by J. L. Drake
Anger replaced my sorrow, and I balled up my fists with my urge to hit him.
“Oh, so that makes it okay?”
“No.” He held my gaze longer than he should while driving. “None of it is okay, Catalina. Your mother was like a mother to me too, and to watch your father cower behind her lifeless body nearly tore me to pieces. I left to find you, to tell you in person. My number will be up too when I set foot back in that house.”
“Then why not just call me? You have my number.”
“Because, woman!” he snapped and tossed his hat on the dash. “I love you! You deserved more than a phone call!”
The air suddenly sucked out of the truck in one quick motion.
“I’ve loved you forever. Nothing I’ve done would ever change that.”
“I didn’t know,” I whispered after a few seconds of silence, “that you still felt for me that way.”
“I never stopped.” He played with the steering wheel cover. “That’s why I came back. You needed to know the truth.”
“Thank you, Abel. I do appreciate that.”
He nodded, and when the silence became too much, he turned up the radio, so the haunting stillness went away. We both said our piece, and we each knew where the other stood. He was in love with me, and I was hopelessly in love with someone else now. He tried to do the right thing for once, and for that, I would try to hold on to my memories of the love I had for him in the past.
I leaned my head into the window and let my scattered emotions try to find their place inside my chest.
Abel was waved past the three checkpoints without being stopped, and we pulled into the driveway without any security present. The vibe was completely different—eerie, almost—from the last time I was here.
“Something is not right here. Come on.” He started to walk up the stairs, and I followed, although a part of me felt like I was being led into a trap.
The house was empty and cold, and a shiver found my lower back and scurried up my spine like a rat in trouble.
Wait, was I the rat?
I’d flipped.
Did they know?
I shook it off and swung my huge purse around to my front and started to pluck items from the shelf.
“What are you doing?” Abel peered down at me. “Do you need money?”
“It’s not about money, it’s about having something that was my mother’s.” I tucked two photos in my purse and moved toward the library. My mother was a reader, and I wanted to grab a couple of her favorites.
“Catalina.” Abel chased after me and hooked my arm, so I whirled around to face him. His expression was puzzled, his jaw was locked, and his eyes narrowed in on me.
“Ab—” He shot forward and kissed me. It happened so fast that it took me a moment to realize what he had done. I pushed his shoulders and stepped back. “Abel, I just don’t feel that way any—” Again I was cut off with the sound of someone talking.
I pushed past him and came to a cold stop when I saw the scene in the library. My father was on his knees at the feet of his older brother Bash. A gun was stuck in his mouth, and my aunt was dead on the floor next to him.
“Huh.” All the air was sucked out of my lungs.
“Ah, Catalina, what a gift. We have been patiently waiting.” His thick accent barked through my fear. His haunting gaze swooped over my shoulder. “Good boy.”
What? An acid wash flooded my veins, and I stayed stuck in a parallel that told me to run but also to stay still. Slowly, I looked over my shoulder, my heart crumbling from the bottom like sand through an hourglass to find Abel with a gun dangling by his side. He glanced at me, and I saw his face conflicted with emotion.
“Time for some truths.” Bash pulled my attention back to him and grabbed my father by the hair, roughly pulling him back to look at me.
“Catalina! Save me!” my father pleaded desperately.
“Catalina, darling,” Bash pulled my attention back to him, “did you know your father was sleeping with my wife for the past nine years?”
I shook my head, unable to tell the truth.
“Lies!” my father hissed like the filthy coward he was.
“Did you know he killed his own son because he tried to make peace with the family?”
My emotional gaze fell on my pathetic excuse for a father, and all my hate came at me in one swift motion. With all my might, I swung my bag into my father’s face. I heard the crack of the glass from the picture frame that protruded as it smoked his cheek. He fell backward, only to be hauled back up by Bash. Blood oozed from the gash, and I wondered if he had done the same to my brother.
Shattered glass could be replaced, but a shattered heart could not.
“Catalina,” my father coughed, “you think I pulled the trigger to kill my son?”
I felt him behind me, and I whirled to find Abel about to grab me.
“Oh, my sweet, useless daughter, I don’t do the dirty work in the family. My hands stay clean.”
No.
Abel’s face hardened, and I knew the truth. I felt my heart break all over again, as it had at seventeen. He didn’t come for me then because he was weak, and he wouldn’t help me now.
“I have to do as I’m told.” He leaned against the doorframe like he didn’t care.
Something clicked in my head. “What did you mean, you were patiently waiting?” I looked at Bash, and he smiled.
“My dear brother sent for you, of course. What other card did he have to play? He offered you, my dear Catalina, his own daughter, to save his worthless life.”
I turned to look at Abel once again. My mind flashed to the hallway when he kissed me, and fingers went to my lips to rub the memory away.
I almost felt my uncle make the connection to what just happened, and the shockwave from the bullet nearly blew me backward. Abel jolted with wide eyes before he slumped to the floor.
Holy shit.
“Why?” I tried to keep my mind moving. I felt like I was covered in mud again at the swimming hole, unable to move. “Why would you trade his life for mine? What value am I to you, Uncle?” I tried to understand.
