“Colombian.” I’m bored of the conversation already. I drop the clutch and ease the car out of the parking bay.
“Are you trying to make me lose my shit on purpose?”
Go fuck yourself, Dante. I have a serious case of blue balls, I haven't had a shower in two days and I need a goddamn drink. “Why don’t you stop dicking around and tell me what’s really going on?”
There’s silence on the line. “Did you take a look at her eyes?”
“Her eyes?” The unthinkable slips into my path like landfall, and I slam my foot down on the brake. “I swear to God, Santiago… If you have some secret woman down here in Colombia I will hunt you down for Eve myself.”
He blows out a harsh breath. “Grayson, the day I look at another woman will be the same day I find religion staring down the barrel of my own fucking gun. Call my question a curiosity.”
“I’ll call it something else if you don’t start talking to me.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t recognize her yourself.”
This stops me in my tracks. I knew I’d seen her before.
Dragging my mind back, I replay the action by the outdoor vending machine, with my hand pressed tight over her mouth as those two fireballs tried to knock me on my ass.
“Motherfucker,” I mutter, as the dots connect, depicting a face I’d never thought about or had any goddamn desire to see again. “Did you know he had a daughter?”
“I heard a rumor. Figured it was hearsay. Figured the truth was all twisted up like the inside of his fucking head. The man was screwing half the whores in Colombia and busy slitting the throats of the rest. So I ignored it. Hoped it would go away. Then I took a phone call yesterday, and now my ass has bite marks all over it. She’s not a fan of me, as you can imagine,” he adds dryly.
“Who else knows about her?” Unease has paced my voice to a slow drawl. I sound like a fucking Bond villain.
“Us, and one other.”
“You planning on terminating her?”
“That's the idea.”
I hang up without saying goodbye. All I can think about is Anna driving off into a soon-to-be sunrise with the spawn of a second devil, riding shotgun.
I let her go.
I fucking let her go.
Without hesitating, I tap a code into my cell and bring up the tracking device stats from Gomez’s car. She’s heading south, with nearly a half hour of driving time on me.
I chuck my cell onto the dash and hit the gas, eating up the same route like I’m a Pac-Man chasing down the bad guys. Correction. One bad girl, and another with the propensity to fuck all our shit up. There’s giving Anna freedom, and then there’s giving her enough rope to wrap around her delicate white throat and hang herself from the rafters.
I nudge the car to top speed with one thought ripping up my insides. If Anna gets brave and spills about our connection to her new BFF, there’s not a single phase of the moon that will save her from decades of bad blood.
She’ll be leaving Colombia in a body bag.
21
Anna
“Did you see it? Did you fucking see it?”
“See what?”
Vi’s acting wild and crazy. She keeps swiping her hair behind her ears and dragging the back of her hand across her mouth.
“The scorpion. Hijueputa! I never ever wanted to see that scorpion back in this country again.”
I go blank for a minute, and then I remember the tattoo on Joseph’s bicep. “You mean—”
“Yes!”
She overtakes a rusty pickup, and then swerves to miss an oncoming delivery truck. The skyline is a gradient of blue and black. It’s the last trick of night before dawn shows us her big reveal. I can see the sloping shoulders of a mountain range in the distance. Our headlights are revealing small shacks and endless fields by the roadside. We’re keeping off the main highways like he told me to, but it’s killing our progress. The bends are vicious. The lack of road maintenance is worse.
“Loads of people have scorpion tattoos,” I say, trying to reason with her.
“It’s the Santiago cartel insignia.” She curses in Spanish before sucking in a breath. “What the hell are they doing back here, Anna? Why are they hunting us? Their allegiance is with the Gomez cartel, not Fernandez. None of this makes sense.”
“Just take it easy, okay?” I grab the door handle as she swerves around another vehicle. “Why is this such a head-fuck to you? All the cartels are bad, right?”
“Yeah, but that guy back there belongs to a dead one. He should be on the other side of the world right now.”
I feel sick. I thought I didn't do guilt anymore? “Maybe Fernandez called in a favor?”
“What, already?” She shakes her head and takes another bend in the road like a Formula One racing driver. Joseph’s appearance has sent her into a new dimension of paranoia. “There’s no way he could have mobilized a sicario like him. Do you remember me telling you about Santiago’s second in command?”
“El Asesino,” I say quietly.
“Right.”
“And you think it was him?” I say, heart sinking.
“Dead-eyed American assassin, check, Santiago, check…. Mierda! You should have let me kill him!”
I want to argue that he wasn’t dead-eyed; that those gray-blues crystalized when I screamed his name, reflecting all the light in the universe.
“Tell me why you hate Santiago so much.”
“Do you want more nightmares tearing up your soul? That man is pure evil.”
But it’s more than that. She said it was personal, and that kind of comment has rivers than run as deep as oceans.
“What did El Asesino say to you in the motel room before I came around?”
Her question sounds more like an interrogation.
“Let’s just say his body parts did most of the talking.”
At least it’s not a complete lie.
I wrap the blood-soaked towel a little tighter around my forearm and prop my elbow up against the door rest to keep it elevated. I know she wants more, but I’m feeling way too edgy to form a defense. Instead, we fall into a jarring silence. There’s too much tension in the car for it to ever be tranquil. She can’t stop her ghosts from haunting her. I can’t stop reliving what happened in the motel room with Joseph. When I close my eyes, it’s there waiting for me: The frantic need of my fingers, his hand roughly pressed against the most intimate part of me, the fierce possession in his kiss, my burning fever for more…
Two hours pass. The stereo stays silent. Music is even more of a vacant pleasure to me with half of Colombia on our tails. I doze, and then jerk awake a couple of times. My first and last thoughts are always the same. When I glance at the dash clock after a few rounds of this, it’s 5 a.m., and the horizon is a blizzard of pink and red. I’m getting that heavy feeling in my lungs again. The humidity has kicked up a gear, even with the air conditioning working at full blast.
The green road signs tell us we’re nearing Leticia. Vi doesn't glance at them. It’s like she knows the route by heart. Twice, we have to hold our collective breath as we’re guided through military checkpoints on the outskirts of town, but we’re waved through each time. The soldiers don’t look at us. They don’t even glance at the jagged line of bullet holes down the side of Joseph’s car. Vi’s paranoia must be infectious, because I’m getting a case of it too.