AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“He’s trying to assassinate me,mijo,” Padre said in a banal tone, as if he were totally bored with the situation. “Lock him up for me. We’ll handle Angel’s punishment after dinner, yes?”
Omar, who never hesitated to follow our father’s orders before, froze. “Angel?”
Thatrattled my father. He stood. “What are you questioning him for?” he demanded. “I told you to take him away.”
“Emma is gone, and David is dead,” I said. “He has something to do with it.”
After only a second, Omar let me go, and I trained my weapon back on my father. “She’s pregnant with your grandchild,” my brother said. “What have you done?”
I ground my molars together. If I didn’t need him to find Emma, I would put a bullet right between —
“Angel? Are you okay?”
If she was wearing her St. Christopher’s medal, Iwouldn’tneed my father. I handed the gun to Lili. “Keep that on him, understand?” I asked and dug my phone out of my pocket. “If he moves, kill him.”
Lili’s lip was quivering, but her aim was solid. “Go,” she said. “I can babysit.”
I didn’t expect Omar to follow me, but I was glad for his presence at my back. “Check the cameras,” he said as we passed through my office door. The program was still open, but when I backed it up to an hour ago, the cameras cut out.
Swearing, I opened up the tracking program that I’d paid someone much smarter than me to create and then attach the tracker to the St. Christopher’s medal. It was tiny and seamless and waterproof. As long as it was still around her neck, I could find her.
“She’s alive,” Omar said in an attempt to reassure me.
“We don’t know exactly when she was taken. He could be dumping her body at this point,” I pointed out, and my stomach dropped into my knees when I saw where the tracker pinged the medal. Everglades National Park.Fuck.
I hadn’t felt fear in years. Not since I stared into a man’s eyes for the first time and blew his brains out the back of his head. Not since Padre stomped on me so badly I thought I might actually die. But staring at that little dot in the middle of nowhere, I felt a sticky cold wash over me. It wasn’t the cold place that I could go, and my head would be clear. This was cloying and clutching at my throat.
“Let’s go,” Omar said. “She’s been doing self-defense with Lili. She can survive until we get there.”
But she didn’t know that we would come. How would she know to hold on until then? “He’s going to die either way, you know that, right?” I asked my brother.
Omar nodded. “You pulled a gun on him,” he said. “There’s only two ways that’s going to end.” He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “I’m with you, brother.”
“If Emma dies, he and whoever helped him will go slowly and painfully, and they will wish for death long before I give it to them.”
CHAPTER28
Emma
Iscreamed for more than ten minutes, but the music from the front of the car thumped all the way into the trunk. He had turned the radio up to cover me. I laid on my back and tried kicking at the lid of the trunk, but it didn’t budge.
Blind panic threatened to close my throat, but I remembered the trunks were built with safety pulls. Taking a breath, I forced myself to be calm, to think rationally, and I started feeling for anything that might be a ripcord.
I ran my hands over the top of the lid and along the seams and came up empty. The safety had been removed from this trunk.They aren’t stupid, I thought.They’re not going to let someone just escape. What next then? If I kept trying to come up with a way to escape, I wouldn’t have time to panic. If I gave in to anxiety and fear, I would die: Lili had told me that too.
I could try and pop out the back lights, see if I could signal a car that way. But the reality of trying to peel back the lining to get to the lights was damn near impossible. I needed a sharp implement or something to tear at the fabric.
But if I had something sharp, then I could just attack the man when he opened the trunk back up. The car made a turn, and I slid to one side of the trunk. The road was getting rougher now; that felt like a bad sign. We went over a bump, and my head smacked into the trunk’s lid.Damnit. I was going to end up with a concussion this way, and then, where would I be?
There was nothing that I could find in the dark that I would be able to use as a weapon. It was just me, and considering the man’s size, I was vastly outmatched. My best option was to run as far and as fast as I possibly could.
I would have to take him by surprise, as soon as he opened the trunk, and I couldn’t falter. I couldn’t let fear trip me up, or I would be dead. I was sure of that. This wasn’t a ransom; this was the thing that Angel told me would start a war.
The car was driving over gravel now; the trunk was filled with crunching as the whole car rocked and dipped. My stomach cramped, and my mouth filled with saliva. I didn’t want to throw up back here; the smell would only make things worse.
When the car slowed to a stop, my heart started to gallop in my chest.Now or never, I thought. I had to get out as fast as I could and get running. I swallowed the spit in my mouth and pulled my knees up so that I could have the leverage to spring out of the trunk.
I heard the driver’s side door open and listened for the approaching footsteps. Every muscle in my body was tight, ready, and when the trunk lid began to open, I didn’t wait. I shot myself up, forcing the lid open with my hands, and it swung into my abductor’s face with a crack.
