by Pam Godwin
He jerked back, stumbled. Oh, thank God. The beam of headlights illuminated a crimson stain at the center of his white shirt. He snapped his gun up, aimed at her, and fired.
The bullet whistled past her. She leapt on him. Took him to the ground. Landed on his chest, the knife slick in her grip, her heart beating at a dangerous velocity.
The buyer hit the ground beside them, one hand squeezing the flow of red at his throat, the other clawing through the dirt to grab her leg. His fingers caught her calf in a blood-slicked grip.
She jerked her leg free and stabbed downward, hitting the bodyguard’s chest. The blade sank an inch and stopped. The sternum? A rib? Shit, shit, she couldn’t push it in. He shoved her away, raised his gun.
A gunshot cracked from the brush.
The beige of his nylon hood turned red, seeping blood. The gun dropped, and his body slumped.
A ragged breath tore from her throat. She unlocked her limbs, shaking violently, and checked the pulse in his throat. Nothing. She scrambled toward the buyer.
He lay on his back, arms lolled to the side. She tore off his mask and stared into the lifeless eyes of a weathered face.
She sat back on her heels, removed her own mask, and choked on the copper-tainted fumes of death and defeat. Nausea gripped her insides. Her first seven captives had fattened Mr. E’s off-shore account, but they were free and their buyers dead. And her eighth captive— A sharp pain ripped in her chest. She inhaled deeply. Josh was safe.
Kate knelt a few feet away, curled over her thighs, shoulders trembling. Liv needed to go to her, but her legs wouldn’t move, the gravity of what came next weighing her down.
One more kill. In Van’s bed. Where he would find her dead and rotting and clutching her letter.
The stampede of foot falls crashed through the trees. A moment later, arms wrapped around her, Camila’s familiar spicy scent a temporary comfort.
“I’m sorry, Liv. We tried to get here in time.”
Shoes scuffed the rocky terrain around her, sounding the movements of young men gathering the dead and cleaning up the evidence. Young men she’d abducted, humiliated, whipped, and jacked off.
Killing herself would free them for good. It would also free Mom and Mattie. Mr. E would have no reason to harm them if she weren’t around to experience the horror of it.
She should’ve ended her life years ago, but Josh had been the push she needed. Releasing him back to his parents was the right thing to do. Perhaps it was his integrity that had given her the strength to be honorable.
She hugged Camila’s slim shoulders and dropped her face in the black silk of hair. “Don’t be sorry. You still managed to fire a kill shot. Thank you.”
Camila pulled back, shaking her beautiful round face, her eyebrows drawn in confusion. “We didn’t shoot anyone. We just got here.”
Her blood ran cold. “What do you mean?”
“Liv?” The deep accented voice behind her belonged to her second captive.
She pulled to her feet and came face to face with Ricky, who aimed a gun at a pair of pale green eyes. Eyes she never thought she’d see again. In his hand, dangled a Taurus PT-22 with a pink wood-grain grip.
CHAPTER 35
Six guns aimed at Josh’s head. Five men, one woman, all of them young, irrationally attractive, and glaring at him with fight in their eyes. He should’ve been scared shitless, but the cold blood settling around his heart suspended him in a state of shock.
He’d just killed a man. Even as he feared God and shunned evil, he knew without a doubt he’d do it again. For her.
Liv watched him, her eyebrows in a stark V, her complexion pale and splattered with blood. “Lower your guns.”
The weapons lowered, disappearing in waistbands and pockets. Her friends, whoever they were, shifted closer, forming a bulwark at her back.
The Latino woman opened her mouth, and Liv held up a finger, silencing her and glaring at him. “How did you find me?”
“You might call it a lucky break. I call it divine intervention.” He flicked the safety on the gun. “Why’d you leave this in the Honda?”
“So you could return it to your mom.” Her eyes flashed. “I did not expect you to use it in a reckless gunslinging rescue.” She spoke low, repeating her question. “How did you find me?”
