Page 2 of K-9 Justice (New Mexico Guard Dogs #6)

CHAPTER TWO

She was already reaching for her go bag.

Debris and glass rained down from above as the safe house’s living room wall disintegrated under fire. Picture frames seemed to explode above her. Photos of happier times, of family she’d lost touch with years ago, of commendations from her career in the FBI. It was all being ripped to pieces by hot lead.

Ivy fisted the backpack she’d stashed beneath a section of the couch and kicked off her heels. Rolling off Carson, she dragged the go bag into her chest. The safe house she’d built to escape the day-to-day violence was falling apart around her, but she couldn’t think about that right now. They had to get out of here. “Get to the bedroom!”

Whoever was on the other side of that gun would expect them to go for the door. But Ivy didn’t like to follow expectations. Not even when it had come to taking the beatings her stepfather doled out on a regular basis when she’d been a child. Who would have thought a ten-year-old could shoot a man who was supposed to protect her? Based on his final expression, certainly not him.

Her partner was already moving. Carson shoved to his feet, fingers encircling her arm. They moved as one, as though a single day and an entire war hadn’t kept them apart for two years. He took the lead, surely already having mapped out this apartment. Leaving no chance for surprise.

Bullets punctured through the wall to their left. Every single one of them seemed to hike her nerves higher. Moonlight pierced through the holes left behind.

Ivy crawled on hands and knees down the hall right behind Carson. The bedroom was positioned at the end. Drywall and dust worked into her lungs, but she couldn’t pay attention to the tightness in her chest right now. Sooner or later the gunfire would stop. The shooter on the other end would breach the apartment. They’d want to make sure they had hit their target. But she and Carson wouldn’t be here. She had to make sure of that.

“Go, go, go!” The orders were unnecessary. What was he going to do? Stop in the middle of the hallway to have a chat? But the need to be in control, to feel as though she was doing something to get them out of here, had taken hold.

A single round ruptured through the wall in front of her face.

Ivy pulled up short as Carson turned back and locked his gaze on her, facing the reality the bullet could’ve dropped her right here and now. Too close. She forced herself to shake it off. They were going to die if they didn’t pick up the pace.

Except the gunfire had stopped.

One second. Two. Longer.

No more shattering glass. No more close calls. No more attack.

They were out of time. “They’re coming.”

Carson lunged for the bedroom and somehow managed to land straight on her king-size bed.

She was right behind him, kicking the door shut. She threaded both arms through the backpack straps and secured it in place. Ivy unholstered her weapon and hit the release for the magazine. Fifteen rounds. Plus more in the go bag. They had a fighting chance.

“This is nice.” Carson slid his hands over the comforter sprawled across the bed. “Much softer than that crappy mattress you had in your last place.”

“It’s one of those mail-order mattresses.” She crossed to the corner window facing the next building over. It was one of the features she’d specifically required when she’d found this place. Corner apartment. Alley escape. Higher chances of getting out alive in case of an ambush. Most people didn’t live that way. But she did. She had to. Unlocking the window, she pried the pane up and pushed the screen free. “No squeaky mattress springs. Memory foam. I sleep like the dead.”

“Maybe one of these days I’ll get to try it for myself.” Carson was already on her heels as she maneuvered one leg through the window opening.

“Watch your step.” She latched on to the overhead stucco ledge framing the window and tucked her toes into an identical one under her feet. The framing only extended the length of the window. They were going to have to make it to the railing on the floor directly beneath her. She’d practiced a handful of times, once scaring the crap out of Mrs. Orson, who’d taken to doing yoga outside, but Ivy wouldn’t regret it now. “It’s a long way down if you’re not paying attention.”

A hard thud registered from inside. Then another. The shooter was trying to breach the front door. It would take a while since she’d replaced the short screws holding the hinges in place with much heavier-duty ones. That, and she’d added a couple of dead bolts. It would take him at least—

The heavy door slammed into the wall behind it.

Not as long as she’d hoped. “Come on.”

Stucco bit into her fingertips as she shuffled off to one side, out of line of the window, to make room for Carson on the ledge. He didn’t waste time in joining her outside. These frames weren’t meant to hold weight. They were purely decorative, and the longer they held on, the higher chance the construction would fail and they’d both die sooner than they’d planned.

Movement echoed through the apartment. Crunching glass. The shooter was on the hunt. For them.

