Holy shit.
What have I done?
There’s blood everywhere—the floor, my arms… Even my pink Chucks have been dip-dyed the color of murder.
There’s another tug on my T-shirt. “Anna!”
I can’t breathe. “Oh my God, Vi—”
“There’s no time for that!”
Tears are trickling down her cheeks. She’s biting her lips to keep her composure, fighting hard against the waves. But Vi isn't Moses. She can't part shit. She’s just another beautiful broken casualty of the Colombian cartels.
The full horror of her ordeal hasn't hit home yet, and as crazy as it sounds, I want to be there for her when it does. We’re in this together now. We’re blood sisters, whether we like it or not.
“Hang on. I need a moment to—” To what? Think? Hide the evidence? Stop wishing with every fiber of my being that my shadow was here to make all of this go away?
“Listen, Anna, I deserve every piece of shit you want to throw my way, but save it for the car, okay?” Her swollen dark eyes are pleading with me. “The whole village would have heard these shots. Fernandez’s spies are everywhere and his son is lying dead on the floor of my bar. We have ten minutes before the Cartagena Costavo are all over us. They'll slit our throats and hang us from a bridge, and that’s if they’re feeling generous.”
Her words seem to zap my frozen body into life. “What do we do with the—?”
“We leave them! Come on!” Her urgent tugging turns into full-on dragging, and I stumble to my feet after her, still clutching the gun.
Avoiding the front door, she leads me out into the yard and through a side gate. The narrow dirt path doubles back to the street and close to where her car’s parked. People in various states of undress are standing outside their tiny red and orange houses, watching as two women fall upon the doors of the small red Renault like wild animals.
“Quickly, Anna!”
“Okay, okay!”
Vi’s already hitting thirty before I’ve found my seatbelt.
“Slow down!” I cry as she swerves to avoid an oncoming black SUV.
“Are you insane?” She drags her wild eyes away from the road to glare at me. “We have five minutes, max. They have a fleet of top-of-the-range Jeeps. We have a shitty old car that doesn't do more than sixty on a good day.”
We’re back on the same road with all the potholes again—the Renault traveling so fast that every bump and jerk is like a mini explosion going off under the suspension.
“Where are you taking us?” I yell above the whining engine.
“Somewhere safe. Somewhere we can get our crap together.”
“Somewhere you can figure out a way to betray me again?”
I can't help it. It just slips out.
“No!” She slams the wheel to the left as we hit a T-junction, the speedometer barely dipping below forty.
It’s pitch black outside. The crescent moon is fading and the stars are in hiding. It’s like they’re ashamed of me, and what I’ve done, but I’m past caring. Killing those men has bought me my first peace in months. I’m too pumped with adrenaline to analyze the wrongness of that right now.
“Why did you do it?” I demand. “Why did you sell me out?”
“I didn’t. I-I… Mierda! Look, I know you don't want to hear it, but I wasn’t trying to sell you out.”
“Bullshit!” I brace against the door as she swerves again, this time onto the main road, the pedal still flat to the floor.
“It’s not, I swear it! I’m sorry I brought you into my mess, but I was fucking desperate. Let me explain.” I can tell she’s trying really hard not to cry again. “You were a guarantee for the debt, nothing more. I never should have mentioned you, but I was in that car and he wouldn't stop touching—” She slams the heel of her hand down on her thigh suddenly. “Motherfucker!” she screams, slamming it down again and again, and I know she’s picturing Gustavo’s face as she’s doing it. “That fucking bastard! How dare he violate my body!” She slams the brakes on and the Renault goes skidding across the asphalt. A second later, she’s kicked her door open and is puking her guts up as I’m left pivoting across both seats to catch her hair.
“Mierda,” she groans out, going down again. “Men are like fucking poison.”
“And puking them up seems to be a recurring theme for us.”
Just then, a car shoots past, rattling the metal framework and setting her off again. After a while she lifts her head with another groan and I pass her a bottle of water I find stuffed in the side pocket.
