The Complete Truth Duet

by Martinez, Aly

  He blinked, turned in his seat, put the car back into gear, and hit the gas. “Nope.”

  I watched him closely as he weaved through traffic. He wasn’t driving fast or overly aggressive, but the muscles in his arms flexed like he was trying to rip the wheel off the steering column.

  By the time he opened the door to our hotel room, he’d relaxed a good bit. I, on the other hand, was a mess. One look around that empty room and I wanted to fall apart all over again. Thanks to the Guerreros, I had missed years of River growing up. But ever since Manuel had gotten locked away, she hadn’t spent a single night away from me.

  Now, I didn’t even know where she was.

  Her clothes were strewn haphazardly in what was supposed to be a pile in the corner, and her phone was still charging on the nightstand.

  Never had my chest felt emptier.

  But crying wasn’t going to get my daughter back.

  Drew was right: I wasn’t a quitter, no matter how appealing the idea sounded sometimes.

  I had no doubt River would call me the first chance she got. She was smart, and as much as I’d hated all the shit she’d had to deal with in her thirteen years, it gave me comfort that she knew how to handle herself in any situation.

  I had a week before the court date. I needed to get in touch with Catalina and figure out our next move. I couldn’t live like that. I’d just gotten rid of two problems without adding Thomas Lyons to my list. Even if that meant finding River and taking off the same way Catalina had done all those years earlier. Once I got the rest of the girls from the building taken care of, I didn’t have much of a reason to stay anymore.

  The building was gone.

  Penn too.

  And, while I did care about Drew, it wasn’t like he was going to spend the rest of his life beside me on the bed. Nor did I want him to. However, I was weak enough to let him stay until I got River back.

  But what would happen after that? I’d always be looking over my shoulder. Holding my breath. Waiting for the day Thomas or one of his henchmen in blue found us.

  It hadn’t even been two weeks since Marcos and Dante died. But there was something inherently addictive about not having to monitor your every move.

  I didn’t think before I spoke.

  I cried without fear of it being used against me.

  And I didn’t wake up four times a night to make sure the doors were locked.

  Penn had given up his life to make me free. Thomas didn’t get to take that away.

  But what other choice did I have?

  “I need to make a call,” I told Drew as I started scrolling through my phone.

  He sat across from me on the bed. “Catalina?”

  My gaze jumped to his. I could have lied. I could have protected her. I could have kept up the façade that I was just as clueless as everyone else when it came to where she had gone. But damn, I was tired of hiding.

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “Please don’t ask any questions.”

  He gave my knee a reassuring squeeze. “How about I head down to the hotel bar for a little while. Give you some time alone. You can call me if you need anything though. Okay?”

  I nodded. “Thanks, Drew.”

  “Any time, Cora. Any time.”

  I stared at my phone until the door clicked behind him. After that, I scrolled through until I found the number I’d programmed in as Delilah’s Bakery and hit call.

  She answered on the first ring.

  “I need you to come back, Cat.”

  “Have you lost your freaking mind?”

  “No. I’ve lost my daughter.”

  The line went silent—along with my heart.

  Penn

  “Please, Penn!” Cora screamed.

  I’d climbed out of her window and was staring up at the flames, which if everything were going as planned, were finishing off Marcos and Dante forever.

  But she wasn’t supposed to be there.

  She was supposed to be at the hotel.

  She was…

  As she banged on the windowpanes, her blue eyes filled with terror, fire licking at her back, smoke all around her. “Please, Penn!” Her voice tore through me with the velocity of a bullet, knocking the wind out of my lungs before piercing through my heart.

  “Cora!” I yelled, lurching toward the building, ready to claw my way up to her, but my legs wouldn’t move any more than her name carried any sound.

  I couldn’t move.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  All I could do was watch her die.

  Such was my curse in life.

  I came awake with a loud roar shredding my throat. Bolting upright, I panted and frantically tried to differentiate my nightmare from reality.

