Legal Heirs - Box Set Edition: Books 5-8 (Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles)

by Lee, Kimball

  “Eat this bread,” her brother, the Ghost, said to her, his eyes meeting hers for a split second with what seemed to be a touch of concern. He handed her a warm roll that smelled of yeast, and of course those basic niceties—a glance, the warm pastry in her hand, the earthy aroma of the yeast—sent tears rushing down her cheeks. She swiped at them with the back of her hand, but there was no stopping them. She had fallen off the edge of the world into a well of hopelessness.

  Her brother wouldn’t look at her after that. He told her to sit on the mattress and to keep her eyes down or he would blindfold her. Then he shouted at the men in Spanish and his voice was hard and sharp like the blade he’d honed so precisely. She recognized the Spanish word for “hurry up,” and she thought her heart would stop when she heard a woman’s voice in the room.

  “Ah, the smell of expensive French perfume mingling with the putrid sweat of these bottom feeding murderers, how very droll. My dear Charlotte, you don’t know me, do you? And yet, I’ve used the very money Alexander paid to care for me to purchase your death. My sister wears that same perfume, isn’t that odd? Quelques Fleurs, isn’t it? His mother and his lover wear the same scent. How Shakespearean, how disgustingly trite.”

  The woman stood above Charlotte as she spoke, the toe of her Louboutin pump resting on the edge of the mattress. Her eyes were filled with madness as they bore into Charlotte with barely contained loathing. Charlotte could scarcely draw a breath, she was suddenly so petrified with fear. This mad woman was Evangeline’s sister, Bly’s aunt, the mother of a man Charlotte had watched die. She was Bennet Sommerfeld’s mother, Gabrielle, and her son was dead because he had held a knife to the throat of Charlotte and Bly’s son, Atticus.

  “I’m truly sorry about your son, Gabrielle, but he held my child at knife point. He would have cut a seven-year-old boy’s throat out of some sort of grudge against Bly. Atticus has the scar from that knife wound, he would have died if it had hit the artery….”

  “Shut up, shut the fuck up! You lying whore. Bennet was a good man, a better man than Alexander by far. Your son should have died, and my son should be alive today. I gave Alexander a choice, you or your son, but he won’t turn the boy over to the Ghost to be butchered. He’s coming here to witness your death, dear girl. I’m sure he’s a few miles from here in El Paso right now, just waiting for my call,” Gabrielle said, and she motioned for the five young men to come closer. She said something to them, and they looked confused. Gabrielle and Evangeline had grown up in Brazil, where Portuguese was their native language. In her mind, if these Mexican soldiers, or whatever they were, spoke Spanish, they should damn well understand Portuguese. But it definitely lost some of its meaning in translation.

  They crossed the room, ready to do what they were told, even if the older lady was speaking some weird dialect. They had gotten a look at Charlotte and they liked what they saw. What a long tall drink of water in the desert she was! They thought she could use a little more meat on her bones, but she was hot and ripe, with that sweet little belly poking out in front. It stirred the men up, her pregnant belly. It meant she liked what a man had to offer, that she was good at spreading those long, perfect legs. She reminded them of a fashion model, with those blue eyes that looked like big jewels in her white face. And man, her mouth, oh, the things they intended to do to that succulent mouth. She huddled on the mattress as they approached, and that sealed the deal. She was scared, and that was the best part of all. She would put up a fight, and that would make raping her a sweet, sweet deal. The men all knew a fucking little gringa bitch like her just needed a good stiff cock, and they couldn’t wait to give it to her.

  The Ghost said something to the salivating men, and they stopped in their tracks a few yards from where Charlotte sat shaking with both fear and anger.

  “You really expected Bly to hand over a little boy to be murdered? You’re insane, Gabrielle, INSANE!” Charlotte screamed as tears dripped from her eyes. She turned to the Ghost. “Would you have done it? Was that the deal you made with her? Then I’m glad it’s me. It makes it a little easier knowing I denied you the pleasure of using your skills on my son. You’ll only be guilty of killing your sister and an unborn baby.”