He tucked the gun into his waistband at the base of his spine. “I left as soon as I woke. Got to the front of the neighborhood, and there you were, in the van, only a few blocks ahead of me.” God hadn’t abandoned him after all. “I followed you.”
Her lips pinched in a line. “I freed you.”
The woman at her side covered her mouth, eyes wide. “Oh my God. He’s that missing football player from Baylor.” Her head snapped to Liv. “He’s one of us?”
They were three hours from Baylor in the middle of nowhere. It was surreal that news of his disappearance had traveled that far. And what did she mean, one of us? His vision prodded through the nighttime shadows, searching the faces of her gun-toting, backup team. “Who are you?”
Liv pulled out her phone and squinted at the screen. “I have about twenty minutes before Mr. E wonders why my phone isn’t moving.” She blinked up. “Josh, this is Camila.”
Camila gave him a chin lift. “I was her first delivery.”
The hand of darkness seemed to lift from the trees, the stars singing together and the world crashing into place in a duh-faced moment. He took in their handsome features, their muscular builds, and their youth. Some were of Spanish descent, and they all fit the same desirable mold, including Kate. All seven of her captives. Here. Free.
All the signs had been there. She had never shown remorse over the fate of her captives, refused to talk about rescuing them, never veered from her plan to deliver Kate. And Van’s inability to attend the transactions made it all possible.
Camila gave Liv’s hand a squeeze. “Liv gutted my buyer the minute he sent the transaction. I screamed like a maniac, covered head to toe in his blood.” She half-laughed, half-groaned. “When she calmed me down, she told me her story. Her history with Van. Her Mom. Her daughter.” A sad smile touched her lips. “I refused to abandon her, so she let me dispose of the body and gave me an anonymous e-mail address. I sent a phone number there, one that couldn’t be traced to me. A year later, she called. That’s when I met Ricky.”
The man closest to him held out a hand. “Ricky. Slave number two.”
Josh accepted the handshake, awe-struck, his tongue not functioning.
Another guy flicked up three fingers. “Tomas. Number three. Her favorite.”
Someone coughed, “Bullshit.” Then each of the remaining men stepped forward, their names threading around him, pulling him into their huddle. Luke, the only redhead, number four. Martin, who had to drag his eyes from Liv, number five. Tate, huge smile, number six.
A familiar blond head emerged through the wall of men, her hands twisting in the front of her dress. She peered up at the strangers with a shell-shocked expression. “I’m…my name is Kate.” She stared at Liv, her lips parted and eyes wide. “Does this make me number seven?”
Liv moved to her and cupped her face, bending to meet her eyes. “You okay?”
With a jerky swallow, Kate raised her chin and nodded. “I’m still trying to catch up. I…I had no idea. I thought I was going with that man.” Another swallow. “I didn’t expect you to kill him. Have you ever lost a slave?”
A deep inhale billowed Liv’s breasts above the cups of her bra, and a quiver skipped over her arm. “No, Kate. We are all here.”
We. They were all free, yet Liv was still a prisoner.
Liv smoothed Kate’s hair from her face and spoke to her in a low, rushed tone about her mom and daughter, the significance of the other slaves being there to help her, and why she does what she does. The whispered conversation went back and forth for a moment longer, and Liv turned Kate toward Camila. “I trust them with my life, Kate. They’ll protect you with theirs.”
Camila embraced Kate in a hug. “Finally, a girl. And blond?” She glanced at Liv. “Still hunting in the border towns?”
“Until Josh.” Liv moved to the hood of the sedan and picked through the cash, weapons, and phones that had been gathered from the dead men’s pockets. “Kate’s buyer wanted blond and innocent. Took Van a year to find her in the southern slums.” She turned toward Kate. “Your brothers were protective of you, but they’re drug dealers, and they’re involved with some really bad people.”
Kate’s face pinched. “I know.”
“It’ll be fine.” Camila grinned and waved a hand at the men. “You can help me air out the testosterone in our house.”
Josh startled. “You live together?” Were they still considered missing?
