Chapter 40
Before her, this was the kind of shite I normally lived, ate, and breathed.
Then a stubborn woman, a head shorter than me but clearly just as lethally protective, became the center of my world.
Now that beacon in my head, normally telling me to race into the storm, was warning me to grab her and run.
I shot blindly at the ground where the sniper hid and raced after her to the next tree over. Another quick set of bullets cracked against the outer edges of the tree trunk and stopped me short.
By the time I got another look, Alizé was long gone, barely a shadow among the brush and trees.
She snaked closer to the sniper’s position as I tracked her advance and scouted around her for any movement.
Luckily, no one had seen her yet. The sniper’s focus stayed on me, bullets popping left and right, while his cohorts advanced.
At the next peek, a flash of silver flew at the sniper and struck him in the side of the head. He was dead. She’d done it. Of course she had. The woman was a force of nature when she put her mind to it.
Another volley of gunfire aimed her way killed my relief. Her sputtered curses as she dove out of view practically stopped my heart. Both of the bastards nearest to me had pivoted and were aiming in her direction.
I didn’t second-guess myself. I ran at them.
Neither saw me until I was on top of them.
By then, it was too late for the first. One clean gunshot to the head.
The second whirled around in time to smack the gun out of my hand.
We grappled together as I fought to get the upper hand.
After rolling atop him, I pinned his feet and landed one solid punch to his shoulder, my fist raised to deliver another blow.
“Stop, or she dies.”
I froze, my panted inhales searing my chest. A mercenary held a gun to Alizé’s head as she slouched against him, her limbs oddly limp. A syringe stuck out of her neck, the plunger flush with the barrel of the syringe. Bile rose in my throat.
“Let her go, or your man gets it.” I yanked my prey by his collar, then shoved him face down in the mud to prove my point. His coughed exhale was the perfect appetizer to fuel my wrath.
“That’s not how this works,” her captor rumbled from deep in his chest, his tone measured and withdrawn behind his balaclava. “You’re both coming with us. I need you. I don’t need her. You get my drift?”
“What’d you give her?”
“Nothing she won’t sleep off, if she survives that long.”
I tossed my gun and inched off the mercenary beneath me, my hands raised. “You have me.”
“Now step toward me. Slowly.”
My muscles coiled. When I got my hands on him, I was going to tear him limb from limb, then dissect his insides for ever thinking he had the right to touch her.
I took my first step forward, then the next.
The man below me scrambled to recover his gun, then bolted upright. I should have expected the blow of his retaliation. He smacked the barrel of his weapon against my temple, once, twice, and when I slipped under a sudden wave of lightheadedness, he gave me a kick to the gut for added humiliation.
The crack of a gun popped through the air, and my prey-turned-attacker wailed a sharp cry.
“Shit. Leave him. She’ll have to do for now,” the apparent leader grumbled. “You just had to fucking hit him.”
The world spun, forest green muddling into shadowed black and woodsy brown.
Shapes blurred, and my head screamed at me in swells of agony.
It felt like it weighed double its size.
I buried my hands in the litter and shook off the confusion, widening my eyes to see better.
It wasn’t working, but sitting around until my vision cleared wasn’t an option.
I forced myself up on two feet, staggering left and right, while rushed footsteps approached from behind.
“Boss, we got you.”
Hands pulled me upright, and I swung around at them.
“Oi, it’s just us. Skipper and Shiner.”
“Fuck.” I tripped and flumped to the ground. My vision swam, wet and hazy. When both attempted to haul me up, I shook them off. “No. Not me. Go after her. Get them. They’ve taken my wife.”
Their silence made the banging in my head all that much louder.
“Go,” I yelled. “Get her back.”
I lurched after them, stumbling against trees and rubbing my temples for some relief.
I clutched a fist to my mouth to keep the bile down.
We had to make it to her. If they got away, if she was harmed…
every possible image of what the cartel was capable of raced through my mind and moved my unsteady legs faster.
The world closed in on getting to her. Nothing else mattered.
Nothing else existed. The pain took a back seat under a burst of adrenaline.
More shots went off and cracked through the woodlands. I was almost there. A motor kicked on and roared. The drag and scratch of tires spitting up dirt racketed between gunshots and stalled my heart.
I hurtled out into a dirt roadway and smacked against the side of a cheap hatchback with a sharp thud as it picked up speed. My body rolled off it and bounced into the brush, but I rushed back to my feet.
The car raced away in a spray of mucky puddle water and the crunch of grit beneath its tires.
It disappeared as quickly as I’d felt it against me, down the two-track ruts in the dirt.
In seconds, it was too far to catch up to on foot.
From the mix of tire tracks in the combination of dried earth and wet clay, off-road vehicles seemed to make frequent use of this road, one I’d had no idea existed on the edge of my land.
“Where is she?” I scurried to Paulie, who hastily wrapped Shiner’s leg while it pissed blood. His arm wasn’t much better.
Paulie adjusted his glasses up his sweaty nose with his shoulder and jutted his chin in the direction the vehicle left.
“They stuck her in the trunk. We couldn’t shoot, or we’d risk hitting her.”
“Fuck. Fuck!” I yelled. “Tell me you got something. Plates. Anything.”
“I got those. Can’t tell you they’re real though.”
I scrunched my eyes and massaged my temples, cursing the bastards out in English and swearing them to an early grave and the devil’s arms in Gaelic.
We had no car, no means to chase them down with, all because I’d wanted to cross couple’s skydiving off her damn list in early November when most skydiving facilities were closed down for the cold.
