His other hand swung toward her face, but she knocked it away and clamped her legs around his thrashing neck. Jesus, he was strong for a skinny fucker.
She yanked harder on his arm and adjusted her hips, maneuvering him into a restrained position.
Finally. Adrenaline surged through her veins, and her breaths came in short bursts.
Realization glistened in the stark white of his eyes, and he snarled like a rabid animal.
That’s right, baby. I know who you are. You’re so fucked.
He bucked his chest against the mattress, his teeth snapping too damn close to her stomach.
“I have kids.” His sunken cheeks blanched, his voice a choked rasp. “I’m a father.”
Good for him. She had a father once. And a mother and sister. Her heart twisted, the loss as raw as the day she discovered their deaths. They would never know what happened to her. Would never know she made it out of that attic of shackles and horrors. She’d escaped a fate worse than death.
The same fate this piece of shit inflicted on others.
“You should’ve thought about your kids…” She hooked her foot beneath her other knee and squeezed her legs. “Before you stole someone else’s.”
The compression of her thighs and the pulling grip on his arm crushed his bicep against his throat, strangling his ability to speak. And breathe.
Her muscles strained to defend the position as he kicked and rolled his hips. Keeping his arm pressed beneath his chin, she swatted away his attempts to punch her with his free hand. Over and over, he flung his fist toward her face, fighting for blood, for air, wild in his desperation.
No bueno.
If done effectively, the chokehold would cut off the blood flow in the arteries on both sides of the neck. It should’ve been over within seconds. Why was this motherfucker still squirming?
She tightened her legs and cocked her head, studying the waning twitches in his body. Unconsciousness would come soon. She settled in and tried to steady her heartbeat.
Months of stalking Austin’s worst criminals had led her to Larry McGregor. Mailman by day and slave trader by night, he spent his downtime hooking up with sleazy women at the local bar. Bet he regretted that vice right about now.
Her thighs tensed, burning to snap his neck. But she needed him alive.
Surveillance confirmed he held a teenage girl in an abandoned barn twenty minutes outside of Austin. Knowing her team was extracting the girl at that very moment should’ve made it easier to breathe. But there were more Larrys, more enslaved girls, the trafficking network in Austin vast and well-funded.
The only way to stop it was to cut off the head. First, she needed to know how to find that head.
Larry’s body fell limp between her legs. She waited a beat, pushing at his gaping jaw before slipping from beneath him and checking his pulse. Slow and even. Unlike her own.
From her purse on the floor, she unwrapped a maxi pad and removed the plastic cable ties she’d hidden in the cotton. How long before he woke?
Fuck, she was out of her realm here. She wanted to end him, but if she didn’t secure the information she needed, another would take his place, and another, and another. This would be her first attempt at torture. Did she have the balls to do it?
She quickly zipped his wrists to his ankles and stuffed the maxi pad in his mouth, her fingers twitching through the movements. Matias would have a body to dispose of soon enough.
Matias. Every call she made to him brought a new line of questioning. His and hers. Neither would budge in their secrecy.
A sudden chill crept over her. Just thinking about him made her feel vulnerable and…naked. She slid on her dress and heels.
She hadn’t seen him since he was eighteen, not since the day those hard-looking men led him out of the citrus grove. Over the years, he told her he was obligated to stay with them. Were they cartel? He refused to confirm her assumption, but he didn’t deny it either. What was she supposed to do? Trust him? No way in hell.
He was a thirty-year-old…what? Grave-digger? Hitman? Underling for a drug lord? Whatever his line of work, he always got rid of dead bodies for her. The first was the man who intended to buy her. Followed by six more buyers and their bodyguards for her six fellow slaves. Her last call was four years ago. To collect Van Quiso’s body.
She retrieved her phone from her purse and pulled up her contact list. A shudder raced through her as she stared at the last number dialed.
Van Quiso.
The man who kidnapped her when she was seventeen.
The man who imprisoned her for a year and trained her to be the perfect slave.
As it turned out, he hadn’t died from that gunshot wound in his shoulder.
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t parse her feelings about that. They ran too deep, too entangled and confusing, much like everything else in her life. So she detached from it, held herself at a distance, and focused on the goal. She had a slave trader to torture and kidnapped girls to save.
She tapped his name on the screen. As the call connected, her heartbeat roared past her ears.
Van answered with silence.
“It’s done and ready for pick up.” She steeled her breath.
“On my way.” He disconnected.
She slumped on the edge of the mattress, her shoulders loosening.
Ironically, asking her kidnapper to help her take down other kidnappers wasn’t the worst call she had to make. That special pang of dread was reserved for her impending conversation with Matias.
God, she missed him. Almost as much as she feared him.
A soon-to-be dead man lay hogtied beside her, eyes closed and mouth stretched around the balled up maxi pad. She could dispose of the body herself. At the risk of getting caught and sentenced for murder.
If she involved Matias, he would shield her from the law. At the risk of him finally locating her.
Then what? Whatever connection they’d shared as children was a distant memory. She knew nothing about the man he’d become.
If his overbearing, razor-sharp tone over the phone was any indication, he hadn’t lost his protective ownership over her.
But she hadn’t spoken to him in four years. What if he’d forgotten about her? What if he was married?
Her heart punched painfully, and she reached up to rub her chest.
There had been a time when he’d gallantly stood between her and anything that threatened to harm her. If he knew she was taking dangerous risks, would he try to stop her? She was so close to finishing this. So fucking close.
And maybe she was protective of him, too. Maybe she still cared for him against her better judgment. If that were true, she couldn’t take him where she was going.
She needed to forget about him.
Except she couldn’t. In the back of her fucked up mind, she looked forward to her next kill just so she’d have a reason to hear his voice again.
CAMILA PACED BESIDE THE floor-to-ceiling windows in Van’s living room, her impatience burning a short fuse. She dragged a hand through her hair, fingers snagging in the shoulder-length, black strands. She needed a fucking haircut.
She needed a lot of things.
Sighing, she turned to Van. “Why won’t he fucking talk?”
After a week of interrogation, Larry McGregor was a goddamn mute. Strapped naked on a table in Van’s garage, he’d endured sleep deprivation, starvation, solitary confinement, and her endless threats of permanent disfigurement.
All he had to do was tell her who he worked for and where he was supposed to deliver the girl he’d kidnapped. Two simple answers and his suffering would end.
Van reclined on the couch and rolled a toothpick between his lips. “You need to up your game.”
“Oh, please enlighten me.” She narrowed her eyes, her voice edged with bitter resentment.
She’d spent an eternal year in Van’s shackles, learning obedience one welt at a time. At least this house didn’t have an attic. She didn’t
need any more reminders of him whipping her body and picking apart her mind. He probably would have taken her virginity, too, but the man who had intended to buy her wanted that sick pleasure.
Van never managed to break her, though. What made him think he could give advice on breaking Larry McGregor?
Tossing his chewed toothpick on the coffee table, he removed a new one from his pocket. “Threaten his kids.”
As a father, Van knew all too well how effective that was. But she couldn’t do it. Even if it were a hollow threat, she refused to stoop to that level.
“No innocents.”