His men, of course, would return in a few days and he would express his displeasure at them for so easily trusting what they’d been told. It didn’t matter that he was the one who had told them to leave. They should know he’d never order all of them away. It left him, the entire operation, vulnerable. Fear was a nasty, cold streak inside him as he thought about it. His rivals were many. Most of them wouldn’t dare come to his home, he knew, but if they had any idea how helpless he was right now . . .
Nala was going to pay for this.
She was going to suffer. Focusing on that forced the fear back where it belonged. Under control, where nobody else could see it. Wise men accepted fears, he believed. Accepted them, dealt with them. He’d accepted. He’d dealt with it. And now he’d make her suffer, because while a wise man might accept fear and deal with it, there was no reason to like it, and no reason to roll over like a whipped dog when somebody screwed him over.
Twisting his wrists against the cable tie, he shot another look around the room, ignoring the hopelessness that crashed through him yet again. The best chance, he thought, would be to try and get the chair over to her dressing table. There were a bunch of little trinkets there. Mirrors, heavy glass bottles. Not ideal, but the best option.
Watching the door carefully, he eased the chair over. One slow inch at a time.
He moved about a foot and stopped, waited. No sound of Nala. No sign of her.
He moved another. And another.
He was less than eighteen inches from the table when he heard a dull thud from downstairs. Swearing, he shoved closer to the dresser and tried to twist around, rising awkwardly, trying to claw for something.
Anything.
His fingers scrabbled against something that felt like cool, hard glass—
A footstep sounded outside the door.
“Señor?”
URGENCY rode her hard as they drove across the dark, busted road.
Vaughnne had used her passport at the border, sweating under her shirt the entire time, because she was absolutely certain they’d realize, somehow, that Gus had cleverly concealed the weapons he wasn’t supposed to be transporting. She was equally certain they’d suspect something about his passport. It wasn’t his name on it. Well, maybe it was. If it was, then he’d lied about his real name to her.
The name on the passport was Miguel Hernandez. About as typical as John Smith, she suspected.
But they’d crossed the border without a problem and she was that much closer to crossing a line. She’d already crossed some, but none of them were anything that would be the end for her.
Not yet.
But it was coming.
She swung back and forth between not thinking about it and trying to overthink it. Did she want to do this? Did she try to call Jones in and see if there were legal lines they could take? But what legal lines would actually work?
None. She tried to think it through. She knew for a damned fact that both the US government and the Mexican government had gone after Ignacio Reyes more than once, and each time, they’d failed to shut him down. There were no legal reasons to keep his child away from him. Alex could claim he’d abused him, but Vaughnne knew how that worked. It was a toss of the dice as to whether or not he’d end up back with his father, and this couldn’t be left to chance.
Nor could they try and have him arrested based on what he’d done to Alex.
She laughed bitterly just thinking about that one. You see, Judge, he used the boy’s psychic ability to track down and murder some people who were going to raid the drug compound he runs. No, no . . . we don’t have proof of it, but the kid’s mom and his uncle believe it happened that way . . . yes, we’re certain the boy is in danger . . .
What legal recourse did they have?
She couldn’t see one.
Reyes had a long, long reach, and if the boy didn’t want to spend the rest of his life running, Reyes had to be out of the picture. Some of her fellow agents would frown on her for this, but Vaughnne didn’t see things in black and white. Some people didn’t need to be on this earth. She wouldn’t cast judgment on the man simply for being a drug dealer and she wouldn’t have gone after a man on her opinions of him alone. But the man had abused his son. He’d used his son to kill. If he got his hands on the boy, he’d do it again.
No child should be put through that. No person should be put through that.
If Vaughnne had to compromise herself, risk herself, land herself in jail . . . worse . . . whatever, to save a kid from that kind of hell, then so be it. She knew what she was doing, and even if it was a hard-ass choice to make, she knew what the right choice was.
Sometimes, the right choice was just the lesser of two evils, but she knew what she had to do.
One thing lifted some of the weight from her shoulders, though. She’d checked that awful website. It still existed, sadly. But the ad for the infamous item was no longer up.
Hopefully nobody else would come hunting them. They didn’t have time—
“Why are you so tense?”
Gus’s voice was a soft, velvet murmur in the night, but it did nothing to ease her ragged nerves. She felt like she’d chugged about two gallons of Monster and her adrenaline levels were cranked up on high. It wasn’t even just what she was doing. Her brain had been sending out little warnings all day long, and the later it got, the louder those warnings got.
Looking over at him, she shook her head and then focused on the windshield again, staring out at the moon-drenched night. “Something’s wrong. Or going wrong. I don’t know. How far away are we?”
“Twenty minutes by car. I’d planned to ditch it and walk in.”
“No.” The word tore out of her, and even though she suspected he knew this sort of thing a hell of a lot better than she did, there was no time for walking.
“If we drive in, he’s going to know,” Gus said quietly.
“We don’t have time. Something is wrong. I feel it, Gus. Really, really wrong.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Alex?”
Vaughnne shook her head. “It’s not him.” She’d already checked with Taige. The kid was safe, safe as he could be, tucked up at headquarters, and the other woman had already made headway getting him to shield himself, and that right there would make him less of a target.
“It’s not him,” she said again. Her gut was tight, cold, and hard. Her muscles, though, despite the fear, felt oddly loose and that, in and of itself, was enough to make her trepidation soar even higher. Everything in her was braced and ready for trouble. “We can’t take our time right now, Gus. Please. You . . .” She blew out a breath and then looked over at him. “You have to trust me on this.”
IF she was wrong and they blasted in there the way she seemed to want, they were both going to be in so much trouble.
Gus was used to trouble. He could handle it.
But risking her wasn’t an option he wanted to take.
He wanted to get her out of this alive.
If she was right . . . what had her so worried? Who had her so worried?
In the end, though, he supposed it didn’t matter.
They were here.
They had a goal.
And Vaughnne was a woman he’d decided he needed to trust. Perhaps if he’d trusted her, as she’d asked him to do from that day on the street when Alex was so ill, some of this, perhaps all of it, could have been avoided.
Please . . . you must promise me . . .