I brewed coffee and made breakfast. Showered and dressed. Then I sat on the sofa with a scotch in my hand and waited. No last-minute planning. No going over the plan again and again in my head. I knew the plan. I wasn’t nervous. I was ready. Ready to kill, and ready to die. It was for Scar, so I was ready.
Three hours later, my phone rang from where I’d placed it on the coffee table. I expected it to be Mateo or one of his goons confirming the time.
It wasn’t.
“Derek, I don’t know what the fuck happened, but she’s gone.”
Michael’s words didn’t make sense at first. Gone?—of course, she was gone. I’d put her in the car and watched her drive away.
Fuck, I caught up fast. “What do you mean, she’s gone? Gone, where?”
“I don’t know. We stopped at some shitty diner because she was starving and because she was dancing around on the seat like she wasn’t going to be able to hold it a minute longer. She made a mad dash to the bathroom and never came back out. Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m already back on the road looking for her, but I don’t know where the fuck to look. If they got her…”
“They didn’t,” I said with absolute certainty. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to see it. Maybe I just hoped she’d see reason once Michael had her away from here. But now, I knew exactly what had happened.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I know Scar. I should have seen it, but I was so busy making plans to keep her safe, I wasn’t paying attention to what I should have seen all along. She never intended to go along with it. She’s on her way back here, Michael. She’s going to be there when Mateo shows up, and he’s going to…”
I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say out loud what I knew. That if Mateo got his hands on her, he’d rip her apart before my eyes just to make me suffer. “Fuck!”
This wasn’t fucking happening. My heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my fingertips, and all I could see was red. The entire world had been shrouded in a red gaze. Even my mind was shrouded by it, making it impossible to think.
I needed to get it together. Right. Fucking. Now.
“Michael, head back here. You know where Lopez will be. Meet me there in two hours, behind the rear hangar. If you run across Scar on the way back, get her off the road. Ram her car into a fucking ditch if you have to. Whatever you have to do.”
The guy hadn’t signed up to go head-to-head with Lopez. For all I knew, he was going to drive off in the other direction, but I didn’t think so. Hell, I knew he wasn’t going to do that. He genuinely seemed to care about Scar, and beyond that, he had a personal bone to pick with Lopez. What it was, I didn’t know, but I hadn’t forgotten the way he’d responded when I’d told him his name. Between his affection for his long-lost niece and his hatred for Lopez, Michael would be there.
“I’m on my way,” he said, as if in confirmation with my thoughts.
I was racking up debts I’d never be able to pay, but if it kept Scar alive, I didn’t give a fuck. I’d play his personal errand boy for the rest of my life to keep her safe.
I hung up the phone and ran through the modifications I was going to have to make to the plan. And entertained for the briefest of seconds what I was going to do to her when all this was over. When thoughts of what Mateo would do to her crept in though, I lost all interest in disciplining her. Alive. I just wanted her to live. That was all that mattered.
14
Derek
I paced the living room floor, waiting for the moment I could go roaring out of here. I couldn’t sit anymore—Scar’s little escape artist stunt had effectively squelched my calm.
When the moment finally arrived, so much adrenaline was coursing through my veins that I felt like I could have run there at twice the speed of the car, carrying my whole damned arsenal on my back.
Thinking better than to let the adrenaline guide me, I slid behind the wheel and mentally checked my body one last time. Two guns on my chest, two at my back and two ankle holsters. I had steel-toed boots on, and I wore brass knuckles on both hands—a gift from Marcos as a reward for taking out a rat. The only thing I needed now was a miracle. Yeah, I wasn’t holding my breath on that one.
The drive passed too slowly as if the whole world was moving in slow motion. I needed to get there. I needed to get to Scar, but I had to shut that part of me down. It wasn’t going to help her.