Lone Star (Dartmoor Book 7)

by Lauren Gilley

  “Swing right,” Fox said. He glanced back over his shoulder as everyone moved to comply, and pinned Candy with a look. “No hero moments yet, okay?”

  Candy bared his teeth in a semblance of a grin. “No promises.”

  ~*~

  Dusk. When the last fingers of light had slipped back from between the tree trunks, Reese moved through the gloaming, quick and silent, toward the workshop. Albie had wanted to come, but Walsh had put a hand on his arm – fingers gripping tight, knuckles whitening with the effort of restraint – and said, “Let Reese. This is what he’s best at.”

  A simple statement of fact, but it had felt like praise. So he moved now with a small kernel of warmth in his breast, as he flattened himself against a section of metal wall, melting into the shadows there.

  The window beside his head had been brushed with a single coat of black paint: too thick to see through, but thin enough to allow the warmth of electric light, with which it glowed now. Someone might have left a bulb burning, but he thought it was more likely that someone was inside.

  The window was barred from the outside, secured with screws that would be easy to remove – if he had the time or a screw driver.

  But.

  Roof it was.

  It was low. He reached up and gripped its edge with gloved hands, took a breath, and pushed off from the ground. A flex, a pull, and he swung up and over and landed lightly on the balls of his feet. He’d made noise – impossible to avoid – but only a little, and his core burned pleasantly from the exertion.

  The old tin crackled under his weight as he moved, slowly, on feet and hands, crawling to keep from falling through. He found what he’d thought he might: a fiberglass panel near the center – a line of them – to let in sunlight during the day. It was yellowed and brittle, but it too emitted a faint glow from inside.

  Reese leaned down and pressed his ear to it a long moment, breath held, listening. Faint shuffling sounds, a rustling like bird wings. No voices.

  He weighed the possibilities. In his experience, people like these Chupacabras couldn’t wait silently anywhere: always chatting and gossiping with each other. Passing the time, fighting the silence.

  He drew one of his guns, and laid it within easy reach, then used his knife to pry up the panel. The noise of it inspired more rustling, and a few little squeaks; the unmistakable quickness of breath.

  He set the panel aside and waited. Heard another noise, in the woods behind him: Albie growing impatient. That was why people like Reese existed, because people like Albie were too emotional and irrational to handle these sorts of jobs with the proper skill and caution.

  When the noise from inside the workshop had died down again, he picked up his gun, and dropped down inside. Landed softly, absorbing the shock of it through bent knees. Turned, gun raised, scanning.

  No Chupacabras, but he wasn’t alone.

  Fifty-Two

  Candy flicked a quick look toward Reese’s face as he stormed past him into the now-open door of the workshop, searching for a hint as to what awaited him inside. He didn’t find one, and wasn’t sure why he’d looked; that painted-black mask the kid wore revealed nothing.

  Dark closed over him inside; a narrow space with open rooms on either side, hastily-patched-in additions to the original structure. He saw movement there, in the shadows; sensed the heat and volume of bodies. But the flickering orange light of a single caged bulb drew him to the heart of the workshop, to the wide-open, dirt-floored space in the center, where a row of tables waited. All of them was occupied, bodies stretched out atop them. The first was Jesse, from the convenience store, his throat a gaping second mouth. And then Eric. The girl, Gwen. Blood on the floors, soaking into the dirt, turning it to mud, stinking of iron and shit. The last table held another woman, and he saw the glint of golden hair–

  The room tilted. His lungs seized, and he stumbled a moment, had to catch himself against the nearest table. Jesse’s body trembled atop it, but didn’t fall, held fast by cuffs.

  Walsh and Mercy stood together, their backs to him. It was Mercy who turned, dark gaze sympathetic, and said, “It’s not her.”

  His lungs opened painfully, and air rushed back in. He stood straight, and took the final steps up to the last table.

  It was Melanie.

  Her throat had been cut, recently, the blood still bright and wet. It had pooled beneath her head, matting her hair, and dripped off the edge of the table. Little plink sounds every few seconds. She’d died with her eyes open; blood flecked her lips, her chin, her cheeks.

