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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“I see you got my message.” This voice was different than her abductor’s. Familiar.

Charlie pried her eyes open, instantly overwhelmed in the center of a portable spotlight. Pressure built in her head to the point she wasn’t sure her stomach could take it anymore. Then the spotlight cut out.

She faced off with the darkness, trying to see through the shapes her brain summoned to make sense of her surroundings.

The light burned her retinas a second time. Charlie pressed her head against the cold steel at her back. Her wrists were tied, her ankles bound with rope to individual posts. Zip ties would’ve been so much easier to break through.

The spotlight went dark again.

“What message? I don’t know you.” The assault to her senses was keeping her from focusing fully. Not to mention the severe dryness in her mouth and the migraine thudding hard at the back of her head. Her abductor. He’d been here. Watching her in the dark. He must’ve knocked her out. And now she had no sense of time or location. Charlie pulled at the rope, sawing through the first layer of skin at her wrist and aggravating the healing rash she’d sustained during her abduction. Her entire body felt as though it were on fire.

Movement cut across the spotlight as it flicked back on, and a smaller feminine frame was outlined in its glow. “Oh, Charlie. Of course you do. One could argue you know everything about me. Just as I know everything about you. My favorite foods, my favorite book I wanted to read every night before bed. How I hated the taste of homemade toothpaste, and my fear of being excluded from all the reindeer games my big sisters never let me be part of growing up.”

Her brain struggled to connect the pieces. “I don’t… I don’t understand. Who…”

No. It wasn’t possible. Charlie pressed her head back into the scaffolding holding her hostage. “You… You died.”

The spotlight darkened, and everything inside Charlie wanted to turn it back on to confirm her worst fears.

Light blazed across the space.

And the woman was right there. Standing in front of her with nothing more than three feet between them. Back from the dead. “It felt like that the entire time I was waiting for you to keep your promise. It felt like dying. Over and over, a thousand times.”

“Erin.” Her sister’s name left her mouth as nothing more than a whisper as she battled with logic and exhaustion and confusion. “What have you done?”

“I took control of my life, Charlie. Isn’t that what you wanted me to do? Why you ran and left me behind?” Her younger sister sidestepped to Charlie’s left, the spotlight highlighting the ten-year difference between the girl she’d known and the woman she’d become. Erin’s hair was shorter, cut for convenience rather than inspired by the magazines she’d hidden under her mattress away from their father. Her face seemed thinner. Features Charlie had associated with the fifteen-year-old she’d loved no longer existed. Instead, there was something almost foreign about her. Detached. “There wasn’t a single day of the past ten years that I didn’t think about you. Not one moment that I didn’t wonder if you thought about me.”

“Of course I did. Everything I did, every choice I made, was to help you escape Vaughn.” Charlie forced herself to stare into the spotlight in order to adapt her vision faster. Another glow pulled at her attention, near where Erin stood. “To finally get you out. But when I heard you’d died… I thought I was too late.”

The spotlight went dark.

Leaving the familiar outline of her sister’s shape.

And the glow of a barrel fire.

Metallic scraping got her attention and raised goose bumps along Charlie’s arms.

“There’s that promise again. The same one you told me the night we set the charges on the Alamo pipeline. You were going to find a way out of Acker’s Army. I lost count of how many times I went to bed with that hope.” Erin’s voice had changed. No longer familiar and soothing, but dark. “But instead, you ran away, and you left me and Sage there to die. I managed to escape before police got to the scene. Barely. I waited, you know. For you to come back. For you to keep your promise. But you never came.”

The spotlight found a new life.

Exposing the steel rod in Erin’s hand. The tip glowed orange, flickering with heat—like a brand—as her sister neared. Erin angled the rod closer to Charlie, letting her feel the scalding heat against her face. Her sister’s features took second priority as Charlie focused on the threat of feeling that rod on her skin.

“Erin, you don’t have to do this. Please. Dad is dead. You can leave.” Her voice shook. Charlie pulled against the ropes as the final conversation between her and her father filtered across her mind in a desperate attempt to come up with something—anything—to neutralize her sister’s hatred.

“I already have, Charlie. Don’t you understand?” Erin waved the steel poker back and forth, illuminating her own face in the process. A dreamlike daze seemed to relax her sister’s expression. “Once I realized you weren’t going to keep your promise, I devised my own plan to escape Daddy’s control.”

Understanding hit. “ Sangre por Sangre. But how?”