“You have no value to me at all, Catalina, except to see how deep your dear father, my brother, would go to save his own worthless hide. It will fascinate me to watch him as I take his daughter’s life before his own. I will wipe out all that was his.”
“What’s rich, here, Uncle Sebastian,” I drew out his name and made my tone sickly sweet, “is that at the end of it all, I will be the only one still standing with the Esteban name.”
“Women don’t have any place in the cartel world,” my father hissed like a snake.
“Who said anything about the cartel world?”
I shot him a devilish smile as it all clicked around him while Bash seemed still confused.
“Yes, father, I’m an American now.”
My mother’s sweet face appeared in front of me. She seemed to shout something, but I couldn’t understand until I felt it.
It took me a moment to process what just happened. The walls in the library shook, the chandelier swung, and plaster from the roof rained down around us. My hearing went in and out as a loud boom hit my ears. The silence was now replaced with a loud hum. I struggled to stand, but vertigo attacked my balance as I reached for something to hold.
A gunshot rang out, and as I fought to stop the spins, I saw my father fall to the floor, his head and the floor red with blood. My uncle now pointed his gun at me.
“What did you do?” Bash screamed through the white powder that filled the air.
Shit, the cocaine stash has been blown up.
Quickly, I ripped my shirt and tried to use it as a filter. The last thing I needed was to breathe it in.
“It’s nothing personal, Catalina.” Bash fired his gun, but he missed.
Boom! Another hit to the house shook the foundation.
I threw myself toward the door as Bash flew backward and hit the bookcase. So much chaos filled the room that all
rational thinking was blocked from my head. I scrambled to find my footing and stumbled toward the gun that was next to my father.
Boom!
I fell sideways and hit my ribs hard. “Ahhhh!” I cried, but I could tell they were only bruised, not broken. Again, I forced my disoriented body to stand, only to feel a hand wrap around my throat and something hard touch my face.
Cold, hard fear broke out across my body when I caught my uncle’s evil face in the reflection of the cabinet glass.
My eyes looked to my angel on the library wall, and I called out to her. A surge of adrenaline flowed through me. For too long, I had taken the abuse my father had dished out to me, but now he lay in a puddle of his own blood next to his lover. Now I was in the hands of his brother, and I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
Boom!
We shot backward, and I cried out when I caught a glimpse of what was pushed against my neck.
No!
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Mike
“Raven One to Delta Six,” Cole shouted at me through the radio, “what’s your twenty?”
I pushed the two-hundred-grain roll up charge next to the door and raced out of the second room on the right with the scope to my eye ready to shoot.
“Thirty seconds to the next blast.” I rushed to the next room with fear lodged in my throat. It too was empty.
Where was she?
So many scenarios raced through my head as I dropped to my knees and set another blast. I used my fingers as guides because the cocaine made the air murky.
As I let my fingers do the work, my head slipped backward.
“Irons!” Daniel called up at me from the ground. I was halfway up the mountain in the middle of a training exercise when he found me. I let go and rappelled down in a matter of minutes. Whatever it was, it must be important, because Daniel never interrupted a training day.
“Hey, what’s up?” I rubbed my hands together to brush the dust off.
He placed two fingers in his mouth and whistled to gain Cole’s attention.
“Yeah?” Cole threaded a line down to Mark.
“Irons and I need a moment, and then I’ll need yours.”
“Sure thing.” Cole signaled to John to take over. He disappeared off the top of the mountain to hurry down the back side.
“I got a call from Catalina.” Daniel held up his private cell phone. “I transferred her to Frank, so he knows, but we need to talk.”
Oh, shit.
“Seems her father’s got himself in a mess.”
“How bad?”
“Well,” he rolled his watch over, “she left twenty-two minutes ago, so we’re pretty much at a ten, here.”
“Wait,” I placed a hand on his shoulder, “she left for Mexico?”
“Yeah,” he nodded, and I felt the agreement we’d made poof into thin air, “but she did blow up Frank’s phone pretty good before she left. She told me she went to your father’s because she couldn’t get you, then called my number trying to reach Frank. Frank did get a moment to speak to her, though. She did everything right, except listen to him about not leaving.”
“Maybe she didn’t?” I wanted to call my father, but when I turned my phone on, I saw I had endless missed calls from Charlotte, my father, and Catalina. We didn’t have our phones on when we were training.
“Her mother was murdered.” Daniel broke through to me. “Would you stay home?”
The entire house shook again, and I knew it would only take three more blasts before the place went down.
“Beta Seven to Delta Six,” Keith sounded off, “I have eyes on the sparrow. I repeat, I have eyes on the sparrow.”
“Where?” I dropped all training.
“Library.”
The six-second run down the hallway and into the library reminded me of when I was back in Iraq. I’d gotten separated from my troop, and I wasn’t sure if they were dead or alive.
And just like then, I was brought to a dead stop when I saw her terrified face and a hand grenade held to her throat.
“Stop!” A guy I recognized from photos as Catalina’s Uncle Sebastian, or Bash, clearly unnerved with our presence, screamed, “One more step and we all go!”
