Into the Fire

by Kyla Stone

  Reyes looked straight at Logan. “Now, he’s seen plenty. Now, he’s a witness.”

  Logan lunged at Reyes.

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  The ice in Alejandro’s voice brought him up short. Logan stopped himself, muscles straining, every fiber of his being longing to close his fingers around Reyes’ skinny throat and wring the life out of him.

  Reyes glared at him, eyes flashing in triumph, but he wisely said nothing.

  One more word and Logan would kill him.

  “Move, boy.” Alejandro pointed his gun at the kid.

  Trembling, Tomás obeyed. He shuffled to the couch and sat down stiffly, his little shoulders quaking.

  “Reyes, shut the door.”

  Reyes had only taken a few steps toward the door when footsteps came down the hall. They’d all been so focused on Tomás that none of them heard it until it was too late.

  A figure appeared in the doorway, clutching a brown bag of groceries.

  Logan’s stomach sank. It was Adelina, Tomás’s mother. She was harried and huffing, strands of black hair falling into her face, but smiling like she always did when she came to his door. Esta Tomás aquí?

  Only this time, the smile froze on her face, transforming into a rictus of shock and horror. “Qué estás haciendo! Tomás!”

  Reyes reached her in one long stride, seized her arm, and jerked her inside the apartment. He slammed the door shut and turned the three bolt locks.

  Adelina stumbled and fell to her knees, the paper bag slipping from her fingers. Cans, boxes, and a bag of beans spilled out. The lid of a colorful box of Lucky Charms peeked out of the fallen bag.

  “Get up!” Reyes grabbed a hank of her hair, dragged her to her feet, and threw her onto the couch next to her son.

  She sobbed as she pulled her son close. Tomás wrapped his thin arms around her waist and gazed up at Logan beneath his mop of black curls, those big eyes shiny with bewilderment and terror.

  Logan felt like he’d been gut-punched. The boy had only looked at him with trust and adoration before. Not anymore. Now, both Adelina and Tomás saw him for the monster that he was.

  “You!” Adelina cried. “I trusted you! What you do? You bring death here? To my son? Qué has hecho?!”

  He shook his head, panic rising, clawing at his throat, his mind frantically searching for a way out of this, a way to get Tomás and Adelina out of here alive. Even as the thoughts careened inside his head, the sickening churn of his stomach told him what his body already knew—there was no escape from this.

  He was as trapped as they were.

  Alejandro turned to Logan. “Kill them.”

  “We don’t have to do this—”

  “We do. You do.”

  “He’s just a kid.”

  “A kid who saw us murder this perro hijueputa. He could put us all in the joint for life,” Reyes said.

  “You goin’ soft, hermano?” Alejandro said. “So soft you would disobey me? Or maybe…betray me?”

  “No,” Logan said around the growing lump in his throat. “Never.”

  Alejandro’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out and scowled. “We’ve been burned. Someone called the cops. Gio says sirens, five blocks away.”

  Rodríguez cursed. It was the first time he’d spoken a word.

  “Kill them,” Alejandro said. “Now.”

  For a split second, Logan imagined firing a bullet point blank at Alejandro, punching the round directly between his hard, startled eyes. Imagined the shock of betrayal turning to rage and then despair as the man he called brother realized he was dying.

  Logan could do it. He could whirl and nail both Reyes and Rodríguez in less than three seconds. Then only Alejandro would be left. With the element of surprise on his side, maybe it would be enough.

  He could kill all three of them…then what? Hope Tomás and Adelina were grateful enough to lie for him? Pray he could escape with nothing but the clothes on his back before the police arrived?

  No. He couldn’t.

  Alejandro was his mentor, his brother. Logan despised Reyes, but the rest of them were his family. The only family he had. Without them, he was lost. Without purpose, without meaning.

  As good as dead himself.

  Besides, even if he took out these three, the rest of his brothers would know who’d betrayed Alejandro. They would come for Logan and they wouldn’t stop coming until they killed him.

