by Camryn Rhys
“Island?” Alex asked.
Tears burned Citlani’s eyes and she wiped them away with the side of her arm. She drew her knife and cut the ropes binding her mother’s ankles.
Zolin and Alex pulled on the chains, but they didn’t budge.
“Stop trying to save me. Get her out of here!”
“Ma’am, we are hunting the man who’s holding you,” Alex said. “If you have information about him, we need you, too.”
“The only information you need to know is that he will do anything to get what he believes belongs to him. My daughter and I are possessions, just like all the others. It’s Guadalajara all over again, except he’s learned from his mistakes.” She yanked the chain out of Zolin and Alex’s hands. “Take my daughter and run! Now!”
“He’s coming,” Tomás shouted. “I can feel him through Lani’s bond.”
The sensation of the air in her lungs being squeezed out started again. She stood and clung to her mate’s arm. “The d-d-doors,” Lani gasped out her last bit of air, pointing to the elevator at the back of the room.
No warning. No arrival bell. The doors slid open and a big, dark-haired man walked into the room.
He raised a metallic object and aimed it at her mother.
Lani lunged as he shot. Fire slashed through her shoulder and she opened her mouth to scream, but no air meant no voice.
Tomás seemed to see his entire life in the moments that passed as he watched Lani fall. Warmth sprayed across his body and he had to look down at his splattered shirt to know it was blood.
His mate’s blood.
A roar tore from his throat and he jumped at the giant man whose face carried echoes of Lani. His shoulder landed in the soft flesh of Adrian’s stomach and another shot fired behind him while they tumbled to the floor.
The gun knocked against the ground and slid across the slick wood. Adrian growled and flipped Tomás onto his back. He landed a punch in his gut, then both sides of his face.
Tomás punched back in fury, gripping the psycho with his legs and pitching them both forward.
“Tomás!” Maggie’s voice rang out. “Move.”
He rolled off Lani’s father and two gunshots split the air nearly at the same time.
Adrian’s body jerked as bullets struck him, but he immediately pushed himself to his knees and let out another growl. “Juarez! Willis! Get in here.”
“Your lackeys are dead.” Maggie aimed her gun, holding it with two hands and staring at him with wide, angry eyes. “You are at our mercy.”
Adrian wiped blood from his mouth and spat. “I am at no one’s mercy, let alone yours, you filthy whore.”
“Does anyone have handcuffs?” Alex held the other gun and looked around the room.
Tomás shook his head, crawling toward Lani.
Zolin was crouched on the ground beside her.
Tomás’ face throbbed and he could only see well out of one eye, but he had to get to his mate.
“I have a pair in the car.” Maggie nodded at Tomás and handed her gun to him.
The large revolver felt heavy in his hands, but he pointed it at a panting Adrian, nonetheless, while Maggie rifled through drawers.
“There has to be something here we can use.”
“What do you think, she-wolf?” Adrian wiped at his mouth again. “You think you’re going to take me down? I am a god here. No one will allow you past the front desk.”
Tomás reached out to Lani. She was breathing, and Zolin was helping her up, but she had her eye on the chained woman in the corner. Her mother.
They’d found her.
“We never said it had to be alive,” Alex growled, advancing on Adrian.
“Everyone, shut up.” Maggie walked toward the monster, pinning him with an angry gaze. “You must have the keys to those shackles.” She pointed to the corner. “Where are they?”
The whites of his eyes flashed in a psychotic laugh. “You think that freeing her will do anything?” Adrian made to stand, but Alex clicked off the safety on his gun.
“You just try to move,” he said. “I’m happy to tell my father that I had to put a bullet between your eyes. And don’t think I’ll miss.”
Maggie stepped on Adrian’s ass and forced him down onto the floor. She dug around in his pockets and pulled out the keys, which she threw to Zolin. “Unlock her chains and let’s get her the hell out of here.”
She kept her foot on Adrian, pinning him on the ground. His teeth ground and something crawled across Tomás’ skin like a slimy memory. But he couldn’t latch on to exactly what had bothered him.
