Page 7 of K-9 Justice (New Mexico Guard Dogs #6)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Something grimy coated the inside of her mouth.

Her pulse pounded at the back of her head as she tried to bring herself back into consciousness, but the delirium of sleep worked to drag her back down. There was no pain there. No pounding in her ankle. No headache.

Warmth framed her jaw, turning her face this way and that. Too easily. As though she were nothing but a rag doll. “Come now, senorita . It’s no fun if you’re not awake for this next part.”

Next part? What was the next part?

Ivy put everything she had into forcing her eyes open. But the world seemed to have turned upside down while she’d been asleep. Not asleep. Knocked out. The outline of a man shifted in front of her, letting her brain first take in the position of her body. Gravity pulled on her every muscle, pain igniting in her feet. Like they’d fallen asleep. No. Like the blood supply had been cut off.

She dragged her chin to her chest, a feat in and of itself. Upside down. A prickling took hold in her fingers. Her hands had been tied behind her back. With a zip tie, from what she could feel.

“Ah, there we are.” The man in front of her took his seat. Though she couldn’t pick out any distinguishing features with the lighting so low. Little of her surroundings were distinguishable, but he seemed to be avoiding showing his face altogether. “That’s better, don’t you think?”

His voice grated against her nerves. The kind of voice that visited in nightmares. Gravelly but calm at the same time. Low and threatening.

Ivy pulled at the zip ties binding her wrists at her lower back. She’d trained her operatives to beat such flimsy safeguards. It wouldn’t take much to break through the thin plastic, but the angle had to be right. Upside down was not a good angle. “Where…?”

Snippets of memory—of running for the gate of the junkyard—pieced together as slowly as the puzzle she’d been working on since Christmas. She and Max had gotten sights on the gate. They’d run while Carson intercepted Sebastian. Then…inky blackness.

A hole. Her stomach lurched as she recalled the sensation of falling. She’d landed feetfirst, but her right foot had made contact with a rock protruding from the basin. Her ankle had shot one way while her foot had gone the other before her head had collided with another rock jutting out from the side of the dirt wall. And Max… Where was Max? Where was Carson? “Where am I?”

“Does it matter?” Her captor shifted in his chair, but there was a hint of resistance in the movement. As though his body were fighting against him. She hadn’t been able to estimate his age without looking at his face directly, but the thin, papery skin along the backs of his hands said older rather than younger. Crusted jeans were stained with what looked like oil and grease, but from what little light illuminated the room, she noted perfectly clean, trimmed nails.

Not the mechanic he wanted her to believe he was.

Interlacing his hands against his low belly, Sebastian waited. It was an interrogation technique. Silence created pressure to fill the void. Lawyers, law enforcement and her own operatives used it as a weapon, but Ivy was conscious enough to recognize it for what it was: establishing power. He wanted her to believe he was in control. That the only way out of this was to comply, but she’d been through worse. Had survived worse. And he sure as hell would have to try a lot harder to get anything out of her.

Sebastian reached for something off to one side, pulling a sidearm into view. Her sidearm. “No wallet or keys in your possession. Just a gun, a little pocketknife and a lie about who you are. You failed to realize I knew exactly who you were before you showed up at my gate.”

“Then why let me in? Why go through this whole charade?” Ivy tried to take in the rest of the room. Find any potential objects that could be used as a weapon. But despite what her brain wanted this place to be, she couldn’t pick out equipment, tools or machinery relating to a junkyard warehouse. No. This place, this room, was something far more dangerous. Unique.

“To cut the head off the snake.” Sebastian detached the gun’s magazine from the main frame, seemingly counting the bullets lined up like little soldiers inside. “You and your private military contractors have torn Sangre por Sangre limb from limb. You’ve hunted us, stolen from us, murdered us.”

“Yes. Well, I’m so sorry about stopping your lieutenants from slaughtering thousands of innocent lives so you can push your drugs, steal their women and children and make a profit off other people’s misery.” Pure vitriol spread through her at the thought of all the damage the cartel had inflicted. All the hatred they’d created. The families they’d torn apart and the homes they’d destroyed. Raids, explosions, underage recruitment. Socorro had saved lives, and now he was going to try to convince her she was the bad guy? “I won’t do it again. Promise.”

