Dirty Angels - Halle Karina - Страница 60
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“I don’t know if I can pull myself up,” I told him, starting to panic a little. “I don’t have much strength.”
“I’ll pull you up,” he said confidently. He quickly eased himself onto the railing, balanced himself, and then jumped up onto the ledge, needing to pull himself up a few feet.
And while he was doing that, his back to me, I felt a gun press against my temple and an arm hook around my neck. I dropped my gun in surprise and it went skittering over the balcony edge.
Heavy breathing seeped into my ear.
Fear gripped my heart.
Salvador.
By the time Javier found his footing and was turning around to see what caused the clatter, I was completely under Salvador’s control. The look of utter outrage and madness strained Javier’s face. I knew he wanted nothing more than to tear Salvador from limb to limb, but that would never happen now.
Now that he had me. Now that he would kill me in front of Javier.
“Javier, Javier, Javier,” Salvador said, his voice raspy. “Finally we meet in person. You know, you’re a lot smaller than I thought you’d be, even with you way up there.”
His chokehold around me tightened and I tried to pry him off with one good hand, giving me a few more inches of breathing room, but the strength just wasn’t there. I was slowly losing air.
“Let her go,” Javier commanded, his voice steady despite everything. “Do what you want with me, but let her go. You’ve already hurt her enough.”
“Really? I don’t think I have,” Salvador mused. “Tell me, Javier, when you were fucking her, did she scream for mercy like she does with me? Did you make her bleed too? You must have. Nice carving job, by the way. For an amateur.”
Javier swallowed. I could see how hard he was breathing, how difficult it was for him not to whip out his gun and try and shoot Salvador, promise to the DEA or not. But he couldn’t, not when I was a hostage once more.
“Let him kill me.” I managed to get the words out to Javier. “Let him kill me, just make sure you kill him. Make him suffer.”
“Shut up!” Salvador roared in my ear. “I will kill you, but then he’s next. He doesn’t even have his gun out. Fucking pussy.”
The gunfire in the background had started to die down. The helicopter that we had seen in the distance was now long gone. I wondered what side was winning now. I wondered if they’d come and find us only after it was too late. I could only hope that if Javier and I were dead, the DEA would ensure that Salvador suffered, that he would never get out of jail alive, that our deaths wouldn’t be for nothing.
“So what do you want, Salvador?” Javier asked, raising his hands. “Why are you doing this? Just shoot her now if that’s what you want.”
“You’re as fucking crazy as she is,” Salvador said, sneering. “Don’t the two of you have any respect for death? You of all people, Javier, should know the importance of making a show of it. Of making it last. The true torture doesn’t come during death—it comes in the moments before. When you know it’s about to happen, but you don’t quite know when. Just like now.”
Javier’s chest heaved. I could see his wicked brain working on overdrive, trying to come up with a way to at least save me if not himself. I could also see he had no options to go on. For all the fury he was carrying, I caught the sorrow on his brow. I saw the soft way he was coming to terms with the end.
But that didn’t mean I had nothing. Even if it meant us getting shot, I at least had to try for the both of us. I welcomed the end more than he did. I had nothing to lose.
I held Javier’s eyes with mine and then slid my gaze over to the partly-healed gash on Salvador’s forearm where I had driven in the piece of glass last week. I couldn’t reach around with my own arms and touch it, but that didn’t mean I was powerless.
When I saw the nearly invisible hint of recognition in Javier’s eyes, I knew it was time. I drew upon my reserves of anger, of injustice, of pure unadulterated rage that I had coiling deep inside me. I let those feelings, those hot, swirling, pulsing emotions wrap me up into an uncontrollable tornado that had nowhere else to go. Then I gave it permission to fuel me, to become my strength.
I screamed, a raw, brutal sound that ripped out of my gut and my throat, and used all my power to twist Salvador’s forearm toward me. I bit straight into his wound, tasting the blood, loving the blood, relishing the feeling of my teeth plunging in deeper and deeper, tearing through muscle and nerve and causing so much pain.
The next thing I knew Salvador was screaming, caught off-guard by my violence, and Javier took that moment to whip out his gun and shoot.
He aimed for Salvador’s shoulder. He got it.
Salvador spun back, out of my teeth and grasp, but not before he took his own gun and fired it at Javier as he fell.
I thought Salvador’s aim would be off.
But it wasn’t.
He shot Javier right in the head.
I screamed as Javier stumbled slightly then pitched forward off the roof and facedown onto the balcony, the glass bouncing around us from his impact.
With what strength I had, I kicked Salvador’s gun off the balcony, then scampered over to Javier, crying, screaming, feeling like my own heart was bleeding, my breath pulled from me. The pain in my chest was so incredibly great, I wasn’t sure how I was going to survive it. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.
I fell to my knees beside Javier, afraid to touch, afraid to roll him over. I wouldn’t be able to handle what I so deeply feared to see.
But before I could reach out and touch him, he started to stir.
Alive.
“Javier!” I sobbed, my hands going for his head. I brushed away his hair and saw the wound, a long trail of blood on his temple. His eye opened and fixed on me.
“Fuck,” he groaned. “Did he get me?”
I burst into the biggest smile and nearly laughed at the intense amount of relief flowing through me. “Get you? I think you were just shot in the head!”
He reached up and gingerly touched the wound. “Oh.” He smiled weakly. “It just grazed me. How is my hair?”
I wasn’t sure whether to punch him or kiss him.
But before I could do either, I was suddenly picked up by my shoulders from behind and thrown to the side. My head smacked against the floor, making everything spin and swirl nauseatingly, blackness teasing my vision and keeping me down.
I stared helplessly as Salvador launched himself on top of Javier, trying to choke him. Even with his one arm useless, he was a big man, stronger than Javier, and he was able to squeeze his throat tight with just his one hand.
“Look at you,” Salvador sneered at him, saliva dripping down into Javier’s face. Javier gasped for breath, his skin turning white. “A traitor to Mexico. You brought in the Americans just to take this whore back. You’re a pussy. You’re soft over a woman. A girl. You’ll be known as the drug lord who became oh so good for no good reason.”
“I am not good!” Javier managed to roar, the fight coming back in his face. With all he had left, he managed to kick up under Salvador and get his knife free from his boot. He raised the knife above his head, and just as Salvador looked up in surprise, Javier swiftly drove the knife between Salvador’s eyes, plunging it all the way in to the handle. “I am just not as bad as you,” he spat out.
Salvador froze up, the knife stuck into his brain. It instantly killed him, and Javier quickly rolled out from under his crushing body. He rapidly crawled over to me and felt along the side of my head. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice cracking.
I swallowed and tried to talk but couldn’t. I burst into tears instead.
“Shhhh, Luisa,” Javier said soothingly. “I’m alive, you’re alive. The fucker is dead. We’re okay.” He sat down beside me and pulled me into his lap, cradling me while I let everything loose. Anger, pain, shock, sorrow. He let me cry for as long as I needed. And when my tears started to dry, he said something that made me cry more, only from happiness.
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