Dirty Souls (Sins Duet Book 2)

by Karina Halle

  He peers around the corner to the bedroom where the opened shuttered doors display Ellie sitting up in bed. Staring at him with cold eyes. Still very beautiful and, at this moment, looking like a ghost from his past.

  He nods at Luisa to come forward.

  The front door shuts behind them.

  “Ellie McQueen,” Javier says, overly formal, “I would like you to meet my wife, Luisa Bernal.”

  Luisa steps out in front of Javier, stares at Ellie.

  Ellie stares at Luisa.

  Neither of them say a word.

  Mexican standoff.

  Javier sucks at his teeth, nods to himself. “Well that went about as good as expected.”

  They’re still staring. It’s like two animals, ready to pounce and Javier really doesn’t want to have to get in the middle of it. He loves Luisa, and, if he admitted it to himself, he cares about Ellie a great deal in his own twisted way.

  The fact is, he would never hurt Ellie if he could help it. Grab her hair, be rough with her, yes, but he was always like that with her. She used to like it.

  But he would never want Ellie to know that. He needs her to know that he might do anything to her and without mercy. It’s the only way he keeps the upper hand.

  That, and keeping Violet hostage.

  Javier watches his women curiously and is just about to think to himself how similar the two of them look right now – wild dark hair, intense brown eyes, gorgeous bodies – and have his brain flooded with threesome images when suddenly there’s a low mechanical moan and the power goes out with a whimper.

  Plunging the three of them into total darkness.

  What happens next happens fast.

  A little too fast to be unplanned.

  While Luisa lets out a gasp from the sudden darkness, Javier hears a scrape of something heavy and Ellie’s feet quickly shuffling across the tiles.

  He doesn’t know what Ellie has but he knows she intends to use it on them.

  Instinctively he grabs Luisa and bends over her to protect and shield her.

  It works.

  Because the next thing Javier knows something large, cold and heavy strikes him across the head, so he’s falling over onto his wife, crumbling straight to the floor and into a sea of dizzying stars.

  The last thing he hears before things get fuzzy and he blacks out is the sound of the front door opening.

  Then closing.

  And he knows Ellie is gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Violet

  My mother.

  Even though I have no idea what’s going on with Vicente and La Mueca, why he’s negotiating with him about cartels and seats at the table, or why La Mueca just put his fucking gun away, all I can think about is my mother.

  She’s here.

  What the fuck?

  Why? Why did she have to find me?

  I’ve never felt more humbled and proud to be her daughter and so fucking enraged. Because now she’s here, in Javier’s clutches, and it was probably his damn plan this whole time. Get Vicente to get me or my mother. Fail to get my mother, well it doesn’t matter because Ellie McQueen will hunt down whatever sad fuck took her daughter.

  For a moment it looked like Vicente and I had a real shot at freedom.

  Before La Mueca stepped into the picture.

  And even though he’s putting his gun away and shaking hands with Vicente on something I barely understand, other than he’s supposed to be on our side now, after he broke my fucking wrist, I’m not going anywhere until I find my mother.

  She came here for me. I will do everything for her.

  Starting now.

  “Take me to her,” I tell him.

  La Mueca looks to me, frowning. “Your mother?”

  “Yes, my mother. You just said she was here, that Javier has her. We’re getting her free and then we’re getting the fuck out of here. You can stay behind.”

  “Violet,” Vicente says, “he’s coming with us.”

  “Like hell he is.”

  I swear I see a hint of a smile on La Mueca’s face.

  “I would be concerned if you didn’t hate me, senorita,” he says in that slow deliberate way of his. “Especially after what I did to you. But I told you not to take it personally.”

  “Yeah. Just business, right?”

  “And this is just business, too,” Vicente says.

  “I don’t give a fuck,” I practically snarl, tightening my grip on my gun. “He broke my wrist.” I raise the gun, aiming it at him. “If you don’t help me get her back, I’m going by myself.”