“Don’t worry,” Maggie sneered. “We’re going to put the chains to good use.”
A loud click sounded and Lani’s mother collapsed to the floor.
Zolin dropped the keys and picked her up, settling her into a nearby chair. His hands grazed places on her limbs that had been injured. “She needs a healer,” he said. “Some of these wounds could take her life.”
Adrian chuckled deep in his throat and the ground nearly shook with the force of his laughter as it grew. “You will never get her out of this building, either. My gua—” He bit his lip. “You will have been seen breaking in to my room.”
Tomás kept his gun trained on Adrian and crossed in front of Alex, on his way to Lani’s mother. He reached out to his mate, trying to send comfort .
They had him. They would soon all be safe together, on their way back up the mountain.
“Can you carry her—” he began, but Zolin had hoisted Lani’s mother into his arms in one swift movement before Tomás could continue. “Right. Of course you can.”
“Wait.” Maggie stepped down on Adrian’s ass again. She was enjoying this. “If his guards are watching us, then we can’t go out the front.” She turned to the elevator and left Adrian wriggling on the floor.
“Careful, Mag,” Alex said, his eyes narrowing. “You don’t know what he might have in here to protect himself, and there are only so many guns.”
Adrian’s eyes shifted around the room and something jumped inside Tomás. He knew where he’d seen that look before. It was the same one Lani got just before she was about to pull something. He opened his mouth to speak when a voice echoed in the hallway. He and Alex both turned at once.
Three large men in black suits came barreling through the door, guns raised and shouting in Spanish.
Tomás lunged at one of them and Alex at the other two. He could feel the push of adrenaline surge through him as he dispensed with the guard in quick order. The guard wasn’t a wolf, and the man had gone down without any problem.
Lani’s scream tore through the air and caught Tomás by the throat. A shimmer of magick followed and Tomás whipped around, running toward Lani.
But he looked on helplessly as Zolin lay crumpled on the floor in front of Lani and her mother, a large black wolf chewing on Zolin’s neck and shaking his rag doll body while two women wailed in horror.
Chapter Ten
“Get out of there!” Tomás yelled, running for his mate with his heartbeat racing.
Lani scrambled away from the feasting wolf, dragging her mother behind the chair.
Maggie’s wolf shimmered not a second later and jumped at Adrian’s wolf, but he flashed his teeth and tore into her shoulder. She yelped and yipped back at him. With one snap of his thick neck, he threw her across the room.
Tomás reached Lani, gripping her wrists and pulling her into his body. She was sobbing and shaking, clutching at her mother and at him, and screaming Zolin’s name. But the large warrior lay in the middle of the light wood floor, his blood forming a small lake between all of the fighters.
Adrian’s wolf fixed his glowing eyes on the corner of the room near the shackles. Tomás got to his feet, holding out the gun and screaming. “You stay back or I’ll kill you.”
The wolf’s ears bent back and it crouched, then lunged.
Tomás pulled the trigger, but the animal kept coming. Shards of pain ripped through him as the
wolf’s teeth tore into his arm. The force of the bite shocked him and the leverage of the wolf’s jaw knocked him across the room. He slid through the pool of Zolin’s blood and knocked into the man’s lifeless body.
A howl loosed itself from Tomás’ throat and he was on the edge of shifting when he heard Alex shout. “Look out, Lani!”
Two loud gunshots bounced through the room and the wolf yelped.
Tomás jumped up, ignoring the pain in his arm, and raised the gun, only it wasn’t there. He must have dropped it when Adrian had tried to rip his arm off.
Alex was on his feet walking toward the wolf, firing off shot after shot into the big body. Each bullet landed and the wolf yowled, but did not drop. When he started clicking the trigger, Alex yelled for the other gun.
Tomás wasn’t sure where it was. But it didn’t matter. He had to get to Lani.
Adrian’s wolf let out a low moan and collapsed to the floor. Tomás reached for Lani and circled his good arm around her.