  “Do you know who she is?” Walsh asked.

  “Yeah.” He searched for grief, but couldn’t find any now. He didn’t guess he could blame her for getting caught up in the cartel’s scheme – it had happened to better people.

  But he did blame her, all the same. Was it worth it? he wanted to ask her. Was it worth your life? And Pacer’s? And Michelle’s?

  Mercy touched his shoulder. “There’s live ones.”

  There were. Walsh walked him back up to the alcoves he’d passed. Eden was there, crouching down, holding a flashlight. There were women, dozens of them, all of them young, in every combination of skin and hair color. Tattered clothes, exposed, dirt-caked skin. Tied at wrists, and ankles, gagged, sitting in their own filth.

  Candy pressed the back of his hand over his nose and mouth. “You were right,” he told Eden. “They are selling girls.” His gaze skipped across frightened faces, and white-rimmed eyes. “Is–”

  “I already checked. Michelle and Axelle aren’t here.” Her tone was grim. “And it appears Gwen was telling the truth about one thing, at least.” She nodded toward the girl in front of her, a redhead massaging her wrists after Eden had cut them loose. “This is April. She’s from Tahoe.”

  “Tahoe?”

  Eden offered her a water bottle that the girl took with shaking hands. She spilled more down her chin than she drank, panting afterward. Her voice was croaky and unused. “I was in town to visit my grandmother. And I went to the store, and…”

  “She was taken,” Eden said, turning to him. “I’m willing to bet everyone here was snatched off the streets or from their homes, and the FBI had to know there were way too many missing persons reports being filed, but they covered it all up.”

  He straightened, and turned, retrieved his own flashlight. The Cali boys were in the alcove opposite, cutting bonds, removing gags. Loco had another bottle of water, trying to divvy it up only a sip at a time, so everyone got at least a little.

  Candy wanted to break things.

  He went back outside, into the cool freshness of night. Stars wheeled overhead, vivid pinpricks against the blackness, casting the forest in a pale silver glow.

  Fox and Reese stood a few paces away from the door of the workshop, voices low murmurs nearly drowned out by the call of night birds. Candy joined them – and then wished he hadn’t. He was boiling inside. The idea of giving orders, of formulating a plan, had his hands clenching and knuckles cracking. Fuck this. Fuck all of this.

  Fox cleared his throat. “I sent two of the Cali boys after the van. Figured you’d want to talk to Cantrell.”

  Cantrell. That fucker. They’d left him gagged and bound to the security grate in their stolen van, and he was coming here now, and Candy was going to break him.

  He wasn’t aware of moving or speaking, but suddenly Fox was right in front of him, the mild lift of his brows visible in the moonlight. “Okay, okay, yes, fine. You can feed him his own entrails after all this is done, if you like. But right now, he’s our best source of intel.”

  Candy took a deep breath that did nothing to loosen the knot in his chest. Wiped both hands down his face when he felt his eyes get hot and tight. He blinked, and collected himself; he felt patched together with tape and school glue. A hurricane in a bottle.

  But he couldn’t do that, not now, not yet. He had to be like Fox. Had to keep his wits, see this through.

  When he dropped his hands, he said, �
�We’ve got to call…somebody. I don’t know who. Someone has to deal with all” – he gestured over his shoulder toward the workshop – “that.” Ordinarily, he would have reached out to Jaffrey, and let him take credit for a major bust. But how much of PD could be trusted right now? Who was on the take with Cantrell and the cartel? And who…

  Shit, he had no idea.

  “I’m going to call Jen,” Fox said, levelly, soothingly. “Have her talk to Maddox, yeah? There’s no way the whole Bureau is on this. We’ll leave some of the boys behind to see that this is handled, and the rest of us will…”

  Headlights cut through the trees, and the van crunched its way up the narrow gravel drive and halted in front of them.

  “Where’s Albie?” Candy asked, and didn’t have to wonder for long.

  ~*~

  Albie had to walk out of the workshop because he was deeply ashamed of the fact that he could look at all those poor girls in there – dirty, and hungry, and waiting to be sold into slavery – and not feel anything except sick and desperate because he hadn’t found his own girl yet.

