“Oh,” I say, backing up so I can have a wall behind me. “It’s already been tons of fun, Admiral. Twelve years of good fucking times, right? You thought you’d what? Just keep giving me orders and I’d just keep following them until you decided I wasn’t worth your time anymore?”

He doesn’t answer, so I press the gun into his kidneys to help him along.

“No,” he groans. “I treated you like a son.”

“Yeah,” I say with an ironic laugh. “You sure did treat me just like my father did. But don’t worry, Admiral, you won’t get the same fate. Because you won’t be brought back from the dead like him. I’ll finish the job and end it right.”

I spot Sasha running outside in a crowd who figure it’s best to get as far away from me as they possibly can, and breathe a sigh of relief. Harper must be safe and my mother must be dead.

I check my watch. Three minutes. Harper appears in the room and people give her a wide berth as she approaches.

The Admiral laughs. “There she is.” He says it with some relief as Harper raises her arm, a gun in her hand.

My eyebrows go up as she walks up to us. At first I think she’s aiming for me, but I realize it’s not me, it’s him. Her father.

“Harper,” he says. “Do your job, honey.”

“What’s my job, Daddy?” she asks sweetly.

“Protect me at all costs. Kill Tet. Kill anyone who threatens us.”

“Is this part of that brainwashing you did on me?”

Fuck.

“Because I have to tell you.” She lowers the aim of her gun and I can actually feel the Admiral let out a breath. But that’s before she shoots him in the leg. “It didn’t take.”

I have to shake my head, because that bullet was so close to me, I feel the impact in my own body.

“Oops,” she says, as the Admiral wails in pain. I let him fall forward onto the ground and take out two security guards. The whole room erupts in screaming and then the bullets start spraying. A woman standing next to me is shot in the torso and blood splatters me in the face.

They’re early.

Lesson learned. Never fucking trust a gang member to do their job on your time.

I grab Harper’s wrist and pull her down to the floor in front of her father so I can keep her safe and relieve her of the gun. “Get the file from One, Harp.”

She crawls over her father’s wounded leg and begins searching One when the Admiral pulls a gun out from his pocket and aims it at me.

“Really?” Tet takes over. He grabs him by the neck just as a shot comes from the gun. Plaster from the ceiling showers down on us, but I don’t even notice when a large chunk crashes on top of my arm.

Because when I have a man’s neck in my grasp, there’s only one way that shit’s gonna end.

Even over the rapid firing of AK’s, I hear the crack.

His head goes limp. His body relaxes. And when I look at Harper, she smiles. “We’re free.”

“Not yet, lionfish. Now we gotta get the fuck out of here.”

The entire ballroom is chaos. People are running, they don’t’ last long, because the bullets are flying. So the runners fall, littering the floor with blood and bodies.

“Crawl with me, harp.” I get down low and make our way to a banquet table. I lift up the tablecloth, but there are several people under there already. “Out,” I hiss at them, pointing Harper’s gun.

They do run, but I grab two of them by the arms and yank them backwards. I pull Harper up as they bolt, and we run with them. Between them.

A living shield.

A woman goes down in front of me, then a man behind. But we book it. The people outside are coming in and the people inside are going out as mass confusion ensues. There’s bodies and blood. People trip, fall, and then get trampled. I pull Harper through the French doors and head for the beach. There’s some Company people running the same direction in front of us, but I shoot them and they go down. Another small group is in front of them, but as soon as they hear the shots, they dart off the path to the beach and head for the trees. Sasha’s army will have to take them out.

Just as we get to the stairs, I see Nick and Sasha.

“We’re gonna make it,” Harper says.

And there’s a split second where I really think we might. I almost let myself hope. I almost give in to the happy ending.

But that’s when Mistake Number One from my time in Honduras steps out from behind Nick, a gun to his side. Sasha is being held as well. They’ve got a hand over her mouth, making it hard for her to breathe.

“Tet,” the deformed Nicaraguan leader laughs. “My pet, Tet! The little girl promised my men you would be here. I admit, I had my doubts. It’s been a long quest, my faithful enemy, but finally, a fruitful one.”

He’s got a red scarf wrapped around his head so you can’t see the part of his face I blew off twelve years ago. He looks every bit his age. His dark skin is wrinkled and worn. The tattoos on his face, a mark that separates them from some of the other gangs, are fading, they are so old. But he lives. He still lives.

He laughs. And his evil movie-star laugh is enough to give me the chills.

I have not seen him since I was rescued by One. I have not laid eyes on him since that final day in captivity. Even when I was down in San Pedro Sula, I never had the urge to seek him out.

Because I’ll be honest here. That motherfucker scares the shit out of me.