Missing in Action

Tommaso

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I stared down at Zahur’s cackling guard as goosebumps raced across my body. Fucking Mostafa. That two-faced piece of shit had to have ratted on me. He fed Stan, fed all of us, bullshit. And I had fallen right into his goddamn trap. Zahur wasn’t here; Zahur was never going to be here. I had to pretend for everybody else’s sake that I wasn’t the cocky jackass I’d been accusing Zahur of being all along.

I shot the guard on the ground just to watch his brains splatter. “Spread out. See if he’s right.”

I turned and raced down a hallway I was mostly sure I hadn’t seen before. The fighting, the gunfire melted to the back of my brain. If he wasn’t here, where the fuck was he? We’d told Mostafa about the house we rented for staging, but the piece of shit didn’t know about the hotel. I’d been very clear not to tell him that. Right?

Bullets thudded into the wall next to me. I swerved into the nearest room. The pain in my shoulder seemed to be growing, blurring my vision