Disclaim (Deliver #3)

by Pam Godwin

  His other hand swung toward her face, but she knocked it away and clamped her legs around his thrashing neck. Jesus, he was strong for a skinny fucker.

  She yanked harder on his arm and adjusted her hips, maneuvering him into a restrained position.

  Finally. Adrenaline surged through her veins, and her breaths came in short bursts.

  Realization glistened in the stark white of his eyes, and he snarled like a rabid animal.

  That’s right, baby. I know who you are. You’re so fucked.

  He bucked his chest against the mattress, his teeth snapping too damn close to her stomach.

  “I have kids.” His sunken cheeks blanched, his voice a choked rasp. “I’m a father.”

  Good for him. She had a father once. And a mother and sister. Her heart twisted, the loss as raw as the day she discovered their deaths. They would never know what happened to her. Would never know she made it out of that attic of shackles and horrors. She’d escaped a fate worse than death.

  The same fate this piece of shit inflicted on others.

  “You should’ve thought about your kids…” She hooked her foot beneath her other knee and squeezed her legs. “Before you stole someone else’s.”

  The compression of her thighs and the pulling grip on his arm crushed his bicep against his throat, strangling his ability to speak. And breathe.

  Her muscles strained to defend the position as he kicked and rolled his hips. Keeping his arm pressed beneath his chin, she swatted away his attempts to punch her with his free hand. Over and over, he flung his fist toward her face, fighting for blood, for air, wild in his desperation.

  No bueno.

  If done effectively, the chokehold would cut off the blood flow in the arteries on both sides of the neck. It should’ve been over within seconds. Why was this motherfucker still squirming?

  She tightened her legs and cocked her head, studying the waning twitches in his body. Unconsciousness would come soon. She settled in and tried to steady her heartbeat.

  Months of stalking Austin’s worst criminals had led her to Larry McGregor. Mailman by day and slave trader by night, he spent his downtime hooking up with sleazy women at the local bar. Bet he regretted that vice right about now.

  Her thighs tensed, burning to snap his neck. But she needed him alive.

  Surveillance confirmed he held a teenage girl in an abandoned barn twenty minutes outside of Austin. Knowing her team was extracting the girl at that very moment should’ve made it easier to breathe. But there were more Larrys, more enslaved girls, the trafficking network in Austin vast and well-funded.

  The only way to stop it was to cut off the head. First, she needed to know how to find that head.

  Larry’s body fell limp between her legs. She waited a beat, pushing at his gaping jaw before slipping from beneath him and checking his pulse. Slow and even. Unlike her own.

  From her purse on the floor, she unwrapped a maxi pad and removed the plastic cable ties she’d hidden in the cotton. How long before he woke?

  Fuck, she was out of her realm here. She wanted to end him, but if she didn’t secure the information she needed, another would take his place, and another, and another. This would be her first attempt at torture. Did she have the balls to do it?

  She quickly zipped his wrists to his ankles and stuffed the maxi pad in his mouth, her fingers twitching through the movements. Matias would have a body to dispose of soon enough.

  Matias. Every call she made to him brought a new line of questioning. His and hers. Neither would budge in their secrecy.

  A sudden chill crept over her. Just thinking about him made her feel vulnerable and…naked. She slid on her dress and heels.

  She hadn’t seen him since he was eighteen, not since the day those hard-looking men led him out of the citrus grove. Over the years, he told her he was obligated to stay with them. Were they cartel? He refused to confirm her assumption, but he didn’t deny it either. What was she supposed to do? Trust him? No way in hell.

  He was a thirty-year-old…what? Grave-digger? Hitman? Underling for a drug lord? Whatever his line of work, he always got rid of dead bodies for her. The first was the man who intended to buy her. Followed by six more buyers and their bodyguards for her six fellow slaves. Her last call was four years ago. To collect Van Quiso’s body.

  She retrieved her phone from her purse and pulled up her contact list. A shudder raced through her as she stared at the last number dialed.

  Van Quiso.

  The man who kidnapped her when she was seventeen.

