MOTHER OF GOD.
Holy Madre de Dios.
No.
Dios mio, no.
Two R’s. Back to back. One backwards, one forwards. Branded into her skin.
River Ranch.
The single most violent cult in the nation.
She’d escaped from River Ranch in the Everglades. No one escaped that cult alive. No one.
“Kendall,” I whispered, half in disbelief, half in fucking horror.
“Decima,” she corrected.
Fucking shocked, all I could do was stare.
She slowly turned around. “My real name is Decima.”
“Decima,” I whispered, hating how the name fit everything about her. Black hair, hazel eyes, high cheekbones, she wasn’t a Kendall. She was an exotic, deadly, unattainable Decima.
She nodded, just barely. “You can’t save me.”
No intonation in her voice, her statement was pure resignation. I asked the only question that seemed relevant. “Who else knows?”
“Candle.”
“No handler?”
She shook her head. “No. No witness protection. I refused.”
It was probably the only thing that’d kept her alive. Anyone knowing where or who she was would’ve been a target. Adrenaline pumping, my pulse Mach one, I stared at her in complete fucking shock. This woman had just signed my death warrant.
My nostrils flared with an inhale. “Chica—”
“Walk away, André.”
I opened my mouth to say something I’d regret, but she beat me to it.
“You can’t stop this,” she warned. “Go back to work. Pretend you never met me. Deny everything.” She picked up her dress. “I’ll be gone before you get home.”
Rip had seen her branding, and he knew as well as I did what that meant. She wouldn’t just bring a two-million-dollar finder’s fee. She cement the LCs alliance with River Ranch forever. A heavily armed, violent cult and a ruthless MC partnership. Jesus Christ.
I ran a hand over my face. “I don’t even know what to call you.”
“If you call me Decima, you’ll be dead before you utter the last syllable.”
Jesus. “Rumor has it—”
“It’s all true.”
I grasped her left hand and held her arm out. The scar that looked like a line of Morse code ran from her shoulder to her wrist. “They say—”
“It’s all true,” she repeated.
My stomach bottomed out. “Where else?” Where else had they tortured her?
She pulled her hand away. “Stop.”
I couldn’t stop. I’d never stop. Especially now that I knew who the hell she was. She’d entrusted me with this. She may not have realized it yet, but that fucking meant something. Trust was earned. I didn’t know how Candle was involved, but that fucker knew, and he’d exposed her today. “Scott?” I asked. “Did he get you out?” I both wanted it to be true so I wouldn’t have to kill him, and not be true so I could justify open range on his ass.
She shook her head. “He was vanquished when he was fifteen.”
What the fuck? “Vanquished?”
“It’s akin to being excommunicated. It’s their version of getting kicked out.”
“Why?”
She looked up at me with guilt and remorse. “Because of me.”
My chest constricted, and I stared at her because I didn’t know what the fuck to say.
“He gave me a daisy,” she continued, her voice breaking. “A wild daisy.”
A fucking flower? “That wasn’t allowed?”
She shook her head vehemently. “They beat and tortured him for a week. You could hear his screams throughout the compound. Then when they thought he wouldn’t survive another sun setting, they cast him out.”
Jesu-fucking-Cristo. “How did he survive?”
“They dumped him in the swamplands. He woke up a few days later covered in dried, caked-on mud. He says the mud stopped the bleeding.”
I ran both my hands over my head. “But he survived. He’s out. He’s alive.” That had to mean there was a possibility she could get out too.
She was shaking her head before I’d finished my last sentence. “You don’t understand. They think he died. He lived off the land for two years and built his strength back up, then he hitchhiked to Miami to the nearest Army recruitment office. He’d heard about the Rangers. One of the elders was a former ranger. He’d told us stories. Candle thought he could become one and exact revenge. He didn’t understand how the world worked. None of us did. All we knew was the compound.”
“How did he enlist?” The military wouldn’t take an undocumented person, and I was sure as hell that no one born on River Ranch was in the system.
She looked like she was deciding how much to tell me. Then she just started talking. “He didn’t at first. He had no birth certificate, no social security number, he didn’t even know the real name of his birth mother, let alone which elder on River Ranch was his father. He told the recruiter who he was and how he wanted to become a ranger. The recruiter called his CO and the CO called the Feds. An hour later, Candle said two assholes in suits walked in and started questioning him. He was smart enough to negotiate a deal. He’d tell them what they wanted to know if they let him enlist. Six weeks later, he was at boot camp. Candle said, for the next few years, the Feds would occasionally get a hold of him and ask more questions. He said he knew they were planning a raid. The ATF wanted to confiscate River Stephens’s weapons and disband his organization enough so it wouldn’t be a threat to national security, or some shit like that.” She drew in breath. “So, when River Ranch reached three hundred members, that’s what the ATF did.”
