On His Six : A Summit Seduction SEAL Novel (The Summit Seduction SEAL Duet Book 2)

by Rachel Robinson

  When it’s all out, she says one more thing before our time runs out. I catch a glimpse of happiness on her face. “Do not run, Maeve. Nothing good comes of running. Don’t run away. You’re stronger than I was. You’re strong enough to face anything. That’s who you are.”

  Autumn screams out in desperation as the guard comes in to take her back to her cell. I see the insane woman they all speak of now, not the mother she was moments before.

  “Thank you,” I call out to her, and at my voice she stills. They inject something into her thigh and whisk her away.

  Autumn Glass is a monster, but she’s also the reason I found myself. This time, permanently. I can’t get out of the prison quick enough.

  Chapter 13

  Maeve

  Lincoln’s phone goes straight to voicemail for the tenth time, and I’m a little panicky as I tap my iPhone against the sofa next to me. Ramona locked us in the bedroom when we got back to the house and made me purge the entire conversation. For that, I’m thankful. I don’t want to be the only one carrying around this information. “The bus is here, but we’re all still getting ready, Maeve can you go out and tell him we’ll be ten more minutes.” We’re heading to another winery for a tasting and dinner, and the buzzed bus as it’s affectionately called is honking the horn in the driveway.

  Tasha stops me before I go outside. “I know this is a long shot, but have you heard from Lincoln? I can’t get Isaac and it’s weird.”

  I shake my head. “I need to apologize, and it’s going straight to voicemail. If you get Isaac, will you ask him to have Lincoln call me?” Tasha looks annoyed with me, but agrees. I have much atoning to do, and her reaction is a sickening reminder.

  “I’ve gotta go grab my purse and lipstick. Be right out.”

  Jogging down the steps from the house and into the circular drive, the bus driver opens the door and I hop aboard, into the dark cabin with flashing lights. “The rest will be here soon, they’re on their way.”

  “Maeve?” an accented voice asks.

  “Yes,” I say, confused. The door of the bus closes behind me. “What?”

  The bus driver shakes his head. “You’ve made this easy on me. Have a seat, Ms. Ahern.” He pulls away from the house and dread settles into a pit in my stomach. “I will not have a seat! Let me out of here. Open the door!” I pull my phone out, ready to call 911.

  I feel a looming presence from behind me, a warmness even though no one is touching me. “I’ll take that.” The man behind me snatches the phone, grabs my hands in one of his and puts a rag over my nose and mouth. It smells like clean laundry, but I know better. I struggle against his tight grip, but it’s no use. My eyes get heavy and the ability to move my muscles stops. He lays me gently on a large couch that spans one side of the bus. The last thing I see before blackness overtakes me is the neon lights reflecting off the damn stripper pole.

  I come to pissing mad, confused, and no longer on the bus. It could have been minutes, days, or months, for how befuddled I am. I’m in a dark hotel room, but the bathroom light is on. I’m on the floor, handcuffed to the base of the table. The top is made of stone and is heavy. I jerk on the cuffs to test, because what else can I do? They’re on too tight to slip out of, too. My eyes still feel heavy, but my limbs move with ease. This isn’t a junky hotel room, this is a suite, and I can tell little about who is staying here by my surroundings. As my eyes adjust to the low light, I see takeout containers and a suitcase laying open on the floor by the king-sized bed. A conversation in another language floats out from what must be an office, and I connect the dots. Rena. The cartel. My dumb ass promise. Rufio making good on his word. “Fuck,” I hiss under my breath. Just when I was getting my life in order—closing chapters and looking forward to new ones.

  I scream out and kick the table in protest. A man peers around the corner and shakes his head, obviously annoyed. “Hey! Come talk to me!”

  It’s not him who comes out, though. It’s Rena. Like the last time I saw her, she looks messed up. Her designer clothing hanging off her gaunt frame like a zombie supermodel. Rena’s face is lined and weary. She resembles Autumn Glass in a way that sends a chill down my spine. “Rena, you have to let me go. This isn’t what I want.”

