by Paige Tyler
Lyla was torn for a moment between turning and heading back to her car or continuing to her brother’s. Telling herself they wouldn’t try anything in broad daylight, she ignored the sleazy looks they sent her way and hurried past them to Marco’s. When she got there, she quickly shoved open the heavy metal door.
“Marco!” she shouted.
Her voice echoed around her as she walked through the smaller room he used as an office and straight into the big open work space filled with racks of sheet metal and various thicknesses of pipes and rods, overhead cranes, welders, and sanding and grinding equipment. As she went, she couldn’t help noticing the three new sculptures pieces her brother was in the process of making. From the haze of smoke and the acrid stench of superheated metal hanging in the air, she knew Marco had to be there somewhere.
She was about to call out again when she caught sight of a foot and part of a leg sticking out from behind a big workbench. Her heart plummeted.
“Marco!”
He sat up as she ran over. Her eyes widened at the sight of the fresh bruise on his jaw and the blood trickling down his chin from a split lip.
She dropped to the floor beside him, reaching out to check him for other injuries. “What happened?”
That was a stupid question. It was obvious what had happened to her brother. Cobb had been sending some kind of message and used his muscle-headed goons to deliver it.
“I’m fine,” Marco said, waving her hands away as she tried to see if he was bleeding anywhere else. “It was just a misunderstanding.”
She shook her head, knowing that was crap. “Like hell.” She dug her phone out of her purse. “I saw Cobb’s men outside. They beat you up. I don’t know why, and I don’t care. But I’m sure as heck not putting up with it. I’m calling the police.”
“You can’t do that,” Marco said.
“Watch me,” she retorted.
She started dialing 9-1-1, but her brother reached out and pulled the phone out of her hand. “Lyla, I’m serious. You can’t call the cops, or someone important to me is going to die.”
She thought he was simply being dramatic, but the tone of his voice, not to mention the haunted look on his face struck her. Crap. He wasn’t kidding.
Lyla sat back on her heels. “Marco, what the hell have you gotten yourself into? I thought you were working for Cobb. Why would he send his men to beat you up?”
He didn’t look at her as she dropped her phone back into her purse. “This isn’t anything you need to be involved in. Just go home and forget about me. I’ve made a mess out of my life. I don’t want to do the same to yours.”
She made a sound of frustration, the urge to choke the crap out of him nearly impossible to resist. What the hell was wrong with him? Had all the drugs he’d done made him stupid?
“You’re going to tell me what the hell is going on, or I’m going to walk right out of here right now and call the police,” she told him. “You can talk to me, or you can talk to the cops who come here to arrest you. But, one way or the other, you’re going to talk.”
Her brother scowled. “Okay, I’ll tell you. Then you need to go before Cobb thinks you know something that will upset his plans.”
Well, that sounded ominous as hell. “What the heck does that mean?”
Marco ignored the question, climbing to his feet then helping her up before walking over to the workbench to pick up a filthy rag to wipe at the blood on his chin. She wanted to tell her brother to use a clean cloth instead, but she didn’t bother. He wouldn’t listen. He never did.
“That second stint I did at McConnell for possession?” he said, not looking in her direction. “That wasn’t my stuff. I agreed to take the hit so Tim wouldn’t go down for it. He was looking at his third strike, and he would have been looking at a life sentence.”
Lyla stared at him, not sure what the heck that meant. Okay, that wasn’t quite true. She got the gist of it. The drugs the police had found on him that had sent him to jail for another eighteen months hadn’t been his but had instead belonged to Tim, whom he’d been arrested with at the time. Her brother had purposely destroyed his life for the piece of crap who’d gotten him sent to prison the first time. All to save Tim from serving a life time sentence.
“Why the hell would you do that?” she demanded. “Why would you go to jail for that a-hole?”
He glanced at her. “When I was in prison for that first nickel, I would have died twenty times over if it wasn’t for Tim. He kept me alive in there. I owed him a debt. When it looked like he was going to go down again, I stepped up for him.”
