“I’d know that face anywhere,” I answer, my heart now pounding grotesquely against my sternum as his face in that dark basement comes back to me. Pistol in his hand, arm around my mother’s throat. I shake my head, wiping the image away.
Focus. Focus. Focus.
“How many guards?” Luke asks.
“I counted four,” I answer, stepping carefully to look back through the window. I quickly count them again, assessing the situation. I pull myself back. “Yes, four. They’re all still in their bloody clothes but they are pulling bags out of another SUV. They’re getting ready to change. We’ll move in when they’re getting undressed. Their weapons will be down. They’ll be at their most vulnerable.”
“Copy,” Luke answers, slightly out of breath, adrenaline gripping his lungs. “Just wait a few before looking back.”
“Got it,” I answer, my eyes staring into the darkness. My pulse throbs anxious beats against my throat. Swish. Swish. Swish. The blood hisses in my ears. My calf muscles sting, my arms begin to twitch, and all I want to do is open that door, pepper the room with bullets and spray their blood on the walls. I lean my head back, the coarse brick pulling at strands of my hair. I take in another breath, trying to focus on something to calm me down. I close my eyes, trying to imagine something peaceful, a sunrise, an ocean. But all I see is my mother, her cream robe cinched around her waist the night before that final, failed mission. That moment comes back to me in slow motion. Mom looking up from the bed, a trace of sadness in her normally fierce green eyes I couldn’t quite pinpoint at the time. Her smile, slight and fragile. I had never seen my mother look like that before. She was always strong, always a commanding presence, but in that moment she looked like someone who needed to be saved.
Mom, help me. Please help me, my mind whispers to her image. And then she’s gone.
I open my eyes, stare back out into the black night, and start a silent countdown.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
I creep closer to the door, my eyes peeking again through the corner of the small square window. This time, the bags are open, pants and shirts and underwear strewn over the hoods of the SUVs, their bloody clothing thrown into a heap on the floor.
I turn back to Luke and nod. He ducks below the window, out of sight from Torres and the guards, pointing to the door’s handle.
Please be unlocked. Please be unlocked, my mind silently begs.
Luke puts his hand on the metal handle, pulling it down just far enough, and it gives. It’s open.
His eyes spark as they lock with mine. He quietly releases it back into its fully closed position. I taste blood on my teeth and realize I’ve been biting down hard on my bottom lip. I wipe the blood off with my thumb and peer through the window. Their guns are all down as they stand in various states of undress. It’s now or never.
I duck down below the window, standing next to Luke, my gun ready to fire. I know as soon as that door swings open, guns will be back in their hands, so I have no choice but to shoot to kill or in a matter of seconds, Luke and I will be dying in a pool of our own blood.
The gravity of the next sixty seconds of our lives hits me across my face. And I am numb.
I look up at Luke and nod. He holds up his hand and silently counts down. And with each finger that falls, my lungs collapse one centimeter at a time.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Luke swings the door wide and I open fire.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Three guards immediately drop to the floor with bullets through their skulls.
The last remaining and stunned guard lunges for his weapon on the floor, but I shoot him before he can even reach the shining metal.
Boom.
The power of the shot ricochets off my chest as it pierces the young guard’s brain and he drops to the floor, his blood pooling and tarnishing the shine of his weapon that’s just out of reach.
Torres stands in the middle of the warehouse, his boxers and white undershirt now speckled with elongated red splatter, the bodies of his guards losing blood and warmth by the second at his feet.
He stares at me, his stunned faced changing with the recognition of just who I am, why I’ve come. Torres’s head slowly looks down at the ground, the guns of his fallen guards just feet away; his fingers quiver, eager to grab his last chance of protection.
“Don’t even think about it, Torres,” I hiss, my weapon pointed directly at his head. His dark eyes return to mine, a small smile tightening at the corners of his mouth, flipping my stomach inside out.
“Reagan Elizabeth Hillis,” he says, his voice almost singsong, like I’ve just arrived for afternoon tea. “I’ve been looking for you. Must you always be pointing a weapon at my head every time we meet?”
