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CHAPTER 79

“GET ME OUT of here,” the Latina woman hisses from the mattress on the floor.

“No one will hurt you anymore,” I say. “Where is Mr. Z?”

“With the new girl.”

“Where?” I ask.

“Where he always takes us,” she says. “The basement.”

Outside, the dead guard’s radio buzzes.

“What’s going on?” a voice says. “Was that a gunshot?”

Carlos grabs the radio and says, “I shot a rattlesnake. That’s all.”

There’s a long pause.

“I’m sending Jenkins and Ramirez,” the voice says.

“Roger that,” Carlos says, acting like nothing is unusual.

“What the hell do we do now?” Ryan asks.

I tell him that we need to open the other doors—fast—and get all the women out.

“You take them out the way we came,” I say. “Call for backup. Carlos and I will look for Marta.”

He opens his mouth to argue, but Carlos says, “You’ve got to get these girls out of here. If everything goes to shit, you’ve got to at least save them.”

He nods in agreement, and we work together to throw open the other rooms and help the women out. There are three, and they all look terrible—emaciated, bruised, unclean.

There’s no telling how long they’ve been here.

No telling what’s been done to them.

We direct them to clamber down the embankment with Ryan. The prospect of escape has given them new strength.

“We’ve got company,” Carlos says.

Two men jog our way through the trees, both wearing black like the guard Ryan shot. Only these guys are carrying TEC-9s.

“Go!” Carlos shouts to Ryan. “We’ll cover you.”

With that, he starts blasting his shotgun in the direction of the men. They dive for cover behind trees. The range isn’t in Carlos’s favor—not with a shotgun and plenty of bushes and tree branches in the way—but with each shot spraying nine balls of double-aught buck, the men have to keep hidden. It gives Ryan and the women time to run down the hill. Within seconds, they’re out of sight.

Which is a good thing, because Carlos’s gun is out of shells.

The men step out from hiding and open fire with the TEC-9s. Carlos dives on me, and the two of us fall inside one of the doorways. Bullets tear through the walls, showering us in adobe dust and chunks of cinder block. Beams of sunlight poke through every bullet hole.

Carlos is lying on top of me, pinning me down. It’s only when I feel warm liquid wetting my shirt that I realize he’s been shot.