Lyla shook her head. He was talking about a world so far outside her understanding, it might as well have been an alien planet.
She pointed at the bloody rag in his hand. “What does any of this have to do with the here and now? You repaid your debt to Tim. Why are you letting them pull you back in?”
“It’s complicated.”
“So, make it uncomplicated. Before I call the police.”
He was silent for so long, she thought he might call her bluff. She wasn’t really sure what she’d do if he did.
“Tim wasn’t there to cover my back the second time, but he didn’t leave me on my own,” Marco said softly. “He went to Mr. Cobb and asked for a favor—protection for me while I did time.”
Lyla remembered Dana talking about the argument she’d overheard between Marco and Tim right here in this studio. After what Marco had already told her about repaying his debts, she finally had an idea what all this was about.
“And now you owe Cobb,” she finished for him.
He nodded. “About three months ago, Mr. Cobb asked me to modify one of my sculptures to carry drugs. It was one that was going to Mexico City for a show. When it came back, it was loaded with fifty pounds of carfentanil.”
Lyla closed her eyes, her heart breaking. Her brother had let Cobb use his art to smuggle drugs. If the cops ever found out, Marco would be the one facing a third strike and a life sentence.
“What’s carfentanil?” she asked.
She wasn’t sure it really mattered, but for some strange reason she wanted to know what her brother had thrown away his life to smuggle.
“It’s a synthetic opioid used on very large animals for surgery. Moose, rhinos, elephants—animals like that,” he explained. “It’s five thousand times more potent than heroin. Assuming it was pure, I can’t imagine what the street value of that much stuff would be.”
“You did it that one time, so now he wants you to do it again,” she surmised.
Everything made sense now—why Marco had been down in Mexico, why he was working on three mammoth sculptures, why Cobb’s goons had come calling. The crime boss wanted more sculptures to carry his drugs, and he wanted them now.
“He wants three new pieces for a major showing in Monterrey, Mexico. They’re not close to being done, but I’m supposed to get on a truck with them tomorrow morning for a show in a few days. After a week in Monterrey, these new pieces, plus five others that are already there, will be loaded with more carfentanil and put on a truck for a show in Dallas. The drugs, hundreds of pounds of it, will be pulled out there.” Her brother swallowed hard. “I don’t have a choice.”
She snorted. “Of course not. You owe him, right? Or is it Tim you still owe? Which one is it? I get confused by all these debts you seem to still owe everyone. You’ve given these people over five years of your life, and that still doesn’t seem to be enough for them.”
Marco’s face darkened. “I’m not doing this for either of them. I’m doing it for Erika.”
Lyla tried to remember if she’d ever heard the name before. “Who the heck is Erika?”
She was surprised when a slight smile cracked her brother’s visage. It disappeared just as quickly.
“She’s Tim’s little girl,” he said. “Cobb is holding her hostage down in Monterrey. If I don’t do exactly what he wants, he’ll hurt the kid. He knows I could never let that happen.”
&nbs
p; If Lyla had been confused before, she was completely baffled now. This didn’t make any sense. “Why would Cobb think threatening Tim’s kid would convince you to do anything?” Then a crazy thought struck her. “Crap! Is Erika your daughter?”
“What? God, no,” Marco said. “But she’s the only one in all this who’s worth saving. Her mother died of a drug overdose when Tim was in prison with me the first time. When I got out, it was more than Tim could manage, so I started helping take care of her. She’s an angel born into a crappy situation. She’s the biggest reason I took the fall for Tim this last time. I didn’t want Erika to see her dad go to prison again. Cobb knows I’ll do anything to keep her safe.”
“Even if it means going to prison for life?”
“Even then.”
She sighed. What a mess. “Why haven’t you called the police and told them about Cobb keeping Erika prisoner?”
