CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The sun was high as Sidney came over the last ridge and trotted down toward El Verdugo’s camp. The astonished looks on everyone’s faces at seeing her return would have been comical if the situation weren’t so dire. She kept expecting to see help come galloping up behind her, but depending on the roughness of the terrain, Mac and Hank could be a half hour or more behind her. Close enough to identify her and Boomer’s bodies before the buzzards landed, but not close enough to keep them from death.
She slowed Rio to a walk as she approached the tents—at least, what was left of them. Most of the tents had already been taken down and were being packed onto donkeys and horses, except for El Jefe’s. Rio whinnied, his entire body shaking with the call. From somewhere down by the corrals, Donkey hee-hawed back.
As she scanned the dense trees, looking for Boomer, Pepita came running over, her legs pumping, her arms windmilling in her mad dash to get to her. Tears streamed down the girl’s face as she told Sidney something in rapid Spanish that she couldn’t even begin to understand.
Pepita’s breath came in frantic gulps. She didn’t bother to swipe at her tears as they left streaks in the dirt on her face. Since Pepita couldn’t get any words out in English, she gesticulated with her hands toward El Jefe’s tent.
Whatever had happened was bad. Real bad.
Bryan.
The blood drained from Sidney’s brain and her world tilted. She swayed on Rio’s back, catching herself on the saddle horn to keep from tumbling off.
Sidney glanced up to see El Jefe being led out of the tent, two men on either arm as he fought for freedom. They dragged him off down the hill. She followed the path down with her eyes until the trail ended by the corral, where a man shimmied up a tree and out onto a sturdy branch. He tied a rope off with a practiced ease. Even at a distance, Sidney could make out the noose at the opposite end of the rope as it swayed back and forth.
What was going on?
Where was Bryan?
From inside the tent erupted a cry of rage, then some loud grunts. Sidney dug her heels into Rio’s side and he goosed forward, then skidded to a stop as Bryan was thrown out of the tent and landed with a thud at Rio’s feet.
“Bryan!” Sidney jumped out of the saddle and landed next to him. He tried in vain to roll to his knees, tried to stand, tried to fight, but he collapsed against the ground.
Adrenaline dumped into her system, a hot flash that boiled the blood in her veins, and her body broke out into a cold sweat. Gently, she rolled him over. There was a gash on his left brow and blood oozed down his temple and into his hairline. He squinted through the pain, and when he saw her he scowled and shook his head as if trying to dislodge a nightmare.
“No, no. No, no, no, no, no.” Bryan’s voice cracked even at the whisper.
Again, he tried to sit up, but she put a shaking hand on his shoulder and held him down. He stilled at the touch. When his eyes met hers, the haunted look in his eyes extinguished the breath from her lungs. Her head spun. She’d never seen such turmoil, such exquisite pain, as if the devil himself tortured his soul.
He reached up, cupped the back of her head, and touched her forehead to his. “Why are you here? Did the men capture you? We had a deal. A three-hour head start. That bast—”
“I love you. I needed you to know that,” she said as the tears she’d tried to hold back fell freely onto his cheek.
Then someone grabbed her arms and hauled her to her feet. Pain, hot and searing, shot through her shoulders and down her arms.
“Let her g—” Bryan was yanked to his feet and the agony stole his words.
Sidney struggled, but they wrenched her arms until her knees buckled and she couldn’t fight through the pain any longer.
“Take them down to the corrals,” El Verdugo ordered as he turned on his heel and headed down the path.
Someone had grabbed Rio’s reins and led the horse down the path ahead of them.
Down at the corrals, the rest of El Verdugo’s men had gathered in a semicircle around the noose. Some of them were laughing, cutting up and exchanging money as if they were taking bets and getting ready for a cockfight. Others were more subdued, as if looking for a way out but more concerned about getting shot in the back or being strung up themselves.
El Jefe was on his knees with his hands tied behind his back. He looked angrier, more defiant than scared—then again, he’d known all along the den of snakes he’d been slithering in.
Sidney and Bryan remained restrained while El Jefe was forced onto Rio’s back and held in place while the noose was slipped over his neck.
