El's breath was coming in short gasps, and a stitch in his side was a sharp ache over his ribs. The night air was warm, and he could feel sweat soaking through his shirt.

'Dios mio,' he reflected wryly, trying to keep Marisa in sight, 'I am getting too old for this.'

He mentally took inventory as he ran; he had his handgun, two spare clips of ammunition, and a throwing knife tucked into the top of his left boot. Not much to work with.

Ahead of him, Marisa ran lightly, her feet making almost no sound as they came down at the end of each long stride. She never once looked back, but he had the strong impression that she knew exactly where he was. Her flight was no longer a panicked sprint; she had found her rhythm and now she was in control, leading him on a chase through the darkness.

El wondered where his chase would end.

She turned onto yet another darkened street, dodging between a few parked cars, and El followed, his breath burning in his lungs.

All at once she stumbled and fell heavily, sprawling in the dirt. El slowed to a jog, bringing his gun to bear on her. She turned slowly over onto her back to face him, panting and disheveled.

"Don't try and run again," he advised her shortly, still breathing heavily from his prolonged sprint.

She shook her head mutely, her eyes wide with terror.

El suppressed a snort of disgust with difficulty. This was the great Marisa, leader of the Barillo cartel?

"Where were you taking Sands?" he asked, meeting her frightened eyes with his own unreadable gaze.

She flinched as he took another step toward her and murmured, "He owes us. He owes me. I wanted to make him pay."

A car door slammed in the distance, making her flinch again. El's gaze hardened, his expression showing his distaste at last. "You think his death will bring your father or your sister back?" he demanded quietly. "Because it won't. Death can never bring life back. Death is final."

She muttered something inaudible.

"Como?" he said softly, dangerously.

"I said," she informed him quietly, "**** you." The terror vanished from her face as she sprang to her feet and yanked out her own gun, lunging sideways into the cover of a parked car with almost supernatural speed. She opened fire with lethal accuracy, forcing him to dodge sideways out of her line of fire without getting a shot off at her.

Running footsteps behind him heralded the arrival of a score of men, all of them in black, all carrying guns. El spun to face them, allowing a small smile to touch his lips. If it was an ambush they wanted, he was more than game for it.

Legs braced in a shooter's stance, he opened fire, catching the lead man in the chest with his first shot, and the second in the face as his comrade fell, the others stumbling over the bodies as they spread out, diving for cover between the parked cars.

El picked off three more as they leaned out from cover to shoot at him with everything from handguns to rifles. Diving and rolling, he let the empty clip fall to the ground as he slid a new one in and locked it in place. The cartel members were shouting to each other, bullets were zipping through the air, and El Mariachi was in his element.

Leaping to his feet, he took out eleven more cartel gunmen in rapid succession, shifting position to bring them into his line of fire. The remaining five had formed a protective circle around Marisa's position.

El scowled. Marisa was the one he wanted, not these faceless cartel lackeys. She was the key; the last Barillo. El refused to think of Estrella as a Barillo; she hated them, there was no reason to include her in that wretched group. Without Marisa, the cartel would collapse, or perhaps be taken over by a stronger, more opportunistic group. Either way, it would be the end of the cartel that had so nearly ended all three of their lives.

One of the five went down, his arm nearly blown off by one of El's shots. The other four shifted position again, covering the hole in their defenses left by their fallen compatriot, but not quickly enough. El lunged at them, taking three more down, spinning to avoid the hail of return fire the remaining cartel member sent his way.

He could see the fear in the man's eyes as he leveled his gun at his skull. He'd seen that look before, in the eyes of criminals whose time has quite suddenly and unexpectedly come. El felt no pity, only contempt. This creature and his kind were responsible for so much death and destruction in his country; he would gladly kill all of them.

This man would die, and then so would Marisa.

He pulled the trigger-

And without any warning whatsoever, the whole situation went straight to hell.

His gun gave a hollow click; out of bullets. Snarling a curse, El fell back as the cartel member sprang lightly to his feet and charged straight at him. El flung the empty gun at the man's head, dove, rolled, and drew the knife from its hiding-place in his boot. A gunshot echoed down the street, coming from behind him, and a line of fire tore across his scalp.

