by Karina Halle
It was something I was trying my hardest not to think about. As much as I thought about Luisa, as much as I pictured her beautiful face, her fiery spirit, her pure heart, the way she felt like home when I was inside her, I didn’t think about the way she was now. I couldn’t even let myself imagine the horrors she must have been going through with Salvador.
For the second time, I felt total shame for carving my name into her back. That would bring her so much pain, much more than the pain I had given her. I hoped she wouldn’t be too broken, when and if I found her. I hoped she’d still find that fight inside of her, that courage. I also hoped she wouldn’t let her selflessness kill her, especially not for someone like me, who didn’t deserve an ounce of it.
I wished I had the guts to realize what she had meant to me, back when I could have changed things. Now it was probably too late.
After a while, we came across our first checkpoint. Considering our vehicle and the fact that Greg, a white man, was in the passenger seat, I was certain we were going to be busted by Salvador’s men.
But the masked gunman only waved us through.
“That was easy,” I commented, twisting in my seat to watch them stop the car behind us.
“They’re on our side,” Berrellez said smugly.
“And what side is that?”
“Mexico’s. They’re your army.”
“And Salvador’s checkpoints?” I asked, waving at the distance in front of us. I knew there would be a few more and they wouldn’t be on “our” side.
“Just trust us,” she said.
Yeah fucking right.
But I had no choice. Soon we were pulling off the highway and down a dusty road that seemed to head into nothing but farm fields, rows of eggplant and tomatoes as far as the eye could see. Finally the fields tapered off and we ascended up into a forest, the road starting to wind.
“Where the hell are we going?” I asked. There was a niggling feeling in my gut that perhaps they were planning to off me.
They didn’t answer. That didn’t help.
Eventually, however, we came to a stop in a wide, mowed field beside a rather large barn. The field was occupied by at least seven black helicopters. Dozens of armed officers with the words DEA emblazoned on their backs were milling around. All of them were wearing goggles and helmets, covered head to toe in protective gear and holding matte black automatic rifles.
“Wow,” I commented. “Very professional looking bunch.”
“It’s the DEA, what did you expect?” she asked, opening her door.
I shrugged. “I thought it stood for Drink Every Afternoon.”
She eyed me with impatience. “Come on, get out.”
I did so, stepping on to the grass with ease and felt every single pair of goggles turn in my direction. Here I was, Public Enemy Number Two, and completely surrounded. I was tempted to give them all a little wave but figured some hotshot would probably mistake it as a threat and blow my hand off.
“Now I’m going to go change,” she said. “Want a gun? They’re brand new carbine AR-15s.”
I pursed my lips. “Nah. Seems a bit impersonal, don’t you agree?”
She stared at me for a few beats. “How about protection?”
I grinned at her. “I don’t use protection. Dulls the senses.”
“For your body,” she said in annoyance.
“I’ve got a vest underneath and a few pistols. I’ll be fine.”
“Your funeral,” she said before she turned and headed toward the barn.
It wasn’t long before she came back looking like a man. Every part of her was covered up in the DEA’s armor, the long AR-15 held proudly in her hands. She smiled at me. “Well, I just spoke to the PGR. They have another five helicopters at their location, and they’re about to set off. Are you ready?”
“To be thrown out of a helicopter? Not particularly.”
She jerked her head toward a helicopter that was just starting up, its blades slowly whirring around. “Let’s go.”
Just like that, everyone around us started clamoring toward the waiting choppers. I climbed in with Berrellez, Greg, and four other men whose names I didn’t know, nor could I tell them apart, and soon we were lifting off into the air. Though I denied an AR-15 and protection, I was still given a headpiece which I could talk to them through, something that was already useful, considering how loud the helicopter was.
“You look nervous,” Berrellez said to me.
“I’m not the best flier,” I admitted.
“Nothing to do with you being dropped off at the heavily-armed compound of the world’s most wanted drug trafficker?”
“No,” I lied. It wasn’t that I was freaking out. It wasn’t even that I was afraid. But there was a thread of apprehension that ran through me, tickling me from time to time. It wasn’t often that I was out of my element, and beyond that, beyond the idea of dying fruitlessly, I was worried that I still wouldn’t be able to save Luisa in the end.
“Good,” she grinned. “I’m not nervous either.”
To my surprise, the choppers didn’t head toward the city of Culiacán, the hazy mass of roofs and rivers. They headed further inland, into the mountains. It seemed that Salvador had changed it up after we captured Luisa and had moved to another mansion. I had no doubt that the remoteness meant security was even tighter.
“Based on satellite images,” she said, pulling out a mobile device and flipping through it, “there’s a plot of land both behind the house and down the road by a few meters. We’ll go as close to the house as possible. If the PGR aren’t already there, we’ll be the first on the scene. We’ll all head out first, then you follow.”
I nodded, understanding but not agreeing.
Suddenly the choppers swooped up, nearly missing a row of trees that protruded from a rapidly rising cliff.
