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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Charlie struggled to pick an emotion to feel.

There were just too many, all vying for her attention. The burn on her collarbone screamed with every move of her fingers interlaced behind her head, but no amount of pain could keep her from taking her gaze off Granger.

He’d come for her.

After everything she’d said—everything she’d done—to protect him, he’d once again risked his life in favor of saving hers. A sob shook through her at the thought but cut short as dirt from the ceiling rained down in handfuls.

“You pull that trigger, and it’s the last thing you’ll ever do, Erin.” Granger was slowly closing the distance between them. There was nowhere for them to go. This place was about to cave in, and the three of them would be buried if they didn’t leave now.

“Funny. I was about to tell you one more step and I’ll pull the trigger.” Erin pulled back on the weapon’s slide and loaded a round into the chamber. “My father raised me to be the best, Agent Morais. Do you really think you can cross this room before Charlie dies?”

The barrel of Erin’s weapon scratched against her scalp, and Charlie closed her eyes to clear her head. Instead, her mind forced her to face a black pool of ifs and whys. “Erin, please. You can still walk away from this. I know you’re scared. I was too when I first got out from underneath Dad’s control, but you can do this. We just have to—”

Erin fired a shot into the ceiling. Dirt hit the ground from above, and a crack spread out from the bullet’s entry. “Stop trying to convince me we’re a team. You were never any good at it, Charlie, even before you disappeared. No. Here’s what’s going to happen. Agent Morais and his doggy sidekick are staying here while you and I have some quality sister time. On your feet.”

Her sister wrenched her arm up, bringing Charlie to stand. “If you so much as move in our direction, I’ll shoot her. If you call your dog, I’ll shoot her. There is nothing you can do to save yourselves, Agent Morais. I’m the one—”

Charlie wrenched her elbow back into Erin’s stomach. She turned as her sister brought the weapon up. Ramming her shoulder into Erin’s belly, Charlie tried to knock the gun from her hand. And failed.

“Charlie!” Granger screamed.

Erin buried the heel of her boot in Charlie’s chest. The back of her sister’s hand made contact and knocked Charlie off her feet. They’d trained together. They’d learned to fight from the same source. There wasn’t anything Charlie could do that wouldn’t be met with equal or greater force. And, in truth, she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to hurt her baby sister. Not when she had so many memories of helping raise her. Guilt for not saving her as she’d promised.

She stared up at Erin from the ground as the betrayal and loss and grief she’d suffered at the news of her sister’s death washed over her.

“You can’t beat me, Charlie. I’m not the same girl you knew back then.” Erin buried her boot into Charlie’s gut. “I’m stronger than you’ll ever be. I always have been, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me or Sangre por Sangre now.”

Her ribs threatened to break under another assault. Charlie gasped for breath, but her lungs refused to inhale. She curled in on herself to relieve the pain sparking through her. Her cough bounced off the failing walls and ceiling.

“Stop!” Granger took a step forward, holding his bull terrier partner back. “Erin, stop. She’s your sister.”

Erin took aim. At him. “You did this to her. You corrupted her. You turned her into something weak with promises of protection and love. Does she even know Homeland Security never authorized you to make her a confidential informant? Does she know how you failed her, that if something had happened, she wouldn’t have been protected at all?”

Granger didn’t seem to have an answer for that.

And Charlie didn’t care.

Because she would’ve still taken the risk. Just for the chance to start her own life, outside of Vaughn, away from her father. To go to a movie in a theater and drink as many strawberry milkshakes as she wanted. To see the world and work diner jobs. To be with someone who loved her. She’d make that choice over and over. Granger had given her that chance. He’d given her everything.

“You’ll never be free this way, Erin. Dad’s still controlling you. It’s just with your own fear.” Charlie kicked her heel out with everything she had.

Erin’s feet swept out from underneath her. Her sister managed to keep herself upright, but the gun hit the ground. Erin had been right. The little girl Charlie had known all her life was gone. Now there was only an emptiness.

Grabbing for the weapon, Charlie brought it up. Her finger slipped over the trigger. Ready to bring all of this to an end.

Erin crushed her hand against Charlie’s forearm, and her aim went wide. Her sister regained control of the gun and reached out, latching onto Charlie’s neck. And squeezed.

