by Lisa Cardiff
Rever lurched forward, slamming his fist into Emanuel’s jaw. His head pitched backward, and blood mixed with spittle showered the front of Rever’s shirt.
“You’re pathetic,” Emanuel growled. Blood dripped down his chin from the corner of his mouth. “No wonder Ignacio begged Ryker to help him. You’re so easy to manipulate.”
Rever jabbed the tip of his knife into Emanuel’s neck. “I should kill you right now.”
Emanuel lifted his chin, his dark eyes sizzling with undisguised anger. “Do it. I dare you.”
I clamped my hand around Rever’s wrist. His muscles coiled under my fingers and his eyes glittered. The coppery scent of blood settled in the air like a heavy mist, clogging my throat and clinging to my skin.
“Don’t let him get to you,” I hissed. “He’s trying to rattle you. He wants you to kill him quickly because he knows it’s better than the alternative.”
Rever closed his eyes and inhaled, his nostrils flaring. His right eyelid twitched and the muscles in his forearms corded. The seconds ticked like hours. Then, he nodded and yanked his wrist from my hold.
“What do you think, Ryker? Another toenail or should I start cutting off fingers?” He waved his knife back and forth between Emanuel’s hands and feet like a music conductor.
I shifted my weight as I pretended to consider the question. “Finish the toenails on that foot, then move to his hand on the opposite of his body,” I said.
Rever laughed. “I like how you think, Ryker.”
I’d roughed people up in the past, but I’d never crossed the line into the world of torture. I should’ve been revolted and horrified, but the longer I watched Rever, the more immune I became to Emanuel’s pain. With every toenail that flicked across the room, the pain lining Emanuel’s face bothered me less and less. Black and white no longer existed. Everything was colored in shades of gray.
Maybe I’d regret this later, but for now, I felt vindicated and refreshed. Emanuel had manipulated Ignacio, Rever, Juan Alvarez, and me to some extent. This was the price of his arrogance. My stomach clenched at the thought. How much longer until I embraced Ignacio’s philosophy of killing and torturing traitors to the fullest extent? How much longer until I was a mirror image of my father?
“Okay. Okay. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” Emanuel yelled, interrupting my train of thought. His entire body shivered and red lines mapped the whites of his eyes. “Just stop. I can’t take any more.”
Rever had removed five toenails and one fingernail. Blood seeped out of Emanuel’s foot in a slow trickle. Cuts and bruises covered his face. He’d lost consciousness once, but I had dumped a bucket of ice water on his head and Rever kept going.
“Start talking,” I said as I paced back on forth, my hands shoved deep into my pockets.
“Can you take off the handcuffs?”
“No,” I said.
Emanuel closed his eyes and for a minute I thought I’d need to pour ice water on him again. “It started two years ago. I had a gambling debt, and I needed extra money.”
“Why didn’t you ask Ignacio for the money?”
“I did. I didn’t tell him why I wanted it. I said I wanted to invest in a condominium project south of Playa del Carmen. Ignacio refused to advance me the money. Juan Alvarez was happy to. I tried to pay him back, but he didn’t want money. He wanted information.”
“What kind of information?” Rever asked, scratching a few specks of dry blood off his neck.
Emanuel’s gaze drifted to the ceiling, and he cleared his throat. “Different stuff. Some of it was inconsequential. Some of it wasn’t.”
I tunneled my hands into my hair. “We need to know the details. Dates. Times. The information exchanged.”
Emanuel dropped his chin to his chest. “I don’t remember everything.”
Rever slapped him across his cheek. “Stop procrastinating. Tell us what you remember.”
“It started small. He wanted names of government officials who were open to bribes. Next, he wanted names of people within the Vargas Cartel who had issues with Ignacio.”
“Wait.” I sliced my hand through the air. “You were working with Dario, weren’t you?” I asked, referring to the man I killed when Hattie escaped from the Vargas Compound. Dario and three other men had surrounded us in the jungle. We killed them all and Ignacio killed Dario’s son as payback. Then, the war between the Alvarez and Vargas Cartels exploded, making news throughout Mexico and the US.
Emanuel licked his lower lip. “I facilitated the introduction. I wasn’t working with him.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What else?”
He shrugged. “I persuaded Juan Alvarez to use Anna to manipulate Rever.”
“How the fuck would that help you?” Rever yelled.
“She got you out of the picture.”
“So?” Rever spat.
“When Ignacio’s successor abandoned him, it made him look incompetent. People were nervous about the future, which made it easy to find someone to kill Ignacio, but he survived.”
“You were behind Ignacio’s assassination attempt,” I confirmed.
“Yes, but the whole thing backfired. Juan blackmailed me for the name of Hattie’s hotel. I thought Ryker would rescue Hattie and flee the country, but Ignacio used the situation to solidify his hold on Ryker and find a new successor.”
“So you were working for Juan Alvarez all along?” Rever asked.
“No,” Emanuel scoffed, shaking his head. “I was working for myself. I wanted to weaken both cartels so I could unite everyone under me.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I paid my dues, but no matter how hard I worked Ignacio refused to change his mind. He didn’t think I was worthy of taking the reins.”
