Chapter 10
TEN
The motel room seemed to shrink the longer Ferrera stayed inside it, the walls pressing in by degrees. He moved from the bathroom door to the window and back again, barefoot on the thin, worn carpet, unable to settle.
He hated waiting. It scraped at him, left him with too much space to think, and thinking was what got men like him killed.
He stopped at the window and peeled the curtain back just enough to see out. A few pickup trucks sat baking in the early light, a soda machine humming beside the ice dispenser. A maid's cart parked two doors down, towels stacked on top like it was any other morning.
Behind him, the television murmured in low, repetitive loops—the same footage cycling every few minutes. The van. The bodies. The long stretch of desert road. And then his own face, caught in the blur of a still frame.
The phone vibrated on the nightstand.
He picked it up without speaking. The voice on the other end filled the space, quick and deferential, just a shade too eager—the way men sounded when they already knew the news was bad and were trying to outrun the blame.
Ferrera listened, his pacing slowing, then stopping altogether as the details settled into place.
When the call ended, he didn't move right away. The phone hung loosely from his fingers.
“They got away,” he said at last.
Across the room, the Sicaria sat at the small table near the door, a strip of motel towel in one hand as she drew it slowly along the flat of a knife, wiping the blade with the kind of attention most people reserved for things they loved. She didn't look up.
Ferrera watched her for a moment, waiting for a reaction that didn't come, and the absence of it irritated him more than any response would have.
“You hear me?” he said.
“I heard you.”
His energy snapped back into motion. He resumed pacing, faster now, his hand dragging through his hair.
For a moment he let himself imagine it—the door giving way under his weight, the gun already in his hand, the old instinct returning.
No middlemen. No delays. No reliance on idiots who didn't understand what they were doing.
“Local idiots,” he muttered, more to the room than to her. “I gave them one thing to do. One. And they let a woman with no training put a bullet in one of them and walk out the front door.”
He stopped, bracing both hands on the dresser, his reflection staring back at him from the dark television screen between loops. He looked tired. He looked like his father, which was worse.
“I should have gone myself.”
That made her look up. Her eyes were pale and steady, taking his measure without interest or judgment. “You would have been seen.”
“So?” He turned on her, the word sharp enough to cut. “I'm already on the news. What's the difference?”
“The difference,” she said, “is that right now they're looking for someone who might be in three states. If you show up at her door, they know exactly where you are, and they stop guessing.” She turned the blade over and drew the towel along other side.
“You don't lose by being on the news. You lose by being predictable.”
Ferrera stared at her. He wanted to argue, but the logic held.
He glanced back at the television just as the footage looped again. He turned away before the cycle completed.
“They'll run,” he said, the thought settling into certainty as it formed. “Cruz will take her somewhere. Somewhere he thinks is safe.”
“Yes.”
“So we find out where.”
The ’Cuda’s engine died, and the sudden quiet rang in Dante’s ears louder than the drive had.
Agua Dulce stretched out around them in pale morning light, sun-bleached yards and sagging chain-link fences.
Santiago’s house sat a little back from the road, behind a fence.
It was a single-story bungalow with peeling white paint and a patched roof.
The front yard was hard-packed dirt, with a narrow strip of stubborn grass.
Wind chimes hung from the porch beam, dull and sun-faded, barely moving in the still air.
Dante didn’t look at Jessica as he got out. Instead, he rested his hands on the roof of the car for a second, grounding himself, his eyes fixed on the front door.
It opened before they reached the steps.
Santiago stepped out, already alert, already reading the situation. His husband Julian came out behind him; he was tall, with kind brown eyes and a crumpled t-shirt, and put a hand on Santiago’s shoulder.
“Dante?” Santiago’s voice cut through the quiet. “What the hell is this?”
“We have a problem,” Dante said.
Santiago’s gaze shifted past him to Jessica. “No,” he said, already stepping onto the porch. His hand tightened on the railing. “No. I told you, Dante–”
“She was attacked,” Dante said. “At her place. They found her.”
“And you brought that here?” Santiago’s voice rose. “You brought La Mano to my front door? To my husband?”
Julian stepped forward then, his voice calm but firm. “Santiago, let’s just slow this down. Get them inside—”
“Inside?” Santiago let out a short, disbelieving breath. “You don’t know what you’re asking, Julian.”
