Take

by Pam Godwin

  Panic tortured her heart, and her muscles refused to respond. It was so dark, so confusing. Why couldn’t she see him? Or feel his hands on her? He would never leave her behind.

  The blackness shuddered with jarring flickers of light. Bullets ricocheted, kicking up dirt across the floor. She tried to sit, until she felt the reverberation of approaching feet.

  She held still, her stomach clenching as a dozen black-clad men with guns ran past her, their boots stepping close enough to bounce the broken pieces of wood beneath her.

  Her hearing detected fragmented sound within her body, like the whooshing of blood and crackling static. Was she hurt? She couldn’t sense pain or time, and her brain didn’t seem to be working right.

  Consciousness shriveled to a pinprick of light, and she strained for it, desperate to stay alert.

  After a while, something touched her. Frantic hands, shaking her shoulders and rousing her awake.

  Oh God, she’d passed out? For how long?

  She opened her eyes, her mouth, struggling to identify the face hovering over her.

  Brown hair, blue bow tie, American features—none of the details she ached to see.

  Cole Hartman jostled her limp body, his lips moving without sound.

  “Where’s Tiago?” She braced a hand against the splintered debris beneath her and pushed up. “Where is he?”

  Her head pounded something fierce, and sporadic noises filtered in, making the pain unbearably worse.

  She must not have been unconscious for very long, because the same chaotic level of disorder raged around her—the fire, the gunfight, the exodus of terrified people.

  Tiago was nowhere in sight.

  They were on an island. Did that mean there wouldn’t be fire crews or ambulances? Where the hell was the mob of people running to? Where would they go?

  Away from the fire and spraying bullets.

  As Cole tried to speak to her, she focused on reading his lips.

  Can you stand?

  Are you hurt?

  We need to go.

  She wasn’t going anywhere without Tiago.

  Shoving off the floor with trembling muscles, she staggered to her feet and scanned the darkness. “Have you seen him?”

  A rush of adrenaline accelerated her pulse, shaking away the crippling shock that had pinned her to the floor during those long, wasted minutes.

  Cole’s arms wrapped around her, lifting her off the floor and forcing her with him. She pushed against his chest, trying to get down, to stand on her own.

  He tightened his hold and took her away from the rubble where Tiago must’ve been buried.

  “Nooooo!” She screamed in horror, frantically searching the destruction for his body. “I’m not leaving without him!”

  Cole didn’t slow as he veered around crumbled piles of masonry, wood, and steel. With each step, her hearing returned. As did her determination.

  “Go back!” She thrashed in his unbending arms. “Take me back!”

  A shooter sprinted past, sweating the room with bullets. Cole took cover, dodging the gunfire while fighting down her flailing hands. Then he burst into a sprint, carrying her through a demolished doorway and into a thick haze of smoke.

  “Tiago!” She choked through the suffocating smog and realized the blackness overhead was the sky.

  He’d taken her outside and wasn’t stopping. His legs ate up the ground, hauling her farther and farther away from the burning mansion.

  No, no no!

  A sob opened her throat, and a flood of wailing screams fell out.

  “Can’t leave him! Put me down. I have to go back!” She couldn’t stop crying. Couldn’t see through her blinding panic and tears.

  She howled and writhed until his hand clapped over her mouth and his furious eyes came into view.

  “You’re going to get us killed,” he whispered harshly. “Shut the fuck up.”

  She shoved his hand away. “But Tiago—”

  “He’s dead or missing.” He ran down an embankment and jumped onto a small deserted dock. “If you run back there, you’ll be dead, too.”

  He dumped her in a waiting speedboat. Before she had a chance to scramble out, he slipped the tether free, fired up the engine, and shot into the black expanse of the ocean.

  The sudden momentum knocked her into one of the vinyl seats. She twisted toward the rear, gripping the headrest as the island drifted away.

