Understanding the reason I couldn’t move my limbs took too much effort to care.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion, swimming underwater and against a strong current. Wherever I was, we were moving. With every jerk and jostle, I felt myself being transported from one place to another.
Soon, a loud rumble roared in my ears, followed by the sensation of going up…up…up…
Then, complete weightlessness.
I should’ve fought to wake up and look for landmarks. With all the transporting, I needed to remember useful information to give my location to someone who could help me.
But the harder I fought to open my eyes, the deeper I sank to the bottom of the ocean, the murky water closing in on me as the darkness claimed me once more.
* * *
“Wake up, you Carrera puta. It’s time to get on your knees. Surely, you’re used to it by now.”
Strong hands dug into my upper arms and dragged me across rough flooring. Bright light shone in my eyes, first forcing them open, then immediately commanding them closed.
My head.
Where the hell did they take me?
“Where…” Licking my lips, I tasted blood as they cracked and split from tension and dehydration. “What time is it? Where are we?”
“We’re going on a boat ride, now shut up and walk.”
The light extinguished, shrouding everything in an ominous cloud of darkness.
The hell I was going anywhere with these people. Digging my heels in the soft sod, my sudden movement caused a couple of them to stumble. Curses flew and another blow landed across my face. A new man grabbed my hair and dragged me across a river bed. The soft slosh of small waves crashing against the bank greeted us as my eyes landed on a small yellow blow-up raft.
“Oh, hell, no.” Digging my heels in again, I shook my head violently. “I’m not getting in that thing. We’ll sink.”
Rough hands twisted in my hair, jerking it backward until I stared perpendicular to the night sky. “The only thing that’ll sink is you when I shove this gun down your throat and throw you in the river. Now get in the fucking boat!”
As I stepped into the raft, a hard shove from behind had me sprawling face first onto the bottom. With my hands still bound behind me, I had nothing to break my fall but my already bruised jaw. Blood filled my mouth again, the taste almost becoming comforting.
At least I knew I was still alive.
Two men climbed in after me, and the rest pushed the boat away from the embankment. As the current took us away from civilization, Val and Nash entered my mind.
Regardless of what happened, I knew I’d see one of them soon. Which one depended on what happened in the next few hours.
Chapter Thirty
Valentin
The car had barely broken twenty miles per hour heading up the driveway to the estate when I couldn’t take it anymore. Throwing the door open, I tumbled out, hitting the concrete with a jarring force that rattled my brain.
Once I caught my breath and got my footing, I took off on a full run toward the house. I knew Mateo called my name a few times, watching the movement of his mouth from my peripheral vision as he parked the car, but it didn’t matter. The roar in my head took up all the space reserved for sound.
I reached the front door and prepared to kick it down, when I noticed it standing halfway open.
They’re already inside.
Pulling my gun, I called her name the safest way I knew how. “Cereza? Where are the cans, baby? I can’t see the posts, so you need to tell me.” I waited for a response, listening for any signs of movement. “Cereza?”
Farther into the house, a metallic smell hit my nose, sending a violent chill up my spine.
No.
Out of the corner of my eye, a body lay on the floor swimming in so much blood, there couldn’t have been any left inside of it. Instinctively, I closed my eyes, willing it not to be Eden. The moment I opened them and saw the militant style black pants and heavy black boots, I let out a sigh of relief, then felt like a shit for being happy about the death of one of my men.
But between one of my men and Eden, I’d choose death for my men over and over.
Leaning over him, I recognized Joaquin Salazar. Barely an adult, the loyal member of my father’s personal team had proved his honor and willingness to protect our cartel with his life. It was the whole reason Mateo chose him to stay with Eden.
If a man like that had been gutted like a fish, what the hell had they done to a woman who’d been at the center of an international drug war?
“Manuel Muñoz has probably slit her from throat to pussy by now.”
Within seconds, Mateo appeared by my side, gun in hand. “I’ve searched the upper floors and the pantry, boss. They’re not here.”
“Where the fuck is she?” Conflicting emotions raged through me: relief at not finding her lying in a pool of blood and fear at what was happening to her at the hands of Manuel Muñoz.
“I don’t know where they are, but come with me. I think I know how it went down.”
Moments later, Mateo led me down into the cook’s pantry. Shattered glass on the panes of the door indicated multiple locations of impact. They were too small to belong to a man. Blood splatter across the walls and the floor indicated a hard-fought struggle.
Sudden pride filled my hollow chest. She didn’t go quietly or shaking with fear. Eden fought like a hellcat with everything she had inside her.
That’s my girl.
Bending down, I traced a smear of blood that beaded on the cold tile floor. Somehow, I knew it was hers. Rubbing it between my fingers I brought my index finger to the left side of my white button down shirt and drew an ‘x’ over the muscle. Glancing down, the red from my fingers soaked into the white thread, staining the tiny lines a deep crimson color.
X marks the spot.
Cross my heart and hope to die.
Imprinted in blood.
Eden Lachey had branded her name on my heart and her soul in my blood for the rest of my life. However long that life lasted depended on the shape I found her in.