“The raid was big news three years ago.” ATF had seized the weapons and two-thirds of the group scattered. River was never captured, except that wasn’t the worst of it. Most of the fleeing members had been shot and killed, but not by the ATF. Several members went to jail on murder charges when the bullets were traced to their guns. A month after the raid, a news network released grainy footage of River. He’d looked crazy as fuck as he spewed his hate. “There was footage of Stephens on the news, saying he would make his disloyal brothers and sisters answer to God. He didn’t come out and say it in the footage, but rumor spread that he’d issued e Hhbounties on any former members not in jail.”
Kendall nodded. “He did, ten thousand each.”
“He has that kind of money?”
She exhaled. “And more. The land River Ranch sits on is from a member. An elder whose family was in the citrus industry. As the sole heir to his family’s trust, he gave all his money and land to River.”
Dios mio. “Why is your bounty two million?” I was almost afraid to ask.
Her gaze dropped to the floor. “When the raid happened, all of the women and children were herded into the supply building, and the armed men had instructions. Shoot anyone who ran. We all knew what could happen. But River, he didn’t go out with the men. He came to the supply building. When he saw me helping the younger children get inside, he grabbed me. He dragged me to the back near a trapdoor in the floor that led to the crawl space under the building, then he ordered me to strip.”
Anger spread through my veins and my hands fisted. “Why?”
She looked up at me. “The fucking coward wanted my dress.”
It took me a fraction of a second to put it together. Then pure, unadulterated rage hit me square in the chest. “He wanted ATF to think he was a woman.”
She gave me a clipped nod. “He was going to hide under the building then escape in the woods that surrounded the property.”
Going to? “What happened?”
The defiance I’d come to know about her showed back up. “I stomped on his foot then kneed him in the balls. He fell and I tried to run, but he grabbed me from behind.” She swallowed and pushed the rest of the sentence out through a clenched jaw. “He slammed me to the ground and punched me in the back.”
Jesucristo. That’s why she fucking hated being grabbed from behind. “Chica.”
She shook her head once, as if to stop me from saying more. “He got the dress.” She glanced at her arm. “Then he dragged me, kicking and screaming, under the building with him. When he couldn’t shut me up, he pulled his knife out and carved traitor into my arm in Morse code. He threatened to slit my throat and that of every other kid in the supply room, if I made another sound.”
I reached for her, but she stepped back.
“He escaped because of me.” Unfiltered rage bled into her tone. “That’s why the ATF never caught him. Once the building was cleared of the women and children, and the shooting had died down, he pushed me out from our hiding spot.” She ground her teeth. “Bloody and naked.”
I didn’t have to ask how much of a distraction she’d caused. It was fucking obvious. Stephens had gotten away, and once the investigation was done, the armed members who’d been caught alive confessed to all the shootings and weapons stockpiling. The ATF didn’t have enough to arrest Stephens, and they’d accomplished their objective. Since no one alive would say they were held against their will, Stephens wasn’t anything more than a person of interest. “How did you hook up with Candle?”
“He knew about the raid, and when he found out I was alive, he came for me. After the ATF questioned me, they offered relocation and a new name. I didn’t trust them. I didn’t trust anyone, so I refused. I went with Candle, but he’d insisted on me taking the new name. That’s how I became Kendall Reed.”
“And you’ve been living with him since?”
She shrugged. “Sort of. The first year he was still active duty. After he got out, he was home full-time, more or less.”
The sun rose higher in the sky, and I wanted to fucking hold her. I wanted to know every goddamn thing about her. How’d she survived being cut without making a sound? I knew marines who wouldn’t have survived that. What happened that first year after she got out? How the hell did she adapt and stay hidden until today? I wanted to know all of it, but we’d been here too long and I needed to get her the fuck out of here.
I risked cupping her cheek once, then I withdrew. “Put pants on. Long sleeves if you have it.”
I turned toward my bedroom to grab some clothes, but she caught my arm. “Don’t do this. You can’t fight them. Just leave me here.”
“No.” No fucking way.
“André—”
“You want to know what happened today?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “Fate. It dropped you in my lap, and I’m not gonna turn my back on you.” I didn’t have a fucking clue how to save her, but I could get her out of Miami. “Get dressed, chica. We’re rolling out.”