Chapter 39
THIRTY-NINE
Lucía woke slowly, surfacing from a dreamless dark that left her limbs heavy and her mouth dry.
The ceiling above her was unfamiliar: bare, wood-paneled, a ceiling fan spinning on the lowest setting.
The light in the room was golden, the kind that meant the sun was either rising or setting.
Her body ached like it had been filled with lead. Even blinking took effort.
Pain pulsed through her shoulder as she tried to shift. Not sharp, but deep, the kind that made her stomach clench and her teeth grit. Bandages. Stiff fabric. A tug beneath her skin that told her something foreign had recently been removed.
She wasn’t dead. She hadn’t been taken. That much she could piece together.
A soft rustle drew her gaze. Ryan sat in a chair nearby, head bowed, one hand resting on his knee, the other wrapped around a water bottle.
He looked like he hadn’t slept. His shirt was bloodied—her blood, she guessed—and his jaw was shadowed with stubble.
There was a tenseness in his shoulders that hadn’t eased, even in rest. When he saw her stir, he leaned forward.
“Hey,” he said, voice low and rough. “You’re awake.”
She nodded slightly, wincing at the movement. Her throat was raw. “How long?”
“Few hours,” he said. “We got you stabilized. Bullet’s out. Fever’s breaking.”
Lucía let her eyes close for a moment, absorbing that. She wasn’t safe, not really. But she wasn’t dying anymore either. Her skin was clammy, but the pressure behind her eyes had lessened.
“Where are we?”
“Safehouse somewhere north of Salina Cruz. Gates knew a spot.”
At the mention of that name, her eyes snapped open again. A flare of alarm burned through the fog.
“You trust him?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Ryan hesitated. That told her enough.
“I trust him to want the boy safe,” he said finally. “Beyond that… I’m watching.”
Lucía exhaled through her nose. Her body felt like paper—thin, fragile, dangerously close to tearing. She hated this part: the weakness. The dependence. The vulnerability of needing help, of having no choice but to accept it.
“He had med kits, a trauma cooler,” Ryan added. “Everything I needed to patch you up.”
“Convenient,” she murmured.
Ryan didn’t argue. Instead, he stood and crossed the room to the table where a glass of water waited. He brought it back, bracing her gently with one hand as he helped her drink. His touch was surprisingly careful, reverent even, like he understood exactly how close she’d come to vanishing.
Lucía sipped slowly, the coolness hitting her tongue like a shock. “Gracias,” she said when she finished.
“De nada.”
He didn’t move away right away. His hand lingered for a moment on her arm before he stepped back.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he said.
Lucía swallowed, letting that sit between them. His voice carried something she wasn’t ready to deal with. Something almost like…feelings.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said quietly.
“Doesn’t change the fact I was standing right there.”
They lapsed into silence. Outside, a bird cried once and went quiet.
Lucía looked at the ceiling fan. “You ever feel like you keep surviving, but only in smaller and smaller pieces?”
He didn’t answer right away. Then, “Yeah. More than I’d like to admit.”
She closed her eyes again. “I don’t know if I can trust him,” she said after a while. “Gates.”
“You don’t have to. Just long enough to get the kid out.”
She nodded. It was the best they could do.
“But if he so much as flinches wrong,” Ryan added, “we walk. Deal?”
Lucía met his eyes. “Are you sure we’ll still be able to?”
He raised his chin and inhaled. “Trust me, between the two of us, we can outrun Tomás Gates.”
Between the two of us.
She felt sleep tugging at her again, softer this time.
It no longer felt like surrender, just rest. And that was what truly unsettled her.
Not the pain. Not the bullet wound. Not even Gates in the other room.
But the quiet certainty that if Ryan stayed by her side, she might actually begin to feel safe.
And that was truly terrifying.
As she drifted into sleep, her last thought wasn’t of missing boys or encrypted threats. It was of a calloused hand against her arm. And the unbearable ache of wanting to believe it might stay there.