Page 8 of K-9 Justice (New Mexico Guard Dogs #6)

CHAPTER EIGHT

The crash jolted her awake.

Though she wasn’t entirely sure she’d fallen asleep as Sebastian—if that was his real name—fed into his own desperation for answers. Where was her team? Where would they strike next? Had they learned about this location? Her body hurt. Every inch. Blood dripped from her hair onto the floor below, staining the cement.

A bark reached through the haze closing in around Ivy’s awareness. Through the seal her brain had created to protect itself. She knew that bark.

“I never liked that dog.” Sebastian stepped into view, her pocketknife in hand. Coated with her blood.

“She’s a…good judge of character.” She’d lost count of how many lacerations he’d cut into her arms, legs and stomach. Nothing vital. He knew what he was doing, how to bleed her to death without so much as raising her body’s alarm systems until it was too late. Her mouth felt full. As though she’d attempted to swallow a handful of bees. Adrenaline had left the party a while ago. She couldn’t count on it to get her out of this as she had so many times before. Adrenaline didn’t consider logic or others. It was pure survival. Her arms ached as she attempted to break through the zip ties one more time. In vain. The angle was wrong. Not enough force.

“Don’t go anywhere. We’re not finished.” He flipped the pocketknife to face down in his palm and stabbed it into the drywall near a door she hadn’t noticed until then. In a single breath, her abductor—her torturer—was gone.

A sliver of hope that had no business sparking lit up inside of her. The crash. She wasn’t sure of the source, but given Max was alive, Ivy was willing to bet Carson was, too. That he’d been the one to cause the disruption of Sebastian’s latest masterpiece. Ivy struggled against gravity and exhaustion to duck her chin into her chest. There wasn’t much she could do in the way of getting her hands around her feet for better access.

But there was another way.

She forced air into her lungs, then breathed out harder than necessary. It had been years since she’d dislocated her shoulder, courtesy of her stepfather, but old wounds never really healed right. There was a chance this could work. If she was willing to endure just a little longer. For Carson. For Max. For the family she’d created in a world full of nothing but brutality and betrayal. Ivy clamped her back teeth together, stretching her bound wrists toward the floor.

The idea of inflicting pain on herself when she’d intentionally built Socorro to protect her and others from going through what she had as a child gripped her hard. But the possibility of losing everything—her partner, her team, her dog—hurt so much more.

“One.” Her stomach protested the pain coming. “Two.” She bounced her straightened arms to get a feel for the momentum needed. “Three.”

She put everything she had into disconnecting her right shoulder. The muscles screamed as they twisted in the entirely wrong direction. Inky blackness encroached into the edges of her vision, but she had to hang on. She had to keep going. Her wrists followed the path of the zip tie as she brought them forward. Every breath helped ease the pain, but her body had hit a wall. It couldn’t take much more.

Ivy fought through the drowning sensation pulling her into unconsciousness. If she blacked out now, Sebastian would have free rein to kill her and everyone she loved. There would be no one to stop him. No. She couldn’t give in. No matter how much she wanted to. She’d survived before. She could—she would—do it again.

Reaching for her feet, she attempted to curl her upper body forward. But the lacerations across her midsection only slowed her down. She fell back and let the relief take hold. Just for a moment. There was a chance she’d never be able to lift a weapon with her damaged arm, but for now, all she needed it to do was get her closer to the tow hook holding her hostage. Ivy tried again. A groan backed up in her throat as her fingertips brushed the end of the hook.

“Closer.” She collapsed again. The room swirled in her vision as she released the air she hadn’t realized she’d been holding on to. Time seemed to slip through her fingers without any effort. Seconds, minutes, an hour. She wasn’t sure how long she hung there. The rhythmic patter of blood dripping onto the floor kept in time with the pulse thudding in her throat. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

She pried her eyes open.

And stared straight into the face of a dead man. As real as Sebastian, as Carson, as the operatives on her team. He hadn’t aged a day despite twenty-seven years since she’d seen him.

“What did I always tell you, Ives?” her stepfather said. “You’re not strong enough to beat me.”

“You’re not real.” The words slurred due to the swelling in her face and lips. “You’re not here.”

His sneer pooled dread at the base of her spine. It was that same sneer he’d given her when he’d dared her to pull the trigger that night. Right before he’d lunged at her to take the gun. She’d shot him at just ten years old, scared, desperate to help her mother, to keep him from killing them both. Then she’d shot him again. He’d dropped to the floor right there in the entryway of their small Jacksonville house, hand to his chest. And she’d stood over him, watching. Waiting for him to take his last breath. Her mother had called the paramedics with a broken arm and two missing teeth, and the EMTs had somehow kept him alive. Only he’d never come home after leaving the hospital. He was still out there. Still haunting her memories, her nightmares.