His eyes locked on Jessica again.
She flinched. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t fix what you started,” Santiago shot back. “You don’t get to walk back into people’s lives like nothing happened.”
Julian shifted slightly behind Santiago. “Santiago…” he said, more tentative this time. “Can you turn the TV on for a second?”
Santiago frowned, not looking back. “What?”
“The news,” Julian said. “There was something on this morning. I didn’t think—” He hesitated, glancing between them. “I didn’t think it had anything to do with this, but…”
Something in his tone cut through the heat of the moment.
Santiago turned slightly. “What are you talking about?”
Julian took a breath, choosing his words. “There was a prison transport attack. Out near El Paso.” He frowned faintly, like he was replaying it in his mind. “They were showing one of the men they’re looking for but I don’t remember the name.”
His eyes flicked to Dante, then back to Santiago.
“And the way you said La Mano just now…” Julian continued. “It felt like the same kind of thing.”
Dante felt something tighten in his chest. “What man?”
Julian shook his head slightly. “I don’t know. They said he was important. Dangerous. There’s a manhunt.”
Santiago stared at him for a beat longer than necessary. “El Merc,” he said quietly.
The name seemed to drain the air out of the space.
Dante’s stomach dropped. “Ferrera?”
Julian nodded once, slower now. “Yeah,” he said. “That was it. That’s the name they said.”
Silence settled over the porch. Santiago’s hand tightened on the railing as the past snapped into focus, no longer abstract, no longer buried.
Alive. And back.
His gaze moved to Jessica again, but the anger was gone now, replaced by something colder. “Then you definitely shouldn’t be here.”
The words had barely settled when Jessica heard it—the low sound of an engine rolling up from the street, close and slowing.
Dante turned first. His posture shifted, shoulders tensing.
An old white pickup with Mexican plates pulled up hard to the curb, dust kicking up around the tires. The engine didn't cut. It idled, restless, like it didn't plan on staying.
Ryan stepped out.
He looked worse than he'd sounded on the phone.
She hadn't expected that. His voice had been so steady through the worst of it—through the men at the door, through the gunshot, through the long minutes afterward when she'd been shaking too hard to hold the phone level, that she'd built an image of someone untouched by any of it.
But the man crossing the street toward her looked like he'd aged ten years since she'd seen him last night.
His eyes swept the block once, quick and practiced, before landing on the porch. Whatever he saw there—the four of them lined up like a family portrait nobody had asked for—he absorbed without expression.
Santiago straightened beside her. “And who is this?”
The question had an edge to it, territorial, the voice of a man standing on his own porch deciding whether the person approaching had earned the right to step onto it.
“Ryan Inglis,” Jessica said, before Ryan could answer for himself. “Former U.S. Marshals. Emphasis on the “former”.”
She felt rather than saw Dante glance at her, a quick flick of attention that she didn't return.
Ryan stopped at the bottom of the porch steps, keeping the distance. His gaze moved briefly to Julian, registering what his presence meant about the stakes, then back to Dante and Jessica.
“I take it you've seen the news?” Ryan asked.
The question was directed at all of them, but Santiago was the only one who nodded.
He shifted his weight, and Jessica noticed for the first time that he was armed, the slight drag of a holster beneath his jacket, visible only because the wind pressed the fabric flat for a second.
“José Ferrera's transport was hit about eighteen hours ago. Whoever pulled it off knew the route, the timing, the response window.” His gaze moved between them. “That's not improvised. That takes access.”
Jessica felt the chill start at the back of her neck and work downward.
“He's not running blind,” Ryan continued. “He's going to start with what he knows. Old names, old connections. People who helped put him away.”
She could feel Dante go rigid beside her, could feel Santiago processing behind his stillness.
Ryan looked at her then. “You're not just a loose end, Jessica. You're someone he remembers.”
She'd known it, somewhere beneath the adrenaline and the hours of not thinking about it.
But hearing it said aloud, in Ryan's careful voice, in the middle of Santiago's quiet yard with the mid-morning light making everything look exposed, made it real in a way that the broken door and the blood and the man in her apartment hadn't quite managed.
“What do we do?” she asked.