by Logan Fox
Lars stood over her, head to the side. “Time to go.”
She looked around. Her last memory was being on the couch, trying valiantly to find a comfortable position. Had one of them carried her in here? The thought was a slightly pleasant one if it had been Finn, a slightly troubling one if it had been Lars.
From the cast of the light shining against the drawn curtains, it was mid-morning already.
When she came out of the bedroom, Finn and Lars were bent over the coffee table in the living room. There were at least three gun’s worth of parts laying on the table. They both looked up at her and then returned to field stripping and cleaning the weapons without saying anything.
She slipped into the bathroom. Washed her face, brushed her teeth. Ran fingers through hair gone awry. A blush stained her cheeks even thinking about it, so she hurriedly stopped.
When she came back into the sitting room and took a longer look at the weapons, she recognized one of them. She walked up to the table and held out her hand.
Finn hesitated, about to slide the magazine back into his pistol’s chamber, and looked aside at her.
“It belongs with me,” she said.
He touched the pearl-inlaid grip of the Taurus and slid it over the table. She snatched it up, pressed the slide that made the magazine slide out, and made sure there were bullets inside.
“Thanks for the ammo.”
Lars stood. “I will say again that I have grave reservations about—”
She almost pointed the gun at him, and then realized that wouldn’t have helped matters. Instead, she slid it into the small of her back. “You can have all the reservations you want. I need to be able to defend myself.”
“We’re going to be right by your side until…” Lars trailed off with a frown that kept growing deeper.
“Yes?” Her voice was a dry monotone. “And I guess I’ll always have you two by my side? Tomorrow. Next week. Next month?”
Silence filtered down, broken by Finn when he let out a massive sigh. He took one of the pistols and secured it into his shoulder holster. “Let’s get this over with,” he muttered.
“Yes. Let’s.” Cora strode to the door and opened it, staring down the empty hotel hallway. When she turned back, both men were staring after her. “Well?”
“Do you think they gave up waiting for her?” Lars asked.
“Thought had crossed my mind,” he replied. “But I’m guessing they couldn’t get hold of Swan either. They’d have no way to contact me. This would be the only connection.”
“Maybe they think you ran off together.”
Finn sighed heavily as he leaned back against the hotel’s exterior wall. In the span of time they’d been waiting outside, a single car had driven past. Originally, when Swan had given him his instructions, they’d estimated Finn would reach these co-ords by earliest eight in the morning.
It was nine. And still, no one had arrived.
Cora sat on the sidewalk a few feet away from them. Legs crossed, hand in her chin, staring out at what they could see of Marfa from where they waited, she could have been an ordinary young woman whiling away the morning.
If he didn’t know about the Taurus tucked behind her belt.
If she didn’t keep fingering that pendant around her neck. The one her—possibly—dead father had given to her the last time they’d seen each other.
And if she wasn’t waiting for the capo of the El Calacas Vivo cartel to come fetch her.
What lay in store for her? The daughter of a capo…what kind of life did someone like that lead?
“Let’s leave,” Finn said, turning to Lars.
His friend was pinching the bridge of his nose like he’d seen the statement coming a mile away. “Fuck my life,” he muttered. “I knew we couldn’t shake her. She’s like the fucking clap.”
“I mean it. Let’s get out of here. She can decide if she wants to make contact with—”
“Señorita Rivera!”
The name coursed through Finn like someone had hit him with a tazer. He spun around, hand on the butt of his pistol and ready to draw when he spotted a Mexican man crossing the street.
Headed straight for Cora.
Then Finn did draw his gun, but Lars knocked away his wrist as he was lifting the pistol to take aim.
“Milo, it’s her fucking lift.” Lars glared at him until he dropped his arm, and then dusted himself off as if they’d been rolling on the sidewalk. “Jesus Christ, get a grip.”
Lars jogged up to the Mexican, arriving beside Cora the same time he did. Finn was a step behind, crowding in beside him and having to stop himself stepping protectively in front of Cora as she got to her feet.