Sebastian’s low laugh brushed against a buried part of her memory. As though she’d heard it before. Except that was impossible. Running Socorro kept her out of the field, and there hadn’t been a single instance in which Sangre por Sangre had succeeded in getting past her security measures. “I can see why Dominic likes you so much. Why he couldn’t kill you himself.”

Carson. Her heart jumped into her throat. Nothing in her peripheral vision suggested Carson or Max had been invited to this little party. The lack of windows in this place kept her from deducing how long she’d been unconscious, but her internal hunger cues gave a few clues. Not enough time for her insides to start eating themselves. Couple of hours. Maybe less. Which meant they had to be somewhere else. Somewhere within the warehouse or on the property. Sebastian wouldn’t have had time to dispose of their bodies and conduct this worthless interview.

The cartel soldier shifted forward, dark hair coming into view as he stood. Heavy footfalls seemed to echo through her with each connection to the cement floor. Sebastian circled to one side, just out of reach. “I imagine you’re the reason for my protégé’s recent lack of commitment to the operation. Why he’s been so…distracted.”

“What can I say? I’m in very high demand.” Ivy took the opportunity of being out of his direct sight to study the apparatus keeping her hoisted above the floor. While Sebastian had secured her hands with zip ties, he’d doubled up on chains around her ankles, hanging her from an oversize metal hook used to tow vehicles. And considering Carson most likely hadn’t helped secure her for the impending torture coming her way, Sebastian would have needed to lift her in place himself. Meaning he wasn’t as invalid as he wanted her to believe.

A fist rocketed into the side of her face.

Lightning exploded behind her eyes. Her teeth cut into the soft tissues of her mouth and forced blood to the surface. Momentum swung her body away from her attacker. Sebastian caught her before the pendulum could be completed, and a visceral stain of evil leached through her clothing and deep into bone from his touch alone. “Why don’t you tell me what you managed to get out of Dominic, eh? What was your end goal?”

“If I told you that, I’d have to cut this conversation short.” Ivy struggled to breathe through the blood clogging her airway. “And we just started to get to know each other.”

Another strike spun her a full one hundred and eighty degrees. Only this time, one of her back teeth dislodged. Her face pulsed in anger. The adrenaline that had numbed the area was already dissipating, and pain moved in to replace it. Her vision wavered. She fisted her hands in an attempt to stay conscious, but there were no guarantees.

Searing pain spread across her scalp as Sebastian pulled her head back by her hair. Exposing her throat. A small blade pricked at the thin skin there as he got close enough to whisper in her ear. “You know, I’ve seen a pocketknife like this before. A few years ago now. You don’t realize how very sharp they are until someone stabs you with it.”

Warning pooled in her gut.

“I know why you came here, Agent Bardot.” Puffs of air tickled her ear and triggered a shiver, but she wouldn’t let him see the effect he had on her. That his proximity had on her. “I know you’ve been searching for me all this time. That I’m the one who haunts your dreams and influenced every decision you’ve ever made in the past two years. You built Socorro to protect yourself from me, but where is your team now? Hmm?”

Agent Bardot. Not Ms .

Ice coursed through her veins as that voice took its rightful place in her memory. There was a reason it had felt so familiar, why he’d tried to hide his identity.

Sebastian moved into her line of view, fully exposing his face in the light, and her insides knotted tight.

“You.” All this time, Carson had been tasked to uncover the identity of the man who’d killed three women from within Sangre por Sangre . And the son of a bitch had been in front of him the entire time. Though it wasn’t clear until this moment—hanging upside down from her ankles with blood trailing into her hairline—that Carson hadn’t set eyes on the man who’d nearly killed her.

That night, those memories she’d tried to bury, flooded through her mind in a rush that stole her breath. Of waking in a basement not unlike this room, of feeling the killer’s hands on her. Of knowing there was a possibility she would die, that she’d never see her partner again. In an instant, Ivy was right back in that position. Vulnerable, helpless. It was all too much of a reminder of those nights her stepfather had drunk too much and exerted his power over her mother with flying fists, hard shoves and broken bones.

Until she hadn’t been able to take it anymore.

Ivy saw herself in her mind’s eye pulling her stepdad’s gun from his nightstand as a ten-year-old. She saw herself fisting her pocketknife in that basement two years ago.

And in this moment, she saw herself snapping through the zip tie binding her wrists and ending this for good.

“That’s right, senorita . Me.” Sebastian released his hold on her hair, letting the blade of her own pocketknife cut through the first layer of skin at her neck. “You and I have some unfinished business to attend to.”

