The Protected

TWENTY

IT had been a very long while since he had been forced to take action on his own.

Ignacio now had men who took care of things for him. But those men weren’t here now and there was simply no way he was going to let that little puta get away from him.

She wasn’t in the room now and he could finally think.

Finally. Every time she touched him, his ability to think just shut down, but she’d been gone for a little while and his mind was his own once more. His mind, his body . . . his rage. How long, he wondered? How long had she been controlling him?

His wrists were slick with blood, but the cable tie wasn’t coming loose. It wasn’t going to come loose, either.

He had to figure out a way to get free.

Of course, she had decided to do all of this in her room. Naturally, she had no weapons in here. A bunch of silly baubles and useless female sundries on the dresser but nothing he could use, even if he could get manage to get the chair he was tied to over there.

Think.

He had to think.

There was a way out of this; there had to be. He just needed to think it through.

His men, of course, would return in a few days and he would express his displeasure at them for so easily trusting what they’d been told. It didn’t matter that he was the one who had told them to leave. They should know he’d never order all of them away. It left him, the entire operation, vulnerable. Fear was a nasty, cold streak inside him as he thought about it. His rivals were many. Most of them wouldn’t dare come to his home, he knew, but if they had any idea how helpless he was right now . . .

Nala was going to pay for this.

She was going to suffer. Focusing on that forced the fear back where it belonged. Under control, where nobody else could see it. Wise men accepted fears, he believed. Accepted them, dealt with them. He’d accepted. He’d dealt with it. And now he’d make her suffer, because while a wise man might accept fear and deal with it, there was no reason to like it, and no reason to roll over like a whipped dog when somebody screwed him over.

Twisting his wrists against the cable tie, he shot another look around the room, ignoring the hopelessness that crashed through him yet again. The best chance, he thought, would be to try and get the chair over to her dressing table. There were a bunch of little trinkets there. Mirrors, heavy glass bottles. Not ideal, but the best option.

Watching the door carefully, he eased the chair over. One slow inch at a time.

He moved about a foot and stopped, waited. No sound of Nala. No sign of her.

He moved another. And another.

He was less than eighteen inches from the table when he heard a dull thud from downstairs. Swearing, he shoved closer to the dresser and tried to twist around, rising awkwardly, trying to claw for something.

Anything.

His fingers scrabbled against something that felt like cool, hard glass—

A footstep sounded outside the door.

“Señor?”

URGENCY rode her hard as they drove across the dark, busted road.

Vaughnne had used her passport at the border, sweating under her shirt the entire time, because she was absolutely certain they’d realize, somehow, that Gus had cleverly concealed the weapons he wasn’t supposed to be transporting. She was equally certain they’d suspect something about his passport. It wasn’t his name on it. Well, maybe it was. If it was, then he’d lied about his real name to her.

The name on the passport was Miguel Hernandez. About as typical as John Smith, she suspected.

But they’d crossed the border without a problem and she was that much closer to crossing a line. She’d already crossed some, but none of them were anything that would be the end for her.

Not yet.

But it was coming.

She swung back and forth between not thinking about it and trying to overthink it. Did she want to do this? Did she try to call Jones in and see if there were legal lines they could take? But what legal lines would actually work?

None. She tried to think it through. She knew for a damned fact that both the US government and the Mexican government had gone after Ignacio Reyes more than once, and each time, they’d failed to shut him down. There were no legal reasons to keep his child away from him. Alex could claim he’d abused him, but Vaughnne knew how that worked. It was a toss of the dice as to whether or not he’d end up back with his father, and this couldn’t be left to chance.

Nor could they try and have him arrested based on what he’d done to Alex.

She laughed bitterly just thinking about that one. You see, Judge, he used the boy’s psychic ability to track down and murder some people who were going to raid the drug compound he runs. No, no . . . we don’t have proof of it, but the kid’s mom and his uncle believe it happened that way . . . yes, we’re certain the boy is in danger . . .

What legal recourse did they have?

She couldn’t see one.

Reyes had a long, long reach, and if the boy didn’t want to spend the rest of his life running, Reyes had to be out of the picture. Some of her fellow agents would frown on her for this, but Vaughnne didn’t see things in black and white. Some people didn’t need to be on this earth. She wouldn’t cast judgment on the man simply for being a drug dealer and she wouldn’t have gone after a man on her opinions of him alone. But the man had abused his son. He’d used his son to kill. If he got his hands on the boy, he’d do it again.

