When caught up in battle your senses can compress so that you are operating in a narrow sphere of consciousness: the vision can become tunneled, the hearing a dull whoosh in the ears, touch and taste and smell can be relegated to some hidden corner of the mind. Other times quite the opposite can be true. I felt like a plucked guitar, I was buzzing so much. It was as though electricity played over my skin, prickling me like a static charge. Partly it was due to the endorphins flooding my system, but more than that it was because I felt that an end to everything that had happened the last few days was in the chamber at the end of the passageway.

Rickard was there—I felt it.

But so was whoever had hired him to destroy me.

Gritting my teeth, I moved forward.

The antiseptic smell hit me, but I paid it no mind. I continued along the passage, listening for my enemies and gauging their positions. Surprisingly, they spoke with lowered voices, as though in gentle conversation. I could make nothing of their words. But the tone and timbre of one voice gave me momentary pause.

I shook my head.

Couldn’t be.

But then I lunged into the room and found my worst fear come true.

It wasn’t for the fact that two men lay dead, their bodies riddled with bullets, or that Luke Rickard stood with a knife in his hand poised to strike his victim. The hospital-style bed, complete with medical accoutrements and electronic gauges, didn’t halt me in my tracks. It was because of who was in the bed.

The person Rickard had been getting his orders from, on whose behalf he’d murdered my old teammates and their families, and for whom he’d tried to kill Imogen Ballard, was the last person I expected.

Not Jesus Henao Abadia.

The person that Rickard stood poised to gut with his knife was Abadia’s mistress: Jimena Antonia Grajales.

Chapter 35

35

Rickard studied the woman lying in the hospital bed. She in turn stared back at him, and there was barely a trace of confusion at his appearance. Her taut mouth spoke only of anger and one eyelid trembled in an effort to hold it in.

“I guess that you weren’t expecting me?”

“No,” said the woman. “I wasn’t.”