Our eyes meet.
"Paco," he says, still looking at me."I need keys to a van."
"¿Ahora?"
"Now.We're handling it together."He jerks his head toward me."Adena.Let's go."
Every eye in the warehouse shifts to me.Paco.The two guys whose names I don't know.Workers pretending not to watch while absolutely watching.All of them waiting to see if I'll obey.
Waiting to see if I'm really his woman or just another girl who thought she mattered.
I can feel the heat of their stares, a wall of men waiting for me to flinch.It’s suffocating.I force my legs to move, stepping out from behind the pallet.I don't look at Paco or the others; I keep my eyes on Jagger.I have to follow him.There’s nowhere else for me to go in a place like this.
Jagger catches the keys Paco tosses, the metal jangling in the silence, and heads for the side door, leaving me no choice but to follow him into whatever comes next.
Eighteen
Jagger
I grip the steering wheel hard enough that my knuckles ache, bones pressing white through skin.The engine growls, and we lurch forward into the afternoon heat that shimmers off the asphalt in waves.
Adena hasn't spoken since the warehouse.
I want to say something—anything—but the words stick in my throat like glass.The van's bugged.Marquez doesn't trust anyone, least of all his drivers.There are cameras tucked into the rearview mirror or hidden in the dashboard vents, recording every word, every flicker of doubt that crosses my face.
Exactly why I choose it.
The city slides past the windows in a blur of color and decay.Storefronts with iron bars.Strip malls with half the spaces empty.Neighborhoods that shift from struggling to dead in the space of three blocks.A traffic light ahead turns yellow, and I punch the gas, blow through it as it flips to red.Beside me, Adena's hand shoots out to brace against the dashboard.
She still doesn't speak.
My mind won't stop racing.Three years of this life.Three years of sinking deeper into a role I can't remember how to take off.Three years of doing things that lodge in my chest like shrapnel, working their way toward something vital.
And now Lucia.Another casualty.
The nail salon crouches between a payday loan place with bars on the windows and a restaurant that's been boarded up so long the plywood's gone gray.Pink neon flickers in the salon window, buzzing loud enough I can hear it through the glass when I kill the engine.
I turn to look at Adena.
She's staring straight ahead at nothing, jaw locked so tight I can see the muscle jumping beneath her skin.Her breathing is too careful, too measured.Each inhale counted.Each exhale controlled, like if she breathes wrong, she'll shatter.
I need her to go inside.Need her to walk into that salon and bring Lucia out because that's what makes this real.A man doing it alone looks wrong.Suspicious.But a man bringing his woman?That's making a statement.That's showing ownership.
But I can see it in the rigid line of her spine—she's holding on by her fingernails.One wrong word, and she's gone.Out the door, out of my life, out of this nightmare she never asked to be part of.
"Go in," I say.My voice comes out flat, dead."Get Lucia.Bring her out."
Her throat works like she's swallowing something sharp.Her eyes search mine, desperate, looking for reassurance I can't give.
Then she opens the door.
The heat rushes in like something alive—thick, humid, pressing against my skin.She climbs out and crosses the cracked asphalt toward the buzzing pink sign.Her shoulders are straight.Head up.
The salon door closes behind her, and she's gone.
Sweat starts to bead along my hairline and trickle down my spine.My hand drifts back, fingers finding the gun tucked against the small of my back.
Two minutes crawl past.Three.
