Chapter 57
FIFTY-SEVEN
Night had sunk its teeth into the desert. The compound’s outer floodlights threw jagged shadows across the perimeter fence, cutting the scrubland into sharp slices of white and black. Overhead, the stars hung cold and remote, indifferent to the war brewing below.
Gates crouched behind a rusted fuel barrel near the edge of the depot, breath low and steady, finger tight on the trigger of his Glock. Sweat slicked the back of his neck.
Stacks of chemical drums lined the fence. A broken forklift sat listing to one side. A rusted utility shack glowed faintly from a single overhead bulb. He moved past it, then heard footsteps ahead. Close.
He kept low, ducked between two barrels.
And saw Reyes.
The little bastard strolled like he belonged here now. Tactical harness, sidearm, the smug entitlement of someone who’d finally stopped pretending he was the help. Gates could feel it roll off him like heat.
He stepped out of the shadows, fast and silent. Grabbed Reyes by the vest. Slammed him into the barrel hard enough to make the metal clang.
Reyes gasped, reaching for his sidearm, but Gates already had the Glock pressed under his chin.
“You make a move, I turn your jaw into soup.”
Reyes froze, breath wheezing. “You should’ve stayed in the fucking closet.”
Gates shoved him to the ground, pinned him with one knee, forearm tight across the throat. The Glock didn’t shake in his hand.
“Where is she?”
“Hangar,” Reyes choked out. “North quadrant. Big one. They’ve got her restrained.”
“Javier?”
“Been in there with her for a while.”
Gates’s stomach knotted. “Alone?”
Reyes tried a grin, blood on his teeth. “Don’t act shocked. You knew how this worked when you signed on.”
Gates’s jaw clenched. “I didn’t sign up for this.”
“The hell you didn’t,” Reyes rasped. “You just thought you’d keep your hands clean.”
He grabbed Reyes by the collar and dragged him upright. “You took a kid, then you tortured a woman for a password. What’s your number, Reyes? What’s the sum that makes you this kind of man?”
Reyes spat blood, half-laughing. “You tell me. You’re still cashing the same checks.”
The sound that left Gates wasn’t a word, it was a low, animal growl. The shot rang out, hitting Reyes just below the chin, before ricocheting off the fuel tanks. His body slumped beside a leaking drum, blood pooling under his collar.
Gates stared at him for a moment, breathing heavily, then he stepped back. And that’s when he saw it. A small flame licking along the ground, straight toward the chemical barrels.
“Shit—”
He backed up fast, just as the first drum ignited with a loud whoomph, sending a fireball skyward.
Flames burst out sideways, searing hot. Gates turned and ran like hell.
Ryan turned left down another hall, this one tighter, filled with stacked crates.
He ducked through shadows, checked each door.
One was ajar, marked with a faded “Hangar Access.” He limped toward it, one hand trailing the wall for balance.
The pain in his leg was building, hot and relentless.
Then he thought of the pain Lucía must be in and his own immediately faded into the background.
He had to get to her.
Suddenly, a voice cracked through the radio on his belt. Static, then something low in Spanish. Ryan froze. The voice didn’t repeat.
Somewhere behind him, he heard footsteps. Then shouting. He backed against the wall.
He waited a second more, his heartbeat slamming in his ears. The radio on his hip crackled again, louder this time. A flurry of voices. Then alarms screamed to life overhead.
Shit.
Ryan broke into a limp-run, teeth bared against the pain. A siren blared. The floor shook under his feet as a heavy door slammed somewhere behind him.
The doorway loomed up ahead. A few more yards, then beyond it, the hangar. His thigh felt molten. He tasted blood in his mouth. The pistol in his hand was almost empty.
But he was here. He was close. Lucía was close.
And he was going to burn this whole place down if they laid another hand on her.
The hallway beyond the torture room reeked of diesel, sweat, and the acrid tang of burning fuel. Lucía limped through it like a ghost from some ruined war, wrapped in a merc’s oversized uniform, blood drying sticky at the backs of her knees.
She held the pistol in both hands. The hall curved left, toward a bank of utility lockers and a concrete washroom, its industrial sink stained with old rust. She ducked inside, breathing hard.
In the mirror, she looked like something unearthed from a grave. Blood crusted in the creases of her lips. Her eyes were too wide, whites showing all around. Her arms trembled. But under the wreckage, there was something clean and electric in her expression.
Focus.
Lucía tucked the pistol into her waistband and splashed cold water over her face. Then tore paper towels from the dispenser and pressed them to her skin.
The radio crackled, voices distorting through static.
“—repeat, fire’s reached the generator shed. Containment’s failing.”
A burst of static. Another voice, higher-pitched, panicked. “North depot’s gone! We’ve got chemicals burning, smoke in the hangar bay!”
A final voice, hoarse and breathless: “Where the fuck is Reyes?”
She stepped back into the corridor. She didn’t know where Javier had gone, but she knew where he liked to be.
High ground. Surveillance. The seat of power.
She crossed into a long access hallway, moving slowly, staying to the shadows. Her footsteps were near-silent. A stairwell rose ahead, unguarded, dimly lit. She took the first step, then the second, each one dragging fire up her legs. By the fifth, her vision was swimming.
She paused on the landing, breathing hard. Her wounds were searing, hot from adrenaline, but she kept going.
Something scraped above her. A voice: low, male.
Javier.
She moved faster now, adrenaline eating through the pain. The stairs opened to a steel catwalk that wrapped around the edge of the wide hangar floor. The mezzanine office door stood open.
Inside, a glass wall looked out over the hangar, but it was covered by so many years of grime, the view was like staring into smoke. Javier stood by the desk. His jacket was draped over a chair.
She watched him from the doorway, gun raised.
And for a moment—just a flicker—her arms trembled.
Not from fear.
But because she remembered the way he’d once spoken to her. Looked at her. Like she was something rare.
It had been a lie, all of it. She stepped inside. “Don’t move.”
Javier froze. He turned slowly, hands just slightly raised. His expression was unreadable. Curiosity, maybe. No fear. Just calculation.
“Lucía,” he said softly.
She kept the gun on him.
“I suppose this is when you say something noble,” he said. “Some last words before you pull the trigger.”
“No,” she said. “This is when I make sure you never touch another girl like me again.”
And then she fired.
The hangar was massive and crammed full of crates and rusted machinery. A work light hummed overhead. The big industrial kind. It swung slightly, as if someone had brushed it on their way past.
Then Ryan saw it: a body.
Face-down on the concrete, arms sprawled awkwardly. He’d been stripped nearly naked, and blood fanned out beneath him.
Ryan crouched, checked the pulse out of habit. Nothing. His eyes scanned the rest of the space. The chair in the center of the floor stopped him cold.
The metal was scorched. Melted zip ties dangled from the arms.
He pictured her there. Writhing. Burning.
His gut twisted, rage flooding his chest so fast he could barely swallow it.
But she was gone. She’d gotten out. She was free. He looked toward the mezzanine office, a glass box suspended above the floor on steel supports. Lights were on up there. Movement. Shadows.
Then—
Gunfire. One shot. Close.
Ryan surged to his feet. “Lucía!”