Page 44 of Lethal Vengeance

My brow furrows.

“If I knew the only person who could rescue her was me, would I do it all over again?” He chuckles. “It took me a long time to see their individual faces, and even longer to care. Then, one day, something remarkable happened. One of the girls we were rescuing laughed, and it sounded exactly like Camila, my sister. For a split second, she was alive and in the room with me. It stole my breath. That first time and every time since.”

He leans forward. “Be resentful. Hate them if you want. But listen and watch too. You never know when Sophia will come alive for you.”

My mind turns his words over, wanting to dismiss them, but even the game of tag with Sterling brought the memory of Sophia alive.

Raider makes people uneasy because they only see the killer in him. The surface. There are so many layers to this man… For the briefest of seconds, all I want in life is time to dive in and discover them all.

Instead, I lean forward and place a lingering kiss on his lips. “Thank you.”

“Are you two coming? We have a lot of things to do to get these girls home safely,” Zane’s voice bellows behind me.

“Coming,” I reply. With a quick pivot, I take the last two steps and enter a large and decently clean room. It’s a studio apartment with a large bed in the corner, a couch, some chairs scattered around, and a tiny kitchen in the corner.

“How in the world did you find this place?” I ask Sterling.

“Eduardo,” Zane interjects. “He offered it to me. Told me he’d converted it years ago but lost his sight before he could live in it.”

Secretive old man, I convey silently to Zane. We both laugh… and it feels good to shake off some of the tension between us.

I look over at Aria and Margot. “We’ll spend the night here. Tomorrow, you’ll split up. One to Chicago, and one to Miami. They’re long trips, so get some rest.”

Margot shakes off Aria’s hand and steps forward.

“I’m not Margot,” she announces.

20

QUINN

Ihate surprises. “Wait, what?” I question her. “You’re not Margot?” Tension builds at the base of my neck. This is what they were arguing about in the cell. “Fuck!”

Zane folds his arms and stares down at the young girl. “Care to explain?”

The words tumble out of her mouth in a rush. “I’m a diabetic, and without good nutrition and medicine, I was getting sick. Margot tried to get them to move me in with her and Aria because their food was better, but they wouldn’t do it. I’m not valuable to them. She—Margot—insisted we switch places. We only intended it to be for a few days.”

Cruz and Raider exchange glances.

“We knew two girls switched places, but we didn’t see their faces, or we would have been able to head this off,” Raider stiffly reveals. “I should have followed up on it. I’m sorry.”

Phone in hand, I peer at the photos Armando provided to us. They both have blond, slender, delicate features. “The photos aren’t the best, but the two look incredibly similar.” I hold it up to the unknown girl’s face. “Who the hell are you?”

She reaches back and grabs Aria’s hand. “Samantha Baston,” she replies in a low voice. “Nobody is going to pay a ransom for me.”

I put the name in my phone and take a picture of her. “How did you get here, Samantha Baston?”

“My father… was a border patrol agent. My mother got cancer. The money dried up. To keep paying for her treatments, he started looking the other way.” Her eyes flash in anger. “One night, he came home in a panic and told me he’d screwed up. He insisted I didn’t have to go, but he was the only who could keep paying for my mother’s treatment. When the men came for me, I went.”

Aria makes a rude gesture, and I shake my head in agreement. “Aria’s right. Your dad’s an asshole playing on your mother’s cancer. There are always other options.”

Zane swivels around to give me a pointed look, but I ignore him.

“I’ll meet with Armando and inform him of the error tomorrow,” I calmly tell her, even though I want to scream and rage at her. This is so fucked up. Maybe I can turn this around and play up the incompetency of his soldiers.

Her blue eyes fill with tears. “Will he make you take me back?”

“Nobody is going to take you back,” Aria adamantly states, her dark eyes staring me down. “If they do, they’ll have to answer to my brothers.” She throws it out there like she’s used the threat a million times to get what she wants.