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

CHAPTER NINE

People were dying to get into their graves.

Ivy wasn’t one of them.

Bright fluorescent lighting agitated the migraine somehow behind her eyes and every other inch of her brain. She wanted to go back to sleep, but the damn rhythmic pulse on the EKG machine wouldn’t let her. The IV line in the back of her hand itched and hurt at the same time. And the bedsheets had obviously come straight from hell.

Ugh. She’d been admitted to a hospital.

“You’re awake. That’s a good sign.” The voice she expected was not the one speaking to her now. Styled dark hair consumed her attention. Not a single hair out of place. White coat—physician.

“I don’t know you.” Her heart hurt at the reminder Dr. Piel wouldn’t be the one to clear her for fieldwork or to go head-to-head with Congress again. Ivy scanned the room, but there was no sign of her team. No sign of Max. Or Carson.

She didn’t know what to think of that right then. Didn’t really want to think about it.

“No. I expect you wouldn’t.” Her doctor faced her, his clipboard leveraged against his lower abdomen. Sharp features built out a handsome face. A little too perfect for her taste. She’d always been attracted to men who had a little wear on them, a little life experience. This one was brand-new. “I’m Dr. Cavill. I’m your attending physician during your stay here.”

“And where exactly is here?” Ivy tried to sit up, but her body seemed to have other plans. In the way it screamed at the slightest movement. How her right shoulder refused to take any weight. She could see out of both eyes. That was comforting. The swelling she’d sustained from Sebastian’s fist colliding with her face multiple times had gone down. Which meant she hadn’t just taken a nap in the time she’d passed out and woken here. It was now most likely days since she and Carson had stepped into a fight they hadn’t been prepared to handle.

“Alpine Valley.” Dr. Cavill made a note on the clipboard. Presumably in her chart.

“I’m in the clinic.” That explained the sheets. Alpine Valley, while home to almost two thousand residents, kept a small-time feel with family-owned businesses and a medical clinic that mostly handled broken bones and people who knew each other’s names. “Can I get an early checkout?”

“I’m afraid not.” His laugh did nothing to ease her discomfort. “You’re lucky to be alive, Ms. Bardot. You’ve suffered from multiple blows to the face, dislocated a shoulder, and we can’t forget about that nasty stab wound in your side. If you still had a kidney, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Don’t forget the sprained ankle.” Her nerves were ticking higher with every pulse of that damn machine. She’d never liked being held against her will. Though she’d have to say this was far more preferable than being hung upside down from a tow hook and used as a pinata. “As for the kidney, someone else is borrowing it.”

Dr. Cavill set the clipboard on the side table and unwound the stethoscope from around his neck. Practiced movements. As though done thousands of times. Maybe he wasn’t so brand-new after all. “Yes, I’ve read your medical history.”

Goose pimples spread over her skin as he slipped the cold metal between her shoulder blades. She tried to keep her breathing steady, but the more she tried to force herself to relax, the farther away she seemed to get from her goal. “Not sure how you would, seeing as how that is confidential information.”

“I contacted your employer when we couldn’t find any next of kin to ask permission for your history. One of your employees—Cash, I think his name was—was kind enough to send it over while you were recovering. He’s in the lobby with a couple police officers waiting to take your statement about how you ended up in my clinic. Along with what I believe is everyone else who works for Socorro.” Dr. Cavill withdrew his probing and recentered the stethoscope around his neck.

Her team was here?

“I have to say it’s a miracle the damage you sustained wasn’t any worse. The dozen or so lacerations over your body were all relatively surface cuts. We’ve cleaned and bandaged each one.” The physician picked up his clipboard once again, making another note. “As for the stab wound, we sewed you up with two levels of stitches. We found some rust flakes in the wound, so we made sure you were up-to-date on your tetanus shot. You should make a full recovery with no ongoing issues as long as you take it easy for the next few weeks, but based off your past X-rays, I’m willing to bet this isn’t the first time you’ve dislocated that shoulder.”

Her past X-rays. Dr. Piel had insisted on collecting as much past medical history and films as possible for each Socorro operative. Ivy couldn’t even remember the number of broken bones she’d sustained the first ten years of her life. Each had healed, in their own way. None perfectly. “No. Not the first time.”

