by Nicole Helm
“What did you do that for?” Oscar howled, cradling his smacked cheek.
She tried to yell all the reasons why she’d hit him, but what she really wanted to do was cry, so she couldn’t manage a yell, or anything more than a squeak.
She moved to slap Jose, too, for good measure, for mixing her up and making her want to cry, but before she could do anything, three more men stormed into the office.
Two with masks and guns just like Jose’s went straight for Bennet. They jerked his arms behind his back and had him pressed to a wall, face-first, in seconds flat.
The other man stared straight at her, maskless, dark eyes cold and furious.
“I knew I couldn’t trust you two,” he muttered, glancing disgustedly at Jose and Oscar. “It’s broad daylight. What the hell are you taking your time for? Eric, Benji, get the Ranger in the van. Now.”
“What about Alyssa?” Oscar asked, still cradling his cheek.
CJ, her eldest bother, the leader of the cartel, looked her over as if she was some kind of cargo. “Alyssa comes with me.”
If she had any sense in her head, she’d let CJ take her. Her oldest brother had always been cold, remote and mostly ruthless, and it didn’t make sense to cross him when she and Bennet had been planning on being taken anyway.
But slapping Oscar had only unleashed more fury rather than soothed any of it. She wanted to hit all of them. She wanted to beat them until they bled. She wanted answers, and hell if she was going to be calm or patient in the getting of them.
“Let him go,” Alyssa said calmly and evenly, coolly even, matching CJ’s cold stare with one of her own.
CJ leaned down, so close their noses almost touched. “Are you warming that Texas Ranger’s bed, Alyssa? I didn’t think we raised you to be a whore.”
Those words, that tone, lit a fire to something inside her that had been simmering for all of these four years. She’d never acknowledged it, this blistering hurt and rage.
They’d abandoned her, to be kidnapped, to be let go. They’d given up any claim to her in four years of silence.
Now they had Bennet pressed to a wall with a gun to his head, and she wasn’t stupid enough to think her brothers were that much stronger and smarter than him. No, Bennet was standing there letting them press him up against the wall.
For her.
No. No, for the case.
But it didn’t matter, because she wasn’t giving her brothers this kind of power. They’d run her life for years, but those years were over.
In a move she’d practiced for as long as she’d known how to walk, she pulled the gun out of her coat so swiftly, she had it shoved to CJ’s gut before he’d even blinked an eye.
His mouth hardened, but he made no other reaction. “Am I supposed to believe you’d shoot me, my sweet Lyssie girl?”
She could almost believe he cared when he used that voice, that old nickname, but four years of separation had given her too many questions, too many doubts. “If you don’t think I have the guts to shoot you right here, right now, then you don’t know the woman you raised.”
“You’d shoot your own brother? Whatever happened to loyalty?”
“Loyalty? You dare speak the word loyalty to me?” Alyssa shoved the gun against him harder, and he winced. “Family was supposed to be the only thing that mattered to you. Family was the rallying cry in protecting me. But I wasn’t protected. I got kidnapped. I’ve been free from that for two years, and where have you been?”
“It’s complicated,” CJ growled.
“It’s not. You weren’t there, and now I don’t need you.” She looked down at the gun in her hand, surprised to find herself steady. When she looked back up at CJ, she smiled. “But I may spare your life.”
CJ scoffed. “Jose, give me that gun.”
“I’ll shoot him if you move, Jose. And what would the world do without CJ Jimenez in it to pull its strings?”
“What do you want?” CJ asked, feigning boredom, but Alyssa could see a faint line of concern on his forehead.
She fiddled with the safety of her gun, just to show him she wasn’t messing around. “Our mother was murdered, and I want to know why.”
CJ’s mouth curved and his gaze moved to Bennet, who somehow looked calm and model-like pressed to her grimy office wall. “I think your Ranger has a few more answers about these things than he lets on.”
Alyssa didn’t jerk, didn’t react, though inwardly her stomach tightened into a painful cramp. Had Bennet been lying to her? Someone was. It could be him. But CJ was her impending doom right now, and she had to take care of him first.
“Drop the guns, let the Ranger go, or I shoot CJ. I’ll count to ten.”
She watched as her brothers all stood wide-eyed and frozen as she counted down. Finally, CJ inclined his head. “Let the Ranger go,” he grumbled.
“And drop the guns. Now.”
The two brothers holding Bennet let go, slowly putting their guns on the ground along with Jose. Bennet didn’t scurry away, didn’t scowl, didn’t outwardly react in any way. He simply picked the guns up and used the straps to sling them onto his shoulder.
“I want you all lined up in front of the door,” Alyssa said, pushing CJ back toward the door with the gun.
They scrambled to do her bidding, and Alyssa couldn’t ignore the thrill it gave her. She was in charge. She had outwitted them. She was going to get what she wanted for once. For damn once.
And there they were. All five of them. The men she’d loved and trusted for her entire life.
She’d spent the past two years fearing they didn’t love her. Being so afraid she didn’t matter or that they thought she was tainted in some way. But none of that fear or sadness was inside her right now. All she felt was rage. Rage that they’d abandoned her. After giving her very few skills with which to survive—only violence and suspicion.