“You’re a coward, Ives. Same as you’ve always been.” Her stepfather moved in closer. So close, she could almost smell that sickening scent of his aftershave. “You think you’re protecting people, but the truth is, you’re just protecting yourself. Like a child. All you ever cared about was yourself, what you wanted. That’s why you shot me. It wasn’t to protect your mama. Look what happened to her after that night.”

“No.” Tears burned in her eyes, giving away the echoing feelings of helplessness when faced with this particular threat. She didn’t want to think about that. About how after the incident her mother hadn’t been able to find a job, how she hadn’t been able to put food on the table and then just gave up trying. Life had beaten her mother down long after her stepfather had gone, had stolen any glimpse of hope. Until there was nothing left but drugs, a revolving door of men and a final overdose.

“She died because of you. You know that, right?” His words surfaced and took shape from within; they’d followed her through high school, college, into the FBI, and were controlling her now. “If you hadn’t shot me, she’d still be here. You’re pathetic, Ivy Bardot. You’re nothing. You can’t save anyone. You can’t even save yourself.”

“Stop.” Tears mixed with blood across her face. The image—the hallucination—of her stepfather waned. Years of building her personal armor, of becoming the woman she was, seemed to disintegrate at the accusations living in her head. Ivy shook her head as though it would make him go away. “It’s not true.”

The thing that made everything not so bad was knowing, sooner or later, I was coming home to you. Carson’s words cut through the self-hatred and worked to repair the damage done to her heart. They burned through her, cleansing and clarifying. Ivy set her attention on the figment of her imagination. Carson was out there right now. Fighting to survive. Fighting for her. Just as he’d done during their last case together. They were still here because they’d refused to give up on one another. And she wasn’t going to let the past stand in the way now.

“You’re wrong.” Confidence replenished some of the strength she’d lost since coming to this hellhole. “I was a child, asshole. Everything that happened in our family was the responsibility of two adults who should’ve made better choices.”

Anger creased her stepfather’s expression. He reached for her, but Ivy thrust herself upward with everything she had left. Her fingers latched on to the tow hook. She gripped the cold steel with force enough to crush a diamond, hauling her bound ankles over the lip of the hook. Just as quickly, her strength gave out. She hit the floor, her legs collapsing out from under her. It was enough. She was free.

Her stepfather had returned to the small space in her head where she’d buried the memories of him. At least he’d been good for something after all this time. She managed to untangle her ankles from the rope, but the filaments of torn muscle in her shoulder wouldn’t like what came next. Hiking her hands above her head, she slammed them down against her thighs with as much force as she could muster. The zip tie broke. Setting sights on the door, she fought through the dizziness closing in and locked on her pocketknife stabbed into the drywall there. “That’s mine.”

Crusted blood stained the handle and blade, but it would be enough in the coming fight. Because this wasn’t over. Throwing open the door, Ivy stepped out into a black expanse of warehouse. Her ankle ached under her full weight, but she couldn’t stop now. She had a family to protect. Every cell in her body homed in on picking up the threat before it slapped her in the face. A single fluorescent light flickered at her left, and she scanned for movement.

“You were right, Sebastian.” Her words bounced off the sheet-metal walls, and the confidence in her voice invigorated her to keep moving. “You and I have unfinished business.”

No answer. No sign of Max or Carson. It would be easy to panic if she let herself, but she’d just conquered one of the demons that kept her up at night. Now it was time to face the second. Gripping her pocketknife in her nondominant hand, she pressed her back into the walls of whatever room Sebastian had held her in. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

“Are you sure you want to play this game, little girl?” Sebastian’s answer felt far away and yet too close at the same time. “The last time I checked, you weren’t cut out to face me.”

She’d sustained a good amount of injury hung upside down as his personal punching bag. Her brain could be messing with her, but Ivy got the feeling her perception hadn’t changed. Sebastian knew this warehouse better than she or Carson. There were spaces he’d most likely created to track his enemies, watch them, ambush them. He wouldn’t be so lucky today. Memories of that voice threatened to slow her down, but she’d already made up her mind. There was no turning back.

A shadow shifted in her peripheral vision.

She didn’t hesitate. She arced the blade of her undersized weapon.

And hit something soft.