  It wasn’t the first nightmare I’d had about her. She was my subconscious’s favorite obsession as of late.

  She was always dying.

  I was always watching.

  And I could never get to her.

  With a shaking hand, I scrubbed my face, desperately trying to wipe away the mental image of her standing at that window. In the dark, I patted the bed beside me as if she would suddenly appear.

  What I would have given for her to be there with me, physically reassuring me while my mind took the longer path to keep up.

  My pulse slowed as I closed my eyes and imagined her there.

  She would have purred as I rolled her over, stretching like a cat before circling her arms around my neck. Her heart beating. Air in her lungs. Safe at my side.

  Her messy, blond hair would have cascaded over her face, barely revealing a sleepy smile as she murmured, “You ’kay, baby?”

  When I would have told her no, that I needed her, her eyes would have opened, the blue sparkling even in the darkness, healing me as she whispered, “I’m right here, Penn.”

  And then she would have kissed me, slow and soft, with a reverence that made it seem like maybe I was healing her too.

  As it always did with us, it wouldn’t have taken long before it became heated. Her hands roaming over my back, and as mine drifted to her ass, the nightmare would fade as desire overwhelmed us both.

  She would have opened her legs, inviting me in.

  And I would have slid in, more desperate than ever to bury myself inside her warmth.

  Alone, in my bedroom, I could almost feel her fingertips gliding over my shoulder as our bodies rolled together, and as I fell back against the pillows, the sound of her moans playing in my ears, I absolutely felt my hand slide into my sweats and wrap around my thickening cock.

  “Fucking hell. What are you doing?” a man growled.

  My entire body came awake for a second time as I flew out of bed, the gun under my pillow coming up with me, my finger poised.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! It’s me! Shane, stop!” he yelled.

  The jarring familiarity was the only thing that stopped me from pulling the trigger, but I still couldn’t process who he was or why he was there.

  “Who the fuck are you!” I boomed, lifting the gun higher, stepping toward his indistinguishable silhouette.

  “It’s me. Drew. Shit, man. It’s me! Put the gun down!”

  My breath left me on a rush. “Jesus, Drew! What the hell are you doing here? Don’t sneak up on a man like that.”

  He slapped on the light, nearly blinding me. “I didn’t sneak up on you, dickhead. I woke your sorry ass up. You sat up and everything. Then you went for your dick like the start of some seriously fucked-up porn.”

  Okay, so I clearly had not fully woken up between my nightmare-turned-wet-dream.

  Well played, subconscious. Well played.

  Using one arm to shield my eyes from the light, I opened the drawer on my nightstand and tucked the gun inside. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  He planted his hands on his hips. “Yeah, well. I’d way rather that any day over watching you jerk your dick.”

  “Would you shut the fuck up?” I hissed.

  And then, as if on cue…

&nb
sp; “Penn?” Her frightened voice fluttered down the hallway.

  Outstanding.

  I started toward the door to put her mind at ease when I caught a glimpse of Drew’s face. Swear to God, his mouth was hanging open so wide that I thought his jaw was going to come unhinged.

  “Are you fucking kidding me right now?” he snarled. “It hasn’t even been two weeks and you got a woman here? Are. You. Kidding me?”

  I shot him a bored glare. “It’s Savannah, you ass.”

  When I got into the hall, I found her standing outside her bedroom door. She was still wearing the oversized sleep shirt, but she’d shed the pajama pants at some point.

  “Go back to bed. It’s just Drew,” I told her.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  I uncomfortably scratched the back of my head. “Yeah. He…surprised me. That’s all.”

  She visibly relaxed until Drew took the opportunity to make things weird again.

  “Oh my God, please tell me you’re not seriously sleeping with Savannah.”

  I jerked around, ready to feed him my fist just to make him shut the hell up, but Savannah got there first.

  “Ew! No! That’d be gross. Penn’s my new daddy.”

  My life, ladies and gentlemen. My life.

