by Pam Godwin
She twisted to see out the broken rear window. No one chased them. No motorbikes. No speeding cars. No guns.
Dread buckled her stomach.
The escape was too easy. Even if Tiago’s men had discovered his death, they wouldn’t just let her go. Something was wrong.
“Call Matias,” she said urgently. “Tell him where we are.”
“A little busy.” Van’s laugh strained with tension as he swerved the car side to side, dodging motorists.
She cradled Tate’s head and scooted forward to reach between the seats and search for the phone in Van’s pocket.
“Fuck!” He slammed on the brakes, throwing her back against the seat. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Up ahead, police cars skidded onto the street, blocking their path.
“Turn back!” Her pulse exploded as she twisted around, searching for a side street. “Take that one!”
She caught Van’s eyes in the rearview mirror and pointed at the alley behind them.
“We can’t trust these cops?” He shoved the car in reverse and sped backward. “What happens if they catch us?”
Tires squealed behind them, followed by the rumbling sounds of motorbikes. Her scalp crawled, and a chill spread through her cheeks as she looked back and found a roadblock of armed officers.
“Get to that alley.” She gripped tight to Tate’s head and shoulders, shaking and nauseous. “They wouldn’t be here unless Tiago called in a favor.”
“What?” Van spun the car around and veered into the alley—the only way out. “I thought Tiago was dead.”
“He is.” Her breath came in wheezing pants. “I smashed his head in with a dumbbell. I thought… Oh God, I didn’t check. I couldn’t…”
His pulse. I didn’t check his pulse. Was he still alive?
If the police caught them, they would die in prison. Or they would be taken back to the compound, where they would be tortured before they died.
“If they surround us, we’re dead.” She tightened her arms around Tate’s limp body.
“Goddammit.” Van slammed the shifter through the gears and recklessly weaved around dumpsters and metal stairs in the alley.
The motor revved, and the end of the alley glowed like a beacon. Police on motorbikes zoomed in behind them, but there were no barricades up ahead.
They can make it. They can make it. Go, go, go…
The air vibrated with a rumbling reverberation right before the end of the alley filled with half a dozen police on bikes.
“Hold on.” Van accelerated.
Twenty feet, ten feet… Holy fuck, he was going to plow through them.
Heart pounding, she bent over Tate’s head, wrapped her arms in a death grip around him, and braced for impact.
A ringing sound split her eardrums, buzzing with the clamor of gunshots and Van’s shouting. Then sirens.
Sirens on a police car, in the alley, careening toward them head-on. The alley was too narrow, and they were traveling too fast and close to avoid collision.
Van jerked the car, hit the side of a building, then slammed into something else. The world spun, and time became heavily compressed and fractured.
The jarring impact catapulted her to Peru, shackled in the back of a transport, falling, rolling, flailing in the memory of twisted metal, broken bodies, crushed bones, and the scent of blood.
CHAPTER 27
Tate surfaced to a muffled symphony of pandemonium. Banging, shouting sounds pulsed in and out, as if trying to penetrate the cotton stuffed in his ears. He lay twisted in a mangled car, covered in glass and throbbing in excruciating pain.
Lucia was there, her tears drenching his face and her hand stroking his hair. Her agony was unbearable, her fear palpable. He couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe as he tried to make sense of the clamor around him.
He remembered gunfire and running and the speeding car. The front hood was bent against the broken windshield. The dash was too close to the front seats, and the pungency of coolant, gasoline, and burnt chemicals fumed the air. They must’ve crashed.
Black spots dotted his vision as he dragged his good arm beneath him and lifted. He blinked. And blinked again.
Multiple rifles pointed through the shattered window beside Lucia, aimed at her head. The armed men shouted something, and she screamed back at them, sobbing and shaking uncontrollably.
His pulse raced, and his senses sharpened. The men wore helmets and uniforms with arm patches and name tags. They surrounded the car, training rifles through every window and shouting in Spanish.
Where was Van? The airbags were deployed, and the front seat was empty.
Overpowering pain tore through his body and stole the strength from his neck. His head dropped onto her lap, and his muscles trembled with never-ending agony.
This wasn’t him. He wasn’t weak or puny. He was physically fit, stubborn, aggressive. He was a survivor. He needed to get the fuck up. He should be able to protect her.
The door beside her opened with a godawful squeal of grinding metal. Hands dove in, yanking her out of the car. She fought and kicked and screamed his name, but he couldn’t reach her. His arms wouldn’t respond to his urgent orders.
“Lucia.” Seething with pain, he tried to scramble after her.
His limbs wouldn’t cooperate, moving sluggishly, inch by inch across the seat. He reached his working arm through the open door and clawed at the pavement, yanking himself forward in a fevered frenzy of ripping flesh and dizzying anguish. He felt things tearing and breaking inside him, but he was separated from his body, completely fixated on getting to her and nothing else.
With his torso hanging out of the car and his legs caught within, he watched uniformed men with guns haul her away. Police cars and motorcycles filled the alley, and at the far end, several cops wrestled Van into the backseat of an armored transport.