Off to the side of the corral, Eli worked the knot of the rope tying him to a tree. The horses in the corrals fed off the general tension, pacing back and forth and nipping and squealing. Rio jigged to the side. El Jefe gagged, his face going red as the rope tightened around his neck. Someone grabbed Rio’s lead rope and maneuvered him back into place.
“I-I can get you the diamonds.” El Jefe’s words came out thin and guttural. “Cut me down and I will show you where they are.”
El Verdugo slipped his hand into the front pocket of his fatigues and pulled out a palm-sized black pouch. “You mean these diamonds?”
For the first time, El Jefe’s eyes rounded with fear, and the acrid spice of urine wafted through the air. The front of his jeans turned a deep, dark blue.
El Verdugo had a smile on his lips as he teased the pouch open, as if he had a great surprise he couldn’t wait for everyone to see. He poured the jewels out into his hand. Several spilled into the dirt at his feet.
Sidney glanced at Bryan, Bryan eyed her back.
Why wasn’t El Verdugo concerned about the diamonds he’d dropped? She raised a brow at Bryan.
Bryan shrugged a shoulder in answer.
Then El Verdugo dropped his hand and tossed the diamonds in the air. They hit with a collective sound, like rain pattering down.
Rio eased a step forward unchecked and the rope tightened until El Jefe’s face turned a purple-red, congested with unoxygenated blood.
“It was a test, to catch my rat,” El Verdugo explained. “You failed. These are fake. How does it feel to die for a handful of paste?”
El Verdugo didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he waved his hand and Rio was led away, El Jefe’s boots sliding along the saddle in a useless attempt to gain purchase. Then the heels of his boots goosed Rio in the butt and as the anxious horse lurched forward, El Jefe’s feet dropped. There was no thud, because his boots never hit the ground.
Sidney looked away, unable to watch the unfolding horror, beginning to fully understand the promise Bryan had extracted from her.
She couldn’t kill the man she loved.
Sidney cut her eyes to Bryan, and his focus lasered in on her. When their eyes met, he shifted his gaze to her right boot, to the gun he knew she hid there, to perhaps his only hope of salvation.
His blue eyes held hers and even as he gave her the slightest nod of thanks, she watched the relief wash over him. Not like a tsunami, but like soft, gentle ripples that caress the shoreline at twilight.
Her heart shattered.
The fragments exploded out in all directions, flinging desperation in jagged, deadly pieces throughout her chest, throughout her soul. Her eyes burned with tears and Bryan’s image grew wavy as the liquid flooded in.
No, you can’t fall apart. Not when he needs you most.
After.
After, you can dissolve into nothing, but not a second, not a moment before.
She sniffed and fiercely blinked the moisture away, wiping her cheeks on her shoulders. Bryan hit her with a wink that almost wrenched opened a hydrant of waterworks.
It was no secret when the struggling stopped and unconsciousness, if not death itself, overcame El Jefe. The stench of evacuated bowels hit like a wrecking ball, a nauseating, solid blow.
El Verdugo made a self-satisfied grunt in the back of his throat, then gave a quick order that had men scrambling to get El Jefe down. While both men held on to Bryan, one of the men restraining her went to help, but any flicker of belief that she might wrangle free was snuffed when a beefy arm clamped across her shoulder from behind and held her tight to a solid chest, both her arms still pinned in his other hand behind her back.
As El Jefe’s body thudded to the ground, Mario and Cue Ball wrestled Bryan forward. Boomer didn’t go without a fight. Her adrenaline spiked and her breath came in rapid, rasping gulps as she juked and jived along with him, willing him to break free. Then Mario whacked him on the back of the head with the butt of a gun. Not hard enough to knock him out, which in a way might have been a blessing, but hard enough to stun him. He slumped in his captors’ arms, his legs trying feebly to keep up with the pace as they dragged him to the noose.
* * * *
Boomer’s skull felt like it had exploded and his vision blurred. All he saw were flashes of color, the green of the trees, the dirty blue of unwashed jeans, the brown and gray of the dirt and rocks as they slid beneath his feet.
