Blood Vows (The Arsenal Book 3)

by Cara Carnes

“It’s possible, but the women think there were at least two people out there.”

  Dread burst within her, an explosion of what-ifs she couldn’t voice. “I’ll find her.”

  “Take Addy with you,” he ordered as he rose from the bed. “We’ll track down Wayne and bring him in to get some answers.”

  “Dallas, it can’t be her. I…” She shook her head. “No way. She told Riley she’d get help the other day when they had the big confrontation because of her touching Jesse. It can’t be her.”

  “I’m hoping to hell not, sweetheart. But hearing what you just shared about your ma and what happened with her...” Sadness filled his gaze. “We’ve gotta brace for the possibility.”

  The likelihood. He didn’t say it, but Kamren knew that’s what he meant. Woodenly, she rose from the bed. Dressed.

  She didn’t know what to think or believe. Could her sister have killed their dad?

  The why was obvious. She’d hated him for taking their mom away, but that didn’t make her a killer. Did it? “Henry Mills and them. They’re behind all this. Vi and Mary said as much. He kidnapped me.”

  “He was up to squirrelly shit that’s earned them a focal point in a statewide investigation and a spot in a cell for taking you, but nothing ties any of those assholes to your dad’s murder. What happened at the farmhouse was personal.”

  Personal. Kamren looked at the man who’d finagled his way into her heart, the same heart that was dying beneath the toxic trail they were chasing. “Juniper was hers. He survived.”

  The grim expression on his face denoted he’d already realized as much. Whether Rachelle had done the horrible things Dallas was afraid she’d done or not, Kamren needed to find her.

  25

  Kamren stared down at the buzzing cell phone in her hand, then slid her finger across the screen to answer. “Hello?”

  “Kam.” The woman’s voice was broken with gasping tears. “It’s not her fault; she’s sick.”

  “Riley. Where are you?” Kamren looked around the compound, but most everyone had moved out, tracing Rachelle’s and Riley’s cell phone signals to Marville. The Sip and Spin. “Everyone thinks you two at the Sip and Spin.”

  “She dumped the phones. This is a disposable.” The woman cried out. “Let me go, Rache. Let me get you help.”

  “Rache! Let her go.” Kamren screamed the order into the phone.

  “You want her, big sis? Come and get her. Follow the trail if you can.”

  No. No. No. Kamren punched her way through screens on the cell phone the girls had given her until she came across Dallas’s picture. She hit the phone icon as her heartbeat thudded in her ears. Tears burned her eyes, but she didn’t get to make this about her, not when Rache had Riley. And the situation sounded far, far away from calm.

  “Kam? You okay?”

  “Rache has Riley, said I had to follow the trail. They aren’t at the Sip and Spin.”

  “No, but Wayne was out back behind the trashcans.” Dallas’s tone tightened the unease in her gut. “Dead.”

  No. No. No. “Dallas.”

  “We’re on our way back. I’ll get everyone in ops on it.”

  “On what? She didn’t give us anything to go by,” Kamren said. Agitation rose within her. “She has Riley.”

  “I know that, sweetheart. We’ll find them.”

  This was her fault. She’d ignored her sister too long, focusing on the fallout rather than the chief cause of her illness. It’d been simpler to ignore that Rachelle was troubled and needed more than some cursory drugs and a new environment. What’d happened long ago may not have been Kamren’s fault, but it was definitely her problem, which meant she needed to calm the hell down and work through what to do.

  Find Rachelle.

  Follow the trail.

  Riley had moved out to the newly built college beside Dallas’s. Kamren sprinted toward the small structure, which was within walking distance of the Mason home.

  Kamren’s gut clenched.

  Blood droplets.

  Heavy boot steps thundered around her. She glanced up, noting Cord and Jud coming to a halt near her. Addy came from the other direction.

  “Yeah, we’re here with her,” Cord said. “Dunno; she’s found something, though.”

  “Blood,” she whispered tightly. Though she didn’t want to believe her sister would cut her own best friend, she didn’t get to judge the situation. All she could do was track the trail and hope to hell she wasn’t too late.

