by Diana Downey
Staring at the hole, I don’t know if it’s large enough for me to squeeze through. I watch through the bars and listen. It’s quiet, and this may be my only chance. I shove the two water bottles out of the hole.
I push one arm through first and then a shoulder. My head goes next. Getting both shoulders and my chest through will be the tricky part. I pull the other shoulder through, but when I work on my chest, I’m stuck. I cannot budge.
Dammit. I have to get through now. I don’t want to die here. A single tear rolls off my chin.
Inhaling several calming breaths, I relax and stretch my legs. My feet bump into the bed fixed against the far wall. Using the bed as leverage, my feet shove against it, and I suck in a deep breath. The stones scrape against my skin through the shirt. It’s so painful I have to bite back my cries of anguish.
I squeeze my chest through the narrow slit, so only my hips are left. The toes of my Chucks dig into the dirt to push me forward, and my hips crush against the stone. Sweat pours down my forehead. I can’t move. I’m stuck. My fingers scrape at the mortar. I rock my hips back and forth and the other stone I’d been working on earlier comes loose but is now wedged askance and preventing me from getting my hips through the tight opening.
Shit.
I wiggle my hips until the loose stone pops out. I scramble the rest of the way out of the cell. I stand up. I’m in a long hall of the house. I’ve never been in this section, but if I find a window, I’ll crawl through and run into the desert.
I stuff the water bottles into my jeans and skulk down the hallway. Light pours in through a window midway in the hall, but it’s up high. I dig the toes of my Chucks into the stone to climb up. Outside, several guards carrying assault rifles chat before moving on to survey the grounds.
I wish it were dark. Escaping will be much harder in broad daylight.
I move down the hall and realize I’m close to the main living area. There’s a back entrance that leads to a path that goes out into the desert. I must cross a wide expanse fully exposed to get to the rear part of the house.
Sneaking into the living area, I hold my breath. Before I dash across, young Manny’s voice comes from the hall, and he’s talking to one of the guards. My stomach climbs into my throat. I spin around searching for a place to hide. If that little prick catches me outside, I’m as good as dead. I have to hide.
Chapter Cyn
I drive up to the eight-foot concrete walled compound where rifles peek over the top. They’re all pointed at me. I shake so hard I can hear my bones rattle. I inhale deeply, and as the gates open for me, I drive slowly inside. They could shoot me right now and kill Willa too. I straighten my spine and mentally prepare myself. I visualize myself calmly finding the gun, shooting Manny, and pressing the pager to call Juarez. Then I can release Willa and get the hell out of here.
Killing Manny is what I need to concentrate on. I have to focus on how much I hate this man, so I can go through with murdering him in cold blood. He killed my mother, and he kidnapped my sister.
I scan where the windowless cell is located and finger the small button pager and flash drive between my breasts. My phone is in my pocket, but it probably won’t be for long. Manny will confiscate it.
I step from the car, my nerves rapid firing underneath my skin, tingling the hairs despite the desert heat. Uncle Manny steps outside along with my little shit cousin. He nods to a guard who immediately rotates his assault weapon behind his back.
I lift my hands and he frisks me, finding the keys and my phone. I left my purse with Shane, and I hope Manny doesn’t notice.
“Where’s your passport?” Manny asks.
“I left it close to the border. If I don’t return, they’ll be looking for me, so I better go home with my sister.”
“She can keep her keys and the phone,” he tells the guard. “Just turn it off.”
After the guard turns off my phone, he hands them back, and I pocket them.
“Did you bring the original?” he asks.
My rigid body aches from the strained muscles. “It’s close by.”
“Any copies?”
There’s no point in lying. “Yes.”
A hard look narrows his eyes. He has to expect that I wouldn’t turn them all over. “Then we cannot make a trade.”
“I will send you the others only if I leave with her.” This is turning to shit. I wipe sweaty palms on my skirt.
“Neither of us can trust each other,” Manny says, “so we’re at an impasse.” He gestures for me to enter the house. “We should talk.”