Alex ran to Zolin and then followed the blood trail up to Tomás. The look of disgust on his face hit nuclear levels when his eyes landed on Maggie. She was crumpled in the corner, her throat similarly slashed, but she was still in her wolf form, and whimpering.
“She’s alive.” He ran across the room and slid beside her, running his hands over her body. “Tomás, help me. She’s still alive.”
Tomás stood, pulling Lani up with him, and avoiding Zolin’s blood as his mate whimpered beside him. The pain inside her swelled so quickly, Tomás had to calm himself before he could work on calming her.
She felt responsible.
He deposited her next to Alex and knelt in front of her, holding her cheek in his good hand with a groan. His other arm just wasn’t usable at the moment. “This is not your fault, Lani. Do you hear me?”
“But…” she sobbed. “Zolin. He’s…”
“Yes, he’s gone.” He hugged her to his chest and held her there as long as he dared. His arm was bleeding and throbbing and he needed to get himself and Maggie to a hospital. “But it was not you who killed him. It was the bastard.”
“Maggie,” Alex whispered, getting close to the long, graceful snout of her wolf. “Maggie, can you hear me?”
The wolf whimpered and flicked out her tongue.
“I need you to shift back so we can take you to the hospital.” He whipped his head around. “Tomás, get me that blanket. Let’s cover her up so she can shift.”
“She’s too injured,” Tomás argued, holding Lani close. “We need to wait and let her wolf heal her. Besides, how will we ever get her past the front desk? Let alone whatever security is there?”
“You’re right. Dammit, you’re right.” Alex slid his hand along Maggie’s cinnamon-colored fur, avoiding the gaping wound on her neck.
A shimmer of magick sounded through the room and they all looked around to see the source. But before they could quite place what’d happened, a flash of naked skin moved across Tomás’ peripheral vision. He looked up from Maggie at the wail of Lani’s mother.
Over near the other corner of the room, the elevator door opened and Adrian stood in front of it with his hand on a big white pad that lit on the wall. He was naked and bloody, with holes in his body, and he sagged against the door, but in his other hand, he had Lani’s mother.
“Mama!” Lani screamed.
Tomás lunged toward the elevator, but before he could reach into the door, it had closed, with Adrian and his captive inside. He stood, panting, in front of the silver door.
“No!” Lani’s wail tore through him like a machete. She scrambled across the floor and clawed at the elevator door beside him.
Tomás pounded on it and yelled, but nothing would make it open.
The door was smooth and held together despite their efforts.
“What the hell?” Alex’s voice, full of incredulity, was low and dark. Angry. He came to stand on Tomás’ other side.
Lani sank to her knees, pounding one last time on the door. “No,” she cried. “No, no. Please. No.”
Tomás knelt, pulling her against him so she could pound on his chest instead. Better anger at him than at herself. He could handle it.
“How in the hell did that happen?” Alex fixed his eyes on the floor. “I shot him… so many times. How did he survive?”
“He has my mother. We have to go after him.” She pulled back and pinned Tomás with angry eyes. “We can’t leave her with him.”
“We won’t.” He glanced over at Maggie, who was trying to stand. He nodded at Alex. “Help her. We should get out of here.”
“We can’t leave like this.” Alex gestured at Tomás. “You’re covered in blood. Lani’s covered in blood. We’ve all been injured. He may not have wolves for his security, so who knows if they know his secret—and he sure doesn’t have cameras in here—but how are we going to explain the dead security guards?”
Tomás shook his head. He couldn’t take it all in. Everything had happened so fast, and Lani was practically in shreds. They had to find a way to get out of that room and get Maggie to a hospital.
He sighed and leaned against the door, taking his sobbing mate with him. His eyes landed on Zolin. The large warrior lay sprawled in his own blood, his gaze wide and angry and fixed on some point far away, where it would never land. Maggie was practically at death’s door. Tomás and Lani had both been injured, and for what? To capture Adrian?