She circled both hands around Erin’s wrists as the life drained out of her, but there was no relief. The burn on her collarbone protested even the smallest movements.

Granger rushed forward.

“Now, I’m starting to lose my patience with you both. So here’s what’s going to happen next.” Erin took aim. And pulled the trigger.

A groan registered from behind Charlie. And it was then she knew Granger had been hit. Every cell in her body honed in on letting go of the feelings attached to her sister. She twisted out of Erin’s hold and gasped for air.

Just as nearly a hundred pounds of K9 weight vaulted over her.

Zeus collided with Erin and brought her down. The bull terrier did what he did best while playing his favorite game and sat on her sister’s chest with his full weight. The gun knocked free of Erin’s hand and skittered out of reach.

The ceiling shook above them, bringing Charlie’s attention up. “Granger, we’ve got to get out of here.” She didn’t hear a response, cutting her gaze to the unmoving man on the ground. Her heart shot into her throat. “Granger!”

Dragging herself upright, she let gravity lead her way to him and collapsed at his side. Blood spread over the same shoulder he’d taken a bullet in two months ago. She pressed her hand to the wound, watching as a pool of blood seeped out the back. It was a through and through. Easily treated as long as they got out of this mess.

“Why do people keep aiming for this shoulder?” His attempt to lighten the mood worked better than she wanted it to. “Hasn’t it been through enough?”

The shaft walls started to crumble around them. Zeus sneezed from the added dust in the air.

“Come on. You need to stand. We’ve got to go.” Taking his weight, Charlie angled her shoulder beneath his arm. His face had been battered. He seemed to be covered in blood no matter where she looked, but he was alive. They were both alive. For the time being. “Zeus, let’s go.”

The K9 obeyed, leaving Erin gasping for breath.

Her sister clawed for the weapon just out of reach. “I’m not finished, Charlie. You owe me. You owe me ten years of waiting!”

“No, Erin. I don’t. Because you’re still stuck in the past, and I was brave enough to go after my future.” Charlie turned to face her as the ceiling collapsed directly onto her sister. Dust billowed out from the hole in the ceiling and spread faster than she expected.

“Run!” Granger clutched onto her hand and pulled her through the opening. He kept her at his side as the walls seemed to disintegrate right in front of her eyes.

Her legs protested with each step, but they couldn’t slow down. They couldn’t stop. Zeus raced ahead of them like that reindeer she’d read about as a kid helping Santa through the fog on Christmas Eve.

Except part of the shaft had collapsed in front of them.

She could see the other side. Light permeated from the other end of the tunnel, but there was no way for them to get to it. Wood beams and an oversized mound of dirt had cut them off. “Start digging!”

Zeus took the order with enthusiasm and started using both paws to dig. Charlie bit back the pain of her branded shoulder and the relentless pain in her skull as she grabbed for handfuls of dirt from the top of the mound.

But the ceiling was still caving in. With every scoop they got out of the way, the earth seemed to want to fill the void, and they had to start again. Dirt kicked up into the air and drove down into her lungs. If tens of thousands of tons of earth didn’t crush them, they would die of suffocation. A rumble shifted the ground underneath her feet, and Charlie looked back to see the shaft collapsing in on itself.

“Granger.” His name left her mouth as nothing more than a whisper. They’d run out of time. No matter how many minutes they’d made up for these past three days, it was never going to be enough.

“Don’t give up.” Granger secured her in his arms as the wave of dirt and debris drew near. “I love you. I’m always going to love you.”

“I’ve loved you ever since that night you offered me a strawberry milkshake. You changed my life for the better, and I’ll never be able to thank you for that,” she said.

“Granger!” A voice cut through the low groan of the building coming down on top of them. A single hand drove through the mound of loose dirt. “Grab hold of the rope!”

Someone had offered them a lifeline.

“Go!” Granger maneuvered Charlie up the side of the mound, and she wrapped the rope around her wrist. “Pull!”

Charlie took a deep breath as though she were about to dive for the Olympics. Her arm stretched through to the other side as thousands of pounds of dirt threatened to crush her, but there was another force on the other end. One that wanted her to live.

She broke through the wall of debris to find Ivy Bardot on the other end. Untwisting the rope from around her wrist, she shoved it at Socorro’s founder. “We need to get them out of there!”

“Granger, rope!” Ivy speared the ratty fibers back through the wall of dirt as the ground shook beneath their feet.

