Chapter 32 - Jag
The private jet takes off, vibrating with the ominous, too-late sensation of a terrible decision.
I flex my good hand, keep my expression blank, and stare at the man sitting opposite me.
The courier of cartel favors.
Cole Hartman.
I recognize him instantly.
He doesn’t speak for the first thirty minutes. Instead, he studies me with hard brown eyes that undress, dismantle, and decide a man’s fate in a single heartbeat.
The good news? I’m still alive.
Unlike most cartel lieutenants, he doesn’t wear a suit. His mobster gear consists of a black leather jacket, boots that have seen desert sand, and a T-shirt that fails to hide the gun tucked along his ribs.
His posture says trained soldier. His glare says homicidal deserter. His smile says he’s not sure which one he’ll be today.
Over the years, I’ve dug up everything there is to find on Cole Hartman.
In another life, he was a high-speed ghost for the U.S.
government, an undercover operative in a clandestine operation called The Activity.
No badge. No trail. No laws applied to him.
When the government wanted deniability, Cole was their man.
He infiltrated wars and made important people vanish.
Terror cells, traitors, anyone too close to the truth.
Somewhere between Baghdad and Bogotá, his cover was blown. He faked his death and walked straight into the underworld.
Now he’s a trusted adviser in the Restrepo cartel’s inner circle.
I can recite his resume down to how he takes his coffee, the VIN on his motorcycle, and every tattoo on his body. And his wife’s body, too. But nothing I found on the dark web captures the disturbing, live-wire electricity that sizzles the air in his presence.
“So you’re the notorious Vigilante.” He clicks his tongue. “The hacker who made the NSA shit itself.”
“They should thank me for the warning shot.”
“You got balls walking into Restrepo territory. Most people don’t come back in one piece.”
“I’m not most people.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen your work. Dubai, Kiev, Ramnicu Valcea… I watched you erase an arms dealer’s offshore empire in under an hour.” He regards me for an eternity, tilting his head. “All this time, you kept your identity hidden. Why crawl out of your hole now?”
“Everyone crawls out for something.” My heart kicks as I lean back, stretch my legs, and feign nonchalance.
“What’s your something?”
“Not your concern.”
“Fair enough.” He smiles, and the dimples ruin it. Way too cute for a killer’s face. “You don’t cash a Restrepo favor unless you’re willing to bleed for it. Are you willing to bleed for your something?”
“The way I see it, you owe me a favor. I’m calling it in. When it’s done, we’re even.”
“You won’t owe us after this.” He taps his fingers on the armrest, slowly and rhythmically, calculating. “You’ll belong to us.”
They’ll have to pull the bullets out of me first. I want out, not deeper in.
I want a world where Dove isn’t in danger every second of every day.
“You look tense.” Cole eyes me sidelong.
“I don’t fly well.”
“Liar.”
He’s right, of course. It’s not the altitude that twists my gut. It’s the fact that I’m about to walk into a nest of ruthless demons armed to the teeth. I’ve dealt with my share of violent criminal organizations, but I’ve never asked one for help.
“It’s curious,” he says. “You hate the world enough to fight it, but not enough to join it. That’s a lonely place to stand.”
“I’m used to lonely.”
“Still, it’s easier when you have a cause. You, me, the anarchists, and the patriots, we all tell ourselves we’re burning down the world for this or that reason. But the best of us learned to smile while doing it.”
“I’m the best. And I don’t smile.”
“Yeah.” Popping those dimples with a grin, he stands and ambles toward the cockpit. “I noticed.”
The plane eats miles and swallows whole countries. Time becomes a smear of coffee cups, crumpled napkins, and half-eaten meals. My phone stays off. Files flash through my head the way code slides down a monitor. Dove’s face is the only image that refuses to pixelate.
My fingers itch for a keyboard I don’t have, for a terminal I can’t touch. Not knowing where Dove is or what she’s doing is a special kind of torture. I tell myself Wolf’s protecting her, not filling her with come. It’s the only way I stay sane.
Hours fold into one another. I close my eyes and open them to a different sky.
Stars stream past the window in slow motion.
Cole reads a small tablet, thumbs drumming.
Each glance he sends my way is a reminder that whatever we’re about to do has been measured, weighed, and approved by people who don’t blink.
We stop somewhere in Panama to refuel. After that, sleep comes in snatches, a nod against the seat, a dream that’s filled with a teenage Dove who gazes upon me with love in her eyes.
I wake to the phantom feel of her small pinky finger wrapped around mine and the stronger reality that her life now sits in the cartel’s unmerciful hands.
I spend the waking hours cleaning my mind the way I clean hard drives. Overwrite, overwrite, overwrite until the old traces are no longer relevant. I run scenarios, door codes, safe houses, and the names of men who might try to kill me.
Around midnight local time, the pilot announces our descent into Bogotá.
My palms slick with sweat, not from fear, but from focus. Whatever this place demands, I’ll bear it. For her.
As the wheels slam onto the runway, Cole shifts toward me. “Welcome to enemy territory. Smile for the cameras. Everyone’s watching.”
The plane slows, and the engines wind down to a chilling hush. The door opens, letting in the humid night reeking of diesel and tropical rot.
I stand, roll my shoulders, and follow Cole down the stairs and onto a tarmac lined with armored SUVs and armed silhouettes.
No passports. No customs. No uniforms with crooked badges. This isn’t an airport. It’s a checkpoint for the damned, owned and operated by the Restrepo cartel.
Cole’s hand lands on my shoulder, heavy and brief. “Frizz will take you from here.”
Then he’s gone, swallowed by the hum of turbines.
