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I’d do fucking anything to take away all her hurt. Make her forget this had ever happened.
* * *
I’m not gonna get any closure.
I stroked Blake’s hair and peered down at the man lying dead on the ground between two cars in the courtyard.
As soon as Elliott had identified him, I’d glued my stare to the man as if he’d come back to life.
Elliott had identified Gajero too, based on a half-melted driver’s license. Gajero had been burned badly, his body littered with puncture wounds from shrapnel.
Blake had passed out in my embrace from sheer exhaustion, so she didn’t see her kidnappers. She didn’t see the man lying two feet away from me with a gunshot wound between his eyes.
I didn’t know who’d shot him. It could’ve been me. It could’ve been Ryan or Crew or…
The man’s eyes were still open. A gun lay next to his body, and his hand was outstretched, like he was trying to reach for it even in death.
Carillo Mesa.
He and his men had kidnapped my daughter; they’d held sixteen innocent people captive, shuffling them from one corner of the world to the next, until they’d ended up right here.
Sixteen people. And I didn’t even get the pleasure of watching him die. No final words, no desperate attempt to bargain, no begging for his life, not aflickerof pain. He was just gone. I’d never heard the fucker utter a goddamn word.
Crew, Ryan, Reese, and Shay had rounded up all the Carillo affiliates across the courtyard. Twenty-eight men, all dead, aside from one Russian and the low-man Gray and Shay had apprehended earlier. River was currently trying to interrogate them, but what was the point? Nothing they said changed anything.
Well…
I guessed there was one good reason to interrogate Petrov. To see if they had other innocent people hidden somewhere.
I stared down at Carillo’s face again, his expression blank. What had been his last thoughts? What had been running through his mind when he’d come face-to-face with the barrel of a gun?
Regardless, he hadn’t suffered enough. A quick shot to the forehead had snuffed out his dreams of starting a cartel in Europe. Sick son of a whore.
Blake whimpered softly in her sleep, and I squeezed her a little and kissed the side of her head.
“Daddy’s here, Blake,” I murmured. “You’re safe.” With my lips pressed to her hair, I glanced over at the burning inferno that used to be the main house. The flames climbed higher, consuming everything they could grab on to.
As of two minutes ago, firefighters had been dispatched after a single call from a neighbor some ten minutes away from here.
I heard someone walk up behind me, so I turned around and saw Darius.
“Have you seen Elliott?” he asked.
“He’s in the warehouse.” I didn’t envy his task. He and Gray were helping the other fourteen people we’d released. Nine women, most of them very young, and five children, the youngest just two or three years old.
“Thanks.” He headed in there.
Many of the hostages needed medical assistance.
Blake did too. And that thought pushed me into a new cycle of feeling everything and nothing all at once. I still wanted more details; I had to know everything, but… Thanks to clarification from Marisa, it appeared Blake had been locked up the entire time. They’d used Blake as leverage to interrogate and harass Marisa. Which… I was sure Ortega was going through the same hell I was. We were relieved beyond words they hadn’t been raped or touched inappropriately, but suffering wasn’t limited to sexual abuse. This slip of a girl in my arms had been lonely, locked inside a fucking cage, forweeks.
According to Marisa, they’d been fed once a day, after which they’d been allowed to go to the bathroom for five minutes. A grown person might be able to handle that for a short period of time, but a child?
Deep-seated sorrow flowed through me in powerful currents, muting the anger for the moment. All the shit she’d been through—for what? For this dead stranger’s quest for vengeance. Elliott had done his goddamn job. He and Tariq had put criminals behind bars, Carillo included, and he’d thought it was a good idea to kidnap my daughter to punish Elliott—and to get him to kill Vincente.
“Firefighters will be here in ten!” Mercier hollered out. He pocketed his phone and walked across the courtyard. “Can I get everyone’s attention?”
Darius came out from the warehouse again, and he said Elliott and Gray were staying inside. The others trailed closer, including River, who left Petrov and the low-man tied to a car dangerously close to the fire from the main house.