* * *
Mateo hadn’t said a word when I refused to leave the pantry. Leaving momentarily, he climbed the stairs, retrieving his phone, and a few more guns. While out of sight, he’d called for a cleaner to remove Joaquin’s body from the estate.
For the first time in a long time, a stab of remorse slashed a hole in the heart I couldn’t believe still existed. Maybe it stemmed from the fact that Joaquin Salazar didn’t hesitate to shift his alliance to me the minute I stepped off the plane in Mexico City. Maybe it came from his willingness to protect Eden with his life without any question.
Or maybe, the woman in question had managed to stitch together what had been destroyed for a lifetime.
When I first saw her, I thought Eden had been sent to save my soul. Losing her made me realize why I’d pushed her away. I was drowning in her, and she’d suffocate beside me. For the first time in my life, I’d put someone else’s needs first and tried to do the right thing. Eden was no angel, but she was the closest I’d ever get to heaven. Marking her and caging her light had made me hate myself to the point of letting her go.
As her blood dried on my fingertip, I realized how blind I’d been. Eden Lachey had marked me long before I touched her. She’d branded me more than any tattoo and cut deeper than any blade ever had. She calmed my killer’s soul and had become the bandage to a lifetime of chaos. The minute they took the woman I loved, chaos would be all they’d breathe until I had her back in my arms.
Regardless, I instructed Mateo to have Joaquin buried properly, instead of our usual destroy and dispose method. Eden would have my ass if she found out I’d done anything to the contrary.
I’d take whatever she had to dish out, just to hear it in person.
Two hours later, I still sat in the pantry, my eyes glued to the phone in my hand. Demanding all lieutenants abandon anything they were working on, I ordered them to p
ull all their best sicarios and disperse them to Guadalajara, Monterrey, Matamoros, and any other fucking place I could think of that they’d take her. Giving shoot to kill orders, I ran a hand over my wild hair, secretly hoping my men kept Manuel Muñoz alive long enough for him to beg me for death.
“Why hasn’t anyone called?”
Mateo looked up from his phone, the lines in his forehead deepening. “They will, boss. It’s only been an hour.”
“It’s been two.”
Turning my head away from his relentless stare, a glint from the overhead light caught a reflection from something shiny a few feet away. Pulled out of my destructive thoughts, I walked on my haunches over to it, and picked it up. Breath hitched in my throat as I recognized the top gold piece of the Santa Muerte pendant I’d given Eden back in Houston. It was jagged as if it’d broken off in a struggle.
Closing my hand around it, I brought it to my lips, praying it held enough power to still protect her.
And if we were lucky, Santa Muerte would answer a prayer and lead us to her.
Lead us to her.
A jolt of electricity shot through me as the fake metal all but burned my hand with the answer. Climbing to my feet, I pulled my phone from my pocket and activated the GPS application I’d installed days before.
“What are you doing, boss?”
For the first time in hours, something besides loss occupied my soul, and I could feel my eyes flash with excitement. “Activating the tracking device.”
“Uh, you destroyed it, remember, sir?”
“Not that one, Mateo. Santa Muerte.”
“I’m not following, sir.”
An actual smile tugged on one corner of my mouth, struggling to break free as I furiously punched numbers onto the keypad. “When Eden demanded that we take her to Mexico, I had a feeling she’d end up getting herself into some shit like this, so I pulled a trick out of Muñoz’s own play book. I had one of your men implant it into a cheap ass Santa Muerte trinket he picked up at a street fair.” I tapped it with my fingernail. “It isn’t even real metal.”
Mateo ran his hands over the top of his long hair. “Jesus, so you’re saying…”
Punching the last few numbers, I turned my phone around and held it to his face. “I’m saying she’s past Reynosa and heading up Highway 2. They’re going back to Texas.”
Hitting a speed dial number, I paced the room—the knowledge that Eden was alive and on the move, spurring a fire in me.
“Who are you calling?”
“Reinforcements. I know where she’s headed, but we need someone with connections to track down where they’ll eventually hold her to prepare for the possible trap we’ll be walking into.”
* * *
“What the fuck do you mean, you took her to Mexico?”
“Just what I said,” I repeated, reminding myself I needed his help and not to lose my shit on the assistant district attorney. “I had to go. She wanted to go with me, so I took her.”
“Jesus…no one has seen her in weeks! We thought…we thought…goddamn it, you know what we thought, Carrera! I thought Muñoz had gotten to her, too. Her whole family is missing, for Christ’s sake! I mean…damn, man…”
When Brody Harcourt’s jerky speech and subject jumping connected in my disjointed brain, I growled deep within my stomach, and slammed my fist into the wall. “You fucking know Manuel Muñoz, don’t you?” Brody grunted, yet offered no further explanation. Cursing, I hit the wall again. “Goddamn it, Harcourt! Come clean or I swear to God, I’ll blow the lid off everything for you. One call to the newspaper and your life will be over.”
“You don’t get it, do you, Carrera? My life is over regardless of what you do.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” What bullshit could the ADA have to compare to sending the only woman I’d ever loved into the hands of a sadistic killer?
