Page 4 of K-9 Guardians (New Mexico Guard Dogs #4)

The water bottle exploded on impact mere inches from her face as she and King waited in a conference room off the school’s main office.

Droplets sprayed out from the impact zone against the wall and attached to her skin, but she wouldn’t wipe them away. They were evidence of a man’s descent into desperation. She needed them to keep her focused.

King’s son had been kidnapped.

Her heart rate hit a high point as he turned to face whoever had come through the door. Ready to unleash all that burning rage on the nearest unsuspecting witness. His shoulders hiked with tension, almost painful to look at, but in a split second, the anger drained.

King sank into one of the chairs around the too-small conference room. Nothing like Socorro’s. Not in size, at least, but the work done in this space was just as important to the families that needed this school. “They took my son, Scarlett.”

“We’re going to find him.” It was easy to match his tone. Her chest felt too tight at the thought of someone coming in here, claiming to be Julien’s mother and walking away with King’s son in order to punish a man for doing his job. Hadn’t he been through enough? “The administrator at the front desk checked the woman’s ID when she requested to check him out. She remembers the name matched Eva’s. But it looks as though when the school in Washington, DC, transferred his records, there was no note about Eva’s death. Her name is still attached to his records. I sent the district the death certificate to have that information changed.”

That was all she could think to do while King raged. The principal had contacted the police. Officers were searching the school property and the surrounding neighborhood, but whoever took Julien wouldn’t stick around. They wanted him for something, and it would be hell to get him back.

“He’s ten years old.” The strangled words sounded practically forced from his throat.

And she understood that. The amount of effort it took to confront your greatest fear. To realize that despite your training, you were absolutely powerless when the people you loved were in danger.

“He deserves to have a ten-year-old life,” King said. “Obsessing about every sport known to man, begging me to stay up late, losing brain cells on his tablet, hanging out with friends. Not this.”

Scarlett moved to close the distance between them. Slower than she wanted to. Heat climbed into her neck as she pulled out the chair next to his and took a seat. A tremor shook through one hand as she reached out for his, enfolding it in her palms.

His skin was warmer—hot even—and rough with dryness from spending most of his days in the desert with a gun in his grip. But soft in other places, like the webbing between his fingers. She latched on, mostly for her own stability as this entire partnership threatened to fall apart. “Is there a chance the cartel knows Julien was there the night his mother was killed?”

“I asked the investigating detective to keep Julien out of all the reports because he was a minor.” King stared down at his hand, as though he couldn’t comprehend how he’d ended up here in this elementary school conference room with her when he was supposed to be out there looking for a connection between two past partners’ murders. “You read the file. There’s no mention of his name.”

“Then we need to assume taking Julien is meant to be a warning to you.” Air stalled in her chest as she internally braced for what came next. “Just as Adam Dunkeld was.”

Surprise mixed with a hint of that anger as King leaned back in the chair. His hand went with him, leaving a streak of heat in her palms. “Munoz. That son of a bitch. He’s got to be the one behind this.” Another shift wrecked the determination that flared in his eyes, gutting Scarlett in an instant. “Adam was missing for three days before he turned up dead at your doorstep.”

And yet Eva Roday was murdered in her own home. There hadn’t been an abduction. No grace period for law enforcement to play catch-up.

“King, if you’re right about Munoz being behind Eva’s death, I think it’s safe to say if the cartel learns Julien witnessed his mother’s murder that night, he doesn’t have that kind of time.” She didn’t want to put a countdown clock on this case, but they had no other choice.

“He’s all I’ve got left, Scarlett. He’s the only thing that matters. All of this—working for the DEA, running that investigation on the side—I was doing it for him. To protect him.”

The defensiveness she’d come to expect from King since he’d inserted himself into her life this morning wasn’t there anymore. He’d been stripped of his armor by a ten-year-old, and there was nothing she could do about it. No security patch could fix this. She had no backup plan in place.

He brought his gaze to hers, the whites of his eyes reflecting the harsh fluorescent lights overhead. “And now they have him.”

“We’re going to get him back. Alive,” she said. “I give you my word.”

“Don’t do that.” The fire she’d witnessed behind all that devastation exploded. He shoved out of his chair, letting the wheels crash into the table leg. “Don’t promise me something you have no intention of following through on, Scarlett. Because this is my son. This is my life, and if I lose him because your word isn’t good enough, I will spend the rest of my life making you pay. You understand? So think very carefully about what you’re promising me.”

She pushed to her feet, meeting him on his level. “You asked about the scar across my stomach. You want to know how I got it? By keeping my word. I don’t give it casually, King, and I don’t give it to anyone who I don’t believe deserves it. But once I do, I won’t give up until I’m finished. Now, we can debate about the worth of my promises all day with examples and my résumé, but your son is out there. He doesn’t have as much time as we need, and I’m one of the only people in this country who knows what we’re dealing with. So are you going to trust me?”

