53. Kali
53
KALI
I wasn’t privy to their plan, but I stayed back and I watched. When I left his bike and followed behind the large portion of guys, he hadn’t argued. He wasn’t going to fight me on a lot, I realized. Maybe it was guilt? Maybe it was because I needed to see this through, considering what it was going to take away from me. I didn’t know.
I didn’t care.
None of the guys said a word either, and I glimpsed a few with pity in their eyes so they all knew.
All of them. It hit me then, really hit me.
This had been a plan for a long time. They all knew. They knew when they came to Friendly, Indiana in the first place. Roadie knew when he was fucking my sister. He knew when he cheated on her.
Machete knew when he ‘took over’ with my sister.
Shane knew when I showed up, following him.
When he kissed me.
When he claimed me.
When he defended me to Foley.
They all knew, and that was a truly shitty feeling.
But was I different because I hadn’t told Claudia? Because I already knew that when we got the call that he was knifed in prison, and was dead, that I wasn’t going to tell her the real reason behind it? I already knew I wasn’t. And in my mind, there was only one thing I could do that would make any of this worth it. One thing that would appease my soul.
So because of that, I kept quiet and I stayed in the background, and I watched.
In a way, it was anticlimactic. The road getting here was the most harrowing, with all the pitfalls and realizations but I guess it was fitting.
Marco Estrada was just a man. He may run a cartel and he may have his men to take over as a backup, but he was still just a man. I didn’t know if he loved. If he had a woman, or women? Or a man? If he had children? Or parents? Or siblings? A part of me wanted to think he was soulless. He cared for no one, but himself. It was a guarantee that he was narcissistic. Who could run a cartel and not be a narcissist? The lack of caring? Empathy? Being so ruthless? That person must’ve been hard inside themselves when they were first born, or were raised in a world where you killed or were killed?
It was all that made sense to me.
The Red Demons had separated into three groups.
A third went down the road by a mile. Another third went ahead. I went where Shane went because in the end, it’d be him with Estrada. Felt that’s how it was going to play out, all the way down to my bones. He was with the middle section.
Five trucks were driving down a gravel road. They’d pulled off a main highway and were weaving through the hills to where we were. I was watching with the same binoculars as the caravan of trucks were speeding when suddenly an explosion went off by the road.
It cut off the last two trucks from the rest, but because they were dickheads, they went even faster. They left those two trucks behind, and a barrage of gunshots rang out. I could see as the Red Demons were moving in from the top of the hills, shooting down into those two trucks.
Boom!
Another explosion, and this time the front two trucks had been separated from the middle truck. The explosion caused a whole crater in the road so the middle truck literally couldn’t go forward. One of the trucks had been upended by the explosion. Men were starting to crawl out through the windows, but like the last two trucks, they were under fire.
So much death.
It was all senseless. Every one of them. But I wasn’t doing anything to stop it, nor did I want to.
What did that say about me?
The middle truck reversed fast.
There was a crater in front, one behind. They had nowhere to go, so they went into the ditch. That didn’t last long because we were in the middle of a forest. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I wasn’t here, but we were. Desert. Cliffs. And trees everywhere.
The truck crashed, which was a given by now. The driver was panicked, and he looked like he was tossed out.
The guys that I stood with, they raised their guns and they lit into him.
He was dead. I was certain.
I noticed movement in Shane’s direction and saw he was pulling on that same white hockey mask as before.
Then I was distracted as I heard more gunfire.
They threw another guy out from the truck. Same result.
I wasn’t understanding the logic, but suddenly there was an explosion on the other side of the truck.
Now I got it, or I got the Red Demons’ logic.
There was nowhere to go.
They began moving down, converging like they had at the other house, and I went with them so I guess ‘we’ were converging.
I wasn’t shooting so I didn’t know if I should think of myself as one of them. Though, in a few minutes that wouldn’t make a difference, I suppose.
One more guy came out, but he didn’t shoot so he wasn’t shot.
He held up his hands in surrender, and a few of the Red Demons moved in, grabbed him, and dragged him away.
There was yelling.
They were yelling at the truck.
They were yelling at the guy they just pulled away.
I wasn’t listening to the words. I didn’t care.
I was watching Shane, and he wasn’t moving.
I thought back to that old hockey mask he put on.
What did it mean? Did that signify something?
I wasn’t too concerned about the chaos that was happening right now. No, no. I was watching and waiting.
There was another explosion. This one felt smaller, and closer. I felt the heat on my face. My hair was whipping around from its impact but I was still only watching Shane. When he moved, I would move.
He was my calm in this storm.
