On the Loose by Tara Janzen

loved her. It was a definite yes.
    â€œSo how you doing, boss?”
    â€œBleeding, but not bleeding out.” Not in this rat-infested alley, not in this flea-bitten town, not today. He’d gotten trimmed, that was all, a round catching him across the meaty part of his right thigh during their great escape from a lunchtime drug deal gone bad. The wound burned, but somehow not quite as badly as his brain.
    Yeah, his brain was on fucking fire. Some two-bit
chingaletos
had jacked the cocaine shipment he’d been delivering to Exaltación’s number-one drug lord, a player named Ray Gonzalez. They’d stolen the damn shit right out from under him and then come after him for good measure—and baby, this week, on this deal, that was a death warrant. Nobody screwed with Alejandro Campos’s cocaine deals except Alejandro Campos.
    Christ,
the drug trade was so damned complicated these days. Too many players, too much blow, too many people with their fingers in the cocaine pie, and too many people fucking up.
    The next ignition wire he tapped against the two he’d already twisted together gave him a spark—
hot damn.
The motor groaned, and whined, and finally turned over.
    It was the most pitiful excuse for a getaway, and a getaway car, he’d ever been involved with—he just hoped like hell that it worked. They were a hundred miles out of Barranquilla, and if he didn’t get Jewel home in one piece, what’s-his-name would probably write some really crappy poem about him and have it published in some really crappy academic journal.
    A poet. She’d left him for a fucking poet.
    Jesus.
Women.
    He levered himself up into the driver’s seat and ignored the fact that he was sitting in a pool of his own blood. It was only a small pool, little more than a wet smear now that most of what he’d lost had soaked into the upholstery. Yes, sir, turning his favorite silk tie into a pressure bandage had been a brilliant idea.
    The car sputtered when he gave it a little gas, and he swore under his breath. “Come on, you inbred piece of shit. Don’t quit on me now.”
    Exaltación, Colombia, wasn’t that damn big, not so big that Gonzalez shouldn’t have better goddamn control of the streets, and not so big that it should have been such a goddamn big deal to get the fuck out of it.
    But he and Jewel were sucking air.
    He tried the gas again, and when the motor kept running, he jerked the car into gear.
    â€œBuckle up, baby, and reload.”
    â€œBuckle up?” She let out a short laugh and slammed a fresh magazine into her .45-caliber Colt. “We don’t have a driver’s side door, a back window, or half the dashboard, and you want me to buckle up? Christ, boss. I’m lucky to have a damn seat.” She grinned. “Buckle up. God, Campos, you were always good for a laugh.”
    And that was probably the last damn thing a guy wanted to hear, any guy. It was only one step above the utterly demoralizing “You’re finished? Already?” Which, admittedly, was a couple of dozen steps above “What’s the problem? Don’t you like me?”
    And yes, he’d been
there
a couple of times.
Dammit.
    Once with her—but no guy got left because of an “equipment malfunction,” not when a woman loved him.
    So, yeah, that’s probably how it had been, with him being in love and her being in something else, like in it for the thrill of the game, because baby, the thrills in the game they played were razor sharp.
    â€œWe have to stop meeting like this, boss.”
    Yeah, yeah, he knew it.
    â€œI mean it, Campos. It’s time for you to jump ship, cash in your chips, and say
hasta la vista.
”
    No, it wasn’t. He’d know when it was time.
    â€œBut you won’t,” she said.
    Christ.
Was she reading his mind? He hated it when she read his mind.
    He glanced over at her: “Jewel”—Joya Molara