Page 105 of South of Justice

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!”

FIFTY-EIGHT

The metal stairsto 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.