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CHAPTER TWELVE

The blood was still pooled on the floor.

Charlie couldn’t make herself look away. “I don’t understand. He was…sitting right there. This doesn’t make sense.”

“It happened so fast.” Granger’s voice had lost its sense of control. “I tried to stop him. I’m so sorry, Charlie. I don’t know how it happened.”

She knew. She’d watched the whole thing as though the recording of her life had somehow caught in the VCR she’d grown up with and froze on the single frame of her father ending his life. And she’d just stood there. Unable to move or stop him. In that single moment, her father had ignored the mountain of muscle coming right at him, and he’d looked straight at her.

Stop them.

All this time, all these years, she’d known Henry Acker as a man of conviction. One who’d never given in to threats from law enforcement, who’d never stood down from a fight or showed an ounce of weakness. What had changed?

Dr. Piel zipped the body bag closed over her father’s face as two other Socorro operatives wheeled the remains out on the stretcher. Because that was what he was now. The monster of a man she’d feared would swallow her up and systematically destroy her was nothing but a shell now. Sympathy smoothed the physician’s expression as Dr. Piel followed the team out of the interrogation room. “Charlie, I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” A heaviness she couldn’t describe closed in around her. A disconnect between her body and her brain. The events of the past three days were starting to compound. How much more was she expected to take? And why couldn’t she look away from the blood on the floor? “I just…don’t understand.”

“Unfortunately, that’s not uncommon. Family and friends rarely have answers when something like this occurs, but I’m happy to request his medical records if that will help.” The doctor bounced her gaze to Granger and back. “What’s important is that you take care of yourself right now. You’re injured and running on fumes.”

“I don’t care.” The tears were back, and she hated them. She hated that she still felt something for the man who’d turned her into…whatever it was he wanted her to be. She hated that he still had this control over her, that he could get her to grieve for him. And she hated that he’d taken his deal with the people who’d abducted her into that body bag with him.

“Charlie.” Granger placed a supportive hand under her elbow. “Dr. Piel’s right. You look like you’re about to collapse. You need some sleep and a few thousand calories to help you recover.”

“I don’t want to sleep, and I don’t want to eat. I want to know what he meant by what he said.” She turned all that building anger onto the man who deserved it the least. It flooded through her, out of control. Her heart rate spiked. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. The only thought in her mind was that last image of Henry Acker holding a razor blade to his neck. Over and over. She’d fed off her drive to stay one step ahead of her father for the past ten years, and now he just got to leave? That didn’t seem fair. “Stop them. What the hell is that supposed to mean, Granger? I have spent my entire life following his commands and cleaning up his messes. And now I’m just expected to…what? Take down an entire cartel at his suggestion?”

A rush of dizziness threatened to take her down. Charlie stumbled back into the wall. Low voices warbled in and out as Granger and Dr. Piel reached for her. Her legs gave out, and she collapsed. There were others closing in on her. Too close. “He wasn’t supposed to die.”

“She’s likely dehydrated. We need to get her to my exam room for an IV. Now.” Dr. Piel shoved to stand as strong arms threaded behind Charlie’s shoulders and along the backs of her knees. “Let’s go.”

“I’ve got you, Charlie. It’s going to be okay.” Granger held onto her, and she couldn’t help but want to bury herself in his strength. Walls and overhead lights blurred as he somehow managed to run with her weight at a full sprint. No matter the threat or the injury, he refused to back down, and she needed that right now. She needed his innate belief that the things they’d sacrificed could actually make the world a better place, because she was losing her grip. “We’re going to get through this.”

Her body hurt. She was tired. She didn’t want to do this anymore. Every decision that’d led her to this point had been to get justice for the lives Henry Acker had ruined, but there was no justice to be had anymore. There was nothing she could do to give them closure. Except to make sure her father’s deal with Sangre por Sangre never saw the light of day. “Put me down.”

Her voice barely carried over the pound of her own pulse. Charlie held onto consciousness by a single thread as exhaustion pulled at her muscles and brain. Time seemed to slip by. Second by second, minute by minute, and she had no control over it. Her head ached, and she couldn’t fight against the pull as her body tried to give up its fight.

Dr. Piel rushed ahead. “In here.”

Maneuvering her headfirst through the door, Granger angled her down onto the examination table. Bright lights bleached Charlie’s vision a split second before Granger centered himself over the source. “The doctor’s just going to give you a saline drip. You’re dehydrated and exhausted. You’ve got to give your body some time to recover.”

