mammal slither into the undergrowth. When it’s gone, I blow out a breath and set the car right again, the rhythm of our unspoken fears falling in sync with the sound of the tires on the asphalt.
“I’ve never seen anyone kill like you did back there,” says Vi after a couple of miles grace. “I saw your face when you pulled the trigger. There was no hesitation. It was a dead calm behind your eyes, parcera.” She sounds scared again, and a little in awe.
“The dead calm before the storm,” I drawl, feeling that weird sense of detachment again. Is this what he feels when he kills? There’s a beat. “Do you think I’m an evil person?”
“No. Not evil,” she says. “You saw an opportunity and had the guts to take it. You knew what they were going to do to us because you’ve lived it before. That’s the other thing I saw on your face, Anna. I saw your past, as clear as day.”
I try to swallow down my next words but they spew out of me anyway. “Two men tried to rape me last night… And you know what the most messed up thing about it is? I didn't even try and fight them off.”
“What stopped them?” she asks quietly.
“Someone stopped them.”
There’s another pause. “You’re not running from a man, are you? You’re running from so much more.” I feel a warm hand slipping into mine. “Do you think you’re the storm, Anna? Like one of those American twisters that rips up everything in its path, and wipes everything clean again?”
Do twisters even have shadows?
I let go of her hand and nudge the Renault up to sixty. “I’m just a woman trying to survive in a messed-up parallel universe, Vi. I’d never fired a gun before tonight. I’m making up the rules as I go along.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Shock studs her voice like the bullet holes in my victims. “You were like a machine back there.”
“I saw red.” Crimson. “I was done with men treating us that way.”
“Men will always treat us this way.”
“Maybe we need to kill a few more to even that shit up.”
“Maybe we do,” she mutters.
Did I just say that?
Did those words feel as right on the inside as they did spoken out loud?
“A friend once told me that some crimes deserve a different kind of justice. I know you agree with her, Vi. That’s why you offered to kill someone for me earlier.”
“True, but are you going to shoot up the whole of Colombia, parcera?”
“Just the ones who deserve it.”
We fall back into that rhythm again, our thoughts more vocal than anything. The next time I look across at her she’s fast asleep.
I let her rest. I let her have this time away from the violent uncertainty of our lives. We have a destination—a safe house—and I can tell she’s holding onto that with everything she has.
Not me. I’m eating up the white lines in the middle of the empty road like they’re my first meal after a hunger strike. I’m done playing the victim now. I know what I’m capable of. For the first time ever, I have a loaded gun in my hand and no desire to die, but that’s always a prelude to the inevitable.
Tick.
Tick.
Boom.
It hits us out of nowhere—an unforgiving beast made of steel and concrete. The steering wheel is ripped out of my hands as the Renault starts to flip, but there’s only one name on my lips as we hit the central reservation with our asses in the air…
And then everything goes dark.
15
Joseph
Dante’s jet lands on a private strip, ten miles south of Cartagena. Carlos Gomez is there to greet me in person, flanked by ten of his men and a very young woman in a black mini and four-inch heels, who’s clearly high on his merchandise. Her noisy giggles turn to hiccups as soon as I appear in the doorway of the aircraft. My expression tends to steal the humor from any situation.
“El Asesino,” cries the Colombian with his arms out wide, acting like he owns the fucking world and isn’t temporarily renting it. “?Quiubo, parce? Welcome back.”
He looks as thrilled as he sounds.
Cunt.
Gomez is a softer, weaker version of his father, with thin gray hair and a double chin to compliment his gut. Gomez Senior was a loyal teniente, lieutenant, to Dante during his reign here, eventually taking three bullets to the back of his head for the privilege while out for dinner with his