Chapter 18
Eighteen
Jagger
I grip the steering wheel hard enough that my knuckles ache, bones pressing white through skin. The engine growls, and we lurch forward into the afternoon heat that shimmers off the asphalt in waves.
Adena hasn't spoken since the warehouse.
I want to say something—anything—but the words stick in my throat like glass.
The van's bugged. Marquez doesn't trust anyone, least of all his drivers.
There are cameras tucked into the rearview mirror or hidden in the dashboard vents, recording every word, every flicker of doubt that crosses my face.
Exactly why I choose it.
The city slides past the windows in a blur of color and decay.
Storefronts with iron bars. Strip malls with half the spaces empty.
Neighborhoods that shift from struggling to dead in the space of three blocks.
A traffic light ahead turns yellow, and I punch the gas, blow through it as it flips to red.
Beside me, Adena's hand shoots out to brace against the dashboard.
She still doesn't speak.
My mind won't stop racing. Three years of this life. Three years of sinking deeper into a role I can't remember how to take off. Three years of doing things that lodge in my chest like shrapnel, working their way toward something vital.
And now Lucia. Another casualty.
The nail salon crouches between a payday loan place with bars on the windows and a restaurant that's been boarded up so long the plywood's gone gray. Pink neon flickers in the salon window, buzzing loud enough I can hear it through the glass when I kill the engine.
I turn to look at Adena.
She's staring straight ahead at nothing, jaw locked so tight I can see the muscle jumping beneath her skin. Her breathing is too careful, too measured. Each inhale counted. Each exhale controlled, like if she breathes wrong, she'll shatter.
I need her to go inside. Need her to walk into that salon and bring Lucia out because that's what makes this real. A man doing it alone looks wrong. Suspicious. But a man bringing his woman? That's making a statement. That's showing ownership.
But I can see it in the rigid line of her spine—she's holding on by her fingernails. One wrong word, and she's gone. Out the door, out of my life, out of this nightmare she never asked to be part of.
"Go in," I say. My voice comes out flat, dead. "Get Lucia. Bring her out."
Her throat works like she's swallowing something sharp. Her eyes search mine, desperate, looking for reassurance I can't give.
Then she opens the door.
The heat rushes in like something alive—thick, humid, pressing against my skin. She climbs out and crosses the cracked asphalt toward the buzzing pink sign. Her shoulders are straight. Head up.
The salon door closes behind her, and she's gone.
Sweat starts to bead along my hairline and trickle down my spine. My hand drifts back, fingers finding the gun tucked against the small of my back.
Two minutes crawl past. Three.
The salon door opens.
Adena comes out first, moving with purpose, and behind her Lucia stumbles like a woman being dragged to the gallows. Her face is wrecked—makeup smeared in black streaks, eyes so swollen from crying they're nearly shut, her whole body trembling.
She looks through the windshield and tries to wrench away.
Adena's grip on her arm tightens—not brutal, but unyielding—and keeps her moving forward.
I reach back, pop the side door.
Lucia practically falls into the van, legs shaking so hard they won't hold her. Adena slides back into the passenger seat and buckles herself in without meeting my eyes.
Lucia starts crying before we even hit the street—quiet, broken sounds that fill the van and make tension roll off Adena in waves.
Out past where the city ends and the buildings thin to nothing.
Past the last struggling suburbs where chain-link fences mark property lines nobody wants.
The highway opens up and swampland spreads on both sides—ancient and dark, cypress trees rising from water black as oil, their trunks thick and twisted, branches draped in Spanish moss that hangs like burial shrouds.
I turn onto a dirt road that's barely more than a suggestion—two ruts carved through mud by trucks that came before. The van bounces hard over roots and rocks. Spanish moss drags across the windshield, leaving wet streaks.
We go deeper. No houses. No other roads. Just trees and water and silence broken only by Lucia's sobbing and the crunch of tires on dirt.
I stop where the road ends, where it just dissolves into swamp and there's nowhere left to go.
My hand moves to my back, closes around the gun.
Lucia sees the gun and her breath catches, chokes off mid-sob. "No—no, please, Jagger, please don't—"
"Get out."
She doesn't move, just presses herself into the corner of the van, shaking her head over and over like a broken toy.
I open my door. The humidity hits like walking into a mouth—hot, wet, suffocating. I walk around to her side, boots squelching in mud, and yank open her door.
