Templado was in chaos and the Gulf in full retreat. Cortez had brought in enough troops to beat the Los Osos gang; they had annihilated them, but he’d taken such a bad hit that he had to pull out.
Arturo would be ecstatic, and I could go home to my girl. I was humming as I entered the underground car park where I’d stashed my ride.
I spotted Kyle standing by the Cayenne from a mile away. Heard him, too. “For fuck’s sake, you useless bastard!” he screamed into his phone. “Check the border!” The Zeta security chief was pissed off. The moment he saw me, he was calling to me. “Rip, thank God!”
The straight line of his mouth and narrowed eyes silenced the crack I was about to make. The enforcer had bad news, and my gut told me it concerned my girl. “Morgan? Someone got to her?” I felt sick just asking.
“She pulled a fast one and slipped away,” Kyle snarled.
“Slipped away? What do you mean?”
Kyle was punching buttons on his phone. “Oh fuck.” Bleakly, he showed me the screen. “This was on her Facebook feed.”
Mitch Cortez, brandishing a knife, poison in every word.
“Ohmigod, he has her friends.” I knew what my girl would do. “Oh Jesus! She’ll go straight to him.”
“She crossed the border,” Kyle was checking his phone again. “We’ve tracked her on the highway, going north.”
Where would Cortez be? At Gulf central? In an abandoned warehouse? Barnyard, perhaps?... It was no good. I couldn’t channel him. All I could think of was my Morgan at his mercy. “Oh Christ, where would he go?”
“Rip, calm down.” The massive hand was on my wrist. “Take a breath.”
I was so scared that I wanted to punch him. “He’ll kill her.”
“No, he fucking well won’t.” The silver eyes were hard. “Our intel says he fell back to Dawson Heights.”
The rat had gone back to his sewer. “I know where he lives.”
“Wait.” The hand was tight on my arm. “You can’t just walk in, Rip. Dawson Heights is crawling with Don Valentine’s men.”
“So?” I’d kill anyone who crossed me.
“Joder, think! It won’t help Morgan to get yourself killed. We need to assemble a team.”
“It will take too long.” Cortez had almost beaten her to death. This time he’d make sure. And a bullet would take just a second. “I have to go now.”
“We’re assembling now,” Kyle was tapping away on his phone. “Shit!”
“What?”
“Alyosha Nikolayev’s private plane just entered our airspace.”
Great. The Bratva were here. “The more the merrier!” I opened the Cayenne door, determined to go to my girl.
He was still tapping away at his phone, texts flying. “Don’t be a damn fool. You can’t go. It’s not safe.”
“Watch me.” As he reached to stop me, I was punching him, my fear powering my fist. I hit him right on the button, and he was out on his feet as he folded. I picked the Magnum out of his belt. “Sorry, Kyle.”
As I took off, I knew he’d be spitting mad when he came to again. Possibly angry enough to step aside as the Bratva homed in on me. I didn’t care. All that mattered was Morgan.
Breaking the sound barrier on my way to Dawson Heights, I was praying I’d be in time. “Please, God, let me save her. Take me, not her.”
I got there in no time flat and made my way straight to Cedar Boulevard. I saw the SuperLow parked in the driveway. She’d been working on it the day I’d left. The sight of it sent a shaft of pain lancing through me. I was shaking as I walked up to the house, the giant Magnum in my hand.
“I’m here.” Morgan’s voice drifted out of the open front door. “Emma, Lucy, are you okay?”
She’d only just walked in. He hadn’t hurt her. I breathed again.
Nobody was even watching the front door. I could see her, muddied up to her eyes but unhurt. “Let the girls, go, Mitch.”
Cortez was standing behind a dark-haired girl, Emma, holding a knife to her neck and pointing a gun at my girl. “Drop your gun to the floor, chica.”
“I don’t have one.” She was stripping off thick leather gloves and dropping her leather jacket on a chair. She was perfectly calm. “You can stop worrying, Mitch.”
Her scorn for him rang in every word. She was steel through and through, brave as a lion. It terrified me. Cortez was going to kill her. I didn’t have a clear bead on him; my girl was standing between us. Quietly, I went closer, hoping to get a clear shot.
I might have strolled up with a marching band in tow because Cortez only had eyes for her. “You nasty little bitch,” he snarled. “You’re going out slow.”
Morgan shrugged. “Like I haven’t heard that before.”
“Please,” Emma was white and shaking. “Don’t make this worse.”
The other one, Lucy, was weeping steadily. “Why is he doing this?”