“My pocketknife says otherwise.” Ivy fisted Sebastian’s collar and dragged him into the light. Victory charged through her as pain creased into his face. “This is for Nafessa Piel.”

Agony seared through her side. Exposing a thin saw blade where her right kidney used to be.

“And this is for stabbing me two years ago,” he said.

She stumbled back, forced to leave her pocketknife in his shoulder.

And dropped to her knees.

* * *

“No!” Carson watched on as though things unraveled in slow motion.

Ivy pressed a hand to her side. Then turned her gaze to him down the length of the maze of in-progress automobiles before going limp. She hit the floor with nothing more than the sound of a feather landing lightly.

Everything in him froze. His worst nightmare had come to fruition. He’d lost her. Carson’s bellow filled the entire warehouse.

Sebastian wasn’t ready for the rage boiling over inside of him.

Carson raced to close the distance between them. He swung the heavy-duty wrench with every ounce of control he had left. Sebastian dodged the first attempt but couldn’t avoid the second. Metal connected with bone in a sickening crunch that would haunt Carson for the rest of his life. The man he’d once considered a mentor within the cartel—a friend, even—had taken away the only person he had left. There was no one left to ground him to this life. His father had left when he’d been a kid; his mother had died after an infection started eating her from the inside. The FBI wanted nothing to do with him, and the men and women he’d fought beside on the battlefield were six feet underground. And now Ivy. Taken by the very person he’d saved from being buried under megatons of rock, cement and steel.

He swung the wrench back for another blow. To end it.

Only Sebastian wasn’t ready to accept his fate. The cartel soldier caught Carson’s wrist, but the wrench’s momentum ripped the tool out of Carson’s hand. It skidded across the cement and was lost to shadow in an instant.

A fist rocketed into Carson’s face. Once. Twice. Lights exploded behind his eyes, but it wouldn’t slow him down. Sebastian held on to his wrist. Except there was more than one way to win a fight. Carson thrust his forehead into the bastard’s face. Sangre por Sangre ’s most fearsome killer fell back, releasing his hold with a groan. Another fist came at him, and Carson raised both forearms to block it.

“Max, bring !” Retrieve. The K-9 leaped from her hiding place with a sharp protest, vaulting for Ivy. She’d never had to pull an entire person out of a hostile situation before, but Carson had his faith placed in her. It was the only way they were all going to get out of this alive. The German shepherd latched on to Ivy’s boot and started jerking Ivy out of sight.

“I’m going to cut you and gut you for what you’ve done, Rojas. You should know better by now. No one escapes Sangre por Sangre .” Sebastian added some distance between them, swiping the back of his hand beneath his shattered nose.

“What did you just say?” That phrasing. He’d heard it before. No. He’d read it before. Carved into the backs of four women, one of whom had been killed a mere two days ago. But…it wasn’t possible. Was it? The man standing in front of him—who’d served as his recruiter and guided him through the ranks of the cartel—couldn’t be the same one he’d been searching for all this time.

“There’s no saving Agent Bardot. Even if you make it out of here alive, I will hunt you both for the rest of your lives.” Sebastian’s threats were more growl than words now. “You will never be safe. You will never have a future. I’ll make sure of it.”

Agent Bardot. Not Ivy Bardot of Socorro Security. Sebastian had known Ivy since before she’d founded her private military contractor operation. But it didn’t matter what the son of a bitch called her. Every second Carson wasted here was another second Ivy didn’t have. She’d been stabbed. He didn’t know how badly, but he’d lived through the experience enough to tell him there was a chance she could bleed out if he didn’t get to her.

“We’ve survived worse than you.” Carson kicked out. His heel connected with Sebastian’s midsection and sent the cartel soldier straight back into a tool bench.

“You have no idea who I am, do you, boy? What I can do to you and your partner?” Sebastian grabbed for a section of chain coiled on the surface and whipped the heavy metal. He was grabbing for anything and everything. Always putting his own survival first. It was a wonder Carson had gotten this far within Sangre por Sangre without seeing it until now. “You’ve never known the kind of pain I will bring down on you.”

Sebastian lashed out with the chain.

The links snapped against Carson’s raised wrist as he attempted to block the strike and coiled around as tight as a boa constrictor might. Muscles burned as he, in turn, pulled the chain tighter and brought Sebastian into his personal space.

A fist thrust into his kidney.

Carson arched backward as the pain lightninged across his back and down into his legs. Three surgeries—two transplants and a stab wound—should have prepared him for the pain, but the opposite seemed to be true. One knee bit into the ground. Sebastian released his hold on the chain. Only to secure it around Carson’s neck in his next breath.

