Her hand wasn’t shaking. Her eyes were cold with hate. Pavón looked at her and saw his death, unless he could pull the trigger faster—
The door beside him opened again and another pistol jammed under his right ear. “Pavón, you pig,” said a soft voice so laden with menace that he nearly pissed himself with terror, because he knew whom the voice belonged to and he also knew beyond a doubt that he had fucked up beyond all chance of recovery. “You threaten my woman? That makes me very angry.”
Rip stood off to the side, shaking uncontrollably. When he’d returned to the car, he’d almost passed out at the sight of Milla holding one of the pistols to a man’s head, that man also holding a pistol pointed at her, and a second, dark, lethal-looking man standing in the open door also with a pistol to the man’s head. By Rip’s panicked count, that was three pistols and two threatened heads. Someone was going to die.
Things had then happened fast. The man in the front seat with Milla was disarmed, and Rip found himself in the backseat sitting beside that living, breathing weapon who simultaneously held one pistol to the back of Pavón’s head and another trained on Rip himself. He’d figured out that this was the infamous Diaz, and after seeing the man, he understood completely the rather gory reputation that followed him. He was absolutely the scariest person Rip had ever seen, and it wasn’t anything he said or did; it was just that aura of lethal competence. He himself had been speechless with fear at having that pistol pointed at him, but Milla had talked fast as she drove out of Juarez, following the stranger’s directions, telling him everything that Rip and Milla had discussed. At hearing that Rip was the anonymous informant who had brought them together, and everything he had to say about True Gallagher, Diaz shoved the pistol he’d been holding on Rip into a holster strapped to his leg like an honest-to-God gunslinger.
Now they were in the desert, far from the lights of Juarez and El Paso, and he was shaking not from the cold or from any lethal aura. He was shaking because he had watched Diaz at work with Pavón, and now he knew Diaz’s reputation was well-deserved, even understated.
Pavón was, quite literally, scared shitless. He was naked and staked out, spread-eagled, on the ground. At first he had cursed long and loud; then he had tried to bargain, and now he was simply begging. Diaz kept asking questions in that soft voice, and what Rip heard made him turn away and vomit. Pavón told it all, starting with the babies who were sold like so many cattle, how the smuggling ring had worked, Susanna’s role in it, the name of the woman in New Mexico who worked at the rural county courthouse and who had stolen blank birth certificates and falsified them. With birth certificates bearing new names, the babies had immediately become different people.
Pavón had told everything he knew about True Gallagher, and Rip shook with rage. Diaz, if anything, became even colder and his work with the knife more diabolical. The people who had been murdered for their internal organs that were sold for millions on the black market—Susanna was doing the organ removal, and Gallagher was getting rich. That was when Rip turned aside and vomited, shaken to the core by the knowledge that his wife was as cold a murderer as this disgusting thug staked to the ground and spewing out his filth.
When Diaz had asked all his questions, he stopped and wiped off his knife and slipped it into a sheath inside his boot. He stood looking down at the sniveling, sobbing mess at his feet, then pulled the pistol from his thigh holster.
Pavón began begging again.
Diaz reversed the pistol in his hand and extended it to Milla butt first. “Do you want to do it?” he asked with grave courtesy. “It’s your right.”
Milla stared at the pistol for a long moment, then slowly stretched out her hand to take it.
“Milla!” Rip said in shock. “This is murder!”
“No,” Diaz corrected, his tone going hard and giving Rip a searing look that told him to keep out of it. “What they do is murder. This is an execution.”
Milla looked down at Pavón, the weight of the pistol heavy in her hand. This was a larger caliber weapon than the ones she’d bought from Chela, guaranteed to do the job, which was probably why Diaz had given it to her. She had wanted Pavón dead for the past ten years, dreamed about killing him. She had dreamed about choking him to death with her bare hands. But she had always seen herself killing him in a rage, not in cool deliberation.
Pavón was going to die here tonight. It was a given. If she didn’t kill him, Diaz would. Because of what Pavón had done to her, Diaz was offering her retribution.
Slowly she lifted the pistol and aimed it. Pavón closed his eyes and flinched, waiting for a sound that he wouldn’t be alive to hear.
She didn’t pull the trigger, and her hand began to tremble from the weight.
Pavón opened his eyes and began to laugh. One way or another he would die here tonight, and he knew it. It made no difference to him who pulled the trigger, but if he had one last chance to torment her, he would take it. “You stupid whore,” he jeered, then coughed on his own blood. “You are too soft, too useless. Your stupid little boy was soft and useless, too, but the buyer wanted a pretty baby boy. He loved little boys. Do you understand, slut? Your baby was sold to a boy lover who wanted to raise his own little love slave. Your baby boy probably likes it by now; he likes getting it in his—”
Those last disgusting words were never said.
Diaz handled everything. He left Pavón’s body there to be found, his clothes and identification neatly folded and placed on the ground beside him, with a large rock on top to hold everything in place.