Arizona felt along her ribs, then let out a shaky breath. “Just fabric,” she said. “I’m good.”
“Then stop looming like a target and get smaller,” Cobra barked.
Valkyrie and I split without talking.
She peeled off toward the twisted fence gap, picking off anyone dumb enough to try and squeeze through now that the element of surprise was gone. I angled toward the road, using a wrecked car in the yard as cover to get a clearer line on the shooters at the SUV.
One saw me and swung his rifle. I ducked, rolled, came up by a stack of pallets. Splinters leapt as bullets hit where my head had been.
I leaned out and put two rounds into his doorinstead of his torso—not because I missed, but because I wanted him to get smaller, to flinch down behind metal and glass. It worked. His angle broke, giving Indigo a clean line from above. Her shot took him in the neck.
He dropped beside the SUV, blood pumping rhythmically.
The driver cursed and slammed the vehicle into gear. The SUV lurched forward, fishtailing as he tried to retreat and ran over his own man already bleeding out on the asphalt. Another SUV behind him peeled out as well, deciding this wasn’t worth whatever they were being paid.
“Cowards,” Medusa spat, firing one last shot that pinged off a rear bumper.
We didn’t give chase. Bikes were fast, but SUVs with unknown backup and rifles waiting up the road were a good way to start a body count we were trying to keep at zero.
That’s when I saw the straggler.
He was inside the fence. Somehow he’d slipped in during the first rush and hadn’t made it back out before the retreat got called. Now he was pinned between a stack of old engine blocks and one of the outbuildings, breathing hard, gun in hand.
He looked young. Young enough that if you saw him in a different shirt at a grocery store you’d just think “teen” and move on.
Valkyrie swung her gun toward him first. Rosé flanked opposite. Liberty moved up the middle,steady.
I closed in from the side, gun up but not quite at his face. If we could take one alive, all the better.
He saw the wall closing. His eyes went flat.
Voices quieted. Even the ringing in my ears seemed to hush.
He said something in Spanish—low, almost a chant. I caught the word muerte. Death. The rest slid past my shitty middle-school language classes like water.
“What?” Medusa called. “Speak a language we recognize besides ‘fuck.’”
He looked at her, then at the rest of us. A strange calm settled over his features.
“For Bolivar,” he said in accented English.
Before any of us could move, he put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
The crack was sharp and close. His body dropped like someone cut a string. Blood sprayed the wall behind him, dark against chipped paint.
No one spoke for a second.
India let out a slow breath. “Well,” she said faintly. “That’s… one way to clock out.”
“Get his pockets,” Liberty said, already moving. Her voice wasn’t shaky. It never was. “Anything that tells us where he shits, who he drinks with, who he calls when he’s scared. I want it.”
Cobra and Indigo moved in efficiently. They rolled his body, checked for phones, IDs, tattoos beyond the obvious cartel ink. Found another cheap burner,this one with no numbers saved. Useless except for confirmation.
“India, Diamondback,” Liberty said without looking back. “How’s my wounded?”
“Anaconda’s going to have a badass new scar,” India said. “Bullet went clean through. No bone. She’ll limp and complain, but she’s not dying.”
“Arizona’s pride got shot worse than any skin,” Diamondback added. “She’ll live.”
