I shot his hand.
“You piece of shit. You’re going to kill me.”
“He’s right,” Rever said, his voice eerily flat. “You shouldn’t toy with him before we get him to the torture room. If he loses too much blood, we’ll have to let him recover before the fun starts, and I’m in the mood to see lots of blood. I have so many plans for him.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m an immediate gratification type of guy. Maybe we could do it here.”
“Nah. We have better tools at the compound. We should wait.”
Emanuel grabbed a knife from the inside of his pant leg. He lurched forward and it flew through the air in slow motion heading for Rever.
“Rever, watch out,” I screamed, but it was too late.
The knife plunged into Rever’s shoulder. He staggered backward, falling to his knees. His eyes widened, and his lips parted. I charged forward, tackling Emanuel. His head cracked against the tile floor. My legs straddling his waist, I wrapped my hands around his neck. Emanuel clawed at my arm, but I didn’t feel anything. I wanted to strangle the life from his body second by second. His lips turned blue. His eyes bulged. His legs twitched. A haze of red filled my vision as I summoned the specter of death with my bare hands.
“That’s enough,” Rever grunted. He pulled the knife from his shoulder and tossed it on the floor. Blood oozed out of his wound, staining his white shirt.
“No.” I tightened my hands around his neck. “He helped Juan Alvarez abduct Hattie. She could’ve been killed.”
Rever slid a pair of handcuffs across the floor. “Yeah, well, we need to get a confession before you kill him. Otherwise, we’ll never get Ignacio to do what we want him to do.”
My body sagged, and my grip on his neck loosened. “Fuck,” I yelled, slamming my fist into the wall behind me. White dust coated my knuckles.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get the chance to do whatever you want with him,” Rever said, cupping his shoulder. Blood seeped through his fingers.
I spat on Emanuel’s face and flipped him onto his back. I snapped one ring of the cuffs around his wrist and the other around the iron stair railing.
“Take my car keys,” Rever said, dangling them from his fingers.
I snatched them out of his hand and started moving toward the front door.
“Text me when you’re out front and get the duct tape out of the glove box.”
“I’m on it. See you in a few minutes.”
“Hurry the fuck up. I don’t want to get in a gun fight while you’re gone.” His hardened gaze drifted across the room. “I have to find some bleach to clean this mess up. I don’t want it to look like we murdered someone in here.” He chuckled at his own joke. “That’ll come later. Much later.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hattie
Sunlight streamed through the edges of the dark brown wooden blinds. I stretched my arms over my head, rolled onto my side and inhaled. Even though weeks had passed since Ryker had slept in this bed, I pretended I could smell his scent. Honestly, it smelled more like laundry detergent than anything else.
“You’re awake. I was afraid you planned to sleep until lunchtime,” Noah said, tapping a magazine against his thigh. A slim bar of light slashed across the sharp angles of his face, making the lower half light and the upper half dark.
“I was tired. I didn’t go to bed until late.” I scooted up to the headboard. “Speaking of which, have you heard from Ryker?”
“No.” He glanced to the side, his eyes distant. “Nothing.”
I eyed him somberly, wishing I could ignore the persistent stabbing in my chest. “But you’ve heard something, right?”
He scrubbed his hand down the side of his face. “Just that there are some internal power struggles going on inside the Vargas Cartel.”
I buried my hands in the sheets. “You’re scaring me. What does that mean?”
Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees. The rolled up magazine dangled from one hand. “I don’t have all the details.”
“What details do you have?”
“Emanuel, Ignacio’s right-hand man, disappeared a couple of days ago. His apartment was covered in blood. Nobody knows if he’s alive. Rumors place Rever and Ryker in the area around the time he went missing, but that doesn’t mean a whole helluva a lot.”
I cringed. “Do you think they killed him?”
“If they haven’t killed him, they will soon.”
My mouth dropped open, and my gut heaved. “Seriously? Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know for sure.” He exhaled, unrolled the magazine and held up the cover for me to see it. “On a different note, we did it.”
I scanned the glossy cover. Senator Deveron had his head bowed, and dark sunglasses covered his eyes. A blurb on the left-hand column in bright yellow print said, Senator Deveron funded by Mexican drug cartels.
I jumped out of bed and snatched the magazine out of his hand. “I didn’t believe they’d actually do it.”
Noah stood. “Go to page ten.”
I flipped open the magazine and scanned the story. “This is so good. They didn’t hold back at all.”
“Nope.”
I closed the magazine. “So what happens now?”
“We sit back and watch the show. The mainstream media has picked up the story. It’s only a matter of time before he’s forced to resign.”
A warm glow trickled through my veins. For the first time in two weeks, I could finally breathe. “Do you think he’ll go to jail?”
“He should.” Noah shrugged, a mischievous smile spreading across his face. “I think that’s up to the Department of Justice, but I think you have some strings you can pull there,” he said, referencing my dad.
“You’re right.” I tossed the magazine on top of the bed and wrapped my arms around his waist. “Thanks so much for your help. I know Ryker’s paying you, but you didn’t have to do it. You probably have better things to do than play babysitter and accompany me to meetings.”
He leaned back and my hands slid from his body. “I would’ve done it for free.” He brushed his knuckles along my jaw, and my heart tripped in my chest. “You needed help and I wanted to be the one to help you. You didn’t deserve what happened to you.”
Unease trickled down my spine. I laughed nervously and backpedaled a few steps, my eyes trained on the grains of hardwood beneath my bare feet.
“It all worked out. It led me to Ryker so I can’t be mad about that. He makes me happy.”
He took one step closer to me, his golden eyes focused on me with enough heat to unnerve me. The air around us pressed against my chest, suffocating me. “Does he really make you happy or is that just what you want to believe?”
I shook my head slowly from side to side, never taking my eyes off him. “Noah, what’s going on? What are you doing?”
He grabbed my hand. “Why are you with Ryker?”
My throat thickened. “Because I love him,” I choked out.
His lips pursed into a tight line. “Do you really? Or are you just holding onto him because you don’t feel like you have anyone else who cares about you? Or because of the baby?”
Tension curled my muscles into tight balls, and my pulse galloped inside my chest. “I don’t need to explain anything to you.” I yanked my hand away from him.
“You do understand that Ryker and Rever are trying to wrestle control of the Vargas Cartel from Ignacio.”
“Why would they do that? Neither of them wants anything to do with it.”
“They didn’t want anything to do with the cartel when it meant being controlled by Ignacio. If they could call the shots, they might feel differently. That’s what is going on right now, or at least that’s what my sources suspect.”
Stunned, hurt, and angry didn’t begin to express how I felt at that moment. My stomach swirled uncomfortably, and my knees wilted. I stumbled backward and sat on the bed. “Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?”