A deep ache that had nothing to do with her injuries took hold. “What happened to the man who was with me? Carson—” She had to stop herself. Because Carson Lang didn’t exist anymore. That part of his life had ended a long time ago, and there was no getting it back. Not as long as Sangre por Sangre still had power. “Dominic Rojas. He would’ve had a German shepherd with him. Is he here?”

“He was.” Dr. Cavill finally looked up from that damn clipboard. He pointed to the door with the end of his pen. “I think one of the nurses finally convinced him you would be okay if he got a few hours of sleep. I’ll see if my staff can locate him.”

Something released inside of her. He was alive. They both were, and it didn’t escape Ivy that they’d been in this situation before. Not that long ago they’d faced a killer in a cartel hideout. The same killer. A sinking sensation interrupted the steady rhythm of her heart rate on the EKG, but Dr. Cavill didn’t seem to notice.

“Try to get some rest. You’ve been through a lot.” The physician headed for the door. “I’ll be back to check on you in a couple hours. Until then, try not to make matters worse by thinking you can check yourself out, Ms. Bardot.”

Before he could exit, Dr. Cavill stepped back as the heavy metal door opened from the other side. Carson. “Well, that saves me having to track anyone down.”

The doctor closed the door behind him, sealing her and Carson in the same room.

“Hi.” As a professional, she ran a multibillion-dollar security firm. She lobbied for additional resources from the Pentagon. She shot down congressmen and made public statements. And the only thing she could think to say when seeing her partner was hi .

“You’re awake.” Carson moved deeper into the room, heading straight for the side of her bed.

“That’s what they tell me.” She grabbed on to her injured shoulder wrapped securely against her chest. “Can’t say it’s been a great experience thus far, but it’s better than being used as a punching bag for a cartel soldier.”

He settled on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight, but there was a distance between them. Something thick and unspoken she didn’t want to deal with right now. “Ivy, I’m sorry. I made a mistake—”

“Stop. It’s…” Well, it wasn’t fine. It wasn’t close to fine, but blaming him for what had happened wouldn’t get them closer to bringing Dr. Piel’s killer to justice. “It’s him, Carson. Sebastian. He killed those women.”

Understanding slid into his expression. “All this time I’ve been looking for the man who abducted you—almost killed you—and he was standing right in front of me.”

“What better way to hide than in plain sight?” Images kept coming back to her. Of the warehouse. Of seeing Carson before she collapsed. There were sensations and memories and confusion. And it had all led to this. To them. Ivy shut down a shiver prickling along her spine. “Did you…? Is he dead?”

“No.” Regret laced that single word. “I sent him back to upper management with a message. They want to come for you, they’ll lose. I’ll make sure of it.”

The wrongness of that statement collided with her need to know she wasn’t alone in this and pressed the oxygen from her lungs. A warning that had been there since the moment she’d found him in her apartment slithered into awareness. It had taken a back seat in her subconscious over the course of two days, but it was growing now. “You had the chance to put an end to this, and you let the killer off with a warning?”

“You’d been stabbed, Ivy. You were bleeding everywhere. I wasn’t sure how long you had until…” Color drained from his face. “I didn’t want to lose you again. I did what I thought was right.”

Right. Of course he had. Because that was what partners were supposed to do. Ivy chastised herself for seeing a potential threat where there was none. She didn’t know whether it was from the painkillers or the trauma she’d sustained that raised her defenses, but there had to be a point where she let herself take something at face value. There wasn’t always a hidden agenda. She reached for his hand, pressing her thumb between his first two knuckles. “Thank you. For getting me out of there.”

“Actually, that was Max,” he said. “Turns out she’s a lot better at retrieval than I gave her credit for.”

“I’ll be sure to thank her, too.” Ivy pulled on his hand until Carson’s upper body had to come with him.

“You’re going to have a hard time getting her attention with all your operatives keeping her busy out in the parking lot.” A smile pulled at one corner of his mouth, instantly erasing the memory of Dominic Rojas. The partner she’d fallen for locked his gaze on hers as he leaned into her.

“In that case, I think we should enjoy this time we have alone together,” she said.

“Believe me, Agent Bardot.” Carson pressed his mouth against hers, and the pain, reality and a whole lot of bad disappeared at the contact. “I intend to.”

* * *

They couldn’t go back to the cartel safe house.