So much adrenaline already coursed through Boomer’s system that he would have missed the new dump if it hadn’t narrowed his focus and brought time to a screeching halt. This wasn’t anything new to him. He’d trained for focus under fire, the ability to command his world and his body under extreme conditions, but that last blow to his head had stolen every last bit of his dwindling reserve to maintain consciousness.
His first coherent thought when the spin of his world slowed from Tilt-a-Whirl to merry-go-round was of Sidney, what she’d said to him. I love you. I needed you to know that. As much as he wanted to yell and scream and holler and get mad at her for coming back, a sick, selfish part of him was glad she’d come. Glad that if he died it would be at her hands and not El Verdugo’s. Not much of a consolation, but at this point, he’d take what he could get.
Now if she could shoot as well as she’d said…
Hell, even if she couldn’t, that would be okay. It was enough that she’d come back. That she’d loved him enough to risk everything for him. He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t change that now. The blood in his veins started pumping again after the shock of seeing her back in camp.
Many times while he’d been deployed, he’d contemplated his death, in the quiet, lonely hours before dawn. At those moments, he’d always looked back on his regrets. They seemed so petty now compared to the mother of all regrets staring back at him—the regret that had “Sidney” stamped all over it in big, bold, brash letters.
He didn’t regret knowing her, loving her, and though he hadn’t been able to protect her, that wasn’t even his biggest regret.
No, his biggest regret was not being the man she’d needed him to be.
His biggest regret was letting the booze and the drugs do the thinking and the talking and the taking.
His biggest regret was losing her before he’d even had the chance to win her.
His biggest regret was that she loved him anyway.
She didn’t deserve that.
Neither did he.
It required five men, but they managed to manhandle Boomer onto Rio’s back and slip the noose over his head. The pain in his ribs and the pounding in his head incapacitated him.
He tried to catch his breath, but his rapid panting wreaked holy hell on his ribs, and he quickly found there was very little he had control over. Not his swirling thoughts, not his breathing, not the all-consuming fire of agony as it racked his body.
Rio jigged a half step forward and the noose tightened around his neck. His hands were free, and he clawed at the coarse rope as it threatened to flatten his trachea. The pressure built in his skull as his jugular veins closed off. His thoughts scrambled in his brain, he couldn’t think, couldn’t decide, couldn’t form a plan.
In his direct line of vision, El Verdugo leaned against a tree, picking at his fingernails with the tip of his knife as if he were bored and waiting for the real action to start. Then he waved an imperious hand and one of the men slapped Rio on the ass. The horse startled and braved another step, but refused to run off.
“Back him. Sit deep in the saddle,” Sidney yelled out. “Tap him by his elbows.” The bruiser of a man behind her slapped his hand across her mouth.
The backing cue! A risk. If he applied pressure in the wrong spot, he could send Rio forward instead of back, especially without any reins for backward pressure in the mouth. Not like he had much of a choice though.
Boomer sucked in a breath, but it was like breathing through a straw and did little to fill his lungs and relieve the scalding, scorching burn deep in his chest. As spots danced across his pupils, he shifted his weight back the best he could, and because his legs were long he could almost reach them forward enough to tap Rio in the right spot. He alternated right and left taps, but without being able to feel his prosthetic, he wasn’t sure if he was doing that.
At first nothing happened, besides Rio’s ears going back, listening for a command, but Boomer could barely take a breath, so getting a verbal command out was impossible. Then he tapped harder and Rio crept back a fraction as if unsure of what Boomer wanted. Boomer tapped more and Rio came back until the saddle was under the rope and there were precious few inches of slack, allowing oxygen to sneak by the stricture in his throat.
Mario slapped Rio again, but the horse kicked up and nailed him with a hoof to the thigh. If Boomer could have smiled, he would have.
The man cursed and hollered and hobbled to the side, and then Boomer heard the crack of a whip. Time’s up. No matter how deep he sat in the saddle or how much he tapped with his heels in front of the drive line, as soon as the harsh sting of the whip landed on Rio, the horse would run.
Rio danced when the man cracked the whip on the ground again. Boomer leveled his eyes on Sidney. If he was going to die, he wanted to die with her face etched in his brain.
