“Figured Ramirez would have dismembered you and fed you to the pigs by now,” Cade says, laughing. He sobers, saying, “Your face is seriously fucked up, Alfonso. ”
Alfonso, whom Cade has apparently met before, glowers; he looks like he’s ready to shoot both of us in the face anyway, irrespective of whether we shoot at him first. “I’m like a cat,” he says. “I have nine lives. I’ll still be here, working for Hector long after you and the rest of your Widow Maker scum are dead. We won’t even bury you. We’ll drag your bodies out into the desert and let the buzzards have you. The crows will peck out your eyeballs.”
“Sounds unpleasant,” Cade says airily. “But I made myself a promise a while back. I swore my body would be buried in Louisiana. Definitely not in a fucking desert, be that an American desert or an Afghani desert. So I’m going to have to decline your offer, I’m afraid.”
“It was not an offer. It was a promise.” He laughs. “How do you think you’re going to get out of this basement, you fool? I’ll kill the girl if you take another step.”
I see Cade shoot a glance my way, but I keep Alfonso in my sights, training my gun at his head. Cade sighs heavily, as though he’s exhausted by the conversation. “I don’t give a shit about the girl. Do your worst. I have a bullet in this gun right here and it’s got your name on it. No way some piece of club pussy is going to stop me from burying it right between your eyes.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
REBEL
Three seconds feels like a lifetime when there are eight guns pointing at your head. The second I step through the doorway and into the front family room of the farmhouse, Keeler and Carnie on either side of me, every single gun in the room swings at us, locked and loaded. Behind me I can hear Cade yelling at Sophia, but I can’t think about that right now. He’ll take care of her, I know he will. Right now, I have to stay alive.
Ramirez is in the corner of the room, and there are two heavy-set guards standing in front of him, protecting him with their own bodies. Andreas Medina is on the ground, bleeding on the carpet by the looks of things, though he’s aiming a gun at one of Hector’s bodyguards. He fires, and the guy on Hector’s left staggers backward. He holds his hand to his head, which just so happens to be where Andreas shot him, and a look of abject confusion flits across his features. A second later that confusions dissolves as he falls to the ground, dead.
“What the fuck?” Ramirez yells. “Julio, your man just shot mine!”
Julio spits on the ground, pulling out a small silver gun from the inside of his suit blazer. “They’re about to shoot the rest of them, too, pendejo.” The tiny little pistol goes off in Julio’s hand, and then the other guard in front of Hector dies, blood running down the front of his white shirt as his heart, suddenly ripped apart, ceases to work.
Everything happens so quickly. Ramirez is unprotected, but only for a moment. More of his men charge in through the front door, bloodied and burned from the explosion that Cade set. As we’d planned, they all ran out there when Cade set the car alarm off, and they were caught in the blast a few moments later. Sadly some of the fuckers survived, though.
“?Abajo! Soltar las armas!” the guy out in front hollers. He’s fucking crazy if he thinks any of us are setting our guns down. He obviously didn’t get the memo about Julio’s guys being on our side for the time being, because he doesn’t even cast a look in their direction. Not even when one of them cocks their gun and shoots him in the side of the head, sending brain matter and gore flying across the room.
“This is fucking madness!” Ramirez reaches for his own gun, but Julio gets to him first, barreling into him, pinning him against the wall. He holds him there, fury all over his face, his cheeks wobbling as he curses his enemy in Spanish.
“Kill. The. Old. Man.” Ramirez grinds out, clawing at Julio’s meaty hands, wrapped around his throat. “Kill. Him.” he repeats, louder this time. A badly burned guy in a singed grey suit nods, and then goes racing off to the right, around a corner, sprinting as fast as he possible can.