He held his own, seemingly taking it all in one word at a time. “Yeah. I trust you.”

“Good. The principal has queued the security footage taken during the time Julien was checked out. I suggest we start there.” Pent-up energy flooded into the streak of scar tissue across her abdomen as she headed for the door. Most days she could pretend it didn’t exist. That her closest friend hadn’t tried to kill her while they’d been stationed overseas. Today wasn’t one of those days. Scarlett wrenched open the door and stepped into the main office.

Formica-coated, two-tiered desks separated two administrators from the parents and students meant to stay on one side. Cabinets stacked high on one another behind each station and showed off motivational posters like the kind she used to hang in her room as a kid. An entire wall of glass gave school staff a view into the long corridors making up the industrial-carpeted school. Two doors provided access into the main school once entrants were allowed past the auto-locking doors.

Scarlett bypassed the officers taking statements from teachers and staff and headed down the hallway into the back of the main office. She clocked each and every camera installed throughout the space as she moved. Not enough. Not nearly enough to keep these tiny souls safe. Cutting to the principal’s office at the very end of the hallway, she didn’t bother to confirm whether King had kept up. “Principal Doleac. This is King Elsher. Julien’s father.”

“Yes, of course.” A trim woman who looked as though she lived off of long miles, few carbs and a tanning bed got up from behind her desk and offered her manicured hand. “I wanted to express how sorry I am about all of this, Mr. Elsher. We haven’t had anything like this happen before. We will be working closely with Socorro and law enforcement to bring Julien home as quickly as possible. Anything you need, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

“You have the security footage of when my son was taken?” King didn’t bother extending his own hand to shake.

The principal retracted into herself as she took a seat in front of an old monitor from the Stone Age. “Yes. I have it pulled up here. It’s not the most sophisticated system, but as I said, we’ve never had anything like this happen before.”

“Could you give us a few minutes?” Scarlett asked.

Hesitation deepened the lines around Doleac’s eyes and mouth. Midforties, Scarlett would guess. Though she imagined the stress of the woman’s job and the political pressure she handled on a day-to-day basis had added a few unkind years. “I’m sorry. I can’t just leave you alone with the district’s system. These computers contain students’ private information and internal information about our teachers. I’m happy to navigate through whatever footage you need.”

King set his badge on the principal’s desk. “I’m not interested in teacher or student information, Principal Doleac. I’m here for my son. Anything we come across not pertaining to this case will remain confidential.”

She studied the badge for a moment before climbing back onto impossibly high heels that accentuated how short Doleac really was. “Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance.”

Scarlett slid into the principal’s chair as the administrator made her way out of the office. A zing of anticipation crackled through her fingers as she scanned through the thumbnails of footage. “Their system could use an upgrade, but it seems simple enough to navigate. Let me pull up the camera and time Julien was checked out.”

King shifted into her peripheral vision, then closer. Right up against her right side. Leveraging one hand against the desk and the other against the back of her chair, he pressed in. He pointed at the screen. “That’s Julien.”

The window expanded to the full width of the monitor and automatically started playing the footage. The angle looked as though it’d come from one of the cameras directly outside the office, recording students in the corridor leading up to the front of the building. The boy’s face was pixelated, but there was no mistaking the similarity between him and the man beside her.

Scarlett studied King for a moment, taking in the softening of his jaw as he studied his son in the footage. “He has his backpack. So this must be after he was already called down to the office to get checked out. Which means we should be able to see who’s waiting for him.”

She sorted through the other frames recorded at the same time. And pulled up the image of a woman with her back to the camera. Thick curly hair pinned back away from the suspect’s face, but there wasn’t a good angle to get an ID. “She’s avoiding the cameras. Let me see if I can follow them out to the parking lot.”

Which meant whoever’d checked Julien out had been in that school before. Had cased it. Knew the ins and outs. Most likely had a security blueprint or a map of the building. Julien’s abduction hadn’t been a one-off reaction to punish King for sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. This was a coordinated effort.

“Do you recognize her?” Scarlett asked.

“Hard to tell without a shot of her face, but I’ve been through all the surveillance we have on Munoz multiple times over. The only woman in his crew was killed a few months ago.” King straightened, getting closer to the screen. “Wait. Look. Julien stops when he sees her.”

He was right. Scarlett saw it then. The terror in the boy’s face. A fawn response. She intensified the frame of Julien’s face. “Like he’s seen her before.”

T HERE WAS ONLY one reason for a ten-year-old boy to act like Julien had in that footage.

Fear.

