Cristiano.
Even from a distance, he’d saved me. If it weren’t for my self-defense lessons, I wouldn’t be standing here. But where was he?
I need you to save yourself and come home to me, he’d told me once.
I was home. I’d saved myself.
Had he?
My breath stuttered.
“Cristiano is dead. You have nothing to fight for. Go to sleep.”
Taunting words as I’d been held down. No air. Barely enough hope to save myself. My throat constricted as ghost hands wrapped around it.
I made two fists, fighting back sobs that rose fast and overwhelming in my chest. Cristiano hadn’t sounded right on the phone earlier. He’d called my name as if in slow motion, from a distance. And there’d been a man in the background. What had he said?
My temples pounded as the back of my throat ached from holding in tears. We’d been talking . . . my heart rate quickening with an unfamiliar and scary kind of excitement.
Come back.
That was the important thing I’d been trying to find a way to tell him without betraying the person I’d been when I’d arrived here.
If I’d known those were his final moments, I would’ve just said it.
Come home.
I turned and leaned back against the door. One of the walls opposite me had been slid open to reveal shelving, like the inside of a large locker. Jaz passed Pilar a blanket and water, even as she held her gun close in her other hand. In a corner, a TV monitor flickered with security footage of the house. Not that there was much to see when it was deathly still and silent.
I opened my mouth to tell Jaz what had happened. Maybe I could connect the upstairs attack with what I’d heard on the phone with Cristiano. But Jaz’s words from earlier came back to me.
If he doesn’t make it back, you won’t make it out.
She’d warned me nobody in the Badlands would forgive Cristiano risking his life on my behalf. If Cristiano was in danger, I was in danger. Jaz had made herself clear not even hours ago.
It would be my fault if he didn’t make it home.
The cost of his life would be mine.
Pilar was suddenly in front of me, trying to get me to move away from the door. “You don’t look well.”
“She hit her head,” Jaz said, shifting brown, almond-shaped eyes to me. “Do you feel . . . ¿cómo se dice? How do you say in English? Sick to the stomach?”
“Nauseous.” Pilar twisted her dark hair on top of her head, secured it in a knot, and took my elbow. “You should lie down.”
“She should do anything but lie down,” Jaz said.
“Where’s everyone else?” I asked Jaz. Pilar tugged on my arm, but I stayed put. The pounding in my head could wait. “Where’s Alejandro?”
Jaz shook her head. “Fighting or dead.”
“You saw him?”
“No, but I know. Some cartel thinks it can come in and slaughter us, but nobody who enters will make it out alive. We can defend ourselves, and we will. They can’t know that every person in this home will fight to the death for what we’ve built.”
The Badlands wasn’t Cristiano’s town. It belonged to all of them. And apparently, I wasn’t the only one Cristiano had equipped to defend herself—and this place—in the event of his absence.
Pilar returned to the locker, searching the shelves. When the door beeped behind me, I moved, and Alejandro ushered in two women from the staff who ran into Jaz’s open arms.
I grabbed Alejandro’s elbow. “Have you heard from Cristiano?”
“I’ve been looking for you.” His eyes roamed my face as Jaz and the women talked over each other in Spanish. “What happened?”
“Have you heard from him?” I repeated loudly, and the bunker went silent.
Cristiano is dead.
This is the price.
Alejandro glanced at the ground. “I have to get back up there. Stay here until I come for you.”
“Max?” Jaz asked from across the room. “Daniel?”
Hearing the names of the two men who’d gone with Cristiano on his mission, Alejandro turned his face away. Grease smeared his cheek. “Nothing.”
My heart missed a beat as panic rose in me. “Nothing?” I asked.
“Nobody’s answering my calls.”
“Maybe they’re not able to,” Pilar said. “They could’ve put their phones down or gone to sleep—”
“They were attacked, too.” Alejandro sighed, clearly torn about whether to stay or go back up, and maybe even how much he should say. “And in an emergency like this—danger out in the field, an intruder or attack within the walls—we always check in within ten minutes. No matter what,” Alejandro said. “It’s a rule.”
The air around me constricted. My vision narrowed on a bloody smear on Alejandro’s green, long-sleeved shirt. I could still hear Cristiano’s deep, alive voice over the phone. His hard-earned laugh. His controlled, unnerving command for me to get down to the cellar when the sirens had sounded. There’d been no alarm on his end. Only my name. And the voice in the background.