Blood began running into his eyes, and he swiped at it with his free hand, keeping the knife between himself and his opponent while trying to see who had shot at him.

Abruptly, he got it. The position those five men had been covering, had given their lives to protect- there was no one there.

Marisa had slipped out of the trap somehow, and unless El did something about it very soon, she was going to kill him.

'Focus, Mariachi!' he told himself, forcing himself to return his attention to the cartel member who was circling slowly, a knife in his hand also. Carolina had often said just that when she taught him to knife- fight. Of course, it didn't really matter if he was focused or not when they used to spar; she'd always cut him to ribbons either way.

The cartel member held his knife blade-downwards as though to stab, but with the sharp edge outward. Clearly he had training, and that made El wary. Still, even experts occasionally made mistakes, if the circumstances were right, and El had a fair idea of how to create those circumstances.

He lunged at his opponent, making the man skip nimbly back, then deliberately stumbled, and made a very unprofessional pause to swipe again at the blood in his eyes. Sure enough, the man took the bait, and closed for the kill.

He seemed rather surprised, overall, to look down and see El's knife sunk to the hilt in his chest. Then his eyes misted over and he fell.

El was turning to face Marisa when he heard the shot. He completed his turn, and paused. She was standing not ten feet away, holding a gun that was still smoking ever so slightly. He looked down.

Red was spreading from neat button-sized hole in his midriff.

Then the pain hit, and drove him to his knees. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think. He had been shot many times before, but never like this. This time, there was no fire of vengeance or retribution to keep him alive against the odds.

He was barely conscious when he felt someone dragging him to his feet. That same someone was half-carrying, half-dragging him to... somewhere. Throwing him roughly down on... the back seat of a car... wrapping something tightly around his body, slowing the flow of blood... the sound of an engine starting... Marisa's voice... "You'll live... maybe... doesn't matter... will come... for you."

Her voice was growing more distant with each moment, but El didn't care. He could have been wrong, but as blackness took him he thought he saw Carolina and his little girl, beckoning him to join them.

*****

Sands was just getting shakily to his feet, holding tightly onto Estrella's arm, when the sound of gunshots reached them. Lots of gunshots.

Sands smiled tightly and commented, "Sounds like El's got quite the party going on. What say we head over and crash it, hmm?"

*****

The shooting had been stopped for several minutes by the time they reached the site of El's battle against the cartel. Leaving Sands leaning against a parked car, Estrella searched the street, finding nineteen dead men, and one was very close to death indeed.

He was lying near the curb in a pool of blackish blood, his right arm nearly blown away from his body. Estrella would have thought he was dead, but as she passed him he moaned a little and shifted feebly.

Estrella was at his side in an instant. "You are cartel?" she demanded without preamble, her voice callous and cold. "What happened here?"

The man coughed and whispered, "Ambush... Marisa Barillo set it up... we were... supposed to take one of you alive..."

Estrella snorted. "It didn't work, though, did it? Where's Marisa?"

"Gone," the man whispered. "She took... that crazy Mariachi... and drove off... in the car we brought..." His voice was almost inaudible now. "I think she shot him up real bad..."

Estrella swore under her breath at him as the man's face went slack in death.

Getting to her feet, she considered for a moment, then shrugged. There was nothing she could do for El at the moment, and besides, she had an appointment to keep the next morning.

Sands demanded to know what she had found out, and Estrella told him, her voice cool and matter-of-fact.

"You aren't planning on going after him?" the blind agent demanded incredulously. "A good friend of yours is badly wounded and in the hands of people who will do unspeakable things to him, and you aren't going after him?" He paused, and then said, "Forgive me if I'm being dense, but why the hell not?"

Estrella shrugged, even though he couldn't see it anyway, and replied easily, "I hear developing a conscience this late in life can be detrimental to one's health."

She hadn't been aware, up until that point, that a man with no eyes could glare, but Sands did so with admirable intensity.

"We have an appointment to keep tomorrow," she reminded him. "A rescue just doesn't fit my schedule at the moment."

Sands shook his head, muttering, "A schedule. Right. How could I forget?"