“Javier is gone,” he said, coming to a stop but still holding on. “He’s going to try and escape out his tunnel. Notice that you weren’t included.”
“We left him on the floor!” I yelled and suddenly reality hit me, that he could have been hurt or dead. I tried to run back but Esteban swung me around until I went flying into the dirt.
“I just saved your fucking life,” he said, nearly spitting at me. “You think he wouldn’t have killed us both in there?”
I got to my knees just as the cars pulled up, their headlights illuminating our naked bodies. “We need to run!” I told him, trying to run but he was fast and pulled me up by my hair.
“There’s no running Luisa, not anymore,” he said.
I gasped from the pain, my eyes wild as I looked over at the masked federales getting out of the cars, their guns aimed at us. I felt like it was all going to end in a second.
Javier Bernal’s wife and right-hand man in custody?
Game over.
The federales yelled at us to get our hands in the air and we complied, even though the darkness, the distance, was calling my name. I could run. Find Javier, make sure he was okay. I could save myself at least.
But to move would mean death.
A man stepped out of the first car, tall and extra forbidding with his bullet proof vest, the black helmet, the mask.
“Esteban,” he said.
Esteban nodded. “If he’s anywhere he’s in the tunnel.”
My mouth dropped. How quickly he sold him out!
“We already have our guys on the other end,” the soldier said. “It should be a clean capture.” He turned his sharp eyes to me. “Luisa. I’m Adan Garcia Ruiz. We’re sorry it had to come to this. But you’ll be better off this way. We’ve promised Esteban his protection and yours.”
I stared at them for a moment while one of the soldier’s approached us, holding out silver emergency blankets to cover us up.
“Protection, why?” I asked as I snatched the blanket, taking a step away from them and quickly wrapping myself up.
Ruiz and Esteban exchanged a look. “We made a deal,” Ruiz explained. “We didn’t want to but we saw an opportunity. Your husband for your freedom.”
I stared at Esteban, my heart picking up speed. “You set this up? You sold us out!?”
“I sold out Javier,” he said calmly, wrapping the blanket around his waist, like it was a towel and he was just stepping out of a spa. “It was the right thing to do. He had too much power and the cartel was bound to collapse in time. I just speeded it up.” He gave me a wry smile. “I was tired of the business. Figured this was the only way I could retire and live the simple life on a beach somewhere. Spend my days surfing.”
I couldn’t believe it. I just shook my head, my fingers curling over my heart.
Javier.
All this time, Esteban had been setting him up.
“That’s bullshit,” I sneered at him. “You just want to take over.”
“We’ll be watching him. And you,” Ruiz said. “To make sure that doesn’t happen. But at the same time we’re grateful. Let’s just hope that Evaristo is still alive.”
“He is,” I said feebly. “Javier only wanted information on Hernandez and the Tijuana cartel. He kept to his word and let him go.”
God, at least I hoped he let him go. If the federales captured Javier, it could be the difference between life and prison and killing him on the spot.
And still, I couldn’t believe any of this. I closed my eyes and prayed that Javier would somehow escape, that maybe Diego saw the tunnel had been compromised, that he got wind of a snitch. Javier had already done prison once in America, before I had met him, but now if he were caught, he’d be put in Puente Grande. Where the worst of Mexico’s worst would go.
And with so many narcos in there already, families torn apart and lives shattered by the drug trade, by our cartel, Javier could be fair game.
He would get no special treatment, the federales would make sure of that.
He was in for many years of hell.
And me, I was free.
For the first time in my life, it wasn’t what I wanted.
I wanted to collapse right on the ground. I guess the soldier closest to me saw that because he put his arm out and led me over to the SUV, placing me inside and giving me a bottle of water. He was saying something to me, but I didn’t remember what it was because all I could think about was Javier.
After everything, he was still everything.
I don’t know how long I was sitting there for. The ranch house went up in flames. I never saw Evelyn again or Borrero, Morales, Diego, Juanito. Javier. It was like Esteban and I were the only ones who got out alive.
Then there was a roar of crunching tires and headlights appeared around the small hill behind the blazing house. They pulled right up next to a helicopter, the blades slowly starting to rotate.
The doors of one of the SUV’s opened and that’s when I saw Javier. Seemingly unconscious and being dragged by two beefy soldiers, but he was there and he was alive.
He was alive.