  Rags of fire whipped along the skyline and wafted plumes of smoke above it, making the darkness even darker. The boat crashed against the waves, and as the distance stretched, reality clawed its way in.

  Tiago was in that inferno, and she’d left him there.

  Grief consumed her, wracking her body with violent, shuddering sobs. She’d abandoned him, something he would’ve never, ever done to her. He would’ve launched himself onto an exploding bomb before he let someone drag him away without her.

  Because he loved her.

  Not once had she said those words back to him, and the thought only made her more miserable. Guilt lashed in her stomach. Defeat bunched her shoulders around her ears. Despondency pounded in her head, and emptiness carved out her chest. She was utterly wretched and inconsolable.

  Cole must’ve thought she’d completely lost her mind. She didn’t know how to explain her feelings, but she had about thirty minutes to figure it out before he stopped the boat.

  He killed the motor, and waves lapped around them. The ocean bled into darkness. Nothing to see or hear for miles.

  After checking something on his phone, he turned his angry gaze to her.

  “I don’t extract unwilling people.” He rose from the driver’s seat and approached her in the rear of the boat. “Tell me I didn’t make a mistake.”

  “You made a mistake.” She was numb. Depleted. Heartsick. “Turn the boat around. Take me back.”

  “You want to go back to the man who poisoned Lucia for eleven years, mutilated Tate’s back, shackled him in a shack for three months, and held you against your will?” He crouched beside her and softened his tone. “Did he rape you?”

  An ugly mass of emotion swelled in her throat, and she looked away.

  “You care about him.” A sigh billowed past his lips. “It’s okay, Kate. You have Stockholm syndrome. I see it all time in these situations and—”

  “What if it’s not that? What if my feelings are real? And I just…” Another sob rose up. “I just left him there to die.”

  “He received the same military training I did. If he’s alive, he’ll get out.” His brows knitted together, and he glanced down at her thigh, where her scars peeked through the slit in the gown.

  He spent the next few seconds examining her for injuries. Cuts and bruises marred her body. Her ankle was sprained, and he claimed she had a concussion.

  She felt none of it. Nothing but emptiness.

  “You’ve been through a lot. You need safety and friends and time to heal.” He checked his phone and returned it to his pocket. “Your ride will be here any minute.”

  “What ride? Who’s coming?”

  “People who care about you.” He removed a small device from another pocket. “I need to do a sweep for transmitters. Did Tiago put anything on your body? Like a small chip under your skin or maybe a piece of jewelry?”

  “You mean a GPS chip?”

  “Yes. You can’t go to the Restrepo estate until we’re certain you’re not being tracked. The location is a highly guarded secret.”

  Her heart slammed as a fresh wave of sorrow washed over her. Tiago would’ve absolutely chipped her, and she knew exactly how. She didn’t even care if he meant to track her. In fact, she loved that about him.

  She loved his possessiveness.

  She loved his bossy mouth, his sexy Spanish accent, his cruel eyes, and his addictive masculine taste when he kissed her. She loved everything about him, and so what if that made her a head case?

  “He hasn’t put anything on me.” She rolled her shoulders fo
rward so the material would hang more loosely across her breasts. “We have to go back for him, Cole.”

  He narrowed his eyes and waved that device right over her breasts until it sounded a low beep.

  Her molars crashed together.

  “You have piercings.” He removed a tiny flashlight from his pocket. “I need to see them.”

  “I’m not removing them.” She hardened her voice. “Take me back to the island.”

  “Not going back, Kate.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled. “You can take out the piercings or leave them in. I don’t give a fuck. I just need to see if there’s a tracker on them.”

  “The thing beeped, so you already know.”

  “It detected metal. You’ll get the same response when you go through an X-ray machine at the airport.”

  “Oh.” She released a breath.

  If he needed to see them, he would have to do it while they stayed in.

  Without removing Tiago’s tuxedo coat, she wriggled the straps of the dress down her arms. When her breasts hit the warm air, he powered on the flashlight and angled the beam on the glimmering red stones.