Ricky strode around the buyer’s sedan and shoved a lolling arm into the trunk. “We come from broken families and ghettos who wrote us off as runaways.” He slammed the lid shut. “If we return to our hellholes, it might initiate investigations that led to Liv.” He walked back toward the group, eyes on Kate. “You can’t go home.”
She stepped away from Camila’s embrace and rubbed her head. “I…I know.”
Martin pointed a finger at Tate. “You know, that guy threw a fit when we told him he was stuck with us. Look at him now. He’s been trying to fuck me since he moved in.”
Hands laced behind his head, Tate glared at him. “I come into your room at night, because the entire house can hear you shouting Liv’s name while you’re jerking off. You need to get over her, man.”
Martin flipped him off. “Fuck you.” His eyes lit with laughter then shifted back to Liv with unmistakable longing.
Liv’s shoulders squared under Martin’s gaze as she blinked up at Tate. “You look well.” She smiled. “Happier.”
“I am happy, Mis—” He coughed in his fist. “Liv.”
Tate was number six, so he would’ve been her last delivery, which she’d said was eight months earlier. Thick black hair and one of those boxy jaws women love, he smiled like he was posing for a camera, but it was warm and sincere when he regarded Liv. Josh believed she’d never had sex with him, but she knew him intimately. She knew all of their bodies intimately. With her hands. And her mouth.
Jealousy surged through his lungs and tightened his muscles. It was ill-timed and immature, but it couldn’t be helped. His fists clenched, itching to drag her away and pretend that none of this existed.
Ricky nodded at him. “Liv, your boy’s about to pop a vein in his forehead.”
She closed the distance, her shadowy gaze caressing his face, her nearness replenishing the oxygen in the air. She clasped his fists and uncurled his fingers, her hands sticky with blood.
“Why’d you free him without a transaction?” Martin crossed his arms over his chest.
Her eyes didn’t waver from Josh. “He’s stubborn, disobedient, and untrainable.”
He saw so much behind those words. Her spine straightened defensively, her lips flattened with fear, and her eyes hooded with affection.
“He failed the buyer introduction.” She raised their laced hands to her chest. “You would’ve failed the next one, too. It was only a matter of time before Mr. E and Van saw this—” Her lashes lowered, her gaze on their hands, and fluttered back up. “They would’ve killed you.”
A mass of regret clotted his throat. He didn’t mourn loving her, never that. But he wished he was smarter. There had to be a safe way to end this with her family protected, but he couldn’t see it.
The guys continued their road cleanup, but their attentions lingered on Liv. Without hesitation, his possessive heart led his lips straight to hers. With a hand on her neck, his other clasping hers against her chest, he kissed her deeply, nipping, licking, stealing her breaths, swallowing the hum in her throat. She was his, and he owned her mouth with a kiss that would leave no misunderstanding.
When he released her lips, her eyes clung to him, dark and hungry. Exactly how he wanted her. After all his questions were answered. “You freed me. Freed Kate. How does this save your mom and daughter?”
Camila paused in her effort to kick gravel over a patch of blood-stained dirt. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.”
The red slicking Liv’s cleavage gleamed in the headlights as her chest heaved. She unwound their hands and walked toward the van. “We need to wrap this up.”
He shoved his fingers through his hair, watching the uncharacteristic wobble in her retreating strides. “Camila, why didn’t she tell me about you? About this?” He gestured at Ricky and Luke, who were pouring jugs of acrid-smelling vinegar over the crime scene.
“She freed you,” she said, softly. “When you return, you’ll be swept into the investigation of your disappearance. Lots of interrogations.” She jerked her chin at the group. “How are you going to keep this a secret? We’re killing people, Josh. And Liv is crazy protective of our identities. In fact, she’s terrified her expressions or reactions around Mr. E and Van will give us away. So she lies to herself when she’s in that house. She thinks of us as dead.” She turned toward Kate, whose eyes were glazed and distant, and stroked her hair. “Until she needs us.”
Across the road, Liv leaned against the passenger door of the van, stripping her boots and wiping the blood from her chest with a t-shirt, her expression downcast and inwardly focused. He never once suspected this endgame, and he liked to think he knew her better than anyone else did.