I blow out a whoosh of fear. If he kills us both, my dad doesn’t know where the other copies are.
From his confident smile, Manny thinks he can get away with killing me. As I walk inside, his wife greets me with a tight expression and hurries off. The youngest girls aren’t around either, which is good. I wouldn’t want them to get caught in the crossfire. His son stays by his side, and he likes blood. I’ve heard he’s killed.
A young female servant offers me a glass of lemonade. Manny takes a glass she pours, so I do too. I think about what I’m going to do. Do I get the gun before seeing Willa? I debated that for the last half hour of driving. Go for the gun.
Little Manny is packing. I see the gun stuck in his pants, and I’m sure he’ll use it. Manny does not appear to have a gun on him. He’s dressed in a black casual business suit, no tie, but he probably has guns nearby.
My hands tremble while holding the glass to my lips.
After a few sips, I say, “It’s been a long journey. I’d like to use the bathroom.” I need to do this before I lose my nerve. I will have to shoot little Manny first and then his father. I wish his son would leave. I don’t want to kill a child, but I don’t want my sister or me to die.
He nods to the one closest to the living area, which is where the gun should be.
I walk as nonchalantly as possible to the bathroom. When I lock the door to the bathroom, I wash my heated face with cold water and stare. I need to calm down. I can do this.
I pull the lid off the toilet and look underneath it. “Oh shit.” The tape is still there, but there’s no gun. Now what do I do?
“She’s gotten away,” comes through the door in Spanish.
Good, but what do I do now? I have no gun and no Willa. Fuck.
How do I stop them from searching for her?
I sneak out of the bathroom and little Manny has his gun pointed at me. While I stare down the barrel, a nervous tick forms in my brow. I’m so screwed. Please let Willa get away.
I look at him and then beyond where he stands. “So you already lost my sister. I guess there’s no trade.”
He jerks me around by the arm and brings the gun to my head. He’s shorter than me by four inches. My whole body stiffens and my breath stops cold while my heart takes off on a race.
I close my eyes and calm myself. “Remember, you don’t have the flash drive yet.”
“What does that matter if we kill you?” he says.
Now my whole body is sweating. “Your whole family will go to jail. There are multiple copies.”
“I’m a juvenile, so I won’t, and I can run the business without my dad.”
“You think your competition would let you?”
He looks unsure, and I get a better look at the gun. It’s a revolver and isn’t cocked. He pushes me to his father’s den, and inside, Willa has the gun that was probably supposed to be mine trained on Uncle Manny.
“I’ll kill her,” little Manny says. “Put your gun down.”
We need to hurry before the guards come in. “Shoot him, Willa,” I say.
Without a word, her gun goes off, and I wrestle the gun from little Manny. I toss it aside and punch him in the throat. Uncle Manny slumps to the ground, and Willa races toward me. She shoots little Manny between the eyes, and I jump backward. Surprise shocks my system, and I can’t move. She shot a child, and there's so much blood.
Tears rush down her cheeks. She throws
her arms around me. “They will never come after us again.”
Reality hits me. I hate her killing little Manny, but she’s right. They’re both crazy.
“We need to leave,” I say, pressing the button between my breasts.
My aunt rushes into the den. She gasps, takes a steadying breath, and closes the door behind her. My heart ratchets up its stammering. She could give us away.
When a pounding comes at the door, she opens and tells them that the girls are dead and she wants a moment with her husband. She tells the guard to remain at his station. She locks the door, goes to the safe, and opens it. She pulls out stacks of cash and a gun and stuffs them into a bag.
“How much time do I have?” she asks.
“Not much,” I say. “Juarez will be here soon.”
She nods. “Will he come for us?”
“Let me see what you took.” I quickly go through everything in her hands. She has passports and money. That’s it.
I search the safe, finding a laptop and a backup drive. I pull them out.
“Not now,” I say. “Juarez wants Manny’s records.”
Tears shine in her dark eyes. “I don’t have anything to do with the business. You have my word.”