* * *

All he could hear was barking.

Incessant and sharp and panicked.

Carson felt as though an elephant was sitting on his chest, ready to crush him to death. He tried to reorient himself, but he couldn’t seem to get his body to obey. The last memory—of falling, of being shoved, of trying to avoid landing on Ivy—took center stage.

Sebastian. That son of a bitch had captured Ivy and Max. And now… Now Carson didn’t know what had happened to his partner. Though from the sound of it, Max wasn’t too far away. Her barks cleared the haze from his head second by second.

He tried to bring his head up. Too fast. His forehead collided with something metal and large. Lightning exploded behind his eyes, and he fell back. Cement smacked against the back of his skull. If he hadn’t sustained a concussion from the fall into a dark hole in the middle of a salvage yard, he sure as hell had now.

His next inhalation caught hints of motor oil, gasoline and rust. His chest seemed to fill any available space, but it was too dark to get a sense of his situation. It was like he’d been sandwiched between two oversize forces. Carson maneuvered his hands at his sides. His weapon had been taken from him. Sebastian hadn’t wanted to take any chances of him shooting his way out of…whatever this place was. Not a surprise but still a disappointment. He’d been positioned on his back. Cement beneath him had been sealed. Most likely a floor. Inside the warehouse? He couldn’t be sure yet.

Another round of barking pierced into awareness.

“Max?” Carson’s vision adjusted the longer he focused, but there was still too much unknown for him to create a strategy to get out. Her responding whine confirmed what he needed to know. She was alive. She was okay. “Good girl.”

He managed to get his elbows into his rib cage and feel the wall hoisted above him. He followed the curves of what felt like car parts. Only there was something distorted about their shape. As though they’d been crushed. Burned crust flaked off and fell into his eyes, nose and mouth. He spit at the chemical bite, but there was nothing that could get rid of the taste of asphalt and heat. “Damn it.”

Sebastian had pinned him beneath a crushed car somehow.

The narrow cavity giving him enough space to keep breathing must’ve been maintained by one of the hoists. Though the son of a bitch had set it on the lowest level. Without the vehicle’s tires, there was no room to navigate an escape.

He was trapped.

An animal-like scream escaped his chest as Carson shoved against the vehicle balanced above him with everything he had. It echoed off the warehouse walls but failed to change anything. He needed to get out of here. He needed to locate Ivy.

He’d brought her here to ease the pressure of this investigation, to give her hope the past two years hadn’t been for nothing. But all he’d managed to do was make things worse. He’d trusted the wrong person, and now she would be the one to pay for his mistake.

Carson braced both palms against the underside of the car. The muscles in his neck and shoulders strained against the weight of the vehicle. There was no moving it. Not on his own. “Come on!”

There was no telling what Sebastian would do to Ivy. How much pain he would inflict. Or if the bastard would just kill her for her connection to Socorro.

Max’s barking seared his nerves with every protest. Until it was all he could focus on. His heart rate ratcheted into his throat as he released his hold on the vehicle above. He couldn’t lose Ivy. Not after everything they’d fought for. Not after what they’d survived. They’d sacrificed too much to only come this far and get nothing in reward. He didn’t want to imagine all the ways Sebastian was punishing her for her crimes against the cartel, but he couldn’t stop the thoughts either.

He’d taken this assignment to do something good with his life. To earn the kidneys both his mother and Ivy had donated to save his life. But what had he really accomplished? What did he have to show for it? There was no end to the amount of evil and violence he and Ivy took on every day, and no matter how hard he fought, it felt as though every step forward was ripped out from underneath him. He’d given up his friends, what little remained of his family, his life. All he had left was Ivy.

“And Max.” Carson shifted his body weight to one side of the cavity stabilizing the hoist. There wasn’t enough room for him to roll. He had to leverage his heels and palms into the floor and slide. Dim light bled through the gaps between the crushed vehicle and the platform meant to support the tires. He could make out movement through the holes. “Max.”

Stillness followed her gruff response.

More details came into focus the longer he forced his brain to account for the obstacles in his vision. He could just make out the K-9’s paws if he concentrated hard enough. “Come here.”

Max took a few steps forward but was prevented from making it to his position. Which meant Sebastian had most likely tied her to something in the shop. Only Carson couldn’t tell with what. There was a difference between a chain and a section of rope. She whined about not being able to fulfill her orders. “It’s okay. We’re going to get out of here. We’re going to find your mom. I promise.”

