The Shadow That Stopped Protecting the Don novel · Chapter 2 of 12

Chapter 2: Without a Shadow

Puerto Ángel is a fishing village where nobody asks where you're from, as long as you pay in cash.

We arrived on a second-class bus at six in the morning, with one suitcase and a duffel bag.

Nicolás slept almost the whole way, leaning against my side.

Before he woke up, I'd already memorized the new identity the forger had sent to my phone.

My name was Mar Reyes, I was thirty years old, and I was the widow of a fisherman from Tampico.

My son's name was Santiago, though I wasn't about to stop calling him Nico at home.

An older woman in a floral apron, with a sign that read "Rooms for Rent," offered me a two-room cabin facing the bay.

"Fifteen hundred a month. Water included. Your husband?"

"He died."

"Oh, what a shame, dear. Come in, come in."

I didn't ask if there was hot water.

There was a double bed, a hammock, a gas stove, and a curtainless window through which the sound of the waves drifted in.

Nicolás peered out the window and his eyes went wide.

"Mom, a boat!"

It was.

A red-and-white fishing boat was leaving the bay, its nets folded up on the deck.

"Are we going to stay here?"

"For a while."

"Is Dad going to find us?"

I froze.

Nicolás had never said that word out loud.

He'd said it staring out the window, without realizing, like a secret that had slipped out of him.

"I don't know, sweetheart."

"I want him to find us."

"I know."

I hugged him and buried my face in his hair so he couldn't see mine.

I didn't sleep the first two nights.

I sat on the edge of the bed with the gun in my lap, listening.

A dog. An engine. A drunk singing in the street.

No familiar voices.

By the third night, I started sleeping in fits and starts.

By the eighth day, I knew the names of three fishermen and the price of red snapper.

I also knew what time the grocery store closed.

On the ninth day, at seven in the evening, I saw him.

He was sitting on a bench on the boardwalk, fifty meters from the cabin, wearing a baseball cap and holding an open newspaper he wasn't reading.

A lone man, thin, with a light jacket despite the heat.

I recognized him by the way he looked without looking.

I took Nicolás by the hand and walked the other way, until I went into the store.

I bought a carton of milk and a watermelon.

I went out the back door, circled the block, and came up behind him.

I pressed the barrel of the gun against his spine, under his jacket.

"Don't move," I said. "Hands on the newspaper."

He went rigid.

"Ma'am," he whispered. "I don't..."

"You work for Hilario. I can tell by the way you sit."

He let out his breath.

"Yes."

"Who else is coming?"

"No one. He sent me alone. To see if it was you."

"And if it was me?"

"To tell you that..." He swallowed. "That the Don is alive."

I stood perfectly still.

"Say that again."

"There was an attack at the park, ma'am. Eight days ago. They say he survived by a miracle."

A strange chill crept up the back of my neck.

"Where?"

"At Fantasía Park. Everything was wide open, no guards at the entrance, no screening. Twenty men came in on an ice cream truck."

I let him go slowly.

I lowered the gun and hid it in the bag with the watermelon.

"Tell Hilario he's not talking to the person he's looking for."

"Ma'am..."

"Tell him the shadow is dead."

I turned around and walked back to the cabin with my son's hand in mine, without looking back.

But that night, once Nicolás was asleep, I turned on the TV in the room for the first time in a week and found a news channel.

A reporter from Guadalajara was speaking in front of a gate covered in stuffed animals and flowers.

"Businessman Bernardo Ledesma, thirty-six, remains in serious but stable condition."

"Three of his bodyguards died at the scene. The woman who was with him and her son are missing."

I turned off the television.

I sat staring at my hands in the dark.

They weren't shaking.

But the window was open, and from the sea came the sound of a boat slowly approaching the shore.

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