Not as long as Sebastian—or whoever the hell the killer was—was alive. Whatever remained of Sangre por Sangre had been called to a final fight, with Sebastian at the forefront. There was no going back. There was no more Dominic Rojas or the connection he’d built over the past two years. No resources. No team he could rely on. And Carson couldn’t help but feel a hole beginning to develop at an entire two years of his life gone just like that.

Once they’d given their statements to Alpine PD, they’d been permitted to leave the clinic. As long as Ivy promised to rest. An impossible task for a woman determined to take on the weight of every suffering human and find a dozen solutions in the process. He pulled the SUV off to the side of the road of a little neighborhood he hadn’t stepped foot in since he’d gone undercover. Max’s tail hit him in the face as she climbed over the center console and across Ivy’s lap to look out the window. “Get out of here, you giant fur ball.” He tried to maneuver her into the back seat, but there was no derailing the German shepherd.

She was home.

“What are we doing here?” Ivy studied the small house with its pristine stucco, traditional-style roof and maintained front lawn. The tree out front looked much bigger than he remembered the last time he’d been here, and the garage had been painted black instead of its original white, but everything else pulled memories from a happier time.

A time when he knew who the hell he was. Where he belonged.

The bruising along one side of Ivy’s face had darkened to a sickening purple and blue but told him Sebastian favored his right hook. Something to keep in mind the next time they met. “You realize I don’t live here anymore, right? I live part-time in that place full of bullet holes we escaped four nights ago and the other part in a stronghold with a team of mercenaries.”

Carson shouldered out of the vehicle. His forearms ached with the use of the small muscles extending from his wrists to his elbows. Protecting his head from being bashed in with a pipe had left its stain beneath his skin, but it was nothing compared to the pain Ivy had to deal with. They needed somewhere she would be safe, that gave her the time she needed to recover. Where nobody could find her. Rounding in front of the SUV, he felt Ivy’s eyes follow him as he approached her door. He opened the passenger-side door and offered his hand. “Trust me.”

Max took the opportunity to spring out of the vehicle. She bounded up the driveway and pranced around the front yard as if she owned the place.

Ivy stared at his hand, then cut her gaze to the house behind him. He could practically see the wheels turning in her head, considering all her options. Trust him or die at the hands of a killer who’d been playing mind games with them all this time? The choice should’ve been easy, right? Slipping her uninjured hand into his, she let him pull her and her go bag from the vehicle. “What did you do?”

“Nothing big. Just convinced the people who bought the place from you to sell it to me.” Carson led her up the driveway, slower than he wanted to go but fully aware of her limitations after surviving what she had.

Disbelief and something along the lines of joy etched into her features. Ivy couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of the house. “When did you do this?”

“While you were recovering in the hospital. Not sure you know this, but you were asleep for a long time.” A move of this magnitude had taken precision planning and people skills. But, in the end, he knew it was worth the effort. Just for the look on her face. “I know you had to give this house up when I went undercover. We couldn’t hold on to our old lives when we started this war, but considering our options are limited to using Sangre por Sangre resources or putting you in the crosshairs with a Socorro safe house, I figured this would be the best place to lie low for a couple days.”

“How…? How is this possible?” she asked.

Carson offered her the key. “Want to go inside?”

She nodded, seemingly incapable of responding. They moved as one up the rest of the driveway and past the black iron gate protecting the front door from solicitors and anyone else looking for their pound of flesh. Ivy slid the key into the dead bolt and turned.

Max pushed past both of them, nearly knocking Carson off-balance. Her nails clicked against the simple, oversize tile installed throughout the entryway as she raced through the maze of rooms. The rug positioned to greet visitors crumpled behind her.

“Knock it off! You’re going to break something.” Carson guided his partner over the threshold, and for a moment, he couldn’t help but think of the night Ivy had invited him inside this place for the first time. How she’d kissed him right here at the front door. It had been a simpler time then. All they’d had to contend with was the FBI’s rules on office romances. Everything had gotten so…out of order since then.

“It all still looks the same.” Ivy unwound her hand from his and limped down the narrow hall leading to the rest of the house. “What did you do, ask the previous owners to leave their furniture and belongings and get out?”

“Something like that.” A lot like that actually. Though he’d certainly made it worth their while. Hundreds of thousands of dollars over value. The thing about working for criminals for so long was he’d learned to become one. He’d known his days as Dominic Rojas would have to come to an end eventually. He hadn’t known the exact moment when, but Ivy’s influence had trained him to prepare for every threat. Every possibility. The cartel wouldn’t get the drop on him. No matter the circumstance, and so Carson had ensured his own future. With the help of Sangre por Sangre . He set Ivy’s belongings by the door and followed after her into the kitchen. “It’s purchased under another alias for obvious reasons. Your operative who works your team’s security—Scarlett—helped with the details.”

