The cellar door comes off its hinges with the next breath.
TacOps come down the stairs in a stack. Eight men. Plate carriers. Long guns up. Optics.
The barrel of every one of them is on Mateo.
The team leader at the front is SAC Reyes himself. He almost never breaches in person. He came down for this one.
"Mateo Salazar-Vega, you are under federal arrest for narcotics trafficking, money laundering, RICO, and one count of attempted murder of a federal agent. Hands."
His voice is iron.
Mateo doesn't move.
He doesn't look at the rifles. He doesn't look at Reyes. He doesn't look at Cami.
He's looking at me.
And the look is asking, why.
My throat closes.
There is nothing to say that the room would let me say.
It is too late.
Cami pulls cuffs from the back of her belt. She walks toward Mateo, slow and steady.
"Mateo. Hands."
She gets within arm's length, and that's when he moves.
He shoves her sideways. He plucks the Glock 17 out of the nearest TacOps belt holster — clean draw, single motion, like he'd practiced it — and presses the muzzle to my temple.
Cami was right there. Eight rifles, a clean line, the new face the institution sent him.
He picked me.
In front of every witness in the room, his body said the thing his mouth would never say.
"Nobody moves!"
He is roaring it.
"Or I put one in her head!"
The whole stack freezes.
I freeze.
The barrel shakes once against my temple and goes still.
I am the answer he just gave the room.
"Mateo — easy." Reyes's voice is the coiled-flat voice they teach. "Step back. Put the gun down. You still have options."
"Options." Mateo laughs. It comes out wrong. Cracked open.
"My only option was believing any of you to begin with."
The metal is cold against my temple. Trembling, slightly.
"Thorn." His voice in my ear now. Hate-thick. "Tell me."
"Top to bottom. Was there even one minute of it that was real."
I close my eyes. The tears come.
Real?
He took my real heart with the Slugger and broke it the same way he broke the leg.
"Let go of my sister!"
Cami is up off the floor and lunging. Reyes catches her at the chest with his forearm and pins her where she is.
"Cami. Don't."
Mateo backs me toward the stairs. The Glock doesn't move from my temple. The TacOps stack walks with us at the same pace, like a tide.
"A car," Mateo barks. "Full tank. Out front. Now. Or we go together."
Reyes nods at someone over his shoulder. Someone goes.
A black Suburban pulls up in the circular drive within minutes.
He drags me up the cellar stairs. Through the marble hall. Out through the front door past the Tag Heuer clock and the orchids his mother put on the console. He throws me into the passenger seat and pours himself into the driver's seat in one motion and is gone.
The Suburban hits the I-95 on-ramp at ninety. Sirens stack up behind us.
"Hold on," he says. Flat.
He cuts hard onto a service road. The Suburban kicks up gravel and we are off the grid.
The road goes to teeth. Every bump is the cellar all over again. I bite down inside my mouth and don't let it out.
I don't know how long we drive.
When we stop we are out at the end of the Rickenbacker, on a stretch of pier no one uses anymore. Old fishing slip, half-rotten boards, a chain-link gate that someone rammed through years ago. The bay is gray-green and chopping.
He pulls me out of the Suburban and walks me to the end of the pier.
The shipping channel is right there. PortMiami's outbound lane. A Panamax container ship is coming through, slow, enormous, the screw turning under it like a guillotine on a clock.
"Thorn." He's behind me. "Are you afraid to die."
I don't answer.
"I am."
He answers his own question.
"I'm afraid that if I die I won't see you anymore."
"Even hating you, I'd rather see you."
The line goes through me like the bat went through my leg.
I'd thought there was nothing left in him for me but hate.
"Why," I say, finally. My voice is gone. "Why me."
"You could have grabbed Cami. She was the better hostage. She's what they want now. She's your new soft spot, isn't she."
"Soft spot."
He laughs. Sad.
"I've only ever had one soft spot in my life, Thorn."
"It was always you."
"And my soft spot put a knife in me herself."
He reaches up. He puts his hand on my cheek. His fingers are cold.
"You know," he says, "the second I saw your file, I wanted to kill you."
"I couldn't do it."
"I broke your leg. I locked you in. I told myself that was enough — that it would be enough to forget you."
"I tried to make Cami the one. I told myself: same eyes, same blood, I can love her instead. I'll learn."
"I couldn't."
"The more she looked like you, the more I missed you."
"I missed you taking that knife for me. I missed the way you patched up my hands. I missed you in my bed saying you loved me."
