I smoothed my hair down after having half of it ripped out by one of the men on either side of me. Clearly they had never heard of bobby pins. I’d wedged that wig on, thinking it would be there awhile.
Mendoza wasn’t taking any chances with me. Both his men had pistols jammed into my rib cage, and I recognized one of the guns as the one that had been pointed at my head. I glared at the man holding it. He smirked.
We took the onramp to I-25.
“You were quite the challenge, but after everything I’d heard about you, I had expected no less.”
“I feel challenging,” I said for the sole sake of being a smart-ass. I could afford to be. And I didn’t like being manhandled against my will. Or having pistols jammed into my sides. One bump, one reflexive squeeze, and there would be no way to dodge a bullet from a gun that close, no matter how fast I could slow time. Perhaps it was time to summon my ace in the hole. But I still didn’t really have anything incriminating on him. And I never would. All the recording equipment was back at the hotel room. If I could get to my phone, I could at least record our conversation, but how I was going to manage that with Dumb and Dumber on my ass, I had no idea. Maybe if I pointed out the window and said,
Look! A bird!
Nah, that wouldn’t give me enough time. I needed a major distraction. Where was a runaway semi when I needed one? The bad guys always confessed all their sins right before they killed the good guys on TV, and I had no way of recording it.
“Still,” he continued as he lit the cigar.
I crinkled my nose. I actually loved the scent of cigar smoke, but I wasn’t about to let him know that.
“You led us directly to her. I never dreamed you had that kind of pull.”
I stilled. Directly to her? What was he talking about?
“You must have some kind of mojo to get the FBI to set up a meet. I didn’t think it could be done.”
The world fell out from under me.
“You don’t have enough faith in me, boss,” the gorilla to my right said. The one who’d held the gun to my head.
Stunned speechless, all I could think was that I needed to warn Agent Carson. I’d led them into a trap.
“No smart-ass comeback?” Mendoza asked. “And here I thought that was your thing. Didn’t you tell me that was her thing?” he asked the other gorilla.
“It’s her thing. She doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up. I think you surprised her.”
“I think I did,” he agreed. He blew out a thick puff of smoke.
My eyes watered, but not because of the smoke. What had I done?
“Unfortunately for you, we had taken measures to make sure you’d give this little mission your all. Too bad they weren’t necessary. Now we have to kill everyone involved.”
We were driving south and took the Broadway exit, heading toward a sparse industrial area. After a few minutes of my mind racing, trying to figure out how to get to the phone in my bag, we pulled into a closed grain elevator. It had three tall cylindrical silos and a few other outbuildings scattered across the grounds. We stopped in front of an armed guard. There were two more armed men in the shadows of the elevator.
Mendoza slid down his window. “Where is Ricardo?”
“They’re all still up there, boss. We didn’t know what you wanted us to do with them.”
Them? My head swarmed with worry.
“That will work. Tell Burro to save his ammunition. I want to see this.”
The guard laughed and spoke Spanish into a handheld radio, telling the man on the other end to hold where he was.
The gorillas led me inside to an actual elevator. Mendoza followed and we rode to the top of the silos, taking a set of stairs up to the last level. When we emerged onto the cone-shaped roof of the biggest silo, I gasped and my knees buckled beneath me. Not because of the height or the fact that the wind pushed at us, urging us to the edge, but because they had two people up there with them: Jessica Guinn and Reyes Farrow. My Reyes Farrow. It was impossible. Was he messing around? Pretending to let them take him?
Both of them were covered in their own blood. Jessica had rope burns on the sides of her mouth, and one eye sported a nasty shiner. She sat on her knees on top of the metal structure, her hands tied behind her back, the wind tossing her hair about. Fear radiated out of her so strongly, I had a hard time seeing past it. Even more than the men with guns, even more than the fact that she was tied up and held hostage, I got the distinct feeling the height scared her the most. And she was precariously close to the edge of a pitched metal structure. One strong gust, and she would go over.
Reyes was tied to a metal ladder that went to the very top of the silo. He was barely conscious. His head hung, his long arms and wide shoulders limp against the ropes that bound him. My mind could not absorb what I was seeing.
