"Keep.Going."
Water reaches her thighs.Her movements slow, fighting against the weight of it, the drag of mud and vegetation beneath the surface.
I raise the gun.
Not to shoot.
To make sure she understands I could.
I angle my head just enough for Adena to see me, for Lucia to hear where the decision’s coming from.“Does she live or does she die?”
Adena’s breath breaks—one sharp exhale like she’s been holding it too long.
She closes her eyes.Just for a second.Then nods.
“I know how to make her disappear.”
Adena
Sunlight cuts through the cypress branches in hard stripes, catching Jagger’s face and sliding away again.He looks steady.Too steady, considering what we just did.
All the way out here, I’d prayed Jagger had a plan.This was it.Fear, staged and controlled, traded for a chance Lucia might run and never look back.It wasn’t clean.It was just better than the alternative.
It’s a risk.For her.For me.For Hightower.But mostly for Jagger if we didn’t do enough to scare her enough to seek refuge at the mission on Barrone Street.
It’s also the only chance we could give her.
“You should have told mebeforeyou pulled the gun.I could have shot you,” I say.
Jagger picks up a branch and snaps it.“I needed this to look good.Now Marquez will see the footage.”
I’mstilla little miffed he took it to such extremes, even if I understand why.“Does she have any reason to go back?Family?”
He shakes his head.“She can’t.Even if she wants to expose us, she’d be dead before morning.No one tolerates rats.”
Relief and doubt hit together, tangled enough I can’t separate them.Lucia’s alive.That doesn’t mean she’s okay.There was no version of this where Lucia could go home.
“What would you have done if I hadn’t told her where to go?”
Jagger eyes me and shrugs.“Told her to keep walking and never look back.”
“Just like that?”
He frowns.“You’re disappointed in me?We just saved her life.The rest is up to her.”
Before I can say anything else, he pokes at a subject we’ve danced around.“How long before your boss pulls you out?”he asks.
It’s the one thing we haven’t said out loud—and saying it won’t change the fact that I’m already in deeper than I expected.
“Your bosses wanted two months.I was prepared for that.Silas cut it to one,” I say.
One month.Four weeks in an environment where letting your guard down gets you killed.
“You were okay with locking in two months of your life?”
I nod.“It takes time to build trust.I didn’t expect things to move so rapidly.”
A smile flickers on his lips.“Marquez was running out of patience.The longer the position went unfilled, the more money he lost.”
