Defy (Brothers of Ink and Steel Book 3) (15 page)

Then again, my intuition isn’t exactly reliable at the moment. It’s telling me—no, screaming at me—to call Farrington.

Just pick up the phone and say hello.

Yeah, right. The fuck?

I’m actually hoping I’m totally mistaken and Miguel is just a low rank douchebag who happened to turn himself into a prosperous businessman. Maybe Mason Enterprises was only a pretty storefront for Cruz’s drug runs. Maybe all the money was Cruz’s after all.

If Cruz has already murdered Miguel, that will make him real tough to find. It would mean Farrington would ultimately be safe, but it might also make it so she never sees her cherished family again.

I tell myself there is nothing I can do about it. It’s not my business anyway.

During working hours, I can keep Farrington at the edge of my thoughts—sometimes, if I’m led on a particularly decent chase, I almost don’t think about her at all. That is, until it’s time to sleep.

Then I’m fucked.

Helpless and at the mercy of my subconscious.

And the dreams always come: I find Farrington bloodied and dead, chained to the wall in Miguel’s basement. We’re back in the car chase with the fake ass dirty cops firing their bullets into the car until one hits her right in the neck. The blood sprays against the windshield and it’s mere seconds before I’ve lost her forever.

Those are the worst.

This dream is different. We’re back in the grimy motel room, and she’s blowing cool air over the alligator bite. I slip down from the table and lift her onto it, along with the towel she answered the door in. It takes only a moment before I have her legs spread around me, and I’m sliding my wrought iron hard cock into her sweet, tight softness. She’s moaning and whimpering beneath me, and I open the towel at the top where it’s folded over and unwrap her like a present at Christmas. I quickly suck one of her gorgeous rose colored tips between desperately wanting lips.

That’s when I hear the voice say, “Don’t do it, Ryder, you’d be her death sentence.”

I wake in a cold, startled sweat with the sensation of lust, love and terror in equal quantities.

“That’s what you get for holding on to those
feelings,
asshole,” I berate myself on the way to the john.

I’m in another motel room. If it wasn’t for the
You Are Here
exit map on the back of the door I wouldn’t have remembered I was in Atlanta.

My cell rings from the nightstand. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.”

I shake, flush and wash my hands. And it stops ringing.

“Good. I didn’t want any first-thing-in-the-morning conversation anyway,” I growl then grab my toothbrush and paste and move further along in the morning ritual.

After that dream, I am truly considering lighting a cigarette to accompany a black cup of coffee. I could do that here in the middle of nowhere, and I’d have no one to answer to. No one would know.

I would know.

Cell rings again. “Leave a fucking message!” I call out between rinses with the last of my travel size Listerine.

It stops, so I lather my face with shave cream. I almost have the razor to my jaw when it starts again. I pick up the towel for my hands, and look to see who it is.

Briggs.

Fuck, the only time he makes back-to-back calls is if it’s urgent.

“Hey, man, what’s going on?” I answer.

“Rachel Farrington just went on the lam!”

“What?” I ask, incredulous. “No way.”

“She snuck away from her fed detail about an hour ago.”

I check my watch—it’s four a.m. now.

Briggs continues, “The FBI are up in arms but are trying to keep it under the radar,” he informs me. “My contact on the inside gave me a call. They’re thinking she may be Miguel’s ally.”

“Where is she, Briggs?”

“She’s on the move, but her coordinates are 29.9586° N, 90.0650° W, which is in Vieux Carre.”

“The French Quarter, New Orleans.”

“Ryder, do I tell the feds where she is?” he asks seriously.

“No, just keep tabs on her. If she’s in trouble they could make it worse. If she’s not . . .”

“What? We’re betraying her by giving her up?”

“Look, I’m on my way. Get ahold of the nearest chopper service and call me directly back.” I end the call and pull on my pants.

“What the hell are you doing, Farrington?”

Rachel

Two hours ago I snuck out of the window and away from the safety of my FBI detail while it was still dark.

Just as I was instructed to.

I ran with every bit of force and power in my body and didn’t rest until I got to the truck stop in the next town over. Praying fervently my guards wouldn’t find me.

I hid in the cover of bushes in the back of the Pilot parking lot, terrified someone would see me and call the cops.

I waited almost an hour before a woman driver in a big rig came through.

I’d memorized my script. I could do this.

After she pumped her gas, went in for some snacks and came back out, I made my move. I pretended to be a woman frightened of her abusive boyfriend and told her I was trying to get away to my girlfriend in New Orleans. She was more than glad to lend a hand.

Now I sit here waiting in St. Louis Cemetery with too much time alone in the quiet with my racing thoughts.

The sun isn’t even up yet, and I can see Venus, the Morning Star, in the sky. I wish she could help me, but she can’t or won’t.

It started yesterday; the housekeeper came into the little inconspicuous home in Vacherie, Louisiana to clean, like she does every morning. The FBI had chosen the town because it was small and they could keep a good watch on the people there. If anything different happened, they’d know it.

Or so they thought.