  “Your sister? Why yes, it’s really quite obvious, how could I possibly have missed the resemblance? I’ll tell you what I want you to do to your sister,” Gabrielle said to the Ghost, who stood staring coldly down at Charlotte. “I want you to fuck her, and I want you to do it now, and then again when Alexander gets here. Don’t worry, I haven’t called him yet. I want her to look near death when he lays eyes on her. We’ll see if she is the woman of his dreams when you’ve worked her over a few times. Go ahead, are you suddenly shy? You kill and butcher on a whim, but you don’t fuck in front of an audience? Or would it be too much like fucking yourself? She looks so much like you, you have to admit. But, maybe there’s a thrill in that, something taboo, an incestuous rush of arousal. She likes her men handsome, I’ll give her that. Her husband and my nephew are really something to look at. But not as pretty as you, my dear assassin. Your face is beautiful… just like your sister’s.”

  “That’s enough. Where’s the money?” he asked, averting his eyes from the shell-shocked, horrified look in Charlotte’s eyes. “I need to see the cash, all of it. Open the bag and dump the money on the floor.”

  “What do you think I am, your fucking slave to order around? I’m paying you, motherfucker, and don’t forget it! There, it’s all there in cold, hard cash. Now, drop your fucking pants, and let me hear the girl scream. You work for me, so give me my money’s worth.”

  Gabrielle had knelt on the floor to empty the bag. This fucking Ghost needed to learn a thing or two about taking orders, and she intended to teach him a lesson. She had it all worked out in her head: The Ghost would kill Charlotte while Alex watched, then he would turn the gun or knife on Alex, and that would be that. While that was all going on, she would make a deal with the five gawking pendejos. They could have all the cash for killing the Ghost so he couldn’t come after her later. Pendejos—she bet if she called them that, they would understand she meant business. She’d learned a lot of derogatory terms in the years she lived in Los Angeles with each of her rich husbands. Of course, she had only heard such words used behind her back by the hired help. Words like that had a nasty ring to them, and they had a way of sticking in Gabrielle’s head, which was nice for a time like this when she wanted to call someone an idiot or a useless little pubic hair.

  “She’s yours and so is the money,” the Ghost told the soldiers. Three of the men went straight to the stacks of hundred dollar bills on the ground. The other two started toward Charlotte, “Not her. The other one, the woman who’s willing to pay to murder children.”

  Gabrielle moved quickly when she realized she was being handed over to a group of thugs hungry for a taste of rape and murder. Charlotte screamed as she saw her draw the knife the Ghost had sharpened to a fine point. His eyes turned to Charlotte just long enough for Gabrielle to deliver one long gash across his chest. He slapped the knife out of her hand and then the soldiers were on her, wrestling her to the ground as she cursed them all.

  Christopher’s shirt had begun to darken with blood when he reached for Charlotte’s hand to help her stand. Her knees buckled beneath her, so he carried her to the Jeep, and then, after they had left the mean streets behind, he lifted her into the small plane at the airstrip.

  “Who am I?” he asked, as they flew north, then east, with the noonday sun high overhead.

  She smiled and said, “Right now, you’re my hero.”

  Chapter Two

  “Wear the vests, they have armor plates in them. This is going to be up close and personal,” Finn told Bly and West when the jet circled, preparing to land on the outskirts of Juarez. “We land at this airstrip, drive ten or fifteen minutes to the warehouse where she’s being held, and we walk right in and get her. That’s the plan, quick and easy. We’re in and we’re out. The Ghost and th
at bitch responsible for this are already dead as far as I’m concerned.”

  Minutes later the jet touched down, and the three men got into a Humvee driven by an ex-SEAL buddy of Finn’s.

  “I’ve been watching the warehouse since you contacted me,” the ex-SEAL told Finn. “I’ve been scoping the place using thermal. There are six people inside emitting body heat. Five of them moving around, one of them is stationary. The one who isn’t moving is in a prone position, the other five have been… up and down, using the one who’s lying down, I’d guess. Sorry man, I had zero backup, or I would’ve done the extraction myself.”

