Devastate (Deliver 4)

“Tiago’s domain ends there. Just a few blocks away.”

She twisted to see out the broken rear window. No one chased them. No motorbikes. No speeding cars. No guns.

Dread buckled her stomach.

The escape was too easy. Even if Tiago’s men had discovered his death, they wouldn’t just let her go. Something was wrong.

“Call Matias,” she said urgently. “Tell him where we are.”

“A little busy.” Van’s laugh strained with tension as he swerved the car side to side, dodging motorists.

She cradled Tate’s head and scooted forward to reach between the seats and search for the phone in Van’s pocket.

“Fuck!” He slammed on the brakes, throwing her back against the seat. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Up ahead, police cars skidded onto the street, blocking their path.

“Turn back!” Her pulse exploded as she twisted around, searching for a side street. “Take that one!”

She caught Van’s eyes in the rearview mirror and pointed at the alley behind them.

“We can’t trust these cops?” He shoved the car in reverse and sped backward. “What happens if they catch us?”

Tires squealed behind them, followed by the rumbling sounds of motorbikes. Her scalp crawled, and a chill spread through her cheeks as she looked back and found a roadblock of armed officers.

“Get to that alley.” She gripped tight to Tate’s head and shoulders, shaking and nauseous. “They wouldn’t be here unless Tiago called in a favor.”

“What?” Van spun the car around and veered into the alley—the only way out. “I thought Tiago was dead.”

“He is.” Her breath came in wheezing pants. “I smashed his head in with a dumbbell. I thought… Oh God, I didn’t check. I couldn’t…”

His pulse. I didn’t check his pulse. Was he still alive?

If the police caught them, they would die in prison. Or they would be taken back to the compound, where they would be tortured before they died.

“If they surround us, we’re dead.” She tightened her arms around Tate’s limp body.

“Goddammit.” Van slammed the shifter through the gears and recklessly weaved around dumpsters and metal stairs in the alley.

The motor revved, and the end of the alley glowed like a beacon. Police on motorbikes zoomed in behind them, but there were no barricades up ahead.

They can make it. They can make it. Go, go, go…

The air vibrated with a rumbling reverberation right before the end of the alley filled with half a dozen police on bikes.

“Hold on.” Van accelerated.

Twenty feet, ten feet… Holy fuck, he was going to plow through them.

Heart pounding, she bent over Tate’s head, wrapped her arms in a death grip around him, and braced for impact.

A ringing sound split her eardrums, buzzing with the clamor of gunshots and Van’s shouting. Then sirens.

Sirens on a police car, in the alley, careening toward them head-on. The alley was too narrow, and they were traveling too fast and close to avoid collision.

Van jerked the car, hit the side of a building, then slammed into something else. The world spun, and time became heavily compressed and fractured.

The jarring impact catapulted her to Peru, shackled in the back of a transport, falling, rolling, flailing in the memory of twisted metal, broken bodies, crushed bones, and the scent of blood.

CHAPTER 27

Tate surfaced to a muffled symphony of pandemonium. Banging, shouting sounds pulsed in and out, as if trying to penetrate the cotton stuffed in his ears. He lay twisted in a mangled car, covered in glass and throbbing in excruciating pain.

Lucia was there, her tears drenching his face and her hand stroking his hair. Her agony was unbearable, her fear palpable. He couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe as he tried to make sense of the clamor around him.

He remembered gunfire and running and the speeding car. The front hood was bent against the broken windshield. The dash was too close to the front seats, and the pungency of coolant, gasoline, and burnt chemicals fumed the air. They must’ve crashed.

Black spots dotted his vision as he dragged his good arm beneath him and lifted. He blinked. And blinked again.

Multiple rifles pointed through the shattered window beside Lucia, aimed at her head. The armed men shouted something, and she screamed back at them, sobbing and shaking uncontrollably.

His pulse raced, and his senses sharpened. The men wore helmets and uniforms with arm patches and name tags. They surrounded the car, training rifles through every window and shouting in Spanish.

