I scramble in the mud, feeling the sharp rocks cut into my skin through my clothes. I manage to get to my side and I claw at his face, but my nails only find purchase in the thick cloth mask covering his face. My nails manage to find some skin, and he curses. I keep going, hoping that I can manage to throw him off me. He shackles one wrist, and I use all my strength to heave him off, but he’s too fucking heavy, and my limbs are burning from the effort. I keep screaming, hoping someone, anyone can hear me, but he pushes my face into the mud, and seconds later, a cloth goes over my eyes, blindfolding me, and a gag goes around my mouth. My hands are yanked behind my back, and my shoulders ache, feeling like they are being ripped from the sockets. He holds them in one hand, and I start to cry, knowing I’m defeated.
My heart feels like it’s beating out of my chest. I’m paralyzed with fear. Thoughts run through my head. Baby Valentina. My brothers. My friends. The news that will be broadcast:Camryn Park. Body found. Raped. Killed in the woods by a madman.I keep screaming behind the gag, screaming until my voice is hoarse and my vocal cords are shredded.
“Shut up.” That garbled voice initiates more sobs. More screams. No one can hear me, but I keep yelling against the cloth covering my mouth. It’s the only thing I can do to escape the pain and the panic. I have to keep fighting. I refuse to think about the end.
Chapter 51
I’m both impressed and disgusted. This one is good at whatever game she thinks she’s playing. Clearly, she has no military training, yet she’s here. She’s of medium height, but slight of figure, and for a second, I feel a morsel of pity. They sent her here to be killed; that much is certain.
The kill will be easy, and the bloodlust I felt earlier dims. She is probably a teenager, caught up in the gang, wanting to fit in, but being used for nefarious purposes by a soulless killer. She looks no older than I was when I joined the Lords. Hate burns in my gut for all the damage the Mestizos have done, not just to me, but to the neighborhoods and families.
Tracking her had been easy. My infrared tree cameras easily picked up her movement, and my goggles outlined her shape, the bright red of her blood and body heat. The yellows, the outlines of green. Hues of the pumping blood in her veins. It’s a beautiful sight. The corpses littered around no longer gave off those colors. They now blend into the background.
I watched on my portable monitor. My would-be assassin is making no move to conceal her movements. Her movements confuse me and intrigue me. I wonder who she is and how shebecame entangled with the Mestizos. She pauses here and there as if she’s on a nature walk and not out to find El Búho and assassinate him.But it could be a ploy, a trick. Or she could be injured. She had no purpose in her movements, moving around in circles, almost as if she were disoriented.
When I was about 30 feet from her, and she hunched over the bodies of the last two Mestizo members I left to rot, I expected her to check for identification. I couldn’t see her face yet, but instead of radioing in that she found them, she looked horrified and hesitant, which meant they hadn’t given her any background on the job. She had no idea who she was hunting.
She’s a fighter, though. I think as I press my body on hers. She’s still twisting, kicking beneath me. From what I can see, she has no weapons on her, except the cellphone flashlight she was using. Her screams are stifled with the gag, but she’s not letting that stop her, trying to buck me off her back. Her ass presses into my cock, and there’s a stirring I won’t acknowledge. I won’t touch her. She comes from filth. Pressing my knee into her back, I keep the knife at her throat.
“Don’t fucking move.”
She doesn’t listen and presses harder. My knife pierces her skin, and she arches, crying out, clearly pained. I press deeper, hoping it stops her. “One more move and it will sever your artery.” My voice sounds muffled from my balaclava, but she seems to understand because she is still sobbing softly into the mud and dirt.
“Did they think I’d go easy on you because you’re untrained and a woman?” She cries out, and I push on her head more, annoyed that they think it will change things. “They should know that tears won’t affect me. They think I won’t kill a woman? That I won’t tear her apart and scatter the pieces. They sent you as a distraction. That I won’t kill you because you have a pussy, but I don’t fuck filth that belongs to The Mestizos. A shameyou’re caught up with them. I’d almost feel pity if I didn’t know they sent you here to kill me.” She shakes her head, the words undecipherable coming from her gag.
