The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 2

by Maegan Beaumont

  That’s when she realized how young he was. His hair was dark. His olive skin smooth. He looked to be in his mid to late forties. “I’m Claire Vance,” she said, hoping manners would force him to tell him her name.

  “Francisco Vega—” He held out his hand as if to shake hers for a moment before he remembered the blood. “I’m the parish priest here at St. Rose,” he said, his hand flopping back to his side, untouched.

  “Vega?” she said, careful to keep her tone light and even. “Any relation to Paul Vega?”

  He seemed to hesitate for a moment before answering. “Yes, he’s my nephew,” he said, thrusting the box into her hand, he stepped back. “Now if you’ll excuse me—” he looked at his watch, “I have a service to prepare for.”

  “You usually have mass this late, father?” she said, standing quickly, her question stopping his retreat. It was nearly midnight.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head, more regret showing on his face. “The majority of my congregation work the fields that surround this church and their hours are long. Midnight mass is a luxury most of them can’t afford.”

  “Then what is so special about tonight?” she said

  “It is the feast of St. Rose, our patron saint,” he said, reaching for the door. “Tonight everyone will be here to pay tribute to her.”

  For some reason Sabrina looked down at the cat sprawled across the bench. Something about his tone told her that no matter what he said, he knew that it hadn’t been killed by a coyote.

  “Father—” She started to ask him, even if a coyote could get over a wall nearly twelve-feet tall, why it would leave a cat, mutilated but not devoured, on the garden’s only bench but she couldn’t.

  Because he was gone.

  28

  Kootenai Canyon, Montana

  The Challenger started on the first try. Those hours spent changing its oil and sparkplugs paid off. On the seat beside him, Avasa wagged her tail, excited to go.

  He’d rolled the barn door opened to find Miss Ettie standing on the other side of it with a thermos of coffee in her hand.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said shaking his head against what he was sure was about to be a lengthy lecture. “I’ve got to try to help her as much as I can—”

  Instead of arguing with him, Miss Ettie laughed. “Well, of course you do,” she said, holding the thermos out. “How long will you be gone?”

  He thought about it. Thought about leaving the valley, driving until he’d traded Ponderosas and black bears for Palo Verde and rattlesnakes. That’s what he wanted to do. He wanted to go to her. It was what he’d always wanted. From the first moment he saw her. For as long as he could remember.

  Protect her. Keep her safe.

  To be the kind of man who could do those things for her.

  But that’s not what she needed from him. Sabrina had never needed him to protect her. She saved herself. Always had.

  What she needed was something he couldn’t give her. But he could make sure she got it.

  “I’ll be back before sunrise,” he told her, taking the thermos from her, trading it for a quick kiss dropped onto her soft, wrinkled cheek.

  “You better be in that kitchen, making me pancakes when I wake up.” She gave him a quick pat on his cheek, catching him before he could fully pull away. “Be careful, Michael,” she said to him, her sharp, dark eyes catching his, making him wonder just how much knew about his predicament.

  “Before sunrise,” he said again, making her an unspoken promise. “I’ll even make bacon.”

  Two hours later he pulled over, the Challenger’s tires grabbing onto the soft shoulder of the highway. Shifting into park, he killed the lights and then the engine, plunging himself into total darkness and a silence that was so loud it seemed to scream.

  Avasa shifted on the seat next to him, whining softly. “Shhh, it’s okay,” he said to her, not even really sure what he was waiting for. The bright, blinding lights of a fleet of black SUVs, speeding in to surround him. A platoon of Pips to drop out of the sky. A sudden, violently painful death.

  Whatever it was, it never came.

  One minute turned into ten and nothing happened. No one came for him. He kept breathing. He had no idea what kind of safety nets Ben had Lark devise to block the signal that would set off his chip but whatever they were, they seemed to be holding.