Ivy steadied her breathing and turned her attention to the railing below. Ten feet down, five feet to the left. She hadn’t jumped with the added weight of her go bag yet. She’d been building up to it in preparation for this exact scenario, but now she didn’t have any other choice. They were going to have to risk it. She whistled low to catch Carson’s attention, then nodded downward.

Disbelief and something along the lines of defiance spread across what little she could see of his expression. He shook his head.

All she could do was nod in response. A single word could give away their position. She’d already lost Carson to the cartel once, and it had changed the entire course of her career and her life. She couldn’t do it again. Ivy spread her weight evenly between both feet.

The movement inside the apartment was getting louder. Closer. They had a minute—maybe less. They had to do this now.

The weight of her backpack was beginning to wear on her. There was no encouraging Carson through facial expressions alone. She forced her attention to the target. Mrs. Orson’s second-floor railing. Ivy redirected everything she had into her toes to give her the distance she needed. Her stomach vaulted into her chest as gravity took hold. The metal railing rushed up to meet her. Faster than she expected. Her fingers grazed the metal.

Then slipped.

She was free-falling. Every cell in her body screamed in warning.

Just as she clutched on to the bottom rail.

Her head hit the section of stucco holding up the second story. Her concentration frayed, and her hand lost some of its strength. Her legs swung out of control and twisted her body to one side. The ground seemed to move beneath her, threatening to swallow her up.

Metal reverberated through her a split second before a strong hand wrapped around her wrist and drew her gaze upward. Carson. He’d taken the leap. He was the only one keeping her from falling. His strength gave her enough direction to swing her legs back around. They still had another floor to go before they landed on solid ground, but right then it felt a little more possible with him watching her back.

Movement registered from her bedroom window.

“Watch out!” She pulled Carson over the railing as the gunman took aim. His weight intensified the pain in her shoulder and nearly dislodged her hold altogether. They had nowhere else to go. The first spray of bullets missed by a hair. The gun jammed, the click of an empty magazine echoing through the alleyway. Ivy had the feeling they wouldn’t be so lucky the second time. The small muscles in her arm stretched longer than they were meant to. Any second now she’d drop him. “I can’t hold on.”

“Ivy, you have to let me go, or we’re both going to die.” Her partner seemed to gauge the distance between them and the ground.

Let him go? Had he lost his mind? No. She wasn’t letting him go. She needed him alive. There was no way she could find Dr. Piel’s killer without his insight into the cartel and the man she believed responsible for the murder.

The shooter slammed a new magazine into place and lowered the barrel of his assault rifle. At her. And yet Ivy couldn’t seem to let her hand relax. Carson’s weight was tearing her apart from the inside. She couldn’t let him go. Not again. Not after everything they’d already survived together.

“You can do this. You have to do this, Ivy.” Carson stared up at her, those dark eyes as familiar and foreign as she remembered. “I’ll be fine.”

She released his hand.

Carson hit the ground. At least twelve feet below. He landed hard enough for his legs to buckle, but then he was rolling out of the shooter’s range. Ivy didn’t hesitate. She released her own hold on the railing. The ground rushed up to meet her harder and faster than she expected. Her knees launched into her chest, but her backpack forced her to roll and redistribute the weight to save her from breaking her legs.

Asphalt exploded around her, and she forced herself to her feet. “Run!”

Only Carson wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere.

A high-pitched whistle from the end of the alley pierced her attention. Ivy pushed everything she had into pumping her legs. The gunman was three floors up. He would have a hell of a time intercepting them.

Unless he had a partner.

Drawing her weapon into her hand, she registered a cascade of police sirens in the distance as she rounded toward the front of the building. Mrs. Orson probably wasn’t the only resident to call 911 at the sound of gunfire. Ivy just hoped no one had been hurt in the ambush. As much as she could leave the apartment and anything else connecting her to this life at the drop of a hat, the people in this building didn’t have that luxury.

She caught up with Carson at the corner and followed him down the street to a black SUV stashed in one of the parallel alleys. Her vehicle wasn’t an option. Whoever had targeted the safe house would already have her registration details, and if this was some kind of coordinated effort to hunt down and ambush Socorro operatives, none of them were safe.

“Get in.” Carson climbed behind the wheel, with Ivy collapsing into the front passenger seat. Max made her presence known with a series of too-loud barks that could summon demons under the right circumstances, but apparently, Carson didn’t have the heart to quiet her excitement for seeing Ivy. The engine growled to life at the touch of a button, and they sped onto the street. Keeping an eye on the rearview mirror, her partner relaxed over a series of seconds. “The life you built is over, Ivy. From here on out, we can only trust each other.”

