Punching the last few numbers, I turned my phone around and held it to his face. “I’m saying she’s past Reynosa and heading up Highway 2. They’re going back to Texas.”
Hitting a speed dial number, I paced the room—the knowledge that Eden was alive and on the move, spurring a fire in me.
“Who are you calling?”
“Reinforcements. I know where she’s headed, but we need someone with connections to track down where they’ll eventually hold her to prepare for the possible trap we’ll be walking into.”
* * *
“What the fuck do you mean, you took her to Mexico?”
“Just what I said,” I repeated, reminding myself I needed his help and not to lose my shit on the assistant district attorney. “I had to go. She wanted to go with me, so I took her.”
“Jesus…no one has heard from her! We thought…we thought…goddamn it, you know what we thought, Carrera! I thought Muñoz had gotten to her, too. Her whole family is missing, for Christ’s sake! I mean…damn, man…”
When Brody Harcourt’s jerky speech and subject jumping connected in my disjointed brain, I growled deep within my stomach, and slammed my fist into the wall. “You fucking know Manual Muñoz, don’t you?” Brody grunted, yet offered no further explanation. Cursing, I hit the wall again. “Goddamn it, Harcourt! Come clean or I swear to God, I’ll blow the lid off everything for you. One call to the newspaper and your life will be over.”
“You don’t get it, do you, Carrera? My life is over regardless of what you do.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” What bullshit could the ADA have to compare to sending the only woman I’d ever loved into the hands of a sadistic killer?
Even more sadistic than me.
A resigned sigh crossed the line. “Manual Muñoz came to me two months ago and threatened my sister’s life. Man, she’s only twenty-one and still in college. He swore he’d kill her if I didn’t agree to find some way to get a tracking device on you.”
Eden’s St. Michael medallion.
Shit.
“What does Nash Lachey have to do with all of this?” And just because it’d been bothering the hell out of me, I added, “And how do you know Eden?”
“The guy I was putting pressure on to turn on you ended up flipping out on me. I tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t listen. They killed Eden’s brother to show him they could get to anyone at any time.” He paused, his voice cracking as if unsure about delivering the rest. “Only the man freaked out and ran.”
“And Eden?”
“Man, we used to fuck, all right? It meant nothing. Cherry never let it mean anything. I guess being frat brothers with her ex-husband ruined anything we could’ve had.”
Fire filled my chest as my breathing came faster and harder. Images of Brody Harcourt in bed with Eden clouded my vision and a compulsive need to break every bone in his body took hold of me.
“You have nothing with Eden. Do you understand me, Harcourt? You never fucking touch her again.”
“Fine, yes. Now, give me the access code to the app that’s tracking her GPS.”
Focusing on saving Eden, I gave him the information. “One thing I don’t understand,” I said, a thought hitting me. “Old man Lachey was supposed to get a permanent reminder from the Carreras to pay his debt. I never authorized a murder. How did Manuel Muñoz know what was happening that night at Caliente?”
Silence filled the line for more than a few heartbeats before he finally answered. “You didn’t turn your phone off, Val. You called me that day to threaten me to divulge info about Nando Fuentes’ involvement with the DEA. I heard your whole conversation about roughing up Lachey. I passed along the info to help save my sister.”
I could feel the muscles in my neck cording with unleashed tension. “So, during our whole conversation, you’d already flipped, you asshole?”
“He threatened my sister, Val. Surely, you can relate to family being targeted.”
I knew what he was doing. The attorney in him tried to appeal to my human side, but with Eden gone, I no longer had one. “Yeah? Well, now he’s going to rape and kill Eden.
“Man, don’t say that.”
“Was the run for the DA seat worth it, Brody?”
“Fuck you, Carrera. You don’t live the kind of life you live and get to judge me. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Santa Muerte, Harcourt.”
“What?”