  A flashlight settled in her hand, along with a knife. She hoped to hell she didn’t need the weapon but offered a chin lift in gratitude to Jud as she flicked on the light and got to work chasing the trail.

  “Z, need you backpedaling footage in the perimeter nearest this location. Look for Riles and Rachelle,” Cord said into his com as he held out one to her. She put it on quickly, thankful they always seemed to have the important things covered when shit hit the fan.

  A team.

  Family.

  “On it. Mary and Vi are dispatching drones. We’re running a heat signature grid,” the woman said. “Teams are spread out. We’ll find them.”

  Maybe, but would it be soon enough?

  Kamren’s gaze swept the area as the last blood drop ended in the middle of nowhere. No. She looked back to the main house, then the buildings nearest the new location. “The barn.”

  “Come again,” Jud said.

  “The barn. Peanut. Rache made us get Juniper when Riley got Peanut.” She glanced at Cord. “Are drones in there?”

  “No,” he said. “Riley thought they’d spook Peanut.”

  “And she goes in there to talk to the horse a lot,” Mary offered in the com. “She may have taken Rache in there to share that with her.”

  Fuck.

  Kamren’s focus narrowed as everyone converged on the location. Jud and Cord took point, weapons drawn as they opened the entry to the barn.

  Then froze. Flashlights swept across Rachelle holding Riley at knife point. The two women were so close it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began because of the darkness within the barn.

  “Take one more step in and she’s dead. This is between me and Kam,” Rachelle spat. “Get in here, sister. Close the door behind you.”

  “You aren’t going in there,” Jud declared.

  “To hell I’m not.” She looked at the crush of armed operatives around her. Dread settled into a tremble deep in her bones. “I have to. This isn’t going to end well if I don’t try.”

  “We’ll get drones in there.”

  “And until you do, I’ll keep her talking.” Kamren looked around, trusting everyone around her because Dallas did. “That’s the smartest play. Right?”

  Cord glared at Jud, who glared at everyone around him.

  “Honey, she’s right,” Vi whispered. “She won’t be alone. We have a solution in play, but we need time.”

  “One hint of bad and I’m going in,” Jud warned.

  Kamren nodded and wiped her palms on her jeans. Her heart thudded wildly in her chest as she slid in, unarmed except the sheathed knife she’d stuck onto her waistband.

  “Rache? What’s wrong, baby?”

  “You know damn good and well what’s wrong, sister.” Anger mottled her voice, deepening it to a feral growl. “Why couldn’t you just let him fucking die?”

  “Let Riley go and we’ll talk it through, just you and me, okay?”

  “No. She’s gotta know. She’s gotta understand.” Rache yanked on Riley’s undone hair, hair so similar to Rachelle’s the two blondes blended into one another within the darkness. Riley’s hands were bound in front of her. The knife glinted within the narrow scant shaft of light from the flashlight. It remained against Riley’s throat as if it’d become a part of her.

  “Honey, you can’t do this. Riley loves you; she’s your best friend. You don’t want to hurt her.”

  “Oh yeah? You know she told me you were good for him. Said you brought back the brother she’d l
ost; the Dallas she loved was back.” Blood ran down Rachelle’s hand as she thundered the rest of the accusation. “Because of you!”

  Tears seeped out of Kamren’s eyes. She took a step closer, silently wishing for an answer out of this disaster. How had she missed how ill Rachelle truly was? “I’m sorry, Rache. I should’ve been here for you. I was wrong.”

  “Yeah, you were. Years! I’ve waited for years to have one of them as mine, finally get the good I deserve. Then you had to go and ruin it all, coming out here, involving them in your stupid, stupid hunt for answers. No one gave a shit that he was dead. He deserved it. He deserved it.” Rachelle glared. “So did you. You always ruined everything. He took her away because of you.”

  “Why? Why now?”

  “He heard me with Wayne, knew I had a plan, a real good one that’d get me what I deserved. But he said I was stupid, nothing better than him or you.” She glared at Kamren when she took another step closer. “Get the fuck back, or I swear I’ll kill her.”

  “Tell me what you want, Rache.”

  “Everything!”