“You remember those construction sites our father used to send us to for explosives?” Erin said. “Every single one of them was owned by the cartel through a number of shell corporations. Upper management may have discovered who was responsible a few months ago after Daddy accidentally let the information slip. The cartel may have then sent one of their lieutenants to take care of the problem. And I may have convinced him we could work together. I would help them salvage what remained of their organization, and, in exchange for that help, they would destroy Acker’s Army.”

“He knew, didn’t he? Dad knew.” Why hadn’t she seen it before? Why hadn’t she put the pieces together before now? “That’s why he wouldn’t tell me about the deal he made with Sangre por Sangre . He was willing to provide manpower and weapons because of you. In his mind, everything he’s done has been for our benefit. Yours, Sage’s and mine. And giving you up wasn’t an option.”

Erin stared at the glowing tip of the steel rod. “A mistake on his part. I always thought our father was a hard man who demanded perfection at every turn, but in reality, he was very easily manipulated if you managed to hit the right buttons. And now he’s dead.”

“That means you’re free, Erin. You can live your life without him hanging over your head.” Charlie tried to wiggle free from the ropes around her wrists, but her sister had known exactly what she was capable of. The scaffolding she’d been bound to shook, and for the first time since she’d regained consciousness, she realized she and Erin weren’t alone. A man stood behind the spotlight. Most likely the one who’d knocked her unconscious in the first place. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Whatever it is the cartel has planned, whatever they’re making you do, you don’t have to be a part of it. We can leave. We can start over. Together. You just have to loosen the ropes. I can take care of everything else.”

The spotlight died, casting her back into darkness and stealing the hope that’d held her upright.

A laugh Charlie didn’t recognize echoed off the walls.

“You still don’t understand, do you?” Erin’s voice seemed distant now. Alien. Sparks shot up from the floor as her sister dragged the end of the poker along the cracked cement. “ Sangre por Sangre isn’t forcing me to do anything against my will, Charlie. That day the cartel sent a lieutenant to kill our father, I proposed a different plan. To use him and his army to our own advantage. Much the same way that Homeland Security agent approached you.”

“What?” Charlie asked.

“You didn’t think I knew about him, but it was so clear to anyone who bothered to notice. I noticed,” Erin said. “The late-night disappearances from your room. The way you’d smile throughout the day when you didn’t think anyone was looking. You changed. You lost your touch during sparring. Like you were distracted. You were more compliant to our father’s commands, and I knew something had changed.”

The spotlight lit up again, burning Charlie’s retinas.

Erin was holding the steel rod back over the edge of the barrel fire, twisting it this way and that, as though she had all the time in the world. “So I followed you. I waited as you slipped out of your bedroom window and met him in the trees. I didn’t recognize him at first, but it wasn’t long before I realized you’d been selling us out. All of us.”

“For you, Erin. I only agreed to give up information on Acker’s Army and our father in exchange for the three of us to get free.” Didn’t she understand that? She’d put her own life on the line for her sisters. Only she’d been too late to save Sage. But she could still help Erin.

“You can tell yourself that all you want, dear sister, but I know the truth.” Erin brought the rod back up in front of her. “We were a team, Charlie. You, me and Sage. It was supposed to be the three of us against our father. We were supposed to be together forever, but I saw how you looked at that agent, how much you wanted to please him, and it seems like nothing has changed. You’re terrified that he’ll be disappointed in you, that he won’t have any use for you. You’re as weak as he was, you know? The man who raised us. All I have to do is push the right buttons. Fortunately for you, I have a way to fix that.”

“What do you mean?” Charlie lost her focus on escape as Erin came back, the steel poker between them. The heat bled through her scrub top. “Fix what?”

“I have a use for you. I can give you purpose again. I can make the past ten years disappear as though they never happened. I have the explosives, thanks to my friends here. All I need from you is your skills in directing the blast,” her sister said.

“The blueprints I found in Dad’s office.” Charlie rushed to make sense of the cartel’s motives. “You wanted him and Acker’s Army to attack the state capitol. Why?”

“There’s something we need.” Erin’s voice had taken on a wispy quality again. Lighter than it should be, considering the circumstances. “Evidence that was taken from us by the DEA. We know it’s being stored in one of their facilities. We just don’t know which one, and I’m kind of in a hurry.”

“You mean drugs.” She couldn’t believe this. Her little sister—the perfect innocent girl she’d helped raise—had sided with a brutal, unforgiving drug cartel. “That’s what all of this is about?”

“I gave my word, Charlie. I promised the cartel I would do whatever it took to help them put their organization back together, in exchange for helping me dismantle Daddy’s life’s work.” Erin pulled at the collar of her shirt, exposing angry and twisted scaring along her collarbone. “But first, I need to know you’re one of us. That you won’t betray me again.”