“Santa Muerte.” I imagined breathing in the deepest scent of citrus and vanilla when I clasped the rosary around Eden’s neck. “I don’t need to judge. We all stand face-to-face with death eventually, and Santa Muerte judges us all for our own actions. I’ve made peace with the sentence I’ll be handed. What about you, Brody? How do you think you’ll be judged when death comes calling for you?”
Before he could answer, I disconnected the call. As I stood there staring at the phone, the bombs of the conversation exploded at once, and I kicked it across the room. Watching my phone skid across the tile floor, it hit me.
Brody Harcourt heard the call about collecting the debt from Lachey.
Non-Carrera men came into the hardware store and freaked out Eden.
The scapegoat wouldn’t take Muñoz’s tracking device from Brody.
The bottom of my stomach fell out, and I scrambled for my gun. “Mateo! Gather whatever men you can in one room, now!”
This wasn’t just a kidnapping. It was a sadistic, sick game.
And Eden was the star.
Chapter Thirty-One
EDEN
HOUSTON, TEXAS
“Edie, what the hell are you doing? Get down from there. You’re going to break your neck!”
Ascending one more branch, I plopped down and hung from my fingertips onto the jagged bark. “Didn’t you read the archives, Nash? There’s no death certificate. God, how could I have been so stupid?”
He tilted his chin, squinting into the afternoon sun. “So, climbing a tree like a spoiled brat makes it better?”
“Piss off.”
Chuckling, he swung his long arms and legs around the trunk and folded his muscular forearms around the thick branch underneath me within seconds. “Look kiddo, so Mom took off. Yeah, it sucks, and she’s a worthless piece of shit for it. But do you really think suspending yourself like some sort of monkey makes it any better?”
“I’m the one that caused her to leave, Nash,” I whispered, my voice cracking as my arms started to shake from the tension.
Nash just smiled. “No, you didn’t. She left us long before you were born. She just walked out because she couldn’t handle living with a living example of everything she’d never be.” For the first time since learning the truth that had devastated my world, a smile broke through the tears. “Now, how about you get down from there before you pull your arms completely out of their sockets, and I have to miss football to take you to the ER?”
A combination of a sob and a laugh escaped my lips as I dangled from my fingers, dropping toward a lower branch. “Pain in the ass.”
“Brat.”
Opening my eyes proved to be more and more difficult each time I tried to do it. Beyond the crushing pain in the back of my head and above my eyes, the first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t feel my hands or feet. After attempting to move them, a sharp tingling sensation shot through my limbs, causing me to twitch.
Why do my arms hurt so much?
I felt weightless and heavy at the same time, which confused me so much that I forced my eyes into submission. Everything was black on top of dark. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.
Which was my first clue that things were very wrong.
A gravelly clanging had me swallowing the panic growing in my throat. I couldn’t find my hand. It was tied above my head, along with the other one over a support beam with the floor barely dusting underneath my feet.
They’d hung me from the rafters by a chain.
Rope and metal cut into my already scarred
and mangled skin so tightly that blood ran down my arms in wet trails. In a futile attempt to loosen the ties, I tried wiggling, which only twisted the chain. The chain’s length had been carefully measured during my unconsciousness to make it short enough to restrict my movement, but long enough to prevent my arms from snapping.
The pain of everything I’d been through hit me in the awkward position, amplifying my injuries. Logically, I knew calling for help would be useless. However, regardless of how remote I knew the location had to be, I did it anyway.
“Is anyone out there? I’m an innocent American! Anyone? Help!”
“You’re far from innocent…Cereza.”
I froze at the hateful snarl of Val’s private nickname for me. My eyes followed the voice to the far-right corner as a light flickered against a short, fat cigar. Thin lips wrapped around the end and sucked hard, puffing on smoke as the orange ember lit up his face.
Manuel Muñoz.
I’d never seen him in person, but Val had shown me pictures on the plane to Mexico City. He’d fought me on the issue, but I’d been adamant on knowing the face of the man who’d ordered my brother’s death. Yet, seeing his picture, and seeing his face in person evoked two entirely different responses.