  The man who imprisoned her for a year and trained her to be the perfect slave.

  As it turned out, he hadn’t died from that gunshot wound in his shoulder.

  No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t parse her feelings about that. They ran too deep, too entangled and confusing, much like everything else in her life. So she detached from it, held herself at a distance, and focused on the goal. She had a slave trader to torture and kidnapped girls to save.

  She tapped his name on the screen. As the call connected, her heartbeat roared past her ears.

  Van answered with silence.

  “It’s done and ready for pick up.” She steeled her breath.

  “On my way.” He disconnected.

  She slumped on the edge of the mattress, her shoulders loosening.

  Ironically, asking her kidnapper to help her take down other kidnappers wasn’t the worst call she had to make. That special pang of dread was reserved for her impending conversation with Matias.

  God, she missed him. Almost as much as she feared him.

  A soon-to-be dead man lay hogtied beside her, eyes closed and mouth stretched around the balled up maxi pad. She could dispose of the body herself. At the risk of getting caught and sentenced for murder.

  If she involved Matias, he would shield her from the law. At the risk of him finally locating her.

  Then what? Whatever connection they’d shared as children was a distant memory. She knew nothing about the man he’d become.

  If his overbearing, razor-sharp tone over the phone was any indication, he hadn’t lost his protective ownership over her.

  But she hadn’t spoken to him in four years. What if he’d forgotten about her? What if he was married?

  Her heart punched painfully, and she reached up to rub her chest.

  There had been a time when he’d gallantly stood between her and anything that threatened to harm her. If he knew she was taking dangerous risks, would he try to stop her? She was so close to finishing this. So fucking close.

  And maybe she was protective of him, too. Maybe she still cared for him against her better judgment. If that were true, she couldn’t take him where she was going.

  She needed to forget about him.

  Except she couldn’t. In the back of her fucked up mind, she looked forward to her next kill just so she’d have a reason to hear his voice again.

  CAMILA PACED BESIDE THE floor-to-ceiling windows in Van’s living room, her impatience burning a short fuse. She dragged a hand through her hair, fingers snagging in the shoulder-length, black strands. She needed a fucking haircut.

  She needed a lot of things.

  Sighing, she turned to Van. “Why won’t he fucking talk?”

  After a week of interrogation, Larry McGregor was a goddamn mute. Strapped naked on a table in Van’s garage, he’d endured sleep deprivation, starvation, solitary confinement, and her endless threats of permanent disfigurement.

  All he had to do was tell her who he worked for and where he was supposed to deliver the girl he’d kidnapped. Two simple answers and his suffering would end.

  Van reclined on the couch and rolled a toothpick between his lips. “You need to up your game.”

  “Oh, please enlighten me.” She narrowed her eyes, her voice edged with bitter resentment.

  She’d spent an eternal year in Van’s shackles, learning obedience one welt at a time. At least this house didn’t have an attic. She didn’t
need any more reminders of him whipping her body and picking apart her mind. He probably would have taken her virginity, too, but the man who had intended to buy her wanted that sick pleasure.

  Van never managed to break her, though. What made him think he could give advice on breaking Larry McGregor?

  Tossing his chewed toothpick on the coffee table, he removed a new one from his pocket. “Threaten his kids.”

  As a father, Van knew all too well how effective that was. But she couldn’t do it. Even if it were a hollow threat, she refused to stoop to that level.

  “No innocents.”

  She’d been an innocent kid once, one of the reasons Van had captured her. Back then, he was a vicious son of a bitch. Still was. But the past four years had diluted some of his poisonous nature. Or maybe his wife had something to do with that.

  Unfortunately, his wife had put a full stop on Camila’s plan to chop off Larry’s fingers.

  “Amber?” she shouted toward the second-story loft, where the strange woman had vanished moments earlier.

  Amber approached the railing upstairs, her brown hair cascading in curls around her model-perfect face.

  How Van had been able to coerce a beauty pageant queen into marrying him was anyone’s guess. He’d kidnapped her, for fuck’s sake. Yanked her right out of her house and imprisoned her in this remote cabin, not to be sold, but to be used as his own personal sex slave.