“Erin, please.” Survival kicked in. Charlie wrenched her wrists and ankles, but there was no give in the rope.

“Don’t worry, Charlie. The pain only lasts a minute.” Erin lowered the steel rod against Charlie’s shoulder.

The heat burned through her scrub top and past layers of skin. Every muscle in her body fought against the scalding pain of hot steel, but there was no relief. Her scream ripped up the back of her throat.

Erin pulled the poker back. Satisfied. “Then you and I are going to get to work.”

* * *

The scream pierced through the heavy rhythm of his breathing.

It tunneled past Granger’s focus and pulled him up short.

His gut tightened as pain, agony and hopelessness combined into a hot rage in his veins. “Charlie.”

Granger picked up the pace. Zeus hadn’t been able to pick up her scent yet, but they were getting close. He could feel it. His heart rate hit out-of-control levels the harder he drove himself, but he had no other option. He wasn’t going to lose Charlie. Not again. “Go on, Zeus, go get her!”

The bull terrier vaulted ahead despite the extra thirty pounds on his frame. He disappeared around a corner up ahead, and Granger had to trust the K9 would lead him true. The muscles in his legs protested with every step and aggravated the wound along his rib cage, but there wasn’t anything in the world that would stop him from getting to her.

Not when he was so close.

Granger rounded the corner, following Zeus’s trail.

A gunshot exploded from down the corridor.

He slowed his momentum and listened. Silence seeped through the walls as he waited for a response. Damn it. He’d rip this place apart if something had happened to his K9. He whistled low enough for Zeus to pick up on, a specific tone only the bull terrier would respond to. Granger approached the corner and rounded it without hesitation

A fist flew at him.

He dodged out of the way and threw a right hook at the attacker who’d been waiting for him. His knuckles screamed at the contact, pain vibrating up his wrist and into his arm. Granger palmed the side of the soldier’s head and slammed the bastard into the wall. The man collapsed. “Seems I’m in the right place after all.”

Another attacked from behind. He managed to block the strike coming straight at his face, then latched onto the soldier’s shoulders and threw the second attacker to the cement.

“I’ve been looking forward to this moment, Agent Morais,” a voice said. “Please give my regards to Agent Bardot.”

Ivy? Strong arms wrapped around Granger’s neck from behind and threw off his balance. He stumbled back, at the whim of a third soldier tasked with slowing him down. His shoulders hit the wall a split second before a fist rocketed into his face. Lightning struck behind his eyes as momentum threw him to one side. The taste of blood coated the inside of his mouth as another soldier joined in the fun. “The hell do you want with Ivy?”

“She and I go way back.” Recognition flared as memories of the attack in the woods surrounding Vaughn rushed to the front of his mind. The man who’d taken Charlie, the cartel lieutenant. “Didn’t she tell you? Perhaps when this is all over, I’ll pay her a visit myself. Until then, I’ve been asked to keep you here. Dead or alive—it doesn’t matter to me.”

“Good luck with that.” He kicked at the attacker to his right and jolted the son of a bitch back and gained a bit of freedom in the process.

Granger launched his elbow into the soldier’s rib cage. The bastard doubled over and gave Granger the perfect opportunity. Grabbing for the attacker’s boot, he threw everything he had into getting the man off his feet. Only the soldier fisted Granger’s clothing and brought them down together. Aches charged through his system as he tried to get his bearings. The bullet graze in his side screamed in response. Not to mention tore at the healing muscles in his shoulder. His vest kept him from taking a full breath and only added to the dizziness trying to get the best of him.

A moan filtered through the overactive race of his pulse. He threw a fist into the soldier’s face beside him, knocking a piece off the board. Granger struggled to get to his feet, unsure of his own weight. Just as the next strike forced him back down. Pain erupted from his mouth and nose in a blinding flash of heat and agony, but he wasn’t going down. Not until he found Charlie.

Granger cocked his elbow back and targeted the son of a bitch in front of him as exhaustion undermined his control. His fist streaked past the soldier he was aiming for, and Granger couldn’t help but follow. Faster than he expected, his attack shoved him into the opposite wall of the corridor.

Hunched down, the third soldier angled his shoulder into Granger’s gut and hauled him off his feet. One step. Two. Gravity released its hold on him as his opponent slammed him to the floor.