“Ah, señorita!” The Mexican man spread his arms as if he wanted to hug her, but Cora cringed back, giving Finn and Lars a nervous glance. “Come, Don Javier is waiting.”
“You’re the falcon?” she asked in Spanish.
“Si, si.” The man waved at her, gesturing toward a motorbike parked opposite them a few yards away.
Finn hadn’t even heard it pull up. Lars was right—he had to get a fucking grip on himself.
“You don’t have a car?” Finn asked, grabbing Cora’s arm as she began following the Mexican.
She looked back at him, and tugged at her arm. But not hard enough to pull free; more in irritation. “What?”
“You know him?”
“Of course not. Why would I?” Then she did pull her arm free, scowling at him. But her expression softened a second later. She glanced at the retreating Mexican man, and then back at Finn.
“Thank you for keeping me safe,” she murmured, and then surged forward. He caught her, kissed her, and almost managed to hold onto her. But she wriggled free and spun away from him, running after the Mexican. Her hands lifted as if she was wiping her face.
He didn’t have to see that gesture to know she was crying; he’d tasted tears on her kiss.
Lars came up beside him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Well, what say we—”
“Wait!” Finn bellowed.
The Mexican hesitated, in the process of mounting his bike. Cora stood to the side, waiting to climb on, hiding behind hair that hung in a loose black curtain around her face.
“¿Que?” The Mexican slipped his helmet over his head just as Finn ran up to the bike.
“She’s not riding with you,” Finn said.
“The fuck, man?” Lars knocked away Finn’s hand as he reached for Cora. “We’re done, Milo. Let’s go.”
“No.” Finn grabbed Cora’s arm and hauled her away from the bike. He stabbed a finger toward the Mexican. “You call Martin. You tell him we’re bringing her to him.”
“¿Que?” The man’s face crinkled with confusion.
“They want to bring me to Tio,” Cora translated in Spanish. Her cheeks had gone red, but she spoke without a tremble in her voice. “You show us the way.”
“No, no, no!” The man waved his hands. “No one goes. Just me.” He pointed at himself. “Me and Señorita Eleodora.” He fumbled in a pocket and jerked out a scrap of photo. It had been torn from the original, but there was no doubt it was Cora in the photo. “We go now.”
“No.” Finn mimicked holding a cellphone to his ear. “Call your boss. Tell him we drop her off at his house, or we don’t drop her off at all.”
“Should we really be negotiating with a fucking drug dealer?” Lars whispered furiously to Finn. “I mean, fuck it, Milo, I’m too young to die.”
“Shut it,” Finn snapped. He smacked a fist against the gas tank. “Make the call.”
Cora rattled off a string of Spanish, glancing between Finn and her escort, and Lars with wide, sparkling eyes.
The man grimaced, shook his head, and reluctantly climbed from the motorcycle. He took out a phone and strode away, throwing Finn an exasperated glance over his shoulder. He was too far away for them to make out anything he said, but the conversation didn’t last very long.
He came back wearing a scowl, and
slid onto his motorbike. “Jefe laugh. Say he want to meet this idiot.” With a sneer, the man revved the bike’s engine. “Follow me.”
With that, he floored the motorcycle and sped up the street.
“Jesus,” Lars muttered as he raced for the SUV. Finn followed at a slower pace, Cora a step behind him.
“Finn,” she called out quietly.
“What?” He could do nothing about the snap in his voice.
“You should just have let me go.”
“You’ll recognize Javier?”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“Then I’ll let you go when he’s standing in front of me. No sooner.”
They walked in silence until the SUV was a foot in front of them. Finn moved to open the door for her, and then paused. Ahead, Javier’s man waited at the intersection for them, helmet turned to them as if impatient for them to follow.
“If we get there,” Finn said, brushing a stray strand of hair from Cora’s cheek with his knuckle, “And something doesn’t feel right…”
She stared up at him, her honey colored eyes touched with sadness. “Nothing’s ever felt right.” She touched his hand, and then opened it so he cupped her face. “Not until you showed me the North Star.”