Even more sadistic than me.
A resigned sigh crossed the line. “Manuel Muñoz came to me two months ago and threatened my sister’s life. Man, she’s only twenty-one and still in college. He swore he’d kill her if I didn’t agree to find some way to get a tracking device on you.”
Eden’s St. Michael medallion.
Shit.
“What does Nash Lachey have to do with all of this?” And just because it’d been bothering the hell out of me, I added, “And how do you know Eden?”
“The guy I was putting pressure on to turn on you ended up flipping out on me. I tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t listen. They killed Eden’s brother to show him they could get to anyone at any time.” He paused, his voice cracking as if unsure about delivering the rest. “Only the man freaked out and ran.”
“And Eden?”
“Man, we used to fuck, all right? It meant nothing. Cherry never let it mean anything. I guess being frat brothers with her ex-husband ruined anything we could’ve had.”
Fire filled my chest as my breathing came faster and harder. Images of Brody Harcourt in bed with Eden clouded my vision and a compulsive need to break every bone in his body took hold of me.
“You have nothing with Eden. Do you understand me, Harcourt? You never fucking touch her again.”
“Fine, yes. Now, give me the access code to the app that’s tracking her GPS.”
Focusing on saving Eden, I gave him the information. “One thing I don’t understand,” I said, a thought hitting me. “Old man Lachey was supposed to get a permanent reminder from the Carreras to pay his debt. I never authorized a murder. How did Manuel Muñoz know what was happening that night at Caliente?”
Silence filled the line for more than a few heartbeats before he finally answered. “You didn’t turn your phone off, Val. You called me that day to threaten me to divulge info about Nando Fuentes’ involvement with the DEA. I heard your whole conversation about roughing up Lachey. I passed along the info to help save my sister.”
I could feel the muscles in my neck cording with unleashed tension. “So, during our whole conversation, you’d already flipped, you asshole?”
“He threatened my sister, Val. Surely, you can relate to family being targeted.”
I knew what he was doing. The attorney in him tried to appeal to my human side, but with Eden gone, I no longer had one. “Yeah? Well, now he’s going to rape and kill Eden.
“Man, don’t say that.”
“Was the run for the DA seat worth it, Brody?”
“Fuck you, Carrera. You don’t live the kind of life you live and get to judge me. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Santa Muerte, Harcourt.”
“What?”
“Santa Muerte.” I imagined breathing in the deepest scent of citrus and vanilla when I clasped the rosary around Eden’s neck. “I don’t need to judge. We all stand face-to-face with death eventually, and Santa Muerte judges us all for our own actions. I’ve made peace with the sentence I’ll be handed. What about you, Brody? How do you think you’ll be judged when death comes calling for you?”
Before he could answer, I disconnected the call. As I stood there staring at the phone, the bombs of the conversation exploded at once, and I kicked it across the room. Watching my phone skid across the tile floor, it hit me.
Brody Harcourt heard the call about collecting the debt from Lachey.
Non-Carrera men came into the hardware store and freaked out Eden.
The scapegoat wouldn’t take Muñoz’s tracking device from Brody.
The bottom of my stomach fell out, and I scrambled for my gun. “Mateo! Gather whatever men you can in one room, now!”
This wasn’t just a kidnapping. It was a sadistic, sick game.
And Eden was the star.
Chapter Thirty-One
Eden
“Edie, what the hell are you doing? Get down from there. You’re going to break your neck!”
Ascending one more branch, I plopped down and hung from my fingertips onto the jagged bark. “Didn’t you read the archives, Nash? There’s no death certificate. Go
d, how could I have been so stupid?”
He tilted his chin, squinting into the afternoon sun. “So, climbing a tree like a spoiled brat makes it better?”
“Piss off.”
Chuckling, he swung his long arms and legs around the trunk and folded his muscular forearms around the thick branch underneath me within seconds. “Look kiddo, so Mom took off. Yeah, it sucks, and she’s a worthless piece of shit for it. But do you really think suspending yourself like some sort of monkey makes it any better?”
“I’m the one that caused her to leave, Nash,” I whispered, my voice cracking as my arms started to shake from the tension.
Nash just smiled. “No, you didn’t. She left us long before you were born. She just walked out because she couldn’t handle living with a living example of everything she’d never be.” For the first time since learning the truth that had devastated my world, a smile broke through the tears. “Now, how about you get down from there before you pull your arms completely out of their sockets, and I have to miss football to take you to the ER?”
A combination of a sob and a laugh escaped my lips as I dangled from my fingers, dropping toward a lower branch. “Pain in the ass.”
“Brat.”
* * *
Opening my eyes proved to be more and more difficult each time I tried to do it. Beyond the crushing pain in the back of my head and above my eyes, the first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t feel my hands or feet. After attempting to move them, a sharp tingling sensation shot through my limbs, causing me to twitch.
Why do my arms hurt so much?
I felt weightless and heavy at the same time, which confused me so much that I forced my eyes into submission. Everything was black on top of dark. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.
Which was my first clue that things were very wrong.
Carrera Cartel: The Collection Page 23