She grasps my hand. “Thank you, Cynthia. If my girls and I are safe, that’s all I can hope for.”
She calls her daughters and tells them to meet her at the SUV in the underground garage. “There’s another car you can take down there. We’re only taking ourselves. Everything else will stay.”
She looks outside the door and signals us to follow her. This is the life of a drug dealer’s wife. Look out for your children and know where the money and passports are.
We follow her down into the cellar where two SUVs, one a black Escalade, and her two frightened daughters wait. Then the fireworks start. The report of rapid firing automatic weapons thunders above us.
To my aunt’s word, the girls have nothing on them other than the clothes on their backs. The youngest is sobbing.
“Go,” I say to Uncle Manny’s wife.
She scoots into the SUV, but Christina hurries over to Willa and hugs her. “Lo siento,” she cries before hurrying into the vehicle. The Escalade peels out of the garage and out into the desert.
“Give me the gun,” I say to Willa.
“You can’t go back up there,” she says, her eyes wide with fear.
“Shane’s up there. I have to go.” This isn’t his fight.
“What about Aedean?”
“He’s fine. He should be waiting at the house.”
Disappointment engrains into her expression, but she won’t say he should’ve come. Shane shouldn’t have come. God, don’t let him die.
“I don’t want to leave you,” she says.
“I can’t leave Shane. If it’s too rough, I’ll meet you here in a few minutes. But don’t wait more than five minutes.”
She nods and starts the SUV while I run back up the stairs. I cautiously creep down the hall back to Uncle Manny where his body lies prone in a pool of blood on the floor. I step around him, terror consuming me. Even dead, he invokes crazy fear within me. His son stares blankly upward. I scoot around the blood and bodies and peek out of the den.
The living area is empty, but gunfire explodes in my ears, and it’s coming from outside. Glass litters the floor from where the windows were blown out. Holes riddle the interior of the once posh estate.
I look outside, trying not to expose myself, when the front door crashes open. I nearly jump out of my skin.
Juarez and two of his men rush toward me. “You okay?”
I nod, thinking can I really trust a drug dealer? “Where’s Shane?”
He braces my shoulders. “Outside, he’s on his way in. Where’s your uncle?”
I show him the bodies in the den—my mind disconnected from the scene. “A laptop and backups are in the safe. I checked my aunt and her daughters before they left. They didn’t take anything but money and passports.”
“Good. So you killed Manny and his son?”
“No. Willa did.”
He smiles. “I have nothing on you now. That was good thinking.”
“I didn’t plan it. She escaped and killed them.”
“You are cunning,” he says, like he didn’t hear me. His gaze sweeps languidly over me. “I think you should dump Shane and come home with me. You are the kind of spirited woman I could love and cherish.”
“The drug dealer life isn’t for me, but I’m flattered.” Not really. I couldn’t live in Columbia trapped inside a drug cartel compound.
I nervously hand him the original. Can I really trust him, now that he has nothing on me? Willa killing Manny would be self-defense. If I’d killed him, it would’ve been considered premeditated, which I’d gladly do to keep Willa safe. “I’d like to hand over the main file to the feds to help my dad, but I won’t give them anything else.”
“Don’t worry,” he whispers into my ear, which is a bit too friendly. “I trust you.” Before I step away, his lips lock onto mine, and he draws me into a powerful, gut-wrenching kiss. I push him off, but it’s too late.
Carrying an assault rifle, Shane marches over, swings the weapon behind him and picks up Juarez off the ground. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Juarez’s men aim their weapons at Shane, who isn’t letting go.
“Shane,” I say calmly. “Please put him down.”
“Get your hands off me,” Juarez says, not the least bit scared when he should be.
Shane killed a wolf with his bare hands and took on a grizzly, though the bear did get the best of him. Unlike Shane, who is deadly calm, anger flares in Juarez’s expression from that fiery Columbian blood. It’s the same kind of scary I saw more often than not in Manny. I don’t want to deal with drug lords anymore, but I need to try and reduce my father’s sentence, even though he showed poor judgment dealing with his brother.