* * *

His heart rate hadn’t come down yet.

Seemed no matter how many miles Carson put between them and Ivy’s safe house, having his former partner here kept his entire nervous system on edge. Adrenaline had started to drain and left him feeling keyed up and exhausted at the same time. A dangerous combination when facing the possibility his cover had been blown. That he’d been followed. Or that someone had come for Ivy.

“Where are we going?” She stroked Max’s fur with a soothing calmness that, at that moment, Carson wished she’d paid toward him, but two years was a long time. They’d kept in touch. Him slipping her cartel intel, her providing him the plan to dismantle Sangre por Sangre and the warning to steer clear of Socorro’s next move. They worked well together in that respect, but in this case, time had made their wounds deeper. Not given them a chance to heal.

She didn’t like not knowing every detail ahead of time, and she sure as hell didn’t like not being in charge, but there were certain things he couldn’t tell her just yet either. At least, not without him logically defending his use of cartel resources available to him, and he wasn’t running on logic right now. “We’ll be there soon enough.”

“You’re very good about avoiding having to answer questions,” she said.

“How do you think I’ve been able to survive this long undercover?” He’d meant to lighten the mood. Because they both knew, out of the two of them, the FBI had chosen the wrong agent to send undercover within Sangre por Sangre . The only reason it hadn’t been her was because of his skin color. His mother’s Asian roots had made their mark around his eyes, but it was his father’s Mexican heritage that defined him on the outside. That heritage had given him an entry point inside the cartel, but to survive its ranks, he’d learned the rest violently and strategically.

Ivy directed her attention out the passenger-side window but stayed physically connected to the dog they’d once shared as a couple. “Good point.”

They’d gotten out of the city without incident, heading north, but it was only a matter of time before whoever’d come for Ivy scorched through the rest of her life as they had her safe house. Which meant her team could be at risk, too. And not just them. Anyone connected to Ivy. Operatives’ families. Clients. Any family she might have left.

“The shooter was sporting an M4 assault rifle. Exclusively a military model with a high-capacity magazine. Not something you would normally find on the streets.” Ivy’s voice had taken on that tone she used for interviewing witnesses and suspects. Strangers. “Which makes me think Dr. Piel’s murder and this ambush are tied back to the cartel. The timing would be a hell of a coincidence if they weren’t.”

He’d made the same connection. “She was your friend. The way you talk about her. It’s not the same as when you’ve talked about your other operatives.”

Ivy rolled her head back toward the center console. “It didn’t start out that way. I hired Dr. Piel because she was the most qualified for the job. She was a general surgeon at Columbia University. The only female in the entire emergency department. I saw how hard she had to work just to prove she was meant to be there, while getting a fraction of the salary as others less qualified. Not just as a woman, but as a Black woman.” There was that sadness again. A mere hint of the grief Ivy was most likely hiding from him. “She reminded me of…me. Of my time in the FBI. So I made her an offer on the spot. I convinced her to uproot her entire life to come to New Mexico. I provided her a surgical suite and clinic, paid her three times what she was worth and watched her do what she did best. Saving the lives of my operatives. Without her, Socorro wouldn’t have been possible. I owe her a lot. Only I’m just now realizing I never took the chance to tell her that.”

The SUV’s headlights bounced as he turned onto an unpaved road cutting off the I-25. It wasn’t well-worn like most others. Practically hidden in the expanse of the desert. Purposefully out of reach of wandering hitchhikers and curious civilians. Carson carved up the single-lane dirt path partially overgrown from lack of use. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been out here. Didn’t know what was waiting for them at the other end either. “Did Dr. Piel talk about her personal life? Maybe a falling-out with friends, family, a neighbor?”

“No. Not that she mentioned.” Ivy stared out the windshield, the lights from the console glimmering off the line of unshed tears in her eyes. His partner never cried. Not even when she’d believed she was about to die. Then again, a lot could change in two years. “And before you ask, I’ve already looked into her finances and phone records. She didn’t have any money problems, and there wasn’t any suspicious activity in her messages or calls. We drug test regularly due to the nature of our work and the missions we take on. Her results have never given me reason to believe she’s anything more than the woman I believed her to be.”

