Chapter 39
B eth’s head pounded as she peered at the two Chavezes sitting across from her on bench seats spanning the length of a windowless van. Evangeline sat between them, hands bound in front of her with zip ties, like the blubbering filling of a Diablo sandwich. Biceps and another thug flanked Beth. Both smelled like a boy’s gym locker.
She tested the tight bonds at her own wrists. Pain rocketed up her arm. At least she didn’t have duct tape over her mouth like Evangeline.
As the haze from being choked until she’d blacked out cleared, she studied the brothers dressed in black jeans and black leather jackets. If they weren’t cold killers, their nearly identical mellow-brown skin, shoulder-length black hair, and hawkish facial features might make them attractive. To her, they looked like poisonous snakes, especially the thicker one, whose picture had been enough to scare her.
Enrique Chavez.
The enforcer, who’d appeared leaner in his wanted photo, had about ten pounds of muscle and two inches of height on his brother. His stalker sibling leered at her with an unfocused gaze rimmed by purple bruises above a bandaged nose.
Good. He deserved a brain bleed from his concussion. If she could buy the lamppost he’d crashed into a drink, she would. While his gaze was softer, the intent in their murky brown depths was no less sinister and much creepier than his sibling. He was the only one in the van without a gun in his hand, though.
She swallowed. Saliva burned a path down her abused throat. “Are you twins?”
Her stalker glanced at his brother. “He’s not my twin, although I do have one.”
She struggled to grasp information she knew was stored in her brain but couldn’t find it through the chaos.
“I can see the gears working in your pretty head, querida . You’re wondering if I’m one of the twins who died.” Her stalker held out his hand. “It’s nice to meet you after all this time. I’m Santiago Chavez, the brother who is dead to the world but not to those who love me. Welcome to my family.”
“You’re my stalker.” She shrank into the cold van wall as she addressed him for the first time. If her hands were free, she’d cover her ears to stop his accent from pealing in her head like a death knell. She’d always wondered how she’d feel when she met her stalker face to face. Revulsion at hearing the voice that haunted her dreams hadn’t made the top of her list, but it did now.
“I’m your admirer. I wish we could have met two years ago, but after your abduction didn’t go as planned, I was relegated to watching you from afar because you were identified as a person of interest regarding Triple X. You needed to concentrate on your work and I respected that. I was so pleased when I got the go-ahead to interact with you again.”
The enforcer waved his gun at his brother. “Two years ago, the job that you took without mother’s approval was to scare her via cyberspace, but you screwed up by making contact. And your job this time was to track her, not send her messages, not steal her cake and watch, and not pay two juvenile delinquents to rob a store and watch again.” He looked at Beth. “Those incidents weren’t part of the Triple X mission, but the obsessed fool enjoys scaring and then watching you for some reason.”
She leaned forward as far as she could without falling off the seat. She’d lost weeks of her life hiding inside her house because of one sibling and the last few days because of the other. Now that she was face to face with the devil brothers who seemed to have some tension between them, she wouldn’t spend another minute cowering. “Why?”
Her voice hitched as she strangled a fear-induced sob. Courage had been so much easier to rally when she fantasized about kicking her stalker’s ass, but she refused to look away from the man who had stolen so much from her. “Why have you made my life a living hell?” She snapped her gaze to the enforcer. “And why are you coming after me? You already have Dr. Sable. She knows much more than I do about Triple X.”
“I’ll let your friend answer that first question.” He ripped the tape off Evangeline’s mouth.
She covered her lips with her bound hands and screamed.
Beth didn’t have the bandwidth to muster sympathy.
“She hired me to meet you online.” Her stalker raised his voice over Evangeline’s sobs. “The plan was to pursue and scare you.”
“What?” Beth’s gaze snapped to her so-called friend. “And why on earth do you know someone in a drug cartel?”
Evangeline shook her head so hard it bounced against Santiago’s shoulder. “I didn’t know who I was hiring. I asked Henry Richardson if he could put me in touch with a talented hacker. Henry said he never liked you anyway, so…”
Beth shot toward Evangeline. The thugs yanked her back. Good thing because she would have killed her before she spilled her sordid story. “Are you stupid?” She already detested Richardson for what he’d done to Scarlett. Full-blown hatred consumed her now. “That man is just as evil as these devil brothers.”
The enforcer pointed his gun at her. “Watch what you say, Cazampulga.”
Beth doubled over. Fighting nausea, she hung her head. She heard her stalker reprimand his brother for yelling at her, but she blocked him and his ominous accent out and concentrated on Evangeline’s gurgled words.
“I’m so, so sorry. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I thought I was hiring some techy nerd, not one of the world’s best hackers. I contracted with him to cyberstalk you for a few weeks, not months. I made it clear that there wasn’t supposed to be any physical contact. And I didn’t hire him to kill Danny, I swear.”
Beth lifted her chin. The world tilted for a second before she caught her breath. “And that makes what you did better? Danny’s dead because of you, and you have the nerve to call me a black widow?”
Evangeline sniffed back a gob of snot dangling from her nose. “Nobody was supposed to get hurt. I just hired him to make your life difficult for a while. You always had it so easy.”
The van hit a bump. Anger exploded with the impact of Beth’s body against the wall. “What the hell does that mean?”
Evangeline’s lips twisted. “You always got off without having to work hard like the rest of us, all because someone died.”
