Page 37 of Shadow Man

“Tell me everything about the debt you owed. No more secrets, Vi.” I bite down on my lower lip to stop myself from screaming out the wordhypocrite.

She rests her head against the window and sighs. “The night we buried my cousin, I had a visit from Fernandez. Manny had been working overseas when he died and he’d fallen behind on his payments to the cartel. He owed close to twenty thousand. We just assumed he’d have some kind of immunity because of who—look out!” she shrieks.

I brake hard as an unknown creature scuttles across the road in front of us.

“Oso hormiguero. Anteater.”

We sit there, hearts hammering, watching the strange mammal slither into the undergrowth. When it’s gone, I blow out a breath and set the car right again, the rhythm of our unspoken fears falling in sync with the sound of the tires on the asphalt.

“I’ve never seen anyone kill like you did back there,” says Vi after a couple of miles grace. “I saw your face when you pulled the trigger. There was no hesitation. It was a dead calm behind your eyes,parcera.” She sounds scared again, and a little in awe.

“The dead calmbefore the storm,” I drawl, feeling that weird sense of detachment again.Is this what he feels when he kills?There’s a beat. “Do you think I’m an evil person?”

“No. Not evil,” she says. “You saw an opportunity and had the guts to take it. You knew what they were going to do to us because you’ve lived it before. That’s the other thing I saw on your face, Anna. I saw your past, as clear as day.”

I try to swallow down my next words but they spew out of me anyway. “Two men tried to rape me last night… And you know what the most messed up thing about it is? I didn't even try and fight them off.”

“What stopped them?” she asks quietly.

“Someone stopped them.”

There’s another pause. “You’re not running from a man, are you? You’re running from so much more.” I feel a warm hand slipping into mine. “Do you think you’rethe storm, Anna? Like one of those American twisters that rips up everything in its path, and wipes everything clean again?”

Do twisters even have shadows?

I let go of her hand and nudge the Renault up to sixty. “I’m just a woman trying to survive in a messed-up parallel universe, Vi. I’d never fired a gun before tonight. I’m making up the rules as I go along.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Shock studs her voice like the bullet holes in my victims. “You were like a machine back there.”

“I saw red.”Crimson.“I was done with men treating us that way.”

“Men willalwaystreat us this way.”

“Maybe we need to kill a few more to even that shit up.”

“Maybe we do,” she mutters.

Did I just say that?

Did those words feel as right on the inside as they did spoken out loud?

“A friend once told me that some crimes deserve a different kind of justice. I know you agree with her, Vi. That’s why you offered to kill someone for me earlier.”

“True, but are you going to shoot up the whole of Colombia,parcera?”

“Just the ones who deserve it.”

We fall back into that rhythm again, our thoughts more vocal than anything. The next time I look across at her she’s fast asleep.

I let her rest. I let her have this time away from the violent uncertainty of our lives. We have a destination—a safe house—and I can tell she’s holding onto that with everything she has.

Not me. I’m eating up the white lines in the middle of the empty road like they’re my first meal after a hunger strike. I’m done playing the victim now. I know what I’m capable of. For the first time ever, I have a loaded gun in my hand and no desire to die, but that’s always a prelude to the inevitable.

Tick.

Tick.

Boom.

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