AllFreeNovel
Share Us
If she hadn’t woken when she had...
Jocelyn clawed her upper body over the edge of the pool and collapsed—face down—onto debris-ridden cement. Chunks of stone and what used to make up Marc De Leon’s compound bit into her face. Hell, she hurt, but she couldn’t stop now. “Baker.”
He’d been in the house with her. But had he made it out alive?
Dragging one knee beneath her, she pressed herself up. The compound was burning right in front of her eyes. Embers raced toward the sky with thick clouds of smoke.
A rumble vibrated underneath her, and thin cracks split the cement beneath her hands. “Oh, no.” The compound sat on the edge of a cliffside looking over Alpine Valley. If the explosion had been strong enough...
Jocelyn shoved to her feet. Her balance failed, and she stumbled into a low wall that’d somehow managed to survive the blast.
This whole area was on the verge of collapse.
They had to get out of here.
“Baker!” She forced one busted foot in front of the other. Making out the remnants of what was left of the kitchen, she maneuvered around a turned-over hood vent and crossed into a house on its last legs. An exposed beam crashed off to her left and decimated the fireplace from the sitting room off the kitchen. Old tile flooring threatened to trip her up as she tried to re-create the layout of the house in her head. She’d lost Baker somewhere between the main living space and the bedrooms on the other side of the house.
“Baker...can you hear me?”
No answer.
Her heart stuttered at the thought of finding him in this mess. The house groaned under its attempt to stay standing, but another rumble threw her into a half-failing wall between the kitchen and dining room.
“Baker, we have to get out of here!”
Smoke chased down her throat and silenced her voice. No amount of coughing dislodged the strangling feeling of nearly drowning in a cartel lieutenant’s pool. Glass and rock cut into the bottoms of her bare feet as she launched herself down what used to be the hallway.
He had to be here.
“Where are you?” Covering her mouth and nose with her soaked T-shirt, she stumbled through the house’s remains, but there was no sign of him.
Except... She pulled up short of the hallway leading to the bedrooms. He must’ve turned left out of the living room when she’d gone right. Because there, in the middle of a section of broken tile, flames were in the process of melting something shiny and gold. Something familiar.
Her breath left her all at once, as though she were back beneath the surface of the pool. Trapped. Deprived. In agony. She grabbed for a piece of charred wood and knocked the police badge out of the flames. But no amount of staring at it changed the dread pooled in her gut. Jocelyn searched the surrounding hallway as another groan escaped from the home’s bones. “No. No, no, no.”
There was no point in denying it.
The chief had been inside the compound when the bomb detonated.
APOINTWAScoming where his head wouldn’t be able to take much more.
Baker pulled his chin away from his chest. Pain arced down his spine as he dragged his head back. His skull hit something soft. Cushioning. Prying his eyes open, he stared out over his truck’s dashboard. A hint of gasoline added to the burn of smoke in his lungs from earlier. Must’ve spilled some the last time he’d gassed up.
Pins and needles pricked at his fingers and forearms, and he moved to adjust. But couldn’t. Two sets of cuffs slid along the curve of the steering wheel. “What the hell?”
It took a few seconds to kick his senses into gear. This was his truck, but he hadn’t driven out to the middle of the desert... Jocelyn had.
Fractures of fire, an explosion and the hole in his chest tearing wider jerked him into action. Baker wrenched against the cuffs, digging the metal into the skin along his wrists. He always carried a set of handcuff keys on him. He went for his slacks, but the chains linking the cuffs refused to give. Just short of reaching his pocket. Pressing his heels into the floor, he tried to lift his hips to his hands, but it was no use. The seat had been moved farther up than he’d set it at.
A warm glow flickered through the pickup’s back window, and Baker centered himself in the rearview mirror. Flames breached outward from what used to be Marc De Leon’s compound. The structure was caving in on itself, lit up by dying fires. “Jocelyn!”
She’d been in the house. She might be hurt, suffering. He wedged one hand against the other and tried to slide the opposite cuff free, but it wouldn’t budge. The son of a bitch who’d knocked him out had known exactly what he’d been doing. Baker thrust his upper body forward and licked the skin around the cuff on his right hand. Anything to get the damn thing off.
The Kevlar vest he’d borrowed from Jocelyn hit the steering wheel.
A muted beep issued from somewhere inside the fabric.
Baker’s heart threatened to stop.
