by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin
Eventually, exhaustion pulled him under with her curves against his, limbs entwined.
When he woke, it was with a head full of sexy dreams and blood swelling him to a full hard-on. Never enough. He grinned and reached a hand over the mattress, searching for her. Not finding her.
He lurched to his knees. The mattress was bare. The room empty of life. His heart went wild, his thoughts crazed. Maybe she was checking on Kate. Or making lunch. He climbed to his feet, and something crinkled beneath his toes. A white piece of paper with scrawled handwriting. Beside it, a car key.
He dropped to his knees and a picked up the letter with shaking fingers.
Joshua,
Van called with the buyer’s pickup location. Meet me at the Sleepy Inn on 35. If I don’t make it there by morning, go home. Go home to your family.
The code is 0054. The key belongs to the black Honda parked out front.
Liv
The letter wadded in his clenching fists, a fog of red clouding his vision. All business. Nothing from the woman he’d spent the day in bed with. She might as well have signed it Deliverer.
He spun to the trunk and found his clothes inside. Hers were gone. She wasn’t coming back. He shoved his hands through his hair.
The code is 0054. Number fifty-four. She was freeing him. What would happen to her Mom and daughter?
His heart collapsed, spilling panic through his blood. What the hell was she planning?
Chapter Thirty-Three
Liv drove the van out of Temple, with Kate strapped to the floor in the back and headed west on 190 to make her seventh and final delivery. Darkness descended over the horizon. Street lights flickered on. Her pulse beat a frenzied vibration in her ears.
Josh would be awake now, driving to the motel that would never be one of her destinations. If he obeyed her instructions, and hopefully, without revealing his identity to the motel clerk. God, she needed him to just wait somewhere safe and hidden until morning. By then, everything would be done. Surely, he wouldn’t go to the authorities before going to the motel?
Fuck, it was a risk, made more excruciating after spending the previous seventeen hours in his arms. She’d tried to keep him at a cold distance when they’d first returned from the meeting. She’d been fighting through her uncertainty about Mom and Mattie’s future and trying to come to terms with what she had to do. She needed to protect him from her, refused to endanger him with the details. But most of all, her plan would’ve devastated him.
When they became entangled, they brought with them all their convictions, pursuits, and pains. Whether it was scriptures from religious study, record-breaking interceptions, or delivery deadlines with sex traffickers, he’d taught her that one’s purpose in life had no sway on who the heart latched onto. And while she’d managed to keep her plan hidden, he exposed the rest of her with a fierce loyalty behind his gorgeous green eyes and a blaze of determination burning in his touch.
She yanked the seat belt pinching her chest, strangled and trapped by the tragedy of her miserable fucking life. She loved him, goddammit, but she had to let him go. She covered her mouth, smothering a sob between trembling fingers. Fuck, it hurt so damned much.
Focus. Breathe. Don’t fuck this up. Gripping the wheel with two hands, she glanced at the passenger seat. A mask, change of clothes, the LC9 pistol Van left for her, the pen knife he didn’t know about, the phone Mr. E would be tracking her with, and her letter to Van. What was she missing?
Josh. His absence was a bleeding fucking hole inside her, the stitches around her heart unraveling and ripping. She inhaled deeply. Gasped noisily. Fuck. Keep it together.
A glance over her shoulder revealed Kate’s heaving chest beneath the restraints on the floorboard. Liv’s throat burned, stinging pinpricks of pain through her head. She wiped at her nose and eyes, hands trembling.
A few miles later, a gas station emerged, the lot half-full with customers. The first stop.
She pulled off and parked at a pump beside a minivan. Bright lights fringed the canopy over the pump islands, flickering with winged insects and bleaching the starless sky. A woman leaned inside the minivan’s sliding door and hollered at the wailing kids within.
Liv approached her with her thumbs hooked in the front pockets of her jeans. “Excuse me, miss?”
The woman turned her head and blew a wayward hair away from her face.
She shaped her mouth into a friendly smile. “Sorry to bother you. Is there any way I can borrow your phone for a minute? Mine’s out of juice, and I really need to check on my dad.”
