by Callie Hart
“Follow. Follow me,” he says. With his gun held up by his head, Cade moves through the door and into complete darkness. I’m right on his heels, my own gun gripped tightly in both hands. Through the door, a set of stairs descends into the pitch black. I stick close to him, my heart fluttering as I try not to panic. Fuck, this is so bad. God knows what’s going to be waiting for us down here. Ramirez’s men have undoubtedly set up a dungeon where they torture their captives. My father’s probably naked, chained to a wall, missing at least three of his fingers, bloody, bruised and broken. I don’t know if I can witness that, knowing that it’s all my fault.
I feel like crying.
Crying is pointless right now, though. I have to keep my shit together. I have to stay focused. Anything could happen, and I need to be ready for that. When we reach the bottom of the stairs, Cade fumbles, his hand brushing the wall, and light suddenly explodes everywhere, illuminating our surroundings with harsh white florescent light. “What the fuck?” Cade hisses.
“Oh god.” I cover my mouth with my hands, the handle of my gun pressed against my lips. “What the hell is this?”
Cade looks around, just as confused as I am. The basement is filled with boxes. Boxes from the floor to the ceiling. Shoe boxes, hundreds of them stacked one on top of the other, except these boxes don’t contain shoes. They contain a myriad of dildos, strap-ons and other weird and wonderful sex toys, each depicted by a large, colorful image on the side of the cardboard.
My father is nowhere to be seen. In fact, it’s clear this space is being used for some rather kinky storage purposes and not for torturing people at all. “Is there another room?” I ask, searching for a doorway. “Is there another place he might be down here?”
Cade scans the large space, the muscles in his jaw popping as he thinks. “No. There can’t be. This area is the exact footprint of the farmhouse. This is all there is.”
“Then where the fuck is my father?”
“Your father’s dead, bitch.”
Cade and I both spin around at the same time. Both of our guns are raised. The man standing behind me, halfway down the steps into the basement, has his gun already trained on us though—on my head specifically—and his finger is on the trigger. “You even think about trying to shoot me and I’ll blow her fucking head off her shoulders, Mr. Preston.” The guy looks like he’s been fighting already, though his bruises look old, faded, more green and yellow than the stark blue and purple you’d associate with fresh injuries. His cheeks are a mess, covered in scabs.
“Figured Ramirez would have dismembered you and fed you to the pigs by now,” Cade says, laughing. He sobers, saying, “Your face is seriously fucked up, Alfonso. ”
Alfonso, whom Cade has apparently met before, glowers; he looks like he’s ready to shoot both of us in the face anyway, irrespective of whether we shoot at him first. “I’m like a cat,” he says. “I have nine lives. I’ll still be here, working for Hector long after you and the rest of your Widow Maker scum are dead. We won’t even bury you. We’ll drag your bodies out into the desert and let the buzzards have you. The crows will peck out your eyeballs.”
“Sounds unpleasant,” Cade says airily. “But I made myself a promise a while back. I swore my body would be buried in Louisiana. Definitely not in a fucking desert, be that an American desert or an Afghani desert. So I’m going to have to decline your offer, I’m afraid.”
“It was not an offer. It was a promise.” He laughs. “How do you think you’re going to get out of this basement, you fool? I’ll kill the girl if you take another step.”
I see Cade shoot a glance my way, but I keep Alfonso in my sights, training my gun at his head. Cade sighs heavily, as though he’s exhausted by the conversation. “I don’t give a shit about the girl. Do your worst. I have a bullet in this gun right here and it’s got your name on it. No way some piece of club pussy is going to stop me from burying it right between your eyes.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
REBEL
Three seconds feels like a lifetime when there are eight guns pointing at your head. The second I step through the doorway and into the front family room of the farmhouse, Keeler and Carnie on either side of me, every single gun in the room swings at us, locked and loaded. Behind me I can hear Cade yelling at Sophia, but I can’t think about that right now. He’ll take care of her, I know he will. Right now, I have to stay alive.
