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“Where are you?” Vida said “We are in El Monte, just before the Peck Road on-ramp We need you here now”

“Thirty seconds,” a voice told her

Mo motorcycle pack that had passed her earlier suddenly poured off the expressway, their big Ninja and Hayabusa bikes raging and growling like starving grizzlies

They were the insurance plan, Jorge’s buddies, MS-13 s went to shit And, boy, had things gone to shit

Her soldiers, still under the overpass, dropped their guns and rushed forward and hopped onto the backs of the now-halted bikes Vida counted heads and waited until Jorge and everyone else was accounted for before she hopped onto the back of one of the Jap bikes herself

Then they all were accelerating, leaving the wreckage and dead Triuons and sirens behind as they roared out onto the expressway

That’s the way it’s done, Vida thought as they zipped down the shoulder, the hundred- at her short hair Stick and et out Manuel wouldn’t have done it any other way

Vida allowed herself a tiny shter into the driver He opened it up, and LA warped into long streaks of white lines and yellow light

CHAPTER 24

SIX HOURS LATER, COMING on two am, Vida Gomez was behind the front wheel of a new stolen SUV, a Toyota Land Cruiser that was parked in West Hollywood about three blocks south of the iconic HOLLYWOOD sign

No rest for the weary, she thought, listening to lass house up the scrubby hill from where they were parked

Keeping her eyes glued on the raucous Hollywood party, Vida took a sip from the stainless steel travel cup at her elbow Instead of coffee, the cup contained tejate, a traditional energy drink from her native Oaxaca Made from corn, cacao beans, mamey seeds, and rosita flowers, it was farfrom Starbucks

With the unflagging pace she was clocking, she needed the energy There’d been barely enough time for a shower and a hastily eaten dinner at the safe house in La Brea Now they were back at it, back out again on the street

They had one ht, one more hit, which was even more audacious than the last one, if that was possible The house just up the winding road belonged to none other than celebrity rapKilla” Leonard

Sobangers, but King Killa was actually the real deal In addition to being a celebrity, he was the leader of a Bloods contingent that ran eles area It was said that his influence even ran into the LAPD’s infa unit, where he had several officers on the payroll