She was on her own because of my failings, and that bleak thought tried to suck me back down into the abyss.
I slapped myself. Now wasn’t the time. There still was a chance. There was always at least one, even if unpleasant.
“Let’s get back to the chopper. Hand me your phone.”
Paulie passed it over, and I immediately called up Liam. It rang through, no answer.
“Devin used himself for target practice, sir. He can’t walk.”
“Then we’ll carry him.”
The pain in my head was shifting to a dull thudding against the roar of my heartbeat and flush of my quickening pulse.
The longer this took, the less chance she had.
My fingers fidgeted with a longing to twirl the curved knife I’d given her and retake control of the situation.
To cut something open. Hit something. Shoot something. Do something.
I dialed Brody next and pinched the phone between my ear and shoulder as I picked Shiner up from under his arms and Paulie took up his legs. We jogged back through the woods toward the glade, airstrip, and hangar.
“Paulie,” my brother answered, his voice devoid of feeling, and just hearing it had me grinding my teeth raw. “Why you calling me?”
“It’s me.”
“You shouldn’t be using his phone.”
“Save it. This isn’t time for protocol. Alice—” Damn it, the name change was going to take some adjusting to. “Alizé’s been taken.”
“And?”
“And I need her back. This has Sosa written all over it.”
“No.”
“What the bleeding fuck do you mean no?” My grip on Shiner slipped, and he groaned through his teeth. With a little toss of his weight that had him cursing me colorfully, I hefted him back up. “I’m not asking, Brody. Alizé’s not LK. Now, I’ve got some plates for you to run.”
“No.”
“Brody…” I growled, huffing my anger through flared nostrils, but tempered my tirade.
Even now, when I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle him again, I had to remember his brain worked differently.
When he wasn’t going off on a tangent, he was often too direct for everyone around him.
Just because he said no didn’t mean that was the end of it. “Explain.”
“You said she’s been taken by Sosa.”
“Mercenaries hired by Sosa.”
“Then there’s no point. She’ll be dead before you get to her or mangled beyond repair. Leave it be. You have an emotional attachment to this woman. Otherwise, you would see this is pointless and let it go. For anyone else, you already would have.”
“She’s not anyone else. She’s—I’m not debating this with you. Just run the goddamn plates.” Paulie listed them off and gave a basic vehicle description: color, make, and model. “You got those?”
“Yes, and…apparently, you’re searching for a microcar owned by a seventy-four-year-old Cathy Michaels in Arizona.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I ground out as we reached the glade.
“Told you. There’s nothing to be done.”
“Shut your mouth.”
Dark-gray clouds shadowed the sun, threatening a storm. They were a mirror to my dark mood. There had to be a way to get to her.
“I can’t reach Liam. Have him call Sosa, sweet-talk him, see what it’ll take to get her back.”
Liam was the smoothest of the three of us when he wanted to be.
“Even if he negotiates with the cartel, it’s too late. They’ll torture her to get to you. You’ll never find her alive.”
“Your confidence is awe-inspiring.”
“You want me to lie?”
“I want you to act like my brother. I need you to get out of your head and understand I can’t lose her.”
“You will.”
“You motherfucking fucker. Don’t say that. Don’t you even think it.”
“You sure she’s worth this?”
“I know she is. She’s…she’s everything.”
The pause on the other end of the line dug into my rib cage and held my insides captive.
Reaching the helicopter did nothing to assuage this helpless feeling.
I didn’t depend on others, ever. I’d kept even my brothers at a distance in case there’d be a day they had to live without me.
Now I was left with no other options but to let others in.
“Fine, I’ll talk with him and see what else I can do. No promises, but I’ll try to see if I can find some footage of the vehicle and track it.”
He couldn’t see my nod, but it was the most I could give while bitterness from his resistance choked my throat.
“In the meantime, call her brother.”
“Why?”
Paulie and I hauled Shiner up into the helicopter and onto a set of bench seats. Blood still trickled in a steady stream from his wounds, and cold sweat pearled across his pale forehead and neck.
“There were rumors from several sources when you two got married that all the De Villier siblings had trackers. Might be a good time to find out if that’s true.”
“That’s grand. That could work. Text me his number and have the clan doctor ready to go. Shiner’s going to need him.”
“Phone number coming your way.”
I glanced back at the facility hangar as Paulie strapped Shiner in.
The pilot was inside, waiting for us. Question was, was he the one who betrayed us to Sosa?
Or was it one of my employees instead? Either way, we needed the pilot before we could do anything else.
Not to mention everything Alizé and I left behind in the locker room.
“Oh, and Brody, find out who revealed our position today. Someone talked. I want their tongue and every finger from their dominant hand. I want them to live feeling helpless, like she did when they took her, for the rest of their short life.”
“I’ll do some research. Good luck. And I’m…I’m sorry.”
I snorted in disgust, not believing that forced apology for one second.
“Lying’s not in your deck of cards.” I hung up and ran, feeling each ticking beat pass with every stride away from the helicopter.
We were airborne fifteen minutes later. It was too long a delay, but that was after threatening the pilot at gunpoint to pick up the pace. The only upside was that I’d gotten in touch with the prim French bastard known as my brother-in-law. Brody was right. Alizé permanently wore a tracker.
From the transmission and the speed at which she traveled south, Adrien De Villier gathered she was airborne.
However, without a final destination, all we could do was regroup before heading out the moment her speed slowed.
He was sending his jet to Boston with a team of his men, with the request that I pick up his second-in-command on my way to the airport.
All mo síbhean had to do was hold on and give them her special brand of hell in the meantime. We were coming.