“Excuse me, señora,” the housekeeper said when she pushed into me, blocking my path through the doorway with the vacuum. At that moment, she dropped something into my pocket and said quietly, so no one but me could hear her,
“
¿
Quieres ver a su hermana otra vez?
Sister? Lemy? See again, sí?”

It felt like my stomach was instantly filled with heavy cement. She couldn’t have said what I thought. No. No.

She smiled and nodded before putting her index finger to her closed lips in a gesture for me to be quiet. “Shh.”

Her words lurched repeatedly through me. “You want to see your sister again?”

Fuck!
The fear gripped me.
What the fuck is in my pocket? Where is Lemy?

“Are you alright, Miss Farrington?” Agent Jones asked.

My eyes trailed to Consuela, who smiled like it was a perfect morning.

“Fine,” I said too fast and too loudly, and then I rushed to the bathroom. I locked the bathroom door behind me and fished the hunk of plastic from my pocket.

A phone!

I flipped it open, and a tiny orange sticker that read PUSH ME was on the call button—I was redialing a pre-programmed number.

I hit it and lifted the receiver to my ear.

“Miss Farrington?” Instantly my mind spun as I recognized the voice of the man who murdered Drew Jameson.

“Yes,” I hissed into the phone.

“Don’t speak again,” he commanded in a low voice. “We must be absolutely certain that no one hears you. I have someone here with me that I think you care a great deal for. I’ll let
her
speak to
you,
but remember, be the intelligent woman I know you are and don’t make a sound. We don’t want to alert the FBI agents doing such a good job protecting you—because that would kill our young friend. What do you call her? Lemy?”

The mention of my little sister’s intimate nickname made my heart lurch into my mouth.

“Waychul?” At the sound of her tender, frightened voice I crashed to my knees on the tile floor.

“Lem—” I slapped my free hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t talk.

“Waychul, I go home. You come get me?”

Tears gathered then spilled down my face.

“Ahh, so now you know what is at stake,” Eduardo Miguel told me sinisterly.

I hyperventilated behind my hand.

“Hide the phone and do whatever it takes to get away from your guards later tonight—make sure it is dark, and make sure you are careful not to be followed or caught, or the child dies.”

All I could imagine was Lemy chained in that monster’s basement.

“Get to St. Louis Cemetery in the French Quarter and find a tomb marked Jacquette Devereaux, plot 325. There is a standing cross at the head of the tomb. Underneath it will be another phone and further instructions.”

At that, he disconnected.

So now . . . I’m at the gravesite and I have the new phone in hand, but there are no instructions or stickers, and I’ve tried to redial but this phone has either never called out or the history has been deleted. I have never felt so defeated and without hope as I do now, sitting here at Eduardo Miguel’s mercy, praying he won’t hurt Lemy and that he will really let her go once he gets me.

The morning hours go by without word.

I’m losing my fucking mind! What if I fucked up? Made a mistake in my terror?

I flip the phone open again—like I have every half hour—to see if there’s a message I could have somehow missed.

The battery is still good.

I hold the phone to my forehead and will it to ring. Beg for it to ring!

Nothing!

It’s unbearable! I can’t sit here any longer. I have to
do
something.

“Don’t make a sound or move, Farrington,” says a familiar voice. “Don’t change your expression.”

My mouth drops open and my lungs hitch in a gasping breath of surprise.

Ryder!

“Look up if you’re alone, down if you’re being guarded.”

I let my eyes travel up the nearest tree trunk into the branches above.

“If you can talk freely, stretch and yawn.”

I think about that. I’ve been sitting here for hours and have neither seen nor heard from anyone. But how in the hell did he find me here?

Horror fuses through the marrow of my bones. No one knew where I was except for Miguel . . .

No. It’s impossible. After everything, he couldn’t be working for—

Every rational thought I have is swallowed by the irrationality of the fact that Ryder
knows
I’m here, right here in this graveyard, next to this grave. I’m positive I wasn’t followed. There is literally only one way he could know to find me here.

I stand and move towards the spot his voice came from. I take one step then two. Next thing I know, I’m charging through the thorny bushes that are behind Devereaux’s tomb.

I crash into Ryder full-force, punching and biting. “I TRUSTED YOU! I TRUSTED YOU!”

“Farrington, stop!”

I know he lets me punch him longer than he has to, but he finally grabs my wrists and pins my legs, laying on top of me, quickly incapacitating me.

“You son of a bitch!” I seethe and spit at his face. “She’s just a baby!”

His countenance is angry. “Jesus Christ, Farrington, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about! What the hell are you doing here? What’s going on?”

“What am I doing here?” Furious blotches of color and light flash across my eyes. “How do
you
know where I am!?”

His eyes fill with concern. “Good Jesus, he has your sister.”

I’m not buying it. “How do you know?” I roar.

“The necklace, Farrington—the clover—it’s a GPS tracker.”

I’m stunned silent. Did I hear him correctly? Is he serious? Confusion grips my mind. And a wave of relief so strong it threatens to bring me to my knees.

“I couldn’t just hand you over to the feds with no recourse. I had to know you were safe and I have serious trust issues.” Ryder looks away. “That was a huge violation of your privacy and I’m . . . not sorry because the truth is, I’d do it again.”