Page 58 of Shadow Man

“Right.”

Hanging up, I break into a run. Storming into my office, I start dialing out two numbers on my cell and desk phone simultaneously.

The desk phone picks up first. It’s Grayson’s lieutenant, the temporary commander of my army base—situated half a mile away to the north of the island.

“Reece. Tell Anderson to get the jet fueled up. I need fifty men, armed and ready. We leave immediately.”

If my assumption is correct and Fernandez fired that shot at Grayson, I’m planning to rip that Colombian cunt apart with my bare hands. The rest of his cartel will follow.

“Where?” Reece doesn’t flinch. He’s worked for me a long time.

“I’ll call you back.” I cut the line as my cell connects. “Gomez.”

“Señor Santiago,” he simpers. “To what do I owe this—?”

“Cut the crap, Gomez, and just listen.”Sycophantic piece of shit.He’s not even half the man his father used to be. “I want the vehicle you lent Joseph Grayson located in the next two minutes. Then, I want you and your entire fuckingsicarionetwork deployed in the same direction. Do you understand me?” The line goes quiet, which is just as well. I’m not even partway done yet. “I need a medic, too. The best you have. We have a man down.”

A good man. The best.So much better than me.

“Oh?” He sighs as if it’s a fucking imposition. “I’ll see what I can do.”

There’s a pause as I fight for composure before I do something I’llneverregret.

“Who theFUCKdo you think you’re talking to?” I roar, losing my shit anyway. “If you don't want your entire operation under new management by sunset, you’ll raze the Amazon to the ground and find them, do you hear me?” I slam the phone down to my bonus adieu of,“you useless motherfucker!”

Without taking a breath, I get Reece back on the line.

“Where?” he repeats, dispensing with the chitchat. I knew there was a reason I tolerated him.

I glance at the ocean vista behind me. Eve calls it a carpet of diamonds, but to me the breakers have always glinted like razors blades and temptation. Today, they’re spelling out words I never thought I’d speak again.

“We’re going to fucking war,” I tell him, grinding my knuckles into my desk.

24

Anna

There’s an ugly vulgarity to silence when your heart is going bat-shit crazy inside your chest.

The hallway that I’m pacing is cold and empty, with stark white tiles on the floor and ochre walls. Everything about this mansion is immaculate, but it’s like a mausoleum, stinking of money and disdain. I don't want to be here, but I have no choice. Behind a wooden door to my left there’s a doctor fighting like hell to save my shadow.

I catch glimpses of him when the door opens and closes. Fresh medical supplies seem to be arriving on a constant loop. He’s hooked up to clear drips and draped in blue surgical sheets… He’s a picture of vulnerability that shakes my foundations. Shadows aren’t meant to be still: they wax and wane with the light.

The stag never got up again.

This time he will… He has to.

I hear snatches of words between the doctor and Vi’s aunt, Gabriela, a stoic, kind-faced woman in her late fifties who took on our carnage with the quiet grace of wisdom and familiarity—issuing instructions for Joseph to be brought inside immediately, and attending to him as best she could before Gomez’ private physician arrived.

By some miracle, the bullet missed his heart and lungs, but there’s damage to other parts I can’t translate with my high school Spanish, and I have no idea where Vi’s gone, so she can’t help me out. As soon as I called Dante—as soon as I blew myself wide open—she shut down all communication with me.

It has been three hours since we crashed through the wrought-iron gates of this place, and were sealed inside by a protective wall of Gomez’s men. The three explosions that followed led me to believe that the men who had been shooting at us were nothing but ash and dust. The devil had kept his word, but had I sold my soul to receive it?

There’s only so much adrenaline I can handle, and my reserve tanks are empty. I come over all light-headed suddenly, reaching out for the wall, and then slithering down it in an exhausted, filthy heap. I can't stop the tears now, either. I don't know if I’m crying more for me or for him, or for the nameless thing we lost that never spread its wings in the first place.

For so long I hated the arms of safety he threw around me. I believed I didn’t deserve them so I pushed them away. He forced that feeling onto me until I had no choice to embrace it. Now it’s been amputated, and I feel more exposed than ever.

“Anna, child.”

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