No Mercy

by Cheyenne McCray

  She raised her hips to meet his every thrust. His biceps bulged as he held his weight partially off her. The solidness of his body made her feel warm and secure. And his rock-hard body against her soft flesh didn’t hurt anything, either.

  He increased his pace, almost as if he couldn’t help himself. He moved harder and faster and she watched as his jaw grew tight and his eyes darkened.

  “Let go.” She dug her nails into his back. “You’ve shown me how amazing you are. Now break free and take me hard and fast.”

  He kissed her hard this time, a kiss of fire and unrelenting passion. He grunted and raised his head, and then drove in and out, as hard and fast as she wanted.

  Another orgasm spiraled inside her, growing and growing. This one was different, intense in a different way, and she cried out with every thrust of his cock. Her eyes nearly rolled back from the exquisite sensations and she had a hard time keeping her gaze focused on him. But somehow he managed to hold on, not letting her break eye contact.

  Where the last orgasm had pushed her over a peak, this one slammed into her like a freight train. She shook her head from side to side, thrashing as her climax sent her mind tumbling so that she couldn’t begin to think clearly.

  She was barely aware of Dylan throwing his head back and shouting with his orgasm. His cock throbbed inside her as her core clenched around him, gripping him like a fist.

  Several more strokes and then he collapsed on her, still managing to keep from crushing her.

  “You are so amazing, Belle.” He was breathing hard. “It is so good to be with you again.”

  She smiled as she came back to earth and kissed his forehead as he slid to one side and brought her close.

  “For me, too,” she said softly.

  He tucked her in his arms and held her like he was never letting go.

  CHAPTER 14

  It was all Salvatore could do to keep from tearing into Christie and the two DHS agents protecting them. He wanted to break their necks, all three of them.

  Maybe he should—although that would mean he’d have to abandon everything, and he enjoyed his life and his wealth too much. One day, when he’d accumulated millions, he would go to Mexico and live in a fine mansion. For now he had a good life.

  As long as a dead man didn’t fuck it up.

  He’d had to give up his cell phone due to the DHS’s fucking standard procedures, but what they didn’t know was that he had a second cell for what he considered to be his “real” business. The one they had taken had been for personal calls and the “legitimate” business he ran.

  They’d had no reason to search him as he had been placed into protective custody with his wife and wasn’t a suspect.

  The agents had taken them to some shithole place in Bisbee. Of course he hadn’t been blindfolded, so he knew where he was. All he had to do now was get the information to his men.

  Somehow he had to learn where the three others were being hidden. He had men all over the county and the Jimenez Cartel spread throughout the state. He knew the make and model of Dylan Curtis’s truck and he had memorized the license plate number. He needed to get that information out to El Verdugo’s men.

  A cold sweat broke out on Salvatore’s skin. If the new head of the Jimenez Cartel knew just how much of the cartel’s empire could be exposed by Nate O'Malley's knowledge, Salvatore’s own life would be in danger. There was a reason the head of the cartel was known as the Executioner. Even though they were distant cousins, Rodrigo wouldn’t let that stop him from eliminating Salvatore.

  All Rodrigo knew was that sensitive information in Salvatore’s business could be exposed. Salvatore was a valued asset to Rodrigo, and the capo of the Jimenez Cartel had been willing to help.

  Christie was deep asleep in the bedroom they’d been assigned, exhaustion and emotions finally overcoming her. Both agents were in the living room watching TV. Salvatore slipped into the bathroom, locked the door, and pulled his phone from his pants pocket. The phone was a slim model that he could make secure calls from.

  He pulled up Oscar’s number. The moment the man answered, Salvatore said, “Is she dead?”

  A hesitation then, “I am sorry, señor. I have not been able to get to her. Law enforcement has been guarding her closely.”

  Salvatore would have exploded with fury if he didn’t have to be concerned about the agents overhearing him. “I want you to kill that woman. Marta De La Paz must die. If you have to sacrifice your own life, so be it.”

  “My life?” Oscar’s voice trembled. “But, señor, I have a family who needs me. Who will pay for their food and clothing and education if I am dead?”

  “I will provide for them.” Salvatore spoke calmly now. “I will make sure they want for nothing.”

  “I do not wish to die.” Tears were in Oscar’s voice now. “Please, señor.”

  “Do it or your family dies in your stead.” Salvatore injected ice into his tone. “Either Marta dies today or I will have your wife and children slaughtered. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, señor.” Oscar was clearly crying. “I will make sure her life ends today.”

  “Your family’s lives depend on it.” Salvatore ended the call.

  The next call he placed was to Carl Joplin, who had handled jobs for Salvatore in the past.

  “Joplin here,” came the voice.

  “I require your services.” Salvatore shoved one hand in his pocket as he spoke. “I am at a safe house, and I need you to take care of a problem I have as soon as possible. As usual you will be paid well.”

  “I’ll take care of whatever it is.” Car; didn’t even have to know what the job was as long as there was good money in it.

  Salvatore gave Carl the information on his location and those guarding the house. “Wait for a call before coming,” Salvatore said. “I am requesting additional men from El Verdugo.”