“No.” That single word slurred in her own ears. She tried to peel herself off the table, but Granger’s hand held her in place. “I can’t stay here.”

Confusion deepened the three distinct lines between his brows. “Charlie, you can barely stand on your own.”

“I don’t care. I have to leave. Please let me leave.” She fisted his shirt to haul herself upright.

“Granger, I need you to hold her still, or I’m going to puncture something I’m not supposed to.” Dr. Piel moved in close. Stinging pain pricked at the soft skin of Charlie’s inner elbow.

Her fight-or-flight kicked in. She ripped her arm back, tearing free of whatever the doctor had stabbed her with. Momentum forced her to overcorrect. The exam room blurred, and she hit the floor on the other side of the table. Adrenaline surged hot and fast. It replaced the pain spiking along her calf, and she managed to get to her feet.

“Charlie.” Granger moved to intercept her, but the doctor held a hand against his chest.

“Don’t, Granger. Give her space. She’s not thinking clearly,” Dr. Piel said. “Charlie, why do you need to leave?”

A massive migraine spread from the base of her skull. Charlie dared a step forward. Then another. She was capable of ordering her limbs to follow her commands, but something didn’t feel right. A numbness had taken hold. Not just in her body, but her mind. Using the end of the exam table to steady herself, Charlie took in the concern etched into Granger’s face. “Because my father was right. I’m the only one who can stop Sangre por Sangre .”

“I told you before. You’re not in this alone. I know it feels that way, but it’s not true.” He raised his hands out in front of him, as though approaching a wild animal, and maybe he was right to do so. Maybe Granger should think about himself first for once. “Every operative in this place will do whatever it takes to make sure the cartel never regains power. Especially me.”

He wasn’t going to let her go. That was clear now, and the tears burned down her face. Walking away from him had been the hardest decision she’d ever made in her life. Not becoming his CI. Not choosing to betray her father and everything he believed in. But leaving Granger behind. Because she’d been in love with him. Was still in love with him.

She wasn’t sure why it’d taken her so long to realize that was the reason she’d survived her abduction. Something deep inside of her had wanted what they’d had back enough to fight for her life when the chances of surviving were the lowest. It’d been the possibility of being in his orbit that had driven her to attack the driver of a vehicle exceeding sixty miles an hour in the middle of the desert with no concern for the consequences. All she’d wanted these past ten years was to feel him again, to know she wasn’t alone.

And she had to save that.

Because the longer he sided with her in this battle, the higher chance she’d lose him all over again. They’d come too close to death. He wouldn’t survive the next time. She felt that truth in through the numbness, deep down into her bones.

So she had to hurt him. She had to make him see the truth. That there wouldn’t be a future for them as long as she kept running. Was that what her father had been trying to tell her?

Charlie spotted an array of surgical tools on a rolling cart a few feet away. She darted for the scalpel, and both Granger and Dr. Piel backed up. There was only one way out of this, and damn it, he was going to force her to use it. She recalled the turns they’d taken to get to this room despite the fog working to shut down her cognitive function. She had to go. Now. “Let me leave, Granger.”

“Why?” Understanding seemed to hit, and his expression crumbled right in front of her. Granger lowered his hands, facing off with her as he had the night they’d met. “Why are you doing this? After everything we’ve been through together, why can’t you trust me?”

Her hand shook around the scalpel. Four words formed in her mind, and it took everything in her power to force them out. “That’s the first lesson they teach you in Acker’s Army, Agent Morais. I don’t trust anyone.”

Charlie rounded the end of the exam table and headed for the door. Without so much as a glance backward, she ran.

* * *

Granger stared after her .

“I can alert Scarlett. She can use the security system to shut down the building.” Dr. Piel lunged for the phone at the desk shoved into the corner of the exam room. Raising the handset to her ear, she hit one of the buttons. “Charlie isn’t going to make it far. She’s—”

A tearing Granger had become all too familiar with clawed through his chest. It had nothing to do with the shrapnel in his shoulder and everything to do with the woman who’d left him behind. Again. “Let her go.”

“We can stop her.” Dr. Piel turned to face him. “She needs medical attention. If she doesn’t get fluids, she might experience seizures, swelling in her brain and possibly lapse into a coma.”

“Hang up the phone. Alerting security won’t do any good.” Granger headed for the door. “It doesn’t matter how far she gets. We can’t keep her here against her will.”

