Chapter 52
FIFTY-TWO
The SUV slowed. Lucía felt it first in her stomach: that familiar shift in gravity, the dull lurch of motion bleeding into stillness.
Then the brakes hissed, and the engine settled into a low, uneven idle.
For a long moment, nobody moved.
The canvas hood clung to her face, hot with her breath. Sweat stuck to her hairline and trickled down her neck. Her wrists burned where the zip ties had rubbed the skin raw.
She counted the heartbeats between breaths. Four. Five. Six.
Then the doors clicked open.
Gravel crunched under boots. Two of them got out first, their movements sharp and purposeful—they were soldiers, not thugs. Reyes stayed inside. She could hear his steady breathing beside her, smell the nicotine on his clothes.
A door slammed. Then the metallic scrape of something heavy being dragged—chains? No. A gate, maybe.
The voice outside barked something in Spanish she couldn’t catch. Another voice answered. Male. Clipped. Military.
Lucía’s pulse spiked.
A hand grabbed her arm, hauling her upright. Pain shot through her shoulder where the bullet wound had barely begun to heal. She stumbled, her knees buckling as her boots hit dirt. The gravel was loose, jagged. She could smell dust, diesel, and the faint chemical sting of jet fuel.
“Cuidado,” one of the men muttered.
She heard Reyes’s voice again, over to her left. “She’s fine. She knows what happens to people who make trouble.”
He’d smiled at her once. Over Gates’s shoulder, back at the safehouse. He’d brought her water. Told her he was glad she’d survived the tax office hit.
And now he was delivering her like cargo.
The heat pressed down in waves. Even through the hood, she could tell it was late afternoon. The air was heavy, the wind dry enough to sting her cracked lips.
Somewhere ahead, she heard the distant whine of machinery, the echo of voices. Maybe they were closer to civilization than she’d hoped. Close enough that if she screamed loud enough, someone might even hear her.
But not close enough for them to help.
One of the men shoved her forward and she stumbled. She caught her balance, breathing through her nose, forcing herself to think.
Information. Always the information.
She counted steps, estimated distance. The ground shifted from gravel to compact dirt. The air cooled. Echoes changed.
They were inside.
The bag was whipped from her head. The room wasn’t bright, but the sudden change in light made her squeeze her eyes shut.
Slowly, she reopened them. The room was hollow, big.
A warehouse, or maybe a hangar. The floor was stained in places with oil, and something darker.
Overhead, chains hung from ceiling trusses like abandoned nooses.
A decommissioned plane sat gutted in the far corner, its stripped fuselage casting a skeletal shadow across the room.
There were no windows. Just the metallic stench of fuel and rust, and the cold certainty that whatever came next wasn’t meant to be seen by the outside world.
There was one man behind her, still gripping her shoulder; two a few feet away, both armed with rifles and watching her with blank but alert stares. Like she was a mildly interesting creature in a zoo. Potentially dangerous, but more of an oddity than anything.
She opened her mouth to say something—anything—but the sudden feel of a blade at her back made her shut it immediately.
A loud zip followed, the sound of fabric being sliced with a sharp knife.
Her t-shirt was pulled away in pieces, and then she felt blunt fingers tug at the back of her bra.
He didn’t unclasp it; instead, there was another zipping sound, and it too was cut away.
Her indignation barely had time to register before it was done, and she was standing there half-naked.
It turned immediately to fear, as the man behind her sliced away at the back of her pants, the tip of knife skimming lightly against the backs of her thighs.
The rags of her cargo pants joined the remains of the rest of her clothes on the ground.
Fear and rage and humiliation formed a hot soup in her stomach. She tried to pull away, but the man behind her tightened his grip on her shoulder. Pain seared through her wound as he jerked her back, in anticipation of her trying to break free.
The other men were still staring at her, their expressions having sharpened. Like the zoo creature was now something they wanted to pet.
Well, if they did, they would soon find out this one bit.
Fear and adrenaline were making her whole body shake, but she forced herself not to panic.
Yes, her arms were still bound, but she had both legs free and if any of these fuckers tried to touch her, she knew exactly where she was going to aim the first kick.
But neither of the men made any move toward her. One dragged a metal chair over, its metal legs screeching against the concrete. The hand on shoulder tightened again, forcing her down onto it.
“Take a seat.”
A zip tie cinched around one of her ankles, securing it to the leg of the chair, then the other. Both her hands were then tied to each arm.
The footsteps moved away. The door slammed. The lock turned. Silence fell again.
She tried to shift her weight, but the chair legs grated loudly.
She could hear the men outside now, faint through the walls. Talking, laughing. And under it all, the low hum of a plane engine winding down.
Someone had just arrived.
Her heart leapt painfully. She thought of Ryan when she’d last seen him, bleeding, furious. She thought of Noah, just a kid and yet trying so hard to be brave through things that would make most adults shit their pants.
And of Javier: his voice smooth as polished glass, promising that she would always come back to him, one way or another.
Lucía inhaled, slow and quiet. She could taste rust in the air. And something else—cleaner, sharper. Disinfectant.
Someone had prepared for her.
She rotated her wrist, slow, careful, testing the friction of plastic against skin.
She wasn’t done yet. Not by a long shot.