  “The fuck?” He leaned in, eyes bulging as he stared at the jewelry. “It can’t be.”

  “What?”

  “Did he tell you what these stones are?”

  “Uh… Pawneets… Or no, it was pennet…”

  “Painites.”

  “Yes. Painites. Why?”

  He barked out a strangled laugh and sat back on his heels. “That son of a bitch.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  He shook his head and gripped the back of his neck, his eyes fixed on the piercings, as if he couldn’t believe they were real.

  “Did you find a tracker?” She straightened, startled by his strange reaction.

  “No. The barbells are too small. It’s not that. It’s just…” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “You can fix your dress.”

  Tiago hadn’t put a tracker on her?

  Her breath stuttered as she put the gown back in order. “Is it the stones?”

  “Yeah, Kate. Those fucking stones…” He shifted to the seat across from her and rested his elbows on his knees. “Painites are one of the rarest gemstones on the planet. Extremely valuable. But that’s not important. It’s…”

  Something thundered in the distance, a clap-clap-clap whir of noise that grew louder, closer. In the next breath, she recognized the sound. A helicopter was coming.

  “That’s your ride. Listen…” Cole ran the device along the rest of her body as he spoke. “There’s a rumor going around in the criminal underground that Tiago Badell sold his entire syndicate to some unknown investor in exchange for…” A swallow jogged in his throat. “Four rare painite stones.”

  “What?” Her face chilled, and she pressed a hand over one of the piercings.

  “That sort of hearsay runs rampant in his world, usually conceived as a means of subterfuge and rarely accurate. I didn’t even bother fact checking it. But the evidence…” He glanced at her chest and cleared his throat. “Jesus, Kate. If those gemstones are real…”

  “He wouldn’t give me fake gems and call them real. Not his style.”

  Cole nodded, his voice stunned. “You’re wearing the last twelve years of his life. His entire goddamn livelihood.”

  “What does that mean?” Tears welled in her eyes as the whomping sound of the helicopter sped closer. “Did he give up his organization?”

  “It appears so.”

  “But he gave the stones to me a month ago, and he’s been going to the compound every day, conducting meetings with all his men.”

  “Meetings about what?”

  “I don’t know. They’re always in Spanish.”

  “He was probably transitioning everything. Or dissolving operations.”

  “Oh my God.” She jumped from the seat, rocking unsteadily as waves slapped at the boat. “Take me back. I need to go back!”

  The helicopter swept in above her, swallowing her voice and enveloping her in a mist of ocean water. She covered her ears against the god-awful noise, unable to make out its silhouette against the night sky.

  No way would she agree to board that thing. How would it even work?

  She turned back to Cole and shouted over the wind, “Take me back!”

  He gripped her face, catching the hair whipping around her. “I’ll go back. I’ll find him.”

  His words didn’t reach her ears, but she read them on his lips and saw the promise in his dark eyes.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  He shook his head and pointed behind her. “Go.”

  Steel arms encircled her from behind, and she turned, falling into the warm, familiar eyes of one of her roommates. “Martin!”

  A tether ran from his harness to the helicopter. Evidently, he’d been lowered on some kind of pulley system.

  Her chest squeezed as she absorbed the worried expression on his handsome face. Damn, she’d missed him, and the roar of the wind made it impossible to tell him as much.

  A gust smacked her sideways, and she braced her legs to remain upright. Cole held her in place as Martin quickly attached a belt around her hips, between her legs, and secured the contraption to his. Then he shined a flashlight into the darkness overhead.

  The harness pulled tight and his arms even tighter as they were lifted into the air. The blades beat the wind against them like a hurricane.

  With her heart in her stomach, she stared down at Cole and demanded with her eyes. Find him.

  He stared back with a silent vow tensing his face.