The ball of rage that bubbled inside him was so hot and grew so fast, it threatened to overtake him. But suddenly, he felt a small press of comfort oozing through him. Lani.
She was trying to send emotions to him.
His arm itched and throbbed as it healed, and he tried to wrap it around her. It wasn’t quite so useless as it had been. Pictures flooded his mind—the flashes of what had just happened in this room. The one thing he had never considered was they would have to get away. How would they ever get past the security guards without alerting the police?
“She’s healing,” Alex said. He had his hands on Maggie’s coat. “It’s taking time, but I can see the blood stopping.”
“Will she make it?” Tomás couldn’t bring himself to meet his teammate’s eyes, and he buried his face in Lani’s neck when Alex answered ‘yes.’
This had been such a disaster. Running into an uncontrollable situation. He wasn’t typically this impulsive. They’d let themselves get carried away.
“We will find your mother,” he whispered into Lani’s ear, through the thick curtain of her hair. He just wanted to bury himself in her and never let go. Every part of his body hurt or bled, but he could imagine the bliss of Lani’s body comforting him in a heartbroken way—the way other men sought solace in the bottom of a bottle. He would seek solace in Lani. And she in him.
She sighed against him and shook her head. “We must get you to a healer. And your friend.” Lani sniffed. “I know where he is taking my mother. We will find her.”
Tomás levered himself to his feet, pulling her up with him. “The island?”
“This island your mother spoke of,” Alex said from the opposite corner of the room. “She insinuated… I mean, she said…”
“I heard it, too.” He stretched his back and leaned against the wall next to the elevator. His body was exhausted. He needed a shower. He needed sleep.
Tomás needed Lani.
“Does that mean…Is he taking her?”
“We might as well say it out loud,” Lani’s voice cut through the room, strong, stark and loud. “This brothel you say he started in Guadalajara. He has one in Choaca, on this island, and that’s where he’s taking my mother.”
“Given how wounded he was, and given the fact that we are waiting in his home with guns, I’d say that’s a fair bet.” Alex stroked Maggie’s fur with a sad droop to his eyes. “Even if only two of us left can fight.”
“I don’t feel him trying to choke you,” Tomás said, pulling Lani back so he could look into her eyes. “Do you feel him?”
> “I don’t know what I feel anymore.” She closed her eyes. “Too much feeling, and I’m numb.”
He pushed off the wall. “At least, for now, you’re safe.”
“Come and help me,” Alex said. “We really should get her to a bed and let her shift. This wound is pretty bad.”
Tomás and Lani stepped away from the elevator just as an electric whirring noise came from it. The doors slid open and everyone’s breath caught. But the silence that had become so precious was cut when Lani’s yelp rent the air.
The bloodied, scarred, lifeless body of her mother slid out of the elevator and lodged itself in the open door, preventing it from closing. The entire inside of the elevator was covered in splattered blood and pieces of flesh, and on the mirror in the back was a giant, bloody handprint, right in the middle.
The handprint of a sadistic murderer, and the only family Lani had left in the world.
Chapter Eleven
Tomás let the nurse wrap his arm for the second time, but he kept Lani in his hospital bed, curled up against his side.
She’d been almost catatonic since they’d found her mother in the elevator, and he kept trying to minimize his own pain so she wouldn’t be bombarded with every hard thing in the world at one time.
When they’d all had to climb into that elevator, with Zolin’s body and her mother’s body, and ride down to the midnight-dark parking garage, Lani had almost crawled inside herself to get away from the emotion and Tomás had resolved to just hold her and keep her close. Not ask more than she could handle.
He just wanted to take back the last two days.
If Tomás could rewind time, to before she’d come to him in the sex tent, he could’ve convinced her to stay in the village with Zolin and to stay the hell away from him. He’d brought nothing but pain to her since they met.
Tomás winced as they secured the bandage. The kind-eyed nurse patted his leg when she finished.
“You’ll heal. She,” she said, pointing to Lani, “won’t need stitches, but I should change her dressing as well, before you’re discharged.”