“You’re not. You’re a piece of shit,” Rever roared as his fist smashed into Emanuel’s face. His eyes rolled up in their sockets, and his head lolled to the side like a rag doll.
“What the hell?” I said, eyeing Rever.
“I couldn’t stand listening to him for one more second.”
“Didn’t you want to know anything else?”
“No.” He dipped his bloodied hands into a bucket of water. “We have everything we need. Get the camera. Let’s find Ignacio. He can finish this. I can’t stand to breathe the same air as him for one more second. I can’t believe I ever trusted him.”
A choked laugh tumbled from my mouth as I turned off the camera.
“What’s so funny?” Rever asked.
“All of Ignacio’s paranoia was pointless.”
“What do you mean?”
“He focused on everyone else while Emanuel snaked his way into every part of the cartel and betrayed him over and over.”
Rever laughed then too. “You’re right, and Ignacio accused me of being a dumbass.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Hattie
“I’m surprised to see you here,” I said as I cracked open the door to Ryker’s apartment.
“You haven’t answered my calls for two days,” my dad said as he shifted on his feet. Dark purplish circles stained the skin under his eyes. He wore a wrinkled t-shirt and jeans instead of a dark suit. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him dress casually.
I glanced to the side, unable to maintain eye contact with him. It hurt too much. I had begged him to come over and discuss everything that happened with Senator Deveron after the story broke, but he rejected my invitation.
“I don’t have anything to say to you or Mom.” My voice trembled, and I choked back a sob.
His nostrils flared. “Can I come in?”
“Is Mom with you?”
“No,” he answered, shaking his head. “I thought it’d be better if I came alone.”
“You can come in.” I opened the door wider and closed it behind him. “Do you want anything to drink?” I asked as we moved through the apartment.
“No. I’m good.” He settled onto the sofa in the living room.
> I sat on the chair across from him. “What did you want to talk about?”
He ran his hands along the tops of his thighs. “Mostly, I want to apologize for not coming over after the story about Senator Deveron came to light.”
I raised one eyebrow, already feeling drained by this conversation. “An apology. That’s it?”
He pursed his lips. “This is hard for me, Hattie.”
I leaned back in the chair and folded my arms across my chest. “Yeah, I can imagine how hard it is for parents to support their child and believe them. I’d always thought it was something that came naturally, but apparently not,” I said, my voice laced with sarcasm.
My dad held up his hand. “To be fair, your mom didn’t tell me anything about your suspicions of Senator Deveron.”
“Really? I find that hard to believe.” I’d told my mom Senator Deveron had orchestrated my abduction by the Vargas Cartel, but she believed Evan over me and dismissed my accusation as a sign of Stockholm syndrome.
He exhaled and squared his shoulders, staring out the window. “She didn’t say anything right away. She mentioned it during your road trip when we couldn’t get in touch with you for a few weeks.”
“And you didn’t bother to talk to me about it.” The words tasted like ash on my tongue.
“For the most part.”
My brows scrunched together. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I did some digging into a possible connection between the Vargas Cartel and Senator Deveron.”
I unfolded my arms, and tapped my fingers on the armrests. “Did you find anything?”
“Nothing concrete. I found curious coincidences, though.”
“But you didn’t do anything about it.”
“I didn’t have the chance to decide one way or another before the whole story landed on the front page of a trashy grocery store tabloid. Did you have anything to do with that? The identity of the source is protected.”
My gaze darted to the side as I contemplated how much to tell him. “Yes.” I sighed. “I gave them the story along with the backup documentation.”
“Where’d you get the information?”
I rubbed my hands over my lips. “I lied. I didn’t go on a road trip a few weeks ago. I went to Mexico. I ended up at the Vargas compound. I got the information when I was there, and a friend helped me shop the information around. That trashy grocery store tabloid was the only place with enough guts to print the story.”
He opened, then closed his mouth in quick succession. “Jesus, Hattie. I don’t know what to say.”
I rolled back my shoulders. “I did what I had to do. I couldn’t let him get away with what he did to me.”
“Do you have any idea what the Vargas Cartel will do to you if they realize you are the source behind that article?” He tugged on the ends of his hair. “They will come after you and they will kill you.”
I smiled condescendingly. “You’re wrong. You don’t know what you’re talking about. They aren’t going to do anything to me.”
He jumped to his feet, his eyes wild. “Maybe you think they won’t hurt you because they let you walk away unharmed once, but you’re wrong. Those people are animals. They will hunt you down and…and…”
“Tie me to a lamppost and cut my head off,” I said without emotion, and his eyes bulged. “Because I’ve seen them do that. Or maybe they’ll brand me like a farm animal.” I slid up the sleeve of my shirt and exposed the burn marks on my arm. “There are so many options, I don’t know where to start.”
His faced paled, and he looked like he might be sick. “Why the hell did you go back there? I can’t believe you broke into the compound and put yourself in danger again.”
“I didn’t break into the compound. I was a guest.” I shrugged as though I didn’t have a care in the world. “In fact, one of them gave me all those documents. He even arranged my first meeting with a newspaper.”
