We’re landing.

I gain view of the red dirt surrounding the private airstrip, and my heart bangs around in my ribcage like a rattle. The wheels of the jet hit the ground, and Clark clears his throat, unclipping his seatbelt and walking to the cockpit.

He pushes the door open and says something to Travis. I look down at the pale agent. His lips are chapped, eyes sealed. He’s still breathing—just barely.

“Get up,” I tell him, but he doesn’t budge.

Clark comes toward me, looking down at the barely breathing DEA agent. “He’s worthless, Gia,” he mumbles. “He won’t make it off this plane. He’s lost way too much blood. ”

“We have to take our chances.” I tuck my gun behind my back, reaching down and grabbing his arm.” Help me get him up.”

“Before I do that, you have to agree to let Travis go back home.”

I frown up at him. “How?”

“We need to find him a way. We meet some of The Jefe’s men and see if they can torch and get rid of this jet, but we have to get him back. He did the job; he got us here. Now we have to let him go. My father will ask him questions, but he’ll do what you told him to do. He’ll say that you made him do it with a gun to our heads.” Clark shrugs. “Not like it isn’t the truth.”

My eyebrows pull together, gaze shifting over to Travis standing near the door of the cockpit. He’s already looking at me, lips pressed thin, eyes stretched as he drops his gaze to the barely breathing DEA agent.

“Fine,” I grumble. “But once we find him a way back, he’s on his own from there.”

“That’s fine.” Clark walks away, murmuring to Travis, whose automatic response is a sigh of relief. Clark digs in his bag nearby and hands Travis some money, clapping him on the shoulder before turning to come to me again.

After Clark and I strap on our bags, Clark picks up most of the agent’s weight. We struggle carrying him off the jet, Travis trying to help from the back, dragging the agent’s mass and our own luggage toward the barbwire gates.

Outside of the gate is a security booth, and from where we are, I can see a man standing in it, wearing all black. He sees us and immediately comes sprinting out of the booth, a handgun pointed our way. His eyes drop to the bloody agent, and he panics, coming to a halt and shouting for us to stop in Spanish.

When we don’t stop, he shouts even louder. He points his gun up in the air and shoots, trying to scare us off.

“Damn it. Wait here with him,” I grumble, slipping from beneath the agent’s arm. Clark grunts, cursing at the agent to stay steady as Travis rushes around to keep the balance.

I hold my hands in the air, marching ahead as the man continues shouting obscenities, demanding that I stop now before he shoots.

“You can’t shoot me!” I yell in Spanish.

“Why the fuck not?” He steadies the gun, aiming it at my head. “This is private property, and without a code and proper paperwork, you are not allowed to use this airstrip!”

“The Jefe!” I shout, and his eyes go round, gun still aimed.

“What about him?”

“I’m with The Jefe. You can’t shoot me. You shoot me or hurt any of them, and he’ll be pissed.”

The man’s bushy eyebrows dip beneath his black cap, his mouth a narrow line. “You’re lying! Anyone can say they’re with The Jefe to protect themselves! I let you get through, and it’s my head on a fucking platter!”

“Call his people—the ones who work most with you and this private strip! I know you have their numbers. Tell them La Patrona is here! They’ll understand!”

I glance back at Clark and Travis, who are now struggling with the agent. He’s a big man, probably both of their weights combined, and Clark may have been right. He won’t make it far. Not in his condition.

“Wait there!” the guard commands, stepping back slowly. He hustles to the booth, still glaring out the window. In seconds, he has a phone pressed to his hear, lips moving rapidly as he speaks.

I see his eyes get bigger as he stares at me and then, in no time, his mouth clamps shut, and he places the phone down. He steps back out again, this time without his gun aimed at me.

“La Patrona.” He rubs a hand over his face “His woman. I am so sorry.”

I ignore his apology. “What did they say?”

“They are on the way here, Patrona.”

“Who did you speak with?”

He shrugs. “I’m not sure. A man.”

I groan. He has many men working for him.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” the man asks hurriedly. “You can understand that I was just doing my job—protecting the strip. Doing what I’m paid to do.”

I step up to him. “I understand.” I glance back at Clark, Travis, and the agent. The agent’s head bobs and his knees buckle.