Forty minutes into the drive, Cora had seen enough dry grass and sand to last her seven lifetimes. The radio station Lars had selected played rock music circa 1980. He seemed to enjoy it; his long, tapered fingers drummed along with precision to every song.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Cora said, sliding forward between the two front seats. Finn didn’t turn from his study of the fields they passed, and Lars gave her a brief, disinterested look in the rearview mirror.
“Best place to hole up if you’re a dealer.”
“Capo,” she said quietly. “He’s not a drug dealer.”
“Really. He’s never sold drugs to anyone?”
“It’s not like that at.”
Lars rolled his eyes at her in the mirror. Finn didn’t seem interested in weighing in.
“So you don’t know this falcon we’re following?” Lars asked.
Cora’s lips turned up a smile. “You mean halcon.”
“Falcon,” Lars repeated slowly, as if she’d suffered brain damage.
“Halcon. It means ‘falcon’.”
“Sorry, my Mexican’s a little rusty,” Lars said dryly.
“Spanish.”
“That too.”
“We speak Spanish, not Mexican, you racist pendejo.”
“Really?” Lars said, sounding genuinely surprised until she caught the sarcastic gleam in his green eyes. “You learn something new every day.”
Finn let out a low snort of a laugh, and gave Lars a sidelong look. “Didn’t you date a Latino girl a while ago?”
Lars shrugged and ran a pale hand through his white-blond hair. He wore it long—long enough that when he was done mussing it up, it hung over his eyebrows. “Yeah…we didn’t do much talking.”
Cora fell back in her seat with a rueful laugh. Honestly, she would have been terrified to be driven so far out by a complete stranger.
Which was strange, because she’d been on the run with Finn for hundreds of miles.
“So halcon is like some kind of rank?” Lars asked.
“They’re lookouts, I guess. They’re on the street, mostly, finding out stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Don’t know,” Cora said, giving Lars a long look in the mirror that he failed to see. “Don’t care.”
“Don’t you think you should? Isn’t that a job requirement?”
“A job—?” she cut off and sat forward again. “Look, I don’t know what Finn told you, but I’m not involved in the cartel. My father was and that’s all.”
“Was?” Lars asked, and this time he did look at her. She didn’t like the considering light in his eyes. “Because he’s dead, or he got out?”
“Lars,” Finn said quietly.
Cora clenched her jaw. “He’s not dead.”
“All we know is that he was captured,” Lars said. “What’s the likelihood he’s still—”
“He’s not dead because I’d know!” Cora yelled. “Okay?”
Lars’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Like, telepathically?”
“Yes. Or something. I would know.” She sat back, wrapping her hand around her necklace, warming it in her palm. “I would know.”
Lars let out a low whistle, and guided the car to the side of the road. “You got yourself a winner here, Milo. I gotta piss. Take over for the next stretch, will you?”
Without waiting for Finn’s reply, Lars got out and ambled off into the field beside the road.
Cora glared after him until the man stopped and began fumbling with his jeans, facing away from the car. When she turned back, Finn was watching her.
“Just ignore him,” Finn said. “He likes to get people riled up.”
“I’m not riled up.” Although the tightness in her voice called her out on her lie. “Which one of you carried me to bed last night?”
Finn shrugged. “Does it matter?”
She opened her mouth to tell him that it did, but then he was getting out of the car and she would have had to shout it to him. And she’d already shouted once today. She had to get a grip.
Finn had been the motorcycle for close on thirty minutes when they had to turn down a dirt road. Grass had grown between the two ruts that made allowance for only one car at a time.
She studied him in the mirror while he stared straight ahead. Wearing only a t-shirt, the scar across his throat was highly visible—a white line against his tanned flesh.
“How did you survive?” she asked. “That cut looks deep.”
Lars answered before Finn could say a word.