“You survived a forest fire to find her,” Dr. Piel said. “You risked your own life to pull her out of that burning vehicle. She just watched her father kill himself. She’s obviously not in her right mind, and you’re just going to let her go out there alone? Sangre por Sangre will find her, Granger. Doesn’t that concern you?”

Granger didn’t bother turning back. He’d spent years trying to locate a woman who didn’t want to be found. And damn it, he was tired of the chase. He had a job to do: stop Sangre por Sangre from regaining their broken power. “Charlie made her choice.”

Working through the maze of Socorro’s headquarters, he made it to his bedroom and shoved inside. Zeus bounced off the bed and approached the door. Waiting. “She’s not coming.”

Granger unlocked the gun safe, pulling a weapon from inside. Acker’s Army had taken his preferred sidearm, and there was a chance he was never going to get it back. He grabbed a few more pieces of gear and ammunition, including his Kevlar vest, and rammed it into one of the duffel bags he pulled from under the bed. The zipper scratched at the scabs along the back of his hand, tearing a hardened chunk of skin free. Blood dripped down his wrist, but he didn’t have the patience to bandage the wound.

Sangre por Sangre had attempted to build an underground headquarters on twenty-two acres of land owned by one of its lieutenants, now long dead. There wasn’t much of the building left after one of Socorro’s operatives had literally torn the place down searching for the woman he loved after her abduction, but Granger couldn’t think of a more fitting safe house for the few remaining members of the cartel. Off the grid, decommissioned and too dangerous to occupy.

He’d start there.

A trail of dust cut across his window. Granger straightened, watching as one of Socorro’s SUV’s sped across the New Mexican landscape, heading east. The entire team was grounded from assignments until the details of Henry Acker’s death could be related to the local police. Which meant the driver was Charlie.

Granger shouldered his gear.

The bull terrier didn’t seem to get the message Charlie wasn’t going to walk through that door and grace Zeus with her presence. “Come on. We’ve got an assignment.”

The K9 didn’t budge.

“Zeus.” The call came out harsher than Granger meant it to, and the dog turned on him with a whine. His heart—finally starting to piece itself back together these past few days—fractured at the sight of Zeus’s sadness. He slipped the duffel strap off and let the bag hit the floor, lowering himself to the K9’s level. “I know. I’m going to miss her too.”

Granger allowed himself this moment of peace. Of him and Zeus hurting for the same loss. In a matter of days, Charlie had slipped back into his life and upended his world all over again. He didn’t know how, and hell, it didn’t really matter. Because there was no going back. “Come on, bud. We’ve got some cartel members to sit on.”

But the truth was, he just felt tired. And watching Charlie leave hurt more than the bullet shard in his shoulder, except this one had gone straight through his heart. He was bloody knuckled, battered and bruised. Because of her. Because of his need to keep her in a life she never intended to stay in. It seemed no matter what choice he made or how he tried to make up for failing Charlie in the past, he would always be second best.

To her need for freedom.

Her need for justice.

And her need to prove herself as an individual rather than a soldier.

Granger collected his bag and headed for the door. Only to be stopped by the journal sitting on the edge of his bed. Erin Acker’s journal. Charlie had broken into her father’s house for it, risked her life for it. It didn’t seem right to leave it here. He slipped it into one of the side pockets of his duffel and hit the hallway with Zeus on his heels. He took the stairs, uninterested in becoming another victim to the dark images and pressure in his head waiting to ambush him on the first floor. He mentally worked through the layout of Sangre por Sangre ’s battered headquarters as he entered Socorro’s garage.

To find Ivy Bardot standing in front of his SUV.

Understanding hit. “You gave her the keys and let her leave.” Granger should’ve known. All this time, he’d wondered if his superior allowed herself to consider anything but the mission. Now he had his answer.

Socorro’s founder didn’t bother denying it. “You know as well as I do she’s the key to the cartel’s entire plan. There’s something about her that Sangre por Sangre wants, and we need to know what that something is.”

“So you gave her an SUV and sent her on her way.” Son of a bitch. Ivy was going to use Charlie as bait. “You want her to lead us straight to the cartel.”

“Wouldn’t you have done the same in my position?” she asked.

Rage exploded through his chest and shot up his throat. Granger closed the distance between them as the last of his control slipped away. “I would’ve taken one look at her and realized she isn’t ready for the fight she’s walking into.”