Though how he was going to do any of that still hadn’t made itself clear. Either way, he wouldn’t give up. Not on them. Not on their future. One they’d earned through the countless hours of blood, sweat and tears. Of losses on both sides and the hurt they’d inflicted. On victims who hadn’t been given the justice they deserved. Because he believed in them. Him and Ivy. These past two years had been about doing what they each thought was best to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves, but no future was worth not having her in it.

Carson angled his head in a way to give him a better view of whatever had been tied around Max’s collar. An earthquake-sized relief rocked through him. Rope. He and Max had trained for this in the times they weren’t assigned perimeter security or guard duty. It had taken up silent hours waiting until the next Socorro raid, and he’d never been more grateful for those hours now. “Max, packen .” Bite.

The German shepherd stared at him as though trying to decipher if a crushed car was the one giving her the order. Carson fit his finger through one of the gaps in the metal. “Packen.”

His K-9 partner took the command to heart, turning on the section of rope securing her to something out of sight. She clamped down on the twine and got to work. Within minutes, Max had chewed through the rope and gained her freedom. A few feet of rope still remained tied to her collar, but she didn’t seem to mind. Charging for his position, she put some bounce in her step. Showing off. She pressed her nose against his exposed finger.

“Good girl. Good girl. I’m getting you the largest steak I can find as soon as we get out of this place.” Carson rubbed at her nose, but the affection fell short. “Okay. We need to find the controls to get this thing off of me.”

How the hell he was going to manage that in his current position, he didn’t know, but Max was smart, and he’d prepared her for anything. He didn’t have a whole lot of knowledge when it came to mechanic shops and salvage yards, but there had to be a button or lever that would lift the vehicle. “Knopf.” Button.

Max sniffed at his finger for a few more seconds, then pulled back. Out of sight. Her nails clicked against the cracking cement. Strong at first, then less so. A rise of panic coated Carson’s throat, but as long as he was trapped here, Max wouldn’t leave. It wasn’t in her nature to abandon the people she loved.

“What do you see, Max?” He tried to maneuver farther down the cavity, but the angle of the tire platform dropped off toward his feet, and his toes hit the underside of the vehicle. “Knopf?”

No answer. No sound of her nails on the floor.

“Max?” he asked.

The car jolted above him.

His nerves spiked into dangerous territory. Carson braced for the potential of the two-ton vehicle to drop directly on him, but nothing happened for a series of seconds.

The car shifted again. This time increasing the light coming in through the gaps between the hunk of metal and the hoist. It was moving upward. A laugh clawed through Carson’s chest. “Max, knopf !”

A mechanical groan filled his ears, and the car lifted higher. It cleared the platform, but there still wasn’t enough room for him to squeeze through. Not yet. “Keep going, baby.” Another round of moaning raised the oversize paperweight higher.

The hoist continued its upward ascent. Any mechanic would’ve spotted the signs the weight had been unevenly distributed and stopped, but he couldn’t expect that from a German shepherd.

The vehicle had started tipping toward him. Off-balance.

But there still wasn’t enough space between the bottom of the car and the tire platform for him to escape. Carson didn’t have a choice. He had to move. Now.

He kept his attention locked on the unbalanced vehicle as he hauled himself over the brim of the cavity holding him hostage.

Carson hit the cement floor, free of his makeshift prison.

Just as the vehicle dropped.

Two thousand–plus pounds of metal screeched from the impact. In the exact same location as he’d been held hostage. Shattered glass escaped the confines of the car’s shell and skimmed across the floor to his position.

Max’s bark called to him from the back of the hoist. He scrambled to his feet, out of breath and in one piece. Because of his K-9 partner. Max nearly knocked him over as she stretched onto her hind legs to give her version of a hug. He buried his hands into her fur. “You’re getting as many steaks as you want tonight.”

She licked at his face, then sneezed from the amount of crust that covered his skin, before dropping onto all fours.

“Had I known you were going to kiss me, I would’ve showered first.” He caught sight of a toolbox splayed open with an array of potential weapons. Sebastian might’ve taken his gun, but the son of a bitch wasn’t going to take anything else from him. Carson collected a heavy wrench capable of a lot of damage if swung hard enough. “Now, what do you say we go get your mom?”