Chapter 13 #3
She was on her side on the floor behind the bar, coughing hard enough to shake. Bruises were already blooming dark on her throat. Blood glistened from cuts on her forearms where glass had kissed her on the way down. Her eyes were wild, unfocused.
“Hey,” I said, dropping to a knee. “Hey, look at me!”
Her gaze finally latched onto mine.
“You’re okay,” I said. “You’re here. You’re breathing. That’s all you have to do for the next thirty seconds.”
She tried to speak. It came out as a rasp. Tears mixed with whatever had splashed onto her cheeks.
Valkyrie appeared at the end of the bar like she’d been conjured, gun up, scanning the room before lowering it a fraction when she saw the body and me and Cali.
“He dead?” she asked, voice ragged.
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s done.”
She slid behind the bar, dropped into a crouch and cupped Cali’s face gently, thumbs just above the purple marks forming.
“Hey, Cal,” she said, softer than I’d ever heard her. “Stay with us.”
California’s breath hitched. She clung to Valkyrie’s wrist like a lifeline.
“He—he came from the window,” she rasped. “Thought it was Indigo… then…”
“I know,” Valkyrie said. “It’s over.”
I glanced down at her. “Get her under. She doesn’t need to see any more of this.”
She nodded.
We guided Cali down, sliding her carefully into the well beneath the bar, tucking her between crates and shelves. Valkyrie grabbed a bar towel and pressed it into her hands.
“Stay down,” Valkyrie said. “If you hear someone you don’t recognize back here, you shoot them in the ankle and then the face.”
Cali gave a strangled laugh that turned into another cough, but she nodded.
I grabbed the dead man’s gun and shoved it into my waistband. No sense in wasting hardware.
“Outside,” Valkyrie said. “We’re still getting hit.”
We vaulted back over the bar into the storm.
The yard was a shooting gallery.
One SUV had rammed the corner of the fence hard enough to twist metal and open a mouth just big enough for men to pour through.
Another idled in the road, doors open, shooters using it as cover as they fired into the compound.
A third was already pulling away, tires throwing gravel, someone inside yelling in Spanish out the window.
Anaconda was on the ground near a cage in the middle of the yard clutching her calf, blood seeping between her fingers. Arizona was over her, half-shielding with her body, pistol in one hand, camera forgotten around her neck.
“Stay down!” Arizona shouted as bullets chewed into the dirt nearby.
A shot cracked from the rooftop. Indigo, taking her angles. One of the gunmen by the SUV jerked back, shoulder exploding in red.
Liberty was closer to the gate, firing in controlled pairs from behind a pile of tires that had become an impromptu bunker. Rosé knelt beside a bike, taking careful shots between the handlebars. Cobra had a shotgun and a look on her face that said she’d been born waiting for this.
Diamondback and India rushed toward Anaconda at a crouch, medical bags banging against their hips. India slid in on her knees, hands already on Anaconda’s leg.
“Through and through,” she said. “You’re lucky. Cry later.”
“Already started,” Anaconda gritted.
“If you can whine, you can live,” Diamondback snapped, even as her fingers went gentle, checking the wound. Her bandaged arm barely slowed her.
Shots rang from the road again. A bullet tore through Arizona’s cut as she turned to grab fresh mags from Anaconda’s vest. She gasped, hand flying to her side.
“Shit,” she hissed. “That was my favorite fucking patch.”
“Any holes that matter?” India called without looking up.
Arizona felt along her ribs, then let out a shaky breath. “Just fabric,” she said. “I’m good.”
“Then stop looming like a target and get smaller,” Cobra barked.
Valkyrie and I split without talking.
She peeled off toward the twisted fence gap, picking off anyone dumb enough to try and squeeze through now that the element of surprise was gone. I angled toward the road, using a wrecked car in the yard as cover to get a clearer line on the shooters at the SUV.
One saw me and swung his rifle. I ducked, rolled, came up by a stack of pallets. Splinters leapt as bullets hit where my head had been.
I leaned out and put two rounds into his door instead of his torso—not because I missed, but because I wanted him to get smaller, to flinch down behind metal and glass. It worked. His angle broke, giving Indigo a clean line from above. Her shot took him in the neck.
He dropped beside the SUV, blood pumping rhythmically.
The driver cursed and slammed the vehicle into gear. The SUV lurched forward, fishtailing as he tried to retreat and ran over his own man already bleeding out on the asphalt. Another SUV behind him peeled out as well, deciding this wasn’t worth whatever they were being paid.
“Cowards,” Medusa spat, firing one last shot that pinged off a rear bumper.
We didn’t give chase. Bikes were fast, but SUVs with unknown backup and rifles waiting up the road were a good way to start a body count we were trying to keep at zero.
