Page 3 of Chris

That grin meant he wanted to fuck the woman.

Valeria didn’t care.

The promise of freedom would make a person smile, no matter how dangerous, crazy, and even if there was no guarantee her plan to run away would work.

Still, she had to try.

For this child, she had to.

“Valeria.”

She hoped the guilt didn’t show on her face when she met Jorge’s gaze. He never missed her distractions. Now didn’t seem like a good time to play with fire. The blank expression he wore said she was the last thing on his mind.

Good.

“Yes?”

“I’m sure you won’t mind going home to the compound alone tonight, will you?” he asked.

He posed it like a question.

It wasn’t.

“Of course, not,” she said.

“I’ll be home for breakfast. Take care of my baby. You got me?”

Better than he understood.

Valeria did her best to soothe the nerves running wild as she brushed down the colt, Butter, in the stables. Butter, only two months old, had given Valeria a reason to visit the stables on the compound more often over the last couple of months.

The compound itself, set on a good twenty acres of secluded, desolate land protected by armed guards, allowed the Lòpez family privacy. To the east, one would find cliffs leading out to choppy, dangerous ocean water. The guards and an electric fence secured the only road leading out of the compound. Two larger barns, used like warehouses and full of drugs to smuggle, sat further west of the compound, while their homes and stables made up a small village right in the center.

There was no way out.

Or so they thought …

One simply needed enough time, and the means to make it happen. Not that they ever gave her the opportunity to run before. She could rarely do anything without a guard or her husband nearby to watch her do … whatever.

The stables, however, were her free time. Or, that’s how Jorge liked to put it. He didn’t have much interest in the horses, it was more of a pet project for his siblings, and some guards that stayed on the property.

Valeria took a liking to the horses because her husband didn’t care. He wouldn’t follow her into the stables to look after the horses, and he didn’t mind her taking one out for a ride—like she did after arriving back to the compound that night—as long as someone was with her to keep an eye on her.

But when she looked after the horses in the stables?

No one cared.

No one watched her, then.

The sound of boots crunching against dried grass, and the hay that fell around the outside of the stables during the last delivery, made Valeria slow the strokes of her brush against the colt’s hind end. She peered up over the back of the colt in just enough time to see Abril slip into the stables.

Dressed in riding boots, a helmet in hand, jeans molded to her legs, and a shawl that would keep her warm on a ride, Abril looked ready to take a horse out.

“Ready?” she asked.

Valeria swallowed hard. “Did they see you?”

“One or two.”