"Don't thank me. We're not out of this yet, and I'm the reason you were there."
"Both things can be true." I use his words from the first morning, the same phrase he used when I accused him of pretending to care. He kidnapped me and he saved me. He's my captor and my protector. He's the worst thing that's ever happened to me and the only reason I'm still alive.
12
MATEO
The headlights appear on the county road twenty minutes before the FBI is supposed to arrive.
Two vehicles are moving fast from the west, the same direction we came from. I see them before I hear them, twin points of light cutting through the darkness, and my body makes the calculation before my conscious mind catches up. Distance, speed, time to contact. Less than two minutes.
"Stay here," I tell Sofia. She's on the bench behind the gas station, wrapped in my jacket, her destroyed feet tucked beneath her. She looks at the headlights and back at me and I see the understanding land.
"How many rounds do you have left?"
"Twelve."
"That's not enough."
"It's going to have to be."
I move to the front corner of the building, the position with the best sight lines to the road and the parking lot. The gas station is a box of cinder block and glass with two pump islands in front and a dumpster to the side. It isn't ideal cover, but it's better than the open road, and the fluorescent lights work both for and against us. They illuminate the parking lot, which meansthe men in those vehicles will be visible when they arrive, but it also means I'm visible. I reach up and smash the nearest light with the butt of the gun. Glass rains down and the corner of the building goes dark.
The vehicles pull into the lot.
They're black SUVs and they park in a V formation that blocks the road exit, and for a moment nothing happens. The engines idle and the headlights blaze. Then the doors open and men step out with the measured coordination of professionals.
I count five. Three come from the first vehicle and two from the second. All of them are armed. One of them is Enrique Salazar. I know him by the way he moves, by the distinctive hitch in his right shoulder from a gunshot wound that healed badly.
Enrique is not a cleaner. Enrique is an artist, and his medium is suffering, and the cartel deploys him when they want a death to echo.
He's here for Sofia. For the message her death would send.
Four of the men spread out across the parking lot, using the pump islands and the SUVs as cover and moving toward the building in a loose formation that tells me they've been trained. The training isn't military but cartel, which is sometimes better because it's unconstrained by rules of engagement.
I have twelve rounds and five targets and a woman behind the building with bleeding feet who is carrying the evidence that could end the Vega cartel. The math is bad. The math has been bad since the moment Diego Vega called me and said'we have a problem.'
I inhale, hold, and exhale. The breathing technique strips away everything except the immediate moment. Fear leaves and doubt leaves. Sofia, my brother's betrayal, the kitchen floor, all of it leaves. What remains is the weapon, the thing I was built to be, the only part of me that still works clean.
Three of them are moving together toward the front entrance. One is circling left, toward the side of the building. Salazar is hanging back near the SUVs and directing.
I take the one circling left first, because he's closest to Sofia's position. The suppressed shot sounds like a heavy book dropping on a hardwood floor. He goes down in the gravel between the building and the dumpster, and the other men react immediately, dropping into cover as flashlights scan the area.
Eleven rounds.
Shouts rise in Spanish. They've identified my position from the muzzle flash. Rounds punch into the cinder block above my head, spraying dust and fragments. The first volley sounds like someone beating the wall with a sledgehammer, and chips of concrete sting my face and neck. I drop flat and press my cheek against the cold pavement, tasting grit and gun smoke. A second burst chews through the corner where I was standing a half second ago, blowing a fist-sized crater in the block and sending a shard skidding past my ear. The muzzle flash from the pump island strobes the lot in fast yellow bursts. I count the rhythm, one-two-three, a pause to adjust, one-two. Between the pause and the adjustment, I roll to the opposite corner, gaining a new angle. My shoulder hits the concrete hard enough to bruise, and I use the pain to sharpen my focus.
Two of the three at the front entrance are crouched behind a pump island. The third has moved to the nearest SUV. I wait for the next muzzle flash from the pump island, locate the shooter, and fire twice. The first round sparks off the pump housing and the second finds its target. The man drops.
Nine rounds.
Return fire comes from the SUV, heavy caliber, and the windshield of the building shatters inward with glass cascading across the interior. I press flat against the wall and feel therounds pass through the space where my head was a moment ago.
The second man at the pump island makes a run for the building's entrance. It's a bad decision. I catch him in the open with two rounds, both center mass. He falls forward with his weapon clattering ahead of him across the concrete.
Seven rounds remaining and only two men: one of them Salazar.
I move along the wall toward the back of the building. I need to check on Sofia and need to make sure the man I dropped by the dumpster is down and staying down.
