Page 59 of Reckless Woman

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Page 59 of Reckless Woman

“Stand aside.”

Balancing on my bad leg—ignoring the knife-like agony—I kick out the rest of the frame, the rotten wood caving in like molding clay. There’s a knock at the motel room door as I’m helping Anna out. Clicking the locks to the bathroom, I swing my legs out to join her.

The motel backs onto a steep slope. Keeping close to the building, wading through empty coke bottles and darkness, I lead her around to the side and back to the parking lot, just as the two men are attempting to kick our door down.

“Who are they?” she hisses.

“An after-fuck delight from Viviana, I can imagine.”

“She wants to kill me too now, huh?”

She wants to kill us all.

I make a quick scan of the lot. The SUV is parked opposite. The door light is on and I can see another man in the driver seat.Bingo.Meanwhile, the others have forced their way through my flimsy barricade and are shooting their happy welcomes into the bathroom door.

“Stay here,” I tell her.

“Wait, Joseph—”

She sounds scared. Unsure.

Whirling around, I grab the back of her head and smash our mouths together. It’s brief and rough, but it does the trick because she’s arching into me right away.I need you present, Anna, not drifting.

“I guarantee in one minute we’ll be on that road and doing seventy outta here.”

It takes less than that.

Within ten seconds, I’ve dragged the driver out of the SUV and he’s rolling around on the ground with a bullet hole in his shoulder.

Hitting the gas, I reverse back up to her.

“Move!”

She’s in the vehicle by the time the men reappear in the doorway of our motel room. We’re already hitting the road as the first wayward bullet skims the trunk. The second doesn’t even hit the target.

Typing “New York City” into the GPS, I re-route it to keep us off the main roads. We’ll need to change vehicles at some point. They’ll be hacking into the police systems to follow their own plates. Anna’s not speaking, and I don’t interrupt the silence. There’s a lot for her to process tonight, and she’ll talk when she’s good and ready.

Reaching for the crumpled pack of smokes in my pocket, I slot one between my lips and, joy of joys, find a lighter in the glove box.

I smoke.

She frets.

I need to get hold of Roman.

She needs to understand that the rules have changed.

“Why is Vi doing this?” she asks quietly, after a couple of miles have passed.

“I can’t answer that,” I say, shrugging. “But Santiago blood never flows clean. Her father, Emilio, was a psychopath. Looks like she inherited more than just his name.”

Anna falls silent again and I chase the white lines on the road—thinking forward, not back. Roman must have missed something. Despite what I said, I’m not convinced it’s an old family rivalry that’s being passed onto the next generation. It’s too organized.Too calculated.

“How did she know where we were?”

“Security footage from the diner. That’s where I would have started.”

Her head tips forward suddenly, her fair hair glistening silver in the moonlight. She’s shaking and she can’t seem to catch her breath.




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