She typed out a question. How do I know Kimber is really where you say she is?
Moments later, a picture of the woman herself, all matted auburn hair and big, terrified eyes filled the screen. Laila had never met Kimber, but her heart went out to the wife and mother suddenly torn away from her comfort, her family, and her life. Kimber was holding a phone displaying a map that pinpointed the location the man had told her.
As a precaution, she will be moved tomorrow or the next day. Montilla does that often. That is beyond my control.
Laila would do everything she could to ensure Kimber was rescued before then.
Now where is Victor Ramos?the man on the other end demanded.
Since she had the information she needed, Laila answered in kind. She typed out the name of the motel, which she had noted on her way out. Our business is now concluded. I will not answer again.
Yes, you will, Laila. As you pointed out, it is good to be a hero. Montilla saw the video of you helping Ramos steal the car. He wants blood. My boss would definitely think me a hero if I brought you to him.
Laila’s blood ran cold. She sat frozen, not daring to reply. When the men who’d come for the Ferrari both started coming toward her, guns in hand, she started the truck and floored it, putting as much distance between her and them as possible.
Blindly, she flew down dark roads, heedless of where she was going, simply relieved she’d been too fast for them to follow. But she needed to ditch this truck, to find safety, and to tell EM Security where to find Kimber before Montilla moved her. She had to return to the villa outside of La Pesca and try to retrieve Trees’s guns and her clothes. And as much as it killed her, she would have to send Trees the email meant to break his heart and hope that he hated her too much to ever want to save her.
* * *
A few hours later, Trees found himself sitting beside Logan in a rented van, rumbling away from an airstrip northeast of San Luis Potosí in tense silence. The bosses had called fifteen minutes after Laila sent her backstabbing video and told him that his mission to find her was on hold. They needed all hands tonight to rescue Kimber.
Fuck.
Of course the bosses wanted to save their sister. But the timing goddamn chafed. Laila was out there, double-crossing him and EM Security. Hunter, Logan, and Joaquin had to know he’d been the fidiot who allowed that to happen. So he had to be the one to stop her. But Trees itched to hunt her down, tie her up, and extract some fucking answers. After she confessed when and how she’d decided to play him so he wouldn’t make the foolish mistake of trusting her again, he would do whatever necessary to exorcise her from his stupid, shattered heart.
While Matt had driven them the 250 miles from the doctor’s office to meet Logan, Trees had tried to close his eyes. But the visual of Laila being touched by Victor Ramos—and her obvious pleasure—replayed through his brain in an endless, destructive loop. Fury boiled his blood and jacked up his mood. Sleep wasn’t happening. His one consolation? If he couldn’t get his pound of flesh from Laila now, he’d at least get to fuck up assholes pushing drugs.
That thought had kept him going until he’d stood to greet Logan at the airstrip. Then he’d puked everywhere.
“You still look green,” Logan remarked an hour later, steadying the wheel as he drove down an empty highway just after three a.m. Once their plane had landed, he’d sent the rest of the team ahead. Matt was now sacked out in the back of the van.
“If you’re looking to get laid, flattery won’t work.”
“Ha ha.” Logan shot him an acidic stare. “Matt says you have a concussion. You probably shouldn’t be turned loose with a gun.”
“Matt should keep his mouth shut. I’m fine.” Well, good enough.
As long as he didn’t think about Laila…which was proving impossible. How had she suckered him so badly? How had she lied and so thoroughly convinced him of her sob story? He would have sworn everything about her was painfully honest, but maybe life with a cartel had carved the need to survive—fuck her scruples—into her psyche. Maybe she’d decided she could stay alive most easily by mesmerizing schmucks like him with her body. Maybe she’d never felt anything for any man who’d been inside her, except Victor. Maybe her wide-eyed surprise when he’d supposedly given her both her first kiss and her first orgasm had been bullshit designed to make him feel special. And maybe he’d believed it because he’d wanted to.
If he were a forgiving man, he’d reconcile himself to the fact she was damaged and simply let her go. Too bad for her. Laila was about to find out that he was a nice guy…until he wasn’t.
“You’re full of shit. You seriously look ready to puke again.”
Trees shook his head and lied through his teeth. “Nope. I’m solid.”
“Stay in the van and be our lookout.”
So he could…what? Fixate on how he’d repay Laila and miss his chance to kill some motherfuckers? “Is that an order?”
Logan sighed. “Fine. You’re a big boy, and we need all the guns we can get. But you better not be BSing me. I don’t want to take anyone back in a pine box.”
“If you do, it won’t be me.” Not when he had a score to settle.
“Hunter is going to kill me.”
Trees didn’t care. “What’s the plan?”
Since most of EM Security, along with Deke Trenton and Caleb Edgington, Oracle agent Trevor Forsythe, and Ghost had flown in together, they’d powwowed on the plane midair. Once everyone had landed, Matt had warned his bosses about Trees’s injury, so no one had felt the need to clue him in.
He was going to change that bullshit now.
“Fine. According to our intel, Kimber is being held in one of Montilla’s haciendas. It’s remote, up in the mountains. Getting up there will be a bitch. Deke, Dad, and Hunter took Ghost and went ahead to do some recon. Once they return, they’ll join Joaquin, Matt, Trevor, Zy, Walker, and the two of us. We’ll split into two teams.”
Trees guessed Kane had stayed behind to guard Valeria and Jorge. “Roger that. Then what?”
“The preliminary plan is that one team will go in from the south, near the stables. The other will go in from the west, between some storage buildings. Supposedly, security is more lax around those sides of the estate. We’ll avoid the front altogether. We’ve got a schematic of the place, so I’m confident that, if the security pattern holds, we have the right approach. But…”
The bosses were meticulous strategists. They could be motherfuckers, but they were smart. He didn’t remember a time any of them had sounded less than confident. “What’s the catch?”
“We got here as fast as we could, but the information is already a few hours old.”
“That’s why we’re inserting on top of recon?”
“Yeah. We were warned that Montilla moves Kimber frequently as a precaution. But this also might be a trap. Are you sure you want to do this if you’re not one hundred percent? It’s going to be rough.”
Then it would match his mood, but they weren’t leaving him behind. “And abandon everyone else when another gun could make the difference between success and failure? No. How reliable is the information?”
Logan hesitated. “We really have no idea. Laila called it in.”