Then, as the whip made its whistling arc through the air, enough oxygen made it to Boomer’s brain that he thought to reach up past the tie of the noose and grab the rope with both hands. The whip snapped with an echoing crack against Rio’s hide, and the horse bolted forward at the same time the sound of galloping hooves crested the ridge.
As Boomer’s feet swung in the air, he gripped the rope with all his strength. His ribs screamed in protest. In his weakened condition, his shoulder muscles instantly burned with fatigue, and the rope started slipping through his sweaty hands.
As big as he was, even in basic training the rope climbs had always been his nemesis, and Boomer found it ironic as fuck that his life depended on it now.
* * * *
The scream died on Sidney’s lips as Rio bolted up the hill, leaving Boomer dangling at the end of the noose, his last-second grab for the rope keeping him alive. He wouldn’t be able to hold on for long—even a healthy man had his limits—and after what he’d been through the last few days, Bryan was far from healthy.
She struggled to break free, to keep her promise.
Then as Rio’s hoofbeats died away, in the distance she heard and felt the thunderous drum of galloping hooves. The man holding her turned his attention toward the ridge, his grip slipping in his surprise at seeing two riders barreling down the hill toward them. Sidney wrestled an arm free and elbowed him in the gut. He doubled over. She spun away from him, tripping on a tree root and going to the ground. Her head slammed against a rock, and her teeth slashed the side of her tongue and blood pooled in her mouth, but her focus was on grabbing the gun in her boot.
When she came up with it, the men in the camp and El Verdugo were drawing their pistols and turning toward the riders. She leveled her gun at the back of El Verdugo’s head—if she killed him first, maybe his men would scatter without their leader. Then a strangled curse from her right had her glancing in that direction. Bryan had lost his grip on the rope, and he dangled by his neck. He struggled to regain his grip, but he was too weak.
Then he opened his eyes and locked onto hers, his face twisted and tortured. He stopped struggling, and dropped his arms to his sides, his chest heaving ineffectually.
Her breath died with his, her lungs squeezed dry as hope vanished.
He blinked once, slow and steady, as if pleading for her to keep her promise. She glanced back toward the ridge. The riders where coming fast, but not fast enough.
Sidney choked back a sob as she retrained the pistol on the center of Bryan’s forehead. A smile twitched at one corner of his mouth, but then it was gone. He closed his eyes a final time.
Carefully, she lined the front and rear sights and removed the trigger slack, and in that infinitesimal span between no fire and fire, she pivoted and the gun coughed in her hand.
* * * *
Dante’s Inferno burned in Boomer’s chest as his oxygen-deprived lungs convulsed in their vain attempt to suck in air, the rope tight around his neck as his weight and gravity worked against him. Stars danced in his field of vision as darkness closed in on the periphery. He was seconds from blacking out, but he ignored the sight of the gun barrel aimed at his forehead and kept his gaze focused on Sidney.
God, he loved that woman.
As his vision dimmed, his hearing became more acute. He pushed away the sounds of galloping hooves and shouting men. Galloping hooves that were still minutes away when he had seconds. He waited for the rapport of Sidney’s Glock, wondered if he would hear it before the bullet claimed the agony.
He waited, one beat, two beat, three. Then a boom. He heard it. Felt no pain. No relief. El Verdugo had won.
“Fuck!” Sidney screamed as he lost consciousness. It was loud and guttural and fitting.
* * * *
Sidney’s guard tackled her from behind and slammed her to the ground, knocking the air out of her lungs and sending the gun flying, but she didn’t care—without any more ammunition, it was worthless.
As she gasped, her diaphragm spasmed and she struggled for air. When her vision started to go dark, she sucked in a shallow breath and then another and another.
The man hauled her to her feet. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of buckskin and she was knocked to the ground again. She rolled to her hands and knees and glanced behind her, Eli stood between her and the man, shaking his big, beautiful, blocky head, protecting her the way a stallion protects his mares.
She glanced back at Bryan. He hung at the end of the rope, utterly still.