I turn, and a man unfolds himself from the back seat of the lead SUV. A young, slender man built of bones and shadows, his pressed black suit clinging to edges and hollows. And his mouth…
Holy fuck.
Thick black thread crisscrosses his lips, puckering the corners into a mockery of a smile. The stitches aren’t neat, too human for a doctor, too practiced for an amateur.
His blue eyes bore into me, unblinking and shockingly bright. Eyes that have seen more than a lifetime’s worth of nightmares and decided to collect them instead of forget.
He opens the door and motions me into the car, his movements deliberate, graceful even, but his presence frosts the air.
I climb into the back seat, and he joins me, shutting the door. The lock clicks, and the driver hits the accelerator.
What fresh hell am I racing into?
The city unfurls outside the tinted glass, and Frizz sits perfectly still beside me, hands clasped on his lap. Black gauze wraps his wrists with thin white thread biting into the fabric.
When he turns his head, the stitches on his lips gleam wet. New.
My insides shrivel. “Did the cartel do that to you?”
His mouth flattens into a hard line of anger, bunching the threads.
“Self-inflicted?” I lift a brow.
His lips relax as he hums softly, almost a whistle, emitting a twisted little tune that sounds cheerful until it isn’t.
Christ. Please tell me he isn’t singing “Dead Babies” by Alice Cooper.
Yeah. He definitely is.
The melody continues on a loop, crawling under my skin and getting comfortable there.
My mind scrolls through every file, every dossier I’ve scraped from cartel archives, and comes up empty. Nothing. No Frizz. No mention of a torturer with a knitted mouth and Edward Scissorhands vibes.
That’s not oversight. It’s intentional. Someone buried this man so deep that even the infamous Vigilante couldn’t find him.
I keep my eyes forward. “I assume a conversation is out of the question.”
A sound escapes him, a muffled exhale through the stitches. Not quite laughter. Not quite breathing. He looks away, watching the streets blur into the jungle-dark outskirts.
This thin, zipper-lipped creature isn’t just some freak the cartel keeps on payroll. He’s a weapon they take out when they want a clean, wordless transaction.
They could’ve taped my mouth shut and put a hood over my head. But that would’ve sent me into a fist-swinging struggle, ready to turn and burn and run.
Instead, they put me in a car with this guy.
His appearance alone disarms and intimidates. By design. Every time his haunting eyes flick toward me, I feel the weight of him measuring what I am, how I bleed, and how loud I’d scream. He hums as if already composing it.
Consider me officially unsettled. But I’m not running. Wherever we’re headed, I’m ready to be there.
The convoy speeds through checkpoints that open without question. Eventually, the driver speaks a code word into the radio. We veer off the main road and onto a narrow strip of cracked asphalt that snakes between shanties and the black sprawl of jungle.
Up ahead, the neon glow of a club sign pulses pink against the night. Music leaks from every direction, low bass crawling through the ground.
We pull around to the back, where dumpsters steam and rats scatter. Two guards in tactical black wave us through an iron gate.
Frizz exits first and gestures for me to follow. He leads the way through a narrow corridor and down a stairwell, the concrete walls wet to the touch. As we pass under the bulbs, his stitched grin glints. Creepy as fuck.
I stay close, scanning corners, counting exits, doing the math of survival.
He stops before a door at the end of the hall. A heavy steel thing, painted black. Raising a pale hand, he taps twice.
The door opens with a mechanical buzz.
My heart hits overdrive, no permission given.
Turning toward me, Frizz hums a few cheerful notes, ushers me into a private lounge room, and locks me inside.
I’d be lying if I said I’ll miss his face.
In the room, lamps glow amber behind red-tinted glass, turning the smoke-dense air into shades of blood. It smells like sex, booze, and money. The cartel’s holy trinity.
A man sits on the couch. An empty chair waits across from him, a coffee table between, littered with ashtrays, a half-empty bottle of tequila, and a pistol. He rolls a toothpick between his lips, eyes steady on me.
Yeah. I know that face. The scar bisecting his cheek makes him look homemade, not born. Steel-cut jawline. Gunmetal eyes. Brutally handsome.
The toothpick rolls lazily between his lips. Calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that comes from killing enough people to find peace in it.
Van Quiso.
He doesn’t introduce himself. No need. His reputation fills the room.
“Sit,” he says, voice a slow rasp that could pass for civility if not for the dominating demand behind it.
I drop into the chair opposite him, every nerve stretched tight.
A fitted Henley clings to his muscular chest, the sleeves pushed to the elbows. His black jeans show no dirt or wear. Can’t say the same for his heavy combat boots or the knife sheathed at his thigh.
He studies me. The toothpick spins. “Welcome to Colombia, Vigilante.”
The alias sounds wrong coming from him, like he’s trying it on to see if it fits.
I say nothing. Pretend I don’t know who he is. Pretend I haven’t read every classified whisper about the man who kidnapped, tortured, and trafficked humans in Texas.
“Relax.” He smirks. “I don’t bite. Not unless you’re naked and bound to a rack.”
I shiver.
In another life, I might’ve pursued that bite, even knowing what he is.
“Tell me something, Vigilante.” His polite, too-soft voice carries an undercurrent of terror, a predator making small talk before the kill. “What does Jag stand for?”
My brain blanks.
No one here should know my real name. No one knows that name unless I choose to reveal it.
The thrashing of my pulse drowns out all other sound.
I recover fast. Shrug. Let my mouth twist into carefree indifference. “J-A-G. Just Another Guy. What does Van stand for?”
He grins, showing no surprise that I know his real name. “Vanquish.”
Yeah. Figures.
“So, Jag.” Legs spread, he props a boot on the opposite knee. “What has you desperate enough to come knocking on our door?”