.”
    “It was a smart move,” Max says with a tone of grudging admiration.
    Must be the booze.
    “What does that have to do with you?” I ask Culebra.
    “I worked for one of his lieutenants. Boss of the Cartel de Sinaloa .”
    That name I recognize, both for the ruthlessness of its methods and the success it’s achieved in getting huge quantities of drugs across the U.S. border. “The Sinaloa Cartel, huh? Were you an undercover agent for the Mexican government? Is that how you met Max? You were working together?”
    “Not exactly.” Culebra’s eyes grow hard. “I was an asesino —an assassin.”
    Culebra an assassin for a narco? I grin. “You’re kidding right?”
    The steady, serious way he gazes back at me raises the hair on the back of my neck.
    The glass I had just raised to my lips bangs down on the table with a thud. I was wrong. I can be shocked. Astonishment knocks the alcohol fog out of my brain. Suddenly I’m sober and shaken. How? Why? Questions tumble over themselves in my head.
    Culebra reads them all. He smiles sadly. “The money,” he says. “Huge money. I was uneducated, an outcast in my own village because of what I was.” He averts his eyes, sarcasm tinges his words with the acid of bitter truth. “Shape-shifters are not considered valuable members of society where I come from. I was an anomaly—a freak. And treated as such.”
    A pause, as if he’s waiting for me to comment. I have no comment. Even my thoughts are conflicted. He finally realizes it and continues.
    “I moved to Baja when I was sixteen. Met the boss soon after. Became a runner. Eventually, I got married, had a family. Worked my way up the ladder.”
    That evokes a comment. “Worked your way up to assassin?”
    “I was caught up in the life.” He meets my eyes squarely. “I’m not proud of it. I hated it, but I had a family to support. There came a point when there was no turning back.”
    I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Or the dead calm tone of Culebra’s voice as he speaks. “You killed people.”
    He looks hard at me. “And you don’t?”
    Max makes a snickering noise.
    I glare at him before snapping at Culebra, “I kill because I have to, because I’m protecting someone. It’s hardly the same thing.”
    Culebra shrugs. “Semantics. I was protecting someone, too. Myself. My family. I followed orders.”
    “Your family? Where are they now?”
    Culebra waves a hand in a vague sweeping motion. “Dead.”
    Still, no emotion. Nothing in his head I can penetrate but a dull pulse beat. It’s strange. As if his answers come from a separate part of his brain, turning on and off like a recorder at the push of the right button. Programmed answers.
    I soften my own tone. “What happened?”
    He looks hard at me. “You want the long version or the short one?”
    I wave a hand. “I’ve got nowhere else to be. Do you?”
    He pours another shot. Downs it. “Get comfortable. We’re going to be here awhile.”

CHAPTER 2
    C ULEBRA TAKES A DEEP BREATH. “I WAS BORN TO A family of shape-shifters. But I was a throwback. The first of my generation to manifest the ability. My family was horrified. They thought the curse had finally been lifted.” He drops his eyes. “The curse .”
    He straightens his shoulders. “My father could never find steady work so our family always lived in poverty. What’s more, he had no trade or skills that he could pass on to me, not that he would have. He hated me. I was not allowed to go to school for