  “Easy there,” La Mueca says, eying my gun. “We’re going, we’re going.”

  He starts heading down the hall toward the kitchen. Vicente motions for me to put my gun away. I’m just about to remind him what kind of person La Mueca is and how we can’t trust him at all…

  When the lights go out.

  Everything goes pitch black.

  I gasp, feeling the dark encroach around me.

  Vicente’s hand at my side. “It’s okay, I’m here,” he says. “La Mueca?”

  The moon is faint tonight, covered by the clouds. Other than that, there’s no light anywhere. It seems even darker when La Mueca doesn’t answer back.

  Suddenly I hear a grunt, the sound of punching, groaning.

  A struggle.

  Vicente grabs my arm to let me know he’s there.

  That something else is going on in front of us.

  La Mueca fighting…someone.

  The wind of their movement floats over me.

  Something clatters to the floor.

  A gun fires, the burst of the light right in front of us before it fades.

  A man’s voice cries out in agony, in English, “Fuck! Fuck!”

  And in a split second I realize whose voice that is.

  “Stop! I yell into the dark hall. “Stop! La Mueca stop!”

  “Holy shit,” Vicente says beside me, recognizing the voice too. “La Mueca, stop, he’s with us.”

  “You could have told me that before I shot him,” comes La Mueca’s voice.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

  Everything inside me seizes up, my chest, my lungs.

  “Ben?” I croak out.

  Ben is here.

  Ben’s been shot.

  “Fuck,” Ben says from somewhere low in front of me. “Violet?”

  “Oh my god,” I cry out, walking forward carefully with my hand waving in front like a blind person. “Where are you shot?”

  “My leg,” he says, groaning. “Who the fuck just shot me?”

  “I’m surprised he had to shoot you,” Vicente says, staying beside me. “Most people don’t make it that far.”

  “Well then I’m fucking honored then. Jesus! Getting shot fucking hurts, my god. Fucking shit.”

  Suddenly a white light turns on. A small flashlight hanging from La Mueca’s hand, pointing in Ben’s direction.

  And there he is.

  I drop to my knees beside him, ignoring the pain in my leg and try and hug my brother. He’s in obvious pain, his face scrunched up, eyes closed. His hair is a mess, his clothes are torn and covered in mud. He’s trying to hold onto his left leg where his blood is turning his jeans red.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask him. “Are you here for mom?”

  “Yes. And I’m with mom. We all were,” he says, opening his eyes and taking me in. He stares at me in horror, from my cheek, to my wrist, to my leg. “Jesus, Violet what happened to you?”

  “Long story,” La Mueca says, voice clipped. “And I’m not sure how much time we have.”

  “Did you have to shoot him?” I growl at him. “This is my brother.”

  He gives me a dry look. “Yes. Actually. And I was aiming for his leg.” He eyes Ben respectfully. “I don’t know where you’ve been trained, senor, but they’ve done a good job.”

  “Yeah, well fuck you, Machete,” Ben snarls at him.

  La Mueca just blinks at him.
<
br />   “What do you mean we all were here,” I ask Ben. “Is dad?”

  “He’s detained in Mazatlan with grandpa Gus.” He closes his eyes. “Ah, god. I should probably suck it up, right? You guys probably get shot all the time down here. It’s been one big fucking welcome party since we got to Mexico.”

  “Here,” Vicente says, stooping down and putting Ben’s arm around him, getting him to his feet.

  Ben glares at Vicente as he helps him up. He doesn’t understand any of this and there’s no time to explain. “Ben, where’s mom?” I ask urgently.

  “I don’t know,” he says.

  “She’s in the hut,” La Mueca says, waving us forward. “Come on. That gunshot isn’t going to go unnoticed.”

  We follow La Mueca. Ben looks at me as Vicente helps him limp along. “The plan was for mom to come in here. She knew Javier would want her, do a trade for you. She’d probably be put away somewhere. I was stationed a mile out in the jungle. Had a hell of a time getting the sensors to malfunction. When I finally did, I got in close, over a wall, over the property lines. Then I cut the power.”

