Chapter 42
B eth spat out the remaining vomit in her mouth. The smell from the puddle of puke she left by the desk engulfed the room. “I’ll give you anything you want. Just tell them to leave her alone.”
But was it too late? Evangeline didn’t move as she hung there from the hook in the ceiling her arms were tied to. The toes of her heeled boots scraped the concrete floor. A fluorescent light directly overhead illuminated the blood gushing from her nose. More stained her pink sweater. Steroids and Biceps surrounded her as if deciding who would get the next shot.
“Please stop,” Beth cried. Nobody deserved to be brutalized like that. The leers on the thugs’ faces said hitting her was just the beginning of their sadism.
Evangeline whimpered behind the dirty gag in her mouth. Steroids pulled out a knife.
The enforcer slammed the door. “Do you still need a break, Cazampulga? There’s another hook in the ceiling. Your friend might want some company.”
Evangeline’s muffled scream echoed like a prelude of worse to come in Beth’s ears.
“Please, querida .” Her stalker hissed at his brother as he knelt next to her. “Do as he says. I don’t want you harmed.”
A whimper squeaked through her lips as she turned back to the computer. The classified data she swore she’d never reveal threatened to burst through her fingertips. She curled the fingers on her uninjured hand to keep from typing. There had to be another way to stall for time until Kane and the VIPER team arrived.
The enforcer pressed the tip of his knife into the top of her arm and dragged the blade down an inch. She gasped as her sweater tore. A half second later, she screamed as red-hot agony bled through her skin.
The stalker slapped the weapon from his brother’s hands. “You promised you wouldn’t cut her.”
“I know you’re too smart to let a woman come between us, brother.”
Beth breathed through the pain in her arm. Her wrist. Her head. Her heart. But she refused to let the Chavezes scare her into submission. There was only one man she’d relinquish control to, and it wasn’t the alpha devil brother. It wasn’t his obsessed brother either. He may be as brilliant as Scarlett, maybe more since he’d eluded her, but based on the sibling dynamic she’d witnessed, he was the weaker of the two.
And weakness made a prime target.
She turned up the tears for her stalker. “Are you going to let him do that to me?”
“No, querida. Just give us the formula and we can be on our way home. Mi madre is eager to meet you and start planning our wedding.”
She touched the cut on her lip. “Your mother is going to have to wait. I can’t walk down the aisle looking like this.” She looked away from the brothers, unable to mask the contempt in her gaze, and slowly scanned the room. “Where are we anyway?”
The enforcer waved his hand. “In a building owned by an associate of the cartels.”
“Let me guess? Richardson?” The silence confirmed her suspicion. Apparently, his immorality spread all over the globe.
Her stalker gently caressed her cheek. “Please type so we can get out of here.”
She tensed at his touch. Panic pumped through her veins. She knew Kane would find her, but God knew what waited for him when he arrived. The Diablos would likely kill him even if she did give up the formula. And if she got on a plane to Mexico…
The enforcer shoved the tip of his gun into the bruise on her cheek. “Do you need more incentive?”
She bit her tongue, but another whimper escaped.
The enforcer grabbed his brother’s wrist. “Stop.”
“Our plane takes off in thirty minutes. I want that information before we get on it. I’m not taking any chances of missing Mama’s deadline. You know how much beating the other cartels means to her. You know what this formula means to the family business, and you know I need to prove myself to Mama before she’ll let me lead the Diablos.”
“I wouldn’t know, since she kept me locked in a bunker for years so I could hack her enemies.” He waved his hand. “That’s an issue for another time. Right now, we are doing this my way.” He glanced at Beth. “Please, querida. Do what he says.”
Sweat dripped onto her raw cheek. “Please,” she whispered to her stalker. “If I’m yours, then get the two of us out of here.” She didn’t stand a chance with the enforcer, but she might with just him .
The enforcer turned the gun to his brother. “Need a reminder where your loyalties lie?”
Without warning, her stalker executed a martial art maneuver she’d never quite mastered and stole the gun from his brother’s hand.
Holy shit. Her stalker had other skills besides hacking, it appeared.
“I’m loyal to my future wife.” He looked at Beth. Ragged breaths scurried through his lips as he teetered in his boots. “Are you loyal to me, querida ?”
Beth choked back a sob as she stared into his gaze. An unstable kaleidoscope of obsession and insanity swirled in their brown depths. Or maybe that was his concussion. Either way, feeding his delusions might be her only hope of escape. “Yes. I’m yours. Take me home.”
He knelt by her side with the gun still trained on his brother. “Seal it with a kiss.”
Fighting revulsion, she leaned into him and hoped she tasted like puke.
Kane’s comms unit beeped with a biofeedback alert as he and the team fanned out to their positions around the warehouse. The surrounding buildings appeared quiet. Hopefully, any innocent bystanders had gone home to celebrate Christmas and wouldn’t get caught in any cross fire.
He glanced at his wrist. Shit, it was warning him that his heart rate was dangerously high.
Chris slid next to him behind a dumpster. “Calm down, brother.”
Kane scanned the desolate street. “ You weren’t calm when Scarlett was at the mercy of a psycho a few weeks ago.”
