Sally
“You stupid, stupid man,” she hissed, her Spanish clipped and fast.
His head jerked up, the pistol rising with it, and for one stretched-out second she thought he might actually shoot her.
Blood had soaked through the strange translucent material on his chest underneath his torn shirt—some kind of huge wound patch that looked oddly luminescent in the stifled daylight filtering through the canopy.
His typically tawny complexion was greying and the dark hollows that were his eyes tracked her movements with a flat mechanical focus.
Only slightly. Which means he knows how pissed you are and how dangerous that is for him. So he’s not as stupid as she initially thought.
“You should be dead,” she said as she stepped closer and examined the wound held by the translucent material.
She ignored how he tensed at her approach.
“Someone came running to me, screaming father had shot you in the back and left you bleeding out in his shack. But,” she gestured to him, “here you are … stumbling through the jungle like a drunken ghost. Not dead. Yet.”
“Disappointed?”
The word hit her harder than it should have.
She crossed the distance between them and dropped to her knees in the mud.
She was close enough to smell the copper tang of blood mixing with the wet-earth scent of the jungle floor, close enough to see the tremor in his hands, close enough to hear his shallow breaths. Each inhale sounded like a struggle.
“Mateo, you should have just kept fucking me.” The words tore out of her, sharp and raw. “You should have just done what I asked, followed my father’s lead, and then none of this would have happened. You would still be playing king, able to keep the gringa on the side, and I would still have—”
Her throat closed. What? What would you still have, Sally? A father who sees you as a tool? A man who never wanted you? They had both used her, just in different ways and for different purposes.
Mateo’s voice was low, almost gentle. “I couldn’t continue. You know I couldn’t.”
“Because of her?” The bitterness in Sally’s voice surprised even her. “Because of that gringa. Gabriella.”
He didn’t deny it. Something broke within her, whether it was her pride or her heart, and she wished he had at least lied to her.
Sally forced herself to breathe, to push down the jagged thing that had taken up residence in her chest. “My father told me to get you alone with him earlier in his shack. He said if I managed that, he would finally let me—” She stopped.
Swallowed. Started again. “He said he would finally see me as more than just his daughter. That I could be part of the real business.”
“So, you led me there knowing—” He started.
“No,” she insisted. “He didn’t tell me he was going to hurt you. I would have … I would have never helped him hurt you. I only wanted freedom from the chains the men in my life seem to weigh on me. To be seen as equal …”
“Did you know?” Mateo’s eyes were sharp now, cutting through the pain. “Did you know he was still reporting as the leader of Nox?”
“No.” She spit the word out, laced with anger and spite. His look said he did not believe her.
Take a breath. He assumes your papa trusts you as more than just a tool.
She made herself slow down and breathe. “No. He hid that from me. From everyone. I thought—He told everyone you were now in charge. I knew he was talking with Obscura on your behalf, but never …” She gestured at the chaos of the compound behind them, the distant crack of gunfire, the smoke rising black against the late afternoon sky.
“Not about any of this or about trying to kill you. I honestly thought you were in charge of everything.”
Mateo shifted against the tree, and the movement pulled a sound from him—low, and primal, he gritted his teeth before releasing a long curse. The patch against his skin shimmered.
“Fuck that man, this shit still hurts.” His fingers rose to touch the material that held his wound closed.
“What the hell is that thing?” she asked as she reached to touch him.
“Don’t—”
“Shut up.” Her hands found the edges of the patch, the strange slick texture of it, the warmth of blood beneath. “Seriously, where did you get this? How are you even moving around after this kind of gunshot?”
“It’s some kind of off-market military tech. Got it from a …” Mateo paused and chuckled before he continued, “got it from a friend, I suppose you’d say.” He sucked air through his teeth as she pressed down on his wound. “That hurts, Sally.”
“Good.” She pressed harder. “You deserve it for lying to me. For using me.”
His hand covered hers over his wound for a moment. Their eyes met and held.
“Why are you out here?” he asked, his eyes betraying a warmth she wished she didn’t crave.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t look for you?” she whispered. “I didn’t find your body in the shack so I went looking. I figured if you were still breathing, you’d be going after him. Am I right?”
Mateo nodded. “Just following orders.”