  I snapped my fingers at Savannah. “Stop saying that.” Then I looked back at Drew. “And you, stop saying anything. I woke up, like, thirty-seven seconds ago. Can I please have a minute to figure what day of the week it is before dealing with your ludicrous accusations?”

  With a challenge, he stepped toward me. “It’s Thursday. Now, what the hell is she doing here?”

  Stealing a move from Cora’s playbook, I rolled my eyes, walked past him, and headed straight to the coffee maker, calling out, “Go back to bed, kid.”

  “Night, Drew. Night—”

  “Don’t say it, Savannah,” I grumbled, cutting her off before whatever variation of dad fell from her tongue.

  She giggled, but thankfully, only Drew’s footsteps followed after me.

  I gave him my back as I went to work on the coffee grounds. I’d texted Drew the address from my new phone as soon as I’d secured the place. Though I’d never given him a key or the security code.

  “How’d you get in?” I asked, taking out two mugs.

  “Why is she here?” he replied.

  I’d have rather gone back to listening to him talk about my dick than have this conversation. But there was no way he was going to let it go. “I promised Cora I’d get her back.”

  “Yeah,” he scoffed. “Then you died.”

  I turned around, propping my ass against the counter. “No, Drew. Penn Walker died. But me, Shane? I promised Cora that day that I’d get her back. So I did.”

  His mouth gaped as he gave me a slow blink. “And what now? You just gonna keep the kid forever? Because she sure as hell can’t go back to Cora now.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “And why not?”

  “Because you are dead!” He started pacing the length of the kitchen. “What the hell is going through your head right now? First, you leave her all those damn stars and the money, and then you blow everything to get the kid?”

  “I didn’t blow anything. What would you have rather me do? Leave her there? She was standing on a freaking street corner, looking for a john so she could buy drugs.”

  He stopped pacing, raking a rough hand through the top of his hair. “You could have called me. I would have gone and gotten her.”

  “I didn’t have time for that,” I stated definitively.

  He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “You didn’t have time? Or didn’t want to make time? Because I’ll be honest: I think you’re doing this shit on purpose. You shut the door with Cora, but you’ve been leaving the window cracked every chance you get. You planning to come back, Penn? Something I need to know about?”

  “That’s not what I’m doing.”

  “Then open your damn mouth and tell me what you are doing. Giving money to the poor? Saving kids off the street? Coming back from the grave? Where I’m standing, it looks like you’re one step away from becoming Jesus Christ himself.”

  “I’m not coming back!”

  He leveled me with a glare. “But you’re not ruling it out, either, are you?”

  I didn’t have an answer to that.

  Yes, leaving her was safer.

  Yes, it’d destroyed me.

  Yes, I’d spent every minute since the fire imagining getting her back.

  Without question, I was going after Thomas Lyons, and there were only three scenarios for how that would end.

  More than likely, I’d get caught and sentenced to life in prison. And if that were the case, I didn’t want her life stopping with mine. Knowing Cora, she’d have baked cakes with nail files in them for the rest of her life. She was stubborn as hell, and God knew I wasn’t strong enough to ever shake her off. But I wanted more than that for her. I wanted her to make a life. A real one.

  The idea of her being with any other man was enough to send me off the edge of a bridge. He’d never be good enough. But I smiled at the thought of her having a family, a bunch of little blond girls who could call her mom without fear of retaliation. This was the scenario that had convinced me to leave her the cash.

  The other possible outcome for me was that I’d fail. Thomas would somehow kill me or get me locked away first. Cora was already on his radar because of Catalina, but the last thing she needed was to be connected to me in any way, shape, or form. She’d become his next target and I’d be six feet under, helpless to save her. This was the scenario that had made it so obvious that Penn Walker needed to die. Without him, there was nothing connecting Shane Pennington and Cora Guerrero. If I failed, she had money. She had Drew. She had a safety net.