  He didn’t tell himself he didn’t have a choice. That was the coward’s justification, and a piss-poor one at that. He knew what he was doing, what choice he was making. His life for theirs.

  In some distant, horrified part of his brain, he understood that Tomás’s face would be seared forever into his consciousness. He could never unsee this, never undo this moment.

  “Do it!” Reyes said, already moving toward the door, Rodríguez hustling right behind him, their expressions tense. “We gotta burn this place. Let’s go!”

  Only Alejandro remained beside him. “Where your loyalties lie, ese?” he asked, quiet and deadly calm.

  “No!” Adelina cried. She reached for Logan, begging, weeping, her mascara streaming down her face, her despairing gaze piercing straight through him. “Take me, kill me. Not him. Not Tomás. Por favor! Please…”

  He let the darkness take over. He let himself go numb and cold and hard. He shut out the screams, the cries for mercy, those desperate, terror-filled eyes.

  He raised the Glock. Exhaled, aimed, squeezed the trigger.

  It was a good shot. A perfect shot.

  He shifted his aim to the left and slightly down. He hesitated, muzzle trembling.

  “Oh, screw it.” Alejandro raised his own weapon. The shot echoed in the small apartment. A muffled pop, and then it was over.

  It was done fast, he told himself.

  They didn’t suffer.

  The only one left to suffer was himself.

  46

  Logan

  Logan stared at the placid swamp, his eyes stinging. His stomach churned. Acid burned the back of his throat. He felt sick. Disgusted with himself. Repulsed and horrified.

  He tried to shake off the memories, but they lingered—dark shapes submerged below the surface, like the hulking beasts that drifted in the black waters beneath their boat.

  He couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand himself. He wanted desperately to get away, to escape, to claw out of his own wretched skin and be anyone but who he really was.

  He waited for Dakota to judge him, scream at him, reject him.

  Hell, maybe she’d pull out her XD-S and put him out of his misery for good.

  He’d topple into the swamp and sink to the muck below. The blood leaking from the hole in his skull would attract the lurking monsters, monsters that’d tear into flesh and bone with their massive jaws, devouring him limb by limb, until there was nothing left.

  It was what he deserved.

  He waited.

  Nothing happened.

  She didn’t say anything. Didn’t do anything. She just sat there.

  The sun beat down on his head and shoulders. The silence lengthened, broken by the occasional splash of fish and the buzzing of a hundred different species of insects.

  The bulge of the flask in his cargo pocket pressed against his thigh. He longed to slug it all down right here and now. To go numb. To forget everything in his past, every horrific thing he’d ever done.

  Drinking would give that back to him. The forgetting. The numbness. A way to survive the crushing guilt, the self-loathing, the despair.

  He formed sentences in his head, each more terrible than the last, the words like ashes disintegrating on his tongue. They clogged in his throat, cutting off his breath.

  The silence stretched taut as a rubber band about to snap, until finally it became unbearable. He had to say something. He had to say it out loud.

  “I killed them,” he said.

  “You did,” Dakota said. There was no hatred in her voice, only heavy sadnes
s, a tinge of grief. But no accusation, no judgment.

  “I killed a child and I killed his mother.”

  “You didn’t shoot Tomás.”

  “I might as well have,” he said, that old despairing fury rising in his chest. “I stood there and did nothing, didn’t I? I let it happen to save myself. It doesn’t make me any less responsible. It doesn’t make me any less of a monster.”

  “You aren’t a monster,” she said softly.

  He didn’t dare look at her. “You must hate me.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You should.”

  “I’m quite capable of thinking my own thoughts.”

  “I’ll leave. You can take me back to the cabin. I’ll pack my bag and be out of your hair by nightfall.”

  “Did I say I wanted you to leave?”

  “No, but—”

  “I’m not going to justify your actions for you,” she said quietly, staring down at her hands. “But I’m not going to condemn you, either.”