“It’s going to be okay,” Morgan assured them. “You’ll be walking out of here soon.”
“You think?” Cortez was shaking with rage. “But I have other plans.”
“Do you?” Morgan sounded bored. “But they so seldom work out.”
“Pinche puta!” The gun in his hand was shaking as he raged. “It’s all your fault.”
“You lost Templado, I heard,” Morgan taunted him. “How careless of you.”
“I will shoot you where you stand.”
“Come and get me,” Morgan snapped back, adding, “Coward.”
He was going to shoot her, and she was still blocking my line of sight. I went in and stood between the gun and my girl, “Actually, you lost Templado because of me.”
“You took out Meme Pastor and John Burton?” Cortez asked.
“I did, indeed.”
“And Drew Martinez, Bill Smith, and Christian Navarro?”
“You’ve been following my work. How flattering!”
“Oh crap,” Morgan sighed. “Rip, you’re not supposed to be here.”
“Actually, he’s the one I’ve been waiting for,” Cortez chortled. Then he called over his shoulder, “He’s here.”
“Excellent. Just like you planned.” He came out of the bedroom, a gun in his hand. I recognised the greasy little bastard instantly. Neto, the chemist with a lust for rape. This wasn’t going well. “Mitch, you’re a genius.”
Cortez was grinning. “Told you! All it took was the right bait.”
It was a trap within a trap.
“Put down the gun,” Cortez snapped.
With both of them covering Morgan, I had no choice. Kyle’s Magnum dropped to the floor.
“You killed Meme,” Nemo snarled. “I liked him.”
I saw the punch coming and blocked it easily. He wasn’t so handy. My fist landed square on his nose.
“Hey, English!” Cortez was standing next to Morgan, his gun at her head. Seeing me freeze, he grinned. “You move, and the girl gets it.”
“What a very unoriginal line!”
Offered no resistance, his friend the chemist went to town. The gun came smashing down the side of my face. There was a moment’s numbness, then fire. A second later, the gun was raking down the other cheek. I stood there and took it.
“You fucking coward!” Morgan yelled.
Through a haze of blood I saw she was crying. “Don’t worry, love. He hits like a girl.”
He bashed me on the nose. “Fucking English capullo!”
“You swear like a girl too. Trying to impress your boyfriend?”
Neto didn’t like that. “You son of a bitch!” Then he hit me again. Standing about and letting him was very dull. He was punching me in the gut when a car drew up.
“What the fuck?” Don Valentine, the bling pig himself. “It worked?”
With the Gulf boss and his three bodyguards, the room was becoming crowded. Cortez took his eye off Morgan for a moment and instead of running for it, she made straight for me.
“Oh God, Rip!”
I leaned against the soft curves, taking in the gold hair and soft eyes. Despite my taunts, I was hurting. My ribs were aching, and my face was dripping in gore. “The course of true love never did run smooth.”
“Jesus, Shakespeare at a time like this?” She was smiling through her tears. “You idiot. What the hell did you come here for? I had it under control.” She glanced towards the tied-up girls, both of them weeping. “Wait,” she murmured.
A surge of hope went through me. My girl had a plan.
“What are you whispering about?” Neto hissed.
Morgan didn’t bother to answer. She was holding me up, her entire attention on her ex and the Gulf boss.
“It worked out just like I said,” Mitch said to Don Valentine. “They totally fell for it.” He turned to me, sneering, “You thought you were so clever, setting us Gulf against the Sinaloa, right? You didn’t fool me. I knew there was something wasn’t right.”
“Too many bodies,” Don Valentine nodded, “and too many clever kills.”
“I’m told my kills are as unique as a fingerprint,” I informed them.
“I went through all the traffic cams in Modesto after you killed Drew Martinez,” Mitch snarled. “I spotted you going into the alley behind his warehouse.”
“Dressed like a ho,” Neto sneered.
“Jealous, darling?”
Morgan giggled. “Rip, you’re spoiling Mitch’s story. Let him have his moment.”
Cortez was spitting with anger. So much so that he didn’t even notice Morgan quietly inching the two of us backwards towards the girls.
“You were saying,” she prompted.
Like a stage villain, Cortez couldn’t help but gloat. “It took me weeks but I traced you all the way back across the border. Imagine my surprise at seeing my ex alive and well.”
“I saw the glint of field glasses,” Morgan said calmly. “You weren’t exactly covert.”
Cortez was stung by her criticism. “I took your friends, knowing it would bring him,” he snapped.