  “Yes, sir,” Carl said.

  “My wife is with me. Do not touch her,” Salvatore added.

  “I’ll be there as soon as everything is coordinated.”

  Salvatore drew in his breath and let it out. Now that he knew Marta would be dead before sunset, and that he would be rescued from this shithole, he had to make the harder call.

  It angered him that his hands shook a little when he keyed in the numbers for his cousin, El Verdugo’s, private phone.

  “What?” The man’s voice was like a bark when he answered in Spanish. “I am busy.”

  Probably busy with some young woman sucking his cock, Salvatore thought. Rodrigo was known for conducting business while forcing women to perform sexual acts. He’d done so on more than one occasion when Salvatore had been on business trips to Mexico to meet with the man. It had been clear that it excited Rodrigo to have other men watch but not participate. Not that Salvatore would have wanted to.

  “I require assistance.” Salvatore took a breath to continue, but was interrupted.

  “Have I not given you enough?” Rodrigo spat the words. “I have problems of my own to deal with.” In the background was a woman’s muffled sound, as if she had something big in her mouth, confirming Salvatore’s thoughts.

  “I would not ask if it was not important.” Salvatore began to feel a sense of panic that he was unaccustomed to. “The deaths of these people are key to protecting my business.” And yours.

  Rodrigo gave a grunt. “Wait while I attend to something.”

  The phone clattered and then Salvatore heard Rodrigo’s shout of triumph, something Salvatore had heard Rodrigo do when he climaxed in front of others. A woman’s cry followed. Rodrigo had probably backhanded her. He liked to get physical with the women when he was finished with them.

  He shouted in Spanish, “Leave me, woman.”

  Salvatore gritted his teeth. It was one thing to kill a woman if it was necessary, another to treat innocent women the way Rodrigo did.

  When Rodrigo got back on the phone, he sounded more relaxed. “Explain, Salvatore.”

  Salvatore told R
odrigo all that had happened, leaving out only the part that the Jimenez Cartel’s operation was compromised as well. Salvatore spelled out what he needed and gave Rodrigo the contact information for Carl. Rodrigo agreed that his men would coordinate with Carl.

  When Rodrigo disconnected the call, Salvatore gripped the phone and clenched his jaw. He looked around the bare bathroom. He wanted to slam his fist into the mirror, take a shard, and use it cut Christie’s throat and the throats of the agents. Breaking their necks wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying as seeing their blood spray across the room and watching them bleed out.

  Instead of allowing himself to lose control, he reined in his emotions. He had to use them to find Leon, Belle, and Dylan. Marta would be taken care of, and soon Christie would, too.

  There would be no mercy for anyone who got in Salvatore’s way. Including—no, especially—his wife.

  As rage poured through him, he pocketed the phone, jerked open the bathroom door.

  Christie stood there, her eyes wide, her hand covering her mouth.

  And Salvatore knew—she’d heard the conversation. Maybe all the conversations.

  Fury burned through him like a raging fire. He glanced down the hallway and saw no one. Christie started to take a step back and lower her hand as if to scream. He clamped one hand over her mouth as he grabbed her, whirled her so that he wrapped his other arm around her throat.

  She struggled. Kicked him. Clawed at his hands. Made muffled screams behind his hand.

  He dragged her to the room they shared. He closed the door behind him and said in a low voice that he put all the menace in that he felt, “Do not scream, Christie. Or I will snap your neck.”

  She went limp in his arms and he threw her on the bed. He unzipped his pants. She looked at him in horror as he grabbed her foot and dragged her to the edge of the bed.

  For the first time since he’d known Christie, he slapped her. He’d never gotten physical with her, and had been an attentive lover. She stared at him in shock.

  When she tried to scramble back, he slapped her again. “Shut up,” he said coldly.

  He flipped her onto her belly. She struggled as he shoved her nightgown over her hips, tore off her panties, and took her without mercy.

  CHAPTER 15

  The light that came through the open bedroom door of the suite was enough for Dylan to see Belle’s features. He studied her, looking at her lovely face as she slept, her eyelids closed, her lashes dark against her fair skin.

  A little smile touched her lips and he wondered what she was dreaming about. In all the horror happening around them, somehow she had found a moment of peace.

  So many feelings for Belle wound through him. He felt anger for what her stepfather had done to her, fear for her safety, the desire to protect her from anything that could ever hurt her… And a depth of caring that filled his chest with warmth, yet pain at the same time. He thought about the pain. It came now from knowing what she went through as a teen, her leaving, and all the years they’d missed together.

  God, they’d missed so much. It occurred to him that part of what Nate had written on the postcard had everything to do with Belle:

  “I want you to promise me something. Remember what you had, buddy. If it happens, second chances only come once. Don’t let it pass you by.”

  Dylan’s heart skipped a beat. This was a second chance with Belle and he couldn’t let it pass him by. He wouldn’t let it.

  Images of Belle slipped through his mind, images of their youth and the love they’d shared. Even now it didn’t feel like it was some silly teenage love. It had been real and deep…and special. And after all these years, it hadn’t waned. He’d never been able to love another woman after losing the one woman who had made his world make sense.

