Page 14 of K-9 Justice (New Mexico Guard Dogs #6)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
No one raised their hand.
That was okay. She would find the person who shot Max. She would tear this whole building down to do it, too. Until then, Chief Halsey was taking care of the German shepherd the best way he could. She lost count of the number of soldiers taking aim at her and her team. One wrong move. That was all it would take to tear apart both of their organizations. Ivy raised her weapon, at Sebastian. “I’m going to give you one chance to put your weapons down and surrender.”
“You must be confused, Agent Bardot.” Sebastian’s laugh inspired the rest of his soldiers to participate. He spread his arms wide, motioning to the men and women prepared to shoot on his order. “You see, I have far more manpower. You, you have four operatives and some dogs.”
“You’re right. Doesn’t feel like a fair fight, does it?” Ivy scanned the room. Instantly landing on Carson. He’d been bound, beaten. Blood dripped down his arm and slid between his fingers. “Would you like to invite more soldiers to come help you? We’ll wait.”
Sebastian’s smile slipped off his face. He stepped away from the desk he’d put between him and her team. “You’ve been hunting me for two years. Sent your lapdog to identify me, to undermine my operation. You send your operatives to take out my lieutenants. All while you hide in your black tower. You are not ready for what’s coming, little girl. You are not strong enough to fight me.”
Strong enough. When the hell had she let other people determine what she was capable of? When had she let it haunt her to the point of paralysis? Ivy lowered her weapon. “Shall we finish what we started in that basement, Sebastian? You, me. No federal agents. No cartel soldiers to interfere. That’s what you want, right? To prove Sangre por Sangre deserves to sit on the throne. That all of this leads to one outcome—you standing over the bodies of your enemies. I’ll give you that chance.”
“Ivy, what the hell are you doing?” Carson struggled to be free of his captives. In vain.
“I would love nothing more.” A wide smile transformed the cartel founder’s expression. “One weapon. No guns. To the death. I win, I will kill your entire team and your undercover operative. Socorro will be no more.”
“And if I win, Sangre por Sangre surrenders to the Alpine Valley Police Department and Socorro. Never to operate again.” Ivy passed her weapon to Granger, positioned behind her.
“Boss, you sure about this?” Scarlett kept her voice low, but the concern was louder than anything else in the room. “You’re still injured from the last time you two were in a room together.”
“I’ll be fine. I have something he doesn’t.” Her gaze cut to Carson as she stripped out of the sling meant to help her dislocated shoulder heal.
“What’s that?” Jones seemed to take inventory of the soldiers he would like to take out, that battle-ready energy coming off him in waves.
She handed off the sling to Granger and rolled her shoulder out. “A team who has my back, no matter what. As long as I have you guys, I can never lose. But for him? Every single one of these soldiers will put their own survival first if pushed.” Ivy turned to face Sebastian as his soldiers cleared away the desks and debris from the middle of the room. “See the C-4 strapped to the major structural beams overhead? He’s not confident in his plan to get to the rest of you. He plans on bringing down the building on top of us if this doesn’t go his way. Make sure he fails. Understand?”
“I have some experience with that,” Scarlett said. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Granger, Jones, Cash.” She didn’t want to say goodbye. She didn’t want to admit that this was a bad idea and that she had no way of knowing if her reason would hold up against a man who’d already killed four women and put another in the hospital. Not to mention the thousands of lives his organization had taken over the years when Socorro had failed to protect the people they swore to protect. “The moment he attacks, he’s going to let his soldiers have a field day. Don’t let your guards down. And feel free to take as many of them out as you can. Just make sure Carson isn’t one of them.”
“Wait. Are we friends with this guy again?” Cash said.
“Enough waiting.” Sebastian kicked a rock from in front of his foot. She’d misjudged him in the dark of a salvage yard before, then again when her eye had swollen to the point she hadn’t been able to see. The man had claimed to spend twenty years building his empire, but there was still a youthfulness to him. A strength she hadn’t considered before.
This was going to hurt. But the past no longer had a hold on her. All that mattered was the future. Hers. Her team’s. And Carson’s. Ivy shrugged out of her blazer and handed it off to Granger. The muscles in her shoulder still ached. The stitches in her side warned her not to take another step, but she wasn’t doing this to feed some ego-driven show of dominance. This was how she protected her family. Just as she’d done all those years ago.
Ivy took a literal and metaphorical step into the ring. “Sure you want to go through with this, Sebastian? That shoulder of yours isn’t looking too good.”
His laugh slid beneath her confidence and started to break it up into pieces. “How’s the side, Agent Bardot?”
She didn’t want to give away the pain she was already in. Not to him. Filling her lungs with as much oxygen as they could hold, she steadied her pulse with Carson in her peripheral vision.