No child should be put through that. No person should be put through that.

If Vaughnne had to compromise herself, risk herself, land herself in jail . . . worse . . . whatever, to save a kid from that kind of hell, then so be it. She knew what she was doing, and even if it was a hard-ass choice to make, she knew what the right choice was.

Sometimes, the right choice was just the lesser of two evils, but she knew what she had to do.

One thing lifted some of the weight from her shoulders, though. She’d checked that awful website. It still existed, sadly. But the ad for the infamous item was no longer up.

Hopefully nobody else would come hunting them. They didn’t have time—

“Why are you so tense?”

Gus’s voice was a soft, velvet murmur in the night, but it did nothing to ease her ragged nerves. She felt like she’d chugged about two gallons of Monster and her adrenaline levels were cranked up on high. It wasn’t even just what she was doing. Her brain had been sending out little warnings all day long, and the later it got, the louder those warnings got.

Looking over at him, she shook her head and then focused on the windshield again, staring out at the moon-drenched night. “Something’s wrong. Or going wrong. I don’t know. How far away are we?”

“Twenty minutes by car. I’d planned to ditch it and walk in.”

“No.” The word tore out of her, and even though she suspected he knew this sort of thing a hell of a lot better than she did, there was no time for walking.

“If we drive in, he’s going to know,” Gus said quietly.

“We don’t have time. Something is wrong. I feel it, Gus. Really, really wrong.”

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Alex?”

Vaughnne shook her head. “It’s not him.” She’d already checked with Taige. The kid was safe, safe as he could be, tucked up at headquarters, and the other woman had already made headway getting him to shield himself, and that right there would make him less of a target.

“It’s not him,” she said again. Her gut was tight, cold, and hard. Her muscles, though, despite the fear, felt oddly loose and that, in and of itself, was enough to make her trepidation soar even higher. Everything in her was braced and ready for trouble. “We can’t take our time right now, Gus. Please. You . . .” She blew out a breath and then looked over at him. “You have to trust me on this.”

IF she was wrong and they blasted in there the way she seemed to want, they were both going to be in so much trouble.

Gus was used to trouble. He could handle it.

But risking her wasn’t an option he wanted to take.

He wanted to get her out of this alive.

If she was right . . . what had her so worried? Who had her so worried?

In the end, though, he supposed it didn’t matter.

They were here.

They had a goal.

And Vaughnne was a woman he’d decided he needed to trust. Perhaps if he’d trusted her, as she’d asked him to do from that day on the street when Alex was so ill, some of this, perhaps all of it, could have been avoided.

Please . . . you must promise me . . .

Consuelo had whispered those words to him, a few short years ago. An eternity ago. A lifetime ago.

Keep him safe. No matter what it takes, mi hermano, you must keep him safe from his father . . . starting now.

So he had. He’d started then, doing the very thing that would keep Reyes from finding them. Doing everything he had to keep the monster from tracking them down.

“He must die,” Gus said quietly as he continued to speed through the night instead of pulling the car over. He passed by the area where he’d planned to ditch the car. They continued to drive through the night, chasing the moon. “No matter who is there, what is there, no matter what happens, he must die. It is the only way Alex will be safe.”

“I know.”

BRUISES were expected.

The cable ties around her wrists and ankles were expected.

Even the brutal backhand was expected.

Nalini blinked the cobwebs from her mind and focused on the man in front of her just as he was drawing back his fist again. Pain exploded through her face as he struck her again, but she swallowed back any sound she might have made. Head averted, she sucked in a breath and ran her tongue over her teeth, checked her jaw. Nothing felt broken.

She wiggled her wrists, but there was absolutely no give in the restraints. No give in the restraints, and she didn’t have a lot of options around her, either. They’d moved her at some point. She didn’t like the looks of the small, dark room she was in, either.

For some reason, it made her think of a coffin. Or a grave.

A place where she was going to die, she realized. Die, restrained to a stupid chair with a couple of cable ties, all because she hadn’t gotten the hell out of there fast enough.

Damn, what she wouldn’t give to be a bad-ass bitch like Black Widow just then. Just bust up the chair and bust up the bastard in front of her while she was at it. Wasn’t going to happen that way, though. She was going to die here, and she wasn’t going to see her mission through. The son of a bitch she’d been chasing for so long was going to get by unscathed for what he’d done. Ignacio was going to survive this. They all were. Everybody but—

“Look at me, puta.”