Ramirez is in the corner of the room, and there are two heavy-set guards standing in front of him, protecting him with their own bodies. Andreas Medina is on the ground, bleeding on the carpet by the looks of things, though he’s aiming a gun at one of Hector’s bodyguards. He fires, and the guy on Hector’s left staggers backward. He holds his hand to his head, which just so happens to be where Andreas shot him, and a look of abject confusion flits across his features. A second later that confusions dissolves as he falls to the ground, dead.
“What the fuck?” Ramirez yells. “Julio, your man just shot mine!”
Julio spits on the ground, pulling out a small silver gun from the inside of his suit blazer. “They’re about to shoot the rest of them, too, pendejo.” The tiny little pistol goes off in Julio’s hand, and then the other guard in front of Hector dies, blood running down the front of his white shirt as his heart, suddenly ripped apart, ceases to work.
Everything happens so quickly. Ramirez is unprotected, but only for a moment. More of his men charge in through the front door, bloodied and burned from the explosion that Cade set. As we’d planned, they all ran out there when Cade set the car alarm off, and they were caught in the blast a few moments later. Sadly some of the fuckers survived, though.
“¡Abajo! Soltar las armas!” the guy out in front hollers. He’s fucking crazy if he thinks any of us are setting our guns down. He obviously didn’t get the memo about Julio’s guys being on our side for the time being, because he doesn’t even cast a look in their direction. Not even when one of them cocks their gun and shoots him in the side of the head, sending brain matter and gore flying across the room.
“This is fucking madness!” Ramirez reaches for his own gun, but Julio gets to him first, barreling into him, pinning him against the wall. He holds him there, fury all over his face, his cheeks wobbling as he curses his enemy in Spanish.
“Kill. The. Old. Man.” Ramirez grinds out, clawing at Julio’s meaty hands, wrapped around his throat. “Kill. Him.” he repeats, louder this time. A badly burned guy in a singed grey suit nods, and then goes racing off to the right, around a corner, sprinting as fast as he possible can.
“Fuck. Oh, no you fucking don’t.” I go after him, crashing into the wall as I try and make the corner; there’s a staircase in front of me, and Ramirez’s guy is almost at the top of it. I aim and fire at him but the bullet misses, impacting with the wall at the top of the steps. The guy swerves out of sight on the landing. I charge up the stairs, taking them three at a time. I reach the top step just in time to see him racing down a long, narrow corridor and then turning to the right, vanishing again. A bone jarring shot rings out, echoing down the corridor, coming from the direction Hector’s guy just ran toward, and my stomach backflips.
He’s killed Sophia’s father. He’s fucking shot Alan, and now’s he’s dead. It can’t be. It just can’t be. I storm down the corridor, ready to put at least five or six bullets in the back of this motherfucker, but when I skid around the corner Hector’s man is lying on his back on the polished floorboards, and another guy is standing over him, looking down at his gun.
He looks concerned, stricken, like the fact that he just shot the man on the ground was a complete accident. His expression transforms to one of anger. “You’re too late,” he says. “I already killed him. As soon as the car blew up outside, I slit the old man’s throat.”
The thing about slitting someone’s throat is that it’s a messy job, though. Perhaps this guy has slit Sophia’s father’s throat. Perhaps he did it from behind and that’s why he’s not covered in blood, but
I know people. I know when they’re bluffing. The guy in front of me doesn’t look like he’s telling the truth. I aim on finding out if I’m right or not. He holds up his gun and fires it at me.
I drop to the ground just in time, laying flat on the hard wood. Almost at the exact same time, I pull the trigger on my own weapon, shooting him in the knee. He falls sideways into the wall, screaming out in pain, and I take the opportunity to take his other knee. No more running for this guy. Probably no more walking, either. I get up and walk over, standing over him. He’s dropped his gun, which I collect from the floor and slide it into the back of my waistband. “Any more weapons?” I ask.
He shakes his head. He really is a terrible fucking liar. Placing the heel of my sneaker on top of the ruin of flesh and bone that used to be his right knee, I begin to apply pressure.
“I’m not bending down there to check you, only to get shot in the face,” I advise him. He screams, his bloodcurdling cry bouncing off the narrow walls.