“Ivy, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to—” Her partner’s words were cut short from the sucker punch to his gut. He doubled over within his captor’s grasp.
Sebastian was the first to strike. He took advantage of her distraction and launched at her. She saw him coming. Ivy fisted his collar and rammed her forehead straight into his nose. The son of a bitch fell backward and hit the floor.
All hell broke loose.
Bullets sprayed across the room. Her team broke apart, each operative hunting for cover. Cash returned fire as his rottweiler, Bear, ran straight for the nearest soldier.
Ivy threw herself behind Sebastian’s desk. A soldier reached over the edge. He grabbed on to her tank top and pulled her across the surface. A knife arced down toward her face. She managed to lean out of the way, letting it embed in the wood. Gripping the handle, she pulled it free and returned it to its owner. Straight into his chest. The soldier fell back, and she got to her feet.
Two more came for her. Both tried to cage her between them, but she was faster. Ivy ducked out from the reach of one and kicked his knee out from under him. The soldier slammed into the floor face-first. The other got a good hold on her from behind. Locking her arms behind her. Her shoulder threatened to dislocate all over again.
“None of you are getting out of here alive.” Sebastian stumbled to his feet. Blood coursed from his nose and framed his mouth. Stained his graying beard. He withdrew a blade from a sheath on his belt.
“And here I thought we were going to play by the rules.” Ivy rammed her heel into the soldier’s foot at her back. He released his hold and tipped off-balance. He fell at her feet, and she made sure he would never get up again. Kicking her toes into his groin as hard as she could.
Just as Sebastian closed the distance between them.
He slammed into her. The knife grazed the outside of her arm as the cartel founder pinned her against the desk. She latched on to his wrist to gain control, but he was a hell of a lot stronger than he let on. Her shoulder screamed for her to let go. But she couldn’t. Not yet.
Time seemed to slow.
Seconds distorted and stretched into minutes. Scarlett took a fist to the face as she tried to reach the laptop dislodged in the chaos. Cash blocked one attack while attempting to dodge a blade to the gut from the opposite direction. Granger had been pinned against the wall by no less than three soldiers. Granger’s bellow filled the entire room as Jones used one of the cartel soldiers as a shield to avoid getting shot.
And Carson. He’d shoved one of his captors off but failed to account for the soldier at his back. The butt of a weapon slammed down onto his skull. His legs collapsed out from underneath him.
They were losing. They were going to fail. Because of her. Because maybe her stepfather—maybe Sebastian—had been right. Maybe she wasn’t strong enough to win this war. But she wouldn’t stop trying.
“Look at them, Agent Bardot. See them suffer.” Sebastian struggled to bring the knife down into her heart. Sweat dripped from his forehead and splashed onto her face. “I can make it all go away. All you have to do is give in.”
The tip of the blade penetrated through her tank top. She couldn’t hold him off much longer. A pinprick of pain registered just below her collarbone. “I gave my word to those women.”
Ivy arched her hips off the desk and threw his weight to one side. Sebastian had no choice but to follow. She hiked his wrist upward, then straight down onto the edge of the desk. The crunch of bone pierced through the sound of gunfire and screams. Along with his scream. He stared up at her with nothing but violence and death.
“I was going to make you pay for what you did to them.” Ivy kicked Sebastian’s legs out from under him. Fisting his collar while he was down, she ignored the pain in her shoulder. And launched her fist into his face. Once. Twice. His head snapped back. Years of being told she wasn’t strong enough to fight created a new energy that sizzled through her. “I keep my promises.”
Sebastian’s body went limp in her grasp. His eyes rolled back in his head. Unconscious. Ivy let him sink to the floor. It was over. The loss. The pain. The fear. Straightening, she left the cartel’s founder there to suffer the consequences that had led them to this room.
The gunfire seemed to cease all at once as Sangre por Sangre came to terms with the end result. Jones ripped out of a soldier’s hold, then pinned his attacker against the wall. Granger shirked off the three men trying to bring him down. Scarlett didn’t seem to notice any change in her surroundings, her focus on the C-4 ready to explode at the touch of a button. Cash shoved one of the soldiers forward.
And Carson raised his gaze to hers through the blood seeping into his eyes. They’d done it. Together. As a team. It had taken so much longer than she’d planned, but they’d—
A gunshot exploded from behind.
Then came the pain. Ivy lowered her attention to the stain spreading across her tank top, then back to her team.
Right before the world went dark.
* * *
Socorro’s operatives fell into action.
Each running to catch their boss before she met the ground.
Carson could only watch Ivy as she fell. The past superimposed the present as he simultaneously saw her collapse in the salvage yard warehouse and hit the floor now. Sebastian lowered his gun hand. A smile creased the outer edges of his face.
