Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 80139 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80139 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
She groans. “Very generous.”
“I was told to make it look like something it wasn’t.”
“What?”
“An overdose.”
Robin rises quickly, nearly hitting her head on the dryer door. “An OD?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
I don’t want to say it.
I say it anyway because the sooner I do, the sooner we’re out of here.
“I measured out a quantity of narcotic. Enough to incapacitate. Enough to create a scene that would be interpreted a certain way by anyone who already knew his history.”
“His history.”
“Yes.”
Her breathing changes.
Faster now.
Shallower.
“My target had a history of drug use,” I say. “That’s why Vega chose that method. It would be believable.”
“Did you give it to him?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes flash. “How?”
“He was outside. Alone. I came up behind him and knocked him out.”
She takes a step back. I keep going because if I stop now, I may never finish.
“I injected him after he was unconscious.”
She gulps, her hand on her lips.
“I did not kill him,” I say quickly. “Zabala is the only man I have ever killed.”
She stomps her foot. “Stop saying that like it makes you innocent.”
“I’m far from innocent,” I say.
“That’s the fucking truth.”
“He survived,” I say.
“Who was it?” she demands.
I say nothing.
Her eyes widen. “Cruz.”
I can’t make my mouth form the name.
Not with her looking at me like that.
Not with Vega’s men coming.
Not with Señora V dead because of every wrong road I ever walked.
“Who was it?”
The basement seems to tilt.
I look toward the stairs.
She slams her hands against my chest. I’m sore from the fight with Zabala, but I feel no pain.
“Who was it?”
“Robin—”
She digs her fingers into my shirt, into the blood and torn fabric.
“Tell me!” she says. “Who was it?”
I can’t breathe.
Some part of her already knows. I see the answer forming in her eyes along with the desperate hope that she is wrong.
I want to lie.
For the first time since I chose to tell her the truth, I want to lie so badly it hurts. I’d give my life to spare her this.
But I promised her the truth. So I’ll tell her. And though I saved her life, I will now lose her.
I take a deep breath in, pausing before I deliver the words that will end whatever potential exists between us forever.
“It was your brother. Eagle.”
35
ROBIN
Eagle.
My brother.
My blood.
My annoying, damaged, frustrating, wounded, beautiful brother.
I stare at Cruz, waiting for him to take it back. Tell me he’s joking. As if he could ever joke about something like that.
He doesn’t.
Cruz Moreno, who dragged me from Texas to Colombia, who has blood all over his face and grief carved into his mouth, doesn’t take it back.
“What did you just say?” I say through gritted teeth.
My voice is calm.
Too calm.
So calm it sounds like someone else’s.
Cruz’s jaw tightens. “Robin—”
“No.” I step closer. “Say it again.”
He doesn’t.
I hear movement above me. Esmeralda and the others leaving the house.
But that all fades beneath the roar building in my ears.
Eagle’s overdose was staged.
Not an overdose.
Not a relapse gone horribly wrong.
Not my brother spiraling so badly that his old demons dragged him back under.
Staged.
And Cruz was the one who did it.
I look at his hands.
Blood stains his knuckles, his palms, the creases of his fingers. Zabala’s blood. Señora Valentina’s blood. Maybe his own.
And now, in my mind, Eagle’s blood too.
Not literal blood.
Worse.
The invisible kind.
“How?” I finally ask.
“Robin, we need to leave.”
“How?”
He flicks his gaze toward the stairs.
“How did you do it?”
Cruz looks down at my hands on his shirt. “It was simple mathematics,” he says.
He says it so coldly that I almost slap him.
Simple mathematics. As if he’s talking about balancing a checkbook.
“You determined what?” I ask. “How much it would take to kill him?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.” His voice hardens, but not with anger. “How much to not kill him. I told you. Vega was very clear about that.”
I kick at the floor. “Congratulations.”
“I mean that.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“I determined how much it would take to make it look like what Vega wanted it to look like.”
“A drug overdose.”
“Yes.”
I hold on to his shirt because if I let go, I might fall. “Keep going.”
“I watched him for days,” he says. “Tracked his movements. His routines. He was erratic. Agitated.”
“Where?” I ask.
“Outside Hawk’s place.”
The breath leaves me.
No.
No, no, no.
“He was trying to get to Hawk,” Cruz says quietly. “Knocking on the door. Hard. Shouting. He looked unstable.”
“He was terrified.”
“I know that now.”
“You don’t know anything.”
His jaw flexes.
“He was knocking like a madman,” Cruz says. “No one answered. I approached from behind and incapacitated him.”
“Incapacitated,” I repeat. “Get real. Tell me what you actually did.”
“I knocked him unconscious.”
My stomach twists. “And then?”
Cruz’s eyes darken. “Then I did it. I drugged him.”
I blink. “You drugged my brother while he was unconscious.”
“Yes.”
“And left him there?”
“I laid him out where he would be found by family.”
A sickening laugh tears out of me. “How thoughtful.”
“Robin—”
“No, really,” I spit out. “That was so considerate of you. You staged my brother’s overdose but made sure someone who loved him would get to find the body.”