“Fuck!” the man gasped, half-hunched, grasping his balls. “Fuck!”

Nikki tried to scramble backward, heart pounding, terror bubbling in her throat, threatening a scream, but she clamped her lips shut, jaws tight, and lashed out again. She had to escape! But how? Everything had gone from bad to worse and now . . . the man glared at her, his left hand snatching at her ankle, his vice-like grip easily wrapping around it like an iron cuff. She lost her balance and her head banged against the asphalt, and the resulting pain shuddered through her skull. She lay stunned for a moment, gasping against that pain, stars floating before her vision as she winced as rage curled her lips and she snarled.“Sons of bitches! Leave me alone!”

Despite the grip on her ankle, she windmilled her legs, aiming for his face, his groin, the other hand reaching for her, trying to grasp her arm. He caught a handful of her long hair, halfway out of its ponytail now, and pulled her closer toward him.

“Stop it!” he hissed. “Stop! I don’t want to hurt—”

Heart thundering in her chest, panic welling up inside her, harsh, unintelligible sounds escaping from her throat, Nikki desperately tried to scramble away from yet another captor, not a Joker but just as bad. No! This couldn’t be happening! How had everything gone so wrong?

Warm tears flooded her eyes, blurring her vision as she cursed, blinking them back. She had to stay strong! Stacey . . . she had to find Stacey. She couldn’t fail. Her plan, thanks to these bastards, had been crushed.

She yanked hard on her captured foot, pulling the tall, lanky man forward with another guttural curse. Adrenaline gave her the strength to briefly pull her foot from his grasp, and she cocked her knee again, ready to lash out. Smart enough to stay out of range now, they locked eyes, each daring the other to move.

“Dammit, I’m not going to hurt you—”

“Liar!” she snapped, trying to scramble backward but with bound hands and lying the way she did, she couldn’t sit up. Her muscles refused to do her bidding. She wanted to scream, to beg for relief, but she refused. She wouldn’t give the bastard the pleasure of seeing her weakness. She would fight to the end if she had to, just like she knew Stacey would . . . Stacey. The air left her lungs as she thought of her twin’s terror, likely much like the terror she felt herself.

The man was on his knees now, the hand that had cupped his balls extended, palm out, followed by the other as he sought to calm her.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeated. His eyes stated otherwise. Angry eyes. Wary eyes, narrowed with suspicion. “Who are you? Why did they take you?”

He wasn’t Mexican at least, but that didn’t make her feel better. He didn’t look like an accountant, not with his military-style buzz cut, his sharp features, a small silver ring dangling from his left earlobe. Dark green eyes glared at her, his slash of a mouth turned down in an angry frown. His hands were huge, marred by short scars. A man who either worked with his hands or had been in more than one knife fight. Who was she? Who was he? Who were those guys who had fired on the Jokers? They had likely saved her life, but they might have ruined her plans as well. She wasn’t sure whether she felt pissed or grateful.

Having grown up in Albuquerque, Nikki was no stranger to Mexican gangs, especially the Jokers, but over the past few years, they’d grown brazen. They no longer kept to themselves but did their best to intimidate residents of the city as well as business owners. Most of the time, it was nothing overt, but they clustered in twos or threes, sometimes more, making their presence known. That was intimidating enough. The police knew about them, the sheriff’s office knew about them, but there wasn’t much they could do. Without actual proof that drug transports had crossed the border or sales had occurred, protection money had been paid, or assaults were reported, the Jokers were pretty much getting away with  a . . . lot of stuff. Unfortunately, Nikki couldn’t prove any of it, but she had her suspicions.

She might only be a part-time writer for one of Albuquerque’s primary newspapers, and it didn’t matter to her that she worked the culture section. She worked online as a freelance journalist, or at least that’s how she described herself to others. Nobody else in her family really understood her drive, and she couldn’t really blame them. So far, most of her assignments from the newspaper, as well as her history of freelancing, was primarily in blog writing, website content development, and lifestyle articles. Still, that was just chump change as far as she was concerned in regard to what she really wanted out of her career. She wanted to do something meaningful, something serious, but getting her foot through the door was tough these days.

