by Pam Godwin
The cars sat where expected. Stillness stretched to the horizon. Too dark. He couldn’t see shit from this position. He would have to go out there to investigate.
He slipped into the kitchen on silent feet and grabbed the largest knife from the butcher block. Then he headed to the hall and made a beeline to Boones’ room.
The door stood ajar. He stepped in.
The faint sound of snoring drifted from the bed, but it wasn’t enough to calm his nerves. He needed to see Boones alive and free from harm.
He approached the bed and crouched beside it, straining his eyes in the dark until he could make out sheared gray hair, black skin over sharp bones, and the rise and fall of a scarred chest.
He exhaled a sigh of relief.
The snoring stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Boones asked in his native tongue.
He lowered the butcher knife out of view. His scalp tingled, his senses telling him a tendril of unrest was creeping toward the house.
Or, most likely, it was just his overactive paranoia taking shape in imaginary noises.
“Just checking on you.” He rested a hand over the welts on Boones’ sternum, finding sanctuary in the thumps of a strong heartbeat. “If you die in your sleep, I’ll have to find someone else to make breakfast in the morning.”
“I spit in your eggs.” Boones smacked him away, a smile in his voice. “Shut the door on your way out.”
He did more than that. As he slipped into the hall, he turned the handle and engaged the lock from the inside without sounding the click and worrying Boones.
A hard kick would break the door, but it would take an extra second or two to bust in.
In the front room, he returned to the gap in the window. Outside, the landscape was a black tarp of empty silence.
Nothing moved. No guards in sight, which meant they were stationed where they were supposed to be, spread out around the property, watching the perimeter from every angle.
Still, he couldn’t shake the tingling along his nape. His senses hummed on high-alert, the hilt of the knife hot in his hand.
He prowled through the front room, listening, waiting, second-guessing the foreboding feeling in his gut.
“Jefe?”
He turned toward the sound of Arturo’s gruff voice and squinted at the silhouette sitting on the mattress. “Who’s on watch right now?”
“Blueballs, Iliana, and Samuel.” Arturo rose to his feet and said in Spanish, “Or maybe it’s Alonso, not Iliana. I don’t know. They switched up the schedule last night.” A pause. “Juan was in here when I dozed off.”
Alarm spiked his heart rate, hardening his body into battle mode.
“The guys rarely sleep in here.” Arturo scratched his whiskers, wearing only a pair of boxers. “The desert is making them restless.”
Tiago strode into the kitchen and removed all the bottom drawers in the cabinets. Behind each one waited a stash of weaponry and ammo. He grabbed a .40 cal pistol, two loaded magazines, and glanced down at his pants.
No pockets. No shoes. No shirt. He wasn’t dressed for combat.
Tension stifled the muggy room as he loaded the magazine in the gun and set the extra one aside. Then he grabbed the knife, both hands armed.
Silence buzzed in his ears, a haze of muted light shining down from the ceiling. His skin itched, sticky with sweat, his pulse thick in his throat.
“What is it?” Arturo approached, zipping up the fly of his jeans. Eyes wide and alert, he loaded his own weapon. “You hear something?”
“Not sure. I’m going to take a walk outside. I need you to stay here with—”
The boom of gunfire sounded in the distance.
He froze, blinked, and in a blur of sharpness, he sped in the direction of the stairs.
Except Boones was down the hall.
His footsteps faltered, skidded.
Kate or Boones.
Kate or Boones.
Indecision cost him half a second.
He swung toward Arturo, pointing the knife. “Go to Boones. No matter what happens to me, you’ll protect him with your life. Don’t let him out, and do not leave his door. Swear to God, Arturo, if any harm comes to him, I will haunt you long after I’m dead.”
The hard edge of his voice sent Arturo running toward the hall, carrying an armful of artillery.
He swiveled back toward the stairs.
Kate.
Flying into a sprint, he made it halfway through the front room before the windows exploded in a shower of glass and lead.