The metal dug into Carson’s flesh. Pinched his skin between the links as his air supply lodged in his throat. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Pressure built in his chest to the point he was convinced his lungs might pop. He tried to twist out of the man’s grip, but Sebastian only held on tighter.

Black waves pierced into his vision. Trying to convince him to give up, to sink into the gravitational pull of unconsciousness. Carson threaded his fingers around the chain, but it was no use. Sebastian had the upper hand. He put everything he had into his heels, kicking back. But the leverage did nothing to relieve the weight of suffocation.

Sebastian’s hands shook from the effort. The only reminder the cartel recruiter was human. That he could bleed just as well as Carson. As Ivy.

Max would get her out of the warehouse. She and Ivy were going to make it. His partner had out-strategized some of the top supervising agents back in the FBI. When she set the rules, failure wasn’t an option. There was only winning in her book. And she wouldn’t let something like a stab wound slow her down. Not when there were potential lives at risk. The partners who’d come before him had seen her as a narcissist, selfish, someone bent on having control and only concerned with her own survival. He’d been warned of her intensity, that she tended to mow people down—partners, witnesses, supervising agents—to get her way.

But that wasn’t Ivy at all. Not the real her. Not the woman she’d allowed him to see underneath that battle armor. Though it had taken both of them nearly dying for Carson to see the truth. That intensity every one of her former partners had feared had been built on survival. They’d been right about that. But not hers. She fought for the victims. For the potential victims. For those who’d been taken advantage of and those too scared to stand up for themselves. She fought a war no one else could see to ensure the evil would never touch them. Hell, he admired her. Wanted to be half as strong as her.

And he would make sure she got out of this alive.

Because the cartel wouldn’t stop, and the innocent lives in their path deserved someone to protect them. They needed her to keep fighting for them. She was all that mattered.

Carson grabbed for the old man’s forearms with both hands. Sebastian had the upper hand, the higher ground, but Carson had the strength. He put everything he had into shoving to his feet. Sebastian was forced to adjust his hold.

And Carson took advantage.

He hauled the cartel soldier over his back and slammed the bastard onto the cement in front of him. Air crushed from Sebastian’s lungs as Carson unraveled the chain from around his neck. His cough filled the warehouse as his lungs tried to remember how to breathe. He tossed the length of chain. “You’re not strong enough to take her on alone. No one is. So tell upper management if they want a war, they’ll have it, and they will lose. Because you have no idea what you’re up against.”

The old man grabbed for his back, rolling onto one side. Giving up the fight.

Carson stepped over the son of a bitch, and exhaustion hit hard. He’d been running off fumes and adrenaline. A potent combination that only inflicted more damage the longer he pushed himself. He located the point where Ivy had collapsed, noting the trail of blood left behind as Max had dragged her out of the building. He had to go. He had to get her to the hospital. Now.

“You don’t get to walk away from this. None of us do.” Sebastian’s voice was the only warning Carson received as a pipe came down on his shoulder.

The pain exploded through his neck and down his arm, but it wasn’t enough to stop him from turning on his former mentor. He caught the pipe on Sebastian’s second attempt and ripped the weapon from the man’s hand. Immediately returning the attack. The end of the pipe connected with Sebastian’s face, and the son of a bitch hit the floor. “Go back into hiding, Sebastian. That’s the only way you’re going to get out of this alive.”

He tossed the pipe to one side, jogging for the exit. The trail of blood took a right turn. Headed straight for the nearest door. “Good girl, Max.”

Carson shoved through the barrier and out in the New Mexico sunrise. Cold air burned down his throat as he sighted the German shepherd struggling to get her human across the salvage yard gravel. His heart double-timed as he picked up the pace. “Ivy.”

Max released her hold on Ivy, pouncing on all four paws.

He skidded to a stop, kicking up gravel as he hauled Ivy’s upper body away from the ground. Her head fell back. Swelling blocked out one of her eyes, bruises already starting across her jaw. But it was the blood that nearly stopped his heart.

Cuts covered her arms, legs and torso. Dozens of them. Something dangerous and more familiar than he wanted to admit clawed through him, and if Ivy weren’t in a position of bleeding out in his arms, he would go back into that warehouse. He would make Sebastian pay for what he’d done.

But he didn’t have time. Ivy didn’t have time. Carson threaded his arms behind her shoulders and knees and shoved to stand. Max followed on his heels, her attention fixed on the woman in his grasp. “I’ve got you, partner. I’ve got you.”