Bennet came to stand behind her, and she expected him to tell her what to do. She didn’t know what, but she expected something. He hadn’t uttered a word this entire altercation.
He still didn’t. He just stood there. Behind her. A calming, supportive force. Because it was her turn. Her turn to be in charge of her life.
“I want all the information you have on my kidnapping and our mother’s murder. And if I think you’re lying, I’ll pick you off one by one.”
“And I’ll help,” Bennet added cheerfully, holding one of the guns in his hands, sights set on CJ.
Chapter Six
For a few moments Bennet could only stand behind Alyssa and stare. He hadn’t known she had a gun on her. How could he have missed that, and what kind of Ranger did it make him that he had?
But that moderate shame was no match for the other feeling that assailed him. Awe. She’d fended off an attack from all five of her brothers. Who did that? They were the leaders of a cartel, three of them had guns, and yet she’d gotten them to drop their weapons, all without his having to lift a finger.
He’d been content to let her brothers think they had the upper hand, eager for them to pull him into their world so he could find his answers.
But Alyssa had a gun on them and point-blank asked for those answers, and so he’d stood behind her and backed her up. It was the only thing to do.
“Why don’t you ask your Ranger, Lyss?” the clear leader of the group said, dark eyes zeroed in on him.
Alyssa didn’t flick so much as a glance back at him, but he saw the way her shoulders tensed, the way CJ insinuating Bennet knew something he wasn’t telling her bothered her.
“If I knew anything about either, I wouldn’t be here,” Bennet replied coolly.
CJ cocked his head, and even if Bennet didn’t know about her brothers and their documented work in cartel dealings, he’d know this man was dangerous. Powerful.
But this man had cowered to Alyssa, and that was something to use.
“When are you going to run for office like Mommy and Daddy, Ranger boy?” CJ asked.
Something prickled at the back of Bennet’s neck, that telltale gut feeling something was seriously wrong, but he didn’t have enough to bluff his way through this one. So, he had to go with the truth. “I’m not a politician.”
“Hmm.” CJ considered Bennet as if two guns weren’t pointed at him. “And I suppose the name Sal Cochrane means nothing to you.”
Bennet racked his brain, every memory, every case, every person he’d ever met, but he came up blank.
“Salvador Dominguez, then?”
Bennet was very careful to keep the recognition off his face. The Dominguez cartel was newer and less powerful than the Jimenez one, but it had been gaining in power of late. But who the hell was Sal Cochrane?
CJ kept studying him, but Bennet didn’t know what the man was looking for. What the man thought Bennet knew.
“Politics is dirty business, Ranger Stevens,” CJ said, putting extra emphasis on his last name, and there was that scalp prickle again. Foreboding.
“I suppose it is, but like I said, I’m not a politician. That’s my parents.”
“I guess we’ll see,” CJ murmured.
“Who the hell are you here for, CJ?” Alyssa demanded. “Me or him?”
CJ’s mouth curved in what Bennet assumed was supposed to be a smile. “If I wanted either of you, I’d have you.”
Which sent a cold chill down Bennet’s spine, because he was beginning to realize this was all a little too easy. For five men involved in a drug cartel with an insane amount of weaponry, one woman—sister or not, remarkable or not—they hadn’t actually been bested.
This was all an act. Bennet kept his gun aimed at CJ, but he started looking around. There was a back entrance, but he’d not just locked it when they’d entered through it, he’d barred the door. They at least couldn’t be ambushed without warning that way.
Alyssa shoved the gun in CJ’s gut again, with enough force that CJ coughed out a breath. “Why was I kidnapped?” she demanded. “You’re not leaving here without telling me. How the hell did someone drug me and get me out of the house?”
CJ’s mouth firmed, and the one who’d come inside without a gun stared at his feet. Whatever the reason, these men all knew it, which meant they were probably part of it.
Which, unfortunately, Bennet knew would hurt Alyssa immeasurably. She’d seen them as her protectors all this time, and not coming after her had been a betrayal—even if Bennet thought she was better off without them—but this?
“You never came for me,” Alyssa replied, and on the surface her voice was calm, collected, but there was something vibrating underneath, something Bennet figured she was trying to hide. Emotion. Hurt. “And now you’re here spouting threats at him. What is this?”
“Still dying to be the center of attention after all these years, Lyssie?”
Bennet opened his mouth to say something, anything to put the man in his place, but that’s when he saw a flicker of light outside the grimy windows, and when the glass exploded seconds later, he couldn’t be sure what was coming through, but he knew it wasn’t good.
And far too close to Alyssa. He lunged for her, knocking her onto the ground and underneath him. He couldn’t make out whatever words of protest she was making, because something exploded.
He could feel heat, bits of debris painfully pelting his back and Alyssa breathing underneath him.
She was swearing, pushing at him, but breathing. In and out. Bennet was almost afraid to see what had caused the explosion, afraid to see what casualties there might be, but he could still feel the heat on his back, which meant the place was on fire.
He pushed off her and onto his feet, offering his hand to help her up, but she scrambled past him unaided.