  “Okay,” she said, unsure what the fuck ‘everything’ meant. Whatever it was, she’d figure a way to get it. “Let Riley go.”

  “No. Not until they know. She’s gotta know. He’s gotta hear the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “About you. Mom. Dad. Everything!”

  “He knows, baby,” she whispered. “They all know, except Riley. They’ve seen the scars. They know.”

  “You liar!” Blood coated her hand, but Kamren couldn’t tell whose it was. Rachelle’s grip on the knife was firm, but not correct. If there was such a thing as a correct grip while holding a weapon against your best friend’s throat.

  “Dad shouldn’t have kept us away so long. I begged him to take me back to you. To Mom.”

  “It was always you. Mom loved him so much, but he didn’t give a damn. You took him from her. From me. You were always such a greedy, demanding little cunt.”

  Kamren recoiled beneath the hatred, words that echoed her mother’s from long ago.

  “Rache,” Riley pleaded, her voice weak and pained. “It hurts.”

  “Good, you gotta learn your place. You picked her over me, said she was good for him. He’s mine. They’re all mine! Bad enough that fat-assed bitch came in and sank her claws into Dylan. Now there’re fucking brats running around here getting their attention.” Rachelle’s eyes narrowed. “You brought them here, found them. You fucking fucking cunt.”

  “Please fucking tell me there’s a firing solution,” Jud said through the com.

  “No. Do not!” Kamren shouted the words into the com but held her attention on her sister. “You need help, Rache. This isn’t your fault, honey, but you’ve gotta drop the knife and let Riley go. If you’re pissed at me, fine. Take it out on me, but she’s been the only good, clean truth in your life. Do not fuck that up with this.”

  “It’s too late,” she whispered. “You fucked it up the day you started digging into Dad’s death. Knew then this would have to happen. Knew then there wasn’t any other end.”

  “Honey.”

  “Then you brought the brats here. No one pays attention to me anymore. They don’t care, all ‘cause of you.”

  “No solution.”

  “No solution.”

  “No solution.”

  The voices in the com all repeated what Kamren already knew. Except for the lone beam of the flashlight she had trained on the women, there was no light. No open doors. No windows. No way into the hell her sister had unleashed on the Masons. On The Arsenal.

  “They love you, Rache.”

  “Liar!”

  “They do, you know. You’re their baby sister’s best friend. They’d crawl through the fires of hell if you’d only ask. But you’ve gotta know this isn’t right. Somewhere deep, deep down, you know this isn’t the answer.” She sobbed, openly crying, and prayed the tenuous grip she’d lost on her emotions helped the situation, made her sister see this wasn’t good. “It’s not too late to move past what happened to us.”

  “Kamren, she’s cycling fast. She’s burrowed into a corner where we can’t get eyes behind her. We shoot through the wood, it won’t be good for her or Riley. The drone we have in position has a lock, but it’s on Riley. There’s an eighty percent chance it’ll knock Riley out. And a fifteen percent chance it’ll hit nothing but air and make the situation worse.” Mary’s voice was calm, even and filled with enough determination to fuel an army. “We’re going with the eighty percent here, so I’m gonna give you an order you aren’t gonna want to hear.”

  No. No. No.

  “We tranq Riley, you take your sister down. Whatever it takes, Kamren. You. Take. Her. Down.”

  No. No. No.

  Kamren shifted on her feet. Hands at her side, she waited and prayed there was another solution. Emotion clogged her throat and lungs, but she pushed it back. She didn’t get to break down, not now. Not when her sister had a knife to Riley’s throat.

  “You took on Hailey without hesitation. You found his son in millions of acres of woods,” Mary’s voice was calm, the focal point of Kamren’s brain, even though Rachelle continued screaming words she no longer heard.

  “There comes a time when emotion can’t play a part in your actions, a time when hesitation is certain death. You’ve been there before, Kam. I need you there again, or Riley isn’t gonna make it.”

  “Okay.” It was the only word she could press out as she shifted again and focused on her sister.

  “I love you, Rache, but I can’t stand between you and the world, not anymore. Let her go, Rache. We can fix this.”