  The kicker was, he’d stopped his kidnapping and slave trading after that. Amber forgave him, and they fell in love or some shit. Their relationship smelled like an epic mindfuck, but on the surface, it seemed to be working for them.

  Amber fingered her curls as if ensuring each one lay exactly right. Then she brushed the front of her sundress, erasing imaginary wrinkles.

  Yeah, the woman had issues, and loving Van wasn’t the weirdest of them. She struggled with severe OCD and agoraphobia. When Van snatched her, she hadn’t been out of her house in two years.

  Lowering a hand to the railing, Amber stepped down the spiral staircase, one toned leg crossing in front of the other like she was walking the runway in a fashion show. “Did you need me?”

  Camila met her at the bottom step. “I’ll cover the garage floor with plastic. I promise I’ll keep the mess…not messy.”

  “No. That’s—” Amber clutched her knuckles, popping each one systematically. “The blood will splatter. I’ll never get it off the concrete and—”

  “Amber.” Van appeared at her side, gripping her fingers and stilling her favorite coping mechanism. “Crack your knuckles again, and I’ll tie you to the tree outside.”

  “Right,” Amber said on a stiff inhale. “I’m good. We’re good.”

  She stared at her husband for a long moment, each second stretching into something intimate and unspoken as her expression heated. Jesus, did she want him to tie her up? This was Van Quiso of all people, prince of sadism and non-consensual kink.

  The four-inch scar that bisected his cheek was the first thing any terrified girl would notice. Followed by his obscenely oversized muscles, tousled brown hair, and the saw-blade angles of his face. There was no denying he was insanely attractive. Insane being the quintessential word here.

  Amber pulled her attention away from him, shifting it across the room, eyes squinting. Hard.

  Camila followed her gaze to the coffee table, returned to Amber, then back to the table. Van’s chewed toothpick lay alone on the dust-free surface. Knowing him, he probably left it there to fuck with her OCD.

  “You guys,” Camila said, shaking her head, “are seriously whacked.”

  Hands fisting on her hips, Amber straightened her spine. “Says the woman who wants to cut off body parts in my garage.”

  Touché. Bringing Larry here had been a matter of convenience. The closest neighbor was miles away, and Van kept the property locked down like a fortress. As for his willingness to help her? Well, maybe that was his way of atoning for being a former human-trafficking asshole. Whatever helped him sleep at night.

  “Fine. No blood.” Camila crossed the room and took in the heavily treed landscape beyond the wall of windows. “I need to increase the Krokodil injections.”

  Created by mixing codeine with paint thinner, gasoline, and a few other nasty ingredients, the drug was more addictive than heroin. She didn’t cook it long enough to remove the toxic impurities, hoping that would speed up the side effects, such as gangrene and pneumonia. Eventually, blood vessels would burst, and the flesh around the injection point—where she deliberately missed the vein—would rot and fall off the bone in chunks.

  “How do you avoid a lethal dose?” Van leaned against the windowed wall, gnawing on a toothpick.

  “No idea.” She wasn’t a druggie, had never even smoked tobacco. “I’m going to check on him.”

  Passing through the kitchen, she took in the polished appliances and spotless countertops. Exactly what one would expect in a house occupied by someone with OCD.

  There was nothing lavish about the cabin. The fixtures, the furniture…it was all simple. Practical. Made her wonder what Van did with his wealth or if he’d even kept any money from his trafficking days.

  She opened the door to the garage and found Liv and Tate bent over Larry’s nude body.

  It was surreal seeing them here, willingly standing in the home Van shared with his wife. His domain.

  Liv Reed was the first person he’d captured, his first slave, and the one he’d hurt the most. After he broke the rules and raped her, he got her pregnant and couldn’t sell her. Buyers wanted virgins. That had earned Van and Liv matching scars on their cheeks, courtesy of Mr. E.

  Mr. E, now dead, had run the operation, raised their daughter, and controlled Van and Liv by threatening the little girl’s life.