  “You did that?” La Mueca asks, still sounding impressed.

  “Fuck yeah,” Ben says. He looks at me and manages a small smile. “I have to say, hacking into the system here is a heck of a lot more fun than hacking into the university to change my grades.”

  But as much as I want to smile back at him, I can’t. Not until I know my mother is safe. I just pray that Javier would never hurt her the way that he’d hurt me. That’s the only thing I’m counting on.

  I also know that counting on people is a dangerous game here.

  A matter of life or death.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Ellie

  For a while there, Ellie was certain her son wasn’t going to come through. There were too many variables. He had to do so much in order to make it work, all through those gadgets of his while he sat in the dark in the middle of the jungle. If he didn’t disable the sensors, then he couldn’t get close enough to ambush the place when the power was cut. If he couldn’t cut the power, he couldn’t get in unnoticed. That was really all they had going for them. Originally it was supposed to be him, Camden and Gus who would infiltrate the place.

  But without them, it just relied on Ben.

  And as skilled and smart as Ellie knew Ben was, they were working with a long-shot.

  Still, she was primed and ready.

  The minute that Javier had left her in the hut, she started looking for a weapon. This place was the equivalent of a padded room, a furnished cell where no one could hurt themselves or each other.

  But Ellie knew of one thing that could.

  The toilet.

  The ceramic lid on the back of the toilet, to be more precise.

  She just had to be careful.

  For all her hatred of Javier, she wasn’t quite comfortable with killing him yet.

  Hurting him, maiming, sure. Of course. For that she had incurable blood lust.

  But killing was something that just hovered at the edges of her conscience.

  So she sat on the bed, the toilet lid beneath her, and she waited.

  She waited a long time.

  And finally someone came to check on her.

  Javier.

  And his wife.

  He had said something about them meeting but she didn’t take it seriously because it was hard to take anything Javier said seriously, especially after he thoroughly humiliated her and fucked with her mind.

  But Ellie got past that pretty quick.

  And when the lights went out, she sprang into action.

  Knew exactly how many steps out of the bed and to the door it was.

  Had calculated just how far Javier and Luisa had stopped.

  She ran through the darkness with the heavy lid and swung, knowing she’d get one of them on the head.

  From his muffled cry, she knew it was Javier.

  She smiled, especially as it didn’t sound like she sprayed his brains everywhere.

  Though, she wondered, briefly, if she’d later wish she had.

  Then she opened the door and ran out into the night.

  The only problem was, it was dark.

  No lights equalled no lights anywhere and the jungle seemed to close in on her.

  She didn’t even know where the house was. Eventually she fell into some sort of pit, a muddy hole in the ground, like someone was putting in an in-ground pool.

  Then, like a cosmic joke, the sky opened up and the rain started to pour.

  Fuck, Ellie grumbles to herself as she crawls out of the pit, totally covered in mud. The rain washes it off in no time.

  And she has no time.

  She doesn’t know what Ben did to the power, but she knows that Javier surely has a back-up generator and as soon as he wakes up from being hit on the head, that thing is going to go on.

  She has to get to Violet and Ben and get out of here before it’s too late.

  She’s back to running across the grass, barely making out the shapes of the trees before bumping into them.

  Then she sees the house.

  Then she hears something behind her.

  “Don’t move, or I’ll shoot,” A man says in heavily-accented English. “Hands up.”

  Ellie is shaking as she puts her hands up. Not in fear. In rage. Rage that she barely got far enough before she was caught.

  The man comes right behind her, places the cold nose of the gun at the back of her neck. “You’re the woman,” the man says.

  He’s got that right.

  “Javier gave us all orders not to shoot you,” he says. “But he didn’t say not to do anything else.”

  Oh, fuck.

  Now Ellie is scared. Scared and angry.

