“Sure.” She sweetened her tone. “Just tell me who you work for.”
He dropped his head back and fell still. Gaze-locked-on-the-ceiling still. Something seemed to settle over him, the tension in his body draining away. Resignation? The motherfucker better not be giving up.
“Whatever you do to me,” he said, eerily calm, “his retaliation will be tenfold. You have no idea who you’re fucking with, you stupid cunt.”
Tenfold? Maybe so. Whomever he worked for would probably go after his family.
“I’m going to put maggots on this.” She traced a finger around the rotted cavern in his arm. “Move along the whole zombie thing you’ve got going on.”
Tate grimaced, looking as nauseated as she felt. Liv somehow managed a bored expression.
“Do it.” Larry closed his eyes. “I don’t fucking care.”
Okay, forget the maggots. She jabbed the needle into the root of his dick.
His back flew off the table, the rest of him restrained by straps as he screamed and flailed.
Holding onto the syringe, she hovered her thumb over the plunger and waited for him to calm down. “When and where is the girl supposed to be dropped? Give me that, and I won’t rot off your junk.”
He shook against a full-body spasm, his eyes bulging as he stared at the needle stuck in his delicate flesh. “Ten at night.” He spat out a month, a day, and GPS coordinates.
Oh, thank fuck. It was only two days away, but she was ready, having tracked and hunted this operation for four years. Her veins sizzled with the need to finish this.
As Tate left the garage to shout the coordinates to Van, she removed the syringe.
Larry cried out in relief then glared at her with bloodshot eyes. “He’s going to kill you. You’ll beg for it before he’s done.”
She tried not to let that threat worm its way inside her, but it penetrated her resolve and formed ice in the marrow of her bones.
Shaking off the dread, she turned and found Liv drifting along the wall where dozens of dolls and mannequins hung from hooks. Van’s garage was a workshop. His little shop of glassy-eyed horrors.
She took a step toward Liv then thought better of it. “Hey, Liv? You okay?”
Liv stiffened, her hand lifting to smooth down her straight, black hair. “I used to hate these things. Part of me always will, you know?”
When Van collected slaves, he also collected freaky plastic people. Now he made dolls out of leather and gave them to homeless kids.
Still fucking creepy.
Liv relaxed her posture and strode back to the table, her graceful legs encased in black denim. Her moods were difficult to follow, switching on and off like the masks she used to wear.
“Did he tell you why he has a fascination with dolls?” Liv asked, tone silky soft.
Camila shook her head. She and Van didn’t have a let’s-share-stories kind of relationship.
Sadness etched Liv’s slender face. “Maybe he’ll tell you some day. It puts all of this”—she gestured at the wall of leather bodies—“into perspective.”
Curiosity itched beneath her skin, but Van’s doll fetish would have to wait. Liv held out another syringe, this one with a thicker needle, the tube filled with Pentobarbital stolen from a vet clinic.
As Camila reached for it, Liv pulled it back, her voice low. “Let me do this for you.”
Liv had killed slave buyers with blades, bullets, and even her bare hands. She certainly had the stomach for it. But Camila had helped with some of them. She could do this.
“Thank you.” She held out her hand. “This is nothing compared to what I have to do next.”
“What are you planning, Camila?” Liv released the syringe, her expression a cold mask.
A shiver rippled through her. That had been the tone Liv used when she held a whip, posed to strike. When Camila’s world had been confined to four windowless walls in a soundproof attic.
Deep breath. She was here because she didn’t want other girls to end up in chains, where they would learn how to beg for an orgasm, how to stroke a man’s cock, and how to relax into the bone-rattling bite of a whip.
She forced her attention on Larry, his eyes closed and breathing even. Passed out. Maybe already on his way to death.
Aiming the syringe over his heart, she slammed it down and drove hard and fast. When his eyes flashed open, she depressed the plunger and held a finger over the pulse in his throat until his eyes closed and his heart stopped.