Mitch had trapped me, just as I’d trapped so many. It was all my fault. I’d killed Morgan.
“I got an interesting call from Alyosha Nikolayev,” Don Valentine told me. “The Bratva are landing in an hour.”
Mitch grinned. “But they don’t want Morgan. So before we parcel you up and hand you over to our Russian friends, you can watch us take care of her.”
“Slowly,” Neto growled.
“With you out of the picture, we’ll patch up our relationship with the Sinaloa,” Don Valentine growled. “And with their help, we’ll take back Templado.”
“Right,” Mitch sneered. “It will be business as usual.”
We were now right in front of the girls, with the Gulf men fanned out before us, standing in between us and the front door that still stood wide open.
“You’re a goddamn fool, Mitch,” Morgan said calmly. “You may be a ruthless bastard, but I’ve forgotten more about the cartel than you’ll ever know.”
Morgan wasn’t afraid. She knew something we didn’t. We were all riveted. She held centre stage.
“I walked into this with my eyes open,” Morgan said. “I knew my coming here wouldn’t save Emma or Lucy. And yet here I am. You should all be asking why.”
“Why?” Don Valentine frowned.
“She’s stalling for time,” Mitch snapped.
“Let’s beat her. Slowly.” Neto giggled.
Morgan dug in her pocket and held out her phone. “Remember the Los Osos warehouse?”
As my girl pressed the dial button, we were throwing ourselves backwards. Taking Emma and Lucy with us, we tumbled over the sofa, using it as cover as the SuperLow exploded.
There was a roar and then a hail of rubble and broken glass. But no flame and no raging fire. On the far side of the sofa, I caught a glimpse of blonde hair and a grin. “Rip, this is where we take over.”
Don Valentine’s bodyguards were face down on the ground, unconscious and bleeding. Neto was out as well, with a great big gash on the back of his head and neck oozing gore. The Gulf boss was on his hands and knees, battered and bruised, but his men had shielded him from the worst of it.
Cortez, his face ripped by glass shards, was on his feet. “Kill you.” Like a fairytale horror, he was aiming his gun at my girl.
I just went for him. I was knocking up his hand as it went off. The deafening blast rocked both of us, but the bullet went wide. “Missed!” I laughed. “And now I kill you.”
He tried to punch me, but it was no good. I was fighting for Morgan, and I was going to end him.
“Want to play?” He was helpless in the face of my fury. I forced his hand back and felt his wrist snap. His squeal of pain and fear fuelled me. I was laughing as I punched him down.
He passed out on me two seconds later. “Bugger! Hey, wake up, you big girl’s blouse.”
“Rip,” Morgan was standing over a groaning Don Valentine, a broken chair leg in her hand. From the rapidly swelling knot on his head, she’d encouraged him to stay down. “You’re scaring Emma and Lucy.”
Her friends were clutching at each other, pale with terror.
“Tell them not to look.”
As Morgan opened her mouth to argue, there was a rush of sound. The trees outside swayed and the door that was hanging off its hinges, fell off. As the whoop-whoop-whoop strafed the air, I saw a chopper landing in front of the house.
The Zetas poured out, swarming round the front and back and back of the house, in military style. The giant figure in black leading them was instantly recognizable.
“The cavalry is here,” Morgan said. “Good. Rip, don’t kill Mitch.”
Kyle was standing in the doorway. “You said drop in,” he grinned.
Chumillo was looking in through the shattered window, a machine gun in his hands. “We came to rescue you,” he laughed. “Looks like we’re not needed.”
“We do need you,” Morgan said. “Chumillo, is the Cayenne in one piece?”
He ducked out and back in seconds. “Si, guapa.”
Morgan put her arms around Emma and Lucy. “Take the SUV,” she told them. “Go home and don’t worry, I will fix this.”
As she led them out, Kyle was giving me stink-eye. “You hit me when I wasn’t looking.”
“Surely you didn’t expect me to play fair?”
He grinned at me. “I was going to hammer the message home, but it looks like someone already had a go. You look like shit.”
“Charming!”
Cortez was moaning, coming round again. I kicked him lightly.
“Rip,” Morgan was back. “Stop messing about.”
“You’re dead,” Don Valentine was struggling to his feet. Apart from the rapidly spreading bruise on his face, he was bleeding from a dozen small cuts. “You can kill me,” he sneered at Kyle. “But my people will avenge me.”
“Bring it on,” Kyle and I chorused.
“Nobody is killing anybody,” Morgan snapped. “I’m ending this right now.”
