The tree line is exactly where he said it would be. Twenty yards of open ground between the house and the woods. Twenty yards of exposure under a sky full of stars that provides just enough light to see by and just enough light to be seen.
The front door of the farmhouse splinters.
The sound is enormous in the silent night, the crack of wood giving way under force, and it's followed by voices in fast commanding Spanish. They're inside.
"Run," Mateo says.
We run.
Twenty yards has never felt so long. My bare feet hit the ground and the cold is immediate and brutal, every step a small agony, but I don't slow down because the voices behind us aregetting louder and someone has found the back hallway and someone is going to find the open bathroom door in seconds.
We reach the tree line and plunge into it. Branches claw at my face and arms. The duffel bag catches on something and I wrench it free. Behind us there is a shout, then another, then the sound of the back door being kicked wide open, and a flashlight beam sweeps the yard like a searchlight.
Mateo pulls me behind a thick oak and presses me against the trunk. His body covers mine, blocking the flashlight's sweep, and for a moment we're invisible, just two shadows among the trees, breathing hard, hearts hammering so loudly I'm sure they can hear us from the house.
The flashlight moves on. Voices confer. I hear boots on the porch steps as two or possibly three men fan out into the yard.
Mateo leans close, his mouth against my ear and his breath warm against the cold. "East. Stay in the trees. Don't make a sound."
We move. Mateo leads, navigating through the woods with the confidence of a man who scouted this terrain days ago and knows where the fallen branches are, where the ground dips, where the trees are dense enough to provide cover. I follow his footsteps exactly, placing my feet where his feet were, trying to minimize the sound of our passage through the undergrowth.
Behind us, the search spreads. More flashlights sweep through the trees like the eyes of mechanical animals. Voices call to each other in Spanish. They've realized we're not in the house, and they're organizing a pursuit.
A branch cracks behind us, close and too close. A boot on deadfall, the sound amplified by the silence of the woods.
Mateo stops, turns, and pushes me down behind a fallen log. He crouches beside me with the gun in his hand and the barrel pointing toward the sound.
Silence follows, then footsteps that are careful and deliberate, someone moving through the trees with training and patience. The flashlight beam appears between the trunks, sweeping left and right, probing the darkness. It passes over the log we're hiding behind, catches the edge of the duffel bag, and stops.
The beam swings back and holds.
Mateo moves.
I've never seen a human being move that fast. He goes from crouching to vertical in a single fluid motion, and the gun in his hand coughs once, the suppressor reducing the shot to a sound like a hard cough. The flashlight drops and a body follows it, crumpling into the underbrush with a rustling finality.
There is no hesitation, no remorse, no wasted movement. He picked up the man's position from the flashlight angle, calculated the trajectory, and fired before I could draw a breath. This is what he is. Not the man who cooks breakfast, not the man who hands me knives and looks at me like I matter. This is the weapon underneath, the thing the cartel built, the thing his brother exploited, the thing that exists at his core.
I should be horrified. Part of me is. The part that went to law school, that believes in due process and the rule of law, that part is screaming.
The rest of me, the part that wants to live, the part that is lying behind a log in the woods with cartel killers hunting us and a duffel bag full of evidence that could bring down an empire, is grateful.
"Move," Mateo says. His voice hasn't changed, still calm and controlled. The kill was a task completed and nothing more, and he's already past it, already scanning the trees for the next threat.
We move faster now, because the shot, suppressed or not, has changed the calculus. The men behind us know we're armed.They'll be more careful, which slows them down, but they'll also be more lethal, which speeds up the timeline.
The woods thin as we approach the county road. I can see it through the trees, a strip of dark asphalt running east-west, empty, with no headlights in either direction. Mateo stops at the edge of the tree line and scans.
"East," he says. "There's a gas station a couple of miles up. We can call from there."
"Call who?"
"Your FBI agent. Baker."
"In the middle of the night?"
"I'm guessing he's not sleeping either. Not since your call."
He's right. Jon Baker, whatever else he might be, is a man who takes threats seriously, and my call from the farmhouse will have triggered every alarm in his professional repertoire. He's probably been working through the night, mobilizing resources, trying to trace the call, trying to find me.