Carson’s head pounded in rhythm with his increasing heart rate. He could barely see through the blood dripping into his eyes, but struggled to his feet. The soldiers on either side of him fought to keep him down. Under control. It wouldn’t work. A fire had started burning in him, and there was nothing anybody could do to put it out. No one but Ivy.
Carson rammed his shoulder into the nearest captor, throwing the son of a bitch off-balance. His female companion he’d gotten out of Socorro holding rushed at him. She didn’t make it. He buried his heel in her stomach and took the air right out of her. Her knees dropped as she gasped for breath. Movement registered in his peripheral vision. Carson ducked to avoid the butt of the weapon coming at his face and swung around in time to let the soldier’s momentum carry him into another moving in to subdue him.
A third attacker came straight at him. The bastard hiked his foot up as though to land a solid kick. Only Carson managed to capture the soldier’s boot between his bound arm and rib cage. One tight jerk and the soldier’s ankle practically broke off in Carson’s grip. He forced the attacker to hop on one foot, angling the gunman right into another threat.
Pain spidered down Carson’s back as a fourth soldier swung his weapon down. It gave Sangre por Sangre a chance to gang up on him. Two more attackers grabbed for his shoulders and arms. He took down another coming from the front and took out the soldier’s knee. Carson ducked out from the son of a bitch on the left and crushed his head into the soldier’s temple. Then had to quickly dodge a knife aimed straight for his spine. The bladesman overcorrected his momentum. But not in time to avoid Carson’s knee to his face.
Men and women groaned at his feet. But the fight wasn’t over.
Ivy’s operatives were dragging her off the battlefield, toward the exit. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t opened her eyes. Even if she managed to survive, there was no telling when Sebastian would come for her again. Come for her team.
Carson had to end this now.
He caught sight of the cartel’s fearless leader making a break for a door he’d once mapped as a secret escape from the building. Low-level soldiers had been kept in the dark. It was just like upper management to sacrifice the men and women they’d used to do their dirty work while keeping their own hands clean. “Sebastian!”
Carson crouched to pick up a fallen knife and sliced through the rope at his wrists. Blood rushed back into his fingertips as he followed after the man responsible for so much death. He’d been an idiot to believe there was an ounce of good within the cartel, that the people at the bottom were simply following orders. He’d been manipulated, used.
And now he was going to make sure it never happened to anyone else.
He dodged another attempt to slow him down. A second soldier pointed a gun at him, but one of Socorro’s K-9s—a husky—intercepted and took the gunman down. Fierce growls let him know these dogs weren’t in the mood for playing. They were here to protect their handlers. Well, except maybe for the one sitting on top of a cartel soldier off to his right. The bull terrier simply grinned at him as Carson cut across the body-strewn space. And, hell, he couldn’t blame the K-9 for adding a bit of fun to this mess. Sometimes that was the only way to make it through the hard stuff.
Ten feet. Five.
Sebastian ducked through the door and secured it behind him.
Just as Carson lunged. His shoulder made contact, but the door had locked from the inside. He slammed both palms against what was meant to look like cinder block, but the exit wouldn’t budge. “Sebastian! You coward! You can’t run forever! I will find you!”
This was no time for caution. He had to get in there.
“We can help you with that, Lang,” a voice said from behind.
Carson turned to find two Socorro operatives, armed to the teeth and not an ounce of exhaustion etched into their faces. To be fair, they hadn’t been tortured for a couple of hours. He motioned them forward. Though he wasn’t sure of their names, they each had the look of determination of seeing this through to the end. The same determination that had possessed him since coming back to the cartel. “By all means, be my guests.”
The one he was fairly certain was called Cash—Socorro’s forward scout—raised his weapon and took aim. Then fired. Once. Twice. The second operative—Jones, maybe—rammed the heel of his boot and forced the exit open. “You come for one of us, you come for all of us. Ivy says you’re one of us. So go get that son of a bitch. We’ve got everything covered here.”
One of them. Three words shouldn’t have held so much weight, but Carson felt the beginnings of the support he’d been searching for all this time. First, with his mother, then through Ivy, and when he’d been required to distance himself from her, from the cartel. Only the people he’d fought beside in the field hadn’t ever really felt the same for him as he had for them. It had all been a manipulation. An order. He saw the truth now. He knew what the future held and whom he wanted in his life, and it sure as hell wasn’t Sangre por Sangre . The haze of revenge and rage lowered to a simmer as he processed the body count. Every Socorro operative was still standing. Apart from Ivy. “Thank you.”
“Hey, Lang, hold up,” Jones said. “There’s something you should know about Socorro. We never go anywhere without our partners.”
Both men parted, letting a stubborn, bleeding, protective Ivy through. She held on to her side. Blood seeped between her fingers.
“What the hell are you doing? You were shot.” He reached for her, unsure if she would appreciate the contact. “You need medical attention.”