  Night was falling and Finn was glad. He liked the cover of night, especially when he had extremely dirty work to do, and because a grown man’s tears were embarrassing in the daylight. Especially when the grown man was a killer by nature, a hardened assassin, and especially when the grown man was him. He was going to enjoy killing whoever was hurting Charlotte, using her. And after he was through, he wanted to die himself. So he stripped off his shirt and the body armor vest as the Humvee pulled over and parked down the street from the warehouse. When West asked him what the fuck he was doing, he just opened the door and hit the ground running. Whatever was going on inside the warehouse, it was clear to him that Charlotte was as good as dead. With no need for stealthy maneuvering or attacking by surprise, he went in through the main door, guns blazing.

  “Fuck, let’s go. That crazy bastard!” West shouted, and he and Bly were close on Finn’s heels.

  Finn kicked the door in, scanned the room, and put a bullet between the eyes of a man kneeling on the mattress with his pants around his knees. He had just raped and slit the throat of the woman who lay beneath him. All Finn could see of her was black hair and blood gushing over her face and body. He blanked that scene out of his mind in an instant, clicked into killer mode, and shot two more men. Bly and West cleanly took out the remaining two, and it was all over in mere seconds. Heavy-gauge weaponry was scattered around the fallen bodies, but the attack had indeed been a complete surprise. Gabrielle was dead with her eyes wide open, a silent scream forever on her lips. West knelt down and closed her eyelids, then he gave Finn and Bly the news: It wasn’t Charlotte. They both closed their own eyes in unison, then Finn’s flew open a second later.

  “Grab that tarp and let’s wrap her body. We need to get out of here, Charlotte could still be alive,” Finn said. He began to shout every profanity he could think of until he heard one of the men on the floor moan. He was next to the wounded man in a flash, and he yanked him up by his shirt. “Where is she, the young woman, the pregnant woman, and the Ghost?” He asked in Spanish, and the man mumbled a few words before he died.

  “They’re local cartel members, small time. The Ghost gave them the older woman a few hours ago. Charlotte was alive, he took her with him. Leave all the bodies,” Finn said, his cold glance levelled at the dead woman who had been the cause of the destruction. “We’re burning the place down, no clues left behind for the cartel.”

  West and Bly had been wrapping Gabrielle’s body, and West stopped to see how that decision might affect Bly. As West suspected, Bly’s sole concern was to find Charlotte alive and well. Finn’s ex-SEAL buddy cautiously walked through the door, his rifle at the ready, and Bly calmly asked him if he could rig an improvised explosive device. Which he did, fashioning it from the tools of his trade that he kept in the Humvee. Then they were out of there, and driving away, as the blast from the warehouse shook the city of Juarez, and the flames climbed into the moonless sky.

  *

  “I need to have a look at that cut,” Charlotte said when she realized fresh blood was seeping through Christopher’s shirt. “Can we land somewhere? Let me get some peroxide and bandages. Where are we going, anyway? Are you still going to kill me?”

  “No, I… was never going to hurt you. I knew that when I saw your face in Cabo. I took you because you needed protection from that woman, Gabrielle… That doesn’t matter right now. We’ll land in Junction, gas up the plane, and stay the night.”

  “Junction, is that in Texas? Where are we going? If I’m going to live, I should let my husband know. I mean, that’s pretty big news. It will mean a lot to him, to say the least, and then there’s our father—we have news for him, too,” Charlotte said. She sat in the seat next to him as he flew the plane. She turned sideways and allowed herself to really look at his face. He really was incredibly beautiful, and she wondered if that was how the world saw her. She couldn’t imagine she was as attractive as he was. “Do you think we look alike? I don’t see it, other than our eyes, of course. I’ll admit you don’t see that color of blue very often. For a man you’re kind of… gorgeous. If I looked like you, I’d throw a party to celebrate!”

