It didn’t even make me squeamish, not even as the eyeball bulged around the blades as they pierced through it. I just yelled, a crazed battle cry, in his face as I stabbed him.
Unfortunately I didn’t have enough strength or time to push it all the way into his skull and brain.
My time had run out.
Esteban screamed in horrific agony and pushed me off of him. I did what I could to crawl away, my face and body burning as the acid ate at the nerves, looking for something else to use in defense. Over by the box of tools he struggled to get to his feet, knocking it all over, and in the glow of the phone I saw him place both his hands over the scissor handle and pull it out with one quick tug.
His eye came out with it, stuck on the scissors’ end.
The scream to follow was animalistic, the sound of a creature dying, filling the room, yet it was quickly buried by the sound of gunfire outside the window. Esteban howled and staggered over to the door, flinging it open and running out into the hallway which was filled with gunfire and people shouting.
He took the scissors, and his eye, with him.
I was left behind.
To die or to live.
Mustering what strength I could, I started to crawl across the floor. My shoulder and breast gashed and bleeding, my hair shorn, my collarbone smashed in, my face and stomach burning away. I had to survive, after all this, I had to live.
I almost made it to the door before the last of the adrenaline was depleted from my veins. Then I stopped, collapsing on the floor, and the last tear fell from my eyes.
I had tried.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Javier
We left just before dusk, three SUVs filled with some of Mexico’s most wanted. Me, Evaristo and Diego were in the middle car, with one of Evaristo’s men at the wheel. He didn’t talk much, which I appreciated.
In fact, not many of us did as we rolled along the highways and backroads, heading up toward the capitol of Sinaloa and my home.
My home. It had started to sound foreign ever since I was put away. It was as if I had believed Esteban and his attempts to take over.
I wouldn’t believe that anymore. It was my home and I was going back and I was taking back everything that was rightfully mine. I had no choice now but to rise like a phoenix from the ashes and rule again once more.
Around a kilometer away from the compound, we took a sharp left down an even rougher dirt road, one that used to lead to a poppy farm once upon a time, before the DEA hazed it down all those years ago. We rolled up and down potholes that would have swallowed a smaller car until we came to a small clearing among the leafy ceiba trees.
We parked and Evaristo turned around from the front seat to face Diego and me.
“Isn’t this where your tunnel leads?”
Shit. He was good, he was able to lead us right here without me saying anything. The tunnel – built by the previous narco owner – lead from the house to an area beyond the hog’s barn, then had another entrance point here, the old poppy field far beyond the rugged brush that surrounded the compound.
I studied Evaristo for a moment. “All this intel you had on me and you couldn’t make a move. Why?”
He shrugged. “Same reason why we didn’t go after Hernandez when we had him. We’ve been trying to borrow the book from the North Americans and give warrant and reason to our arrests. A waste of time, as you know. We had you. Have you. We have everyone, almost, except the ones who are really on the run, as you may have to be if and when word gets out. But we are not allowed to make a move until all the boxes have been checked. I think it has a lot to do with the North Americans meddling in our jobs, even though the federales would never admit it. There has been far too much money put into our force.”
“I guess they’re hoping you won’t be so corrupt this time around.”
He smiled. “And you can see they were wrong about that.”
We got out of the cars and gathered around while Evaristo and some of his men opened the trunk and started handing out ammo. They had been briefed over and over again during the day over what was going to take place and, unsurprisingly, there were no objections. The whole lot of them were primed for more bloodshed, you could practically see them salivating at the mouth.
It didn’t help that when morning came around, one of the men was found strangled to death. Apparently he had been a child molester and that’s why he had been behind bars. Even the country’s worst criminals had a limit to what they would tolerate.