“I thought—”
“You thought wrong.” He holsters his gun, then crouches down so we’re eye level. “This is what happens when you run,printsessa. This is what happens when you try to trust anyone else.”
The desert is silent except for the wind and my ragged breathing.
“How many?” I whisper.
“How many what?”
“How many people want me dead?”
He considers this. “All of them.”
The honesty takes the breath from me.
“All of them?”
“Everyone connected to this operation. Everyone who thinks you know something. Everyone who sees you as a threat or a liability or just a loose end that needs tying up.” He stands, brushes dirt off his knees. “The only reason you’re alive right now is because I decided you were worth keeping that way.”
I look at Rodriguez’s body. At the blood soaking into the sand.
“He wasn’t really a cop.”
“Oh, he was a cop. Just a cop on someone else’s payroll.” Green Eyes walks back to wherever he left his car; I can’t see it, but I hear an engine running somewhere behind the ridge. “Corruption goes deeper than you think in this city.”
“What about—? What about real police? FBI? Someone?”
“Someone like who? Someone like Rodriguez?” He shakes his head. “Mary, the people who want you dead have been operating in this city for decades. You think they don’t have contacts in law enforcement?”
The weight of it crashes over me.
There’s no cavalry coming.
There’s no safe place to run.
There’s no one I can trust.
Except…
“Why?” I ask. “Why do you keep saving me?”
He’s quiet for a long moment, studying my face like he’s trying to solve a puzzle.
“Because you’re useful,” he says finally.
Not because he cares. Not because he feels responsible. Because I’m useful.
The honesty shouldn’t hurt, but it does.
“Useful how?”
“That’s a conversation for when we’re not standing next to a dead body in the desert.”
A black SUV crests the ridge, driving toward us. For a second, panic flares—more enemies?—but Green Eyes doesn’t react, so I force myself to stay calm.
The SUV stops, and a man gets out. Tall, lean, all sharp angles and cold eyes. He looks at Rodriguez’s body with the same expression most people reserve for roadkill.
“Clean?” he asks Green Eyes.