If they were incarcerated, she wouldn’t see a doctor. Wouldn’t have access to medicine. Maybe Matias or Cole would find them and grease the right palms to get them released, but it would be too late for her.
She would be dead by tomorrow.
A roar ruptured from his throat as he twisted around, searching the car for a weapon and coming up empty. A seat belt tangled around his leg, and he wasted miserable seconds and precious strength to free himself. Then he crawled on one arm, rolling onto the pavement and nearly blacking out. He muscled through it, compartmentalizing the pain and fumbling forward, scraping his chest along the ground.
She thrashed and swung her legs in the clutches of the men who carried her. When she found his eyes, her expression hardened, and she redoubled her efforts. But she was outnumbered, and he was too slow, too fucking weak.
He couldn’t reach her, couldn’t touch her, couldn’t save her.
But he tried, and tried, and kept trying.
Goddammit, he would never give up on her.
CHAPTER 28
Crammed inside a cell in the municipal police station in eastern Caracas, Lucia struggled to breathe amid the sweltering heat and the reek of body odor, shit, and urine.
She didn’t know where the police had taken Tate. Didn’t know if Tiago Badell was orchestrating their fates. Didn’t know if Matias would be able to find them or if he even had the power to get them out of this place. Her nerves were shot, and with every hour that passed, she felt the tendrils of despair taking root.
When she and Van were thrown in here, they were shell-shocked and manhandled. The guards took his shirt and shoes and her bra and boots. But they let her keep the rest of her clothes. Then they were shoved to the back of the prison cell by dozens of restless, hungry prisoners.
Van had dragged her through the crowded bodies, fighting his way back to the front to yell at the guards through the bars. Though he spoke good Spanish, his pleas for a doctor fell on deaf ears. He’d tried to explain her illness and her need for medical attention, tried to argue for her human rights, but there were no rights here. Within the walls of the calabozo, no one was human
.
Shirtless men and barely-dressed women stood shoulder to shoulder against one another, with no room to sit. They took turns resting on hammocks made from sheets tied to the bars. A few managed to squat along the back wall.
Every hacking cough was a reminder of the diseases that lurked among them. Tuberculosis. HIV. Influenza. Not to mention the red scabies-like rashes that blistered the arms and legs around her.
A small window outside of the cell sat high on the wall. The sun had set forever ago. The guards had changed twice. Dawn would come soon.
She stood with her back to a corner. Van had wedged her there, using his body to separate her from the others. With his arms braced on the walls above her head, he worked his jaw rhythmically.
Neither of them had eaten, drank, or gone to the bathroom in over twenty-four hours. Her bladder cramped painfully, but relieving it would require peeing in a plastic bag while everyone watched. She would have to submit to that eventually, but she wasn’t mentally ready.
“Still no symptoms?” Van asked for the hundredth time.
“No.”
There were some nights, though rare, when she didn’t experience nausea, abdominal cramps, or any pain at all.
Tonight, she felt a different kind of pain. A deep, emotional torment that festered and cramped in every part of her.
Tate was probably in a prison cell like this one, alone, unable to stand or defend himself. Were prisoners stepping on him? Was he bleeding out on the filthy floor? Would he take his last breath while prisoners stood on him unaware and unconcerned? She couldn’t stop imagining it, and it was slowly killing her from the inside out.
Beside her, a man leaned his back against the wall, sobbing as he pulled on his hair and scolded himself for robbing a merchant to feed his starving family.
“I can’t believe places like this exist,” Van muttered, staring at the man. “That’s saying something, considering I grew up in the shittiest shit hole on Earth.”
Her chest pinched. “I’m sorry you got pulled into this. This wasn’t your fight.”
“I volunteered.” He bent his knees, bringing his scarred, bruised face into her line of sight. “I’ve committed so many crimes, and this is the first time I’ve been behind bars. This is justice, don’t you think?”
She shook her head. “You’re a good man.”
He laughed and returned to his full height, looking away.
“No.” She gripped his bicep and pulled him back down. “What you did for Tate last night, especially knowing you have a wife—”
“How the fuck do you know about her?”
She yanked her arm back and swallowed. “Tiago knows. I’m sorry. I don’t know if he’ll go after her or—”
“She’s safe.” His entire body turned to stone, and he dragged a hand over his face, breathing through his nose as if trying to rein in his temper. “Matias has her. He’s protecting everyone connected to Tate.”
Oh, thank God.
She closed her eyes and inhaled. Then she looked up into his silver-bladed gaze. “I probably won’t make it through the morning—”
“Lucia,” he growled.
“I just want to thank you for what you’ve done for him. You didn’t have to come to Caracas. You didn’t have to participate in Tiago’s demands last night. If you hadn’t done those things, I wouldn’t have made it this far.”
“This far? To a prison?”
“I had five days with him.” Her voice quivered. “I got to experience love. Do you know that feeling?”
“Yeah.” His eyes closed briefly, and when they opened, they glimmered.
Jesus, this mean-looking ex-kidnapper was head over heels in love. Who would’ve thought? She certainly wouldn’t have recognized it before, but now… Now that she knew what it felt like, she sensed this man’s love for his wife all the way down to her toes.
Neither of them was in a position of hope, and maybe that was why she felt the need to say, “Promise me you’ll see her again.”
