Page 103 of Chris

Right.

Because anyone who had been to this place would understand that there was no way out … without a horse, and a fucking boat. Someone like Abril.

That should have been another clue.

Nothing here was as it seemed.

“What’s happening, Mamá? Why is it so loud?”

Valeria hushed her daughter as she shoved the girl up into the saddle. “Just hold tight, okay. We’re going to go on a little—” Gunfire cut through the air, far enough away from the stables, sure, but loud enough to take her breath away. Maria’s eyes widened further, but she was determined to get on these horses, and leave, now. “Come on, move up for me.”

Maria did.

Valeria mounted the horse, too.

“Abril—”

“Let’s go! We don’t have time to fuck around in here!”

One of the two guards that had been waiting out by the stable doors came around the corner just as Valeria turned to tell her sister-in-law to hurry. She saw the way Abril bent down, her fingers sliding into the leg of her riding boot—she had already been dressed to ride, although Valeria only noticed it now—before standing straight with a knife in her hands.

That blade swung around and embedded deep into the neck of the guard. Valeria sucked in a sharp breath, her arm swinging around to cover Maria’s eyes as the man dropped to the ground, and Abril yanked the blade out.

Blood sprayed.

The man choked.

Abril looked her way. “Go.”

“Not without you,” she said just as fast.

“What the fuck was that back there?”

Abril’s attention flew around the corner of the stable, the knife in her hand flipping around so she had a good grasp on the hilt. “Valeria, go.”

“But—”

They already had the two horses ready for her, and Abril to ride. Standing in the stable’s middle floor, the horses tacked up, and edgy because of the noise of gunfire and shouting men outside the building, but ready to go.

Ready to run.

Abril reached out and slapped the thigh of Valeria’s horse with a loud crack. “Heeyah!”

She had time to grab hold of her daughter, and the reins before the horse reared back from the slap, and jerked forward. They came out of the stable doors in a full gallop, the man coming back toward them barely got out of the way.

Valeria looked back in just enough time to see Abril kill that man, too. Which meant no guards would follow them off the ranch, she realized. It was just them, and the horses, now. Abril was quick to jump on the horse waiting for her, wasting no time coming out of the stables at full speed.

Her horse was fast, but skittish from the noise. She managed well enough to get the animal steered toward the fields behind the house that would take them further away from the chaos behind them. It took Abril no time at all to catch up with Valeria, her horse coming alongside hers as she glanced over.

“We’re going to the cliffs,” Abril said, her voice faint, the words almost disappearing in the wind. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

“Why is that where we have to go … or how do you kn—”

Abril smiled. “Who do you think helped to start this war, Val?”

“But why?”

She was so grateful.