by Lexi Blake
She was dragged into the hanger. The building was large, easily housing a small Learjet. Evans had come up in the world. She counted eight men walking around the hanger, including one of the men who had watched her the other day in Chazz’s office.
She felt a savage sense of satisfaction. Her Master was going to owe her big time. He was still wearing the same shoes, the very ones she’d attached the GPS to. Oh, she was never going to let him live that down.
And then she saw something that chilled her to the bone.
Stack after stack of what looked to be fertilizer lined the long walls of the hanger. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it was something for the farm that seemed to be attached. They were stacked ten bags high and the hanger went on for thirty yards. There must have been hundreds and hundreds of bags. That many bags could be turned into a bomb of unimaginable force.
Evans walked up to her, holding his hands out as though inviting her to a great event. “Welcome, Eve. The last time we were together, I was a small operation. I think you’ll find my brief time in prison has refined and refocused my passion. How do you like me now, whore?”
“Not any better than I did before.” God, what was he going to do with all that fertilizer? She was afraid she knew damn well. And Warren was going to let it happen? She wasn’t sure who was the bigger monster—Evans, who was a sociopath, or Warren, who knew better and still allowed it to happen.
Evans seemed to enjoy having an audience. “I’ve got bigger plans than before. Do you have any idea how long I’ve had to take to gather this much ammonium nitrate without the feds coming down on my ass? I’ve gathered it from all over the country, using all of my followers. McVeigh used forty fifty-pound bags in Oklahoma City. I have three hundred.”
Three hundred bags of pure grade-A death when used in the most improper way. “I’m sure Warren here helped you hide that. How are you going to justify that, asshole? Do you know how many people he can kill with a bomb that big? Do you really think you can hide your ties to him forever?”
Evans grinned, a smile that on anyone else would indicate genuine joy. His joy was killing people and getting away with it. “I think that SAC Petty will continue to do what he needs to do. Or he’ll lose everything. Besides, his brother plans to run on a law and order platform. I’m giving him something to rail against. Everyone wins, Eve.”
Everyone except the people he killed. She knew who the true monster was. There was something deeply wrong with Michael Evans that began in his childhood. She’d studied him. His mother had fled her abusive husband, using a women’s shelter to hide from him. But she’d left her son behind. Michael had grown up listening to his father rail against whores and turning his abuse on his son.
Warren had grown up wealthy, with parents who doted on him. He knew exactly what he was doing. Evans was sick and deserved to be put down, but Warren was simply greedy. There was no defense for him. “You’re a traitor. Not just to your friends and your job. You’re a traitor to your country. I will not stop until I out you and your brother.”
“It won’t work.” Warren sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
Evans walked up and put an arm around his partner in crime. “He’s mine, Eve. He has been since the minute we met over coffee and discussed blowing up that clinic. He facilitated my exit from the United States federal penal system, and it’s been a marriage made in heaven ever since. When he called me to let me know that Alexander had resurfaced, I was so excited. We have unfinished business. I heard about your divorce. So sad. I suppose he couldn’t handle the fact that another man had his woman.”
“I divorced him.” And she’d been stupid to do it. She could see it now. She’d been weak. She was Alex’s sub. It was her freaking job to tell her Dom what she needed. At the time, she’d been too scared to ask. She’d been scared of what he might say, but now she knew something she hadn’t before. Love—real love—required courage. It required her to speak out. It required her to fight for it.
A strange light came into his eyes. He looked a little like a fallen angel. It wasn’t hard to see why women flocked to him just based on his looks. But once he opened that mouth, he was the devil and she wondered if she hadn’t just given him an in. “Because you wanted me. You wanted what only I can give you.”
God, he was so wrong. Nausea built inside her. She didn’t know how she would handle it if he managed to put a hand on her. “I hate you. You have to know that. I can’t stand the thought of you. I love my Alex and we’re getting remarried because I finally realized something.”
He snarled a little. “And what is that, little whore?”
“I realized that he loves me no matter what. You gave me that. You forced me to realize something I might never have known. I might have gone to my grave wondering, but now I truly know. Most couples aren’t tested the way you did us. We know now. You took years from us, but you don’t get our forever. You can do anything you want, but I belong to him. My choice. I choose him. Always.” And forever more. There wasn’t time to worry. There was only time to love. She loved Alex. She wasn’t going to fight it. It didn’t matter if she was afraid. Her love was worth more than fear. Their relationship was worth fighting for. “It won’t work. You can’t break us. We went through your fire and we’re stronger now.”
Evans face had flushed as though he was anticipating the challenge. “Oh, but it will, dear. This time I will make sure you don’t get back to him. I only let you go the first time because I thought he would be so worried about you, he would ignore me. I made the mistake of underestimating his real obsession. As long as I keep you away from him, he’ll hunt for you and I can do my very important work.”
“Alex will find me.” He had to.
His hand came up, gesturing to the plane. “That airplane is going to take you to South America. You will disappear there. You’ll spend a few months at my private apartment, and then I have other plans for you. I always hoped this day would come. Though it’s a bit sudden, plans are already in place. Carlos?”