He shielded his face with an arm and ran into the shrapnel, hunching low to avoid a wayward bullet.
The front door crashed open, followed by a stampede of boots. Then the rapid firing of popped rounds and ear-splitting, disorientating chaos.
His military training kicked in, revving his pulse, sharpening his awareness, and focusing his mind on one objective.
Kill.
The Glock in his hand held fifteen rounds, and he used every bullet to clear a path to the stairs. When the pistol clicked empty, he whipped it across the face of the nearest intruder and threw it at the head of the next one.
Down to the knife, he slashed it along a heavily muscled arm. The man’s firearm dropped out of reach. Tiago slashed low and opened the man’s gut.
Five intruders left. Two swept up the stairs.
Kate.
Fury flogged him, but he couldn’t chase them. Three men were already on him, punching, kicking, and swinging knives.
He tackled the only one with a gun, gripping the man’s arm and guiding the automatic weapon as the fucker squeezed the trigger.
The spray of bullets went wild, punching a zigzagged line along the floor, up the front wall, and taking out one of his own guys.
He swept the man’s legs out and wrestled him to the ground.
Gunfire sounded from the direction of Boones’ room, ramping his pulse to a dangerous level, distracting him.
An elbow slammed into the back of his head. He coughed a pained grunt and lost his balance.
Adrenaline flooded his veins as he rolled, swept the blade wide, and cut a deep gash across the man’s chest. Hardened eyes rounded in shock then tapered with the drive to kill.
With a grunt, Tiago flipped to his feet and spun as another guy jumped on his back. A backward stab with the blade relieved him of the threat behind him.
He rammed his forearm against the throat of one in front, pinning him against the wall.
Footsteps erupted on the stairs, descending at a run.
He swiveled his neck and marked two men making an escape from the second floor.
One of them carried Kate, her unconscious body dangling over a bulky shoulder, blood dripping from her face.
Heat smothered his brain and blinded his vision.
She’d put up a fight and received a knockout punch for the effort, which meant this wasn’t a rescue attempt. It was a kidnapping, and he knew exactly how it would play out.
Her chance of survival was nil.
Rage detonated in his chest and hit the air in a blistering roar. He seethed, breaths shaking, teeth cutting the insides of his cheeks.
With a surge of strength, he pushed harder against the throat beneath his arm. Holding the knife in his other hand, he buried it in the man’s skull, pushed it in to the hilt, and yanked it free.
The body dropped, and he launched for the stairs. Until someone slammed into him from behind.
The wind evacuated his lungs as he collided with the floor, his shirtless chest skidding through shards of glass beneath the weight of the man on his back.
He trained his eyes on the front door, where those dead motherfuckers had just carried out his whole fucking world.
They knew it, too. They knew exactly what she meant to him, because one of his own goddamn guards had tipped them off.
Someone had told them to head straight for the stairs.
An arm hooked around his neck from behind, the heavy drive of a knee agains
t his spine. He shoved his upper body into a push-up, dug in his toes, and dove into a somersault. The man lost his grip and came up swinging.
Fists flew. Elbows. Shins. Bone-crunching smacks. Tiago wouldn’t feel the pain from those hits until later. Right now, all he felt was pure, raw aggression, scorching his blood and driving him forward, toward her.
If he didn’t get her back, he would burn the whole fucking country to the ground.
Venom seared through him, powering his punches, propelling each strike harder, faster, spraying blood, breaking teeth, bone, and cartilage, until the man slumped to the floor.
Legs quaking, heart thrashing, he grabbed a pistol off a dead body and bolted out the door and into the night.
At the end of the drive, taillights glowed red in the blackness. They already had her in the van. Already driving away.
Bullet holes littered his cars. Tires deflated. Hoods ablaze with fire.
He was too late.
Grief tried to suck him into the earth, but he pushed forward, throwing himself into a burning sprint.