“For two women who only met a couple of hours ago, we’re making up for lost time,” she croaks, unscrewing the cap and taking a sip. “I’m good now. The sickness has passed. We need to get going.”
“Not like this, move over,” I say, taking charge, attempting to push her gently out of the car. “There’s no way you’re driving. I think you have a concussion.”
“Do you have a license?” she says, refusing to budge.
“Do you honestly give a shit about that?” I yell. “I just committed a crime that’s way worse!”
“You’re right… Fuck.” She staggers around to the passenger side and opens up the door. “Just keep to the limit now we’re on the main road, parcera. We don't want to attract attention.”
“Fine. Now get in.”
It’s been years since I drove a manual, but the simple action of wrapping my hand around the stick brings it all flooding back. As soon as she’s safe in the seat, I slip the car into first and hit the gas.
“How’s your head?” I ask, chasing the speed up through the gearbox until I’m hitting fifth.
“Pounding,” she whispers. “Stay on the right side, like in America… Did that really just happen? Did we really kill Alberto Fernandez and two of his men?”
It’s the inclusion of herself in my crime that makes me hate her even less. If we go down over this, we’re going down together.
“Yep,” I say grimly, clutching at the steering wheel like it’s the grip of that gun again. I steal another glance at her through the darkness. She’s staring straight ahead, her mouth working hard to hide her emotions. Her forehead is a bloody battlefield of cuts and grazes, but there’s no way we can visit a hospital.
“Do you believe me, parcera?”
“I believe in your guilt,” I tell her. “I know you were trying to make amends by offering yourself in exchange for me.” The same way I know the friendship we struck up in that restroom was the real deal.
“That’s not good enough,” she says. “The only way we’re getting through this is if we start trusting one another again.”
“Fine, I believe you. I don't know why, but I do. Maybe because I don’t have a fucking choice anymore.” My shock is sounding more like belligerence now.
She takes it with a pinch of silence, digesting my words slowly. “Keep heading straight. We need to get to Leticia as quickly as we can. It’s the southernmost city in Colombia, and it’s about a six-hour drive from here. I know a place we can go. No stopping, except for gas.” She pulls out her cell and starts fiddling around with the GPS, and then slots it into the vent mount. “Okay. We’re on the map and we have a route.” There’s a pause. “The deadline to deliver you to Fernandez was tomorrow evening. I was going to drive us down to Leticia first thing. He must have guessed I was planning to renegade on our agreement.”
“Yeah, he seemed a real untrusting asshole like that.”
“What the hell are we going to do, Anna?” She sounds scared suddenly.
“We’ll figure it out, okay?”
Call him.
No.
Call him.
I don’t have his number.
Liar. You have it memorized...
“What’s in Leticia?” I ask her, ignoring my bat-shit crazy inner monologue. It’s driving me close to the edges of a ravine that’s filled with shadow. If I fall in now, I’ll never climb out again.
“It’s where my aunt lives.”
“Can we trust her?”
“With our lives. Her estate is a fortress.”
“Tell me everything about the debt you owed. No more secrets, Vi.” I bite down on my lower lip to stop myself from screaming out the word hypocrite.
She rests her head against the window and sighs. “The night we buried my cousin, I had a visit from Fernandez. Manny had been working overseas when he died and he’d fallen behind on his payments to the cartel. He owed close to twenty thousand. We just assumed he’d have some kind of immunity because of who—look out!” she shrieks.
I brake hard as an unknown creature scuttles across the road in front of us.
“Oso hormiguero. Anteater.”
We sit there, hearts hammering, watching the strange 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 favorite mistress. We both mourned him and vowed to avenge him, but in the end Eve Santiago had that pleasure.
Regrettably, Carlos fell a long way from the Gomez family tree—namely, the next fucking orchard. The first chance he got, he screwed Dante over by forming allegiances with Dante’s brother, Emilio. Wrong decision, asshole. Dante’s been making him pay for it ever since. When he steps forward to shake my hand, his slight limp is courtesy of my boss’s knife play. The three missing fingers on his left hand were all my doing, though. I wasn’t going to let Dante have all the fun.