  He looked at her and smiled, and she thought she might faint. She felt a rush of connection followed by a huge rush of gratitude. She was going to live, her baby would be born, and her ghost of a brother had come back from the dead and was sitting next to her. All those things swept over and through her, and as the adrenaline receded from her bloodstream she reached out and placed her hand over his. He started to jerk away from her, he was so unused to human connection. But instead, he curled his long fingers around her soft hand and stared down at it as if he had seen the face of God. She smiled as she leaned her head against the back of the seat and she slept soundly, with one hand on her belly and the other held securely by her brother.

  *

  The Sunset Motel in Junction, Texas wasn’t fancy, but it had two adjoining rooms and it was clean. A grizzled old cowboy gave them a ride from the tiny airport into town, and they stopped to eat at a Dairy Queen along the way.

  “Oh my God, I have to have this!” Charlotte practically groaned as she unwrapped her bacon double cheeseburger and dipped several hot French fries in ketchup. “Please don’t watch me eat. This is like food porn. I’m pregnant and I’m starving, it’s not going to be pretty.”

  Christopher smiled as he watched her eat, and when she stuffed the fries in her mouth and moaned, he couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Oh, oh, oh, this is so good, this hits the spot. The baby is kicking like a mad, like the star forward for Manchester United. We are both ridiculously happy. And look at you,” she said, watching Christopher lift his second cheeseburger to his lips. “I guess all that muscle requires twice as much food, huh?”

  “You know you’re bleedin’ don’t cha?” The old cowboy said. He sat with them while they ate. He was skinny as a rail, and he drank several cups of coffee and stepped outside to smoke more than once.

  “My brother was in a little skirmish. We’ll need to stop at a drugstore if you don’t mind, before we settle into the motel,” Charlotte said, and Christopher could see that the tough old man was easily caught up in Charlotte’s mesmerizing presence.

  There was some magical quality about her, Christopher had to admit. She’d captivated him the first moment her eyes met his in the mirror in Cabo, and even before that. He’d been tailing her for some time, watching her from afar, trying to decide what to do about her. When she and her husband crossed into Mexico, it had presented the perfect opportunity. Her husband was the best operative he’d ever gone up against—that was undeniable. Christopher had never faced a more formidable adversary. So it had taken time to arrange the abduction after Gabrielle Sommerfeld had contracted the job. Watching Charlotte through a scope was quite a bit different than seeing her in person. She drew him to her like the moon pulled the tides. When she had first said the words, “I’m your sister,” he wanted it to be true. His heart had flip-flopped in his chest, and for the first time that he could remember, he desperately wanted something. He wanted to believe her, and he wanted her words to be true.

  “Not a problem,” the cowboy said. His voice was dry as the West Texas landscape. “We got a Rexall right downtown, but it ain’t called that no more. Now it’s got some fancy name and they closed the soda fountain years back. But this here Dairy Queen ain’t too bad, a
nd I’m pretty much a fool for their milk shakes at breakfast time. Where you folks from, if ya don’t mind me askin’?”

  “Mexico,” Christopher said flatly, and the old man squinted and stared out the plate-glass window and didn’t ask any more questions.

  “This is deeper than I thought,” Charlotte said when they had settled into the motel rooms and Christopher peeled off his shirt. The blood had dried and the denim stuck to his skin. She saw him wince just a little as he tore the shirt away and tossed it aside. “Wow, not your first knife fight, evidently. Reminds me of Finn. He used to come home with these battle scars all the time.”

  “Finn? That’s his name, your husband, the assassin?” he asked.

  “Yes, that’s his name and let’s skip the job specifications, okay? I need to call him soon, like right now. Here, take a shower and wash those cuts with this Betadine solution. I’m going to call my husband and tell him what’s going on… He’s worried sick, as you can imagine… or maybe you can’t, I don’t know. Just wash away some of the germs, then I’ll patch you up and we’ll talk if you’re up to it. Where are we going, anyway? We’re not going in the right direction for California.”