She’d gone over it in her head a thousand times. On her own, she had started writing an article about the influx of illegal drugs and other activities into New Mexico and the Southwest, primarily from Mexico and Central America. She had begun asking questions, doing research, and thanks to a few very rudimentary hacking skills, she’d managed to find a bit of information about the Joker motorcycle gang. Then everything had gone to hell in a handbasket. Literally.

The moment she learned that her sister was missing, her heart had dropped to the pit of her stomach as nausea roiled. Whose toes had she stepped on? What had she done to garner the wrong person’s attention? People did research on the cartels all the time. The Sinaloa cartel, known by many as among the most powerful and largest drug trafficking rings in the entire western hemisphere, had grown by leaps and bounds since the late 1970s. They’d started off moving cocaine, then had joined with the Honduran cartel, and then one by one, smaller Mexican cartels until their roots had been firmly established throughout Central America, Mexico, and now, even into the United States.

The struggle for leadership among the many different branches of the cartel, and those scattered throughout Mexico and along the border, was violent, bloody, and ongoing. There were organizations within organizations and internal battles for control had been going on for the past couple of decades. Nikki had experienced a minor freakout when she’d read that the reach of the Sinaloa cartel extended from Brazil to New York City and every major city in between. To date, the cartel operated in nearly twenty Mexican states and fifty countries around the world.

Did they have her sister?

She should have dropped her snooping after she’d learned that much. But she hadn’t. It was her chance to turn in a serious article to the editors of the newspaper. It was an important issue, especially with the influence of the Jokers. Most of them were from Mexico, many of them with MS-13 tattoos emblazoned on their necks, and the majority of them belonging to one cartel or another.

A week later, her twin sister, Stacey, who worked as a bookkeeper for an auto repair shop in downtown Albuquerque, had failed to show up for work one morning. That wasn’t Stacey. She never called in sick, would never be a no-call, no-show. A friend, wondering why Stacey hadn’t returned her call, had gone to the apartment only to find Stacey gone, though her vehicle was still in her parking spot. She had called Nikki. Nikki had a key to Stacey’s apartment, and upon entering, she had fought back panic when she saw her sister’s bed unmade, her purse, keys, and cell phone lying on the kitchen counter.

The cops had arrived at her sister’s apartment soon after she called them to file a missing person report, but all they told her was to wait seventy-two hours. There was no evidence of a crime and Stacey was an adult and could up and disappear anytime she wanted to. Nikki had tried to argue. Stacey didn’t have her purse, her phone, and she’d left her car there! What did they think had happened? That she’d grown tired of living in Albuquerque and just walked away? Walked?

So, Nikki had come up with an idea. Maybe a foolish one. Actually, there was no maybe about it, but she didn’t know what else to do. It would be a tough sell, convincing the cops that members of MS-13 or a Mexican cartel had kidnapped her sister. Why would they? Because she’d been writing an article about cartels and gangs? There was nothing new about journalists doing that, which made Nikki feel even more foolish than she already did. She hadn’t broken new ground, hadn’t learned anything that she couldn’t find through research. Then again, if she hadn’t touched a nerve, why had her sister suddenly gone missing? No matter what the police said, she knew without a doubt that Stacey had been kidnapped. There was no other explanation to her disappearance. Stacey didn’t have any boyfriends, no angry ex in her past. She worked hard in mind her own business.

Back in her own apartment, Nikki had sat down in front of her computer. Hands shaking slightly, she’d logged on and located the file folder with research about her article, scanning the list of names of people she’d spoken to. What was the connection? Was it her fault her sister was missing?

It was less than an hour later when she realized she’d been wrong. About everything.

