Enemy Sworn

by Karin Tabke

  “I think we took the first step to that end the other night.”

  As they rounded the next corner the clinic came into view. The church bell began to chime the hour. It was ten o’clock in the morning.

  As they approached the clinic a wailing ambulance pulled up. Mateo’s instincts told him it was Lily and she was dead or dying. His instinct also told him it wasn’t of natural causes. Fucking Dumas!

  As they ran across the street the EMTs were wheeling Lily out on a stretcher. “Wait,” Sophia called.

  Dr. Trish shook her head. “I’m sorry, Sophia, she woke up fine, just a little skittish. We kept an eye on her but—”

  Blood stained the white sheet covering Lily. “She slit her wrists. I sewed her up but she’s lost a lot of blood. I gave her what I have but she needs to get to a hospital.”

  “I’ll go with her,” Sophia said, and jumped into the back of the ambulance. “Follow me, Mateo.”

  “I will.” He didn’t argue, but this would be the perfect opportunity to call command and call in the strike.

  As the ambulance wailed off, Mateo looked at the doc, who was so pale she looked like she was the one who had lost blood. “I should have kept a closer eye on her.”

  “Was anyone in there with her?”

  “Only Justina.”

  “Who’s Justina?”

  “A cook at the hacienda. She brought some baked goods for us like she does most mornings. She went in to offer something to Lily while I used the restroom. I came back several minutes later—Justina was gone and Lily was bleeding out.”

  Mateo clenched his jaw. Dumas sent the baker to do his dirty work. With Lily dead, so was her story. “Gracias, doctora,” Mateo said and walked to the rectory.

  The padre took him directly to a secured room in the back and handed Mateo a locked metal box. Discreetly he exited the room, closing the door behind him. Knowing the combination, Mateo opened it to reveal a burner cell. He opened the door to his left and saw it was a bathroom. Deciding not to take any chances at being overheard, he texted in and waited. When he was cleared he explained the situation to command.

  Mateo was given the task of learning the meeting time and location and getting that information back to command, who was standing by not only in Mexicali but Terra Oro as well. Once the information was verified command would move into position and what could conceivably be the bust of the century would ensue.

  Just as Mateo was getting the names of contacts within the village, a loud knock on the door hastened the conclusion of Mateo’s conversation. He crushed the phone beneath his heel and tossed it in the toilet, then flushed it.

  Opening the door, he grunted in pain as two fists punched his lights out.

  chapter sixteen

  Sophia watched in horror as Lily went into cardiac arrest and, despite everything the EMTs did, she was pronounced dead upon their arrival at the hospital. Mr. Chow and his sister, who was Lily’s mother, were there and understandably inconsolable when Sophia gave them the news.

  As she held them, she looked for Mateo. Once she had the Chows situated with other family members, Sophia pulled her cell phone from her pocket and called the hacienda for a ride home.

  After she scoured the entire house for her husband, asking everyone she came in contact with if they had seen Mateo and receiving the same negative response, Sophia began to panic.

  She went back to her room and dug through Mateo’s backpack in hopes of finding something . . .

  When she came upon an envelope, she debated on opening it. She felt like she was prying, but her instincts told her he was in trouble and they also told her that if she didn’t get to him soon he would die.

  When she opened the envelope and looked at the two pictures inside, she screamed.

  • • •

  Mateo slowly came to. He was blindfolded and tied at the wrists, waist and ankles to a chair. The acrid stench of chemicals clogged his nose and lungs. Instinctively he knew he was in Dumas’s subterranean lab.

  “Ah, the prodigal son-in-law awakes,” Dumas’s deep voice said.

  As Mateo lifted his head, searing pain sliced across his left pectoral. He screamed in agony as the putrid scent of burnt flesh assaulted his nose. His burnt flesh. He’d been cut with a molten-hot blade. The shock of the pain to his body spiked Mateo’s adrenaline, giving him the capacity to not pass out from the pain.