“Pull!” Granger’s voice boomed through the space on the other side, and Charlie and Ivy worked together to get Zeus through the limited opening.

The bull terrier shook layers of dust from his coat and sneezed three times before circling around Charlie’s feet. Untying the knot on his collar, she drove the end of the rope back through the mound. “Granger!”

Only there was no response.

The rope remained slack, and the seconds slipped through her fingers as easily as the grains of sand through an hourglass. “Granger.”

She drove both hands into the mound, searching for a sign he’d survived the collapse.

And pulled a single hand free.

* * *

Two days later…

Dying in a shaft collapse hadn’t hurt so bad.

Granger tried to sit up in the recovery bed, but the mattress and pillows were too damn soft. He kept sinking down into the middle as if he’d been ordered to recover in the middle of a marshmallow.

The lights were too dim. His body kept trying to go to sleep on him, but he wanted to stay awake for updates from the team.

Two bodies had been recovered in the bowels of Sangre por Sangre ’s headquarters. The third soldier who’d attacked him—the one intent on making his relationship with Ivy clear—hadn’t been found. Seemed the son of a bitch was good at dodging death. Though Socorro’s fearless leader didn’t seem bothered by Charlie’s description of her abductor, Granger was fairly certain the man Ivy and her partner suspected of killing those women all those years ago and the one Granger had knocked unconscious were one and the same. Which meant Socorro’s undercover source within the cartel couldn’t surface. At least not yet.

Scarlett had decrypted all of the notes written in the margins from the blueprints taken from Henry Acker’s office, including the cartel’s final goal: retrieving the massive amount of fentanyl pills confiscated from Sangre por Sangre less than a month ago. Turned out, the government had only been on the lookout for the pills because of a sample collected by Scarlett in a warehouse raid to save a DEA agent’s son. Six million dollars’ worth. Enough to put Sangre por Sangre back on top of the drug hierarchy, so long as they were able to liquidate their inventory.

A knock registered from the door, and Charlie—in all her gauzed and bandaged glory—leaned against the doorframe. “Up for some company?”

“As long as it’s you.” Granger relaxed back against the pillow, taking in everything he could about her.

“This is killing you, isn’t it? Having to lay here and recover like a good operative,” she said.

She wasn’t wrong. “Doc had one of my teammates drag me back when I tried to leave. Said she’d sedate me the next time.”

“Patience has never been your strong suit.” She brushed a section of his hair off his forehead, exposing the gauze beneath her shirt collar. “Mine either. I think that’s why we get along so well.”

Her smile took his attention off the ache in his shoulder, but more, it gifted him a knot of hope. That they could move on from this. Together. “How are things in Vaughn?”

“Chaotic, but Acker’s Army has officially dismantled. Once I informed the residents my father was dead and why, there didn’t seem to be any interest for anyone else to step forward.” She skimmed her fingers down his arm, raising goose bumps in her path. “His legacy is dead, and the families of the people he hurt will be able to move on now. Just like we always dreamed of.”

“I’m sorry about your father, Charlie. I know a part of you still loved him,” he said.

“Yeah. Deep down, I believed him when he told me everything he did, everything he put us through, was meant to make us stronger, so we didn’t have to suffer like he did. That’s what fathers are supposed to do, right?” Her expression smoothed over. She was retreating again, holding herself back from having to feel the grief that came with losing a parent. In time, Granger trusted she would learn to deal with it, but for now, he’d let her grieve how she felt she needed to. “But at the same time, look at what happened to Sage. What happened to Erin.” She straightened. “Were they able to recover my sister’s body?”

“Yeah. Turns out that tunnel wasn’t the only one. Once the engineers were able to map out one that ran parallel, they managed to get the excavators in and clear out the collapse.” He’d been lucky. Just a few more seconds and Granger would’ve suffocated right along with Charlie’s sister. Lost forever. But she’d pulled him out. “She’s with the medical examiner in Albuquerque.”

“Good. I know what she did was terrible and hurt a lot of people, but she didn’t deserve to stay down there,” she said. “I guess I’m the one who gets to choose where she goes.”

“You have a place in mind?” he asked.

“She tried to get out of Vaughn her entire life. I don’t think it would be fair to take her back.”

