Then the wrists. The fingers. One by one, I turned the man into a collection of broken parts.
I'm going to make all of them pay, I thought, the rhythm of the hammer providing a steady beat to the mantra. Every person who was there. Every person who helped. Every person who took him from me.
By the time I was finished, Lopez was barely a man. He was breathing, but he would never walk again. He would never hold a weapon again. He was a living ghost, a message waiting to be delivered.
"Bundle him up," I said, wiping a stray drop of blood from my cheek with a silk handkerchief. "We are going to give our next target a little heads up."
I walked out of the processing plant without looking back.
The drive back to Seville was long and cold. I sat in the backseat, the city lights blurring into streaks of neon as we sped down the highway.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out, expecting a report from Lake.