The man who had watched her spanking walked up, a leering smile on his face. “Hello, Amanda. Or should I call you Eve?”
You should call me the bitch who tagged you. He couldn’t know it yet, but he was his boss’s downfall. She kept quiet, not willing to engage any of them.
He reached out. She tried to back up, but Warren was behind her, keeping her from getting out of reach.
“I think you should be nice to me. Once Evans is done with you, I think he’ll let me have you. I have a brothel in Argentina. Your beauty will bring me much wealth.” His hand dragged down the side of her face, chilling her. Only Warren’s body blocked her from moving away.
She couldn’t stand the thought. Every muscle in her body ached for Alex. Please, please come for me. I need you, baby.
“But not until I’m done,” Evans said. “I think I’ll let you stay alive long enough to see all of my plans bear fruit. You’re mine until I give you away. I’ve set up a network I couldn’t have dreamed of before. I really should thank your ex. When he shoved me in prison, he made a martyr. He brought me to a whole new world I never would have found if I hadn’t been forced to run. I have everything I could possibly need. I have the feds on my side for once. And a senator in my pocket. Perhaps a president as well.”
She needed a little chaos. “The SAC had a plant in your club here.”
Warren’s hand came out, catching her across the face. Fire licked along her skin. He’d smacked her and hard. “Keep your mouth shut, bitch. None of us wants to hear your lies.”
“Maybe I would find her lies amusing,” Evans said, his voice quiet.
She needed them at each other’s throats. “Jesse Murdoch has been working for Warren.”
Carlos frowned, staring Evans’s way. “Murdoch is a believer in our friends’ cause. I was assured of this. You assured me of this.”
“Everyone is solid, Carlos. We don’t need to call in our radical friends.” Finally something seemed to jar his conf
idence.
“Check his financials.” It was what Adam would do. “Warren’s been paying him on the side. He intended to take you out. He was going to use Jesse to assassinate you so his secret was safe. You can’t believe that the senator is really going to allow you to live. He can’t run for president with this hanging over his head. And Warren could go to prison.”
Evans stared at the SAC. “Or Warren could go somewhere far worse.”
Warren was backing up, his hands lifted in denial. “She’s trying to cause trouble between us.”
“It’s working, friend,” Carlos said.
Eve edged away. Both men were so interested in Warren that they seemed to have forgotten her for a moment. She was close, so close to the exit. The other men were readying the plane.
“It is easy enough to check these financials,” Carlos was saying.
“I didn’t do it.” Warren kept backing away, toward the airplane, and Evans and Carlos were tracking him like a predatory pack.
Eve felt the door at her back, the handle right below her waist. The highway was too far. She needed to make a break for the farm she’d seen. It was maybe two hundred yards away.
Warren was loudly arguing his innocence when she slipped outside.
Eve ran. She sprinted for everything she was worth. Keeping her balance was hard with her hands in front of her. Her cheek ached and she could feel a trickle of blood from where Warren had split her lip. In fact, she was bleeding from several places, but she kept running, praying there was a door into what looked like an arboretum. The structure ahead was screened in, perhaps to keep birds from the fruit trees. She had to hope there was a way in.
“Hey!”
She heard a man scream in the distance. This was all the head start she was going to get.
“Help! Help me!” Maybe someone was outside. The sign had claimed they had daily tours. The sun was starting to wane, but maybe there were stragglers.
A door! She caught sight of it and ran toward it. Just a few more feet. The ground beneath her had become soft, muddy. Please be unlocked. Please. Please.
Eve fumbled with the latch. The door came open and she slipped inside. With a heaving breath, she closed it and turned the lock. It wouldn’t keep her pursuers out for long.
But they weren’t running anymore. Four men were leisurely walking now, laughing as they moved toward her.
“When you’re ready to come back, princess, let me know,” one of the men yelled.
Eve turned, ready to run across the farm. She could hide somewhere.
A low hiss turned her blood to ice.
It wasn’t a citrus farm. Mud and swamp and hundreds and hundreds of sleepy reptiles started to writhe and awaken around her.
It was an alligator farm, and Eve worried that she’d just become dinner.
Chapter Nineteen
Alex looked through the scoped rifle at the target up ahead.
“Do you see her?” Jake stood beside him as Sean and that dipshit Murdoch checked and rechecked the guns and ordinance.
“Not yet. I can’t get a line on anyone. There’s a single vehicle in the parking lot. Looks like a rental.” Warren’s most likely. Betrayal burned in Alex’s gut and all he could think about was getting his hands around his ex-partner’s throat and squeezing until he turned blue and his fucking eyes popped out. Or maybe he would just carve out Warren’s eyeballs. And his tongue. And then he would take the fucker’s cock and feed it to him. “Have Adam run the plate.”
Jake got on the phone immediately, feeding Adam the information he needed. According to Adam, one plane, a Learjet 40, arrived roughly thirty minutes ago out of New York and immediately filed a flight plan for Mexico City.
They would be required to file a plan because they were leaving US airspace, and the choice of Mexico City was telling. Mexico City had a large airport. Once they arrived, Evans didn’t have to worry about US government records, and he could move Eve around South America with very little trouble as long as the governmental wheels had been greased with cash.