A pressure King couldn’t seem to get rid of followed him as he shoved through the elementary school’s doors and out into the open. He scanned every car, every window from the houses facing the school. His son had been right here. Alone. Scared. Forced to follow the orders of a stranger or get hurt. King scrubbed a hand down his face. Damn it. He should’ve been here. Not chasing some dead end of a case he shouldn’t have his nose in in the first place.

The school’s exterior surveillance hadn’t caught the vehicle Julien had been forced into, but King didn’t need it. He knew who was behind this. And he knew exactly what he had to do to get his son back. He took his cell from his pocket.

“You’re going to regret making that call.” Scarlett’s voice battled the loss and rage spiking through him. Which was impossible. He knew that, but there was something about her that argued with the natural man inside him that wanted to tear through this entire city to find Julien. And, hell, he wanted to give in to her. To feel some sense of peace for himself. For his family.

King let his thumb hesitate over the phone’s screen. “What call is that?”

“The one where you call up the team you have sitting on Munoz and give the order for them to breach the compound.” Scarlett moved into his peripheral vision with far more grace than should be possible with all that gear she carried. Like she’d made it part of her over the years. Based on what she’d told him of her experience, he guessed that was true. “You’re not in the right frame of mind to think about this logically. You’re too close to it. The second your team crosses Munoz’s property line, you’ll be declaring war with Sangre por Sangre.”

“And you don’t think kidnapping a DEA agent’s son is an act of war?” His grip tightened around the phone as he turned to her. She was right. There was no logic behind this, but life wasn’t always logical. It was the connections that made the difference between the ordinary and the meaningful, and the only one he cared about right now was Julien. “How about stabbing an agent through the chest?”

“Whoever did this is baiting you, King. They want you running off emotion instead of common sense. That’s how they win, and if you make that call, you’ll be playing directly into their hands,” she said.

“Why?” That was the question. The one that’d been constantly ticking at the back of mind after he’d gotten the call about Adam’s murder this morning. It churned until he swore his blood started to boil. “First Adam, now Julien. My investigation into Munoz didn’t turn up anything significant. I have nothing. He’s made sure to keep his hands off cartel business, so why make an example out of me? Why go after the people I care about?”

“I don’t know.” Scarlett stared out over the parking lot, seemingly memorizing the quickest exits and any vehicles that might get in her way. Like the good soldier she was supposed to be.

His gaze dropped to the hem of her T-shirt and the scar hiding beneath the fabric. She’d told him she’d gotten it by keeping her word. If that was true, she might be the only one who could help him now.

“According to our intel Munoz is making a move for leadership,” she said. “He wants the old regime out. You or your surveillance team must’ve stumbled across something that could put a stop to that. Killing your partner—abducting Julien—they’re warnings.”

The truth of it resonated through him, but no single piece of evidence came to mind. The pressure behind his sternum strangled the remaining air in his lungs. Helplessness threatened to erode the last of his strength. It took everything he had right then to stay on his feet as his mind replaced Eva’s crime scene photos with ones featuring the boy he’d come to love more than life itself. “I’m all he has left, Scarlett. I promised I would take care of him. That as long as we were together, nothing could hurt him, and now...”

“I know.” She stepped close to him. Tendrils of hair escaped the ponytail tied at the nape of her neck and tickled across his face. That simple focus conquered the downward spiral tearing through him. “I need you to listen to me. Sangre por Sangre doesn’t play by the rules. They don’t stick to MOs unless they’re sending a message. There’s no telling how much time Julien has, but if we can prove Munoz was behind Eva and Adam’s murders, we’ll have the leverage to use against him. You know Munoz’s current operation better than anyone. Do you have any idea where the cartel might’ve held your partner during the three days he was missing?”

“I’ve been through Munoz’s holdings a hundred times.” Addresses, bank accounts, phone records—all of it had been aboveboard to an outsider looking in. None of it useful. “He owns a couple car dealerships in town, a restaurant that’s under investigation by the state health department and a couple McMansions outside the city.”

Scarlett’s face lit up. “The restaurant. The health department would’ve shut it down until Munoz addressed the problems they found, right? No one would be allowed in or out, and restaurants usually come with those locking freezers. If Munoz worked it right, he could’ve stashed Adam Dunkeld without anyone knowing.”

He loved the way her brain worked. Electricity shot through him at the idea of their first real lead. King swiped through his phone and brought up the address, moving toward the SUV. “The restaurant is only a couple miles from here. I’ll put in the request for the search warrant.”

They moved as though they’d been partnered for more than a few hours. In step with each other. Scarlett rounded the SUV to the driver seat as King hauled himself into the other side. Both Dobermans paced back and forth across the cargo area. As though they sensed what was coming.

War.

He would go to war with the cartel for his son.

King submitted the warrant request up the DEA chain. He’d worked his own personal investigation into Munoz up to this point, but stepping foot inside the restaurant without a warrant would throw anything they found into question. Or dismiss it altogether. And he couldn’t take that risk. Not with Julien’s life on the line.