  He waited, said nothing, his whole body tense like he was entering a battle weaponless. There was no way to fight this thing inside him, no way to ever make the past okay.

  Tomás would never grow up. The little boy with the too-big head and huge eyes, who loved NASCAR and video games, who despised oranges but loved his mother too much to disappoint her, who’d looked at Logan a thousand times with nothing but trust and affection.

  Pain wracked him. With it came the shame, black and ugly, a cancerous rot eating away at him as surely as the insidious radiation. “You don’t understand—”

  “Yes, I do.” She turned and stared straight at him. “Would you do it again?”

  “Never. It doesn’t matter whether it’s my life on the line. I’d rather die a thousand times than hurt them—or any innocent person—ever again.”

  “Okay,” she said simply.

  “Who I am isn’t who you think—”

  “I know who you are.”

  He watched her warily. “But who I was…”

  “Someone I respect once told me that we can’t change the past, but we can decide whether we let it control our future.”

  He gave a hard, helpless shrug. “I don’t know if I can do that. If I deserve to do that.”

  He listened to the birds chirping from a cluster of cypress trees off to their right. A large gray bird with long, spindly legs stalked in the shallows across the far bank, hunting for its prey.

  A mosquito buzzed around his face. He ignored it. “I’m a murderer.”

  “You are, but that isn’t all you are.”

  He waved his hand helplessly. “I almost killed an unarmed woman and a girl yesterday, in case you forgot.”

  “Almost. You didn’t do it.”

  How could he say the words out loud, make it real? It was like dressing a shadow in flesh and bone, creating a monster out of smoke and dust. “I can’t control it. I’m…I’m afraid of myself.”

  “You stopped, Logan. You can control it. You made the choice. Maybe that voice inside your head tells you that you can’t, but it’s a liar.”

  He cracked his scarred knuckles. The words he’d tattooed on his arm stared back at him, the accusing Latin words bristling with barbed wire: et facti sunt ne unum.

  Lest you become one.

  “I belong in prison. Four years wasn’t enough. Not for this. Or maybe I deserve the electric chair.”

  “Maybe,” she allowed. “Maybe a few weeks ago, I would’ve agreed with you. But things have changed. The world has changed. But you have to make that choice yourself. You have to decide.”

  “Decide what?”

  “You can turn yourself in and waste the rest of your life in a cell. You can drown your guilt in the bottom of a bottle and waste the rest of your life in misery. Or you can stop feeling sorry for yourself, man up, and be who you want to be.”

  “I don’t deserve a good life. Not after what I’ve done.”

  “I don’t know if there’s a God out there, judging us. Maybe Julio’s right and God is all about love and mercy. Either way, people get what they don’t deserve all the time.”

  “How can I ever make up for what I did?” he asked brokenly.

  “You can’t. Not for Tomás and Adelina. But throwing away your life won’t do anything for them, either. Julio believes every life has a purpose. Maybe yours is to do enough good that someday it tilts the scales against the bad.”

  “Like redemption.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe the idea of redemption is just something religious people believe in, but I don’t think so. The world needs people willing to fight for something that’s good, now more than ever.” Her jaw flexed. “Everything we do matters. It has too. Otherwise, nothing matters.”

  “That all sounds great, but not for me. Not after what I’ve done. I’m…not a good person.”

  “The worst of humanity, the truly evil people, they don’t give a rat’s ass whether they deserve anything. It’s the decent ones who worry about whether they’re good or not.”

  He bowed his head, his shoulders hunched. “I’m not.”

  “How many lives have you saved in the last three weeks, Logan? You’ve stuck with us, haven’t you? Even after I lied to you. You risked your neck for me and Eden more than once. A lesser man would’ve hit the road long ago. So don’t give me that crap. I didn’t know who you were, but I know who you are now. I know you.”

  He didn’t say anything, but he heard her. He heard every word.

  For the first time in a long time, he saw the glimpse of a future that contained more than violence and death, more than shame and despair. Maybe there was a way. A way to merge both death and life, violence and love.