Shoving to her feet, she sprinted to Bryan, clasping her arms around his thighs and lifting him up, but the noose was still tight around his neck. For the second time, she heard the heavy whump of helicopter rotors. Seconds later, shots were fired behind her—many, many shots, like their own little war zone—but there was nothing she could do about that.
She needed help to get the noose from around his neck. Frantic, she glanced around and spotted Pepita running toward her through the trees, with Bryan’s combat knife in her hands like an avenging angel.
“The rope!” Sidney said. “Cut the rope!”
Pepita skidded to a stop, put the back side of the blade in her mouth, and scrambled up Sidney’s back like Sidney was a human jungle gym. Balancing on Sidney’s shoulders, Pepita held onto the rope and hacked at it.
“Hurry, Pepita,” Sidney said. “Please hurry.”
A couple swings of the blade later, all Boomer’s weight dropped into Sidney’s arms. All three of them crashed to the ground. Sidney broke Bryan’s fall and Pepita tumbled out of it, landing on her feet like an elite gymnast. Sidney scrambled over and worked the noose loose and over his head. She put her head to his chest, and heard the faint, thready tha-thump tha-thump of his heart.
He was alive!
But he wasn’t breathing.
“I’ve got him.” Mac skidded to her knees beside Sidney. “His neck could be broken. Put your hands on either side of his head and keep it steady.”
Sidney did as she was told as Mac leaned over and gave him mouth to mouth. Again and again and again, Mac forced air into his lungs, his chest rising and falling, rising and falling.
“Come on, Marine,” Mac said between breaths, “Don’t be a jerk, breathe.”
Then Bryan coughed and sucked in a wheezing, beautiful breath.
Then another.
And another.
His lips moved, but Sidney couldn’t make out what he said. She bent her ear down to his lips and the two most beautiful words she’d ever heard came rasping out: “Fuck. Me.”
Sidney laughed, but it came out as more of a sob.
He coughed. “Always knew you wanted to kiss me,” he told Mac with a wry grin.
“Christ.” Mac thumped him lightly on the shoulder and said, “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”
“Roger that,” Bryan managed.
“Hey,” came a shout from behind them, “call off your damn watchdog.”
Sidney glanced over her shoulder. Hank and a couple of men with gear bags were being held at bay by one seriously pissed off buckskin gelding.
Sidney clucked to her horse and stepped away from Bryan. Eli shook his head a final time before trotting over to her and butting his head into her chest, breathing out hot, horsey breaths against her stomach. She rubbed both hands up and down his forehead, picking the twig from his forelock. She put her face to his neck and breathed in his scent.
Then she grabbed the end of his lead rope and stepped over to Bryan and watched as the two paramedics braced his neck and started him on IVs.
Pepita stood off to the side, her slight body shaking, probably from a combination of fear and the aftereffects of adrenaline. Sidney’s hands shook and her knees felt loose and disjointed. She held out an arm and Pepita stepped into her embrace.
“You were amazing.” Sidney tilted the little girl’s face up to her. “Without you, he would have died.”
Sidney didn’t know how much Pepita really understood, but the girl nodded her head and squeezed her arm around her waist, so Sidney assumed she got the gist of it.
“How did help get here so fast?” Sidney asked as Mac stepped over to her.
“They’re part of the search and rescue team that’s been out looking for you guys. They were already in the air when Hank radioed our position after spotting you on the ridge.”
“That was damn close.” Hank had come up behind them, wiping his brow with the sleeve of his shirt and then snugging his cowboy hat onto his head. There was a hole in his shirt—low on the left side, blood seeped onto it. But it must not have been more than a flesh wound, because both he and Mac ignored it.
Hank wrapped an arm around his wife and held her to his side. To Sidney he said, “You good?”
“If he’s good,” Sidney bobbed her chin toward Bryan, “then I’m good.”
The paramedics strapped Bryan onto a backboard that someone had brought over, then started packing up their gear.
“Did they get everyone?” Sidney was almost afraid to ask. “Did they get El Verdugo?”
“Some men ran when the tactical team fast-roped in,” Hank said. “The sheriff and the drug task force guys are still trying to sort everyone out.”
“I can tell you if he’s here.”
Hank glanced at Mac. Mac nodded her head. Sidney handed Pepita Eli’s rope and said, “You two wait here, okay?”
