Chapter 20
“Drive faster,” Spike begged Pipe.
He was being unreasonable, as Pipe was already driving way faster than was safe. It was seriously only a matter of time before a police officer clocked them and tried to pull them over, but they’d worry about that if it happened.
Spike had watched the little red dot on the screen go through El Paso and head east. Nausea swam in his belly. He’d thought they’d stop in the big city, maybe for the night, letting him, Pipe, and Tonka catch up, but they’d simply kept moving east.
Until they’d turned south, heading toward Big Bend.
The Texas park was literally in the middle of nowhere.
There were no towns around it, just miles and miles of wilderness.
And it was a different kind of wilderness than was around The Refuge.
Instead of woods and trees, Big Bend was smack dab in the middle of the desert.
There were some rolling hills…some would even call them small mountains…
but there wasn’t a lot of shade or grass.
More importantly, and the reason Spike assumed they were headed there, the only thing separating the United States from Mexico in the area was the Rio Grande.
A bolt of lightning lit up the sky, and Spike winced.
“My weather app shows a huge storm moving up from Mexico,” Tonka said from the backseat. The last thing they needed was a storm hindering their search for Reese. Spike had a feeling that if those men got her across the border, it would be next to impossible to find her.
Pipe had made up some good time with how fast he was driving, but it wasn’t enough.
They were still at least an hour out from where the red dot was blinking on Pipe’s cell phone.
While the kidnappers were driving the speed limit so as not to draw any attention to themselves, Pipe had been pushing his sports car hard.
Tonka’s phone rang from the backseat, scaring the shit out of Spike.
“Tonka…okay…yeah, we’re on the east side of Texas moving fast…Big Bend, yes…All right, but the weather here doesn’t look good…neither of them would want you to crash…I know…okay, yeah. Later.”
Tonka didn’t make Spike or Pipe wait to hear who he was talking to. “That was Brick. Stone and Owl, with Tex’s assistance, are on their way with a chopper.”
“Holy shit, seriously?” Pipe asked.
“That’s what Brick said,” Tonka replied.
Spike closed his eyes. He thought he knew what friendship was. Thought he was actually a pretty good friend himself. But this…this went above and beyond anything he could’ve ever expected, anything he could ever repay.
Stone and Owl were two of the best chopper pilots the Army had ever seen.
They were legendary Night Stalker pilots.
They’d been on a mission in the Middle East when they’d been hit by an RPG.
Their helicopter went down, and somehow Owl had been able to keep it from crashing into a million pieces, but both he and Stone had been wounded in the crash.
They’d managed to get out of the wrecked pile of metal, but hadn’t been able to evade capture by the militants who’d shot them down.
They’d been held hostage for two weeks. Fourteen days of torture and hell, broadcast to the world, before a team of Delta Force Operatives had been able to rescue them. Neither man had flown since.
For them to go back up into the air, in this fucking weather, for Reese, made Spike want to cry with gratitude.
“No one takes one of our own and gets away with it,” Pipe said sternly as he stared at the interstate in front of them.
“Damn straight,” Tonka echoed.
Spike wanted to agree, but he couldn’t speak.
He was too worried, too nauseous, too overcome with gratitude that he had such an amazing group of men at his back.
All he could do was pray they wouldn’t be too late.
That Reese was all right. That the men who took her weren’t hurting her.
Until he saw her with his own two eyes, until he was able to get his hands on her to make sure she was alive and well, he wouldn’t relax.
It was fully dark now, and with the darkness, Reese’s fear increased tenfold. Somehow in the daylight, things didn’t seem so bad. But now that she couldn’t see more than ten feet in front of her SUV, fear settled onto her shoulders like a heavy blanket.
The dark brought evil. Brought out the worst in people.
And the last place she wanted to be was with these men.
Angelo still hadn’t looked at her. Not even once, so she knew she couldn’t rely on him to help her in any way.
She still couldn’t decide if he’d known what was going to happen when he asked her to drive him into Los Alamos, but if not, he still hadn’t done anything to reassure her since this whole nightmare had begun.