  It was impossible to look at Liv without feeling a torrential mix of nostalgia, pity, and gratitude. While Mr. E had forced Van and Liv to capture and train slaves—nine in total—Liv covertly and brilliantly killed the buyers each time she delivered a slave. She did that for years.

  Tate looked up from the table, his dark blond brows pulling together as he scanned Camila from head to toe. He’d been the sixth one Van and Liv enslaved.

  Imagining a strong-willed, masculine guy like Tate Vades being forced to suck Van’s cock… Camila knew it had irreparably damaged him. But he hid his demons beneath a disarming smile.

  “Doing okay?” He met her gaze, a thousand more questions swirling in his crystal blue eyes.

  “Muy bien.” She really wanted to know how he was holding up, but if she asked, he’d give her a similar bullshit answer. “You don’t have to be here, you know.”

  When she told her team a few months ago that she’d asked Van for help with this phase of her plan, Tate had blown a gasket. But if Liv could trust Van—enough to let him be part of their daughter’s life—they could rely on him for this.

  “Van doesn’t scare me.” Tate crossed his arms, the sleeves of his t-shirt straining across his biceps. “I’m not going anywhere, Camila.”

  He hadn’t left her side since the day she rescued him. They lived together, worked together, his shadow always hovering like a protective brother. Except the way he watched her was more like a boyfriend. One who refused to have sex with her.

  Maybe he kept her in the friend zone because of what they’d been through. Or maybe it was because of what she’d become.

  “This is going to be unpleasant.” She approached the table where Larry lay motionless, his arms and legs bubbling with sores. She gave Tate a stern look, silently reminding him she was going to break another law. Murder another man. Throw away another body. “You can go before—”

  “Stop.” He gripped her jaw and brought his mouth to her ear, his voice low. “I owe you my life, so just…shut the fuck up about it.”

  “Fine.” She turned her head, breaking his hold.

  As the first slave to be freed, she spent six years helping Liv extricate Tate and the others. That included disma
ntling Mr. E’s operation, killing the buyers, and using her connection with Matias to dispose of the bodies.

  The freed slaves could’ve gone back to their lives if they’d had families or something to return to. They didn’t, instead joining Camila in her effort to take down a new trafficking ring—the one Larry worked for.

  “He’s still not talking?” She prodded at the gangrenous, pus-filled flesh on Larry’s forearm.

  “No.” Liv frowned, the scar on her cheek wrinkling. “I have to leave in a couple hours.”

  “You have Livana this weekend?”

  “Yes.” The tightness around Liv’s mouth relaxed, replaced with the warm glow of maternal love.

  Van and Liv shared joint custody with Livana’s adoptive mother. It was a strange arrangement, one they fervently protected. Which meant they kept their involvement in Camila’s illegal activities to a minimum. Had it been Van’s weekend with Livana, he wouldn’t have permitted Camila and her team of ex-slave vigilantes anywhere near his house.

  Larry flicked open his eyes and thrashed his head, his rotten flesh tearing beneath the cinch straps.

  To think, addicts purposefully shot themselves up with this shit. Cheap ingredients, easy to make, and a killer high? Yeah, no thanks.

  She touched the abscess on his arm, and a layer of skin the width of her hand slid free and splatted on Amber’s pristine garage floor. Her stomach revolted.

  “Shit.” Tate rubbed the back of his neck. “Amber’s going to have a full-on seizure when she sees that.”

  Not if they cleaned—

  Holy fuck, was that a bone shining through the hole in Larry’s arm? Bile simmered in the back of her throat.

  “What are you doing to me?” Larry groaned, his eyes clearing.

  Good, he was lucid. She turned to grab a syringe, but Liv was already there, holding it out for her.

  “This,” Camila said, positioning the needle an inch from Larry’s flaccid dick, “is Krokodil. It’s been eating you from the inside out. Given the dead flesh on your arms and legs, I bet your guts don’t feel very good right now.”

  “You fucking bitch.” He shifted his hips, unable to distance himself from the syringe. “Get away from me. I need a fucking doctor.”