  The hood was yanked from his head and he had a clear view of his surroundings. Forcing the pain from his mind, he focused on the room. It was approximately thirty feet by thirty feet. Before him stood Dumas and behind him Bertram and three other men in their fifties and sixties. The Reconquista, he presumed, in its entirety. Holy fuck, if only his team could get in here and eliminate them all, how much sweeter the world would be.

  “How did you like my little wake-up call, Mr. Juarez? Or should I call you Special Agent Kane?”

  “I’m special but no agent.”

  Dumas removed Mateo’s own stiletto from a copper pot glowing with embers at his feet and held it beneath Mateo’s nose. “Wrong answer, Special Agent.” He sliced into Mateo’s other pectoral. Mat screamed, fighting back the black hole of unconsciousness that the pain provoked. If he passed out, he’d lose what little respect Dumas had left. He felt light-headed and the room began to tilt. Regulating his breathing, Mateo used his mind to see through the pain. Using imagery, he thought of how beautiful Sophia looked as she came beneath him the night before. The way she liquefied when he entered her and how innocent she looked when she told him she loved him. If he could love, he’d love her.

  “You smile while I cut you, loco?” Dumas demanded incredulously.

  Mateo nodded. “I was thinking how much I liked fucking your daughter.”

  Dumas backhanded him so hard Mateo’s neck snapped back and his head hit the wall.

  As he was about to do it again the door at the far end of the room opened and Sophia burst in with Manny hot on her tail.

  “Papa!” she cried, coming to a standstill as she realized something terrible was happening. “What are you doing?”

  “Señor,” Manny apologized, “she tricked me and took the keys. I’m sorry.”

  Dumas smiled as Bertram caught Sophia by the arm before she could get to Mateo. “No, Manuel, it is good that she’s here, now she can hear the truth from her husband.”

  Sophia stared at Mateo, the horror and pain on her face killing him.

  “Everything he tells you about me is a lie, angel. I swear it.”

  “Papa,” she said, her voice quaking as she yanked her arm from Victor’s grasp, “please tell me what’s going on. Why is my husband tied up and bleeding?”

  Dumas looked with some affection to his daughter. “I will let him tell you the truth, mi hija, but before I let him . . .”—he nodded to Bertram. He reached into a large box and pulled out Javi’s decaying head.

  “Papa!” Sophia cried, turning from the horrifying sight.

  “Your husband threw this head at my feet, claiming it was your intended’s. I had my lab run a DNA profile on this head, it doesn’t match Javier’s.”

  Sophia’s shocked expression riveted on Mateo. His eyes narrowed.

  “Is it true?” she asked.

  He nodded. He would not lie to her.

  “Then whose is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” And that was also the truth.

  “Why?” she asked, her body trembling violently.

  “It was a means to an end.”

  She swallowed and swiped tears from her eyes. “What end?”

  “You.”

  She looked from Mateo to her father, then to Mateo again. “I don’t understand.”

  Dumas sneered. “Tell her who you really are and why you’re here.”

  Mateo remained silent, begging her with his gaze to forgive him. />
  “Tell her!” Dumas bellowed. When Mateo refused, Dumas grabbed the stiletto from the embers and sliced him across the belly. Mateo bit back a scream but Sophia didn’t.

  “Papa! Stop!”

  Dumas raged. “Tell her or I will cut you in half!”

  Mateo remained silent. He would not break Sophia’s heart any more than he had.

  Dumas grabbed his daughter from Bertram, who had grabbed her again, and pressed the molten blade to her throat. “Tell her or she will scream until you do.”

  “Let her go.”

  “Tell her who you are!”

  “Special Agent Mathew Kane, DEA. My mission was to infiltrate Dumas, discover the source of the drug known on the streets as O, and destroy the lab and distributor by any means necessary.”

  Sophia’s jaw dropped. “Now do you see, mi hija, that I am the only one who loves you unconditionally. All I do, I do for you,” her father said.

  Her father moved her aside and went in for the kill.