And on the other side of them, settled in the middle of a plateau, was Salvador’s house. It was a mansion not too dissimilar to mine, albeit with none of the class or beauty, with a few guards milling about and some stationed at the gates. Naturally, as soon as we started bearing down on the house, they started panicking and shooting at us.
The gunman in the chopper began firing back, taking out as many as he could before the pilot began a quick descent toward the green grass of the backyard.
Not going to lie—my heart was in my throat.
And I had to take every opportunity I could. As soon as Greg slid the doors open and the chopper was making its way past one wing of the house right over a small balcony, I made the sign of the cross, leaped past Berrellez, and jumped out.
Someone tried to grab me at the last minute, maybe it was Berrellez, but gravity had taken hold and I plunged about fifteen feet, landing straight on a glass table. It shattered beneath me and I lay there for a few moments on my back, the wind knocked out of me, staring blankly up at the black chopper blades as it continued on its way. The sound was incredible, hypnotic, until I heard Berrellez squawking in my ear.
“What the hell was that?” she yelled at me through the scratchy earpiece. I quickly rolled over in time to see someone coming to the balcony door. I whipped out my pistol and shot right through it, getting the figure before they could get me.
“You do things your way,” I said to her, “I’ll do things my way.”
“Don’t forget the deal. All bets are off if you end up killing him. We need Salvador alive!”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, and switched my earpiece off.
I scrambled to my feet, shrugging the broken glass off of me. Rapid gunfire erupted on the lawn though I couldn’t tell who was firing the most and who was already winning.
It didn’t matter though. I was after only one thing.
I gripped my gun and stepped through the broken glass door and into a cool, carpeted bedroom of Salvador’s house.
Time to find my queen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Luisa
At first I thought it was the end of the world. I
heard the deep rumble slice through the air, felt it quaking in my bones, shaking the floor of the bathroom I was lying on.
I welcomed the end of the world with open arms. In fact, I think I smiled knowing that death was finally on its way. It had ignored my pleas for far too long.
But then, when I didn’t die and the world didn’t burn and crash around me, I realized that the sound I was hearing was helicopters. I tried to raise my heavy head to look through the narrow window above the shower. It was glassless now, as was the mirror. Salvador had taken them out after I had stabbed him in the forearm one day with a slice I broke off. It cut my hands up pretty bad and I received a round of electric shock torture for my disobedience, but damn had it felt good.
Through the window I saw a black helicopter fly past, heading right over the house and the sound built up, growing deeper. Then I saw another helicopter and another.
Something was going on. I should have been happy, just having a disruption to the daily monotony. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been kept in the bathroom, perhaps ten days, perhaps two weeks? It was hard to remember. My brain wasn’t functioning anymore since he stopped feeding me several days ago. I still had water coming out of the bath and the taps and the toilet, just to ensure I wouldn’t totally die. If I was dead, how on earth could he torture me? How would he hear me scream?
Salvador hadn’t even raped me aside from the first day or two that I had arrived back. I felt like that was purely to assert his dominance, especially after he saw Javier’s brand on my back. He wanted to make sure that I belonged to him again. But to my surprise, the sexual attacks stopped soon after.
It was nothing to be relieved about. Salvador’s big thing now was to torture me in other ways. I was no longer his wife that he could have every which way he wanted. He no longer wanted me. So I was treated like an informant, like a spy, like a hostage. I was locked up in the bathroom somewhere in his house and he would visit me … sometimes once a day, sometimes twice, sometimes once every couple of days, all his ways of keeping me in suspense.
Too bad I had become too numb inside to even care anymore.
The first week, he removed the nails from my pinky toes. While one of his men held me down, he slowly ripped the toenails straight out. I prided myself on not passing out, but boy did I scream. It was just what he wanted. After that, I did my best not to make a sound. I was able to make it through the Tasers, being the old pro that I was already, but when it came to the hot irons he applied against my stomach, well that I could never keep inside.
And while I was able to take the beatings quite well, the other day he took a hammer to my finger. He seemed extra angry, muttering something about my choice in hired help, and I was punished accordingly. I screamed more after he left, when I attempted to bandage my broken index finger to my middle one using a toilet paper roll and strips of the shower curtain I had painstakingly ripped off.
Now I was lying on the cold tiles of the floor, wondering if the end was coming or if the helicopters were only going to bring me more pain. I didn’t even have the strength to crawl over to the door and see if I could hear anything.
Not that I needed to. Soon the air was filled with the sound of gunfire coming in all directions. People were no doubt dying. I wanted to smile at that. I wanted the whole world to burn.
I closed my eyes again and lay down my head, envisioning the madness that was going on outside, pretending that the good guys had come—whoever they were—and that Salvador would be caught in the crossfire. I hoped he’d die feeling like a fool.
Minutes passed and more helicopters sounded. More gunfire followed. I wondered what would happen if someone found me. Would they mistake me for being part of the cartel and shoot me on sight? Would they show me mercy? Or did the world hold worse things for me? It didn’t seem possible.
Eventually I heard quiet footsteps on the floor outside, and when I opened my eyes, I could see a pair of boots underneath the doorframe, waiting on the other side.
I started smiling before I even knew why.