He watched her with a renewed appreciation for her mystery. She was a complicated puzzle, one he planned to enjoy for the rest of his life.
A new life. What did that look like? He wouldn’t return to his old life without her. Yet, she’d sent him on his way as if she expected him to do just that. His spine tingled. “She wouldn’t have freed me unless she had a solution to save her family.”
Kate’s shoulders bunched as she watched Liv wrestle with the front clasps of the bodice. “She’s going to kill herself.”
His nostrils flared, his pulse spiking in objection. “Did she tell you that?”
Her head shook as she hugged herself. “I was just thinking about her behavior since we left the house. She cried a lot on the way here. Then her voice grew cold and weird. She started singing “Last Resort”, you know, that suicide song by Papa Roach. Definitely not her usual genre of music.”
Muscle-clenching fear shot through his legs. He sprinted toward Liv, watching her movements, his entire body aware of her fingers on her corset and her feet pacing in a tight circle. Did she have a weapon on her? Would she attempt it right there? In front of him?
He skidded before her and slapped her hands from her belly. “Do you have a blade under your clothes?” He wiggled the remaining hooks free, dropped the corset, and tackled her bra, searching the seams. “Answer me.”
“Fuck you.” She gripped his arms, tried to stop his hands from unclasping the back hooks.
The bra dropped, her breasts bare and streaked with red. No weapon. He dropped to her latex shorts, shoved them past her hips.
“What the hell are you doing?” She glowered down at him, kicking off her shorts like she was going to kick him.
Well, screw her. He was a breath away from tying her up. He opened the passenger door and shifted her until the door gawk-blocked her nudity from the nosy onlookers.
With her arm twisting in his grasp, he pulled her chest against him and pinned her back against the inside of the door, his voice low and vibrating. “Did you consider me in your suicide plans?”
A gasp shuddered through her. Good. Let her feel some of his wretched horror.
Her shoulders rose, and her eyes sparked. “Yes, I thought of you. So much so I made a covenant with my heart to stop cutting you with its jagged, damaged pieces.” She spat the words, her voice growing louder, her eyes watering. “Don’t you see how wrong I am? I’m a kidnapper. A murderer. A fucking monster.”
“I see all of you.” He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to her temple. “I c
laim every jagged piece of you.”
She shoved at his chest, tears escaping, screaming, “I freed you. For you.”
His feet dug in, his arms caging her against the door. He put his face in hers and stared directly into her eyes. “And I will free you. From you.”
Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment. She seemed to be struggling to hold her composure in place. Then a heartbreaking sound keened in her throat. She grabbed him, clinging, her arms twining around his neck, her thighs climbing his body.
He hoisted her backside and wrapped her legs around his waist. His heart fractured and bled out, but as he held tightly to her trembling body, his fortitude strengthened and beat anew.
With her face against his neck, her rushed breaths stroked his skin. “Staying alive is the most selfish thing I’ve done. Every day I live risks them.” She gestured behind her. “And you. Mom. Mattie.”
“Yet you rise out of the storm, faultless and upright.” He gripped her chin, angled it until he won her eyes. “With every delivery, you release another captive. Then you return to your cell to begin the cycle again. The predators exist with or without you. You lure them out, and stop them from preying elsewhere.”
She peered up at him, lips parted, her body going soft in his arms.
He kissed her lips, treasured the salty tears there, and rested his forehead against hers. “Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone. You were the first slave. The one who has never been freed.” He cupped her beautiful, tear-stained face, and traced the scar with his thumb. “Don’t give up. On me. On us.”
The hammer of her heart against his chest slowed with her breaths. She hugged him tighter, nodded. “Thank you for coming. For shooting that man.” She trailed a finger over his lips, watching the movement. “You saved me.” She glanced up. “You can mark that off your to-do list.”
She still needed saving, as did her family.
Camila strode toward them and held out Liv’s handgun. He snatched it before Liv could and set it inside the glove box, along with Mom’s PT-22.