Val and Manuel grew up in the same country and were around the same age, but that was where the similarities ended. Manuel Muñoz’s shaved head depicted scenes of war and bloodshed, with tattoos covering most his scalp. A dusting of facial hair hid what was probably once a handsome face, only now, it scowled with evil and hatred beyond anything anyone could imagine. But it was his eyes that turned my stomach. They were coal black and void of a soul or anything salvageable as human being.
“You,” I breathed with contempt.
A cruel smile teased his lips as he rose to his feet and stood in front of me. Inhaling a long puff from his cigar, he blew the smoke in my face and licked his lips. “We finally meet, Eden Lachey.”
“Go to hell.”
“In due time; first thing’s first.” Holding the cigar in between clenched teeth, he curled his hand and attempted to reach underneath my dress.
Screaming, I jerked and twisted as best I could, revolted at the thought of his touch, but also realizing they never checked my thigh holster. I needed to keep my only chance for survival hidden from view. “Don’t touch me, asshole!”
“Calm down,” he laughed, releasing me and returning to his cigar. “I just wanted to feel the pussy that rendered Valentin Carrera’s balls useless.”
With my blood boiling, I forgot about my burning arms and swung my leg, landing a light kick straight to his dick. His face twisted in tortured pain, and he moved out of my trajectory, his body bent over and heaving. After moments of labored breathing, he straightened with a furious roar, and barreled toward me with a clenched fist. Holding my breath, I braced myself as bone cracked against bone, his knuckles driving into the side of my face with brutal force. Upon impact, my head snapped back as the chain swung above me. Spitting blood, I’d barely recovered, when he landed an even harder blow to my ribs, a sickening crack echoing in the silent room.
Coughing wetly, I held his stare. “You killed my brother, you son of a bitch.”
“Not personally.” He smiled, licking my blood off his fist. “That part, I regret.”
I tried to hold in my rage like Val had taught me and stared at him with a cold eye.
“Never show your hand, Cereza. Your next move is the only thing you have that your opponent doesn’t know.”
Returning my stare, Manuel paced around me like a wolf stalking its prey. “You’ve caused quite the international shit-storm, Eden Lachey.”
“Well, as they say, go big or go home.”
He laughed, baring his stained teeth. “I see why Carrera likes you. American women are—how do you say—lively.”
“Fuck you.”
“And then you say things like that and ruin a good conversation. Crudeness isn’t attractive in a mate, Eden.”
“Why don’t you let me down from here and fight me like a real man?” I taunted, hoping to get a rise out him. Without many options left for escape, I grasped at straws.
He laughed again, waving the cigar in the air. “I have no interest in fighting. I’d just put a bullet in your head and be done with you.”
“Then why am I still alive?”
“You’ve amused me.” Taking another puff, he pointed the lit end of the cigar at me and raised a thick, black eyebrow. “I also know Valentin has a soft spot for you. We all knew you’d be the one to lead us to him. I enjoy torturing Carrera, and I love a good show. But, then again, this isn’t my show.”
That caught my attention. “No?”
“No.”
“I didn’t take you for a yes man, Manny.” I managed a grin, despite my cracked and bleeding lips.
Returning my smile, his lips curved into a knowing smirk—as if he held a secret weapon about to be unleashed on the world. “Not a yes man…a partnership, puta.”
For the first time, Manuel’s eyes lit up with an emotion I could only describe as giddiness. I opened my mouth to ask him to explain when the door to the dank room opened, and a faint click of a light switch filled my ears moments before brightness flooded the four walls.
“Hello, Eden.”
The moment my eyes adjusted to the shock of the light, they settled on the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life. Almost as tall as Manuel, but with legs that seemed to extend well beyond her waist, she glided into the room, a halo of thick, shiny black hair flowing down her back. Her skin stretched flawless across her face, framed by deep set, penetrating, brown eyes that captivated me from the onset of their glare.
