“I just—”
“No, you’re right,” I amended, smiling for his benefit. “I’ll shut up.”
He checked my face, trying, I was sure, to get a read on me.
“And just so you know, there will be several different social workers,” I informed him.
“Okay, good,” he rumbled as he pulled up in front of an apartment building and parked.
“You’re getting around pretty well already,” I praised him.
“Well, you know, GPS, it’s a thing, but I’ve been here a week already, so some things are starting to make a little more sense. Though some of the streets I’ve been on—there are potholes that you could lose an axle in, and I swear I was driving down Milwaukee Avenue, and I’m pretty sure it turned into, like, two different streets or something, and some of the intersections here… I pray to God I’m never first because I would have no idea where to turn.”
I chuckled. “You’re used to living in a city on a grid.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Yeah, no,” I teased before getting out of the car.
We were there to check on Ernesto Ramirez. He was placed in witness protection after he saw his father, an elementary school science teacher, killed in Tucson, Arizona. The reason Ernesto was taken into WITSEC and not simply foster care was who pulled the trigger. Troy Littlefield was a hedge fund manager supposedly lost at sea two years prior after an accident on his yacht. Ernesto’s father, Manuel, knew—everyone did—that the story had been splashed all over the internet, so when he recognized Littlefield, he snapped a picture and ran. Unfortunately Littlefield was not alone. His men caught Manuel, and Littlefield shot him, only realizing the little boy was there when Ernesto gasped. But it wasn’t as easy for the men to catch a speedy, skinny eleven-year-old, and Ernesto got away by running straight to the police. That was a year ago, and the trial was still being scheduled, so Ernesto was in our system.
As I stood with Redeker outside the door, I took a quick breath, terrified of what we were going to see.
“Good morning,” a woman greeted me cheerfully through the opening the chain would allow. “May I help you?”
We both lifted our credentials so she could see them, along with the stars hanging from chains around our necks.
“I’m Deputy US Marshal Miro Jones, and this is Deputy US Marshal Josiah Redeker. Are you Monalisa Verone?”
“I am,” she said sweetly, closing the door to take the chain off and then opening the door wide.
The aroma tumbled out of the hall as she stood in her doorway, and I whined. I tried to stop it, but whatever it was smelled incredible. My stomach growled at the same time. It must have sounded pitiful.
Redeker looked at me like I’d grown another head.
She chuckled. “Come in and have some empanadas, Marshal, before you pass out.”
She introduced her mother, Conchita, who was cooking and appeared very pleased to see us. The only person happier to see us was Ernesto. He shook our hands as I sat beside him at the small kitchen table.
“That woman was so mean to me, Miro,” he said, using my name as I directed him to. “And she never paid Mrs. Verone, and it’s really hard for her to get all of us stuff for school if she only uses what—”
“Wait,” I stopped him. “Go back to the not paying Mrs. Verone.”
He nodded quickly. “She always said that the paperwork was lost and needed to be refiled.”
“Ma’am,” I said, “are you receiving the appropriate subsidy payments for Ernesto being here?”
Monalisa waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it, Marshal, I—”
“I’m worried about it,” I told her. “You’re supposed to be compen—”
She grabbed my hand so fast it startled me, and she squeezed it. “Mrs. Cullen told me that if I pushed about the money, she would remove Ernesto from our home, and I—”
“No,” I assured her. “I won’t move him, and I will get you what’s owed, and whatever is back-owed. Do you have paperwork for me?”
Monalisa’s mouth fell open.
“Mija,” Conchita snapped. “Go get the nice man the paperwork that you filled out over and over so he can get you some money and some health insurance.”
Oh shit. “Not that either?” I asked Conchita.
“Not yet,” she said, pinning me with a pointed stare.
Redeker snorted. “Tell me who to call, Jones.”
When Tori Macin from DCFS got to the apartment, the harried-looking social worker was stunned to find I had already scanned and sent paperwork out to her office.
“So you—you just took it upon yourself to do that?”
I squinted at her as Conchita passed her an empanada.
“Thank you so much,” Macin said quickly before turning back to me.
“Have you worked with the marshals service before?”
“I have,” she told me, “but only with Sebreta Cullen,” she amended. “And I will say that that was only in her office. She never came out in the field.”