Shane pulls Juarez closer to her face. “Stay the hell away from Cyn.”
“If you don’t let go of me, my men will shoot you,” Juarez threatens.
I don’t want either of us to die, especially after living through the last half hour that has left my body in ruins from shot nerves and knotted muscles.
Chapter Shane
The tension in the room could explode at any moment. Juarez’s guards keep their rifles trained on my head. I should let him down, though my anger hasn’t subsided, especially at Cyn. I didn’t think she should come out here in the first place, and the way she was kissing him wasn’t innocent.
“Don’t fucking touch my girlfriend,” I say, lowering Juarez to the ground and thinking I ought to beat him senseless, which wouldn’t be too smart right at the moment.
After I release Juarez, the drug lord calmly pockets the flash drive and brushes off his sports coat. “I will review the files and hand over what you can give to the feds.”
“Do you have everything?” Cyn asks me, her voice anxious.
“Let me grab my bag.” I run outside, pick up my gear and her purse from the SUV, and return. I can’t believe she was kissing him, and shit, it looked like she was enjoying it. I can’t get the ugly image out of my mind.
Juarez and I give each other menacing looks before I escort Cyn to the front door.
“Espinoza will be waiting for you on the other side of the tunnel,” Juarez calls to us.
Son of a bitch. I should’ve killed Juarez. My fists are bunched at my sides, ready to tear into him.
I hurry Cyn out to the Camry and light into her the moment our doors are closed and I’ve peeled out of the compound. Guns watch us from the top of the compound walls. Goddamn drug dealers. “Why were you kissing him?”
“He kissed me, and it shocked the hell out of me,” she shoots back.
I slam on the brakes and look right at her. “You were enjoying it.” Fuck, I hate that I’m jealous.
Her face blanches, which only further ignites my jealous rage, and that damn kiss hurts
like fucking hell.
“I didn’t enjoy it, and you.” She stabs a finger at me. “You’re kissing Nikita. How do you think that makes me feel? I’m sick of it.”
“The feds think they’re close, and I’d like to catch these fucks coming after me.” And her. I recall her run-in at the tower’s parking garage. I also tracked down more of the IP addresses where the data is going.
“I can’t deal with it anymore,” she says more to the window than to me.
“What are you saying, Cyn?” Fuck. She better not leave me.
“I don’t know.”
I’ve rarely seen her cry, and tears pool in her eyes dulled from lack of sleep and the drain from adrenaline. She’s tough. She proved that to me when she escaped her abductors who killed her mother and then when she killed one of the men hunting us in Alaska.
“I love you,” I say. I love her too much, and I can’t lose her, especially to some fucking drug lord.
Her hand grazes my arm. “There’s no one else but you. How could there be? You’re the only guy who understands my body.”
To my knowledge, I’m the only guy who’s gotten her off, and I want to be the last guy she fucks.
“There’s Willa,” she says, pointing at a black Escalade.
“Do you think Manny tried to run you over?”
“I don’t know. He rarely comes to the States.”
Willa has pulled off the road alongside a deep chasm. We need to ditch the SUV, and the severe drop-off gives me an idea.
“Wait here, princess.” I expect her not to listen, but she rests her head against the window, and that makes me feel worse.
I get out and take a rag from my bag. Using the rag, I open the SUV door, so I don’t leave prints. “Come on.”
I help her out, and she’s shaking and crying. I’d overheard she’d killed Manny and his kid. She’s only eighteen and the murders will weigh on her. “Get in the car.” We need to get the hell out of Mexico as quickly as possible.
Using the gas can in the back of the Escalade, I pour it onto the SUV’s seats. After wiping down the door and steering wheel, I put the SUV in drive and toss a lighter into the SUV. In a fiery ball, it drives into the chasm 60 or so feet down and then explodes at the bottom. Good. It’ll be hard to get any evidence from the SUV.
