Page 108 of South of Justice

Only then did Ryan feel his knees weaken. He leaned into the open door, gripping the frame hard enough to hurt. Everything in his head buzzed with heat and betrayal and exhaustion. He looked at Lucía, still clutching the gun. “You okay?”

She didn’t answer right away. Finally, she said, “I’m just trying to figure out if there’s anyone left I can trust.”

The Beetle rolled to a stop on the shoulder of a desolate service road, its engine clicking in protest as Ryan cut it off. The headlights stayed dark.

Down the slope, a crooked service shed slouched beneath the stars, half-collapsed and hunched in a grove of mesquite. A faint yellow glow flickered inside.

Lucía gripped the passenger seat. The metal under her fingers was cold, even after the inferno they’d left behind.

She watched Ryan climb out, moving like every joint hurt. He crossed the gravel, disappeared inside. There was silence, then a creak of hinges and a small voice: “Ryan?”

Lucía’s vision blurred.

She turned away from the windshield, forehead pressing to the cool glass. Her hands found her knees and clutched hard.

The chair.

The heat.

The sound of Javier’s voice, telling her she’d beg before sunrise.

The way her own scream had echoed inside her skull.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but the tears came anyway, hot and wild. She bit the side of her hand to stifle the sob but it still broke. A single ragged breath pulled from deep in her ribs.

She folded forward. Her body shook. Not from fear. From the violence of staying alive.

It was the grief of not dying.

The passenger door creaked open.

She didn’t look. But she heard the soft scuff of Noah’s shoes as he climbed into the back seat. The gentle click of the seatbelt.

Ryan’s voice, low: “He’s safe.”

Lucía nodded, still hunched.

“I didn’t think we’d all make it,” she whispered.

Ryan slid into the driver’s seat, shut the door. “Yeah. Me neither.”

She finally looked at him. Saw the dirt on his face, the fresh blood at his collar, the dried blood on his hands. And still, somehow, that steady blue in his eyes.

He turned the key. The Beetle groaned, coughed, then rumbled back to life.

“What now?” he asked.

Lucía blinked at the windshield. The road ahead was black and empty.

“A place no one can find me,” she said.

Ryan adjusted the mirror. Glanced back at Noah, curled up in the backseat.

“That makes three of us.”

The car rumbled forward as they drove into the dark.

FIFTY-NINE