“Point taken. ”
As if on cue, Scarlett’s voice came over the mind comms.
“The building belongs to my freaking stepfather.”
A collective “what” sounded over the brainwaves.
“It’s registered under a dummy corporation. I’m sending the layout now. And there’s a plane that’s headed to Mexico at the airstrip. Guess whose name was on the registration at the end of a long paper trail?”
Kane’s leg bounced like a jumping bean. “Can’t they just lock Richardson in solitary already?”
“We’ll deal with him another time,” Chris said . “Let’s get your girl first.”
Kane nodded as the schematics appeared on his comms unit. “ What are we working with?”
“There’s a wireless signal coming from the easternmost room with three heat signatures. Three from the room behind it. There are a dozen men positioned at the front entrance and another dozen at the back, all with clear shots. Cameras are situated throughout the exterior. Once you leave your cover, you’ll be a target.”
“Can you take the cameras out?” Linc asked.
“Don’t.” Kane patted the weapon strapped to his chest. New protocols required them to carry backup in the unlikely event their V-Strike weaponry failed. “ Let’s use good old-fashioned firepower to draw out as many assholes as possible.” He’d given the Diablos a taste of what a super soldier could do. Now, he’d demonstrate the lengths a desperate, lethal man in love would go to rescue his woman. “Before we go high tech on their asses, let’s light the fucking place up.”
A minute later, they had a plan.
“Ready to do this?” Chris raised his weapon.
Kane pulled out his own gun, aimed, and wrapped his finger around the trigger.
Beth pulled back from her stalker’s clammy lips. “I swear, I’ll go with you wherever you want and give you the information. Just please get me away from your brother before he?—”
Gunshots erupted outside. Her stalker pushed her to the floor. A moment later, shots rang from inside the building in rapid succession as she landed on her knees and pitched forward onto her hands. Pain lanced up her injured arm and she screamed.
The door to Evangeline’s torture chamber swung open. Biceps barreled past her. Steroids followed and slammed the door behind him.
“Kane,” she whispered. Dread flooded her system as she cradled her arm against her stomach and shook. He was here, but something was wrong. She stopped breathing as more gunshots pealed from the front of the building. Why were Kane and his team using guns instead of voodoo magic? Ryan and Scarlett wouldn’t let them come into battle without their superpowers unless…
Voices shouted in the hallway. She strained her ears for Kane’s. More shots boomed closer and closer and drowned out every other noise but the pounding of her heart.
The enforcer pulled her by the hair and shoved her to his brother. “Head to the airfield. Once you’re on the plane, use your gun to control your woman and make her give up the formula.”
The firefight intensified as the enforcer ran into the hall. She spun to her stalker. “Did you mess with VIPER’s network?” If anyone could compromise it, he could.
He grabbed her injured wrist and tugged. “Come.”
Pain so intense she couldn’t even scream doubled her over. She had to think. Giving up the formula wouldn’t protect Kane any longer. He could be dead by the time she divulged it at the airfield. He’d said he was protected from head to toe, but every part of him couldn’t be bulletproof. And Chris was out there. And Nic and Linc. All the gunshots could only mean that VIPER’s technology had been compromised and they were fighting superpowerless to save her.
She couldn’t let them be numbers four through seven. Not because she thought she was a black widow but because they were her family.
If she could get her hands free…
Her stalker tugged her toward the room where Evangeline hung unconscious.
“I’m sorry.” His yell carried over the shots still pounding from the front of the building. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, but when my brother gets angry, I get angry too.”
She caught the exasperation in his pitch and dug in her heels. She almost pitied him for having a big bully as a brother. Almost. “Do you always let him make your decisions?”
Anger and embarrassment flashed in his muddled eyes as he wobbled.
She ignored the battle raging down the hall and steadied her shoulders. “Stand up to your brother.” She stepped closer, her throat raw from puking and yelling over the raucous and held out her wrists. “Take these off and let me leave here as your bride, not your prisoner.”
She held her breath, praying he’d grow a pair of balls and accept the challenge.
He touched his bandaged face. “I’ve endured so much for you. Do you love me, querida?”
She touched his cheek as tenderly as he touched his broken nose instead of punching it. “No, but I can learn to.” The words felt as wrong on her tongue as having a conversation about love with her stalker in the middle of a gunfight. Her next words felt even more wrong. “Kane is going to die out there. He wasn’t just my boyfriend. He was my bodyguard. You can’t leave me unprotected and helpless until we’re safe at your house in Mexico.”
The tears coursing down her cheeks weren’t forced for his benefit. She clamped her teeth together to stop her jaw from shaking as he retrieved his brother’s knife from the floor and placed his gun on the desk. The zip ties rubbed against her bloody skin as he slid the blade under her bonds.
Unbearable seconds passed until the last piece of unforgiving plastic broke free. She lifted her hands to her face. Blood dripped from her angry flesh. She forced a choking sound from her throat and clutched her stomach. “I’m going to barf.”
As she clamped a hand over her mouth, she doubled over beside the laptop. From the corner of her eye, she caught the gleam of his gun on the edge of the desk. Pain ricocheted up her injured arm as she gripped the weapon. Slowly, she tucked it against her belly.