Serrated air sawed in and out of his lungs. He pumped his legs and leveled the gun on the van’s tires. Fired. Missed.
As he emptied the magazine, the van sped away, vanishing into the darkness.
He careened to a stop, braced swollen, bloody hands on his knees, and attempted to stymie the insufferable pain closing around his heart. If he let in the anguish, it would kill him.
This wasn’t over.
He couldn’t fail her.
Her captors would contact him, before or after they killed her. It depended on who they were and what they wanted. He had an hour at most to organize an attack.
First, he needed to find out where the fuck they were taking her.
Spinning, he raced back to the house as his mind pored over what he knew and everything that had just gone down. He recalled faces, accents, weapons, and fighting styles.
They were Mexican cartel.
When he burst through the front door, he barreled into Boones.
“What are you doing out of your room?” He ran his hands over Boones’ shirtless torso, front to back, shoulders, legs, his frenzied search fueled by fear.
“Calm down.” Boones gripped Tiago’s arms, hindering his hunt for injuries. “I’m fine. Not a scratch.”
His hands shook as he stepped back and locked onto Arturo’s eyes behind Boones. “Search the property for survivors and bring the old truck around from the back. We’re going to need it.”
“Si, Jefe.” Arturo headed toward the door with a rifle.
“Arturo.” He waited for eye contact, trying his damnedest not to fall apart in front of his guard. “Thank you for keeping Boones safe.”
With a stiff nod, Arturo lumbered out the door.
“We need information.” He combed the room littered with dead bodies and found one breathing.
The man lay on his back, his face and stomach soaked in blood as wet gurgling sounds wheezed from his mouth.
Boones stared down at the injured man and ambled toward the kitchen. “I’ll get the sharpest knife.”
Twenty minutes later, every inch of skin had been flayed from the squealer’s chest. He didn’t survive the torture, but Tiago now had a location and an identity.
The orchestrator of the attack was the comandante of a Mexican cartel. Hungry for money and power, they operated without borders, trafficking worldwide in drugs, prostitution, stolen cars, and contract murders. But it wasn’t enough for them.
The comandante wanted Tiago’s gun smuggling routes. Tiago had refused every offer and negotiation over the past couple of years, and thus, infuriated the ruthless, brutal man.
A man who now had Kate in his custody.
Tiago rose to his feet and stared down at the gore he’d strewn across the floor. Boiling rage lined his insides and scalded his throat, the taste of death coating his tongue.
During the skin-flaying session, Arturo had returned carrying Blueballs, the only survivor. The tattoo-eyed guard had been shot in the stomach and lived long enough to explain that he, Samuel, and Alonso were on the night shift.
Iliana and Juan had wandered off to fuck when the attackers arrived on foot. While Tiago’s guards were picked off one by one, a van showed up. The occupants captured Iliana as she tried to race back to the house.
The same van that had taken Kate.
Blueballs had managed to wheeze out every detail while Boones worked tirelessly to save his life. When he died, Tiago knew Blueballs hadn’t betrayed him.
Another concern was Tate, but a check on the video footage of the shack verified Kate’s friend hadn’t been touched.
The cartel had known exactly who to target. They knew Kate’s capture and ultimate death would hit the deepest, most vulnerable part of Tiago.
There would be no negotiations.
The comandante would make contact in the form of body parts. Proof of Kate’s death.
Normal behavior for a violent, power-hungry criminal group.
“You’ll get her back.” Boones cleaned away the blood from Tiago’s trembling hands and shoved a clean shirt against his chest.
Tiago looked at him and Arturo, the only two left standing.
They seemed nervous amid the storm whipping off him, as if waiting for him to pull his shit together, anxious for a plan.
“Right. Okay. This is what we’ll do.” He outlined a strategy, called in fifty of his best men in Caracas, and sent them to a small town a couple of hours away, where Kate would be held.