Rage and disbelief seeped from Beth’s pores like the snot mixing with Evangeline’s tears. “You think I benefited every time I buried a boyfriend? ”
“Let’s count the ways. Exempt from senior year finals. Carte blanche to miss school. Prom queen, even though your date was dead. Isn’t sympathy the reason you got that sweet college internship? Because your boyfriend, who beat cancer and then died in a car accident helping you, had a father at the National Health Agency who pulled strings.”
“No.” Tears assaulted Beth’s eyes. “It wasn’t like that.” But clearly the gossips thought she relished the attention. For years, she’d been trying to figure out why the universe chose to punish her. Rolling her shoulders, she shrugged off the nagging uncertainty for good. She hadn’t done a damn thing except endure abuse from hateful, jealous women. All because she’d been the recipient of well-intentioned sympathy from people who cared.
Evangeline wiped her nose on her sleeve. “The whole town saw exactly what you were—a sympathy whore. You didn’t deserve the advantages you stole from me.”
“Advantages? Like a stupid homecoming crown?” The absurdity wrenched a strangled laugh from Beth’s throat. “You think I basked in the spoils of death?”
“You must have because as soon as I made things tough, you finally struggled. How did it feel not having everything handed to you?”
“You crazy fucking…” The thugs held Beth back again from hurling herself at Evangeline. “You told me Danny’s murder was my fault because I’d broken up with him and went on that dating site.”
Mascara mixed with Evangeline’s tears. “It was your fault. Danny should have never taken you back after the horrible argument you guys had. You didn’t deserve a second chance . I deserved a chance with him. You stole what I wanted. Again.”
The tears Beth couldn’t fight any longer boiled over into stark disbelief. “Christ, Evangeline, I always knew you were the jealous type, but I never thought you’d purposefully hurt me.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said? I didn’t plan for him to take things so far.” She tilted her head to the stalker. “He was supposed to give you the kind of attention you wouldn’t benefit from. The kind that upended your perfect, merry life. It scared the shit out of me when he shot Danny. I had to ask Henry to help me find a job in another country, so I’d be far away in case I was connected to the murder.”
A hysterical laugh seared Beth’s throat. “You should have stayed there.”
“That was my plan, but he…” she gestured to the enforcer as the van turned a corner. “He came to Dubai. In a meeting with the CEO of my company and Henry Richardson, I was told that if I didn’t come home and give them information about you, they’d kill me.”
The enforcer smiled. “I don’t just like to grab and go when I’m snatching someone. I like to find their vulnerability and drive it home so when we meet face to face, they understand what the stakes are. Our intel alerted us to your budding relationship with Kane Darren. Your friend told us about your curse. And then she gave us the perfect way not just to scare you but to track your whereabouts.” He nodded at Evangeline. “I appreciate your cooperation. Do understand that it pains me to have to kill you.”
Beth ignored Evangeline’s cries. “Not if I do it first, and then I’ll kill Henry Richardson.” She curled her fingers into her palm. White-hot pain shot through her injured wrist, but it had nothing on what she’d inflict on Richardson if she ever saw him again.
Her stalker leaned forward and reached out his hand. “I’ll take care of Richardson for you , querida.”
The enforcer slapped it back. “Remember what happened last time you acted on your own? I told you to be patient and wait for me to come to the States to claim her the right way, but you went off half-cocked in an alley with a gun you didn’t know how to use and botched it up.”
Snippets from that alley flashed through her mind. The paralyzing fear the moment before she and Danny were attacked. The vicious, agonizing crack of her bone. The distant, desperate sound of Danny calling her name. The gunshot. Her scream. All because he wanted to… “Claim me.”
There was only one man she’d let claim her.
The stalker swayed as he stared at her breasts. “I couldn’t wait to make you mine.”
Beth cringed at his sick, unfocused eyes. “And kidnapping is how you chose to woo me?”
His body rocked to the side as the van veered to the right. “You’ll come to love me eventually. I’m incredibly wealthy. I have a beautiful home in Mexico fit for a queen with everything you could ever want.”
Beth snorted. She already had everything she desired. “Ain’t I lucky that a well-off psycho fell for me.”
The enforcer shot across the van and slapped her across the face. “Enough insults.”
Beth’s head snapped to the side. Pain rioted up her nose and down her jaw.
The stalker grabbed his brother’s arm. “Did you forget your promise to use mild coercion to get her to talk?”
“Mild?” Beth lifted her bound hands to her cheek. “I’m pretty sure my wrist is broken.” She was also pretty sure the devil brothers didn’t feel any brotherly love for one another.
Her stalker bowed his head. “I’m sorry, mi querida . My brother tends to get carried away. Once you give him the information about Triple X, you’ll be all mine, and he won’t touch you again.”
The enforcer reached across Evangeline and fisted his brother’s shirt. “Your drive-by yesterday screwed up my operation to snatch her. Instead, we had to resort to taking the backup plan . Now that the old bat has been rescued, your woman is our only source of intel. I’ll get that information however I choose.”
Sweat beaded the stalker’s forehead. “It’s not my fault her boyfriend rescued Dr. Sable. I mean her ex-boyfriend. Kane Darren will die for touching what’s mine.”
A sinister smile crossed the enforcer’s face. “Not so fast, little brother. Her cooperation, not your jealous revenge, determines if her soldier becomes number four.”