  She laughs. “You think just because you ask, I’ll let you go. A deal is a deal. Did you or did you not ask Rufio for this favor in exchange for Lincoln and Turner’s safety?”

  “I did. I won’t lie, I thought it was my only option. It’s not though. They need me, Rena. Turner needs me. Please you have to trust me that this isn’t how it’s supposed to end.” I swallow hard when I see her features harden even further. “I can’t run from them. They’ll never get over it.”

  “Oh, Lincoln gets over things and people quickly. Don’t give yourself that much credit.” She crosses her arms, and manages to look even thinner. There has to be a shred of something inside of her that wants happiness for her former family—that has some kind of empathy for her blood sister.

  “I talked to Autumn Glass, Rena. I talked to our mom.” If she can feel a link, maybe she’ll have mercy on me. “It’s not too late for me, you can let me go before I disappear, and I can live the best part of my life.”

  “What did she say? What did that witch say? Why did she give us away?” Rena cocks her head to the side. The man peeps his head out to check on us and must be satisfied, because he ducks back into the other room.

  I exhale a pent-up breath. “She wanted us. Autumn gave birth at a home for girls and they forced her to give us up. She wanted us, Rena.”

  “She did?” That seems to get her attention.

  Turner. Turner. Turner. My heart is beating for him right now. “Rena, she wanted us like I want Turner. I can be there for him.” Be a good mother, I think, knowing I shouldn’t say that out loud, but feeling the call deep down in my bones. “Don’t you want him to feel wanted? If I leave, he’ll feel like we did our entire lives. Wondering why he wasn’t wanted.”

  “He’s already fucked, Maeve. I abandoned the kid.”

  “You didn’t,” I say, desperately. “You only did what you thought you had to.”

  She saunters over to me and stoops down to pick up my necklace. Not the lighthouse, the new one that holds both of my engagement rings. “Talismans of my failures,” I say, using Lincoln’s words. “I can make it right.”

  “You think I want you to go back to the man I love? To be a mother to my son? I’d rather slit your throat and blow my brains out first.” She pulls the necklace off with a firm yank. “He never gave me a ring.” She pulls off the ring Lincoln gave me and I shudder to know she knows immediately which one is which. She slides it on her left-hand finger, and I blink back tears.

  “You can’t mean that. If you ever felt anything for Lincoln, you’d let me go.”

  “Why didn’t she ever look for us?” Rena asks, admiring her hand. She lets the chain and Rexy’s ring fall to the floor. It’s just out of my reach.

  “You had a closed adoption. You know that. And well, she was too busy trying to… survive to look. She had a hard life, Rena. Autumn is an awful person, but she had every reason to do the awful things she did. Raped and pregnant with twins that they tore away from her at birth.”

  “She sounds like a wuss. I left a newborn of my own free will.” Even as she says it, I know she doesn’t mean it.

  “Drugs did that. You didn’t,” I say softly.

  “I did the drugs, you twit! No one else forced my hand.”

  Rena is still looking at the ring on her hand. “Fine. You don’t care at all, got it, and I’ll go willingly without force. But let me say goodbye. I beg you. Let me say goodbye.”

  “That’s not how this works. You’re disappearing, Maeve. He can’t know anything. We both know how persistent the man is, particularly when he wants something. You give him any small tidbit and he’ll never give up searching.” It’s a pseudo compliment, I realize. Rena calls out to the man in the office. “Get the plane ready we’re alr
eady taking too long.”

  I sniffle. “I won’t tell him anything. I just want to tell him goodbye. He’s not coming after me, Rena. Don’t you want to know why I’m wearing that ring on my necklace instead of on my finger? I left him.” At the worst possible time, ever. “It was unforgivable what I did, really.”

  She narrows her eyes. “Why should I trust you?”

  “I’m your sister,” I croak. “Because we both went through awful things, and yet we’re together right now. Finally, we’re back together. The way we were always supposed to be.”

  That gets her attention. Maybe if I flick her heartstrings just enough. “How was she?” Rena says, as she moves away from me to zip up the suitcase. “Autumn.”