“Where’d they go?” She stared at the door and the flames licking around it. None of her brothers or her brothers’ bodies were anywhere to be seen. There was only a line of flame slowly spreading down the length of the front wall.
She whirled on him. “Where’d they go?”
“Alyssa...”
“You let them get away. You...” She slapped her palms to his chest and pushed. Hard, and while in normal circumstances it wouldn’t have hurt him in the least, a searing pain shot through his shoulder and back at his body’s movement.
He hissed out a breath, and some of her desperate fury was replaced by confusion, and maybe concern. She tried to move past him, but he moved with her, keeping his back hidden.
“We need to get out of here,” he said, sucking in a smoky breath before reaching his arm out to take hers. To usher her out the back way. The fire wasn’t huge, but they needed to get out before the smoke got worse, and they really needed to leave before anyone saw them.
He nudged her in front of him, pushing her down the hall no matter how often she scowled over her shoulder at him. He pulled the heavy rack he’d pushed in front of the back door earlier away, no matter how his back screamed, then pushed her out the door and into the alley where they’d parked his car.
He wasn’t sure how he was going to drive like this, but they had to get out of here before they were seen. If he had to explain this to the Rangers, other law enforcement would be brought in, and he wasn’t ready for that yet. Not when he knew so little.
Not when CJ Jimenez had dropped hints about his parents.
No, he had to figure out what this whole thing was about before anyone else got involved. If his parents were connected to something... He could hardly stomach the thought, but he wouldn’t protect them. He couldn’t. Not at the cost of everything he’d sworn himself to.
But he had to be sure first.
“Oh my God. You’re bleeding,” Alyssa gasped when he passed her to head for the driver’s side.
Bennet paused and glanced down his back as best he could. “It’s just some glass,” he muttered.
“We have to get you to a hospital.”
“No,” he said, leveling her with his most serious glare. “We have to get the hell out of here.”
“Bennet, there are shards of glass sticking out of your back. How do you suggest we get the hell out of here?”
He looked down at the keys in his hand and then shrugged, wincing in pain. He tossed her his keys, trying not to show how the move hurt him. “You’re driving.”
* * *
ALYSSA DROVE BENNET’S fancy car through the streets of Austin, back to his parents’ guesthouse, glancing occasionally in the rearview mirror to the back seat, where Bennet was pretzeled into a position where his back wouldn’t hit anything.
It looked awful, and Alyssa was half-tempted to drive him to the hospital against his will.
But none of this made sense. Not her brothers’ appearance, not their disappearance and not Bennet’s refusal to stick around and deal with it as an official law enforcement agent. He’d called 911 and given the pertinent information, but not his name.
Luckily she didn’t really care if her office burned to the ground. She still had her gun and her motorcycle, which were the most important possessions she owned. The paperwork she kept in the office was helpful, but not necessary. The few important documents she had, she kept in a safe-deposit box at the bank. Losing the office meant nothing.
Losing out on answers meant everything.
She glanced at Bennet again as she drove the long, winding drive to his parents’ guesthouse after he’d ground out the code to the gate and she’d punched it in.
She supposed that man meant a little bit. He’d certainly jumped between her and harm. She could be the one with shards of glass sticking out of her if he hadn’t acted so quickly.
As much as she might want to blame Bennet for letting h
er brothers get away, she wasn’t stupid. Everything that had happened—from her knowing Jose and Oscar on sight even with masks, to the firebomb that allowed the Jimenez brothers to escape—had all been part of a plan.
CJ hadn’t given her any information he hadn’t wanted to, and while he’d given her nothing, he’d planted all sorts of new doubts about Bennet in her head.
She parked the car at the garage door and pulled the keys from the ignition. “Let me guess, you have a magic doctor on staff who’s going to stitch all that up?”
“No, I’m afraid that’s going to have to fall to you. Hope you’re not squeamish.” On a grunt, he shoved the door open. Wincing and breathing a little too heavily, he maneuvered himself out of the car without any help.
Alyssa scrambled to do just that—help. No matter what insinuations CJ had made, this man had stepped between her and an explosion. His first instinct had been to protect her, which was not an instinct apparently any of her brothers shared. And even before all that, Bennet had given her something no man in her entire life had ever given her: power.
He’d let her hold a gun on her brothers and question them without stepping in, without riding roughshod. He’d given her space, and he’d protected her.
Maybe he knew more than he’d let on, but she wasn’t about to let CJ manipulate her into doing what he wanted. No, she was going to make up her own mind. Slowly. Carefully. Once she had all the evidence laid out before her.
She followed Bennet inside, through the vast white rooms and plush hallways and into a bathroom that was about the size of her entire above-the-garage apartment.
He bent over, hissing out a breath as he pulled a white box out from under the sink. He dropped it on the beautiful countertop. “First aid kit. I doubt there will be anything to pull the glass out with, though.”
Alyssa unzipped her jacket and turned slightly away from Bennet. Once her front was shielded from his view, she pulled her Swiss Army knife out of her bra before turning around and holding it up. “I’ve got tweezers.”