“Easy.” His expression hardened with conviction. “I’m counting every breath until I see her again. I promise.” He cupped the back of her head and held her face against his chest. “Your turn.”
“I’ll see him again.” In my memories. His face will be the last thing I see before I die. “I promise.”
CHAPTER 29
Four nights. Three days. One room.
Tate marked the loss of time by the ebb and flow of sunlight through the cracks in the wood walls. He lay face down on a thin blanket, his muscles trembling and his back a throbbing, burning, spasmodic ripple of pain.
His prison was a windowless shack with a dirt floor, a bucket to shit in, and a door that locked on the outside.
After Lucia had been taken from him in Caracas, the police put him in the trunk of a car. He’d traveled about a day in that dark cramped space. When he arrived here, he was blindfolded and carried into the shack by two men he couldn’t see.
During those few seconds outside, he’d felt the warmth of the sun on his skin and the dry heat in the air. It smelled like a desert—dusty, hot, barren.
Maybe he was near the coastline, but he didn’t hear the tide or the sea birds or any insects. He didn’t hear anything at all through the walls of the shack.
Except when the doctor came.
Twice a day, a car rolled up outside. The bar slid from the door on the shack, and an old man shuffled in to tend to his wounds.
Always escorted by two armed guards, the black-skinned doctor spread a numbing cream into the cuts on his back, cleaned the stitches on his arm, and bathed him from head to toe. Then he was fed broth and tea.
One guard emptied the shit bucket while the other patrolled the door. Tate could barely crawl, let alone stand. But they weren’t taking chances.
No one spoke. In those first couple of days, Tate couldn’t, either. He wasn’t sure any of them knew English. The guards resembled the thugs in Badell’s compound, and the doctor matched the descriptions Lucia had given him of Badell’s medical team, down to the scarification welts on his arms.
My back will look like that someday.
If I live.
Though he’d heard Lucia say she’d killed Badell, he knew the gang leader was the reason he was here. Either someone had taken over the operation or Badell was still alive.
When Tate could finally manage raspy words, he badgered his visitors with questions about his location, Badell’s whereabouts, and Van and Lucia.
Where’s Lucia? was the question he demanded most, and during the visit this morning, one of the guards had given him a single English answer.
Went to prison.
He’d blown a gasket when he heard the response, seething and thrashing and reopening wounds in his fit of rage. The guards had to restrain and gag him while the doctor patched him back up.
If he counted the day it took him to travel here, it’d been four days since he’d been separated from her. If she was imprisoned, she would be dead now.
His brain struggled to process that. His heart flat out refused.
He ran through a range of conflicting emotions in his isolation, from fury and guilt to determination and hope, and chief of all was helplessness. He’d failed her. Failed to protect her. Failed to rescue her. Failed to make her smile.
His shame and self-pity made him resent the healing of his injuries. He resented every fucking breath he took. Why bother?
But what if she lived?
He wore himself out trying to stand. Felt the wounds on his back tearing when he tried to stretch. He was imprisoned in a horizontal position, lost in the destructive fabric of his thoughts.
In hopeless conditions, the mind deteriorated. He knew that was happening, knew he needed to shut down parts of it to survive.
So he did.
CHAPTER 30
I’m still alive.
Lucia didn’t know how or why her illness up and fucking vanished, but she hadn’t experienced a single symptom since the night Tate was
tortured. Tiago must’ve given her a cure in the last injection. It was the only logical answer.
She and Van spent a week in that overcrowded jail, living in a cesspool of feces, disease, and despair. Now they were on a prison bus, being transported to a permanent penitentiary. There were no phone call allowances, no lawyers, no judicial process. No human rights. This was the underworld, and corruption pulled the strings.
She wasn’t sure if their case had even made it to the courts. She still didn’t know what they were being held for. Tiago was behind this. He was powerful enough. Vindictive enough. She expected nothing less after bashing him over the head with a dumbbell. Killing her would’ve been too merciful for his brand of revenge.
Did she regret attacking him?
Maybe he’d truly meant to give her freedom.
Freedom from him.
Freedom from her illness.
But without Tate, she would’ve never been free.
The only thing she regretted was not bashing him again and again until his brains spilled onto the floor.
She sat beside Van on the bus, hands and legs shackled with a chain between the restraints to limit movement. Dozens of prisoners crowded in around them, all traveling to the same horrific fate.
Sadness hung like a fog in the humid air. The entire bus smelled like defeat. But she refused to subscribe to it. Her feelings had been all over the place for the past seven days, but she hadn’t let herself break. She hadn’t given up. Eleven years ago, she’d entered Tiago’s world much like this and worked her way to the top. She would do it again.
But could she do it with a broken heart?
Thinking about Tate, missing him, craving him, loving him—her need for him didn’t come and go like her illness. It was a building, growing, continuous escalation, and she couldn’t break away from it. She didn’t want to. She’d never experienced such deep-seeded torment in her life. But it was her torment, and she would endure it for as long as she was separated from him.
About an hour into the drive, the bus rolled through an urban town. High-rise buildings lined the street in a mishmash of historical and modern architecture.