The woman shifted to face her, and her eyes widened, fixed on Liv’s scar. She looked away quickly. “Uh, yeah. Let me grab it.”
Funny, Liv never really thought about her fucked up face until she ventured into public. Her internal damage had always been much more distracting to her.
“Here you go.” The woman offered the phone, the pity in her eyes negating her smile.
“Thanks. I’ll just be a minute.” She stepped away from both vehicles until she was out of hearing distance and dialed the number she knew from memory. It was the sixth time she’d called it, and it’d been eight months since the last call.
“Who is this?” Camila’s sultry voice, though always straight to the point, had a way of warming Liv every damned time.
“It’s me.”
“Where?”
The reason for her calls was always the same. “Brady Reservoir.” She gave Camila the GPS coordinates Van had sent. “10:00 PM.”
“Shit. We’re three hours away.” A muffled noise scratched down the line. Then Camila’s voice came back. “We’ll make it. How many?”
“At least one extra man. Maybe two.”
“Stall them. We’ll be there.” The line disconnected.
Stall them? Buyers and their bodyguards did not stall, and it was eight fucking o’clock. Camila would have to make up a full hour. She sighed, rubbed her eyes. It wouldn’t be the first time Camila overextended.
Fear crept in, like it did before every delivery. Deep breath. This was the last one. She pinched the bridge of her nose, drew in another calming breath, and returned the phone to the woman.
For the next two hours, she smoked one cigarette after another. The stimulant intensified her edginess, so she sang while she smoked. When the tears sneaked in, she changed up the song. The towns grew smaller with each passing mile, stretching farther apart, separated by rocky scrub land. Fifteen minutes outside of Brady Reservoir, she stopped on the side of the road and changed into her costume.
The Deliverer wore a silver under-bust corset over a bra and boy shorts, both made of black latex. The gun went into her thigh-high boot. The knife’s scalpel blade folded in, and the pen-like design fit down the center of the bodice, snug in the corset casing that had originally held a steel bone.
With a few minutes to spare, she knelt beside Kate and brushed the girl’s hair from her sweaty forehead. “I delivered another girl once. Six years ago.” Her chest tightened, testing the seams of the bodice. “She was very brave.” She leaned down, pressed a kiss on trembling lips. “You remind me of her.”
Thanks to the pitch-black interior, she couldn’t see the fear in Kate’s eyes. She didn’t need to. It breathed through the van in a ghastly shudder, desolate and needful.
She returned to the driver’s seat, a sheen of dread dampening her skin and chilling her spine, and faced the next phase of the plan. As she maneuvered the winding roads, dipping and curving around hillocks and banks, she couldn’t escape the grip of doubt.
The emotionally detached letter she’d left Josh weighed on her the most, but she couldn’t leave him with the damaged whispers of her heart. He might’ve clung to her words, searched for her, tried to save her. There were too many people involved in her deliveries, too many identities to safeguard. The less he knew in his freedom the better for everyone.
Stunted bushes crowded the landscape, forming smudges against the inky backdrop of barrenness. T
he last building was ten miles back. The occasional headlight bobbed in her side mirror and vanished behind the bends in the road. The desolation preyed on her nerves.
The navigation system directed her onto a narrow path that faded into a gnarled expanse of wilderness. As the clutch of trees closed in, she put on her mask, tying the strings to hold the round white face in place.
Up ahead, an arced glow rose through the dark, striping through the skeletal branches. Her boot shook against the gas pedal, and her palms slicked the wheel.
“Glory and Gore” by Lorde invigorated her lungs and heart as she scanned the trees, searching for a sign of her secret saviors.
Ricky, Tomas, Luke, Martin, Tate, and her very first captive, Camila.
She knew them by the names she’d once refused to use, by the bruises on their skin, and by the strength of their forgiveness. Her six deliveries in seven years were dead to her. Until she called. Her freedom fighters always came when she called. And they came for blood.