“What about your safe house?” He twisted his torso toward the nightstand on the other side of the bed. The bullet graze along his rib cage didn’t like the movement one bit, but this was important. “Maybe this could be buried with her.”

He handed her Erin’s journal, the one she’d taken from her sister’s room the first night she’d come back to New Mexico.

“We used to write each other notes in a journal like this. In a special code only the two of us knew. Just in case Dad started snooping.” She flipped through the pages, landing on the last entry. “She kept it up. Even after I left, she was writing me notes.”

“Come here.” Granger brought her head to his chest, below his newest bullet wound. “She was going to kill you, Charlie. I couldn’t let her take you from me again.”

A line of tears glistened in her eyes.“I know. I just wish she hadn’t decided to let her anger and fear make her choices. Maybe then she’d still be alive.”

“Maybe,” he said.

The click of nails echoed down the hallway. A thud slammed into the recovery room door. The entire frame threatened to break under whatever had hit it.

“I’m going to take a wild guess that Zeus is here to see you.” Charlie pried herself from the edge of his bed and answered the door.

The bull terrier took the invitation without hesitation and launched himself onto the bed. Granger’s legs instantly regretted the added weight as he wrestled with the K9 one-handed. “I missed you too, buddy. I hope Charlie’s been taking good care of you these past couple days.”

“Well, he really took more care of me than I did of him, isn’t that right?” She scratched Zeus between his ears, and the dog seemed to melt.

Great. Granger was never going to be able to get out of this bed between the two of them.

“How’s the shoulder?” she asked.

“No shards left behind. Seemed the second bullet pushed the shrapnel from the first out. Dr. Piel called it a shot in a million.” Granger settled back in the bed, no longer feeling as though he needed to leave. Instead, he wanted to remember everything about this moment. “I’m feeling better than I have in a long time. Then again, maybe it has something to do with the possibility of seeing you once I get out of this bed.”

Her smile chased back the numbness starting in his toes and reinvigorated his nervous system. It was a smile only he saw, a spark that couldn’t be contained. And he was lucky enough to witness it now. She leaned over the edge of the bed and pressed her mouth to his. “I didn’t realize I had such an influence on your recovery. Maybe I should visit more often.”

“I like the sound of that,” he said.

“I just have one question for you before I agree to anything.” There was a brightness in her eyes he hadn’t seen in far too long, and Granger couldn’t help but lose himself in it. “Do you like strawberry milkshakes, Agent Morais?”

“I would kill for a strawberry milkshake right now, but I think I’m beginning to like this even more.” He fisted her jacket and pulled her in for another kiss. The taste of her spread across his tongue and quieted all of the violent memories he’d held onto these past few weeks. It wasn’t the mere physical act of having her here but the connection. To her.

“I think I can come around to your way of thinking.” She whispered the words against his mouth. “For a price.”

“Whatever it is, I’m willing to pay it.” There was no arguing about that. He didn’t care what she required of him. He would do whatever it took to keep from losing her again. “As long as it gets me you.”

“Tell me you love me,” she said.

“I love you, Charlie.” He set his uninjured hand against her face, and Zeus instantly took that to mean he needed attention too. The dog army-crawled up Granger’s chest and set that wet nose against his chin. “I think I fell in love with you the night I met you in your father’s backyard with a rifle pointed at my heart, and I was too much of a coward to say it.”

It wasn’t sudden. It was three months of trusting her as his confidential informant, ten years of building her up in his mind and four days of fighting with her at his side. No matter the circumstance, she’d been right here with him. “And I want you to know, official paperwork or not, I never would’ve let anything happen to you while under my supervision. Ever.”

“I knew, Granger. I knew Homeland Security wasn’t going to consider me an official confidential informant because of my relationship to my father.” Charlie pressed her face into his hand, planting a kiss in his palm. “Your superior contacted me. He tried to convince me to sever my contact with you, but I didn’t care. I made the choice to trust what you were doing. Because we were a team.”

“Then and now.” And he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Forever,” she said. “So, Agent Morais, how about that milkshake?”

He searched the window facing out into the corridor and clocked the security camera posted outside. “We can have all the milkshakes you want if you get me out of this room without anyone else finding out.”

“Good thing I have experience with disappearing.” She kissed him again. “You’ve got a deal.”

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from Corralled in Cutthroat Creek by Juno Rushdan