“Hands up, Torres,” I answer, my body moving closer to him, Luke and his weapon pointed at Torres just a few feet behind me. “Luke, keep your weapon on him.”
I lower my gun and turn over the body of one of his guards, unbuckling his belt and yanking it from around his waist. I grab another belt that’s been thrown on the ground and then point my M4 carbine back up at Torres. He stares at me, his hands weakly raised in the air.
“Let’s go,” I say, stepping closer to him and motioning toward the corner of the warehouse. Torres doesn’t move, just stares at me, waiting for me to balk, to shake and lose my nerve like last time. I raise my weapon.
Boom.
I fire a shot just inches above his shoulder and scream, “I said let’s go!”
Torres doesn’t even flinch. Just raises his eyebrows. After another moment in our stare-down standoff, I ready my gun to shoot again, this time in his shoulder for real. Finally, his body moves, his rough and calloused feet scrape against the cement as he slowly drags himself across the warehouse to where a metal pipe runs from the floor to the ceiling. Once we reach the pipe, I yank on it, checking its stability.
“Stand here,” I demand, pointing at the ground next to the pipe with my gun. Torres just stares at me, standing still. “I said move, Torres.”
Finally, I push the barrel of my gun against his back and this time he moves closer to the pipe.
“You ever get déjà vu?” I ask, my voice gravelly, strained by fury, as I roughly loop Torres’s hands together with the belt, then tie it tightly to the pipe. “You should be feeling some serious déjà vu right now. I know I am.”
As I tie him tighter against the pipe, my forearm brushes against his hand, and even that minimal contact makes the acid in my stomach roil like a god damned ocean.
“Feet, too,” I demand, breaking contact and pointing down at his bare feet.
Torres obeys, shuffling along the dirty cement floors until they are next to the pipe. I tie the second belt around his ankles before anchoring it to the rusting metal. I pull on the leather strap to make sure he’s completely secure. It doesn’t budge. When I stand up, Torres is full-out grinning at me.
“What are you smiling at, you fool?” I snap, pointing my gun back at his skull.
“Just how much you’ve learned,” Torres says, sounding almost wistful. “A year ago, you were a trembling child. And now look at you. I’ve killed lesser agents. In fact, I killed two just today. You are not like them. You are smart and strong and quick and confident. Elizabeth would be proud of her handiwork.”
“Take her name out of your mouth,” I reply, my voice aching in my throat. “You don’t deserve to say my mother’s name out loud.”
“I didn’t want to kill her,” Torres says, his dark eyes narrowing. “But you gave me no choice.”
“Liar,” I reply, steadying my weapon. “You were going to kill her anyway.”
Torres stares at me, a sinister smile separating his lips. “Well, I guess you’ll never know. Will you?”
His words pull at the center of my chest, where my lingering doubt has always been buried. Had I not come to Colombia, had I not entered that house, would my mother still be alive?
“Reagan, let’s call for backup,” Lu
ke’s voice says calmly behind me. “Let’s take him into custody. Bring him to justice.”
“No,” I answer firmly over my shoulder, then turn back to Torres. “He doesn’t deserve the luxury of three meals a day and a warm bed in federal prison. Visits. Yard time. Ramen noodles from the commissary. What kind of justice is that?”
“Reagan, I think you should really…” Luke continues to push but I cut him off.
“I said no!” I yell curtly without bothering to look back at Luke.
“You know, you remind me of myself, Reagan,” Torres says, his accent thinned from years in the United States; years with the Black Angels. “When I was an agent, I was the best. But I was a rule breaker too. Always getting into trouble. But always for good reasons.”
“I am nothing like you,” I reply, that ember burning hot and high. I’m shocked that when I speak, fire doesn’t leap off of my tongue. “I could never spend years with the Black Angels, fight alongside them, save their lives only to turn around and stab them in their backs.”