Ivy stared up at him, so damn calm. She wasn’t the least bit intimidated by a man twice her size. She knew as well as he did she could put him on his ass faster than he could process the threat, and she wasn’t afraid to prove it at the slightest provocation. “And yet you didn’t stop her when she ran from Dr. Piel’s exam room.”

The accusation neutralized the fire in his veins, but it wasn’t strong enough to quiet the concern pushing him to act. He wasn’t strong enough. Charlie was gunning for a fight she wouldn’t win alone, and there was nothing he could do to convince her otherwise. The night of the Alamo pipeline attack, he’d felt useless. Wondering where he’d gone wrong and how he could’ve changed the course of events. Losing his job at Homeland Security as a consequence of defying orders to let Charlie loose as his CI had only shored up that crack in his confidence.

This was worse.

She’d been right there, within reach, and he’d somehow lost her all over again. Granger tightened his hold on his gear. “You brought me into Socorro because I know the way terrorist organizations and the members inside them work. Sangre por Sangre might not fit the bill exactly, but they’re desperate. This is their last stand, and I’m not going to let them use her like so many people have before. Like I have. So you can get out of my way or get in the vehicle, Ivy. Either way, I’m taking the fight to the people who started this. Maybe then Charlie will finally feel she’s earned her freedom, and she can stop running.”

“All right.” Red hair escaped the tight bun at the back of Ivy’s head, something Granger had never seen before in all the years he’d operated at Socorro. The former FBI agent had tried so hard to keep her hands on the reins, but something had happened. She was slipping. “But there’s something you need to know before you charge straight at the cartel and start a war.”

Ivy handed off her phone. “The coded notes on the blueprints. We weren’t able to identify the owner of the handwriting, but Scarlett was able to decipher the notes a few minutes ago.”

“How did she find the key so fast?” He read through the translated sentences. He took in times, dates and directions that didn’t make any sense.

“It was easy after I explained there was a killer who’d used this code before he disappeared off our radar within Sangre por Sangre ,” Ivy said. “She took a chance on thinking of it like a calling card.”

“He used the same key for both codes?” he asked.

“No. This code has been altered. There are only a few characters left from the original code. It’s very sophisticated. Something that would’ve taken years to create.” Ivy took a step into him. “But it did require a three--letter key. Just like the first. Scarlett believed it could be a set of initials.”

The notes seemed to indicate a schedule of some kind. But for what? Or who? Henry Acker’s name came to mind, but there was no way the general of Acker’s Army would be able to waltz into the state capitol building with his face plastered all over federal databases. “Whose?”

“It was Charlie’s, Granger,” Ivy said.

Granger didn’t understand. He pried his attention from the phone. “CGA. Charlie Grace Acker. Why would he use her initials to decrypt notes meant for Henry Acker? As a threat? To keep Acker from forgetting what was on the line?”

“We don’t believe he did.” The hardness in her voice

Acid surged up his throat as the pieces of Ivy’s theory stitched together in the silence between them. “Tell me you’re not saying what I think you’re saying.”

“There’s a reason you couldn’t find her for those ten years, Granger. Think about it.” Ivy’s gaze refused to let him go. “You approached Charlie in an effort to gather inside intelligence on Acker’s Army. You recruited her to undermine and dismantle her father’s organization with the promise to get her and her sisters out from under his control. But Sage and Erin are dead, and she blames him for their deaths. She’s hurting. She’s angry, and there’s no way she can destroy him on her own. What better way to get back at him than by fighting fire with fire?”

“This is insane.” Granger maneuvered around Ivy and headed for his vehicle. “Charlie isn’t working with Sangre por Sangre . They tried to abduct her. They nearly killed her.”

“Unless it was a failed extraction. She survived, Granger. Against all odds. How do you explain that?” Ivy latched onto his arm to get him to stop, and he turned on her.

“Sheer will.” He tossed his bag into the back seat and let Zeus climb inside. “She was raised to fight, Ivy. It’s all she knows.”

“You’re right. Fighting is all she knows, except now she has no one to fight. So what do you think is going to happen next?” Ivy asked. “She refused medical care and ran, Granger. Why?”

He didn’t have an answer for that.

“You have to move past your feelings and see the truth.” Socorro’s founder was waiting for him to see reason, but he couldn’t. Not when it came to Charlie. “That code we decrypted tells me Charlie Acker is the one calling the shots. And whatever she’s planning, she knows we’re coming.”