Her familiarity unnerved me. “How do you know me?”
“Marisol, this is Valentin Carrera’s whore.” Manuel motioned dramatically from the woman, back to me, then gave me a wink. “Eden Lachey, meet the beauty and brains of this operation—Marisol Muñoz, my sister.”
* * *
After our little introduction, Manuel and Marisol literally left me hanging while they called a family meeting in the corner of the tiny room. Satisfied with their communication, Manuel nodded and pulled out his gun, shooting through the chain above me. I cried out in relief and pain when I hit the floor. Without a doubt, I knew I had a few broken ribs and most likely a cheek fracture. The way my chest rattled from the wet cough, I wouldn’t be surprised to find a collapsed lung.
If I ever made it to a hospital.
A heavy boot in my stomach had me flipping onto my back with stars in my eyes. “Get up.” Manuel’s hand jerked me roughly off the floor and onto my feet. “We’ve got a party waiting for you downstairs,” he snarled, freeing my hands.
Val.
The logical part of me prayed I was wrong, and he was safe and out of their sadistic hands. Yet the weak and needy part of me ached to hold him again.
Turning over my shoulder, I threw a cold stare at Marisol Muñoz as her brother dragged me down the darkened hallway. “Why are you doing this?”
She looked at me as if I’d just asked her to explain quantum physics. “Money, darling. Valentin Carrera has it; I want it. You think I spent six years studying with my nose in a book at the University of Guadalajara to be stuck in an office somewhere?” A high-pitched laugh bounced off the walls. “Hell no. What this cartel has lacked since my father’s death has been intelligent direction. No offense, dear brother.”
Manuel shrugged and raised a quick eyebrow in her direction before snapping my arm toward a closed door.
“The Muñoz Cartel could never overtake Alejandro Carrera because the men in my family lacked strategic planning and intricate follow-through—something that required the long-term patience of a woman. You understand; right, Eden?”
“Sure,” I replied, rolling my eyes in the dark.
As all three of us reached the closed door, the smile on her face morphed into an arrogant sneer. “The men in my family have always lacked patience for anythin
g. They want everything now, now, now. But I told them, ‘bide your time and watch Carrera. He’s not as inhuman as you think. Eventually, we’ll find his weakness. When we do, take it. Carrera will come to us.’ You’re his weakness, Eden. We women, we’re powerful creatures. In our lifetime, there will always be one man who will die for us.” She stared at me and ran a painted red nail down my tangled hair. “No man is immune to our power—even the almighty La Muerte.”
“I told you, Valentin Carrera—”
“Congratulations on being the woman who brought down the giant.” Opening the door, each Muñoz sibling grabbed one of my arms and faced me forward. With a shove from each of them, I didn’t even have a chance to touch the first few steps before I tumbled head first.
My toes barely grazed the tip of the fifth or sixth stair as I fell down the entire flight, darkness and light intermingling with intolerable pain. After what seemed like a never-ending fall, my broken body hit the concrete floor with a sickening thud as they slammed the door.
“Help…” It was all I could manage as the wet cough overtook me again, my mouth filling up with so much blood, I had to turn my head so as not to choke.
I have to get out of here or I’m going to die.
Crying out with every move, I dragged myself into a kneeling position, every pull of breath into my lungs, feeling like a hundred daggers stabbing me at once. As I crawled toward the center of the room, a voice broke the ragged silence.
“Eden…”
It took every concerted effort I had to lift my head and focus. The moment I did, the pain in my chest and limbs dulled compared to the searing, ripping apart of my heart.
“You,” I whispered, wishing Manuel Muñoz had killed me when he had the chance.
Chapter Thirty-Two
VAL
After pacing for twenty minutes in an alley behind the district attorney’s office in Houston, my phone finally rang. “Harcourt, tell me you have it.”
Blurred Red Lines: A Carrera Cartel Novel Page 23