A wall of sadness punched me in the gut as the memory of my last moments with Ryker drifted to the forefront of my mind. As of yesterday, his phone was disconnected. I didn’t know if he was alive or if I’d ever hear from him again. I scoured the internet searching for news on the Vargas Cartel daily. Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t find a single article mentioning Ryker or Ignacio. I had no way to contact him. Noah disappeared two days ago. He left a scrap of paper on the kitchen counter with his cell phone number. I could call him, but the way our last conversation went, I promised myself I’d only contact him as a last resort.
“You’re collaborating with the Vargas Cartel,” my dad said, sounding lost and confused.
“I guess so.”
“Why would you do that? Why would you put yourself in danger like that?”
“I didn’t have a choice. Senator Deveron paid the Vargas Cartel to abduct me. Nobody would believe me unless I provided evidence to support my allegation.”
“So you went to a criminal organization for help?”
“I didn’t have any other options. Besides, I wasn’t scared.”
My phone vibrated on the coffee table. I didn’t recognize the number, so I pressed ignore and slipped it into my pocket.
“I’m the US Attorney General. Of course you had options. You could’ve talked to your parents.”
I scoffed. “I tried that. Mom ignored everything I said.”
My dad winced. “I know, but if you’d given us some time, we would’ve come around.”
“Yeah, and in the meantime, Mom would’ve continued to shove Evan down my throat.”
“You didn’t give us much time to come to terms with the accusations. You disappeared a few days later,” my dad said, dropping his voice an octave. “We didn’t know what to believe. You were acting erratically.”
“It all worked out,” I said as I walked toward the hallway. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some stuff to take care of before I leave.”
The light shuffle of my dad’s sneakers followed me down the hall and into Ryker’s bedroom. Without looking at him, I sorted through the stacks of clothes on the bed next to my open suitcase. I’d gone shopping earlier in the day to buy more clothes. Most of my things were still at Vera’s house and wearing the same five outfits had lost its appeal a week ago.
“Are you going somewhere?” my dad asked, leaning his shoulder against the espresso stained doorjamb.
“I’m thinking about it.” I counted the number of shirts and then placed them at the bottom of the suitcase.
“Were you going to tell us or did you plan to disappear again?”
I whirled around, my hands raised in the air. “Why would I tell you or Mom anything? You’re always busy with work. You barely have a minute to spare for me. Mom only wants me in her life when I’m her puppet doing whatever she wants.”
“That’s not entirely true,” he whispered, his voice raw, pleading with me to understand.
I cocked my hip to the side. “You and mom spent all of an hour with me the day Evan brought me home from Mexico. You were both counting the minutes until you could run away. I felt like you couldn’t stand to look at me. Like I had simultaneously disappointed and inconvenienced you.”
He licked his lips. “I’m sorry if you felt that way. We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know what to say. There isn’t a textbook on how to handle what happened to you.”
Closing my eyes momentarily, I sucked a deep breath into my lungs. “You could’ve acted like I mattered. Like you were happy I was home. Like you loved me.” I tugged on the ends of my hair. “Jesus, Dad, it’s not rocket science.”
“You do matter,” he said almost soundlessly. “We love you. I’m sorry if we failed to show you how much.”
“Great, well, now you don’t need to worry about it,” I said, turning back around.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “It means that if you want me in your life, you need to support me and trust my decisions.”
“We can do that.”
I placed another stack of clothes in the suitcase. “All right.” My phone vibrated again. It was the same number. My heart raced thinking it could be Ryker. “I need to take this.”
“Okay.” He scrubbed a hand down the side of his face. “Will you call me later? I’m not done talking to you.”
“Yes.”
“Thanks.” He kissed me on the cheek. “Don’t give up on your mom and me yet. We aren’t perfect parents, but we love you.”
I nodded. “I won’t.”
“Hello,” I said as I heard the front door close.
“Hattie?”
My heart rocketed at the sound of his roughened voice. “Ryker. I’ve been insanely worried about you. Where are you? Why is your phone disconnected? What’s going on? Did you see the news about Senator Deveron?”
He chuckled, and the deep laugh danced down my spine like a lover’s caress. “Slow down.”
“Just tell me what going on,” I demanded.
“I had to disconnect my phone for security reasons. This is the new number. Yes, I’ve seen the news and I’m still in Mexico.”
“Oh.” My shoulders drooped, and I inhaled shakily. A big part of me had hoped he was already in D.C. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. How are you holding up? Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m a little nauseous on some mornings, but nothing too crazy.”
“Good. How are things with your parents?” His voice was gruff.
“Not so good, but my dad wants things to change. He just left a few minutes ago.”
“Did you work out everything with Ignacio?”
Ryker didn’t say anything for a prolonged beat. “I’m still working on a few details.”
I twisted my fingers into interwoven knots. “How much longer?” I couldn’t take being separated from him for much longer. I was lonely.
“Strange you should bring that up,” he said. I could hear the smile in his voice, and a matching smile stretched across my face. I loved playful Ryker.
“Why’s that?”
“Because there will be a private plane waiting for you at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport at two in the afternoon tomorrow. Do you think you can find it in your heart to clear your schedule?”