  “Like you’d expect a murdering, psychotic maniac to be… except you can tell she cared about me. Us, I mean. While I was visiting, they said it was the most normal they’ve ever seen her while she’s been in prison. She doesn’t look like the photos you see on the internet. Not anymore. Time has been hard on her.” It doesn’t take long to know why she’s asking.

  “Guess I have a lot to look forward to. I have a question for you, sis.” Rolling her suitcase over to a side table, she starts gathering the drug paraphernalia that rests on it. “If you love them so much, why would you agree to this in the first place? Why leave them forever?”

  It’s now that I realize what is wrong with Rena. “Because you sacrifice for the people you love. How is that even a question? If I vanish into the cartel, I was told that they would be untouched, unbothered, and able to live out a normal happy life.”

  “How happy of a life can they have if you’re not in it? You made a selfish decision you thought you deserved and called it sacrifice. You’re no better than I am. We abandon those who give us standards we don’t think we can live up to.” She zips up a makeup bag she’s using to house drugs. “That’s why I was wondering about ole mommy dearest. She seemed to have high self-esteem from everything I’ve watched and read, but it sounds like that was all a front. She’s just like us. Love hungry but too afraid of disappointing people to take what’s given.”

  I retreat into myself. I never thought of it that way. In fact, there’s a huge chance the drug addict in front of me pinned me with one sentence. Why are we as human’s always blind to things that hold us back the most? Why are our faults blind spots to us yet so visible to those around us? Is there a solution to letting self-awareness trickle into these places? I sigh as defeat seems more and more plausible. Rena doesn’t care, she knows who she is, where she came from, and what she wants. Me not being in their lives. For herself, it seems she wants to detonate like a bomb and be done with it all.

  “Rena, you’re forgetting one key piece of information here. I live a normal life. I don’t kill people, take drugs, or dull my pain with violence. I’m not like Autumn or you.”

  “You will be. Something to look forward to.” She stoops down to unlock the cuffs, and I the thought of fighting her off occurs, but dies the second I see multiple men with big ass guns come out of the office. “You’ll come without fighting? We can knock you out if this is too much for your little, withered heart.” She balls her fists and rolls them back and forth by her eyes.

  “I’ll go with you,” I say, choking back tears. “Without fighting.” Inching my hand towards Rexy’s ring. I encircle it with my fingers and slowly bring my hand back to its initial position.

  “Honestly, I’m tired. Tired of talking about this, tired of following you, and worrying about getting caught. I’m weary. Let’s just get back to Mexico and be done with this once and for all.” My whole life passes before my eyes. I think of my friends. Of Aspen. There’s an in case of emergency file on her computer. I added a ton of information on there over the past few weeks. No details about my whereabouts, or anything like that, but what to do with the finances of the office. I updated my will and the deed of my house. Everything is in order. That’s one thing I can be thankful for in all of this. I will be the only loose end.

  Funny, I’m also sick of all of her bullshit. I pocket the ring and rub my wrists where they are bleeding and raw from being restrained. One of the men rolls her suitcase and takes her drug bag. One holds me with my hands behind my back, and the other is in front with his weapon pointed like a dagger as he opens the door. “Is the plane ready?” Rena asks mindlessly, walking next to me. There’s no way I can tell what hotel this is, but I do notice it’s empty. Like, no staff at all.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask.

  “It’s our hotel. I bought it when I discovered your dumb girl’s trip plan. All the employees now work for us.” I’m trying to wrap my brain around this, how someone just buys a hotel and commandeers staff when I see a helicopter on a vast expansive lawn, out the stairwell window. “Oh, God,” Rena whispers as she moves in for a closer look. “They found us.”

  My heart pounds, because I don’t deserve this luck. Wait, I can’t call it luck yet. The guy holding me speaks to the others in a different language and Rena joins in on the conversation, leaving me out of it altogether. I understand words like death and kill, but I can’t keep up as they hatch their plan. His hands tighten on me, and fear is radiating off him.

  We continue going down the stairs, now just at a quicker clip. I stumble and trip as I’m forced forward before my feet can catch up. There’s a metal door to the side that opens to some kind of storage room where electrical equipment is held. Rena handcuffs me to a pipe, looks me dead in the eye, and says, “This is all your fault.”

