Page 50 of Shadow Man
“Us, and one other.”
“You planning on terminating her?”
“That's the idea.”
I hang up without saying goodbye. All I can think about is Anna driving off into a soon-to-be sunrise with the spawn of a second devil, riding shotgun.
I let her go.
I fucking let her go.
Without hesitating, I tap a code into my cell and bring up the tracking device stats from Gomez’s car. She’s heading south, with nearly a half hour of driving time on me.
I chuck my cell onto the dash and hit the gas, eating up the same route like I’m a Pac-Man chasing down the bad guys. Correction. One bad girl, and another with the propensity to fuck all our shit up. There’s giving Anna freedom, and then there’s giving her enough rope to wrap around her delicate white throat and hang herself from the rafters.
I nudge the car to top speed with one thought ripping up my insides. If Anna gets brave and spills about our connection to her new BFF, there’s not a single phase of the moon that will save her from decades of bad blood.
She’ll be leaving Colombia in a body bag.
21
Anna
“Did you see it? Did you fucking see it?”
“See what?”
Vi’s acting wild and crazy. She keeps swiping her hair behind her ears and dragging the back of her hand across her mouth.
“The scorpion.Hijueputa!I never ever wanted to see that scorpion back in this country again.”
I go blank for a minute, and then I remember the tattoo on Joseph’s bicep. “You mean—”
“Yes!”
She overtakes a rusty pickup, and then swerves to miss an oncoming delivery truck. The skyline is a gradient of blue and black. It’s the last trick of night before dawn shows us her big reveal. I can see the sloping shoulders of a mountain range in the distance. Our headlights are revealing small shacks and endless fields by the roadside. We’re keeping off the main highways like he told me to, but it’s killing our progress. The bends are vicious. The lack of road maintenance is worse.
“Loads of people have scorpion tattoos,” I say, trying to reason with her.
“It’s the Santiago cartel insignia.” She curses in Spanish before sucking in a breath. “What the hell are they doing back here, Anna? Why are they hunting us? Their allegiance is with the Gomez cartel, not Fernandez. None of this makes sense.”
“Just take it easy, okay?” I grab the door handle as she swerves around another vehicle. “Why is this such a head-fuck to you? All the cartels are bad, right?”
“Yeah, butthatguy back there belongs to a dead one. He should be on the other side of the world right now.”
I feel sick. I thought I didn't do guilt anymore?“Maybe Fernandez called in a favor?”
“What, already?” She shakes her head and takes another bend in the road like a Formula One racing driver. Joseph’s appearance has sent her into a new dimension of paranoia. “There’s no way he could have mobilized asicariolike him. Do you remember me telling you about Santiago’s second in command?”
“El Asesino,” I say quietly.
“Right.”
“And you think it was him?” I say, heart sinking.
“Dead-eyed American assassin,check, Santiago,check….Mierda!You should have let me kill him!”
I want to argue that he wasn’t dead-eyed; that those gray-blues crystalized when I screamed his name, reflecting all the light in the universe.