Shit. He’s done for.

Clark curses loudly, dropping his heavy body on the red dirt and then bending down, pressing two fingers on his upper neck to check his pulse.

“I told you, Gia!” Clark yells. “He’s fucking dead!”

I sigh, looking at the guard again. The guard looks perplexed and stunned, eyes a little wider now. “Do you speak English?” I ask.

“Yes,” he answers.

“Have any men who know how to make two dead bodies and a jet disappear?”

His lips smash together as he looks around me at the agent on the ground. “I know people, yes.”

“Then call them. Tell them we want the jet to be untraceable and for the bodies to never be found again. There is another body on the jet.”

“They’ll expect pay,” he says. By his tone alone, I know he’s not just talking about the men he’ll call who, I know, will expect to be paid. He wants to be compensated for this, too.

I sigh, taking my tote bag off my shoulder and slinging it around. Unzipping it, I snatch out a few rolls of the money I packed. “It’s $50,000. All I’ve got right now.” That’s a lie. I have more on me.

He bobs his head, taking the case. “It’s more than enough. Gracias, Patrona.”

“How quickly can you get it done?”

“I’ll make the call now. It won’t take long for them to get here. Maybe thirty minutes or so. Your people aren’t too far away. Close to the border, which is a little over forty-five minutes from here. You are welcome to wait inside the booth. It’s air-conditioned.”

“It’s fine. I’ll wait out here. Make the call to your people.”

He nods and turns, marching back to the booth and picking up his phone to call. I make my way back to Clark and Travis.

“We’ll get you out of here soon enough,” I tell Travis.

“What did that motherfucker say?” Clark asks, pointing at the booth. “And did I just see you give him money?”

“Yes, I gave him money to take care of the bodies and the jet. We have to cover our tracks and make sure nothing links back to your father. Right?”

He sighs. “We could have gotten him to handle that shit without pay. He knows the Jefe doesn’t fuck around.”

“The money means nothing to me. There’s more where it came from.” I look down at the agent, blowing a breath. Swiping a hand over my sticky forehead, I bend down and take the badge off his holster. I place my bag down next, taking off my leather jacket.

It takes about forty-five minutes for the guard’s “cleaners” to show up. They pull up in a brown vehicle, speak to him briefly, and then come right for us.

“This one of them?” one of them asks.

I nod.

He bends down, grabbing the agent by the ankles and dragging his body through the gate and toward the jet. Another man comes hustling after him, climbing on board first and tossing things out. Mostly papers and folders.

Once they have the agent’s body on the jet, they come back down, dusting their hands off and walking toward us. One of them hands me a paper. I look it over—Big Jack’s registration for the jet.

I hand it to Clark who folds it up and tucks it into his back pocket.

The man who dragged the agent’s body says, “We’ll fly the jet to an abandoned strip—not many know about it. If it is vacant, we’ll pour gasoline and burn it. Once we burn it, we’ll send the pieces to a dump to smash and compact them. Then,” he grins, like this truly excites him, “we’ll burn it again, just to be on the safe side.”

“All with the agents inside of it?”

“Oh, we were going to chop and burn them, but if you want us to just torch the bastards while they’re on board, we can do that too. Either way, you’ll never see them or that jet again.”

I bob my head. “I don’t care what you do with them. Just get it done please. Make it seem like they and the jet never existed.”

“You got it, Patrona.” They take off for the jet, climbing back on again and starting it up. As the engine of the jet warms up, I hear the crunch of tires over rocks and dirt, and when I look to my left, I see a white Chrysler driving toward us rapidly.

Clark snatches his gun out, holding it at his side as the vehicle swerves and parks sideways, blowing a gust of dirt in our direction.

When the car parks, it’s just my luck that Patanza bustles out of the car, brows stitched, pointing her gun at Clark, swaying it between him and Travis.

“Put your fucking gun down!” she roars in Spanish.

Clark scoffs. “What? I’m sorry! No hablo Español!”

“NOW!” She barks the order in English.

“Patanza! He’s with me!” I step in front of Clark. “You don’t need to shoot him—either of them!”

“Fuck that, Gia! No one told you to bring them! They know about you—about Jefe! He’s already a fucking liability, now get the fuck out of my way!”