The door was suddenly kicked open, narrowly missing my face, and I followed the boots up to see a pair of golden eyes staring down at me. Waves of pain and relief swirled in them with startling clarity.
“Luisa,” Javier whispered, immediately dropping down to his knees. He looked completely beside himself as his eyes searched my body up and down. He touched my face and I closed my eyes, leaning into the warmth of his palm. He was here. He had come. My beautiful, ruthless king.
“Luisa,” he said, gently running his other hand down my side, feeling carefully for anything broken. “Stay with me, darling. I’m getting you out of here. Can you walk?”
I nodded. “I think so,” I said, my voice so painfully raw.
He looked at my broken finger, at my toes, at the wounds in my arms and legs from the Taser, at the bruises on my face. The more he searched me over, the more broken he looked. I couldn’t let him lose it if I hadn’t yet. Now was not the time.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, trying to get to my feet.
He gripped me by my arms and carefully pulled me up. I wobbled a bit on my feet, dizzy from the lack of food, and fell into his chest. He immediately wrapped his arms around me and held me tight. It took everything I had not to break down crying.
He kissed the top of my head. “I should have never let you leave.”
“I never should have left,” I said softly. I had regretted it the moment I stepped into the house, the moment I realized that Salvador would probably have my parents killed anyway. For once, I hated how selfless I had been.
“I’m going to kill him,” he growled, and I could feel the anger and tension starting to roll through him. “I want to kill him more than I’ve ever wanted to kill anyone. I want to do everything he did to you to him, but worse. I want him gone.” He sighed in frustration. “But I made a promise not to.”
That surprised me. “To whom?”
“The DEA,” he said. “They’re the ones who got me in.”
“You made another deal with the Americans?”
He pulled away and stared at me intensely. I had missed his eyes so much, the power inside them, the passion and strength. “I would do anything to get you back. And I did.”
“But your cartel,” I started.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. None of that matters. Only you matter, Luisa, only you.” In the distance, the gunfire reigned. He paused. “But it will all be in vain if I don’t get you out of here. I’d tell you I need you to be strong, but I can tell you already are.”
I managed a smile, refusing to let fear enter my veins anymore. I wouldn’t fear with him by my side. We would make the world pay.
“Give me one of your guns,” I said, holding out my good hand, which was thankfully my right one.
He grinned at me and reached into his boot, pulling out a handgun and placing it in my hand. “Try not to shoot the guys with DEA on their backs. We might get in trouble.”
“Save that for another time?” I said, not really joking either.
He planted a hard kiss on my forehead. “Goddamn it, you’re perfect.”
He led me out of the bathroom and into the adjoining guest bedroom. We were almost out in the hall when one of Salvador’s guards appeared.
Javier pulled me down and shot the man just as another guard appeared. From my position on the ground, I somehow managed to aim the barrel and pull the trigger.
I hit the second man right in the chest, and he stumbled backward against the wall before toppling over on his fallen comrade.
My heart galloped wildly, loudly, and it felt hard to breathe.
I had just killed a man.
Me.
Just like that.
Javier looked down at me in awe before helping me to my feet.
“How did that feel?” he asked in amazement, peering at me closely.
My breathing had returned to normal and the adrenaline was starting to coax through my veins. My flesh tin
gled all over. I swallowed as I looked at him, sharing his wonder.
“It felt good,” I told him honestly and not feeling the tiniest bit ashamed. “Almost like sex.”
He shook his head, his nostrils flaring. “Stop that,” he said gruffly. “I almost came just from seeing you pull the trigger.”
He brought me to the hall, and after checking both ends, we ran down it, heading away from the gunfire that now sounded like it was coming from the foyer. He darted into the room of David, Salvador’s asshole assistant, and I could see where he’d already come in. The French door and the table on the balcony were already smashed, David’s dead body lying amidst the damage.
I spit on his body as we stepped over the corpse and onto the balcony. In the distance a helicopter was flying and I could see a few of them on the lawn. The grass was littered with bodies, most of them Salvador’s men. Bullets still ripped through the air, though I couldn’t see the combat.
“We’ll go on the roof,” Javier told me, staring up at it. “That way one of the helicopters can pick us up and we’ll be safer. We can see anyone coming from below and we’ll pick them off.”
If we stood on the edge of the balcony’s railing, there was a small overhang that would be easy to climb up on, at least for him. Escape was so near.
“I don’t know if I can pull myself up,” I told him, starting to panic a little. “I don’t have much strength.”
“I’ll pull you up,” he said confidently. He quickly eased himself onto the railing, balanced himself, and then jumped up onto the ledge, needing to pull himself up a few feet.
And while he was doing that, his back to me, I felt a gun press against my temple and an arm hook around my neck. I dropped my gun in surprise and it went skittering over the balcony edge.
Heavy breathing seeped into my ear.
Fear gripped my heart.
Salvador.
By the time Javier found his footing and was turning around to see what caused the clatter, I was completely under Salvador’s control. The look of utter outrage and madness strained Javier’s face. I knew he wanted nothing more than to tear Salvador from limb to limb, but that would never happen now.