Stacey’s boss, Roger Mandy, had called and asked her to come down to the auto repair shop. Stacey had only been gone a couple of days, but without warning, without a seeming ounce of empathy, he’d asked her to collect Stacey’s things and take them home. Nikki had argued with him, but Roger insisted that he couldn’t put it off any longer. He’d hired a new bookkeeper and Stacey’s stuff had to go. Angry, feeling a sense of betrayal for her sister’s sake, Nikki had made her way to the workshop and into the tiny cubicle that served as Stacey’s office. With windows on two sides, she was able to watch some of the goings-on in the shop while she removed personal items from Stacey’s desk and put them in an oil-stained cardboard box that Roger had left outside the tiny office door. It was then that her whole theory on Stacey’s disappearance had been blown apart.

She’d paused as she tucked a framed photograph of her and her sister at the Grand Canyon into the box, frowning. None of the cars were up on ramps or those hydraulic things that lifted the cars toward the roof so that the mechanics could get underneath. It had looked like several of the cars had been literally dismantled: car doors, seats, fenders, stacked neatly against the sides of the walls. The two men in dark blue and grease-stained overalls worked quickly with their air guns, removing tires . . . the truth had slammed into her so hard she nearly tripped over into the desk.

Nikki had turned to the doorway. Roger leaned against the doorjamb, watching her, and had taken everything she had to keep her expression blank, to prevent him from seeing that she finally understood. Had it been this obvious all along? Or had Roger just started in this side business? The place was a chop shop.

Just as she had lifted the box into her arms and turned to leave the office, a movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She turned toward a figure who had just entered the shop, followed by yet another. The man looked rough around the edges, one with a shaved head and black goatee, the other with close-cropped black hair, clean-shaven, his face pocked with chickenpox scars. Both of them wore jeans, dark T-shirts and black leather jackets. One of them turned, and she’d seen the emblem of a snarling court jester wearing one of those tri-cornered hats with bells dangling from the tip emblazoned on the back. Jokers was embroidered in blood-red lettering over it.

Oh God. Nikki had fought back the bile that rose in her throat and tightened her grip on the box to hide her trembling hands. She’d offered a wan smile toward Roger, pretending that she knew nothing, saw nothing, figured out nothing, but she couldn’t disguise the tremble in her voice. “You’ll let me know if you hear anything about Stacey, won’t you?”

Roger had nodded and then gestured with an arm toward the short hallway with the exit sign over it. Nikki prayed he saw nothing more than a worried sister. She’d barely managed to get outside, pop the trunk, and slide the box of Stacey’s belongings into the trunk before hot tears burned her eyes.

She hadn’t needed to fake her distress. If anybody was watching from inside the shop, she’d hoped they’d ignore it as the overflow of emotions from Stacey’s disappearance. She’d slammed the trunk, climbed into her car, and tried several times to slide the key into the ignition, her hands shaking so badly she feared she’d have a panic attack. She’d managed to hold it back, forced herself to slow down, and finally succeeded in starting the car. Calmly, slowly, she’d backed out, maneuvered her car around the tiny parking lot, then pulled out of the driveway and onto the street. She’d driven several blocks, holding back all her feelings before she came to a small park, where she slid the car to the curb, put it in park, and then fallen apart.

She should have gone to the cops, told them of her suspicions, but chop shops were a dime a dozen in the Southwest. She had no guarantee that the Jokers ran that particular shop, although it was likely. She had no proof that the Jokers had kidnapped her sister, or worse, if Stacey had learned the truth and threatened to snitch to the cops. She had no proof that Roger had been either bribed, coerced, or threatened to turn his own repair shop into a chop shop.

No, the police would never have helped her. She had to do whatever she could to find her sister on her own. Now, when she had come so close to maybe finding out where her sister was, she’d hit yet another obstacle. Literally. If it wasn’t so heart-wrenching, she might have laughed at the irony.

She’d allowed herself to be taken by the Jokers, a desperate move, no doubt about it, but she had to do something. It hadn’t taken her long to realize she’d gotten in over her head. Way over. And now? Now she was in the hands of another motorcycle gang. The Steel Kings. Who the hell were they and who did they work for?