“Gomez,” I say coolly. “It’s been a while.”
I make sure to give the scars an extra squeeze to let him know that forgiveness is still a couple of decades away. I don't trust him an inch. Never have. Never will. His dogs are more fucking intelligent than him. The first chance he gets, he’ll be going for a double strike against us.
“Señor Santiago advised me you might be needing some assistance during your trip.”
“Just your car for now.” I retrieve my hand and gesture to the line of black jeeps and SUVs parked in front of me. “Give me the keys. When I need guns, I’ll be in touch.”
“You’re here on your own?” I watch him angle his head to the empty steps behind me. The glint in his eye makes me want to do a number on the remaining two fingers.
“I’m not on a vacation, Gomez.”
His fake smiles drops. “I’ve requested a meeting with the heads of all of Los Cinco Grandes. Three or four nights from now on neutral territory.”
“Send me the address. I’ll be there.”
“And how exactly is Señor Santiago planning to unite the families from his island in the Pacific?” he says slyly. “There haven’t been peace talks for months, only war, especially from the thieving tyrant, Fernandez.” He spits on the ground to show his dislike of his rival.
“You seem to have forgotten I have my own powers of persuasion.” I drop my gaze to the remains of his hand.
“¿Quiubo, parce?” he says again, laughing nervously. “I have no doubt that you can help bring about a peace to these petty squabbles.”
“No doubt,” I repeat icily, glancing back to the vehicles. “I have personal business to attend to first. I’ll drive myself.”
“Of course, the woman… No chauffeur?” His eyebrows arch in surprise.
“Not today.” Any driver of his is a spy I can do without.
“But we brought you a present to enjoy on your journey.” He beckons to the young woman. “Luciana here will make you very comfortable. You have my personal guarantee.” His accompanying laughter makes me want to take a knife to his other hand.
“Not interested,” I say, nodding at the woman who can’t hide her look of relief.
I know her type. She’s a prostitute from the banks of the River Caguán, most likely transpo
rted here for Gomez’s amusement. The sex trade is legal in this country, yet cocaine production and whoring go hand in hand, and it makes the legalities questionable at best. The last thing she needs is an asshole like me pawing at her. The last thing I need is for her to run back to Gomez with a pretty mouth full of complaints. I’m selective who I fuck these days. A little too selective since spun gold cast a spell over my dick.
“Very well.” With a forced smile, Gomez hands over a set of keys. “It’s the one on the left. You have my number…”
Damn right I do.
“And here is the girl’s address.” He hands me a piece of paper. What is it with all those fucking pieces of paper? “She owns a bar in Santa Perdida, which is an hour north of here. You’ll find the GPS codes already programmed in.”
“What’s her name?”
“Viviana Martinez. Twenty-three. Graduate from UCLA.”
My head jerks up in surprise. “She’s American?”
“Colombian. She moved back from California last year… Tell me, why is Señor Santiago so interested in this one, eh? I thought he was happily married. Wife. Baby—”
“His interests don’t concern you,” I interrupt tersely. “If there’s nothing further, we’re done here.”
Sparing myself any more false salutations with Gomez, I head toward the vehicle. Truth is, I don’t have a fucking clue why he’s so interested in this woman. He’s never mentioned her name to me before, but I learned a long time ago that Dante’s darkness is like shock therapy. You never know which truth will be jolted from the depths next.
I’m still pissed at him for adding to my task load. I could have located and extracted Anna within a matter of hours, but now I have to talk down a load of petty drug lords and babysit some chick until he and his gun arrive to settle scores.
I tear out of the airport hangar and follow the directions to Cartagena, stifling a yawn as I go. It’s ten p.m., and it has been a long-ass day. My whiskey hangover has lodged in my temples, but my craving for her is the greatest ache of all. I backed off to let her heal, but I’m done with that approach now. I’ve come here to claim her, even if I have to lock her up and fuck the past out of the both of us to make it happen.
Shadow Man: Grayson Duet: Book One Page 9