She certainly wasn’t the type to panic. She had nerves of steel, that one. And the job she was doing for him was surely much easier than most of those she’d been tasked with in the past. Now it was set to get even simpler. All she had to do was cruise the streets on the bike and gun down any copper on the beat. Or she could fire directly into the windscreen of a patrol car. Or play safe and take aim from a distance using the sniper rifle. The Slayer was a true pro so the next few days were going to be a doddle for her.

He decided to send her a text to reassure her that he wasn’t about to pull the plug.

I’m still alive and kicking. Carry on the good work until you hear from me.

He thought about her while he waited for a response. The woman intrigued him. She had to be the hottest contract killer out there. The kind you see in the movies. In Mexico – a country filled with assassins – she must have outshone all the others.

Her boss, Carlos Cruz, had told him a few interesting things about her during their last phone conversation.

‘She’s an enigma even to us, my friend,’ he’d said. ‘Most of the guys in the cartel would love to fuck her, but unfortunately she prefers women to men. And that doesn’t surprise me because as a little girl she was badly abused by her adoptive father and his paedophile friends.’

Cruz also said that Rosa’s parents were murdered and she took revenge on the man who killed them.

‘Soon after that we became her family,’ he’d added. ‘She’s been a loyal member of the cartel since then, and our most accomplished sicaria. We’re all she has and all she needs. I can’t imagine her ever leaving the fold.’

It was 7.30pm when Rosa replied to his text. She didn’t bother with any pleasantries or even say that she was glad he was still alive.

She simply wrote: OK.

62

Laura

The taxi had dropped me off at home an hour ago and I was still here because I was having second thoughts. The enormity of what I was planning to do had hit me suddenly, like a harsh wake-up call that gives you a fright.

It didn’t help that I hadn’t really thought it through. I was being driven by an unbridled anger and a burning sense of injustice. The same emotional triggers that had caused Tony Marsden and three other police officers to put their careers – and their lives – at risk.

Did I have it in me to step over the line? To break the rules. It was a question I had never had to ask myself. But then I’d never faced a situation where the law was desperately failing the victims of a brutal murderer.