Marco let out a short laugh. “Are you kidding me? Do you think the cops care about people like me? Like Erika? They wouldn’t give me the time of day. They’d probably revoke my parole and throw me back in prison, the hell with what happens to Erika.” His mouth tightened. “I’m going to do this my way, like I always have.”
“You’re just going to end up in prison, and Erika still won’t be any better off,” she pointed out. “Even if you’re somehow able to make this all work out, you know Cobb isn’t going to let you walk away. He’s going to keep using Erika to control you until he gets everything he can out of you. You’re going to end up back in prison—or dead.”
Marco stiffened. “That’s my problem to deal with, isn’t it?”
Lyla stared at her brother for a moment, feeling the last few threads binding them together snapping away. She was never going to be able to help him. She never could. The only question left was whether she was going to let him pull her down with him when he crashed and burned. She knew what her mother would say, and she knew what her father would say. Now it was time to figure out what she was going to say.
“Yes, it is your problem,” she said softly. “And you’ll deal with it the same way you always have. Except this time, you’ll do it without me there to bail you out.”
Tears stinging her eyes, Lyla turned and headed for the door. It tore her heart out to turn her back on her brother, but she simply couldn’t keep watching as he did one stupid thing after another. It was time she realized there was only so much a sister could do for her older brother.
Her vision was so blurry, she didn’t see Cobb’s big bruisers until they were right in front of her, blocking her route to her car.
“What do you want?” she demanded, too heartbroken to be worried about what they might or might not do.
The man with the broken nose smiled. “Your brother piss you off? That junkie has a habit of not taking things as seriously as he probably should.”
Lyla might be mad at her brother, but hearing him called a junkie pissed her off. She was about to tell the jerk in front of her exactly that, but he stepped forward and grabbed her arms, dragging her away from her SUV.
“Mr. Cobb asked us to take you down to Mexico to make sure that moron brother of yours understands that what Mr. Cobb wants, Mr. Cobb gets.”
The second man laughed, and she looked over her shoulder to see him standing beside a big, dark sedan, smirking. That was when Lyla realized just how much trouble she was in.
Lyla reacted without thinking, swinging wildly at the guy holding her, her poorly-aimed punch hitting him in his bandaged nose by pure chance. He cried out in pain, letting go of her to reach up and protect his bloody nose.
She twisted away and ran for her car, screaming for help and praying she’d get there in time. She didn’t get more than three steps when Broken Nose grabbed her by the hair, yanking her back so hard she flew off her feet.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going, you stupid bitch?”
Lyla fought and screamed, but it did no good. Broken Nose and his equally large friend dragged her to the car and threw her in the back seat. Her head hit the edge of the door on the way in, knocking her so dizzy she could do little more than shove ineffectively at her kidnapper as he climbed in beside her.
Her head throbbed as she tried to jerk the door open on her side of the car, ready to throw herself out of the moving vehicle if necessary, but Broken Nose bounced her forehead off the side window and told her to stop making a fuss.
“Unless you want to ride in the trunk all the way to the airport,” he added with a laugh.
Lyla had a hard time hearing the words over the stabbing pain in her head. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him good luck with that since she didn’t have a passport. Then again, Cobb wasn’t likely to take her out of the country by a route requiring one.
She would have lost it right there, if it wasn’t for one simple fact. Trent knew she’d come to see Marco. He’d figure out what happened to her, and he’d do whatever was necessary to find her. She believed that with every fiber of her being.
* * * * *
Trent sighed with relief when he saw Lyla’s car sitting in the darkened parking lot outside Marco’s studio. For the first time in hours, he felt like he could breathe again.
When five o’clock had come and gone, he’d started texting Lyla, asking if everything was okay and how things had gone with her brother. When he hadn’t gotten anything back from her, he’d called, then called again, and again, but her phone had gone to voice mail every time. His parents had picked up on his concern by then and offered him their truck to check on Lyla. He’d taken them up on the offer, and after a quick call to Lyla’s parents to ask for Marco’s address, he’d headed for his old friend’s apartment. Neither Lyla nor her brother was there, but Marco’s neighbor told him Lyla had stopped by there more than three hours ago then left when she couldn’t find her brother.