Then he strapped on as many weapons as he could carry and rose out of hiding.
CHAPTER 21
Taken.
Again.
Kate might’ve laughed at her absurd misfortune if she weren’t so fucking terrified.
Handcuffs shackled her arms behind her, and the hood over her head confined her within a black, sightless world.
Sweat coated her skin, made worse by the chills that came in feverish waves. She licked her cracked lips, tasting blood. Probably from the fist that had knocked her out in Tiago’s room.
Where was she? Who had taken her? What happened to Tiago?
She’d woken in the back of a moving vehicle. It had traveled another hour or so before stopping here.
Here was some kind of city, an urban area. She couldn’t see through the hood, but she smelled the asphalt, felt the heat of it beneath her bare feet. The sounds of motor traffic rumbled nearby, as well as in the distance.
Men surrounded her, marching along in heavy boots, their deep voices firing words in Spanish.
Her insides buckled to the point of nausea. Her lungs couldn’t gather enough air.
The cold metal of guns prodded at her from both sides. When her toes caught on a curb or a crack, someone pushed her from behind.
After a few minutes, the crumbly concrete underfoot smoothed into polished cement, and the scuffing of boots echoed off walls that closed in around her.
She’d just entered a building.
Ushered forward by barking shouts and urgent hands, she was forced into a jog. She imagined a winding hallway with countless turns and stairs going up and down.
With her hands fettered behind her, it fucked with her balance. The whole thing was a stumbling, falling, slipping all-out run to some unknown destination.
Eventually, calloused fingers yanked her to a halt.
More voices. The same ones, new ones, all yelling in Spanish. The scent of motor oil and gasoline permeated the hood, tickling her nose.
“Who are you guys?” She spun around, blind and winded. “Where am I?”
A hand caught her neck, squeezing her airway, strangling. Hot breath saturated the outside of the hood, seeping through the material and heating her face.
Her mouth gulped for oxygen. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t escape the choking grip.
He held her there, waited as the very end of her life crashed toward her in a chest-squeezing, lonely, black wave of nothingness.
She would die alone.
The collar of fingers released her with a vicious shove that sent her careening across the floor on her back. Boots shuffled out of her way. One of them kicked her into a corner.
She pressed herself there, curling into a ball, gasping for life, and swallowing silent tears.
Time passed in frantic heartbeats. Her pulse hammered for an hour. Maybe two.
The cement floor grew unbearably hard beneath her butt, grinding against her bones. Her legs bare, her body covered in only a shirt, she was overly exposed and unarmed. But still alive.
Not once did she let herself consider the possibility Tiago was dead. He was too untouchable, too impervious. Too goddamn mean to die.
He would hunt her down. Find her. Hopefully, before it was too late.
Footsteps came and went. Others scuffed around her, lingering, guarding. The men never shut up, their voices charged with energy, fear, excitement.
Then she heard a word she recognized.
Comandante.
A horrible feeling overtook her, running chills down her spine. She was already in the worst situation she could imagine. But hearing the mention of a comandante, she knew this was either a rebel group or a cartel.
She wouldn’t escape this alive.
That suspicion solidified when another set of boots entered the room and paused before her.
The hood lifted, and florescent lighting blinded her eyes. She blinked through the brightness as the cold press of steel caught her beneath the chin.
Her heart stopped.
Holy fucking goddamn, that was a huge fucking knife.
The man holding it crouched before her. Black hair and a mustache, pockmarked cheeks, and soulless eyes, he smelled of cigarettes and torture.
She scanned the surrounding shelves that lined the wall, taking in stacks of machinery, tools, a random tire, and things made of steel. A supply room full of automotive parts? A mechanic shop, maybe.
Nothing within reach to slam into his face. Not that she could with her arms handcuffed at her back.
Another man stood beside her and gathered a fistful of hair on her crown, pulling, elongating her neck.
And she knew.
They were going to cut off her head.
