Page 88 of South of Justice

Her whole body stiffened.

Ryan.

Gunshots cracked, wild and close. She rammed her feet against the seat. Screamed against the bag. Kicked harder.

The SUV jerked to a stop. She heard a door open, and boots scrambling. A voice yelling, “¡Baja! ¡Vamos!”

Gunfire again, a long volley, thudding against metal. She flinched.

Then more scrambling. The doors slammed shut, the engine revved. They were moving again but faster this time.

She was thrown sideways again, ribs slamming into the door. She caught one last sound, just barely—Ryan’s voice, hoarse and broken: “NO!”

Then nothing.

The vehicle peeled away into the desert.

Ryan didn’t remember crawling out the bathroom doorway. Only that the blood trail was his, and it didn’t seem to be slowing down.

He made it to the motel room door and, using the door frame for support, clambered into a standing position. Down in the lot, he saw Lucía, a bag over her head, her arms tied together, being shoved into the back of the SUV by two black-clad men.

He screamed her name, the word ripping free from his throat like a wild thing desperate to escape.

The SUV closed its doors and shot forward.

With shaking arms, he aimed his rifle in the direction of the tires and pulled the trigger. When the vehicle pulled to a stop and three of the men got out, he thought for a wild, hopeful moment that he’d been successful in stopping their getaway.

But that hope immediately died in a hail of returning gunfire. It exploded in the wall beside him, and he was forced to duckback inside the doorway. No sooner had the echoes faded than he heard the slam of doors, the spit of gravel as the SUV resumed its escape. It paused only long enough for one of the shooters to aim his rifle out the window and spray a wave of bullets at Ryan and Lucía’s vehicle as it passed by.

He may have screamed, or maybe it was the pain screaming inside his head.

His gun hand trembled. His vision kept doubling. He pushed himself upright with a groan. Pain flared through his leg, his arms, his whole body.

On hands and knees, he crawled, out the door and down the breezeway. Finally, he collapsed beside the vending machine, cheek pressed to sun-warmed concrete.

The shooter in the breezeway was still there, dead now, eyes open. Ryan forced himself up, panting, and moved closer. He studied the man’s clothes. Dark tactical pants. Civilian shirt. Armored chest rig. No tattoos. No gold. No cartel bling.

Ryan rifled through his pouches, searching for ID, and found instead a concealed pistol. He grabbed it, turning it over in his hands. The serial number had been filed away.

There was a half-torn velcro patch still clinging to the chest rig. The letters were scuffed but readable: PHALANX SECURITY GROUP.

Ryan sat back hard on his heels.

Private. Fucking. Military.

He’d seen them before—in Afghanistan during federal training exercises. Third-party security vendors that no one talked about in briefings.

This wasn’t just a betrayal. This wassanctioned.

So who the hell was Gates really working for?

FORTY-NINE

The desert stretchedout from the ruined motel: flat and endless. A vulture circled lazily overhead, not even pretending to not notice him bleeding out against a crumbling wall.

Ryan sat on the ground where he’d fallen, back pressed to the motel’s outer wall. His jeans were stiff with blood. His left arm was trembling so badly he’d finally let the rifle slip from his fingers.

He was done. He had nothing left but a gunshot-riddled vehicle in a ruined motel at the ass-end of nowhere and a wounded body that wasn’t going to carry him much farther.