  “I’m sorry, angel,” Mat said softly. “I never meant to hurt you.”

  “How can you say that when you promised me you wouldn’t hurt me? That you’d protect me?” She slapped him. “How could you make love to me knowing you were using me to get close enough to destroy my father?”

  “To expose an evil as virulent as your father I would have danced with the devil, Sophia. He’s responsible for thousands of deaths. Thousands. You’re a fool if you believe him over me. I have proof.”

  “My father would never lie to me.” She turned to Dumas then and held out her hand.

  “Sangre por sangre. Let me do the honors, Papa.”

  Dumas’s eyes glittered maniacally as a terrible smile twisted his lips. Then he handed her the stiletto. “I am proud of you, Sophia.”

  Sophia took the blade and said, “When he’s dead, I will pick my own husband from among the reconquistas.” She calmly regarded her father. “I will sit at your right hand, not my husband.”

  Dumas nodded.

  She turned to look at each and every family head. “There will be no secrets between any of the families. I have seen what O can do. It’s addictive and powerful. However much is being produced? It is not enough!” She looked at her father. “Is this the only production lab?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you get it out of here?”

  “Tunnels, running in every direction for hundreds of miles.”

  Sophia nodded and Mateo saw her hand shake. She was pumping the old man for information. For him. His heart pounded against his rib cage. If she showed her hand she’d be next on Dumas’s hit list. “I only have one question for you, Papa. After you tell me the truth, I promise I will never question you again.”

  “I have no secrets from you, Daughter.”

  Tears began to track down her cheeks as she reached into her back jeans pocket. Instinctually Mateo knew she’d found the pictures of her mother. She handed them to her father. He looked at them and his eyes widened as if he had never seen them before.

  “Where did you get those?” he demanded, as if shocked by them.

  “Did you give the kill order?”

  “No, I thought—I hoped she was still alive!”

  “Victor did it at your father’s order,” Mateo said.

  Dumas turned furiously on Mateo. “You lie.”

  Sophia tuned to Victor, who looked at her with regretful eyes. He didn’t need to say it out loud.

  Sophia turned back as her father reached for her. “Mi hija, she was going to take my family from me, I—”

  “You killed my mother!” Sophia screamed, and plunged the knife into his gut. “My beautiful mother who never hurt anyone! You killed her because she wanted out of the jail you built around her!”

  Incredulous, Dumas looked down at the blood seeping between his fingers, then up at his daughter. “Y tu, Sophia? You would abandon me?”

  “No one abandoned you. You forced them away or killed them!” she cried. “Had you given me the choice, I would have followed you to hell, Papa. But you forced your will on me with no consideration of what I wanted or my feelings.” She threw the knife on the floor. “Now I not only give you nothing, I’m taking my life back. You’re dead to me. I hope you rot in jail.”

  As Dumas stood bleeding all over the floor, Sophia turned to Mateo, the pain of his betrayal as deep as her father’s.

  “Sophia,” he whispered as he felt himself begin to fade out.

  The door burst open and the most welcome sight in the world poured in: Mat’s task force. But the cartel heads were prepared and a quick but violent gun battle ensued. Fighting to stay conscious, Mat watched Sophia hit the ground, stinging hot shell casings raining down on her, and her father’s body jerk as it was pumped full of rounds. From which side Mat didn’t know—he was just glad the drug lord was dead before he hit the floor.

  When the guns were finally silent, Mat tried to focus on Sophia, to make sure she was unharmed, but his world began to blacken.

  The last thing he heard before he blacked out was his wife cry out his name and a deep voice inform her she was under arrest.

  Four months later

  Sophia sat on a blanket on the little strip of beach outside her house in Carmel-by-the-Sea and watched the sun dip slowly beyond the horizon. It was quiet here. No gangs, no drugs, no gunshots or sneaky DEA agents breaking her heart. And how her heart ached. It ached for what was and what could never be. It ached so badly she could not bring herself to file for divorce. But then, neither had Mateo.