  Standing in the narrow front hall of the workshop, voices surging like white noise around him, lungs full of the stink of human waste, he was transported back to an alley in London. Back to tackling his own father to the ground; the pain of impact, the sharper pain of betrayal.

  Devin had left them that night. Just left. He’d known about Tenny, and about Pseudonym, and about all the horror that awaited them, and he’d abandoned his own children. Again. Always. Always again and again.

  And he’d been floundering under a toppled chair while cartel goons clubbed his old lady over the back of the head and threw her in the back of a truck…

  He didn’t realize he was moving until the cold night air slapped him in the face. The lights startled him, at first, and then he saw the police van idling, its passenger door open. And then Jackal appeared, walking someone along in front of him – someone bound and gagged, his hands behind his back.

  Cantrell.

  Albie didn’t think; he moved.

  It was only the work of a few strides to reach the van, and by that time Cantrell had come down off the last step, standing unsteadily on the gravel. Albie had his fist cocked before he was in range; the punch started in his gut, in the deep, angry, seething heart of him, and the impact of his knuckles against Cantrell’s cheek echoed off the steel walls of the workshop, a sharp crack.

  The pain was immaterial; it was more numbness than anything else.

  Cantrell dropped with a choked shout behind his gag, landing in a clumsy tangle on his side, hands still locked together behind his back.

  Albie kicked him in the stomach, and he doubled up like a cooked shrimp, wheezing and choking and retching against the gag. He tried to go to his knees beside the man, another swing already winding up.

  But strong hands caught him beneath the arms and dragged him backward. Picked him up off his feet, like he was no more than a doll.

  A better man would have realized that he was acting like an idiot, and not resisted. Would have taken his scolding, pulled himself together, and would have applied himself toward something productive.

  Right now, Albie was not the better man.

  He kicked and thrashed, and tried to get loose, for all the good it did him, which was none. “Fucking – put me – I’m gonna–”

  “Albert, you’re embarrassing yourself,” Fox deadpanned, appearing beside him. A moment later, Fox’s fingers were at his throat, pinching in just the right way against his windpipe and the nerves in the side of his neck.

  He considered letting it happen. Fox could and would put him to sleep, and maybe that would be better than the hectic, bird-in-a-cage mental state currently plaguing him.

  But he thought of the girls, and he subsided, choking only a little.

  The beast holding him put his feet back on the ground, but kept hold of him. “Trust me,” Candy said, revealing himself – he’d known that only he or Mercy would have been strong enough to do what had just been done to him – “I wanna do that, too. But we’ve gotta talk to his ass first.” He patted Albie on the shoulders and turned him loose.

  Fox still held him, and Albie shot him a glare. Fox waited a full second, unblinking, before pulling back.

  On the ground, Cantrell remained curled up tight, heaving or crying or pleading, muffled sounds of pain. The moonlight caught the glint of tears on his cheeks.

  Candy walked around to him, grabbed him by a fistful of his shirt, and lifted him up. Cantrell flailed a moment like a kitten, but Candy gave him a hard shake, kicked his feet into place under him, and pushed his face into the other man’s. “Walk.” Albie had never heard him sound like that, and Cantrell’s red-rimmed eyes went properly wide.

  Candy marched Cantrell into the workshop, and Albie and the others followed. All save Reese, he noted, who stayed out on the ridge, keeping watch. At least not all of them were blinded by rage and panic.

  Inside, some of the girls were on their feet. Albie saw Cantrell’s head turn side to side as they passed. Are you shocked? he wanted to demand. Did you know your little boy was doing this? Did you help him do it?

  They reached the first of the tables, and Candy held Cantrell by the wrists with one giant hand, and reached with the other to test the bonds on Jesse’s corpse. “Fox?” he asked, when he didn’t manage to open the cuffs.

  Fox stepped up and fiddled a moment. “Wingnuts,” he said. “Not even locked.” In a few moments, he had the dead boy’s ankles and wrists unlatched.