  “How is this my fault? I didn’t kill a man, Rena!”

  “You’re so dumb and naïve. The military landed on the lawn of a cartel-owned property, and you haven’t pieced together who is responsible for this? They’ve been after us for weeks. Do you know how many men I’ve lost? How persistent the special ops squads have been in trying to eradicate the underground drug smuggling when they haven’t given a fuck for years? Not until you, Maeve. Not until Lincoln’s prized piece of destroyed meat was in danger.”

  A commercial-sized radiator hums to life next to me and makes it hard to hear. “You’re telling me one man. Lincoln. Is responsible for directing this? Because of me? Bullshit.”

  Rena laughs. “Again, you’re forgetting how persuasive he is. It won’t matter for long, though. I’m going to burn this place to the ground with you in it. To think, I almost had a sister. It’s too bad you turned out to be a huge disappointment.” Rena reaches into her pocket and pulls out a metal box. She dips her pinky nail in and snorts thick white powder until she needs a breath. “I’d offer you some, but you probably want to be lucid when you die.”

  My breathing speeds, and I’m open mouth breathing. Rena reaches down her leg and comes up with a tiny gun she had tucked in her boot, and tucks it into her waistband. “My guys should be getting the armored vehicle from the garage right now.”

  I’m desperate. “Why not take you with me? Why the change in plan? Give me time. I could be a better sister.”

  “He knows now, Maeve. Lincoln knows and he’ll never give up on you.”

  I shake my head. “This isn’t him. It’s just the cops outside. He doesn’t have anything to do with what’s happening today. He’s on a trip! It can’t be him. He has already given up on me.”

  “Shut the fuck up, you idiot. He told me he wouldn’t stop. He would hunt me down to get to you for the rest of his life, until he was old and on his deathbed. Does that sound like he’s given up? Like a man who wouldn’t orchestrate a war on drugs to find the woman he loves?” Her eyes well up with tears. “He didn’t do that for me, no. Lincoln never looked for me at all.”

  She slides my engagement ring off her finger, admiring it as she does. Rena reaches over and pinches my cheeks until my lips pop open. She stuffs the ring into my mouth. “Bite down on that when the pain gets to be too much.” I spit it back in her face and notice the key to my cuffs is on a ring hanging out of her jacket pocket.

  You can do this, Maeve. You are enou
gh. All by yourself. Rena’s pupils are enlarged and with the substance coursing through her veins she’s less predictable. I remember that from the last time she had a gun. This time, I’m more unpredictable. My breathing speeds as I come to the only possible conclusion. I have to follow the course of my family destiny and kill. To live, I must kill. Autumn’s words and reassurance float in, and I’m momentarily distracted that I’m drawing inspiration from her. Rena floats closer, swaying as she hisses mean words. She’s jealous. That’s all this is, and nothing more—amplified by drugs. Jumping up as hard as I can, I kick out both legs. One hits her square in the face, and the other lands on her chest, pushing her, and the keys further away from me. You can do this, Maeve. Survive.

  Rena is splayed on the ground, so I kneel and kick out my feet and capture one of her feet between mine. Then I bend my legs and pull to drag her closer. It’s tedious and blood is pouring from my wrists where the metal cuffs are cutting in from the pressure. Her head lolls from one side to the other. One more time. Close enough, but I have to switch positions to be able to reach the keys. Rena bends her arm, and I lose my breath. She’s going to kill me if I’m unsuccessful. Lincoln will never know I’m sorry. How it was all for him, or why I did what I did.

  I have to use my knees to move her top half closer to me so my fingers can reach the keys. The keyring has a big Chanel logo. I’m able to pull the top of the C and pull them toward me. I slide them on the pavement by flicking my finger over and over until the keys are firmly in my hand. It was a mistake on her part cuffing me in the front, but it’ll be the only reason I’m able to shuffle the key into the small hole and set myself free. As I rub my wrists Rena rolls over, and I take the gun from her waistband and aim it at her body. My hand isn’t the only thing shaking—my whole body quakes, teeth chatter, and my legs are wobbly.