Eli blew a hot breath through Pepita’s hair and the girl giggled. Sidney’s heart thumped and her chest tightened seeing the light the little girl’s eyes.
Following in her wake, Hank trudged up the hill after her to where the sheriff and what she assumed were the task force guys, dressed in black BDUs and loaded down with tactical gear, had the men from the camp sitting on the ground, their hands bound behind their backs with thick zip-ties. She scanned each of the men’s faces as she walked by. Mario. Cue Ball. She recognized some of the others, but there was no sign of El Verdugo.
“That can’t be right,” Sidney said as she walked back the way she’d come, looking closer at each man. No way she could miss El Verdugo.
“Where are the rest of them?” Sidney asked Sheriff St. John.
“There are three dead, over there.” St. John indicated an area behind her, where a man was laying tarps over three bodies, parked side by side like semis at a truck stop. “That’s all we have.”
Before the men could think to stop her, she jogged over to the bodies, Hank on her tail, protesting the entire way.
At the tarps, Hank grabbed her arm and spun her around. “Sidney, you don’t have to do this.”
She met Hank’s firm gaze. “Yeah, Hank, I do.”
He chewed on that a moment, then finally dropped her arm and glanced at the deputy. “Show her,” he said.
Wrapping her arms around her waist, Sidney closed her eyes.
Nothing can be worse than seeing Bryan strangle.
Sidney opened her eyes.
The deputy peeled back the tarp. She glanced from man to man to man. The first one was El Jefe, his eyes still bugging out, his face discolored and his features frozen in eternal damnation. She tried to feel something for him, at least for the loss of a life, but deep down, she felt nothing. The next man she didn’t recognize, and the last one had had his face nearly obliterated by a bullet. Sidney’s stomach flipped and she swallowed back a mouthful of acid. “Let me see the rest of him,” she squeaked out.
St. John pulled the tarp back until the body was completely exposed. The man was long and lean and…
She turned to Hank, dread gnawing on her stomach like a fat, juicy steak bone. “El Verdugo’s not here.”
* * * *
One of the tactical team members replaced the tarp over the three dead men; a breeze picked up and the edges fluttered against the ground.
“What do you mean he’s not here?”
Sidney slapped a hand to her chest, startled at the sound of the sheriff’s voice right behind her. “El Verdugo. He’s gone.”
“You’re sure?”
She shot him a look that had him raising his hands and taking a half step back. He palmed the mic from his personal radio and notified his men.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he said as he strode off toward El Jefe’s tent, where other men gathered in the makeshift headquarters.
Then Sidney heard the whine of a powerful engine and looked up to see the rotors on one of the helicopters start to turn, the paramedics hopping in after loading Bryan through the sliding door.
Without a backward glance at Hank, Sidney sprinted for the helicopter. Halfway there, she glanced over and saw Pepita standing there with Eli, and without a thought called out, “Pepita! Pepita!” and made a “come here” motion with her arm.
Sidney ducked under the spinning rotors as the men finished strapping the gurney down. “I’m—” Pepita bumped into her from behind and Sidney’s arm automatically wrapped around her.
She shouted above the whine of the engine. “We’re going with you.”
Before the paramedic could protest, she lifted Pepita into the hold and jumped in behind her. The paramedic spoke into the microphone on his helmet, listened for the response, then nodded his chin toward two jump seats that looked like the ones the airline flight attendants used.
She buckled Pepita into one and herself into the other. The paramedic plucked ear protection from over her shoulder and handed it to her, then found a pair for Pepita and slipped it over her ears before returning to his patient.
As they lifted off and banked to the left, Pepita placed her hand on the window and stared out as the landscape fell far, far away beneath her. When she turned back to Sidney, she had a gigantic smile on her face, and while Sidney couldn’t hear the giggle, by the way Pepita scrunched up her nose, she knew it was there.
Sidney gave Pepita a thumbs-up and returned the girl’s smile with a forced one of her own as worry wrapped around her heart and gave it one hell of a squeeze. She had no idea what she was going to do with Pepita. She only knew she couldn’t leave her behind.