The Dobermans stuck both of their heads over the center console with low groans.

“They don’t look too pleased you left them in the car.” King found himself leaning away from the duo. His instincts told him this breed could turn on him at any moment. One wrong move, and they’d turn him into their next meal.

“A lot of people hold grudges against Dobermans.” Scarlett angled out of the elementary school’s parking lot, bringing up the GPS on the SUV’s navigation screen. “They believe the aggression is innate. That it can’t be bred or trained out of them, so I try to keep the twins away from the general public. But in the year I’ve worked with Hans and Gruber since coming to Socorro, they’ve only grown more attached to me and the team, including the other K9s.”

Attached enough to kill anything that threatened their handler? “I’ll be sure to stay on your good side then.”

Her laugh filled the cabin of the SUV and physically attacked the tension along his spine. Which shouldn’t have been possible. Not when they were on their way to search a building where his partner could have been tortured and killed. Where Julien might be held now. But he was quickly learning what he saw of Scarlett wasn’t exactly what he got. A security consultant for the country’s most well-funded private military contractor would have to be controlled, perfectionistic and critical of everything and everyone she encountered, but at the same time there was a hint of softness in the way she spoke. A passion to help that he couldn’t ignore.

“Only if you want to stay alive,” she said.

They settled into a few minutes of silence as they got closer to the restaurant.

“This is it.” Scarlett shoved the SUV into Park. She leaned over the console to get a better look through his window at the stucco building across the street.

Hints of her body soap—something like eucalyptus and lavender—filled his space and dove into his lungs. Soothing and exciting at the same time.

Unholstering her sidearm, she released the magazine and checked the ammunition before reassembling her weapon. Efficient. Quick. The woman knew her way around a gun. “Catalina’s?” she asked.

“It’s named after his wife.” He’d never been here in person, but King felt as though he knew every inch of the place from the amount of surveillance he and his team had done over the past two months. He noted the pillars holding up the overhang protecting the double glass doors, intricate designs carved into the wood. Sharp corners and a flat roof complemented the look and feel of the surrounding buildings and homes with benches and plants funneling customers inside from the heat. “One entrance at the front, an exit at the back that leads into the alley between all these other buildings.”

“How do you want to play this?” she asked.

King checked his phone. “We’ve got the search warrant.” Unholstering his own weapon, he ensured his badge and credentials were visible to anyone who might want to intervene during their search. “That means we can knock on the front door.”

“Great. I love Mexican food.” She shouldered free of the vehicle and wrenched open the back door to let Hans and Gruber out. King followed suit. The Dobermans immediately rounded the SUV in playful leaps. “Fuss.”

Each dog took to Scarlett’s side as she holstered her weapon and headed for the restaurant’s front door. “After you.”

He’d waited a long time for this. King forced the knot in his gut out of his mind as he approached the building. No movement from the windows. A seal plastered over the double doors warned customers of the potential dangers of stepping foot inside, but he wasn’t worried about E. coli or contracting food poisoning. King was here for his son. He pounded his fist against the thick wood. “Hernando Munoz. DEA. We have a search warrant. Open up.”

One minute. Two.

There was no answer from inside, and his heart rate notched higher.

“Let me help.” Scarlett pulled a blade from one of her cargo pant pockets and slit the seal down the center. The Dobermans sniffed at the crack between the doors before she pulled at the handle. The doors parted with a frigid burst of air from inside. “Pretty sure these are supposed to be locked.”

Warning flared in King’s gut. He took to one side, Scarlett doing the same. “Go.”

She stepped over the threshold, and the K9s followed close on her heels.

Swinging around the door, King swept his attention over a ghost town of chairs and tables. Dark walls and flooring made it hard to see without overhead lighting as they moved section by section. Blinds had been drawn to keep outsiders from looking in, but the edges lit up with bright sunlight that reflected off stacks of glasses.

He nodded toward a swinging door at the back of the building. “The kitchen.”

“Right behind you,” she said.

King took the lead. No matter what waited on the other side, he wanted to be the first through the door. Wanted Julien to see his father hadn’t given up on him. Hinges protested as he shoved into the back room. Clean stainless steel glimmered as King hit the light switch to the right.

The K9s jogged ahead, spreading out. Before meeting in front of the oversize freezer doors.

“They’ve got something.” Scarlett lowered her weapon but didn’t move to put it away. Sidestepping to the freezer’s handle, she glanced back at King. Silently waiting for his go-ahead.

He gave it.

She wrenched the door back, exposing what waited for them inside.

King held his breath as he moved into the too-small space but kept his distance so as not to disturb the blood patterns arcing across the floor and walls. Fresh. Recent. He lowered his weapon. “Adam was here.”