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I stilled. Directly to her? What was he talking about?
“You must have some kind of mojo to get the FBI to set up a meet. I didn’t think it could be done.”
The world fell out from under me.
“You don’t have enough faith in me, boss,” the gorilla to my right said. The one who’d held the gun to my head.
Stu
“No smart-ass comeback?” Mendoza asked. “And here I thought that was your thing. Didn’t you tell me that was her thing?” he asked the other gorilla.
“It’s her thing. She doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up. I think you surprised her.”
“I think I did,” he agreed. He blew out a thick puff of smoke.
My eyes watered, but not because of the smoke. What had I done?
“Unfortunately for you, we had taken measures to make sure you’d give this little mission your all. Too bad they weren’t necessary. Now we have to kill everyone involved.”
We were driving south and took the Broadway exit, heading toward a sparse industrial area. After a few minutes of my mind racing, trying to figure out how to get to the phone in my bag, we pulled into a closed grain elevator. It had three tall cylindrical silos and a few other outbuildings scattered across the grounds. We stopped in front of an armed guard. There were two more armed men in the shadows of the elevator.
Mendoza slid down his window. “Where is Ricardo?”
“They’re all still up there, boss. We didn’t know what you wanted us to do with them.”
Them? My head swarmed with worry.
“That will work. Tell Burro to save his ammunition. I want to see this.”
The guard laughed and spoke Spanish into a handheld radio, telling the man on the other end to hold where he was.
The gorillas led me inside to an actual elevator. Mendoza followed and we rode to the top of the silos, taking a set of stairs up to the last level. When we emerged onto the cone-shaped roof of the biggest silo, I gasped and my knees buckled beneath me. Not because of the height or the fact that the wind pushed at us, urging us to the edge, but because they had two people up there with them: Jessica Gui
Both of them were covered in their own blood. Jessica had rope burns on the sides of her mouth, and one eye sported a nasty shiner. She sat on her knees on top of the metal structure, her hands tied behind her back, the wind tossing her hair about. Fear radiated out of her so strongly, I had a hard time seeing past it. Even more than the men with guns, even more than the fact that she was tied up and held hostage, I got the distinct feeling the height scared her the most. And she was precariously close to the edge of a pitched metal structure. One strong gust, and she would go over.
Reyes was tied to a metal ladder that went to the very top of the silo. He was barely conscious. His head hung, his long arms and wide shoulders limp against the ropes that bound him. My mind could not absorb what I was seeing.
When Mendoza spotted the disbelief in my eyes, he explained. “Several of my boys were in prison with him. They know what he is capable of. Better yet, they know how to take him down.”
How to take him down? Even I didn’t know how to take him down. How on earth?
“Tranquilizer darts,” he offered when I only shook my head in incredulity. “The kind made for elephants.” He walked to Reyes and jerked his head up by his hair. My instincts bucked, and I inadvertently summoned Angel. “What would kill a normal man barely brought this one to his knees. But it was enough to disorient him. Another dart brought him down, and still it took another to keep him that way. I don’t know what he is made of, but whatever he is, he can be killed.”
“You don’t know me as well as you thought,” I said to Mendoza. “Jessica and I are not friends. Enemies would be a more applicable term.”
Jessica’s eyes were filled with absolute terror.
“Then you won’t mind when we toss her off the roof?”
I bit down, afraid to say anything. Afraid to risk her life.
“What do I do?” Angel asked. He took hold of my arm, as if he could keep them from harming me.
I shook my head. I just didn’t know, but I looked at him regardless. “I need Reyes,” I said. “Can you bring him back?”
He glanced at him. “I don’t know how. He’s out. Whatever they gave him worked.”
“I need him, Angel.”
Angel nodded and stepped cautiously toward him, facing his own fears of Reyes in that instant.
After Mendoza watched my interaction with air, one of his men said, “She does that a lot.”
“I like you,” Mendoza said. “I’ll let you choose. Which one dies and which one lives?”
My vision narrowed and I swayed in the gorillas’ arms. It didn’t matter whom I chose. They were going to kill us all. If I could just buy a little time. If Reyes would just snap out of it.
I swallowed and pointed to Reyes. “Him,” I said, my hand and voice shaking.
Mendoza shot me a delighted look, picked up a booted foot, and gave Jessica a soft shove. I barely had time to gasp before she toppled over the side. I lunged for her, as though I could catch her, but the gorillas tackled me and held me down.
She didn’t scream. I’d expected her to scream, but there was only silence. I didn’t even hear her fall. I only heard the wind whipping around us, howling through the metal structure.
“Surely you’re not upset,” Mendoza said, the smug look on his face the incarnation of evil. “You were enemies, after all, yes? But you’ll get your wish. Untie him.”
I tried to scramble to my feet as they untied Reyes, but they were still holding me down. This wasn’t happening. Not to Reyes. Could he survive the fall? It had to be the equivalent of seven stories. He’d survived worse. But he’d been conscious. Able to prepare, to defend himself.
Before I could say another word, two of Mendoza’s men dropped his listless form over the side and he fell quietly from my sight.
21
Misery loves company,
which explains my sudden popularity.
—T-SHIRT
I watched as Reyes fell, a scream I couldn’t hear wrenched from my throat as I waited for him to do something. For him to react. To save himself. It was Reyes, after all. He could do anything. He could fly or dematerialize or grab on to something on the way down like they did in the movies. But there was nothing. Just the sound of the wind howling through the abandoned building.
Angel was in shock, too. He was standing on the side, looking over, his eyes round.
“Angel,” I said to get his attention.
He turned to me, his mouth a thin line of regret.
“No.” I shook my head at him. It was impossible. There was just no way.
“Don’t look so worried,” Mendoza said. “You can join him.”
He nodded to his men, and they dragged me to the side. I could see two bodies, but they didn’t look real. They were small from that vantage, like mangled action figures. None of this was real.
Mendoza said something I didn’t comprehend. No one could have survived that fall. Not even a supernatural being. Not even the son of Satan. He lay there, unmoving, and I could not wrap my head around it. Any of it.
“Ready?” I heard at last.
Mendoza was the kind of man who enjoyed killing. He enjoyed the false sense of power it gave him. But he also enjoyed the part right before the actual death. The torment. The taunting.
I looked at him. And I did my job. I judged him unworthy of crossing into heaven.
He didn’t like the revulsion he saw in my eyes. Where he’d expected fear, he found disgust. He turned me to face the edge again, put a hand on my back, and just before he pushed, he said, “No loose ends.”