A car blocked the road, its headlights aimed at her and cut by the silhouettes of two men. She shielded her eyes with a forearm, turned off the engine, and grabbed the phone. In the back, she unstrapped Kate, straightened the girl’s knee-length cotton dress, and led her out. “Stay beside me,” she whispered. “Shoulders back. Eyes down.”
“Yes, Mistress.” No chains or cuffs. The girl was broken in her despair.
With the confidence of the Deliverer, she swayed her hips and flexed her bare thighs with each stride toward the waiting men.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Liv closed the final few feet with her chin held high, and her strides wide and easy. Her insides, however, shook with a violence that strangled her breaths.
The shorter of the two men wore a Guy Fawkes mask, painted with a mustache, goatee, and a cynical smirk. The bodyguard didn’t share his employer’s creativity, his face distorted in a transparent sleeve of nylon.
“Good evening.” Guy Fawkes cocked his head.
“We’ll see.” Her cool voice tangled in the autumn air.
The bodyguard approached her, and she remembered the drill from the intro meeting. She stretched out her arms, her phone in one hand. Beside her, Kate stared at her bare feet.
He prodded around her mask and hair and patted down her bra, corset, and skin-tight shorts. When he reached her boots, he lifted the gun as she’d expected. Pocketing it, he moved to Kate and repeated the search. That done, he stepped back.
The Guy Fawkes mask turned toward Kate. “Come to your Master.”
Liv clasped her wrist and walked a step ahead of her, holding her to the side. Was Camila there yet? Could Liv cut the fucker before his bodyguard shot her? Stall, stall, stall.
She released Kate’s arm. “Kneel.” As the girl descended to the ground, Liv arched into Guy Fawkes’ suit-clad body, inhaling the stench of musk and greed. She cupped his groin.
He swelled in her grip and held a palm out, halting his guard’s advance. “How much for both of you?”
Same question he’d asked last time. If he saw her scarred face, he’d probably choke on his persistence to buy her.
“Pay me for one slave.” She tightened her fist around him. “Then we’ll discuss the prospect for two.”
He pulled out his phone, his fingers tapping on the screen over her shoulder. She stroked his erection, bile burning through her chest, challenging her steady breaths.
“Sent.” He pocketed the device and slammed a hand down on her ass. A heavy fucking hand.
The sting rippled down her leg and burned through her muscles. He reared back and hit her again. Her fingers fell away from his dick to clutch his hip. She was sure he broke blood vessels, the sadistic prick.
Her phone vibrated in her hand. She held it between their chests, unlocked it, and glanced at the text.
Van: Funds received
Her heart soared. It took a great amount of discipline to hold in the relief blubbering to escape. She breathed to the beat of “Glory and Gore” and lowered the phone to her bodice. As she worked it beneath the binding, she slipped the pen knife free, her body pressed to his in a wretched embrace.
The bodyguard stood a few paces away, his nylon-smashed expression skimming the surrounding woodland.
She flicked the blade open, her hand hidden beneath the rise of her chest, her pulse thrumming wildly. Trusting that the Guy Fawkes mask limited his field of vision, she swung the scalpel upward, and sliced his carotid artery. He shuffled back, cupping the spray of blood beneath his mask.
The bodyguard straightened, drew a pistol from his hip. She stopped breathing.
One shot fired from the trees. Two. Three.
He jerked back, stumbled. Oh, thank God. The beam of headlights illuminated a crimson stain at the center of his white shirt. He snapped his gun up, aimed at her, and fired.
The bullet whistled past her. She leapt on him. Took him to the ground. Landed on his chest, the knife slick in her grip, her heart beating at a dangerous velocity.
The buyer hit the ground beside them, one hand squeezing the flow of red at his throat, the other clawing through the dirt to grab her leg. His fingers caught her calf in a blood-slicked grip.
She jerked her leg free and stabbed downward, hitting the bodyguard’s chest. The blade sank an inch and stopped. The sternum? A rib? Shit, shit, she couldn’t push it in. He shoved her away, raised his gun.
A gunshot cracked from the brush.
