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My heartbeat kicked up a notch, pounding hard enough that the sound of blood whooshing past my ears nearly drowned out my captors’ voices.
Still fully dressed, I felt naked, exposed.
Defenseless.
“… if something goes wrong, you damn well do whatever you have to do to stay alive.Because I will find you, darling. I won’t stop until I do.”
Brute’s words echoed inside my head, but they weren’t just words. I could feel the promise, the conviction in them; I recognized it because it would have been the same conviction in mine if our roles had been reversed.
So, staying alive—that was priority number one at the moment. Hopefully, it had taken Domínguez’s men long enough to realize I had a tracker that Gabe was able to figure out the destination. Or at least, the general vicinity he and the others needed to search.
But that left me with two options: lie here and wait for rescue, or reduce the number of occupants in the room to one.
Lying around like a useless log wasn’t really my style, but still, I squeezed my eyes shut and tested the air. When you walked into a room, you could feel it sometimes—the mood, the vibe, the atmosphere… whatever you wanted to call it.
InEl Bíbora’sbasement, there’d been an energy when the men were there, a sick, twisted, and depraved energy that left no doubt about what they were after. But the energy in this room? The word “malevolent” came to mind. Dark and venomous. It could have been my imagination—that was certainly working in overdrive at the moment—but if I was reading the room right, they weren’t here to fuck me; they were here to kill me.
My hands started to shake. I could feel the vibrations through my whole body, which made my jaw throb harder. Raven was right; I wasn’t fearless. If I could have hidden myself away in a deep, dark hole at the moment, the temptation might have been almost overwhelming. Almost. But putting an end to Domínguez and his kidnappings and his barrels of acid was more important than my fear.
So, with my eyes still squinted, I turned my head slowly, a scant millimeter at a time, surveying my surroundings.
Old, peeling wallpaper. A CRT television on a chipped wood stand. Thick, orange curtains on a window by the door.
It was the living room of a house. An old one, and dingy. It looked like they’d brought me to a freaking rundown roach motel.
I could see the headline now. “Greta Agossi, found dead in a dirty, old Mexican dump in the shittiest part of town.”
That was not the legacy I intended to leave behind me, so there was no way in hell I was dying here.
I tilted my head downward slowly, toward the voices.
There they were. Two men; both of them were tatted with shaved heads, like the men I’d first seen at the warehouse nearLázaro Cárdenas.They were sitting at a two-seater table, the kind with a plastic top and metal legs.
One of the men had a knife in his hand; he was fiddling with it idly, but even with my eyes squinted and the room dim, I recognized the damn knife. It was mine—not that this should have surprised me. I was pretty sure murderers didn’t worry about petty shit like thievery. Still, I really wished I had that knife at the moment. It had a wickedly sharp six-inch blade and a handle that fit my hand perfectly.
In hindsight, since I’d known they’d likely take my weapons, I should have had the nail tech file my fingernails into sharp points. But the rounded tips with the metallic blue polish were great too.Really useful.
The men still hadn’t noticed me, but in plain sight, there was zero chance of me catching them off-guard. They’d hardly miss it if I sprang from the sofa and lunged at them.
“If you can’t beat them, confuse them,”ZiettoVito had said in some long-ago lesson.
All right, but confuse them… how?
I thought about what they’d be expecting. Either a scared little mouse or a spitting-mad chihuahua? Probably. To confuse them, I’d have to be neither.
I sat up slowly.
“Buen día, boys.¿Cómo estás?” I said, swinging my feet off the sofa and stretching out my limbs because they still felt mildly weighted. I ran my fingers through my tousled hair and forced my lips to twitch in just the slightest flicker of a smile.
Were they confused? The looks on their faces certainly said so.
“Don’t move,” the taller of the two tatted freaks hissed. He was the one with my knife, but he wasn’t going to have it for long.
I shrugged. “It’s your party.”
Both of them kept looking at me, furrows between their brows, shoulders taut.
“If I can’t move, do you suppose I can smoke?” I asked, holding out a hand for a cigarette. There was a package of them on the plastic tabletop and a pack of matches next to it.