When Mendoza spotted the disbelief in my eyes, he explained. “Several of my boys were in prison with him. They know what he is capable of. Better yet, they know how to take him down.”
How to take him down? Even I didn’t know how to take him down. How on earth?
“Tranquilizer darts,” he offered when I only shook my head in incredulity. “The kind made for elephants.” He walked to Reyes and jerked his head up by his hair. My instincts bucked, and I inadvertently summoned Angel. “What would kill a normal man barely brought this one to his knees. But it was enough to disorient him. Another dart brought him down, and still it took another to keep him that way. I don’t know what he is made of, but whatever he is, he can be killed.”
“You don’t know me as well as you thought,” I said to Mendoza. “Jessica and I are not friends. Enemies would be a more applicable term.”
Jessica’s eyes were filled with absolute terror.
“Then you won’t mind when we toss her off the roof?”
I bit down, afraid to say anything. Afraid to risk her life.
“What do I do?” Angel asked. He took hold of my arm, as if he could keep them from harming me.
I shook my head. I just didn’t know, but I looked at him regardless. “I need Reyes,” I said. “Can you bring him back?”
He glanced at him. “I don’t know how. He’s out. Whatever they gave him worked.”
“I need him, Angel.”
Angel nodded and stepped cautiously toward him, facing his own fears of Reyes in that instant.
After Mendoza watched my interaction with air, one of his men said, “She does that a lot.”
“I like you,” Mendoza said. “I’ll let you choose. Which one dies and which one lives?”
My vision narrowed and I swayed in the gorillas’ arms. It didn’t matter whom I chose. They were going to kill us all. If I could just buy a little time. If Reyes would just snap out of it.
I swallowed and pointed to Reyes. “Him,” I said, my hand and voice shaking.
Mendoza shot me a delighted look, picked up a booted foot, and gave Jessica a soft shove. I barely had time to gasp before she toppled over the side. I lunged for her, as though I could catch her, but the gorillas tackled me and held me down.
She didn’t scream. I’d expected her to scream, but there was only silence. I didn’t even hear her fall. I only heard the wind whipping around us, howling through the metal structure.
“Surely you’re not upset,” Mendoza said, the smug look on his face the incarnation of evil. “You were enemies, after all, yes? But you’ll get your wish. Untie him.”
I tried to scramble to my feet as they untied Reyes, but they were still holding me down. This wasn’t happening. Not to Reyes. Could he survive the fall? It had to be the equivalent of seven stories. He’d survived worse. But he’d been conscious. Able to prepare, to defend himself.
Before I could say another word, two of Mendoza’s men dropped his listless form over the side and he fell quietly from my sight.
21
Misery loves company,
which explains my sudden popularity.
—T-SHIRT
I watched as Reyes fell, a scream I couldn’t hear wrenched from my throat as I waited for him to do something. For him to react. To save himself. It was Reyes, after all. He could do anything. He could fly or dematerialize or grab on to something on the way down like they did in the movies. But there was nothing. Just the sound of the wind howling through the abandoned building.
Angel was in shock, too. He was standing on the side, looking over, his eyes round.
“Angel,” I said to get his attention.
He turned to me, his mouth a thin line of regret.
“No.” I shook my head at him. It was impossible. There was just no way.
“Don’t look so worried,” Mendoza said. “You can join him.”
He nodded to his men, and they dragged me to the side. I could see two bodies, but they didn’t look real. They were small from that vantage, like mangled action figures. None of this was real.
Mendoza said something I didn’t comprehend. No one could have survived that fall. Not even a supernatural being. Not even the son of Satan. He lay there, unmoving, and I could not wrap my head around it. Any of it.
“Ready?” I heard at last.
Mendoza was the kind of man who enjoyed killing. He enjoyed the false sense of power it gave him. But he also enjoyed the part right before the actual death. The torment. The taunting.
I looked at him. And I did my job. I judged him unworthy of crossing into heaven.
He didn’t like the revulsion he saw in my eyes. Where he’d expected fear, he found disgust. He turned me to face the edge again, put a hand on my back, and just before he pushed, he said, “No loose ends.”
