Page 7 of You Can Run

Dante stayed in the shadows, his chest heaving. The jealousy was a hot, greasy coil in his gut. He pictured her the way he’d seen her last week through the club window—neon crawling across her skin, men staring like starving dogs at a butcher shopcounter. He pictured the way her skin would glow, the way her hair would flip, the way some prick like Trent Haley would get to put his hands on her at the end of the night.

The thought of it made him want to burn the world down.

He looked at the ’Cuda. Then he looked at the wrench in his hand. He told himself he’d moved on. That he was building something better.

But today… today felt wrong. Like something was shifting under his feet.

He didn’t know Ryan Inglis was already on the road. He didn’t know Jessica Meeks had just slammed a locker and refused protection.

He just felt the change in the air. A rising pressure.

He turned off the lights. Behind him, the ’Cuda glowed faintly in the dark, like an ember waiting to reignite.

THREE

The moteloutside San Antonio buzzed with the hum of insects and passing semis. Ferrera sat on the edge of a sagging bed, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He'd traded the prison scrubs for jeans and a faded work shirt. The television was on in the background, muted.

The Sicaria stood by the window, curtain drawn just enough to watch passing headlights without being seen. Ferrera couldn't place her face. She had too many clashing details: Latina skin tone, Slavic bones, those cold blue eyes. She wasn't pretty, and she didn't pretend to be. She looked like someone built for utility, not admiration.

He'd stopped trying to work out exactly where she fit. Thirteen years inside had a way of scrambling the org chart—men he'd left as runners would be lieutenants now, and the network had grown limbs in places he'd never authorized. She was one of his people, that much was clear.La Mano Negradidn't pull a man out of a federal transport van for anyone else's benefit. She'd come when he called, she'd done the work, and she'd shown up here to settle accounts. That was enough. He didn't need her pedigree.

He reached into his shirt pocket and took out the folded square of paper he'd been carrying since the night before the transfer, the one thing he'd guarded through the strip searches and the holding cells, the thing he'd promised himself was worth every day of the wait.

He held it out to her.

“Here's your end,” he said. “Same as we agreed.”

She crossed the room and took it and unfolded it without expression. Two names. Two neatly written addresses.

Jessica Meeks. 114 Shoreline Drive, Corpus Christi, TX 78401

Dante Cruz. FM 3090, Agua Dulce, TX 78379

“My boys did good work,” Ferrera said, watching her read. “Took them a while, but they found a motivated source down in Corpus. Couple of weeks back. Some cop with a gambling problem and a girlfriend he didn't know much about.” He smiled at the memory of the report that had reached him in his cell, in carefully coded language. “Turns out he knew more than he thought.”

The Sicaria's eyes moved over the page. “You're certain of these.”

“I'm certain.” He leaned back, the bed frame groaning under him. “She's been hiding thirteen years and she was right there the whole time. And him—” his jaw tightened “—him I'd given up for dead. But there he is. Same county. Going by Cruz.” He shook his head slowly. “After all these years. Both of them right where my people could reach out and touch them.”

He'd run it a thousand times behind his eyes, in the dark of the transport van and the worse dark of the cell before it. The ballerina who'd turned rat. The runner who'd vanished with her. The two of them had cost him everything—his operation gutted, his freedom, thirteen years he was never getting back—and nowtheir addresses sat in the hands of his own woman, and the only thing left was to give the order.

FOUR

Jessica waiteduntil the beaded curtain stopped rattling behind her before letting her breath out in a shaky exhale.

Someone—Scarlett, probably—had cranked the fans to max. They roared overhead, rattling in protest, stirring the cheap perfume fog into something vaguely noxious. Jessica forced her hands steady, but they refused to stay that way. Her mind kept replaying the moment Ryan had said Dante’s name.

She didn’t want to think about that. So, naturally, her brain thought about nothing else.

Her phone buzzed across the counter.

A text from Trent.

u done yet? i’m hungry

No 'hey babe'. No 'how’s your night'. No interest in anything that wasn’t directly related to his stomach or his dick. Trent was consistent, she’d give him that much.

She typedBe home soon, deleted it, then typed it again because she hated herself a little when she didn’t respond to him.