Ivy ran her uninjured hand the length of the expansive kitchen island. Large enough to seat four people, though Carson had never known his partner to invite anyone into the space but him. The tension drained from her shoulders minute by minute. “I didn’t think I would ever get to be inside this place again. I drive by it sometimes. Wasn’t too happy with them painting the garage a different color, but they took good care of it, from what I can see.” She surveyed the kitchen and the attached living room. “Do you think there’s a chance they left anything to eat?”

“Already on it.” Carson dodged Max’s beeline for the living room couch. “If you don’t calm down, I’m going to put you outside.”

Ivy’s laugh followed her into the living room, where she sat down on the sofa beside the German shepherd, and in that moment, it was easy to imagine they were on the other side of this investigation. That they’d survived Sangre por Sangre and Sebastian and everything else the world threw at them, and all that was left was…this. This peace.

It had been so long since he’d allowed himself to relax, he wasn’t sure he knew how to anymore, but right now, here with Ivy, he saw their future. A future he’d killed for, had nearly died for and sacrificed for.

In an instant, guilt—thick and hot and acidic—burned in his gut, eating away at his stomach lining. He’d built a life within the cartel. Dedicated himself to protecting the people he served with. They’d become his team at a time when he’d needed them the most.

But choosing Ivy meant abandoning them. Delivering them up to the slaughter when Socorro brought down the final judgment.

His fellow soldiers. The people he’d laughed with around bonfires in the middle of the desert while they waited for their next orders. Who’d pressed their backs against his in the middle of a firefight with the DEA. Who’d stood watch over him so he could grab a couple of hours of sleep out in the open. For the first time since he’d lost his mother he’d had a family of his very own.

Sebastian had been included in that group. Now there wasn’t anything Carson wouldn’t do to keep him from putting his hands on Ivy again, but his insides still raged as the two lives he’d created battled for dominance. “I’ll see what I can scrounge up for food.”

He set to work on inventorying the cabinets. Lucky for him, the previous owners had left a good amount behind. While he’d never been anything but a ramen chef as an FBI agent, there were some skills he’d been forced to rely on within the cartel. Being able to create a densely nutritional meal out of few ingredients, for one. Within minutes, Carson plated a sizable helping of homemade macaroni and cheese complete with hot dogs and brought two plates to the couch.

Max eyed him scornfully as he handed off Ivy’s plate.

“Yours is in the kitchen. Try not to make a mess,” he said.

The K-9 took that as permission to fly off the couch and skid across the tile floor. Only she failed to stop in time, crashing into the lower cabinets.

Ivy’s laugh interrupted her initial bite, and she had to cover her mouth to keep the macaroni from falling back onto the plate. “Happy to see she’s held on to some of that puppy excitement. It’s nice, knowing she’s still the same troublemaker I brought home so long ago. I missed that.”

He had to remember that. That as much as Carson had missed of the real world over the past two years surviving and thriving within a drug cartel, Ivy had missed a lot, too.

“You should see her when I manage to get my hands on those special chips you used to eat.” He took his first bite, and his entire body clung on to that single influx of calories as though he’d gone weeks without food rather than twelve hours. “You think she’s hyper now. She practically flies on that stuff.”

“Salt-and-vinegar chips aren’t special.” Ivy took another bite and seemingly melted as quickly as the cheese. “Kind of a delicacy for a cartel soldier. Apart from the fact the one time I offered you one, you threw it into the neighbor’s backyard. I think you said something like vinegar isn’t meant to be consumed.”

“Yeah, well.” He couldn’t help but smile at the memory. A sliver of time when they’d been allowed to be nothing but themselves. “I might have changed my mind a little.”

“Good to know.” She speared her next bite of macaroni onto her fork, only didn’t bring it to her mouth. In fact, Ivy let the fork skid along the outside of the plate. “Is there anything else you might’ve changed your mind on I should know about?”

“Yeah. There is.” Carson set his unfinished plate on the coffee table. He’d been putting this off long enough. Unwilling to let go. But there was no future for him in the cartel. Not anymore. “I’m ready to come home.”