She was on her own. There was no way Gus and the others would know where she was. She was sure they knew something had happened by now, but there was nothing they could do.
Rain pelted the SUV and the wind made her small Ford Escape sway with each gust as the guy driving resolutely kept moving forward. Wherever they were going, he seemed to be intent on getting there, not sitting out the storm somewhere.
He turned the car down another path in the desert, this one no more than two ruts in the dirt. The undercarriage of her car scraped on a rock, and Reese winced. They traveled for another fifteen minutes or so before the driver finally stopped and said something to his friends.
The rain pelted against the roof, the car rocking in the gusty wind.
The three strangers had some sort of argument as they sat there, and Reese pressed her lips together worriedly.
She didn’t like the anger that she could hear in their tones.
So far, everyone had been fairly calm, which had helped Reese avoid completely freaking out.
But now the driver seemed to be egging Angelo on somehow, while the man to her left protested vehemently.
For the first time since Reese had known him, Angelo raised his voice. He yelled something—and the other men fell silent for a moment. Then the driver laughed. He sneered at Angelo, saying something that made Isabella’s brother reach for the handle of the door and storm away from the vehicle.
In shock that Angelo had left the safety of the car in the middle of such a hellacious storm, Reese jerked when the guy to her left grabbed the back of her neck and squeezed, hard.
She gasped in pain and tried to pull away, but with the man on her right sitting so close, she had nowhere to go.
She tried to reach up to pry the guy’s fingers off her neck, but he ignored her weak attempts and grabbed her chest. He squeezed one of her breasts, saying something that made the other two men laugh.
Fear had Reese shaking violently. Was this it? Was she going to be raped by these men? Terror threatened to freeze her limbs—but then she began to fight. Her adrenaline spiked. She wasn’t going down so easily. She’d been calm and docile all day, but she was done.
She spun toward the man to her left and raked her fingernails down his face, trying to use her digits to gouge his eyeballs out.
He yelped in surprise and let go of her neck as he threw a hand up to defend himself. The man on her right wrapped an arm around her chest, rendering her hands useless by pinning her arms, but she could still use her feet—and she did.
Glad she’d decided to put on her hiking boots before going into town, Reese brought her knees up and kicked at the man who’d touched her chest with all her might.
The three men were all yelling now, but she tuned them out.
She couldn’t understand them anyway. She screamed at the top of her lungs, swearing at them, telling them she wasn’t going to make anything they did to her easy.
She fought as if her life depended on it, and it probably did. Reese had no illusions that she could defeat three men all by herself, but she was damn well going to try.
The man she was kicking fumbled for the door handle and practically fell out of the car when it opened. Rain and wind immediately soaked the seat where he’d been sitting.
Reese had a single moment to feel proud that she’d beaten at least one of the men, before her heart sank as the guy leaned back into the car and grabbed her ankles. She was caught between the two men, and no matter how much she writhed and fought to get free, it was no use.
The driver turned in his seat. Reese’s gaze flew to him, and she saw that he was laughing. Laughing at her. He said something, and the man holding her arms began to scoot toward the open door. His friend helped by pulling her legs.
The rain hurt when it pelted her face, but Reese barely noticed. She was being carried away from her SUV. She had no idea what was about to happen, but she knew down to her bones it wasn’t going to be good.
Angelo ignored the storm raging around him.
He felt sick. When they’d stopped, Pablo told him that he’d changed his mind.
They were going to have their fun with the American before they crossed into Mexico.
They had time, and it wasn’t as if anyone could find them in the storm.
He’d told him to go to the cargo area of the SUV, that Diego and Andres would lower the back seats and hold her down while he took his turn first.
Diego had once again argued to be first, but Pablo had told him to shut the fuck up or he wouldn’t get a turn at all.
That had turned into a shouting match, and Angelo had frantically tried to think of a way out of this.
He didn’t want to hurt Reese. And he didn’t want the others to hurt her either.