Kyla
She stumbled back from the door, reaching for her gun. “Where the fuck did you come from?”
“The road. Where else?” The new man smiled at her, revealing a cracked front tooth. He extended his hand. “Ryan Phan, nice to meet you.”
“I got here just before sundown. The twins were kind enough to give me a room.”
Stanley was getting red again. “I knew I’d seen you skulking around. I knew it.”
“I’m not sure how—I fell asleep just about the second I got here. I didn’t wake up until I heard all the screaming.” This Ryan fellow didn’t miss a beat. “It wore me out, chasing you and Polly back across Mexico. Where is she, by the way? I’d like to get her somewhere safe.”
“She’s—” Stanley hesitated, grew redder. “She’s not coming anywhere near you. Not now. Not ever again.”
“That would be a shame. I was all set to make you an offer of my own, Mister Holiday.”
Kyla interjected. “I’m sorry, but you’re weirding me the fuck out. How could you get here without any of us noticing?”
“I noticed! I told all of y’all—”
“Can you ever just shut the fuck up?” Kyla hadn’t realized, after six months of dealing with him at the steakhouse, just how tired she was of Stanley Holiday. The big man, for his part, seemed so stunned by her disrespect he couldn’t speak. She’d take it.
Kyla looked at Ryan again. “I don’t get it. Why are you even here?”
“I’m here to get my stepdaughter away from this asshole. Away from the whole fucking outfit. I did it once already, and Stanley went all the way to Mexico to get her back. He gave me this in the process.” Ryan gestured to his splinted nose with a flourish.
Ethan said, “Penelope is your stepdaughter?”
“No,” Stanley said. “No, she is not. She—”
“She would have been, if I’d had the chance to marry her mother.
Stanley made sure that couldn’t happen.” Ryan’s swagger faltered for just a moment, a memory flickering behind his eyes.
He seemed to push it away with a physical effort.
“But we don’t have time for the past. What matters is right now, Stan.
You give me Penelope and I won’t tell this office why you butchered the lovely Miss Powers. ”
Stanley looked briefly, genuinely, astonished. “Are you insane? I’d never met the woman in my life.”
Kyla arched an eyebrow. “Are you an idiot? You’ve spent the last six weeks having dinner with her. I served the two of you a pair of T-bones not five days ago.”
Stanley spun on Kyla, but Ethan was the first to speak. “You served Sarah dinner?”
“Many times,” Kyla said.
“But she didn’t recognize you earlier, here in the office.”
“I’m not surprised. She was just there for Stanley and Frank. They—”
“Stanley and Sarah were an item,” Ryan Phan cut in. “Penelope told me about it while we were in Mexico—all about the woman Stanley had fallen for.”
“You think I was in love with Sarah Powers?” Stanley looked almost ready to laugh. “We were working with her, you idiot. She was doing a job for the outfit.”
“Five seconds ago you said you’d never met her,” Ethan said.
Ryan said to Stanley, “Exactly what kind of work was she doing for y’all?”
“You think I need to explain myself to you?” Stanley said.
“You might want to. Because Penelope told me plenty more than just that.”
Kyla’s eyebrow arched higher; this all felt a little too easy. “Like what?”
“Enough for Stanley to be very worried. Let’s just say it wouldn’t be the first time he let his temper get out of hand with a woman. I heard about a little something that occurred in a motel closer to Stockton. The Terra Vista. Ring a bell?”
Stanley, to Kyla’s surprise, said nothing. The only sign he was listening was a vein in his throat that started to pulse, very fast, beneath the skin.
Ryan appeared to take this as a good sign. “The good news for Stanley is that if he gives me my stepdaughter, no one has to know about any of that. I’ll get Penelope to safety. We’ll be halfway back to Mexico City by dawn.”
Ethan said, “You realize that information could be life or death for the rest of us?”
“I’m sorry, kid, but that’s really not my problem. Y’all seem smart. Tough.” The man’s eyes drifted over the room. They lingered, just a moment, on Hunter. “I bet you’ll figure something out.”
The vein in Stanley’s throat throbbed faster.
From out in the dark, one of those terrible SHRIEKS sent adrenaline tingling on Kyla’s skin. Fernanda seemed to feel it too. In a quiet voice, she said, “Do you really believe you can simply leave this place?”
“I don’t see why not. I don’t see—”
What happened next only took a few seconds.
Stan Holiday started marching toward the office’s door, that vein thump-thump-thumping in his throat. The guy was over this. Beyond over it.
Kyla took a long step sideways, well out of his way, because she knew that even though Stan Holiday was a thug and a bully and an overgrown child, he also had a gun on his hip, two hundred pounds of a white man’s entitlement and a dangerously short fuse.
Her father had always warned her to give a person like this a wide, wide berth.
Maybe Ryan hadn’t gotten the same lesson. Maybe he just wasn’t thinking. He stepped into Stanley’s path. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Stanley pushed the man back with his left hand.
Ryan came right back, fists up now, looking like he was ready to coldcock a man fifty pounds heavier and a good four inches taller. Kyla had to give him credit: whoever this guy was, Ryan Phan would’ve probably been a hell of a drinking buddy.
Stanley didn’t seem to think so. With his right hand, the big man raised the Desert Eagle from the holster on his hip. “Out of my fucking way.”
And then it happened.
Stan didn’t appear to aim. He fired twice, and between the flashes of the gun’s massive barrel and the deafening crack-crack of the powder, Kyla didn’t realize Ryan was dead until well after his body landed on the floor.
No one moved. No one screamed. They just stared, dumbfounded, at the way this man, Ryan Phan, was suddenly missing half of his head and a decent chunk of his face.
A thick coating of blood and brain matter coated the office’s front door.
It plastered itself onto the narrow windows. It steamed on the cold glass.
When someone started screaming, it was Stanley. Before anyone else could even register what had happened, Stanley was running—out of the office, into the parking lot, screaming and screaming like no one was more horrified by this turn of events than Stan Holiday himself.