  He was a man of violence—that wasn’t going to change. But maybe he could harness that darkness to protect, not to destroy.

  Maybe there was a way back.

  It had seemed impossible, but right now, anything seemed possible. Here was Dakota Sloane, the toughest girl he’d ever met, who’d survived her own hell, who’d battled her own demons but didn’t judge him for his.

  He’d shown her the worst of him—the darkness, the monster without a conscience, the thing he most loathed about himself—and she hadn’t flinched.

  She didn’t run away. She was still here. She was just one person, but she was the most important person.

  And somehow, that made all the difference.

  Something took root inside his chest, something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Hope.

  “Thank you,” he forced out around the lump in his throat.

  “Julio’s the one for the deep talks.” Her mouth twitched, the faintest hint of a smile forming. “I pretty much suck at this.”

  “No,” he said, “you really don’t.”

  Her smile widened.

  Their boat drifted into a wall of cattails stretching as far as he could see in either direction. It was a maze inside, like they’d been swallowed by a labyrinth of green stalks.

  Small green frogs leapt from the cattails into the water. On his left, two birds screeched and lifted off with a flurry of beating wings. Bullfrogs croaked. A majestic great blue heron made its way across the sky, gliding, its wings a slow rhythmic flapping.

  It felt like they were the only two people in the world.

  Dakota’s hands were loose on her knees, her right knee only a few inches from his own. Her hair was up in its usual ponytail, the sun streaking the auburn strands a fiery red. A few loose strands clung damply to her cheeks and forehead.

  This close, he could see the faint spray of freckles across her nose, the sardonic tilt of her lips, the curve of her jaw that gave her face that hint of softness that he loved.

  He didn’t hesitate this time. He took her hand.

  Dakota wound her fingers through his and squeezed.

  “Burn it,” she said. “Burn the past. Build something new.”

  When he leaned in and kissed her, it felt right.

  It felt like the most right thin
g in the whole broken world.

  47

  Maddox

  The door to the infirmary burst open. Reuben shouldered his bulk inside. “Enough resting!” he crowed. “Time for all my favorite things—fighting, killing, and vengeance.”

  Maddox smoothed the wrinkles in the fresh shirt and khakis he’d just dressed himself in. Dim dawn light spilled into the room through the opened door, but he’d been awake for hours. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Ha!” Reuben guffawed. “We’ve been waiting for you to get off your sorry butt for, what, six days now?” His eyes glittered. “You’re running out of time.”

  “Tonight,” Maddox said. “It’s happening tonight.”

  Reuben’s gaze sharpened. “You sure you’re up to it?”

  “I’m fine. I’m ready.”

  “Great, man.” He leaned in and slapped Maddox’s shoulder far too close to one of the scabbed lash wounds. Maddox bit down on the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out. Hot tears sprang to his eyes, but he quickly blinked them back.

  Reuben was testing him for weakness.

  Maddox refused to show him any. Ignoring the pain, he squared his shoulders. The days of rest had done him a world of good. His strength was returning. He felt better than he had in weeks, since before the blast. “Let’s go. We’ve got a mission to plan.”

  “Of course.” Reuben’s smile was wide and bright as usual, but there was a glimpse of something in his eyes, a hint of displeasure. Jealousy, maybe, that the Prophet had chosen Maddox, not himself. “First things first, though. The Prophet’s got something big brewing. It’ll blow your mind, man. He said it was time to show you.”

  He smiled back, just as wide and bright as Reuben’s. “So, show me.”

  They turned toward the door.

  Sister Rosemarie stepped into the doorway, dressed in her long dusky blue skirt, her graying hair tucked into a bun and her hands clasped demurely in front of her.

  “Blessings be upon you, Reuben,” Sister Rosemarie said stiffly.

  Reuben flashed his teeth at her in an approximation of a smile, but they both knew it wasn’t. “And you, Sister.”