"Out."
"Please—" Her voice cracks, breaks.
"Out. Now."
She half-falls into the mud, heels sinking instantly. Her knees buckle and she catches herself on the van, fingers white-knuckled against the metal.
I gesture with the gun toward the trees, toward the dark water beyond them where the swamp waits, patient and hungry.
Lucia backs away from me. One stumbling step. Then another. Her breath comes in gasps now, hyperventilating, tears and mascara painting her face like a tragic mask.
Behind me, I hear Adena's door open. Hear her feet hit the ground.
I don't turn around, can't afford to look at her. I know what I’ll see. It’s what I see reflected in the mirror every morning.
"Walk," I tell Lucia.
She takes one shaking step into the shallow water at the swamp's edge.
Then another.
The mud sucks at her heels. Water rises past her ankles. Past her calves. She's sobbing so hard she can barely breathe, barely move, but she keeps going because the gun in my hand doesn't give her a choice.
"Keep going."
"Please—I'm sorry—I didn't mean to—I was just angry—"
"Keep. Going."
Water reaches her thighs. Her movements slow, fighting against the weight of it, the drag of mud and vegetation beneath the surface.
I raise the gun.
Not to shoot.
To make sure she understands I could.
I angle my head just enough for Adena to see me, for Lucia to hear where the decision’s coming from. “Does she live or does she die?”
Adena’s breath breaks—one sharp exhale like she’s been holding it too long.
She closes her eyes. Just for a second. Then nods.
“I know how to make her disappear.”
Adena
Sunlight cuts through the cypress branches in hard stripes, catching Jagger’s face and sliding away again. He looks steady. Too steady, considering what we just did.
All the way out here, I’d prayed Jagger had a plan. This was it. Fear, staged and controlled, traded for a chance Lucia might run and never look back. It wasn’t clean. It was just better than the alternative.
It’s a risk. For her. For me. For Hightower. But mostly for Jagger if we didn’t do enough to scare her enough to seek refuge at the mission on Barrone Street.
It’s also the only chance we could give her.
“You should have told me before you pulled the gun. I could have shot you,” I say.
Jagger picks up a branch and snaps it. “I needed this to look good. Now Marquez will see the footage.”
I’m still a little miffed he took it to such extremes, even if I understand why. “Does she have any reason to go back? Family?”
He shakes his head. “She can’t. Even if she wants to expose us, she’d be dead before morning. No one tolerates rats.”
Relief and doubt hit together, tangled enough I can’t separate them. Lucia’s alive. That doesn’t mean she’s okay. There was no version of this where Lucia could go home.
“What would you have done if I hadn’t told her where to go?”
Jagger eyes me and shrugs. “Told her to keep walking and never look back.”
“Just like that?”
He frowns. “You’re disappointed in me? We just saved her life. The rest is up to her.”
Before I can say anything else, he pokes at a subject we’ve danced around. “How long before your boss pulls you out?” he asks.
It’s the one thing we haven’t said out loud—and saying it won’t change the fact that I’m already in deeper than I expected.
“Your bosses wanted two months. I was prepared for that. Silas cut it to one,” I say.
One month. Four weeks in an environment where letting your guard down gets you killed.
“You were okay with locking in two months of your life?”
I nod. “It takes time to build trust. I didn’t expect things to move so rapidly.”
A smile flickers on his lips. “Marquez was running out of patience. The longer the position went unfilled, the more money he lost.”
“What happened to the last forger?” I ask. “Nolan said it was classified. I assume that means he met a grisly end?”
Jagger’s face tightens and he flat-out ignores the question. “Tell me what you’re planning,” he says. “Maybe I can help.”
I release a sigh. He’s trying to protect me. Insulting, considering how synced we’re becoming.
“I’m marking everything. Variants in the watermark. Ink composition. Micro-features. Some only visible under UV.”
When he nods, I carry on. “They want twelve documents marked. Different transactions.”
“Good spread,” he says. “Strengthens the RICO angle.”
I shift my weight and push the issue a little harder. “So, about the last forger?”
For a moment I think he’s not going to answer, but this time he yields—and when he does, I almost wish I hadn’t asked.
His eyes shift to the swamp, then back to my face. “He’s somewhere at the bottom.”