Chapter
19
Annabelle
I wasn’t exactly sure who was holding who up, but together, Laura and I were somehow managing to stand in an upright position by the door. My hand was resting lightly on her waist, while her hand was holding me in a death grip, as if she still didn’t quite trust me not to leave her behind and make a break for it on my own. I pulled my ear off the door to our room, where I’d had it held for the last couple of minutes, listening intently to the other side for any kind of noise. Noise meant movement and movement meant danger to us. So far there’d been no noises and I was hoping that meant there would be no immediate danger once I opened this door.
I leaned back into her body whispering, “When we leave this room, stay glued to my side.”
“Okay.”
“Do you happen to know where we are in the house? I was unconscious when they brought me in.”
“We’re in the basement.”
“What else do you know about the house, Laura?”
“We don’t want to go left. It leads to more rooms like this. They put you towards the end of the row of rooms, so if we go right, it leads us through what they call the lounge area, which is pretty big. Like the size of a small house. After the lounge area, on the far wall is the stairs.” Her voice cracked. “I haven’t been up those stairs since I’ve been here.”
“How long have you been here, honey?”
A sniffle, followed by her tearful, raspy voice, “I don’t know anymore. I lost count sometime after I reached a hundred days.”
My heart broke for her all over again. How in the hell had she survived this place for so long? There was no time to dwell on that right now, though. Someone could come back at any time. We had to leave now. I didn’t know how much longer I would be able to stay conscious with all of my blood loss. Frankly, I had no idea how she was standing upright at all. I could feel the weakness of her body under my hands as we held on tightly to each other and I considered it a miracle she was alive at all, let alone standing somewhat on her own.
“Let’s get you out of here then.” Her hands clenched a little tighter in response. My hand felt around the door until I found the knob and my adrenaline kicked into high gear. This was it. Turning the door knob agonizingly slow, I pulled it open at what felt like a millimeter at a time until bright light spilled through the crack. Laura was so still behind me that I doubted she was even breathing. That was until her anguished voice sounded.
“They didn’t even lock the door. How many times have they left the door unlocked, knowing I was too stupid to escape?”
“You’re not stupid, honey. They beat you down until you didn’t know any better. You’re a survivor. Remember that. You ready?”
“More than you can know,” she whimpered.
“Okay, here we go, girl.”
Pulling the door open a bit more quickly this time, I opened it enough to stick my head out and look down the hall to the left. It was empty in the direction she had indicated we shouldn’t go, with nothing to see except closed doors to a row of several rooms. Knowing what those rooms were for now, my body gave an involuntary shudder. Turning my head to look in the other direction, I saw it was laid out exactly like she had described it.
After two more closed doors in the hall, there was a large, brightly lit, open area—perhaps twelve hundred square feet—between us and the stairs on the far wall. Although, I don’t know if I would have compared it to a small house like she had. It reminded me more of a gentlemen’s club.
There were a couple of small stages with shiny metal stripper poles adorning them. In front of those stages were a number of plush looking couches, and there was even a long bar off to the side. Strip clubs had never bothered me before. In fact, I’d been to one for a fellow agent’s bachelor party because the guys had all thought I wouldn’t have the balls to show, but the sight of this was enough for me to see red; wishing I could burn this whole place down on my way out. Unfortunately, getting out alive held more priority than exacting revenge for countless, nameless women who had suffered on those stages and in this basement.
Looking back to Laura, I whispered, “We’re going to hug the wall until we get to the end of the hall here. Then, you’re going to wait while I take a quick look around to make sure we’re alone. When I deem it’s safe, I’m going to jerk your hand and we’re going to haul ass running to those stairs. When we get to those stairs we have to tip toe up them as quickly as we can. Once we reach the top, I’m going to stop us, ease open the door and stick my head out to see if we’re clear. From that point on, you’re going to have to pay close attention to what I tell you to do since we don’t know what’s up there. You with me?”
She nodded her head instantly, no hesitation whatsoever, and transferred her grip on my hip to my hand. She squeezed it so tightly it was amazing she hadn’t broken a bone. I wasn’t going to complain about her crushing hold since the pain it was causing seemed to clear my head of the remaining haze I’d been suffering from whatever drug they’d shot me up with in the delivery van. With everything that had happened in the room, I’d failed to notice I wasn’t quite even-keeled yet, but I was coherent enough to look for danger and run like hell, so that’s what we were going to do.
We slipped out of the room, plastering ourselves to the wall as we made the short distance to the end of the hall. Stopping on the very edge of the corner, I popped my head out and took a quick scan of the premises, which was thankfully empty and as silent as a tomb. Yanking Laura’s hand with my own, we ran across the open space to the stairs and we didn’t slow down until we were at the bottom of that first step. Keeping my back to the wall, eyes on the empty den of depravity in front of me, and the small fragile hand of the other woman firmly locked in my own, we trod noiselessly up the stairs, making it to the top of the tall staircase with no bad guys in sight.