“All right, all right. Here.” He draws back his suit jacket and there’s his back up, strapped to his chest. I pull the engraved, ostentatious firearm out of the holster and tuck that down the back of my pants, too.
“Which room?” I growl.
“I told you. He’s dead.” I place more of my body weight on his mangled knee. “Fuck, man. Fuck! Stop, stop, stop!”
“Which room?”
“That one. The one on the end. On the left. Fuck!”
I remove my sneaker, shaking my head. “Don’t get any ideas,” I advise him. But it’s too risky. I can’t just leave him here, bleeding on the floor. Too easy to get shot or stabbed in the back. “Sorry, man.” I shrug as I take a final shot after all, shooting him in the head.
No time to feel bad now. Downstairs, it sounds as if all hell is breaking loose. Hopefully, for my sake along with everyone else’s, Sophia is safe. I run to the end of the hallway, booting open the door on the left, and it takes me a second to find what I’m looking for. On the other side of the room, hunkered down in the corner between the bed and the wall, is Alan Romera. His throat is in tact, and he seems otherwise unharmed, which is a minor fucking miracle. “Alan? Dr. Alan Romera?”
The old man blinks at me, eyes cold and contemptuous. “If you’re going to shoot me,” he says, “get it over with. I’m not afraid to die. My Lord and Creator is waiting for me at the gates of heaven, ready to receive me.”
Well, damn. I’m not prepared for that. I smirk as I cross the room, wondering how the hell a guy like he ever fathered a child like Sophia. “Don’t worry,” I say. “The big guy upstairs is gonna have to wait a little while yet to receive you, buddy. If I don’t get you out of here safe and sound, I don’t get to marry your daughter. And I fully intend on doing that really fucking soon.”
Alan’s eyes almost pop out of his head. I don’t know if this is because I mentioned Sophia, because of what I said about marrying her, or because of my language. Frankly I don’t care. I just need to get the fool out of here before he cops a stray bullet to the back of the head or something. Holding out my hand, I offer to help him up.
Alan stares at me like I’m either the second coming of Christ or the son of the devil himself. Cautiously, he places his hand in mine, allowing me to pull him to his feet. At least five days’ worth of stubble marks his face, making him look disheveled and grizzly. From the stains and the rumpled nature of his shirt and pants, I’d say he’s still in the same clothes he was wearing when Ramirez had him snatched from the side of the street, but other than that he looks fairly healthy.
“You know my daughter?” he asks.
“I do. She’s downstairs, probably getting herself into a world of trouble. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back down there to make sure she’s safe.”
The guy seems really out of it, as if he can’t really believe any of this is happening, but I don’t have time to hang around and pander to him. I place one of the guns I just liberated into his hands, and I try not to shake the shit out of him when he looks at it like it’s a coiled snake.
“You know how to fire that thing?” I ask.
“Of course I do,” he says indignantly. He pulls the slide back and checks the chamber, and then removes the safety. “I’m a man of God and I’m a healer, but I’m also not an idiot.”
“Good for you, Doc. Now come on.” I hurry from the room, wondering how the hell I’m going to get him safely through the shit fight that sounds like it’s escalating downstairs. I have very little time to weigh my options. I hear Alan making a strangled choking sound behind me as he steps over the two dead bodies in the hallway. I look back to make sure he’s still following and he is, so I keep going. We creep as quietly as we can down the stairs, and as we reach the ground floor I hear Carnie yelling at the top of his lungs.
“Fucking die already! Fucking die!”
I duck around the corner, back into the front family room of the farmhouse, and Carnie’s wrestling with a guy on the ground, on his back, his arm locked tight around his opponent’s neck. They’re alone—everyone else is notably missing. Ramirez’s man has turned purple, and his tongue is fat, sticking out of his mouth as he claws at Carnie’s arm. He’s managed to kick both of his shoes off, and I watch as he thrashes at the floor in his socks, floundering, flailing, growing weaker and weaker as he tries free himself. Carnie grunts, tightening his hold, bowing his back as he strains, and the guy in his arms falls slack. When Carnie lets him go, shoving him off him, the dead man’s mouth falls open, and the tip of his tongue dangles down onto his chin, half bitten off.