  Candy grabbed the edge of the table and tipped it. The body slumped off and fell to the floor in a nauseating tangle of impossible angles and bends. The thump of it impacting the floor was almost satisfying, though, Albie thought. Then Candy hauled Cantrell up onto the blood-slick tabletop, hands still bound at the small of his back, so his spine was bowed awkwardly; the pain on his shoulders and elbows would be sharp.

  Good.

  Candy ripped the gag from his mouth, revealing red marks on the man’s cheeks where it had been tied overly tight. The sight sent another pulse of satisfaction through Albie’s stomach.

  Cantrell started talking immediately, trying to save himself. “I swear I didn’t–”

  Candy slapped the table right beside his head, and Cantrell flinched, eyes squeezing shut. “Here’s how this is gonna work,” Candy said, and his voice was still terrible; rough and raw and half a growl. But cold, too. There could be no mistaking him right now for a man with a shred of leniency or sympathy. “I’m going to ask you questions, and you’re going to give me answers. If you won’t talk, or if you give me a buncha bullshit, that guy” – a nod toward Mercy where he lingered half in and out of a shadow, hulking, profile orange-glazed in the light, hair a sinister ink spill down his shoulders – “is gonna start taking fingers and toes and other non-essential bits until you tell me what I wanna hear. Do you understand?”

  Cantrell cracked his eyes open, face lined with pain and distress, and jerked a nod.

  “There’s no law here,” Candy said, braced above him, looming, face a cold mask. “There are no badges, no squad cars, no agents to arrest me and save your sorry ass. Right here, in this room, you have no jurisdiction. This is me versus you, and I’m the bigger animal, so you need to think very carefully about your answers when you give them. I’ll know if you’re lying – I’ll be able to smell it on you.” He sniffed, scenting the air like the dog they all wore on their cuts.

  Albie had an ugly, desperate thought: he hadn’t scented it before. None of them had. No one had ever suspected what that birth certificate had revealed. How could they have?

  How could they win now when they’d been stumbling around up until now, blind and stupid?

  Candy said, “Luis said his father was the head of the Chupacabras. Does that mean you’re a cartel boss?”

  “No. No, that’s just a joke of his. He’s – he’s got a weird sense of humor.”

  “Yeah,” Mercy said, approach
ing from the other side of the table, drawing Cantrell’s shivering, terrified attention. Mercy was Candy’s counterpoint here, relaxed, easy, smiling – but it was one of his sinister half-crazy smiles, and there was nothing comforting in the size of his arms – or of his fists, which he rested lightly on the table edge. “Nothing says ‘haha’ like a room full of sex slaves and a buncha dead bodies.”

  Cantrell closed his eyes, throat convulsing as he swallowed. “He’s very disturbed. Luis is – there’s something wrong with him. He…I don’t know. I wanted him to sit down with a psychiatrist, but–”

  “But you decided to help him murder a buncha people instead,” Candy said. “Got it.”

  “I didn’t – I didn’t help. I just–”

  “Lied to us, arrested us, and let innocent women suffer. No, sure, but you’re not guilty of anything. Where’s Luis now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Very calmly, Mercy walked down to the end of the table, and unlaced Cantrell’s shoe.

  His eyes flew open. “No! Wait! I really don’t!”

  Mercy drew the shoe off, humming to himself, and then the sock. And with a deft movement broke two of Cantrell’s toes with an audible sequence of cracks.

  He screamed. Anyone would have. Arched up higher off the table and shouted, “I’m not lying! Please, please!”

  Mercy gripped another toe.

  “Please! I have no idea where he is now!”

  Candy looked at Mercy, and nodded.

  The rest of the toes followed.

  When Cantrell’s bitten-off screams had trailed into wet, shuddering breaths, Candy leaned down and said, “I believe you.”

  “Candy,” Blue said. He sidled up to take Mercy’s former place at the table, expression stern.

  Candy met his gaze, only a heartbeat, but then Blue nodded and eased back a step. Candy had been challenged lately, Albie knew. Brothers pressuring and doubting him from all sides. No one was challenging now, not when his fangs were out and all his muscles coiled for violence.