She stood there for a moment, waiting to feel something. Like what? Killer’s remorse? Was that a thing? All she felt was purpose. It strengthened her backbone and energized her pulse.
“Got to make a call.” She headed toward the door.
Liv caught her arm and swung her back around. “What’s your next move, Camila?”
That was the tricky part. Liv, Tate, none of her team would like it.
“I’ll fill you in.” She pulled her arm from Liv’s grip. “But I have to deal with the body before it stinks up Amber’s garage.”
Liv studied her face, probing too closely, too deeply. “You’re carrying a torch, girl. The damn flames are burning in your eyes. Someday soon, it’s going to devour you.” Liv’s expression softened. “You can’t save them all.”
“I know.” But she could save a lot of them.
In the kitchen, she grabbed a new burner phone from her bag on the counter and headed toward the front door.
Van blocked her path, arms crossed over his chest. “Who do you call to deal with dead bodies?”
“An old connection.” She trusted Van more than she ever thought possible, but she didn’t trust him with this.
“What the fuck kind of connection? Liv said you did side jobs for some cartel. Are you bringing that shit to my front door?”
She might’ve mentioned something along those lines at some point. She didn’t do anything for any cartel, but it was highly probable that her connection did. “I’ll move the body off the property. They won’t come anywhere near here.”
His jaw stiffened. “The same thugs that were supposed to dispose of my body.”
“Hey, man.” She held up her hands and met his frigid gray eyes. “I’m not the one who shot you.”
His gaze turned inward. He scratched his shoulder—the old wound hidden beneath his shirt—and the corner of his mouth twitched. “Good thing Liv missed my heart.”
Was that a good thing? Maybe so. If Liv had aimed true, Van wouldn’t have lived to help them in the most valuable way possible. Financially.
“The thing I can’t figure out, though…” He narrowed his eyes. “How did you know I didn’t die? Liv says this guy, whoever you’re about to call, doesn’t have a way to contact you. If he didn’t tell you I wasn’t there…” He tipped his head to the side. “Were you watching the house?”
“No, I…” Jesus fuck, this is an awkward conversation. “I went there to clean up the blood. Except you didn’t leave any behind, and your car was gone.”
He nodded absently, seemingly absorbed in thought, so she slipped around him and opened the front door.
“Camila.”
Her breath caught. Christ, would she always flinch at the bark of Van’s voice?
Standing behind her, he squeezed her shoulder and removed his touch. “I’m sorry.”
For which part? Snatching her from her front yard? Tying her up? Spitting in her face? Shoving his cock in her mouth?
“For everything.” His footsteps retreated, leaving her shaken and off-balance.
Dammit, not the best frame of mind for the call she had to make.
It had been four years since she’d spoken to Matias. Did his promise to always help her still hold true? What if his number was disconnected?
Only one way to find out.
Her heart hammered as she stepped into the chilly darkness and dialed.
THE VIBRATION OF THE PHONE SHATTERED the chilly stillness in the SUV. Matias glanced at the screen, and a smirk pulled at his l
ips.
There had been a time when a call from an unknown number had sent his heart rate into a frenzy. But that was years ago, before he’d invested in spies, surveillance, and drone technology.
Parked on a barren road in the outskirts of rural Austin, he stretched out in the driver’s seat and met Nico’s gaze in the rear-view mirror.
“You gonna answer that¸ careverga?” Nico dropped his head against the backseat and closed his eyes as if he didn’t give a fuck either way.
The pompous ass had apathy down to an art. Nico could yawn through mass beheadings and play games on his phone during gunfights, but everything he did was calculated. His brutal intellect and mafia-style code of respect made him the most feared cartel capo in Colombia.
Matias knew the man behind the reputation, though. He trusted Nico, not only with his life, but with Camila’s.
“She made me wait four fucking years.” He held the vibrating phone in one hand and a wide screen tablet in the other. “I want to watch her sweat.”