Somehow she’d lost even more color since she’d confronted him in Socorro’s headquarters. “When have I ever let a wound slow me down? Besides, I may have played up the seriousness of the shot.” She pulled her hand away, revealing a stained tank top. “There was no way I was going to be able to fight Sebastian on my own with a dislocated shoulder and a stab wound. So I let him take me out of the equation.”
Disbelief stole the air from his lungs. “But the bullet—”
“Was very real.” Her laugh took the tension out of his shoulders. She was alive. She was okay. Ivy lifted the edge of her shirt, showing off a line of blood and burned skin. “But it was just a graze.”
“You guys know the longer you stand here, the farther our suspect gets, right?” Cash pointed toward the door.
Ivy set clear green eyes on Carson, and the entire world seemed to make sense again. As though for the first time in two years, he’d given himself permission to make his desires known instead of bowing out to everyone else’s. “Are you ready to end this?”
“Let’s do this.” Carson shoved through the door. His heart rocketed into his throat every step he stumbled in the darkness. Grief charged through him at the realization he didn’t have Max to help guide him with her higher senses. Except he wasn’t entirely on his own.
He had his partner.
“I’ve never been through this corridor before.” Carson felt his way along the wall, following the sharp turns that seemed to never end. “This must’ve been how the cartel was still able to operate over the past few months.”
“Where does it go?” she asked.
He didn’t have a chance to answer as sunlight pierced into the darkened space up ahead. “I’m guessing outside.” Carson offered her his hand. Which she took. “Come on.”
Ivy unholstered her weapon—the same one she’d handed off to one of her operatives earlier—as they ran. They left the protection of the building and scanned the open desert. “Where did he—”
An engine revved from their left.
And shot directly at them.
Carson pulled Ivy with him, just as she’d done that night in her apartment when they’d been under attack. Saving his life. They hit the ground as one, and he tucked her into his body. Dirt worked into his mouth and nose with each roll, but they’d avoided dying. For now.
The vehicle crashed into the exit, sealing it off. Sebastian shoved free of the driver’s seat, armed with what looked like a long piece of rebar.
Ivy was the first to get to her feet. And took aim. “Drop it, Sebastian. Or I will shoot.”
“You took everything from me!” The cartel founder brought the metal weapon down on her forearm. The gun went off. A bullet shot into the wall of the building and spit dirt.
Ivy fell forward. The gun fell from her hand, out of reach, as she cradled her arm against her chest. Sebastian raised the elongated metal for another strike, and Ivy rolled. The rebar thudded into the cracked earth. “Now I’m going to take everything you love from you.”
Carson dragged Ivy to stand, maneuvering her behind him. “It’s over, Sebastian. There’s nothing left of your cartel. Give yourself up, and you might live another twenty years.”
Sebastian unpocketed some kind of device. A small black box with an antenna. A detonator? “Say goodbye to your team, Agent Bardot.”
He hit the button.
Except nothing happened.
Carson waited. One second. Two. Sebastian pressed the button again, then once more. And the tension eased out of Carson’s shoulders.
“Looking for this?” Scarlett Beam rounded the corner and into view. Tossing a brick of white…C-4? Jones, Cash, Granger and their K-9s followed. Each taking aim with guns in hand. “You can thank Ivy for that. She noted the C-4 wired into the structural beams of the building. I took the opportunity to reprogram your detonator. To mine.”
The security consultant showed off her phone. Then tapped the screen with a smile not meant for life-and-death situations.
The explosion started within, bringing the building in on itself in a series of blasts but containing it at the same time. It was the perfect system.
“You’re finished, el jefe .” Ivy rounded into Sebastian’s vision, seemingly memorizing his realization that he’d lost. He’d outmanned and outgunned Socorro, but he couldn’t beat them. Because they were a team. “ Sangre por Sangre is dead.”
Sebastian sank to his knees as he watched his headquarters collapse in on itself.
Sirens echoed off the sides of the man-made bowl. A patrol cruiser skidded to a stop behind Carson, and Chief Halsey pulled a set of handcuffs from his pocket.
“Sebastian Aguado, you are under arrest for a whole lot of shit.” Halsey pinned Sebastian’s arms behind his back and hauled the cartel founder to his feet to install the cuffs. “Namely, coming after my partner, but that one will be the least of your worries. Because you get to ride in the back seat with her German shepherd. We’ve got two years of charges you’ve earned. And I’m going to make sure every single one of them sticks.”
Carson couldn’t help but etch this scene into his brain. To convince him it was real.
Alpine Valley PD shoved Sebastian headfirst into the back seat of the patrol car. Chief Halsey secured the cartel founder inside with a nod in Ivy’s direction.
“It’s finished.” Ivy stared after the cruiser, the sun highlighting the bruises and scrapes along one side of her face. “After two years, we finally took down Sangre por Sangre .”