Chapter 58
FIFTY-EIGHT
The metal stairs to the hangar mezzanine groaned beneath Ryan’s weight, one slow step at a time.
He kept his rifle raised, moving fast but cautious. Then he saw it. The office door at the top of the mezzanine was cracked open, a smear of blood trailing down its frame.
He felt like his whole body had ceased functioning, each and every cell frozen in time.
With a trembling hand, he pushed it open.
Lucía stood in the center of the room, her body still, one hand gripping the back of a metal desk chair.
Her knuckles were white. Her eyes fixed on the man collapsed on the floor at her feet.
Javier Esquivel.
Blood pooled under his head, one eye still half-open, jaw slack in death.
Lucía wasn’t shaking. She wasn’t crying. But she was so still it made the air feel wrong.
She was wearing baggy mercenary gear cinched tight at her waist, a bloodied black shirt. Her cheeks were smeared with blood and sweat, her hair matted at the sides. She looked like she’d just crawled through hell and made it. Barely.
Ryan lowered his pistol. Relief poured over him, like hot water over freezing skin. “Lucía.”
She turned, slow and deliberate. Her gaze found his. “You’re alive,” she said. Her voice was hoarse.
He stepped into the room. “Are you okay?” It was a stupid question. The things he’d seen on that surveillance video said that clearly she wasn’t.
Her eyes flicked down at Javier’s body. “I did what I had to,” she said.
Ryan moved a little closer, but not too close. “I know you did.”
She looked down at Javier again. “He thought I still belonged to him. That I’d fold the second he dangled mercy.”
Her eyes found his again, and they looked hollow and empty. Like dead eyes.
“I was afraid we were too late,” he said.
Her brow twitched. “We?”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”
She crossed the room, stiff with pain. “We need to get out of here,” she said. “I think there’s a fire somewhere.”
Ryan nodded. He wanted so badly to reach out to her, to wrap her in his arms, but he couldn’t.
He didn’t know how much pain she was in physically or mentally for that.
So all he could do was gesture stupidly to the door and say, “There’s a hole in the fence on the east side. We can get out that way.”
She moved toward him, then paused and looked back at Javier’s body. “I thought I’d feel something,” she said. “Killing him.”
Ryan didn’t speak.
“I don’t,” she added quietly. “I just feel…nothing.”
Then she stepped out the door and into the smoke-streaked dark.
Ryan lingered for a heartbeat more. Looked down at the man who had stolen so much from the woman now walking away. At least she’d finally gotten the chance to steal something back.
Ryan felt the blast before he heard it. A deep, concussive shudder ripped through the compound, rolling up from the ground and through his bones. A second later, the night went white, an eruption of fire from the far side of the hangar.
He staggered, caught himself against the railing, eyes narrowing against the glare. For half a heartbeat, everything held its breath—the floodlights flickered, the sirens choked silent—and then the world broke open.
Lucía stumbled beside him. He grabbed her elbow, steadying her as the grated stairwell groaned underfoot. Her eyes found his in the half-light, wild and confused.
“Shit,” Ryan muttered, already turning toward the fire. The heat hit them like a physical shove. Another blast popped deeper in the compound, rattling the catwalk.
Smoke rolled in thick, black waves from the north quadrant. Below, the shouts began—men barking orders, boots hammering on steel. A floodlight cracked, sputtered, and went dark.
They bolted down the stairs, metal clanging beneath them, the air alive with heat and panic. Lucía gasped behind him, “What the hell happened? Is that—?”
“Don’t know.” He reached the landing and froze. A figure pushed through the smoke ahead.
He raised his weapon, instincts flaring, until the man’s voice cut through the din.
“Thought you two had decided to stay.”
Gates.
Lucía’s breath caught. “How—?”
“No time,” Gates snapped, pointing behind him. “Fire’s spreading fast. Whole place is coming down.”
Another fireball blasted skyward, shaking the hangar’s skeleton. Ryan squinted into the light. “You started the fire?”
Gates gave a grim half-smile. “Let’s just say Reyes and I had a disagreement by the fuel tanks.”
The blaze was moving quick now, leaping from roof to roof, swallowing the night. Mercs scattered in every direction, some shouting into radios, others running for their trucks.
Ryan jerked his chin toward the perimeter. “Fence. Now.”
They half-ran, half-hobbled through the smoke, the ground shuddering beneath them. Lucía’s breath rasped behind him. A final explosion went off somewhere close, metal clanging, glass screaming, and then they were at the fence.
Ryan kicked the loosened wire free, the metal groaning as it curled outward. Beyond it stretched the desert: black, endless, silent.
“Go,” he said, shoving Lucía through. The heat behind them was almost physical now, pressing at his back. The airfield burned, painting the night orange. Alarms still wailed faintly over the crackle of fire.
Ryan turned and grabbed Gates’s arm, hauling him through the gap.