The beige of his nylon hood turned red, seeping blood. The gun dropped, and his body slumped.
A ragged breath tore from her throat. She unlocked her limbs, shaking violently, and checked the pulse in his throat. Nothing. She scrambled toward the buyer.
He lay on his back, arms lolled to the side. She tore off his mask and stared into the lifeless eyes of a weathered face.
She sat back on her heels, removed her own mask, and choked on the copper-tainted fumes of death and defeat. Nausea gripped her insides. Her first seven captives had fattened Mr. E’s off-shore account, but they were free and their buyers dead. And her eighth captive—A sharp pain ripped in her chest. She inhaled deeply. Josh was safe.
Kate knelt a few feet away, curled over her thighs, shoulders trembling. Liv needed to go to her, but her legs wouldn’t move, the gravity of what came next weighing her down.
One more kill. In Van’s bed. Where he would find her dead and rotting and clutching her letter.
The stampede of foot falls crashed through the trees. A moment later, arms wrapped around her, Camila’s familiar spicy scent a temporary comfort.
“I’m sorry, Liv. We tried to get here in time.”
Shoes scuffed the rocky terrain around her, sounding the movements of young men gathering the dead and cleaning up the evidence. Young men she’d abducted, humiliated, whipped, and jacked off.
Killing herself would free them for good. It would also free Mom and Mattie. Mr. E would have no reason to harm them if she weren’t around to experience the horror of it.
She should’ve ended her life years ago, but Josh had been the push she needed. Releasing him back to his parents was the right thing to do. Perhaps it was his integrity that had given her the strength to be honorable.
She hugged Camila’s slim shoulders and dropped her face in the black silk of hair. “Don’t be sorry. You still managed to fire a kill shot. Thank you.”
Camila pulled back, shaking her beautiful round face, her eyebrows drawn in confusion. “We didn’t shoot anyone. We just got here.”
Her blood ran cold. “What do you mean?”
“Liv?” The deep accented voice behind her belonged to her second captive.
She pulled to her feet and came face to face with Ricky, who aimed a gun at a pair of pale green eyes. Eyes she never thought she’d see again. In his hand, dangled a Taurus PT-22 with a pink wood-grain grip.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Six guns aimed at Josh’s head. Five men, one woman, all of them young, irrationally attractive, and glar
ing at him with fight in their eyes. He should’ve been scared shitless, but the cold blood settling around his heart suspended him in a state of shock.
He’d just killed a man. Even as he feared God and shunned evil, he knew without a doubt he’d do it again. For her.
Liv watched him, her eyebrows in a stark V, her complexion pale and splattered with blood. “Lower your guns.”
The weapons lowered, disappearing in waistbands and pockets. Her friends, whoever they were, shifted closer, forming a bulwark at her back.
The Latino woman opened her mouth, and Liv held up a finger, silencing her and glaring at him. “How did you find me?”
“You might call it a lucky break. I call it divine intervention.” He flicked the safety on the gun. “Why’d you leave this in the Honda?”
“So you could return it to your mom.” Her eyes flashed. “I did not expect you to use it in a reckless gunslinging rescue.” She spoke low, repeating her question. “How did you find me?”
He tucked the gun into his waistband at the base of his spine. “I left as soon as I woke. Got to the front of the neighborhood, and there you were, in the van, only a few blocks ahead of me.” God hadn’t abandoned him after all. “I followed you.”
Her lips pinched in a line. “I freed you.”
The woman at her side covered her mouth, eyes wide. “Oh my God. He’s that missing football player from Baylor.” Her head snapped to Liv. “He’s one of us?”
They were three hours from Baylor in the middle of nowhere. It was surreal that news of his disappearance had traveled that far. And what did she mean, one of us? His vision prodded through the nighttime shadows, searching the faces of her gun-toting, backup team. “Who are you?”
Liv pulled out her phone and squinted at the screen. “I have about twenty minutes before Mr. E wonders why my phone isn’t moving.” She blinked up. “Josh, this is Camila.”