“You think you know me, don’t you?” Torres says, shaking his head. “But you don’t know the half of it. You don’t know everything about your beloved Black Angels. There cannot be good without evil.”
Stop, stop, stop, my mind screams as his words rattle against my brain, poisoning my willpower, my clarity. I roll back my shoulders, standing up straighter, not ready to fall for his line of bullshit.
“You’re just trying to get inside my head so I’ll lower my weapon,” I continue. “Let you go free. How stupid do you think I am?”
“Not stupid at all,” Torres says, shaking his head. “In fact, I think you’re smart enough to know that even if I’m dead, this will not end.”
Pins prick at the back of my spine and it takes all the strength I have to suppress a shiver lingering below my skin’s surface.
“You will always be a target,” Torres continues. “The people you love will always be in danger. Because of you.”
Because of you, my brain repeats. It’s your fault. It’s always your fault.
I shake my head, clearing the taunt in my mind, and press my lips hard between my teeth until they ache.
“Save your breath, Torres,” I finally say, my weapon still pointed at the center of his face. “You can’t manipulate your way out of this. Your mind games don’t work on me.”
“Tell me something,” Torres says, almost in a whisper. “Does Cameron Conley know I have the power to cripple him the way I crippled his father?”
A foul smile spreads across Torres’s face as shock registers on my own. I feel my eyes expanding from their narrowed slits, my jaw slack and dropping out of its scowl.
“Does Anusha know she was much safer flying her little airplanes? That she wasn’t at risk until she got involved with you?”
My hands begin to tremble, my finger just centimeters away from the curved trigger of my M4 carbine, my mind resisting the itch to pull it.
How does he know this? How does he know their names?
“Sam Levick. Your father. Harper,” Torres says, his voice punchy, every syllable deliberate as he delivers his final blow. My best friend’s name on his tongue physically knocks me back and I have to stop my knees from buckling. “No one is safe. Especially if you kill me.”
Torres’s dark eyes scan my body and penetrate my skin, their chill stealing what little breath I have left in my chest.
“How do you know Harper?” I finally whisper. Sam, my father, even the trainees he could have figured out. But Harper?
“I know everything,” Torres whispers back, his eyebrows rising almost as punctuation, an exclamation point at the end of his cryptic declaration. “You don’t even know where she is. But I do.”
My throat clenches and I try to swallow the piercing lump wedged in my throat as I imagine Harper walking across Washington Square Park on her way back to her dorm at NYU. Her books in her hand, the wind whipping her wavy hair off her face, a man fifteen paces behind, watching her every move.
“The headline practically writes itself, doesn’t it?” Torres says with a sickening glint in his eye. “Poor little midwestern girl moves to the big city only to be raped and murdered outside her dorm.”
I turn my gun around, striking Torres across the face with the hard, wide handle. His lip splits open, blood dripping down his chin.
“Jesucristo,” Torres cries out, his face recoiling in pain. He instinctively pulls his hands toward his lips, trying to comfort himself, but the leather strap pulls his arms back into place.
“Don’t you touch her!” I scream, pointing my gun back at his face.
“I will do what I please,” Torres responds, blood spitting from his mouth with every word.
“He’s lying, Reagan,” Luke says behind me. “Don’t let him get in your head. He has no idea where she is.”
“Oh yeah?” Torres counters, glancing at Luke before turning back toward me with a slow smile, blood smeared across his white teeth. “She should have thought twice about those evening film classes. The dark streets of Lower Manhattan aren’t safe for a beautiful blond like Harper.”
With that, I point my gun at Torres’s kneecap and squeeze the trigger.
Boom.
Torres’s knees buckle and he screams in pain. His wrists pull violently against the metal pipe, the belt scraping but not budging.
“I don’t believe you!” I scream over his groans. “You are a liar and a manipulator and a traitor. You’ll say anything to get your way.”
“Believe this,” Torres cries out in pain, his head slumping as he looks at me through the slits of his distressed eyes. “Your family destroyed my life. Your parents killed my son. You killed my brother. So I will destroy you, Reagan Hillis.”
