No Stranger to Danger by No Stranger to Danger (Evernight) Page B

dryly, watching the swagger of his lean hips as he started down the street.
    Her heart sank just a little at the thought of her home, but she stepped into the street after him, turning her mind to the incredulous idea of Logan having been close enough all along to snoop on her in his free time. "You’ve been spying on me? That is just weird."
    Logan shrugged.
    It was totally one thing to look into information about her home, but to spy on her personal relationships deeply enough to have formed an opinion, that was just too much.
    Mara followed Logan down the trash littered street with sandy sides and overgrowth hanging over wall barricades that were as tall or taller than she was. The bright, offensive walls were spray-painted with graffiti down the entire length, lining the street as far as she could see.
    "How are we going to find him in all this?" she asked, looking doubtfully up the hill.
    The reputation of the barrios preceded them. They weren't a nice place to be, and the taxi driver had wasted plenty breath telling them all the way from the airport to the barrios. He'd said the crime rate only skyrocketed the further to the top of the barrio you went, and not even the local police would enter the upper levels of some. However, he couldn’t have known they had no choice but to venture in.
    Logan only gave her an exasperated look over his shoulder. They continued on, further down the street, and she glanced at a street sign. Autopista Norte-Sur .
    Mara sniffed as they rounded a corner. She smelled the food before the stubby man with a silver vendor's cart came into sight. Logan approached him.
    " Buenas tardes , señor . Empanadas ?" The man with grey shocks of hair curving around the backside of his head, just above his ears, picked up one of the little pies in a red-checkered wrapper and lifted it toward them.
    " Dos ," Logan said and pulled out cash. He handed the money to the man in exchange for the empanadas and reached back to give one to Mara. "Tell me," Logan said to the man in Spanish, "have you seen another Americano living here in this barrio. Tall—" Logan raised his hand to demonstrate how tall. "Built. Ex militares ."
    The man narrowed his eyes and began to shake his head, his double chin bouncing with the slow bobble. " Sì , sì . Americano." He turned and pointed to Logan's right, up and across the street, just past where the road made a Y, to a purple building on the corner with an open front and a tall, dark-skinned guard standing outside a cantina.
    Mara and Logan glanced to one another.
    "Your source was pretty damn accurate, if the Americano in there is him," Mara said in an aside whisper.
    Logan turned back to the man and gave him a tilt of his head in gratitude. " Gracias ," he said to him.
    The man nodded back, and they started for the building.
    Mara bit into her empanada. "This is good," she said around a bite, looking down into the little shell. Damn good for being the only thing she'd eaten since the layover in Paris. Logan had been so tense, expecting trouble, that they'd mostly stayed in hiding at CDG.
    Chorizo and cheese. Gawd , Mara thought around another bite. "I can't believe you have nothing to say about this," she mumbled to Logan as he ate quickly, too. "We have to go back there." She pointed over her shoulder.
    Sounds of cheering and loud talk spilled into the street as they crossed one side of the Y and paused on a median for a rusty, little, blue car to pass. Logan pressed at her lower back to guide her to cross with him.
    She finished the empanada about the same time they came to a stop in front of the dark-skinned man, and she dusted her hands on the drab dress, swaying the ends around her feet as she did.
    Logan looked around the doorman, and his stare hitched on the back of a man standing at the bar, his fists in the air, chorusing in with the rhythmic cheer of the other patrons. There was a stint of silence and then a heavy “ aagh !”
    Mara glanced around Logan at the TV