“Jesus Christ.” Beside me, Soph’s father is white as a sheet. He covers his mouth with one hand, staring down at Carnie who is heaving and panting, laid out on his back with his eyes closed, catching his breath.
“Don’t worry, Doc. I doubt anyone’s waiting at heaven’s gates to receive that guy,” I tell him.
Alan trembles. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a handkerchief, mopping at his brow. “You may be right. But still…”
Once upon a time I would have been stunned myself. But serving in the military changes things. It changes everything. Nothing will ever surprise or horrify me again. I grab hold of Carnie by the arm, pulling at him until he sits himself up. “Where are the others?”
“Outside,” he pants. “Out the front. Julio’s gone fucking crazy.”
“You okay? Can you watch the doc?”
Carnie takes a deep breath and hauls himself to his feet. “Yeah, I got this. Go.”
******
Outside, body parts lay strewn in the long grass. The air is choked with copper, making the back of my nose itch, reminding me of memories I’d rather forget. Under foot, something snaps, cracks, crunches every time I take a step. It’s almonds. There are sugared `almonds on the ground everywhere. The external wall of the farmhouse is painted in blood, and Julio and his men are standing around in a half circle while someone screams and shouts loud enough to wake the dead.
“Sick. Mother. Fucker!”
I know the sound of flesh striking flesh well enough to know that someone is taking a serious beating. I know the sound of flesh on broken bone, too. Whoever Julio and his men are watching right now is pounding on dead flesh, or close enough to it anyway. I look around, trying to catch sight of Cade and Sophia, but they’re not here, or at least not where I can see them right now anyway. I head for Julio, noting that every single one of the four men he brought with him appears to be alive, though perhaps slightly bruised and bloody. I’m about to ask him if he’s seen the rest of my guys when I stumble onto Keeler repeatedly pile-driving his broken hands into Hector Ramirez’s skull.
“She was pregnant,” he sobs. “She was fucking pregnant, and you chopped off her fucking head.”
I halt in my tracks, my heart climbing up out of my chest and up into my throat. Bron? Bron was pregnant? Oh, god. Keeler carries on openly weeping as he slams his fists into Ramirez’s head and chest. The leader of the Los Oscuros carte
l doesn’t move. He doesn’t twitch. He doesn’t flinch. As far as I can tell, he’s dead.
“I wanted to do it myself,” Julio tells me under his breath. “But this one seemed like he had a bigger score to settle.”
Shit. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in this situation, but I can’t just let Keeler grind Ramirez’s head into the dirt. I don’t care if he kills him. I couldn’t care less if Ramirez checks out of this world in the most undignified, terrible way possible. I do care about Keeler’s mental state though. If he smears Hector’s brains all over the porch with his bare hands, that’s going to affect him. It’s going to take a piece of him that he won’t be able to get back.
I nearly take an elbow to the face when I wrap my arms around him, pulling him away from Ramirez’s body. “Get off me! Get the fuck off me! I’ll fucking kill you!” he wails, over and over again. I collapse onto the ground, Keeler braced against my body, and I hold onto him tight.
He shakes and cries, and I continue to hold him. I don’t let him go until his hysteria passes, leaving him limp and exhausted.
No one’s moved. No one’s tried to figure out if Ramirez is still breathing. Carnie and Alan stand in the doorway, watching on, and it feels as if the world is holding its breath, waiting to exhale.
“I’m sorry, man,” Keeler whispers. “I’m really fucking sorry. I shouldn’t…I shouldn’t have lost it like that.”
“It’s okay. It’s okay. Just take a minute. It’s all going to be okay, brother.”
But it’s not. It’s not, because that’s when the world exhales.
That’s when we hear the gunshot.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SOPHIA
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Cade’s voice sounds so disconnected. So inhumane. It’s like he’s flipped a switch somewhere and he’s not feeling anything. I almost find myself believing the words that are coming out of his mouth. But they can’t be true? Can they?