“Milo’s got a lot of blood in him,” Lars said. He leaned across and made a rasping sound in the back of this throat as he dragged the nail of his thumb over Finn’s scar. “Live feed, beaming straight to some fucking military HQ. That was after negotiations had broken down, of course.”
Finn flinched. He could have moved his head back or shrugged away Lars’s touch.
He didn’t.
As unexpected as the touch had been, Finn didn’t seem to mind it.
Cora’s gaze flashed between the two men. Had they—?
“There’s something up ahead,” Finn said quietly, cutting through her vague thought.
Their SUV slowed.
Cora sat forward, not caring that she brushed Lars’s arm as she grabbed hold of the seats to keep herself in place.
Ahead, a dark SUV was parked in the middle of the dirt road. As they drew closer, Cora could make out the slim, short silhouette of a man leaning against the truck’s hood. He wore a sombrero and, from the plume of smoke that would cloud in front of him every few seconds, looked to be smoking a cigarette. He didn’t turn to them when Finn brought their vehicle to a halt a few seconds later, finishing his cigarette and grinding it out thoroughly beneath the heel of a cowboy boot before sauntering toward them.
Finn turned off the ignition, but kept his hand on the key. “Who the fuck’s this guy?”
“Don’t like this,” Lars said quietly.
The man riding the motorcycle climbed off. He approached the man in the sombrero with caution.
“Is that Javier?” Finn asked, glancing back at her.
“I don’t think so,” Cora said, ducking her head to try and see underneath the hat’s brim. But they were parked too far away—all she could see was a smudgy shadow. “I need to get closer.”
She slid out of the car. “Tio?” she called.
She heard both the passenger door and driver’s door of their SUV open. Boots crunching on dirt as Lars and Finn both got out.
“Is that you?” she asked in Spanish, craning forward to see under his sombrero.
The man stopped and tipped up his hat with a finger. He was about ten years older than either Lars or Finn, maybe in his late thirties.
He had a sun darkened face and too many lines on his forehead, as if he frowned a lot, but his mouth had just as deep creases on either side, as if for every frown there was a smile in return. The heat seemed to have no effect on him; he wore a jacket and an easy-going smile.
“Get back here!” came Finn’s furious yell. “We don’t know—”
Cora stiffened. “You’re not—”
Then there was too much movement, all at once. Crowded together like someone scrubbing through the timeline of a video to get to the good bit.
The man in the sombrero drew a pistol from the inside of his jacket. He fired two shots in rapid succession. Cora yelled as she wrestled her Taurus free from her belt. It felt too heavy, too clumsy in her fingers. Like it was suddenly double the size and weight that had it been when she’d picked it up earlier.
Lars dropped and rolled to the side, while Finn darted back at a speed that belied his size and took cover behind the hood of the SUV. Both had their guns out and aimed before she’d even gotten her Taurus pointed in the right direction.
The halcon crumpled to his knees, touched a hand to his chest, and then fell face first in the dust.
“Cora, down!”
But she had her gun drawn now. She threw Finn a confused, almost indignant look. And then realized neither him or Lars were shooting because she was standing right in front of the man.
She flung herself to the side. The air knocked out of her as she landed on her shoulder and hip. Dust puffed up around her, the smell of it filling her nose and landing in a grainy film over her mouth. She tried to aim the Taurus, but the man in the sombrero sidled to the side, pistol in one hand like a cowboy, aimed at Finn.
He took a shot at Finn, maybe realized he didn’t have a chance of hitting the sliver of him visible behind the SUV’s hood, and instead turned to Lars.
Who lay exposed on the dirt road, nothing but a meager shield of scrubby grass between him the man’s bullets.
Cora fired. She missed.
The man gave her a surprised look, as if he hadn’t been expecting her to have a weapon. But then he grinned.
A cold shudder tore through her. Something—the hand of Santa Muerte, intuition, something—told her to look at the black SUV. It had tinted windows. All the door were closed. But then she focused down, down, down.