  The last months had been a crazy turnstile of events. She had been arrested, then released. She had refused to give her father a proper burial. Instead she had him cremated and left his urn in his study to be buried with the hacienda when she had it demolished three weeks ago. The feds arrested hundreds of cartel members and with the tunnels gained access to the heart and soul of Reconquista’s business, permanently shutting them down.

  Sophia had given the feds carte blanche to search and seize whatever they wanted with the understanding she would have full immunity. Then she’d walked away, putting that life behind her.

  But try as she might, she could not forget her golden-eyed husband. Whereas he had obviously forgotten about her. And yet she still craved the way he had made her feel. Alive. Sexy. Cherished. And foolish. God, what a fool she had been to fall in love with him when her gut told her he wasn’t trustworthy. Thank god she had not gotten pregnant.

  She hung her head as the wind whipped her short locks around her head. She’d cut it all off in a fit of anger. Mateo had loved her long hair. Well, fuck him! Good riddance to them both!

  “I was a lousy father the first time because I wasn’t there when my wife went into early labor and I lost him.”

  Sophia’s heart thudded like thunder in her chest. Slowly she turned to see Mateo standing behind her. He was barefoot, dressed in a pair of faded blue jeans and a black T-shirt. He squinted against the receding sun, his dark hair longer, blowing in unruly waves in the fickle wind.

  He moved to stand nearer to her but still several feet away. Then he squatted and clasped his hands before him. Gazing at the horizon, he said, “I was deployed when she told me she was pregnant. I knew it wasn’t mine. The timing was off. I wasn’t very nice to her when I came home early because of an injury.” He inhaled, then exhaled. “When she went into labor I was training out in the Mojave Desert. She waited at the house for me. I took my time. Dreading welcoming another man’s child into the world. I could have made it back to Pendleton in time, but I was angry. When I showed up she had delivered the baby. A little boy. He was stillborn.” He made a coughing, sobbing sound and Sophia’s heart stopped. A tear traced down his cheek and he looked at her. “It was my son, Sophia. She hadn’t been unfaithful. I was too proud to listen. Because she waited for me, she didn’t get to the hospital in tim
e after she started bleeding. Because of my action, I lost my son and I lost her.”

  She reached up to wipe his tears away and he grasped her hand. “I fucked it up big time, Sophia. The night before my brother died we got into it. He was going off the reservation with a case he was working on. I tried to rein him in, pull him back, get him some help but I fucked it up. He was dead the next day. I fucked us up big time too. I have a lousy track record at this shit. I’m afraid I’ll fuck us up again.”

  “Did you love her?”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Not like I should have.” He opened his eyes and pulled her into his arms. “Not like I love you, angel. Not even close.”

  His words soothed her aching heart.

  He buried his nose in her hair. “Can you forgive me?”

  She had forgiven him the minute he showed up. Wrapping her arms around him, she hugged him tightly to her. “I forgave you the night you made love to me. I knew in my heart you cared even if you didn’t know it yet.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come to you sooner, Sophia. I wanted to, but I didn’t think you would want me, especially not after having a taste of freedom.”

  “I love the freedom,” she said, then laughed. “And I’ve never been so happy or so miserable in my life.” She kissed him and said, “Freedom’s no fun without you to share it with me.”

  “You really love me?” he asked.

  “I swear it.”

  “Swear you won’t give up on me?”

  “I swear to love you, Mathew Kane, even when you fuck things up.”

  He smiled. “Damn straight you will. Now kiss me.”

  She kissed him long, deep, possessively. “That’s my house behind us. I have a big bed,” she said against his lips.

  He grinned and stood up. “I know, I parked my duffel bag on my side of the bed.”

  As the sun sank into the ocean, Mat swept his wife up into his arms and smiled. “I don’t have a condom.”

  “You’re a lousy Boy Scout, Special Agent Kane.”

  He kissed her on the lips and started to run. “I know, that’s why I became a Marine.”