Trent’s first instinct had been to head straight to Marco’s studio, but then he realized he didn’t know where it was. It took him a few seconds to figure out what to do, but then he remembered Lyla had called Dana on his phone, so the number would still be in the recently called list.
Dana had freaked a little when he called and asked for the address to Marco’s studio. Trent had been tempted to lie and say everything was fine, but his gut told him things weren’t fine, so he’d admitted Lyla had gone to see her brother and now she wasn’t answering her phone.
Dana had put him on hold to call Marco but had come back on the line less than a minute later saying Marco wasn’t answering his phone either.
“Call the moment you learn anything,” she told Trent after she gave him the address. “If you see Marco, tell him I love him and I’m sorry things didn’t work out differently.”
Trent had said he would.
That was fifteen long, agonizing minutes ago, and it had been tough as hell keeping to the speed limit as he drove over here. But seeing Lyla’s SUV made the tension wash away. She and Marco must be having one hell of a talk if she’d been here all this time. Hell, maybe he’d be able to call Dana with some good news after this.
But the second he walked into Marco’s studio and found his old friend hard at work with a cutting torch—and Lyla nowhere in sight—Trent’s gut clenched all over again.
“Marco!” he shouted, getting the other man’s attention over the hissing of the torch. “Where’s your sister?”
Marco turned at the sound of his name, staring at Trent through the dark goggles he was wearing. He slowly turned off the cutting torch and tossed it onto a workbench with a careless clatter. The goggles soon followed, revealing fresh bruises and a split lip that was swelling up pretty good. The abuse looked fresh, making Trent wonder if Lyla had taken her anger out on her brother. No way. Regardless of how much of a moron her brother was, Lyla loved him too much to ever lay a hand on him, even if that was probably what the guy needed.
“Where’s Lyla?” Trent asked again.
Marco shook his head. “No idea. I haven’t seen her.”
> If Lyla’s car out in the parking lot wasn’t a dead giveaway, the look crossing Marco’s face was. The man was lying his ass off.
All kind of dark scenarios played through Trent’s mind right then, most of them involving Marco losing his cool and doing something to his sister. But worse were the thoughts that one of the assholes in her brother’s world had finally reached out and affected someone beside Marco himself.
Either way, Trent was in no mood to play around. He closed the distance between him and Marco in three quick steps, yanking his friend off his feet and slamming him back onto the table with the cutting torch and pieces of metal scrap.
“Her car is right outside, Marco, so I know she was here,” Trent ground out as he balled his fists into the man’s shirt and thumped him down on the table a couple of times. “Now, you’re either going to tell me where she is, or I’m going to beat the living shit out of you then turn you over to the police. Maybe I’ll tell them I saw you with a load of drugs at Cobb’s club. With your background, something tells me they’ll believe me.”
Marco’s eyes widened, as if he’d finally figured out Trent was serious as shit. “You can’t do that!”
“I’m pretty sure I can.”
Marco shook his head like crazy. “If I get arrested and can’t finish these sculptures, Lyla is dead.”
Trent’s heart pounded so fast he got dizzy. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Cobb’s guys grabbed her over an hour ago. He called and told me,” Marco said. “She’s probably on a private plane bound for Mexico right now.”
Shit.
“And you didn’t think about calling the cops?” Trent shouted. “Didn’t think about calling me?”
He could kill Marco. Right now, he had a hard time believing this man used to be his best friend.
“I couldn’t,” Marco said. “Cobb wants these sculptures on the way down to Monterrey, Mexico tomorrow morning so he can load them with drugs for the return trip. He took Lyla to make sure I do as he wants. If I don’t get these pieces to him by tomorrow night, he’ll take it out on her.”