"Thorn. Tell me. That night. I love you. Was that really a lie."
His eyes are completely red. The capillaries are little blown nets.
I can't breathe.
What is the right answer.
The truth — yes, that was the only true thing I ever said to you — and then he goes into Coleman with that piece of light in his pocket, and it eats him alive in a cell for thirty years.
The lie — yes, that was a lie — and he dies hating me, and that's the version of him that exists from now on.
I don't know.
I genuinely don't know.
Sirens. Far. Getting closer.
Mateo's face changes. The decision happens in his face faster than I can catch it.
"Looks like we're out of time."
He pulls me in. Tight. He puts his mouth right against my ear and says it so quiet only I can hear.
"Thorn. Listen."
"I love you."
"That part is true."
He shoves me back, hard, against the bollard. He turns. He runs three steps. He jumps.
"No —"
I am screaming, and the sound is somewhere outside my body.
I drag myself to the edge on my elbows and one good knee. The bay where he went in is one slow vortex. The Panamax is right on top of it. The screw is still turning.
He doesn't come up.
The vortex closes.
Sirens behind me, footsteps, voices. Cami is at me. She has her arms around me.
"Nez. Nez. You okay? You okay?"
I don't hear her.
I am staring at the water.
Mateo. Mi corazón.
He's dead.
He's dead because of me.
Then the dock and the bay and Cami's hair all go black, and I'm gone too.
I come back up in a hospital bed.
White ceiling. White sheets. The smell of bleach over the smell of bodies.
Cami is in the chair next to me. Her eyes are red and swollen and her hair is in last night's ponytail.
"Nez. You're awake."
She sees my eyes open and her whole face cracks.
I turn my head. The window is gray.
The sky is the same color as my chest.
"Did they — find him."
My voice sounds like someone else's. Sandpaper.
Cami's eyes go down.
She shakes her head.
"Coast Guard worked it for three days and three nights. Nothing."
"The chop was that bad and the screw was right there. They're saying — they're saying it's not realistic."
My chest twists.
"Nez. I'm sorry."
She takes my hand.
"This is on me. If I hadn't pushed, if I'd just waited a little longer — "
"Stop."
I cut her off.
"This was always how it was going to end."
The day I put on the badge and walked into Mateo Salazar-Vega's world, this was the script. Either he ate me or I ate him.
He ate.
I'm still here.
Like a bad joke.
SAC Reyes comes in around noon.
He has a folder in his hand.
He sets it on the bedside table.
"Marlow," he says. "Given the gross dereliction in the field and the emotional compromise of the cover, the Office of Professional Responsibility has issued a Notice of Proposed Removal. Effective today."
"As of today, you are no longer a federal agent."
I look at the folder. I look up at him.
I laugh.
I laugh until I'm crying.
I gave that badge everything. I gave it my twenties. I gave it my faith. I gave it the man I loved.
What I get back is one piece of paper signed by a man I trusted.
"Why."
Cami is on her feet. Her voice is shaking.
"Sir — my sister was on assignment. She did three years deep on a syndicate principal. She nearly died. How can you — "
"It's the office's decision, Marlow."
Reyes's voice has gone metal.
"Camila. We're federal agents. The job comes first. Always. That's the deal we signed."
"Personal feelings can never override the operation. Ever."
He looks at me when he says the last sentence. He doesn't have to say and you, Marlow, broke that one. The look says it.
He goes.
The door clicks shut. It's just me and Cami again.
"Nez. This isn't right." She is shaking. "I'm going up the chain. I'll go to the Inspector General if I have to. This is — "
"Don't."
I take her wrist.
"It won't matter."
"They want a clean hero, Cami. They want a closed case file with a photo on the wall."
"I'm the failure. The agent who fell for the target. The cover that came back broken."
"I embarrassed them."
So they erase me. They take the name off the file. They take the file out of the cabinet. They take the cabinet out of the room.
I'm a pawn. I was always a pawn. The board doesn't keep dead pawns; it sweeps them off.
"Nez —"
She has her face in my shoulder. She is sobbing into me.
I stroke her hair. The way I used to when we were kids and our mother was on a double.
"Cami. Don't cry."
"Your sister is okay."
"Listen to me."
"You finish what we started. You make a good agent. The kind we both meant to be."
She cries harder.
I know what's running in her head. I took your case. I took your life. I took your guy.
She doesn't know.
It was never our case to take. We were both pawns. From day one. The kind they sweep off the board the second they need the square.