Chapter 15: The Brother on the Witness Stand

Two television vans were parked outside Warehouse 9 before I finished breakfast.

Six patrol cars came behind them, and the officer in front carried a folded warrant.

"Dalia Aldecoa," he called down the Cellar stairs. "Come up with your hands where I can see them."

Thirty fighters stood up from their cots at once.

Joaquin was already moving toward the stairs, and his shoulders had gone wide.

I caught his sleeve.

"No."

"They have no right."

"They have a video of me breaking a man's nose, and they have two hundred phones that did not film the part before it."

I kept my voice low.

"If you touch a cop, Renata wins. Take the drive and the laptop out the back. Now."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he pulled the drive from the reader, pressed it into his coat, and was gone through the coal chute before the officer reached the bottom step.

I walked up the stairs with my hands in the air.

The cameras were waiting on the sidewalk.

The officer turned me against the van and put the cuffs on, and the metal bit into my split knuckles.

"She's seventeen!" Beto shouted from the doorway. "She's a child!"

"The charge is assault with injury," the officer said. "The complainants are two employees of Aldecoa Freight."

A black car pulled up behind the vans.

Tomas got out of it in a charcoal suit, with his face washed and his eyes red.

He walked through the reporters without looking at any of them.

"I'm Tomas Aldecoa," he said into the nearest microphone. "I'm her brother."

Every camera on the sidewalk swung to him.

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