That’s when I saw the straggler.
He was inside the fence. Somehow he’d slipped in during the first rush and hadn’t made it back out before the retreat got called. Now he was pinned between a stack of old engine blocks and one of the outbuildings, breathing hard, gun in hand.
He looked young. Young enough that if you saw him in a different shirt at a grocery store you’d just think “teen” and move on.
Valkyrie swung her gun toward him first. Rosé flanked opposite. Liberty moved up the middle, steady.
I closed in from the side, gun up but not quite at his face. If we could take one alive, all the better.
He saw the wall closing. His eyes went flat.
Voices quieted. Even the ringing in my ears seemed to hush.
He said something in Spanish—low, almost a chant. I caught the word muerte. Death. The rest slid past my shitty middle-school language classes like water.
“What?” Medusa called. “Speak a language we recognize besides ‘fuck.’”
He looked at her, then at the rest of us. A strange calm settled over his features.
“For Bolivar,” he said in accented English.
Before any of us could move, he put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
The crack was sharp and close. His body dropped like someone cut a string. Blood sprayed the wall behind him, dark against chipped paint.
No one spoke for a second.
India let out a slow breath. “Well,” she said faintly. “That’s… one way to clock out.”
“Get his pockets,” Liberty said, already moving. Her voice wasn’t shaky. It never was. “Anything that tells us where he shits, who he drinks with, who he calls when he’s scared. I want it.”
Cobra and Indigo moved in efficiently. They rolled his body, checked for phones, IDs, tattoos beyond the obvious cartel ink. Found another cheap burner, this one with no numbers saved. Useless except for confirmation.
“India, Diamondback,” Liberty said without looking back. “How’s my wounded?”
“Anaconda’s going to have a badass new scar,” India said. “Bullet went clean through. No bone. She’ll limp and complain, but she’s not dying.”
“Arizona’s pride got shot worse than any skin,” Diamondback added. “She’ll live.”
“California?” Valkyrie asked.
“I’ll go,” I said.
I jogged back into the clubhouse.
The main room looked worse with the adrenaline rolling off. Glass everywhere. Bullet holes in the walls and ceiling. Blood tracked in boot prints. The man I’d killed lay in a glossy pool behind the bar, eyes staring at nothing.
I stepped over him and ducked behind the counter.
Cali was still tucked into the shadowed corner of the well, clutching the towel like a shield. Her breathing had evened some, but her eyes were rimmed red. Bruising was coming up mean and dark along her throat.
“Hey,” I said softer than I felt. “They’re gone.”
She swallowed. Winced. “All of them?”
“All that matters,” I said. “One exited himself. The rest ran.”
Her laugh was a brittle crack. “Good.”
“You need a medic?” I asked.
She shook her head, then stopped because that hurt. “India’ll look at me later,” she rasped. “I… I just need a second.”
“Take it,” I said. “You earned twenty.”
She lifted her eyes to mine. “You—”
“Don’t,” I cut in. “You’d have done the same.”
“Not that clean,” she whispered.
I snorted. “I’m a mess, Cali.”
But she knew what I meant. She nodded, fingers loosening around the towel.
“Under here’s the safest place in the room for now,” I said. “Stay until Valkyrie or Liberty tell you otherwise just in case there’s anyone else hiding.”
She nodded again. I climbed back out.
By the time I hit the yard again, the volume had dropped. Engines gone. Only sound now was the mutter of voices, the clink of shells being gathered, the low groans of the injured and the higher, brittle laughter of people who’d just realized they weren’t dead.
Liberty stood near the center of it all. Blood on her boots. Hair pulled back harder than before. The Steel Serpent cut from the junkyard still hung on a hook inside, but the war had just stopped being concept art.
She looked at me as I approached.
“California?” she asked.
“Bruised,” I said. “Shaken. Breathing. She’ll have a nice handprint for show-and-tell, but she’s upright.”
“Good.” Liberty nodded once. She looked around at her girls, at her yard, at the bent fence. Then back to me.
“They hit us once and ran,” she said. “Now they’ve hit us twice. Next time, it’ll be bigger. More bodies. More cars. They’ll rally, and when they do, they’ll decide whether to try us again or switch and hit you.”
I wiped a streak of blood—someone else’s—off my cheek with the back of my hand.
“They already gave us their allegiance cry,” I said. “‘For Bolivar.’ They’re not hiding who they’re working for anymore.”
“Good,” Liberty said. “I like my enemies labeled.”
Liberty then turned to Medusa. “I want a full sweep. Make sure nobody else got in. Make sure there isn’t someone hiding. Check every shadow. Every inch.”
“Yes, Prez,” she replied.