I stepped forward, but the roof beneath my feet disappeared. I was over. He’d thrust me over the side just as he had Jessica. Just as they had Reyes. And we would die together.
In one final act of rebellion, I twisted around to look at them and swiped a hand through the air. In that split second between dream and reality, I’d marked their souls for the Dealer, a bright archaic symbol emblazoned on their chests. They were all his.
Then I saw Angel. He grabbed for me. When I twisted around, I’d kicked out and he caught my boot and pulled. But there was nothing he could do. I weighed too much. Little did I know the shit had a plan. My foot caught on something. A metal brace protruded out from the side of the silo, and Angel wedged my foot there. But my body kept falling until the wedge took hold. Pain shot up my leg, and my ankle very likely broke as my body slammed against the side of the silo. My skull cracked against a metal rung. I grabbed hold of it and held on for dear life.
I hung there upside down, trying to gain my bearings, staring at the top of the silo, and waiting for the men to figure out I didn’t fall. They would have to shoot me now if they couldn’t reach to dislodge my foot. When they didn’t appear immediately, I took another long look at the ground beneath my dangling body. Reyes hadn’t moved. He hadn’t flinched at all. A wave of grief overtook me, and tears fell up my face to mingle with the blood flowing there. I looked at my boot, wondering if I could move it a centimeter to the left with the ankle broken, just enough to dislodge it and finish the journey.
In that moment, the only thing I could think about was what it would be like to live without Reyes. It wasn’t a life I wanted, and I suddenly realized how and why Emily Michaels could do what she did. How she could risk her life to protect the man she loved. Even prison was better than death, losing the ones we loved so desperately.
An agony that matched the shooting pain in my ankle consumed me so fully, I could think of nothing else but the fact that I did not want to go through life without him. I pushed on the metal bar and tried to dislodge my foot. I’d never been particularly suicidal, but I’d never been consumed with quite that much pain. Not emotionally, anyway.
“What are you doing?” Angel asked, peering over the side.
“Help me dislodge my foot,” I said.
He shook his head and said, “Fuck you,” right before he disappeared. Little shithead.
My teeth welded together as the pain of my busted ankle coursed through my body like electricity. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I registered the sound of fighting above me. I snapped to attention as gunshots ricocheted around me before an eerie silence thickened the air. As I fought the effects of blood rushing to my head and pain hammering into me, another dark-haired man peered at me from over the side of the building. But this time, it wasn’t Angel.
“Reyes!” I shouted, reaching out to him.
“Sorry, sugar,” the man said. “It’s just me.”
I blinked and tried to focus. The Dealer. What was he doing there? Had I summoned him when I marked the souls of Mendoza and his men? Was that even possible?
He showed his teeth and gestured over his shoulder with a nod. “Thanks for the grub, though.”
I unclenched my stomach muscles and lowered my upper body to take in the horrific scene underneath me. Reyes was still unmoving. The Dealer reached down for me and grabbed hold of my pant leg, and in that moment, I honestly wanted to slip out of his grip. I considered kicking him with my other leg to loosen his hold, but he glowered and shook his head in warning.
“Uh-uh-uh. I keep telling you,” he said, pulling me up as though I weighed nothing, “we need you alive. No thoughts of suicide just because that mutt of yours kicked off.”
My heart contracted so fast and so strong, I felt as though a hulk made of rock had punched me in the chest. I would not survive the force of my agony. Even knowing he could still be with me incorporeally didn’t help. I wanted him. I wanted Reyes Alexander Farrow in my arms, warm and solid and real.
The Dealer lowered me to the roof carefully, and a jolt of pain shot through me the second my toes touched down. My right leg collapsed, and the Dealer tightened his hold to keep me from falling. I bit down, pushed off him, and tried to rush to the access door for the elevator, but I just couldn’t support my own weight. I stumbled before I took two steps. He caught me. That was when I noticed the bodies on the roof.
The Dealer shrugged. “I think after throwing those two off the roof and trying to throw you off, they got into an argument and killed each other. Who would’ve thought they’d do such a thing?”