“Following orders?” She laughed, the sound bitter. “I suppose we’re both guilty of that, aren’t we?”
He shook his head. “José manipulated you.”
“My father used me.” The correction was sharp.
“There’s a difference. I let him use me because I wanted more than just this for my life.
” She gestured at herself, at the burning compound, at the whole suffocating weight of being José’s daughter.
“I wanted to matter. To be seen as something other than a pretty distraction, a bargaining chip, a useful tool.”
Mateo’s breathing had steadied somewhat, the color creeping back into his face by degrees. The patch on his chest seemed to be working, in some miraculous fashion. Still seated, leaning against the tree, he shifted his weight to test his strength and grimaced.
He looked her in the eye and said, “We need to move. Can you walk?”
“Can you walk?” She shoved his injured shoulder against the tree.
He stifled a groan but nodded. “I asked you first.”
Sally stood, offering him her hand. He took it, and she pulled—hard, because he was heavy and wounded and stubborn—and got him to his feet. He swayed, caught himself, pressed his free hand to his chest and breathed through whatever wave of pain had just hit him.
“Where’s José?” Sally asked.
“You mean your father?”
“I mean José.” Her voice was flat. “I need to stop thinking of him as my papa.”
Mateo studied her for a long moment. “I don’t know. He ran after he shot me, not long after the raid started. I was hunting him down, but …” He looked down at the shimmering bandage. “Needed to take a breather.”
“Then we will hunt him together.” She conceded.
“Sally—” he began but she cut him off.
“He shot you.” Her voice was sharp now, edged.
“He shot you in the back, Mateo. He didn’t give you a chance to defend yourself, didn’t give you the respect of facing you.
He just shot you and walked away.” The anger in her chest was hot, bright, clarifying.
“I may not have known he was lying about Nox, but I knew he was a coward. I’ve known that my whole life. ”
Mateo opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. This man is seeming smarter by the moment.
Finally he said, “I am pretty sure he went this way.”
They moved through the jungle in tandem, Sally leading because she knew these trails, these shortcuts, the way the compound fed into the jungle and where men like José would run when the walls closed in.
The sounds of the raid had faded behind them—either the fighting was over or they’d moved far enough away that the jungle had swallowed it.
The night was thick with the calls of insects, the rustle of leaves, the distant scream of a howler monkey.
Sally’s heart pounded against her ribs. Her hands were steady. That was the thing that surprised her most—how steady her hands were now that she’d made her choice.
“Stop.” Mateo’s voice was low and urgent, fading into the night.
She froze. Her breath and beating heart made it hard to listen.
There—the snap of a branch. The rustle of someone moving through undergrowth, careless with speed. Not an animal. Animals knew how to move without announcing themselves unless they were prey being hunted.
José burst into the small clearing ahead of them, his shirt torn, his face scratched bloody from thorns.
He had a pistol in his hand and murder in his eyes.
Then he saw Mateo, and the murder transformed into something colder.
An array of emotions crossed his bloody features: disbelief, rage, and fear.
“You should be dead,” José said
“A lot of people keep saying that.” Mateo raised his own pistol, the movement smooth despite his wound. “I seem to be disappointing everyone tonight.”
José’s eyes flicked to Sally, then back to Mateo. “Get away from him, Sally. Now.”
“No,” she said as she raised her chin in defiance.
“That was not a request.” José’s voice dropped into that register it always went to when he expected to be obeyed, the voice that had controlled her for her entire life. “Get away from him before you get hurt.”
You are really stupid, Sally. This is really stupid. Sally took a deep breath, stepped forward, and stood between the two men. Project confidence. Breathe. You’re his daughter. He won’t shoot with you in the line of fire.
“Papa,” she said. “The compound is burning to the ground. Most of our men have been captured or killed.” She took a step towards him, her hands raised as if she were calming a frightened animal. “Let Mateo take you in. It’s over, but you don’t have to die here.”
“Over?” he asked with disgust, his face knotted with rage.
“Nox was just a piece of Obscura. I’ll recover from this.
Sally,” he said without lowering his gun, “we can recover from this. Together as father and daughter. Isn’t having more power, being the one in charge … isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”
“It was.” She took another step away from Mateo and closer to José. “Once.”