They ran.
The ground sloped down from the fence line, loose gravel giving way to dry scrub. The orange Beetle waited where they’d left it, parked under a mesquite tree, its absurd color glowing like a target in the half-light.
Ryan reached it first, wrenching open the driver’s door. “Get in—”
The word caught in his throat. Lucía wasn’t moving.
She stood ten feet back, breath ragged, pistol raised. The wind tugged at her baggy shirt. Her hand didn’t tremble.
She had the gun pointed at Gates.
Ryan’s blood turned cold. “Lucía—?”
“Step away from the car,” she said quietly, like she wasn’t asking.
Gates blinked, once. Confusion gave way to wariness. “You’re kidding me with this shit.”
Lucía’s eyes stayed on him. “Javier told me something, right before he died. He said you were playing us and had been the whole time.”
Ryan turned to Gates, something heavy dropping into his stomach. “Tell me that’s not true.”
For a heartbeat, Gates said nothing. Then, finally, he said, “I wasn’t working for Javier.”
Lucía’s voice was like ice. “But you were working with them. Phalanx.”
The pause that followed was the wrong answer.
Ryan stared at the marshal. He’d known Gates longer than anyone in this nightmare. And while he’d never fully trusted him, he’d at least thought he knew him.
“I didn’t know about the kid,” Gates snapped. “I swear. And I didn’t know Javier was the buyer until too late.”
Ryan laughed under his breath. “But you thought you could play both sides. Sell the ledger, save the kid, get out clean.”
Gates looked at him. The defensive expression on his face fell away and suddenly he just looked tired. “I thought I could manage it. That I still had control.”
Lucía didn’t lower the gun. “You made a deal to betray us,” she said. “You came down here acting like the hero. And all the while you were just another bastard looking to cash out.”
Ryan stared at him, something acid burning at the back of his throat. “You judged me,” he said quietly. “You sat across from me and told me I’d betrayed everything we stood for.”
Gates didn’t deny it.
“Thing is,” Ryan continued, “you were just better at hiding it. That’s all. I knew I’d crossed a line. You just learned how to decorate yours with noble excuses.”
Gates’s jaw twitched. “We all crossed lines. I just crossed mine later than you.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Lucía said, although she kept her finger on the trigger. “I probably should, but I’m not. But you’re not coming with us.”
Gates shrugged, holding up his hands like he meant no harm. Like he’d never meant them any harm. Then he stepped back from the car slowly, the firelight casting his shadow long across the gravel. Lucía didn’t move until he was gone, just a shape swallowed by the dark.
Only then did Ryan feel his knees weaken. He leaned into the open door, gripping the frame hard enough to hurt. Everything in his head buzzed with heat and betrayal and exhaustion. He looked at Lucía, still clutching the gun. “You okay?”
She didn’t answer right away. Finally, she said, “I’m just trying to figure out if there’s anyone left I can trust.”
The Beetle rolled to a stop on the shoulder of a desolate service road, its engine clicking in protest as Ryan cut it off. The headlights stayed dark.
Down the slope, a crooked service shed slouched beneath the stars, half-collapsed and hunched in a grove of mesquite. A faint yellow glow flickered inside.
Lucía gripped the passenger seat. The metal under her fingers was cold, even after the inferno they’d left behind.
She watched Ryan climb out, moving like every joint hurt. He crossed the gravel, disappeared inside. There was silence, then a creak of hinges and a small voice: “Ryan?”
Lucía’s vision blurred.
She turned away from the windshield, forehead pressing to the cool glass. Her hands found her knees and clutched hard.
The chair.
The heat.
The sound of Javier’s voice, telling her she’d beg before sunrise.
The way her own scream had echoed inside her skull.
She squeezed her eyes shut, but the tears came anyway, hot and wild. She bit the side of her hand to stifle the sob but it still broke. A single ragged breath pulled from deep in her ribs.
She folded forward. Her body shook. Not from fear. From the violence of staying alive.
It was the grief of not dying.
The passenger door creaked open.
She didn’t look. But she heard the soft scuff of Noah’s shoes as he climbed into the back seat. The gentle click of the seatbelt.
Ryan’s voice, low: “He’s safe.”
Lucía nodded, still hunched.
“I didn’t think we’d all make it,” she whispered.
Ryan slid into the driver’s seat, shut the door. “Yeah. Me neither.”
She finally looked at him. Saw the dirt on his face, the fresh blood at his collar, the dried blood on his hands. And still, somehow, that steady blue in his eyes.
He turned the key. The Beetle groaned, coughed, then rumbled back to life.
“What now?” he asked.
Lucía blinked at the windshield. The road ahead was black and empty.
“A place no one can find me,” she said.
Ryan adjusted the mirror. Glanced back at Noah, curled up in the backseat.
“That makes three of us.”
The car rumbled forward as they drove into the dark.