“Then we need to assume she was killed because of you. Because of your connection to her.” Carson pulled the SUV in front of the safe house. Well, safe house was a bit modest of a description. This place was more like a compound. A base Sangre por Sangre upper management utilized in case of emergency. Only it hadn’t been used much in the past six months for the simple fact there wasn’t much management left, thanks to Ivy and her team. He switched off the engine but didn’t move to get out. Not yet. “Ivy, we knew this would be a possibility going in. You’ve spearheaded Socorro’s creation and this war against the cartel. You’ve rallied the entire United States government to back you without hesitation and put Sangre por Sangre in a position of battling for survival. Dr. Piel’s death, the attack at the apartment… This is just the beginning. They will not stop until they’ve destroyed everything and everyone you love.”

“What is this place?” Ivy leaned forward in her seat, taking in the expansive landscaping, architecture and driveway leading to a three-car garage off to the left. She didn’t wait for an answer and shouldered out of the vehicle. Rounding to the front of the SUV, she turned on him as he climbed out of the driver’s side with Max following suit. “Did you bring me to a cartel safe house?”

“It’s the last place they’ll look for you.” He didn’t know how else to explain his decision. In his head, bringing her here made sense. Whoever had come for her at the apartment was well resourced, had access to military hardware and was not afraid to hurt bystanders. This was the best option to keep her safe. Right under the cartel’s nose.

“Or I’m walking right into their hands.” Her concern was valid. For as long as he’d been embedded within Sangre por Sangre , there were still some things he’d been kept separate from. The head of the cartel’s identity, for example.

“I would never knowingly put you in danger.” Carson couldn’t take this distance between them anymore. Not just physically, but emotionally. He might’ve been on assignment for two years, but he was still the same man she’d fallen in love with during their last assignment. They were supposed to be a team. Not…whatever this was. “You know that.”

“Do I?” Her jaw set hard enough to cut glass, but there was still an edge of nervousness. As though she expected to have to make a run for it at any second. “Because it was easy to contact you those first few months, Carson, but you stopped contacting me altogether. After a while, I was the one arranging our meetings. I was the one having to pull intel out of you instead of you offering it. That wasn’t how this was supposed to work, or did you forget that while killing anyone the cartel pointed you at?”

Tension bled into every muscle along his spine. Every shot, every kill, had been ingrained into his head. There was no way he’d ever be able to forget the voices that had begged for their lives. No way he could ever forgive himself for the futures he’d stolen in the name of Sangre por Sangre . No matter their level of evil. But her accusation that he’d forgotten his purpose in all of this—that he’d defected into the enemy’s ranks—gutted him. “I couldn’t blow my cover. Every time I reached out increased the chances of exposing our operation and putting your life in danger. We knew what we were getting into when the special agent in charge approached us with this assignment, Ivy. You’re the one who stepped away from the FBI’s support and took it upon yourself to compartmentalize who was involved. You agreed to all of this.”

“I thought you were dead. Do you know what that feels like? To believe that your partner can’t get word to you that he’s in danger? That you’re helpless to do anything about it?” Ivy swiped at her face. She lost the battle of facing off with him, escaping back to the SUV. Except she didn’t stop at the SUV. She kept walking. Heading toward the main road.

Carson didn’t have an answer for her. Not the kind that would make her feel any better when exhaustion, adrenaline and anger were working to undermine her executive function. He trailed after her, keeping his distance. For now. “Where are you going?”

“I’m not just going to hide out in some cartel safe house and wait for the son of a bitch who killed my operative and came after me to make his next move. I need to know if the rest of my team is in danger.” She pulled a phone from her blazer pocket. The screen lit up around her as she pressed her phone to her ear. “I can have an extraction here in twenty minutes.”

Carson grabbed the phone from her hand. He tossed it on the ground and stomped it into the dirt with the heel of his boot. The metal and glass protested, but he couldn’t risk broadcasting their position. “Whoever killed Dr. Piel wasn’t responsible for what went down at the safe house tonight.”

“You needed to destroy my burner to tell me that?” She seemed to come back into herself, the anger bleeding from her expression. “How can you be sure they’re two separate incidents?”

Max whined between them as the tension thickened.

“Because the killer we’re looking for prefers a blade. He likes to get close to his victims and make examples out of them. A gun is too messy. Traceable through ballistics.” Any second now, he’d lose what little trust was left between him and Ivy. He couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t lose her, too. “My guess? The ambush was a distraction. Something shiny for us to chase. And if I’m right, that means whoever killed Dr. Piel is already using it to his advantage.”