Catalina’s eyes were wide and kept sweeping the room as if desperately seeking a way out. That was when I took in that her father and a woman lay executed on the floor. Her friend Abel also had a huge hole in his chest.
What the hell happened here?
I slowly held up my hand and pointed to my neck to show him my intention. “If I don’t radio to stop them, they will shoot.”
He nodded for me to go ahead and stop the team.
“Delta Six to Raven One, do you copy?”
“Right behind you, brother. Exits are secure, and we have eyes on the mark.”
“Stand down. Subject has a hand grenade.”
“Copy that, Delta Six. We will wait for your signal. Pin in or out?” I didn’t need to check a second time; I’d noticed right away.
“Out, copy that.” Again, I lowered my hand slowly and moved my eyes to Catalina, who seemed to be in total shock.
“Why are you here?” Sebastian yelled at me as another one of my blasts went off. He rocked backward and almost pulled Catalina right off her feet. She struggled to breathe around his flexed arm. I went to make a move, but he found his footing and removed one of his three fingers from the spoon trigger.
Keith came into view behind, but I shook my head. I was calm, and my head was clear. It had to be if we were going to get through this.
“Denton Barlow sent me.” I lied, of course.
“The American?” He sounded confused, and what shocked me was that he used his nickname. “I find that hard to believe. He’s in prison.”
“Has that ever stopped anyone before?”
He shifted Catalina to cover more of his body. I wondered if he could feel my men moving in for the kill.
“Denton and I have been in communication, and he never once mentioned a US team coming here.”
That so?
“It was a deal made with your brother. Why don’t we ask him?” I dropped my gaze to Salvador’s lifeless body. “Oh, wait, we can’t.” I was deadpan.
“Not possible.” He spat on the floor, and I saw his pupils were dilated. He’d obviously had a good deal of cocaine even before the blast. “We had a deal. I take out my family, and in return, he’d ship me pretty USA girls. He’s already got a container full. I just need to show him some proof.”
Human trafficking was the lowest of lows.
“I want in. Where are the girls?”
“Mike,” Cole warned, but we both knew if we had an opportunity to get some information before we blew his head off, we should.
“Why does he want your brother dead?”
He glared at me, and his mindless chatter came to a halt. He whipped around, and he spotted Keith with a rifle pointed at his head.
“No!” He squeezed his eyes shut. “If I die, he’ll know something has happened.”
“That’s fine.” I shrugged and glanced at Catalina. “Are you okay?”
She didn’t register me. I couldn’t tell if she was high or in shock or both.
“Catalina?” I spoke louder, and her eyes snapped to life and tears broke through at what was happening.
“Mike?” she cried and tried to fight Sebastian’s hold. A finger slipped, and I held up my hand.
“Stop!”
She froze.
Sebastian looked at me, then her, then me again.
“You want to know what connection my father made?” Suddenly, Catalina’s fight was back, only I wasn’t sure she knew what she was doing.
“Ten seconds to the next blast, boys. We need to move,” Mark whispered, and both Keith and Cole shifted their weapons.
It was time.
“The only daughter of the Esteban family flipped,” she hissed in delight as her words hit him hard. I saw the moment he realized who we were, and I saw his las
t finger make the move to release the grenade.
I leaped forward and dove at Catalina just as the blast from the other room went off, I tucked her under my body as we hit the floor.
The boom shot books in different directions, little sheets of paper fluttered around us like snow, and I waited, but the second, harder blow never came. Keith seemed just as confused as I was. I stood and saw it. The hand grenade was now in a tight grip in Catalina’s hand.
“Shit.” I knelt and pried it carefully from her locked fingers. “Give it to me, babe. I got it.”
As soon as her hands were free, they went to cover her face, and a sad cry ripped from her chest as the last thirty minutes hit her.
“We need to move!” Keith yelled, and I scooped Catalina up and carried her out of the house, down the stairs, and into the waiting SUV that John had just arrived in.
“Take her!” I yelled and headed back inside to finish my job as he peeled out of the driveway.
Mark met me in the entryway and helped me peel back the floorboards. I dumped everything I had on me and lit a fuse.
“Did you get it?” I yelled over my shoulder as we raced back down the stairs.
“Yes!”
“Good.” We jumped into the other SUV, and Cole sped away after John. Just as we hit the main road, we could feel the shock waves that flattened the Esteban house. Thanks to Catalina’s call to Daniel, we were able to clear the house of all staff and baggers. No casualties except the ones we meant to take down. It wasn’t the smoothest of operations, but it was successful and would never have worked if we hadn’t had Catalina.
“John?” I clicked my radio.
“She’s okay. Keith is with her.”
I sank back in my seat and removed my helmet, thankful she hadn’t been hurt and we hadn’t lost any of our guys.
“Nice work, Mike.” Cole kept his eyes on the road. We weren’t out of the woods yet. “I called Denton’s info in.”
“Good.” We could never be too careful with what we learned. We always called it in the moment we could in case anything happened to us on the way home.
Cole turned up the music, and Same Blood by Aleo Blacc pumped through the speakers, and I sank into the seat while a sense of relief crept over me.