“We should shoot the capullos,” Chumillo protested.
“No, we don’t want another war,” Morgan pointed out. “We all lose in an all-out war.”
“Not if you win,” Kyle rumbled. “But this is your party,” he went on politely. “You were saying?”
Morgan was eyeing the Gulf boss. “You fucked up royally,” she informed him. “Your own men hate you for promoting this Hollywood wannabe over them, your friends the Sinaloa are pissed, and on top of it, you lost the territory I handed to you.”
Don Valentine was fuming but he kept silent.
“My father was loyal to you, and for his sake I will once more save your ass,” Morgan drawled.
At that, the cartel boss was staring at her. “On what terms?”
“You drop the contract you put out on me,” Morgan said.
He nodded. “It’s done.”
“You stay away from my friends. No taking revenge on the girls, Roberto, Tim or Jake.”
“I agree.”
“You can keep Dawson Heights, but I’m taking Templado.”
“You can’t do that!” Mitch was struggling to his knees and whining.
“I gave it to you, and now I’m taking it away.” Morgan was pure ice.
“Shut up, Cortez,” Don Valentine wasn’t even looking at his best sidekick. His total attention was on Morgan. “What else?”
“You also keep Neto.” Sarcasm dripped from every word. “You value money over loyalty, so keeping your revenue stream should make you happy.”
On the floor, the chemist was stirring. It was a shame; I’d been hoping the blast had killed him. Sadly, he had the survival skills of a cockroach.
“But Neto raped your sister,” Chumillo exclaimed. “It’s your right to kill him.”
“I’m giving up my claim,” Morgan said quietly. “I’ll also make sure that Emma and Lucy won’t lay charges against Don Valentine for kidnapping.”
The Gulf boss gasped. Even the cartel have trouble beating a Federal rap. “Done,” he said quickly. Then grudgingly, “It’s a pity we fell out, chica. You’re just like your father.”
“I never said a word against you,” Morgan shrugged. “Mitch was angry at me for turning him down. He decided screwing me was more important than looking after business.” She looked over at her ex. “I give up my right to kill him too.”
“Wait a minute,” Don Valentine glared at Mitch. “He said you were spreading it everywhere that I had let you down and screwed you out of your compensation too. He swore it to me! You’re saying he lied?”
“Mitch is more slippery than a pocket full of pudding,” Morgan sighed. “He’s after one thing: power.”
Don Valentine was fuming. “I backed you up,” he hissed at his lieutenant. “I guess the others were right. You can’t trust new blood.”
Mitch went white. In the cartel, lying to the boss is a no-no.
“But Morgan—” I couldn’t help myself.
“No, Rip.” Her eyes were steel. “It stops here.”
“Okay, okay. If you insist.”
“Deal?” Morgan asked the Gulf boss.
“Deal,” Don Valentine agreed.
At that, I was worried. The man was bound to go back on his word the moment we were gone, especially when he discovered that Templado was the key to casino goodness.
But Morgan wasn’t done. “You know what Rip is capable of, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Don Valentine sounded cool, but his eyes were flickering nervously towards me.
“It took Navarro all night to die,” Morgan reminded him. “I hear that Pastor, Burton, Martinez, Smith, and the others went screaming too.”
Don Valentine was silent, but we all saw he was afraid. When I stared at him, he actually dropped his eyes.
“One hint of trouble, and I tell Rip he can party,” Morgan warned him. “He’ll take down your men, your family, and when you’re all alone in the dark of the night, he’ll come for you.”
“You have a deal,” Don Valentine said shakily.
It was over. Morgan was free, and we were walking away.
Kyle was looking at his phone. “Cops are on their way.”
“Let’s go,” Morgan said. “We don’t want the Bratva ambushing us. And Rip needs to see the cockroach.”
“I’m okay.”
“I can see that,” Morgan smiled. “You’re looking absolutely spiffing.”
Unfortunately it made me laugh, and it hurt like hell.
“I take it back,” Morgan was shaking her head. “You look like you’ve been chewed, spat out, and stomped on.” She put an arm around me, propping me up carefully. “Lean on me, sweetheart.”
The bling pig was making moves too. “I’m out of here.” Then, with a nasty look at Mitch. “I’ll take Neto, he’s an asset. You can deal with this.”
With no cartel to wave a magic wand and three unconscious men on the ground, Mitch was going to have a hell of a time explaining himself.
As we stepped out through the smashed door and field of rubble, Morgan smiled at me, “I think it’s going splendidly, don’t you?”
We took the chopper home.