Maybe luck was on our side. Maybe some karmic force had decided we’d had enough. Or maybe God was trying to give us a Holy, ‘You Go, Girl.’ Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I was going to start praying that on the other side of the door, where the first floor of the house was, we’d find a whole lot of nothing, too, and that would mean we could haul ass out of the first feasible exit I could find. For the first time since I’d woken up in the Rivera Cartel’s hands, tied up like a calf at a rodeo, I had real hope I was going to come out of the other side of this alive.
Then the lights went out.
~~~
Bobby
The silence of my green-tinged world through my thermal imaging goggles abruptly ended when I heard a string of gun fire from another area of the house. Since all of our guns were equipped with silencers that meant one of the team was drawing enemy fire. It hadn’t taken long for one of the house’s occupants to stumble upon one of us and now it would only be a matter of minutes before the house was crawling with combatants. Not good.
Jaxon and I were clearing the front quadrant of the house, moving stealthily from large room to large room, making sure no one was waiting to ambush us before moving on. We’d moved into our third room, a rather large living room of sorts, when a flash of movement across the room caught my eye. A man, who had been crouched by a door, sprang up as the door opened and grabbed the arm of the person who was emerging from it as a feminine squeal sounded.
That person was Belle, and she was covered in blood.
Why was my woman naked and bloody? There wasn’t time to analyze this disturbing new fact that sent my entire body into a cold sweat. The man had his arm wrapped tightly around her throat in a choke hold and shoved the barrel of his pistol against her temple. Jaxon’s low curse behind me let me know he was also witnessing the clusterfuck developing in front of us. The only good news here was that he was still unaware of our presence across the room. His focus was solely on Belle as she struggled against him.
“Where do you think you are going, puta? Mr. Rivera has plans for you,” he hissed in her ear before bending his head down to lick up the side of her neck. “I bet he lets me have you after he’s done. Mmm…”
My gut was in knots at the sight of his filthy hands and mouth on Belle, but I had to keep a level head for a little while longer. Sudden movement from behind the man almost startled me to shoot, but I managed to stop myself in time to watch another woman launch herself onto Belle’s captor’s back; latching onto his neck and screaming in shrill tones for him to “let her go” as she used her free hand to hit him repeatedly in the head. The man initially flinched at his attack, but quickly moved his pistol from Belle’s temple, pointing it over his shoulder in the direction of his attacker’s face and pulled the trigger. It all happened so fast neither Jaxon, nor I, had a chance to do anything to help, not without taking the chance of accidentally hitting Belle if we were to shoot. Belle’s attempted rescuer had no chance to move before she took a bullet to the forehead, either. Belle, on the other hand, had used the distraction to renew her struggles to get free of the chokehold, stomping on the man’s instep and elbowing him harshly in the ribs, but somehow he’d ignored it all to reach over his shoulder and, in the span of a few seconds, end some poor, innocent woman’s life.
Belle’s screams echoed through the room as she started fighting like a crazed banshee. Hysterically calling out the name “Laura” while trying her best to get free, but was forced to quit her struggles when her captor tightened his arm to the point where she couldn’t breathe at all. The taller man was now cursing at her in Spanish, jabbing his gun in anger at her neck, slapping it violently up the side of her head, before digging the barrel into the top, fleshy part of her shoulder causing her to cry out in pain.
“Take any open shot, Baker!” Jaxon’s low voice barked into our comm. link.
I didn’t like it, but Jaxon was right. The man’s enraged rant at Belle was enough of a distraction to take him out before he could make it impossible to get a shot at all by using her as a shield. Between where Jaxon stood, a few feet away from me, and my position, hopefully one of us would get an open shot before it was too late and that asshole killed her. Taking steady breaths, my rifle fixed in my grip, I ignored the world around me, zeroing in on that one spot in front of me. All I could see now was Belle and the man that was cruelly cutting off her precious oxygen supply. He was still yelling at her; oblivious, or possibly uncaring, to her anger and tears. His arm tightened again as he literally lifted her up off the ground, her feet dangling in the air, as he bent his head and screamed something into her ear. That put his head too close to her body for a safe shot.
He pulled his head back as he dropped her body enough for her toes to touch the ground again and I saw her mouth move as she said the word “Asshole.” In another fit of rage, the man pulled his hand back, and swung his pistol towards her head again in retaliation. I saw the movement of his arm in slow motion. It moved forward, made contact with the side of her head, then pulled back again as he started to drop it behind her back.
There was my shot.
My finger pulled the trigger. My body shifted slightly as my arm and shoulder took in the recoil of the shot. A sudden silence ensued as the shot hit him in the neck, stopping him mid-word of whatever he’d been saying, and then the silence was shattered by a loud crack. I watched as Belle’s body jerked, her eyes widened in surprise, and she looked down to her shoulder where there was now a bullet hole and blood pouring from it.