He barely had a second to make sense of his at-tacker’s next move before a knee slammed into his face. The world threatened to spin as Granger tried to regain control of his body. A boot carved into his rib cage and stole the oxygen from his lungs despite the protection of his Kevlar vest.

Granger summoned the last of his adrenaline reserves and put everything he had into getting off the floor. He dug his fingers into the wall for support. Throwing his shoulder into the nearest attacker, he lunged at the man standing between him and Charlie and pulled the soldier off his feet. The muscles in his legs burned as he hauled the added weight through a thin door on the other side of the corridor. They spilled into the room and hit the ground as one.

His mouth filled with blood. Granger spit it out as the pain in his head tried to warn him he was shutting down. Red stains spewed in every direction, creating miniature Rorschach tests on the floor.

Granger pulled a blade from his ankle holster. He arched his arm and buried the tip of the knife into the soldier’s thigh. With a twist, he inflicted as much pain as he could to take the cartel member out of commission. Only the bastard wouldn’t go down. Granger fisted both sides of the soldier’s collar and threw him into the floor face-first.

The cartel lieutenant he’d left in the hallway had come around. He shot straight for Granger’s throat and squeezed, pinning him against the floor. “Do you know how many women I’ve killed for challenging Sangre por Sangre ? Your FBI agent Ivy Bardot doesn’t even know about all the other bodies I buried. She only found the ones I wanted her to find. Now imagine what I’m going do to Charlie when I’m finished. How long do you think it will take you to find her? You and your team of dogs will have to search the entire state to put her back together.”

“No.” The visual was too much. Pressure built in his head with every second his brain lacked oxygen, but he hadn’t come this far to stop now. He maneuvered one hand around the soldier’s wrist, broke the suffocating contact with his throat and twisted until the bones of the man’s hand snapped.

A scream echoed off the walls as the cartel member dropped to his knees, and Granger rocketed his fist into the son of a bitch’s temple to put him down. “You’ll never touch her again with that hand.”

The final rush of adrenaline seemed to drain right out of him then, and he stumbled toward the door and back out into the corridor. His brain had a hard time making sense of direction, but there was something pulling him deeper into the building. He sucked in as much air as his lungs could hold, and still, it wasn’t enough. Peeling off his Kevlar vest, Granger discarded it on the floor to get a hold of himself. “I’m coming, Charlie. I’m coming.”

His boots kicked up chunks of cement as he used the wall to keep him upright. All he had to do was take that next step. To keep moving forward. “Just hang on.”

The corridor emptied him out into alcove lined with scaffolding. Spotlights cast too-bright light around the room. A barrel fire burned at one end with a steel poker discarded nearby, its tip still red from heat. The scream. He caught sight of severed rope hanging from one section of the scaffolding and crossed the room. Pulling it free, he rubbed the fibers between his fingers and scanned the rest of the room. Empty. His chest filled with all the longing and grief and rage he’d felt after her disappearance and honed it into a single word. “Charlie!”

The building moaned in response. Dust fell in streams. Then a single chunk of cement from above. The rock exploded upon impact and sent shards in every direction. The entire structure seemed to be suffering right along with him.

A bark cut through the tremors vibrating through the walls.

That single sound washed the failure from his veins and focused his attention to a doorway across the room. Granger discarded the section of rope, jogging for the exit. “Zeus?”

The door dumped him into an area not mapped on satellite imagery. Weapon raised, he cleared each door he passed along the corridor. The scaffolding. There was a reason Sangre por Sangre wouldn’t let this building fall apart and die where it stood. They were still building in secret. Under the radar from law enforcement and Socorro. Damn it. How long had he and his team let them restructure without notice? Wood beams braced up the ceiling, preventing the shaft from falling in on itself. The unpaved ground slopped downward, and the only place Granger could think where it led was straight to hell.

An earthquake shook the corridor and knocked Granger into the wall. Despite the cartel’s determination to keep this building on its last legs, the whole place was about to come down around them. Dirt slid beneath his shirt and into his hair, pushing him to pick up the pace.

He had to move fast.

Granger followed the shaft deeper into the earth as one of the beams fell out of place. A landslide of dirt cascaded behind him. Within seconds, the way he’d come was sealed. Another bark sounded from the darkness ahead. He couldn’t focus on a way out right now. All that mattered was getting to Charlie and Zeus. They were his team—his future—and he would do whatever it took to reach them.

He breached an anterior room off the main shaft. And froze.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you, Agent Morais.” The woman held Charlie at gunpoint. A hint of familiarity pricked at the back of his mind, and Granger found himself looking at a dead woman. “We have so much to talk about.”