  It was one thing when Javier was violating her.

  Though it disgusted her, it was expected and familiar.

  This is something else.

  But she has to be strong.

  She closes her eyes as the rain runs down her face.

  The man presses himself against her ass, one of his hands sliding around her stomach and up.

  Ellie sucks in her breath.

  An explosion goes off by her ear.

  Her entire body freezes in shock, stunned by the sound.

  She blinks, shaking, looking down beside her where the man is lying, a bullet wound to the head, eyes staring up into the falling rain.

  Ellie glances up to see who fired the shot.

  It’s too dark to tell.

  A shadow steps out from the house, followed by more shadows.

  “Mom?”

  Violet’s voice.

  Violet’s voice!

  “Violet!” she yells.

  She starts running toward the sound.

  Sees the limping figure of her daughter running toward her.

  Ellie is too overwhelmed to do anything but burst into tears and try and pull her daughter into her arms. She knows she’s hurt though, can somewhat see the wound on her cheek, notices the bandage and the way she favors her wrist, the halting way she ran.

  “Oh, my baby,” Ellie cries into Violet’s head. “I’m so sorry if I’m hurting you but I have to hold you. I have to hold you.”

  “It’s okay,” Violet says and then she’s breaking down too.

  They don’t have all the time in the world. Ellie knows this. But she can’t help but try and hold on to each second she’s with her daughter.

  She pulls back and peers at her face.

  It’s a changed face. Not just from the horrible V in her cheek or the cuts or bruises, but Violet has gone through the fire and come out someone hard and scorched.

  Ellie feels anger flare through her, anger at herself, anger that Javier took something as soft and delicate as her daughter and tried to ruin her.

  “Are you okay?” Violet asks. “Ben found us.”

  “Ben?” she asks, looking beyond Violet at the three tall shadowed figures by the house, the figures who are obvious
ly trying to give the mother and daughter a few moments of private time. “Did he just shoot that fucker?”

  “No, that was Vicente,” Violet says. “Mom, Vicente had nothing to do with this, with me being here. You have to know this now.”

  “Did he tell you he hit me and duct taped me to a chair?”

  “Yes. I’m still mad at him for that, if it makes you feel better. But I did something similar to his mother, so I guess we’re even.”

  Ellie frowns, thinking back to seeing Luisa and the bruising on her pretty face. She’s not sure she likes this line of reasoning.

  “But please believe me, he didn’t know what Javier had planned. He had to actually stab his father and hold him hostage in order to see me, to rescue me.”

  Ellie’s chin jerks up in understanding. Javier’s wound. Vicente really did get him good. That almost buys him favor into her good books.

  As does the shot he just took of that man that was about to assault her.

  But Ellie’s good books are a fickle place to be. She’s not ready to forgive or make nice with Vicente just yet. Though something tells Ellie he’s going to be a part of their lives for a long time. This isn’t just young love she’s seeing between Violet and Vicente. This is mad love. The kind that’s incurable.

  “I hate to rush you,” a calm voice sounds as the figures start toward them. “But we need to get going.”

  Ellie blinks in the rain to see the man she had seen earlier, the one who escorted her with Javier to the hut. Her eyes widen.

  “It’s okay,” Violet says. “He’s on our side. I think.”

  “Phhff,” Ben says, coughing.

  Ellie smiles at her son, achingly grateful to see him alive, but the smile fades when she notices he’s limping too. “What happened?”

  Ben glares at La Mueca who is not-so-patiently waiting for the reunion scene to wrap up. “This guy got trigger happy, that’s what.”

  “Please, we need to go,” La Mueca says, moving along the lawn toward the driveway.

  With Violet on one side of her and Ben on the other, Ellie looks at Vicente. Holds his gaze. He holds hers. She nods her thanks. He nods his.

  That’s as good as it will get for now.

  They follow La Mueca as he heads toward one of the cars.

  A shot rings out, exploding against the side of the house.