  However, it was that last possible outcome that played in my head every night when I stared up at the starless ceiling. It was the one where I’d killed him and gotten away with it. The world would be a better place, and I’d walk away free and clear. The chances of that happening were almost zilch. You couldn’t take out the city’s DA and expect to ride off into the sunset. But it was the one scenario that gave me hope of getting her back, and no matter how hard I’d tried, I couldn’t let it go.

  I didn’t want to admit it. But it was that last scenario that was fueling me day in and day out.

  And as I’d learned the day I’d choked the life out of Dante while his terrified brother watched, knowing he was next: There wasn’t much I wouldn’t do for Cora Guerrero.

  Turning back to the gurgling coffee pot, I poured a mug as I declared, “I’m not talking about this anymore. When Thomas takes his last breath, then we can worry about what I’m going to do or not do next.”

  “Right, well. I guess I should tell you that, if you’re hoping Cora lives long enough to be part of that equation, you might want to hurry up on the whole making-Thomas-stop-breathing thing.”

  Fire hit my veins. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  He arrogantly tipped his head. “You heard me. Thomas made a little appearance tonight. Trumped up some child endangerment charge against Cora, had her arrested, and took River.”

  Another blast of adrenaline hit me hard. “What the fuck? Where the hell were you?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Lying in the bed next to her. I can’t fight the cops, Shane. That’s how a man gets dead. Fast. I got her an attorney, but Thomas sent him home. They play golf or some shit. He cornered Cora though. Told her to make sure Catalina stays gone or they’re both dead.” His mouth kept moving, but no words made it past the sound of my heart roaring in my ears.

  Visions of Lisa lying on that carpet exploded in my head. Only this time, Cora was beside her. Both sets of their cold, dead eyes staring back at me.

  Before I knew it, I had my fists wrapped in the front of Drew’s shirt, my face vibrating as I ordered, “He does not ever come near her again. Do you understand me?”

  He gave
me a hard shove, but my body was so amped my every muscle was screaming. He might as well have been pushing a brick wall.

  “That’s why I’m here, asshole. You gotta speed this shit up. Get off your ass, quit playing Nanny McGee, and handle this once and for all. Or get out of my way and let me take care of it on my own.”

  I stared at him with wild eyes. “He’s mine.”

  “Then consider this your courtesy heads-up. I’m not feeling real patient anymore. He’s been breathing for four fucking years, Shane. You want your twenty-nine minutes. Take ’em. But if I get a clear shot before then, it’s over. You got me?”

  “That was not the plan, Drew.”

  “What plan?” He swung a hand out and pointed down the hall to Savannah’s bedroom. “You have shit all over every fucking plan we’ve ever made. Currently, we got a woman who has you tied up in so many damn knots you’re unrecognizable anymore. I thought she was good for you at first, but now, she’s got you so off-kilter you can’t even think straight.” He sucked in a deep breath and gripped my shoulder, giving it a rough squeeze. “I know you’ve been dreaming about this. And I know I promised you that you could have your moment with him. For Lisa. But, brother, this shit’s gotta end. We found him. Now, let’s finish him.”

  He was so right.

  It had been four years.

  Four years of searching for answers.

  Four years of bleeding myself dry emotionally and physically.

  Four years of burning in the flames of hell.

  Those two months spent drowning in Cora, feeling like myself again, thinking more than minute to minute were the only reason I was still able to function.

  There was nothing I wouldn’t do to get back to that.

  Not even sacrificing the very same revenge that had brought me to her door.

  I extended a hand his way. “I want Cora to be priority one. You have a shot. You take it. As long as we can keep her out of his reach. I’ll deal.”

  He grinned, taking my hand. “Now, that actually sounds like a plan we can make stick.” He pulled me in for a quick back pat, and before he released me, he did what Drew did best: He made me want to laugh and then feed him my fist again. “I can’t believe you were trying to get me to watch you jerk your dick. You know I don’t swing like that.”