  He reached up and clicked on the dome light on the roof of the Challenger and the dog sitting beside him woofed softly. “Okay, okay,” he said to her, reaching across the bench seat to open her door. She gave him a swift swipe with her tongue before darting out into the dark. “Stay out of the road,” he called out to her flagging tail but he needn’t worry. She only went as far as a few yards before she sat in the dirt to keep watch.

  The dog took her job seriously.

  Unlatching the glovebox, he found what he was looking for. Closing his hand over it he pulled it out. An old analog cell phone. It was his contingency plan. His escape hatch. He had identical phones stashed in the bunker and buried in the woods where the kids liked to play.

  He turned it on, waiting for the small green screen to power up before he searched the short list of contacts. Finding the number he was looking for, he hit send.

  As he suspected, his call was dumped into voicemail—an automated message that did nothing more than recite the number back to him and beep. “This is Michael O’Shea,” he said into the phone. “We need to talk.” He hung up, clicking off the dome light to wait.

  Two minutes later, the phone rang.

  “Is she alive?” No greeting. No surprise or disbelief. Just the question. The only thing that mattered to him.

  Michael leaned his head against the Challenger’s headrest and closed his eyes, his jaw suddenly tight. “Yes.” He forced the word out, fighting the urge to hang up the phone. To run it over. To drive to San Francisco and commit murder.

  He listened to him breathe on the other end of phone, waiting for him to elaborate. To explain. He didn’t.

  “I don’t think you’d called me a year later, at 2AM, to tell me that, Michael.”

  “She needs your help.”

  “My help?” Phillip Song chuckled softly but there was a smug, satisfied edge to the sound that made Michael want to cut his tongue out. “What could I possibly—”

  “You know what, asshole,” he said through gritted teeth. “You helped her once before. I need you to do it again.”

  “Wade.” It wasn’t a question. Hearing him say the name told Michael all he needed to know about how close Sabrina and Song had become. Close enough for her to confide in him. Close enough that .when he said Wade’s name out loud, it sounded like a curse.

  “Yes.”

  “If she’s in need of my help, why wouldn’t she call me herself?” Song said, sounding both wary and concerned. “She knows I’d do anything for her.”

  “Because of me.” He’d known, as soon as he asked her to call Song and ask for help, exactly what she’d do. She’d agree in order to placate him and then stubbornly refuse to do what they both knew was best for her. “Because you’re in love with her—or at least you were.”

  More silence. For a second, Michael was sure he’d hung up the phone. Finally, he spoke. “Where is she?” he said it quietly, not even trying to deny it. “Tell me where she is and I’ll—”

  “I don’t want it to be you,” he said, matching Song’s tone perfectly. “Because I know what you’ll do. You’ll play knight in shining armor with your fucking tea and your expensive suits that cover up the tattoos that spell out just what kind of man you really are. You’ll call her sweetheart and you’ll do for her what I can’t.”

  “And what is that?” Song said, sound equal parts pissed and amused. “What can I do for her that El Cartero can’t?”

  “You can be there.” Michael caught his reflection in the review mirror and looked away. “Got a pen?” He rattled off the number to the cell phone he’d given Sabrina and listened to Song write it down.
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  “I can protect her. Give her her family back. Her friends,” Song said, warning him he was right. That he could do more for her than Michael ever could. “With me, she could even be a police officer again if that’s she wanted.”

  “Pretty lofty proclamations for a simple businessman,” he said but he knew Song wasn’t overstating his abilities. With him, Sabrina would be what she could never be with him.

  Free.

  “I’m not bragging,” Song said. “I’m telling you how it will be. What I’ll offer her.”

  He turned his head to look out the open car door. Avasa sat in the wedge of it, watching him with what looked like pity. “Do what you gotta do, Song,” he said before ending the call. He patted the seat next to him and she jumped onto it.

  She was ready to go home.