As if feeling my gaze, he turned, sparks of fire going in the air between us. His head tilted to the side, just barely. Then I heard someone call his name. It penetrated this weird vacuum of sound. He started forward, and I felt his footsteps, though he was a few feet away from me, I felt every step he took. The deep thud as he walked, his foot meeting the earth, and I felt that vibration going up through my legs. Up to my chest.
I didn’t know what was going on with me, but I was in a daze of sorts. I’m sure. I was only seeing Shane as he went forward. I was only hearing his footsteps. There were yelling and other sounds of gunfire or explosions in the background, but they were barely filtering in.
It was like we were in a bubble. Where we were, nothing could penetrate. As Shane kept going forward, so did I until he got to Marco Estrada’s truck. A man was pulled out, and he was being held up, shoved against the back.
It was not Marco Estrada.
I didn’t know what Marco Estrada looked like, but I could tell by the eyes that this young man wasn’t him. He wasn’t a boy, but he wasn’t quite a man. He was scared, and his mouth was moving fast. He was saying something, and judging from the plea in his eyes, he was pleading for his life.
I hoped, for the first time since the first explosion, that this young man wouldn’t be killed. But it wasn’t him, and I knew that they were expecting Marco Estrada to be in the middle truck. Made sense except to Marco Estrada himself. He would’ve wanted to trick anyone who might set out to attack his convoy. But if he was in the back, he might’ve been taken out.
If he was in the front, he might’ve been taken out.
So where was Marco Estrada?
I knew where he would be.
I turned, and this time the vacuum left me.
All the sounds from around me hit me hard.
I heard all the shouting, all the cursing. But no more gunfire. No more shots were being exchanged. I liked that part, and I ran back up the hill, hearing Shane yelling my name too.
I ignored him.
A part of me didn’t want him to come for this last part, because as soon as I figured it out, I knew it was true. I felt it in my bones. I was supposed to go, but I didn’t know the reason.
I didn’t care.
They had brought a truck. One, among all the Harleys. I ran to it, jumping in, and I turned back to where the house was.
I didn’t go to where we’d left, where I knew bounty hunters were arriving to pick up Estrada’s men. I drove to the first house, the one that had the shed where they kept Katie and the two men I didn’t know captive.
It looked so ragged and abandoned now, but as I drove down the driveway, I saw another truck parked on the backside of the house. It was an old truck, a classic that I might’ve gone crazy for in another life. This time, though, I just knew who that meant had arrived.
A man stepped out from the front door, his gun raised. He was dressed all in black, and he looked military. His gun was pointed at me.
I stopped, my hands going up, but then another man stepped out from behind him.
There.
That was Marco Estrada.
I knew it this time. I could tell from his eyes.
They were old and dead. Like him. It was a weird sensation because I already saw the life leaving his body, though he was fully connected. I still saw it. Parts of him were shedding and flying away. Or maybe I was just seeing his soul wasn’t a part of him. On the outside, he looked almost handsome. Cheekbones that curved high. He had big lips. He was tall, maybe six three. A wiry body. He was in a business suit.
He held up a hand and his lips moved. He was almost smiling as he stepped forward. Then I heard what he said. It took a second to get to me, and no, I didn’t understand the cause for that. “Wait, Manuel. I’d like to hear what she came to say.”
He walked down the stairs and approached, the ends of his mouth curved upwards. He had a hand toward me, and he was waving for me to come to him. “I’ve come to enjoy these moments, when I get a pocket of time to talk with my enemy’s woman. This has happened before. Another woman. Another time and place. Another enemy, but still the same. Though, that time she had a dog with her.” A full smile beckoned to me. “Do you have a dog, Miss Kali Michaels?”
So he knew who I was.
That would make this easier.
I didn’t care to make this a big to-do. There didn’t need to be conversation. There was no point, really. Before a few days ago, I never heard about this man, but as I started to hear yelling again, as my heartbeat began to pick up, I brought out the gun that I snuck.
I watched as they took the weapons out of that house. And I watched as they bagged them up. And I watched where that bag of weapons were put when they brought them to the house. And when Shane was having a ‘meeting’ with his men, when everyone wasn’t paying attention to me, I went and grabbed one of them. And I checked, because my dad once took me to a shooting range because he thought it’d be a good idea if I knew how to defend myself, and I saw there were three bullets still in the chamber.
There was shouting again.
I saw from the corner of my eye as the guy behind Marco, the one who was with him, was shooting behind me.
Marco was focused behind me as well, and he was starting to turn to run, but then I brought my gun out and he stopped.
Slow motion.
That’s what this was.
This was all happening in slow motion to me.
Even better because I raised the gun, and I pointed, and as his eyes widened, he realized what I was going to do–I did it.
Connor’s death would stand for something.
I pulled the trigger.