  When she’d left, that had all crumbled and he’d barely made it from one day to the next for so long. Eventually he’d moved on, but he’d never gotten over her.

  But she was back now, and he had another chance.

  A smile touched his own lips. Maybe she was dreaming the same thing he was thinking.

  The blackout shades made it impossible to tell what time it was, but his internal clock told him it had to be around six-thirty in the morning. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep as early as he had, but apparently he’d needed it. Belle certainly had.

  He wanted to touch her, to brush hair from her cheek and kiss her forehead. He did none of those things, not wanting to wake her.

  It was hard turning his mind back to work. For the time being, everyone should be safe at their respective safe houses. He could concentrate on the problems at hand.

  He thought about the SD card that had been implanted beneath Joe’s skin. Six folders, all password protected…

  He nearly bolted upright in bed. Six passwords, six postcards from Nate. The cards could provide the password or passwords to open the folders. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? Probably because it had been a long couple of days.

  Careful not to disturb Belle, he slipped his arm from where he’d settled it on her hip. When he turned over and looked at the clock on the nightstand, he saw that it was six thirty-five.

  He slid out of bed and gathered his discarded clothing. After tugging on his jeans, he strode barefoot into the front room of the suite. From off a small writing desk he picked up a pen and a pad of paper with the B & B’s name and logo. He grabbed his duffel bag and retrieved a folder with copies of the five postcards he’d gathered. At the office he’d scanned everything electronically and it was all on his tablet, but he’d had a feeling that he needed hard copies to spread out like he and Belle had at the office.

  He crouched on one knee and set each copy of the postcards on the coffee table, in order by postmark date. Each paper had a copy of the picture on the front of the postcard and a copy of the back with the message.

  He took the notepad and made three columns, then crossed the vertical lines with six horizontal lines. He looked over the cards, each with a different postmark date. Leon’s was dated first, and Dylan picked out the incorrect sentence.

  “You were one hell of a receiver.”

  On the top line of the chart went Leon in the first column, receiver in the second, and then quarterback in the third.

  Marta’s card was second: “Remember Lindy and the chalkboard incident?”

  Down went Marta, then Lindy, and lastly Misty.

  He studied Christie’s card next. “You know how chocolate is my favorite flavor and I’m ready to hit the Dairy Queen again.”

  On the grid he wrote her name, chocolate, and vanilla.

  His gut clenched and he paused for a moment when a date skipped. Following the logic, if Nate had mailed one postcard every day, Tom’s would have been on the fourth day. He wrote Tom and left the next two spots empty.

  Belle’s card had been fifth—she’d received hers the day that Nate had died. “I’ll never forget when your big brown dog bit me on the ass.”

  On the fifth row he wrote her name followed by brown in the second column and in the last, white.

  His card had been last, since it had never been mailed. He studied the one sentence that was off. “Hey, remember when I served in Iraq?”

  In column one, on the sixth row, he wrote Dylan, then Iraq, followed by Afghanistan.

  He frowned. How could they figure out what the missing words were without Tom’s card? And what the hell were they supposed to do with the words? It could be any number of things.

  Something as simple as the right or wrong word being a password, but he doubted Nate would do anything so obvious. They could be meant to use the first letter of the wrong words, or the first letter of all of the right words, or even a twelve-letter password using the first letter of the right and the wrong words, and that would have to be done a few different ways.

  Or hell, it might not even have anything to do with the password or passwords for the folders on that SD card.

  He blew out his breath as he stared at the table he�
�d written. “Nate, what the hell did you get us into? What were you into?”

  Tom was dead, probably thanks to these damn cards. Dylan knew Nate would never have intentionally put them in danger, but the anger flowing through him burned in his gut. His muscles tensed and he clenched his jaw.

  “Goddamnit.” He flung the notepad with the chart across the room and it hit the door with a thunk and dropped to the floor.

  “Is everything all right?” Belle’s concerned voice came from the bedroom doorway.

  Dylan got to his feet from his crouched position and faced her. She was so beautiful wrapped in the robe she’d been wearing last night, her hair tousled, and still looking a little sleepy. And here he was, temper flaring, acting like a frustrated jerk.

  “Sorry about that.” He did his best to relax his tense muscles. “Hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “I was already awake.” She walked over to him and laid her hand on his arm. The heat traveling through him from her touch went straight to his heart. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Dylan couldn’t help himself. He brought her into his embrace and held her. He rested his chin on the top of her head and stroked her hair. “Just a little frustrated with Nate and his postcards.”

  She leaned back and looked up at him, and met his gaze. “You know Nate never would have done anything to put us in harm’s way, if he’d thought there was the slightest chance any of us would get hurt.”

  “Yeah, I know.” The protectiveness he felt for her welled up inside him, nearly overcoming him. He kissed her forehead. “I need to call in to work.”

  She stepped back when he released her. “It’s just after seven. You must get to work early.”

  “Some of us do.” He pulled his phone out of its holster. “The guy who’s handling that memory card always comes in early.”

  He found George’s direct number and pressed the connect button. When the tech guy answered, Dylan said, “What have you got for me on that memory card?”