Slowly, she swung her head around and stared at Ignacio’s right-hand man. His name was Jorge. He was mean as a snake, and although he pretended otherwise, he was too smart. He was also wearing a pair of gloves. That was a problem. If there was skin contact for even a second . . .

Through her lashes, she stared at him for a minute, holding her breath, hoping he’d edge close enough.

But he was careful, keeping just enough distance between them that she couldn’t wiggle around to touch him, not even a bit.

“The señor says I can do whatever I want with you now,” Jorge said, smiling at her.

“Whatever?” She doubted that. She suspected Ignacio had figured out how she worked and he wasn’t going to risk having her pull Jorge in. She licked her split lip, the taste of blood a metallic wash on her tongue. “He said you can do whatever to me and you decided you were going to just hit me?” She laughed and tugged at her bonds. “He told you to beat the shit out of me, didn’t he?”

He shot out a hand, fisting it in her shirt.

“You stupid little bitch. I’m going to have a lot of fun with you, you know that?”

“This?” Despite how much it hurt, Nalini made herself laugh. “This is how you have fun? Whoever taught you about women seriously neglected their lessons, hijo de la chingada.”

His face went red.

Nalini just smiled, keeping her mask in place.

His hand shot up to her face and squeezed, squeezed . . .

Through the pain, she tried to focus. So hard to do it. His gloves. Damn the gloves. No skin-to-skin contact.

“That’s enough for now, Jorge. I want to ask her some questions.”

With blood pounding in her ears, fear cloying in her throat, Nalini sucked in a breath as Jorge’s hand fell away from her face. Turning her head, she stared at Ignacio as he appeared in the doorway of the dim room. The star-studded sky was at his back, the moon shining down on his black hair, casting his face in shadow.

Then he came inside, shutting the door at his back.

He had showered and changed, dressed in a suit that cost more than she would have made in a month working for Jones in the Bureau.

Jones. She’d needed that out and she hadn’t had time to so much as call.

Life really was a bitch, she decided. A mean, sucker-punching bitch.

As he came to a stop in front of her, she spat out a mouthful of blood at his feet. Nalini watched his eyes narrow in distaste as he moved his shiny, slick shoes back from the small bit of saliva and blood.

So careful with his clothes, with his shoes, with his home. So arrogant.

People around him scraped by for every damn thing they had. People died acting as his mules . . . died or were jailed, and they took the risk because they felt it was their only option.

A monster, that was what stood in front of her. One who sent mercenaries after his son, so he could . . . what? Use that kid?

The frustration she’d been feeling abruptly died.

Okay, so she hadn’t gone after the bastard she’d promised herself she’d find. But she hadn’t wasted the past few weeks, either. This son of a bitch wasn’t going to touch the kid, and she’d had a bit of a hand in that. She’d help save a kid from dealing with some of the hell she’d had to deal with. It was enough.

Ignacio’s face smoothed and he came closer, sat on the bed across from her. “You have proven to be such a problem, Nala . . . or is that your real name?”

“A name,” she said, heaving out a sigh. “What’s in a name, really?”

Jorge moved to stand behind her, tangling his hand in her dreads and twisting so hard her scalp screamed at her. She smiled through the pain. “Is that the best your trained monkey can do, Iggy? Come on. I had schoolyard punks pound on me harder than this.”

There was a table just outside the narrow pool of light, and she watched as he turned and reached for something. Her gut clenched as she saw what it was. A knife. A big-ass machete. “We’re going to talk, Nala. About my son. How you know about him. Where he is. How I can find him. And for every time you fail to answer me, I’m going to cut off a finger. If we go through all your fingers, then I’ll move to your eyes. I’ll save your ears and tongue for the last. Am I understood?”

Horror twisted inside her, but she didn’t let herself babble in fear.

In the end, there wasn’t a damn thing she could tell him, really.

The boy was probably safe, but she’d deliberately avoided learning anything about him. Defeat settled over her and she slumped in the chair. “You might as well start cutting, then. Have fun getting bloody. I don’t know where he is, who has him . . .” Then she lifted her lashes and stared at him. “Even if I did? I’d lose my eyes, my ears, my heart, my kidneys, every damn thing I have before I’d turn some poor kid over to the likes of you.”

Ignacio simply smiled.