I don’t budge. Instead, I pull my gun from behind me and point it at her. Emilio steps out from the driver’s side, his hands at his waist, like he’s exasperated from the ordeal already.

“He cannot come with us, Patrona. The Jefe won’t like it,” Emilio says to me in Spanish.

“I don’t care. He’s my cousin. He comes with me.”

Patanza paces forward, raging. “What if I shoot you, huh? He doesn’t give a shit about you anymore, Gia! You never should have come back! You’re the last thing on his mind!”

“I don’t believe you.” I steady my gun, the anger seeping to my fingertips, ready to pull the trigger. I can’t shoot her—won’t shoot her. She’s like family to him, but she doesn’t know that I won’t shoot. She thinks I’m a threat to them both now—that I’ll do anything to stay alive. And maybe I will. “Take us to him.”

Emilio sighs again. “You know we can’t do that, Patrona.”

“Yes, you can. This is not a request. It’s a demand. I need to see him. Immediately.”

Emilio shifts on his feet, head shaking. Patanza keeps her gun pointed my way, mostly trying to get at Clark.

Emilio murmurs something to Patanza, and she glances over at him, grimacing. Finally, after several expletives, she lowers the gun, and Emilio pulls out a burner phone, turning his back to us and walking a short distance away to make a call.

Strapping the gun around her, Patanza storms toward me, getting in my face. “If you do anything stupid, I will end you myself, Gia, and I mean it. Don’t fuck with me right now,” she growls through clenched teeth.

I challenge her stare, narrowing my eyes. “I’m here for Draco. That’s it. Don’t hurt me, and I won’t hurt you.”

Her nostrils flare and then her gaze shifts over to Travis. “Who the fuck is he?”

“My uncle’s pilot. He flew us here.”

“He can’t come with us to Jefe’s territory,” she spits out.

“We know. We’ll find a way for him to catch a ride home. You won’t have to worry about him.”

Her eyes finally shift over to Clark, who has a smirk on his lips. “What the fuck are you looking at?” she snaps.

“Never seen a woman so aggressive,” he chuckles. “Or that good with a gun. Makes me wonder what else those hands can do.”

“Fuck off.” She turns her back to him, walking to Emilio, who wraps up on his call and then turns with a loud, tired-sounding breath.

“All right, Patrona. Get in the car,” he says.

“What?” Patanza steps in front of him, her back still to us. “Is he sure about this? We don’t even know the men she’s with! For all we know they’re trying to turn him in! We can’t take her to him!”

“The Patrona I know would never do that,” Emilio responds. “He may be angry with her, Patanza, but even I know she would never do that. When I described the dark-haired one, it’s like he knew exactly who I was talking about. He’s a Nicotera.”

She huffs, turning back around and looking Clark and Travis over. “Whatever. But we’re taking the guns.” She comes to us again, demanding them.

I don’t hand mine over. She challenges it, holding her hand out, eyes furious. I keep mine gripped in hand.

“Perra estupida,” she spits.

Clark willingly hands his guns over, winking at her in the process. He’s getting under her skin, something he knows how to do to anyone all to well.

“Your bag, too,” she demands. He hands it to her and she takes it, heading for the trunk of the car and opening it. She tosses the bag inside and then puts the safety on the guns before putting them in too.

She comes back and pats Clark and Travis down, then orders us to get in the backseat.

I lead the way, letting Travis in first. I climb in next and Clark follows, slamming the door behind him. After Emilio talks to the guard in the booth, he and Patanza hop in the front and buckle in, leaving the private airstrip immediately.

“What makes you think I can’t just take one of Gia’s guns and shoot you both in the back of the head?” Clark asks, like he’s truly curious.

“I fucking dare you to try it,” Patanza grits through her teeth, glaring back at him.

“Clark, please just shut the fuck up,” I mutter, shaking my head.

He laughs. “It was just a question. Are we not allowed to ask questions around here now? I know it’s not a free country, but damn.”

I sigh.

Patanza’s jaw flexes.

“Either of you got a cig?” he inquires, and they both look at each other before focusing on the dirt road again and deciding to ignore him.

“Mexicans,” he mumbles, laughing to himself and staring out the window. “Always gotta be so fucking serious.”