  29

  Her phone was ringing in the front seat. She could see it through the passenger-side window, next to the box Croft had given her. She put the shoe box with the cat inside it on the roof of the car and popped the lock, reaching for it just as the sound of it was cut off. Six missed calls and eight text messages.

  Five of the calls were from Church. One of them was from number she didn’t recognize, save for the area code.

  San Francisco.

  Before she could even figure out how to deal with that one, the phone buzzed again, signaling another text. A picture of Croft’s dark green Jetta, parked in a slot in front of cheap motel. Room 122.

  Hitting redial, Sabrina wedged the phone between her ear and shoulder, bending over to grab the box. Church let it ring. She hung up and looked at her watch. It was 12:05AM.

  Shit.

  Using the key fob to pop the trunk, Sabrina tucked the box Croft gave her inside. On impulse, she added the box with the cat carcass before punching out a quick, one-word text.

  DON’T

  Shutting the lid, she noticed that the parking lot was nearly full. Parked across the lot, along the shoulder of the road, was the same King Ranch she saw outside Vega’s house.

  He was here.

  Her phone rang and she breathed a sigh of relief, answering it quickly before Church changed her mind and hung up in favor of following through on her threat and slitting Croft’s throat.

  “I stopped by St. Rose on my way back to the hotel—Vega is here for midnight mass. I’m going to slip in and—”

  “You have no idea how relieved I am to hear your voice, yeon-in.” Phillip Song’s voice wrapped around her, deep and smooth, as playful as always. “Almost as relieved as I am irritated that you disappeared without telling me.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut for a second, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “How did you—” she stopped short, panic squeezing at her throat. “Michael. Michael called you.”

  He’d left their valley. Used a cell phone. Risked his life—everything they’d built. For her. She didn’t know if she wanted to kill him or kiss him.

  “He did,” Phillip said, his tone going flat. “He also told me he’d asked you to do it but that you’d refused. Why would you do that, Sabrina?”

  The parking lot was emptying, people filing into the small sanctuary. Men in shirts that looked clean and pressed. Women, their heads covered with shawls and scarves. Children in what looked to be their very best clothes. Within moments, she was alone.

  “A secret only stays a secret if you keep your mouth shut, Phillip.” She told him the truth. At least part of it. The rest—that some part of her knew Michael was right, that Phillip’s feelings for her had grown far beyond his perceived debt to her—was something she didn’t want to get into.

  “You don’t trust me.” There was no question in his tone, only something that sounded like hurt, mixed with disbelief.

  She really didn’t have time for this. “It’s not that.” She sighed. “I trust you but there’s a lot at risk here—not just me. Not just Michael.” She thought of Christina and Alex, the children they’d rescued. Loved. “We’re a family. That’s not something I’m willing to jeopardize. Not for anyone or anything.”

  “It seems to me,” Phillip said quietly. “That when it comes to your wellbeing, you and your Michael are willing to risk very different things. He says you need my help and for once I am inclined to agree with him.”

  For a second, she tried to imagine introducing a powerful Korean mobster to the former pet psychopath of Livingston Shaw. The mental picture made a for a spectacular shit show. “I don’t need your help, Phillip. I’m—”

  She watched a lone figure materialize from the shadowed fields surrounding the church. It was Will Santos. She watched him walk across the dirt lot, pausing for a moment in front of the King Ranch she’d tagged as Vega’s before continuing on. He hesitated for a moment before he pulled open the door to the church and stepped inside.

  Phillip was still talking and she had to force herself to focus on what he was saying.

  “…I care for you, Sabrina,” he said, his voice hardening around the words. “But you have always been a poor judge of what and who you need. I’ll see you soon.”

  She looked down at the closed trunk lid, weighing her options.

  The box can wait, Darlin’. Better hurry inside now—the show’s about to start.

  “Okay.” She didn’t have time to fight a battle she’d already lost. “Whatever,” she said, without bothering to tell him where here was. If he wanted to put his nose where it didn’t belong, he was going to have to work for it. She killed the call without waiting for a response before following Santos in the sanctuary.