“I won’t let you hurt them,” I yell over his grunts. “This ends now.”
My finger is wrapped around the trigger, ready to fire the final shot.
“Reagan, stop…” Luke protests from behind me but I drown him out.
“You think you can protect them?” Torres squeezes the words out as he gasps for air, his body failing him. “You obliterate everything you touch. You think you’re helping but all you do is hurt. It won’t matter if I’m dead or alive. You can’t save them. You couldn’t even save your own mother. You killed her by coming to Colombia. By coming into my home. You might as well have pulled the trigger yourself.”
“No, no, no!” I shriek, shaking my head, and everything around me begins to blur; the gray walls of the warehouse, the blood, Torres’s wincing, excruciating face. I feel like I’m about to spin into blackness, disappear through a hole, swallowed to the center of the earth.
Suddenly, the warehouse falls silent. Torres’s lips are moving, but I don’t hear his words. All I hear is my shaking breath, my heart pounding in my ears, shouting its commands.
Do it. Do it. Do it.
I point my gun at Torres, close my eyes, and scream. I can feel my finger squeezing the trigger, knocking me back.
My screaming ceases, the bullet’s shattering echo disappears. When I open my eyes, Torres’s body slumps to the floor, a bullet at his left temple, blood running down his cheek.
Blazing red. His blood is brighter than any blood I’ve ever seen. Just as I imagined it. I shake my head, wondering if I’m trapped inside one of my vengeful daydreams. I bite down hard on my lip, taste my own blood, and know that this time, it’s very real.
“Oh my God,” Luke says from behind me, his voice a reedy whisper. “Reagan, what have you done?”
THIRTY-FOUR
Reagan. Reagan. Reagan.
I hear my name being called out, but it sounds hollow and far away. Like someone trying to wake me out of a nightmare. The warehouse, its walls, its floors, the dead guards on the floor start to lose their color and fade. The only thing I see is Torres, with a bullet in his brain and bright blood dripping off of his chin, hitting the dirty concrete floor like a tiny drumbeat.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
�
�Reagan, we’ve got to go.” Luke’s voice is panicked as he grabs me by the arm, pulling me away from Torres.
“You guys have got to get the hell out of there.” Cam’s voice intensifies in my ear. “Torres’s second team knows something is going on. They’ll be there any minute.”
“Shit,” Luke answers, still pulling at me, practically dragging my feet across the warehouse floor. “Reagan, what is wrong with you? Let’s go.”
“I want to make sure he’s dead,” I say, pulling back toward Torres, wanting to feel for a pulse, make sure the bastard is really gone.
“Reagan, no!” Luke barks. “He’s dead. We’ve got to go now or we’ll be dead too. Come on.” He grips my arm tighter, pulling me away from Torres’s body, past the dead guards and finally, the spell is broken. The sounds and smells and colors inside the warehouse come back to me and I begin running toward the door, away from the scent of death.
“Cam, they’re all dead,” I say into my earpiece as we run out the warehouse door and toward our waiting SUV two blocks away. “Where do we go now? Do we come back to the compound?”
“Absolutely not,” Cam answers. “They’ll find you here. And then we’ll all be in danger. You guys have to get out of the country!”
“What? Out of the country?” I say as we reach the waiting Jeep.
“Yes, go back toward that same route and keep driving south,” Cam says, his voice almost breathless on the other end. “The Black Angel plane is still at the private airport. Look. I have to tell CORE what’s going on.”
“No, don’t you dare,” I reply as I turn the car on and slam the gearshift into drive.
“Reagan, I have to,” Cam answers, his voice firm. “Torres’s second team could look at the security cameras in the warehouse or on their vehicles and know it was the two of you. Do you even know who you’re dealing with? If we don’t get you off this island right now, you’ll be dead before sunrise. I have to tell them.”
“Shit,” I answer and slam the steering wheel with my left hand as I turn the car back onto a desolate stretch of highway that leads toward one of Sumatra’s largest towns. “Okay, do it.”
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