Where was Van? The airbags were deployed, and the front seat was empty.

Overpowering pain tore through his body and stole the strength from his neck. His head dropped onto her lap, and his muscles trembled with never-ending agony.

This wasn’t him. He wasn’t weak or puny. He was physically fit, stubborn, aggressive. He was a survivor. He needed to get the fuck up. He should be able to protect her.

The door beside her opened with a godawful squeal of grinding metal. Hands dove in, yanking her out of the car. She fought and kicked and screamed his name, but he couldn’t reach her. His arms wouldn’t respond to his urgent orders.

“Lucia.” Seething with pain, he tried to scramble after her.

His limbs wouldn’t cooperate, moving sluggishly, inch by inch across the seat. He reached his working arm through the open door and clawed at the pavement, yanking himself forward in a fevered frenzy of ripping flesh and dizzying anguish. He felt things tearing and breaking inside him, but he was separated from his body, completely fixated on getting to her and nothing else.

With his torso hanging out of the car and his legs caught within, he watched uniformed men with guns haul her away. Police cars and motorcycles filled the alley, and at the far end, several cops wrestled Van into the backseat of an armored transport.

If they were incarcerated, she wouldn’t see a doctor. Wouldn’t have access to medicine. Maybe Matias or Cole would find them and grease the right palms to get them released, but it would be too late for her.

She would be dead by tomorrow.

A roar ruptured from his throat as he twisted around, searching the car for a weapon and coming up empty. A seat belt tangled around his leg, and he wasted miserable seconds and precious strength to free himself. Then he crawled on one arm, rolling onto the pavement and nearly blacking out. He muscled through it, compartmentalizing the pain and fumbling forward, scraping his chest along the ground.

She thrashed and swung her legs in the clutches of the men who carried her. When she found his eyes, her expression hardened, and she redoubled her efforts. But she was outnumbered, and he was too slow, too fucking weak.

He couldn’t reach her, couldn’t touch her, couldn’t save her.

But he tried, and tried, and kept trying.

Goddammit, he would never give up on her.

CHAPTER 28

Crammed inside a cell in the municipal police station in eastern Caracas, Lucia struggled to breathe amid the sweltering heat and the reek of body odor, shit, and urine.

She didn’t know where the police had taken Tate. Didn’t know if Tiago Badell was orchestrating their fates. Didn’t know if Matias would be able to find them or if he even had the power to get them out of this place. Her nerves were shot, and with every hour that passed, she felt the tendrils of despair taking root.

When she and Van were thrown in here, they were shell-shocked and manhandled. The guards took his shirt and shoes and her bra and boots. But they let her keep the rest of her clothes. Then they were shoved to the back of the prison cell by dozens of restless, hungry prisoners.

Van had dragged her through the crowded bodies, fighting his way back to the front to yell at the guards through the bars. Though he spoke good Spanish, his pleas for a doctor fell on deaf ears. He’d tried to explain her illness and her need for medical attention, tried to argue for her human rights, but

there were no rights here. Within the walls of the calabozo, no one was human.

Shirtless men and barely-dressed women stood shoulder to shoulder against one another, with no room to sit. They took turns resting on hammocks made from sheets tied to the bars. A few managed to squat along the back wall.

Every hacking cough was a reminder of the diseases that lurked among them. Tuberculosis. HIV. Influenza. Not to mention the red scabies-like rashes that blistered the arms and legs around her.

A small window outside of the cell sat high on the wall. The sun had set forever ago. The guards had changed twice. Dawn would come soon.

She stood with her back to a corner. Van had wedged her there, using his body to separate her from the others. With his arms braced on the walls above her head, he worked his jaw rhythmically.

Neither of them had eaten, drank, or gone to the bathroom in over twenty-four hours. Her bladder cramped painfully, but relieving it would require peeing in a plastic bag while everyone watched. She would have to submit to that eventually, but she wasn’t mentally ready.

“Still no symptoms?” Van asked for the hundredth time.

“No.”