  30

  She was alone.

  There was a silence to the place she’d never heard before. An emptiness that made her sure that wherever he’d gone, the man who took her was not here. She didn’t know how long she laid there, listening to the empty black that surrounded her but somewhere between realizing there was no one to stop her and remembering where she was, Maggie made a choice.

  Pushing herself against the wall she planted her bound hands on the floor, levering herself up until she was sitting. She’d pissed herself again. The cold sting of it rubbed into the chafed skin of her thighs, mixing with the tacky blood and the dried semen between them.

  That’s when she started to remember.

  What he did. How much it hurt. How long it went on. What he said to her. Each word punctuated with the lash of a whip. Each lash followed by the brutal thrust of his hips. The excruciating pressure of him inside her. Over and over until each unbearable pain bled into the next. Until she screamed and cried. Begged for him to stop.

  Until she wanted to die.

  She started to shake. Her arms and legs trembling so hard she had to wrap herself into a ball and press her face into the top of her thighs to keep herself from coming apart. “Stop it,” she said out loud. “Stop it right now.”

  She didn’t have time to fall apart. She was alone but for how long? Ten minutes? An hour? Unwrapping herself, she planted her bound hands on the floor and pushed again, pulling her legs beneath herself slowly, finding her balance, until she was standing.

  The room was pitch black. When he’d dragged her back down the hall and toss her into it, she’d hit the floor, her knees buckling before she scrambled across the cracked concrete until she hit a wall. Wedging herself into its corner she’d cowered and waited.

  He’d stood in the doorway for a few minutes, watching her—his fingers flexing around the handle of the knife he’d used on her. “Do you still believe in miracles, Margret?” he said to her in the same, calm, reasonable tone he’d used while systematically raping and beating her.

  “Yes,” she whispered it, worried that if she raised her voice he’d be able to hear the lie. She knew instinctively that the moment she told him the truth—that she didn’t believe in anything anymore—he’d kill her.

  Instead of answering her, he just laughed and shut the door.

  Now, hands outstretched, she shuffled forward, shoulder scraping the rough block wall. The dark had a way of di
sorienting you. Turning you upside down. Growing and shrinking until you didn’t know where you were. Making it impossible to find your way to the other side.

  The more she stared at it, the more the crack of light beneath the door seemed to stretch and wane, growing farther and farther away with each step she took. She kept going. One step in front of the other. Eyes fixed on the crack of light that would show her the way out.

  When her hands closed over the door handle, her breath caught in her chest. Please, Please let it be open. Please God, help me find my way out. Please, Please, Please... She leveled the handle downward. Felt the latch that held it closed give way.

  The door swung open.

  It was a test. Some sort of trap. The certainty of it had her shrinking away from the open doorway. She’d try to escape and she’d be caught. He’d punish her. Drag her back into that room and do things…

  She leaned heavily against the doorframe and waited. Listened. There was nothing. No sound. No movement. Trap or not, this was her chance. She wouldn’t waste it. Pushing herself away from the door, Maggie took a tentative step into the hallway.

  The hallway was deserted. There were other doors. Other rooms. Trying them, she found some locked, some not. The ones that opened were empty. There were no windows. Not anywhere. No way out that she could find. Looking down, she saw the blood trail that cut down the center of the floor.

  Maggie followed it. Not toward the room he’d taken her to, but in the opposite direction. Around a corner and down another corridor. The blood trail grew fainter and fainter until it was nothing more than indistinct brown streaks soaked into the concrete, disappearing under a closed door.

  If this is where he’d taken the body of the other woman, maybe it led to the outside. Maybe it was a way out. Again, she stopped and waited for the trap to snap shut.

  After a few seconds of more nothing, she yanked on the handle. The latch released and the door swung open. Her chest went tight, constricted with hope. She would find her way out. She would escape. She would run.