I won’t treat her to the horrors the men get. No doubt being with the Mestizos means she’s experienced horrors. They don’t value women, and to have her be an assassin in their ranks, but she will die. Pity has no room out here. Nature feeds on the weak and the unprepared. A bullet is the easiest way to do it. I reach near my ribs to pull out my gun and place it against her head, lifting the safety.
She cries louder now at the feel of my gun, turning her head more to the side in an effort to look up at me. She mumbles around her gag, but I hear her.
Please.
Something registers in that sound, but her neck lifts, and it’s the smell that brings clarity. A waft of something sweet between the layers of decay and damp reaches my nostrils. It’s a smell that doesn’t belong among the fetid rankness of my handmade cemetery. There are no yellow blooms that grow here. Only fungus and poison. There is no light, the overhang creating a dark understory of branches and leaves. It’s too invasive to allow flowers. Despite the impossibility, I smell the fresh florals. The specific fragrance I’m intimately familiar with. Honeysuckle. The scent that I only associate with one woman.
Camryn Park.
She’s here.
I rip off my goggles, my eyes taking in the truth, converting light into electrical signals that are sent to my brain. Yanking down her hoodie reveals her, the familiar shape of her skull. The unmistakable long, inky braid coils like a snake down her back in the waning light. I blink. Shock ripples through me, followed by pure fury. I dig my hands into her scalp and yank her up, disbelief and rage still clouding my vision. Son of a bitch.
Everything clicks into place. Her untrained moves. Her lack of fighting ability. She’s not here to assassinate me. She’s here to antagonize me. Push me to my limits. Easing off her body, deadly rage flows through me. I yank her up, lifting her off the ground. She tries to kick at me, and I shake her. “Stop!” I slam her into the nearest tree and wrap her arms around the trunk, taking out another zip tie. My hands shake, not working with their typical efficiency as I attach the zip-tie. I almost put a bullet in her brain. She could have been killed. “What the fuck are you doing?” I growl in her face. She’s bleeding from where I nicked her, blood soaking into the collar of her black hoodie. Seeing it drip down her neck sends conflicting sensations in my body. Anger wars with desire. My cock is hard at the sight of her, blindfolded, gagged, and bleeding. It’s my fantasy to have her bleed for me, but not like this. I could have killed her.
She mumbles around her gag, and I slice through it. As soon as her mouth is free, she screeches, calling me every curse word she can throw at me.
“Shut up!” I pull off my goggles and toss them away. I don’t want to see her in infrared. I want to see flesh and skin, and verify that she’s real.
“You better kill me and bury the body, ’cause I won’t shut up!” She shouts in my direction, looking around, my blindfold making it impossible for her to see. “Help! Someone help!”
“Scream all you want, but there’s no one to hear you except the dead.”
She stops, her lungs heaving. “Who are you!?”
She doesn’t recognize my voice. The filter mask makes it sound robotic even to my own ears. I would laugh if I wasn’t so pissed at her, and the improbability of it all.That she’s here, in a space she has no business entering. She could have been hurt, seriously hurt. The bear traps I’ve set. The thought of her leg snapped in half, mangled. The deep holes I’ve dug are lined withbarbed wire. Not to mention the sharp inclines that lead to rock outcroppings. The ways she could have fallen, incapacitated, left out here. If she hadn’t tripped the alarm, there’s no telling what could have happened to her. Stumbling upon the rotted remains is the least dangerous thing she has encountered.
I step closer again, aligning our bodies until I’m pressing into her, letting her feel my cock. I return the safety on my Sauer and re-holster it on my chest, then slide my hands down her hip and grip it tightly. The mood changes. She inhales when I add bruising pressure.
She freezes. “Please. Please, don’t.”
“Don’t what? Fuck you? Kill you? Do things to your body that will haunt you. It’s what you deserve. This is a place for murder, so that means I should slit your throat for trespassing.”