  “Aim for her hand if you’ve got a clean hit,” Jud said in the com. “Muscles will seize quick if the hit is hard enough.”

  God. God. God.

  The grip was wrong, kept her palm fully hidden, which meant the target would have to be her wrist. Clean through.

  She closed her eyes a second, long enough to curse her father for giving her this lesson, the skill that’d been one of the many reasons he’d driven a wedge between her and Rachelle ages ago. He’d made her his shadow, the most important part of his life even though the rest of his family desperately craved his love and attention—something they never got.

  Kamren hadn’t either, but Rache wouldn’t ever understand or believe that. “I love you, Rache. Let her go. We can fix this.”

  “You’re wrong. They gotta learn. Dad always said the best lessons are those that hurt to the bone, burn your marrow and settle in permanent-like. They’re gonna learn.”

  “Now!”

  Kamren wasn’t sure what to expect. A crazy-looking device shot from beneath the ground near the corner. Peanut whinnied. The machine whirred, then fired a dart. It all happened within one breath.

  Riley dropped, her weight too much when unconscious. Kamren pulled her knife and threw. The savagely sharp blade plunged precisely where she’d aimed, her sister’s wrist. The weapon she’d held clattered to the ground as Rachelle growled and screamed, then slammed into Kamren.

  Blood.

  So much blood.

  Light shafted into the barn as both doors exploded open and Arsenal operatives stormed in. Two incapacitated her sister, while Cord and Jud hauled Kamren backward. Jesse and Nolan surged in and collapsed beside their sister, whose blood ran freely from a neck wound.

  She looked down at the blood coating her hands. Riley’s. Or Rachelle’s.

  “Fuck.” Dallas swept her into his arms. “I’ve got you, sweetheart.”

  Dallas paced the narrow corridor of Nomad Memorial Hospital. He glanced back at the waiting room where the entirety of The Arsenal and Mason brood waited for word about Riley. Kamren was huddled in the corner with Vi, Mary, Zoey, Rhea, and Bree. The women had converged like the force they were and swept her into their loving fold. Gage and Addy had remained back at the compound to deal with the loose ends and keep everything secure, including the boys, who’d thankfully sle
pt through the entire ordeal.

  Jesus. There’d been so much blood.

  “Come back into the waiting room, man. Your pacing is making my woman nauseous,” Dylan said as he clapped Dallas on the back. “She’ll be fine. Our sis is strong and stubborn, just like us.”

  “We should have seen that crazy,” Dallas whispered. “Should have known she was trouble.”

  “She’s gonna get the help she needs.”

  Dallas glanced over at Kamren. “Maybe, but at what cost? Fuck, man. She didn’t even hesitate, threw that knife dead center. Took out her sister’s wrist to keep ours breathing.”

  “It was the only call. If she’d hesitated, we’d be here for an entirely different reason, a much worse one.”

  Fuck. Dallas clenched his teeth. It was over. He rubbed his chest and looked at his brother. “Can’t help but wonder what the fuck is next. The Hive. The Collective. Marville Dogs. Then this.”

  “Think we’re due for a break. A couple of weddings. Maybe three.” Dylan’s smirk turned into an outright grin. “She’s a good woman. Warning, though. There’s been talk. Jacob had an idea.”

  “Shit. Now what?”

  “They’re going to help her learn to read and get her GED.”

  “She might not be down with that,” Dallas said. “Her decision, not theirs.”

  “Agreed. They’ll approach it slowly, but either way, we think she’d be good on the teams. Nolan and Jesse want her field-training survival and tracking techniques to the noobs.”

  Dallas had expected as much. She was kickass in the field, a vital asset. Pride settled deep in his chest, then warmed. Fuck, he loved her. The double doors he’d staked out opened. Brant sauntered through, gaze weary and mouth thinned. Clad in operational scrubs and green booties, he waited until the entire waiting room clustered around him. Dallas and Dylan put hands on their mom’s shoulders as she shoved her way to the man.

  Dallas put his other arm around Kamren, kissed her neck, then nipped her earlobe. “Love you, sweetheart. Don’t ever forget that.”

  She melted against him. “Love you, too.”

  “Well? Spit it out,” Bree ordered.