Jaxon fired another shot into the man’s large body as it hit the floor, but the damage was done. Belle was now sliding to the floor as I ran to get to her. There was shouting over the comm. links as Jaxon and others barked out terse commands, but all I could see or hear was the love of my life as she gasped in shock and pain. She gave a frightened scream when I picked her up in my arms, cradling her against my chest.
“Shh… baby. It’s me. It’s Bobby. I’ve got you now and I’m taking you home.”
Her fingers grasped the front of my shirt as she gave a relieved sob. I started walking away when she yelled out, “We can’t leave her, Bobby! We can’t! I promised Laura I would take her home.”
Agony and sympathy crashed over me in waves at her desperate plea. Perhaps Belle didn’t know the woman hadn’t made it? “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but she didn’t make it.”
Belle’s head nodded in resignation. “I know, but I still promised to take her home to her sister. Please. Please, get her and bring her with us. I felt her blood splatter down my back when she—” Belle couldn’t finish the sentence and gave a small sob.
Jaxon walked past me, headed towards the small body that apparently belonged to Laura. “I got her, Baker. Get her the fuck out of here and back to the secondary rendezvous point. The choppers are already headed there to meet you. She needs medical care ASAP. The Sullivans are waiting outside to give you cover while the rest of the team finishes clearing the house. We’re right behind you.”
Turning around and heading for the exit, I kept a firm hold on Belle, while trying not to aggravate her wounds. Cradling her carefully to my chest to hide her nudity from the others, since I didn’t have anything on me that I could cover her with. “Hold onto me, baby. We’re going to book it to the choppers. It might hurt you a little bit because I’ll be hauling ass, but it will only be for a little while. Promise.”
A slight nod of her head was all the answer she could manage. She seemed too shell-shocked or physically weak to do any more. There was no telling how much blood she’d lost. I didn’t have enough medical training to determine that; I needed to get a move on it. For two and a half miles to the secondary rendezvous point, I hauled ass. Declan and Riley had to lead us, since I couldn’t free a hand to check my GPS until we reached the Black Hawk that had brought us here. There were heavy footfalls behind us, but I knew they belonged to my teammates because, if it had been a threat, one of the Sullivans would have taken them out without so much as batting an eyelash. Riley was first to hop up in the chopper, and he reached down to take Belle from me so that I could climb up inside myself. He then held her until I pulled down the stretcher from where it had been stored and placed it on the floor of the Black Hawk between us. Riley laid her down gently before stepping away so that I could kneel next to her.
Smoothing her hair away from her face, I asked her, “Give me a rundown of your injuries.”
Her voice was a weak croak. “Cut across the chest from shoulder to shoulder, deeper cut down the thigh, and—I’m not one hundred percent sure—but I think I was shot in the shoulder. You’ll have to double check that one…”
Snorting at her, I was relieved she was with it enough to crack a joke about getting shot. I shook my head in exasperation. “Anything else we need to know, smartass?”
Giving a weak nod, she said, “Yeah. I took a couple of hits to the head. The first one at the bar knocked me unconscious. They also injected me with something in the van when I came to at the border.”
The others finally arrived, loading quickly into the chopper as our medic, Wyatt Brooks, knelt down on the other side of Belle. I would stay at her side to offer her comfort, while Wyatt would tend to her injuries. He was one of the best medics the Air Force had ever produced because of his Pararescueman training. He reached out a hand to take a thermal blanket Riley was handing him as our chopper finally lifted off the ground.
“Let’s get you wrapped up before you go into shock, Ms. Roberts.” He was in business mode. Taking over, asking questions, and prepping bandages to stop the blood flow. Looking up from Belle’s red, stained body, I looked over to the other chopper, where I knew Jaxon was with Laura’s body; a body that had once been full of life, dreams and hopes for a future. A person who probably had family that was worried sick over her disappearance and would mourn her loss once they were notified. I looked back to the woman whom I have loved most of my life; the one I was ready to admit still held my heart and soul in the palm of her hands. My emotions overloaded on me at the gravity of her situation. I’d almost lost her again, only permanently this time, and we still weren’t out of the woods because we had to get her to a hospital. I had enough medical training to know she was losing too much blood.
I did the only thing I could do while I knelt there, holding one of her hands, and helping Wyatt when he needed it.
Prayed.
Hoped.
And murmured encouragement to my brave girl as she laid there and dealt with her wounds better than I’d seen some highly-trained, special ops soldiers deal with injuries that weren’t half as bad. There would be no living if I lost her now and, as soon as we got her all bandaged up and on her way to healing back in San Antonio, I was going to do my best to convince her she couldn’t live without me, either.