Eve would be gone. Utterly untraceable.
Revenge would have to wait. “Getting Eve out is all that matters.”
Sean took a place beside him. “So if you get a shot at Evans, you’re not going to take it?”
Not if he had a second’s concern. It twisted him up. The need to avenge her was right there, a fire in his belly, but he had to put her first this time. “I can’t.”
A savage grin crossed Sean’s face. “I think you should let me do it. It’s been a long time since I got to kill someone.”
“You killed a couple of people not an hour ago.”
Sean shrugged. “Fine, it’s been a long time since I killed someone who mattered.”
“Are we killing the fed, too?” Jake asked. “Adam said that sedan was rented by Warren Petty.”
So this was the place. “As much as I hate to say it, we probably need the fed alive.”
To question. For a really long time. He couldn’t even bring himself to call Warren by his name. He was the fed, the man who had sentenced his wife to hell on earth.
“We need to get closer.” Sean studied the scene.
“We need to make sure they don’t take off. Murdoch, can I trust you with what will very likely end up being a suicide mission?”
Murdoch still looked a little pale, but he stepped up. Alex’s first instinct was to shoot the big guy between the eyes, but then he’d actually looked at those eyes. Regret. Hollowness. Alex had seen that look in the mirror every day for five years. Maybe Sean was right and the kid really had been following orders, trying to redeem himself.
Why the hell else would Warren have left him for dead? He’d seen the wound on Murdoch’s chest. That had been a kill shot, one he’d watched Warren take several times before over the course of his career.
“Yeah. Anything you need.” Murdoch had turned into a needy puppy. But he was a needy puppy who seemed to be very comfortable with firearms.
“I need you to make sure that plane can’t lift off.” He couldn’t risk Eve being taken out of the country.
Murdoch nodded. “Do you want me to kill the pilot or blow up the plane? I can do either. I brought some C4.”
Of course he had. Sean and Jake’s new puppy was a little deranged. “Don’t blow up anything unless my wife is safe. Then go fucking crazy, man. But I need Evans alive.”
He couldn’t believe he was saying it, but Evans was the only one who could verify what Alex thought he knew—that Petty was dirty and his brother was potentially very dirty. Alex didn’t buy that Petty was the one who had the affair with Carmen. Oh, but he knew Eddie. Eddie had always loved younger women, and Petty had spent most of his life covering for his brother.
This time he’d gone too far. Alex couldn’t allow Eddie to run for the presidency. He had to take him down. For Eve. Because she would want him to do the right thing, and the right thing was to protect their country from a man who would abuse its highest power.
But damn he wanted to kill the fucker.
“Can I kill my boss?” Murdoch asked.
Again, he heard Eve’s gentle voice. She would ask him to do his job, to be the law and not vengeance. Even when vengeance would feel so fucking good. But Eve was all that mattered now. “Not if we can take him alive. I think he’ll look damn good in prison orange.”
And he would likely make some new friends. Very intimate friends. Yes, prison might be better than killing Petty.
Where was his wife? God, he wasn’t going to be able to breathe until he saw that she was alive.
“I can avoid the cameras.” Murdoch said. He pointed to them. They seemed stationary. “I can hit the wheels as they roll out. They can’t take off if I take out a couple of wheels.”
“Do it. Jake, go with him.” No one got a jump on Jake. And Jake could keep track of the puppy. “Use him as a human shield if you need to. And Murdoch, Warren Petty is not your boss anymore.” He used the words the kid would understand. “I’m
your commanding officer, and there will be fuck-all hell to pay if you fail in this operation.”
“Yes, sir.” Murdoch’s hand started up as though the salute was ingrained in his very being. He managed to stop, but only just.
He and Jake started off across the field, moving with ease and avoiding the cameras.
“She’s in there.” Sean stood next to him. “She’s alive. I know it. We need to get close enough to figure out how many men he has with him.”
He needed to walk into that hangar and shoot up every single man who came between him and his wife. He brought the binoculars back up to his eyes, searching all around. There was the airplane hangar. It looked like it would hold one, maybe two planes. “Has Adam figured anything out about this place?”
Sean looked at his phone. Alex had asked Adam to text Sean with any information he could come up with. “It’s a reptile farm. It looks like one of Evans’s contacts bought it a couple of years back. They sell alligator skins to make shoes and bags. Along with all the creepy crawlies, they’ve got the airstrip and nine hundred acres of citrus and berry farm. Shit. According to Adam, Bartwell isn’t selling fruit anymore, but they have bought a metric shit ton of fertilizer.”
And fertilizer meant something to a man like Evans. It meant bombs and death and destruction. At least they knew what he’d been up to.
“We have to find his stash and figure out what his target was.”
Sean’s eyes widened. “If my math is right, he likely had more than one target. Even if we shut down this site, who knows how many more he has? This is bigger than just you and Eve. We can’t let him get out of the country.”
No. They couldn’t, but he also couldn’t kill him. “They have to have her inside the hangar. We need to sneak in, get her out, and then deal with the rest of the situation. Ian’s calling in his contacts.”