After Afghanistan, I have enough blood on my hands to drown myself in. I don’t particularly want to add to the body count, but if they stand in my way, if killing them means I get to put an end to Ramirez, then so be it. My soul is already damned to hell. I might as well really earn my place there.
The night smells like gasoline and bad weed, the latter of which must be coming from the house. Crouching down low thirty meters from the illuminated building, I scan the darkness, trying to see if there are more watchmen that need putting down. I made a stupid, reckless error before. I wasn’t expecting there to be guards so far out on the very perimeters of the farmhouse. When the first guy emerged out of the black night and slashed at me, he took me by surprise. Between me, Cade and Carnie, we managed to put down the four men who rallied to take us on, but it was close. Stupid. I should have been more wary. I’m not just risking my own life here, but Cade and Carnie’s too.
“How many?” Cade whispers. My best friend scratches at the beard he’s managed to grow in the past few weeks, frowning severely. I can’t count how many times we’ve found ourselves together in this position, crouching in the dark, planning on doing wrong. It’s little comfort that the majority of times it was on behalf of the U.S government. We may not be desert rats anymore, but we’re still soldiers. We’re still fighting a war. Except this is one of our own making, and there’s no getting out of it. No backing down. It’s necessary.
“At least six,” I reply.
“I only count five,” Carnie chips in. “Three in the living room, one in the kitchen. One in the hallway.”
He’s right, but his eyes aren’t as sharp as mine. I glare up at the farmhouse, holding my breath, slowing my pulse. “And one more. Upstairs. Front left window. He’s watching us right now.”
Carnie makes a disbelieving sound. “You’re fucking crazy. The room’s pitch black. You can’t see shit.”
“Oh, he’s there all right. I can see him just fine.” In fairness to Carnie, maybe I can’t see him in a traditional sense. The room is in pure darkness, but I can sense it—Ramirez is there, standing in the murky shadows of the room, waiting patiently for my arrival. I can feel his presence so intensely that the hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end. He’s been there all along, just waiting for me to show up. With all the showmanship and blatant peacocking in town, he’s been stabbing at my buttons, knowing that with each and every sighting he’s coming closer and closer to drawing me out.
I’m a stupid motherfucker.
I’m normally so much smarter than this, but the fury over Ryan and Leah’s deaths has had me taking temporary leave of my wits. Cade nudges me with his elbow, grunting softly. “We’re here, man. You wanna do this now, we’ll do it. But maybe—”
“Yeah, I know.” I sigh heavily. Angrily. I want to pound my fists into the dirt in frustration, but where the fuck would that get me.
“You might be wrong,” Carnie whispers. “I get bad feelings all the time. Your brain plays some epic tricks on you sometimes.”
“He’s not wrong, asshole. He’s never been wrong.” The dull thump of Cade punching Carnie in the arm is quiet, but Carnie’s yelp of pain isn’t. “Jesus, man. Shut your fucking mouth. You wanna get us killed?”
“I don’t think he’s seen us,” I whisper, ignoring them. “But I can’t be sure. Time to leave.” Leaving is the very last thing I want to do. I want to storm into that building and shoot some motherfuckers. I want to dig the point of my blade into Hector Ramirez’s chest and watch the light go out in his eyes as the steel bites deeper. But Ramirez is a smart guy. He knows I’m coming. There’s no way there’s only six people in that building. He will have an army of men hidden out of sight, ready to end our lives before we even step foot on the fucking farmhouse porch.
“Come on, man. We’ll get the fucker, don’t you worry. But this ain’t how it goes down,” Cade says. I let him pull me back, let his words deaden the boiling adrenalin storming my veins, calling for revenge. I suddenly feel exhausted.
“All right. All right,” I take a deep breath, uncurling my hands, not realizing they were clenched into fists. As I retreat from the farmhouse with my boys, ducking low to remain out of sight, I feel sick to my stomach. We’re leaving with our lives, but somehow it feels like a defeat. I’m chanting the same words over and over as the farmhouse shrinks and disappears behind us.
This isn’t over, motherfucker. It’s only just begun.
TWO
SOPHIA
I’ve given up screaming. It didn’t get me anywhere for two days so I figured why waste the energy. I haven’t seen Rebel in ten days. Ten days couped up in his cabin while he’s out there doing god knows what and I’ve been going bat shit crazy. I thought we were past this. I thought this part was over. I should have known by his silent, brooding mood on the way back from Alabama that things were right back to where we were in the beginning. More fool me for assuming that me agreeing to help him, me turning down the opportunity to flee back to my family, me fucking him for fuck’s sake, would change things between us. Now, I just feel foolish. For all of it.
There was a brief moment where I did get to step outside. Seventy two hours after Rebel put the Humvee in park and bundled me into his house on the hill, locking the door behind me, the prospect, Carnie, showed up and drove me out into the desert, kicking and screaming. He wouldn’t tell me why at first, but after an hour of me chewing his ear off, threatening to scream blue murder the whole time we were sitting in his shitty, beaten up Firebird, the guy caved.
“The cops are tearing the compound apart, looking for evidence to link the club to that shooting in Los Angeles.”
I’m horrified when it takes me a beat to remember what he’s talking about—the shooting at Trader Joes, where all those civilians were killed by men wearing Widow Makers cuts.
“Yeah, one of Rebel’s uncle’s friends called and gave him a heads up. Told Rebel the police caught the guys who did it in Irvine, still wearing the fake cuts, drunk as all hell. The fat one who was supposed to be the club president confessed that they’d been hired for the job. Gave up Maria Rosa in a heart beat, in exchange for a lesser sentence.”
“Is she still going to cause problems then? This Maria Rosa?”
Carnie gets a far away look in his eye that looks almost romantic. “From what I’ve been told, the Bitch of Columbia causes problems wherever she is in the world. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
He drove me back to the compound at nightfall and took me straight back to the cabin, ignoring my colorful language and my threats to take him out at the knees.
That was last Wednesday. Now it’s Wednesday again. Tomorrow morning I should be getting up at seven and going for a run before heading to my Human Sciences class. Instead, Carnie, with his busted up glasses and his hipster side-parting will bring me my breakfast and refuse to tell me anything, and I’ll swear at him or completely blank him depending on my mood. The cycle repeats itself endlessly, over and over.
Tonight, however, Carnie’s already dropped off my evening meal. I called him a soulless bastard and threw the plate of meatloaf at his head, but the thing missed him entirely and impacted with the wall. I need to do some serious work on my aim. The meatloaf has sat on the floor since then, getting colder and staler by the second, in amongst the shattered shards of the chinaware.