  Digging her hands into Martin’s shoulders, she held her breath and closed her eyes. She had to trust Cole to go back to the island, but it left her feeling completely useless and terrified as that boat sank farther away from her feet.

  When they reached the helicopter, hands grabbed, and arms pulled, until she was lying on her back and safely inside the aircraft.

  Familiar faces filled her view. Smiles. Cheering roars. Even a few wet eyes.

  “Kate!” Camila tackled her as soon as she was disconnected from Martin. “Fucking shit, girl! You’ve given me a dozen heart attacks.”

  Matias nodded at her from the cockpit. She caught a glimpse of Luke’s red hair, before Ricky hauled her into the seat beside him and strapped her in. Martin plopped down on her other side, and the helicopter’s nose dipped as it raced into the night.

  The blaring noise from the blades made conversation difficult, but she felt their relief and happiness pouring off them. Four of her old roommates had shown up for her rescue—Martin, Camila, Ricky, and Luke—and she suspected Tomas and others were waiting at Matias’ Colombian estate.

  After being gone for four months, it was surreal to be sitting here with them. A consuming, head-spinning kind of surreal that crashed in with a flood of pain.

  Her eyes burned with that achy feeling that always came right before she cried. She tried to hold back the tears, but they were persistent and full of so many conflicting emotions—gratitude, fear, joy, desolation, and hope.

  She was finally free, and it hurt to the depths of her soul.

  The one thing that mattered most in her freedom was missing.

  She needed Tiago.

  Whether he joined her in her freedom or took it away, she just needed them to experience whatever came next together.

  Eight people have been arrested after Saturday’s apparent assassination attempt on the President of Venezuela. The President survived the ambush after several drones dropped explosives on his dinner party at a private residence, an attack he blamed on opposition activists and Colombia’s president. Thirty-seven people are confirmed dead. Twelve others are still missing.

  Kate powered off the TV and stared at the blank screen, her voice brittle with pain. “Tiago’s alive.”

  A throat cleared. Feet shuffled. Someone sighed.

  Sitting in one of the many living rooms at Matias’ Colombian estate, she was surrounded by he
r friends. All of them. Liv and Josh, Van and Amber, Camila and Matias, Tate and Lucia, her roommates—everyone was here, seeking refuge within the cartel’s stronghold while awaiting the verdict on Tiago Badell.

  No one trusted him, and maybe that was smart. As long as she was separated from him, they weren’t safe.

  Cole Hartman had returned to the island as promised, but after a night of searching for Tiago and Arturo, he came up empty.

  The next day, he went to Tiago’s penthouse and slipped past the building’s supposed impenetrable security. Everything was still there, but the entire staff had vanished, including Boones.

  That was four days ago.

  He hadn’t been able to confirm the list of casualties on the island. The President had buried that information. No surprise. Most of the names at the party belonged to the sort of unsavory people no president should be associated with.

  Cole assured her he would learn who died and who was missing, but it would take time.

  Didn’t matter. She already decided Tiago was alive. She just needed to figure out how to find him. That was the tricky part.

  Tiago had enemies, and now they knew who she was and what she meant to him. The moment she stepped outside of Matias’ fortress, they would find her.

  It didn’t dissuade her. She had powerful friends, and they were extremely protective of her.

  Except that was the problem. Her friends were too protective.

  When she’d asked Matias for a security team to accompany her to Venezuela, he refused. Then he threatened to lock her in a cell if she tried to leave. Her roommates supported that threat.

  When she’d asked Cole to somehow get a message to Tiago in the criminal underground, that request was refused, as well. Cole said it would end up in the wrong hands and only put her in more danger.

  But Cole kept a diligent watch on Caracas, and he’d been able to confirm one thing.

  Tiago was no longer associated with his organization.

  Smuggling routes had been dismantled. Rival gangs had moved in. There was even a new leader running what was left of his compound.

  He’d given it all up. Forfeited his livelihood. Surrendered his protection.

  For the four gemstones he’d attached to her nipples.