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I move toward Dean, pulling the gun from my waist. “Is it Juan or Estrada?”
He presses his lips into a firm line, refusing to speak.
“You all flipped?” I ask. “The Mal crew mark is still on your hand, so I’m assuming you haven’t made it into Estrada’s good graces. Juan, then?”
Dean doesn’t respond, doesn’t even blink as he stares at me, knowing his death is coming.
I pull the trigger with a smile on my face, some twisted habit I’ve picked up from Jasper.
“Is that it?” Javier shouts into the hallway outside my door. “No more?”
“There’s smoke,” Tomas yells back, thundering into my apartment. “Do you have a fire escape?”
I shove my wallet into my pocket. “Yeah. All the units—”
“Don’t care,” Javi cuts in. “We gotta get the fuck outta here.”
“Shit.” I snag my phone from the table and rush out the door.
“Where are you going?” Tomas shouts, following me.
“To get Gem.”
Someone propped open the entrance to the fifth floor stairwell with a piece of splintered wood. Heat emanates through the steep corridor as I take the stairs two and three at a time.
“She’ll be fine,” Javier calls at my back, though I hear them both running behind me.
I cover my nose with the neck of my t-shirt as the smoke meets us, climbing toward the top.
“She was by herself,” I shout.
The door to the fourth floor is wide open too, a magazine wedged under it. Jasper’s living room light is on, her door hanging by a single henge.
I run inside, gun up and ready, but there are only dead bodies. Two in her living room and one in the hallway, though no one is even gurgling with the last dredges of fight in their systems.
Jasper’s car keys are still on the table, so I toss them to Tomas. I move into the kitchen, grabbing her set of the Merc keys from the drawer. I throw those to Javier as I grab her wallet and phone from the counter.
Her bedroom is empty. The only sign that she was even here is her messy bed and a pair of socks on the floor. Not her socks, so she wasn’t alone. The window is open, which makes me feel better, but only a little. I can’t call her, because I have her phone.
“Let’s go. She’s out,” I yell to Javier and Tomas. “We can go this way.”
“We’re behind you,” Tom says, bumping me with his elbow.
We climb down the metal ladder, hands burning the closer we get to each of the windows. I drop the last twelve feet, landing in a crunch to cushion my fall, and creep toward the corner of the building. Javier taps my shoulder, catching my attention. He motions toward the garage, and I nod.
“I need to get to the guard’s booth,” I whisper. “I’ll lift the gate. You two pull the cars out.”
“What about yours?” Tomas quietly asks.
“Not important. Mine is empty. She’s always got her laptop in her back seat.”
We prowl around the corner, finding two more guys. I put bullets in both their heads, my ire rising at the foot soldiers who’ve turned on us. We’re going to have to clean house soon, and that’s going to cause problems we can’t afford right now.
I stop at the guard’s booth, and Javi leads Tomas to the cars. I don’t even glance back at them... Because when I look inside, I freeze at the sight before me.
Jasper is going to lose her fucking mind and rain fury down on Juan for this.
Roland Perez lies in a puddle of blood, another body half on top of him. Neither are breathing. A long knife sticks out of the other man’s back from his chest. And blood tickles from Roland’s mouth, his eyes closed, face slack.
