Their Cartel Princess: The Complete Series: A Dark Reverse Harem Box Set Page 50

  Ahead, a bird called out. Cora’s horse whinnied and shifted its hooves, taking her a step to the side. It felt like an elastic band snapping when she broke eye contact with Javier to look up.

  The sky was black with crows.

  A jangle broke the stifling silence that had descended between her and Javier. Cora started and looked back at him. He stared at her as he dug blindly in his saddle bag and pulled out a satellite phone.

  “Yes?” he snapped.

  Listened.

  His nostrils flared, and he moved his horse away from hers, starting back for the villa. “When? Yes, let them back in. What? What message?” Javier went quiet then. His hand tightened around the phone until his knuckles went white. “Impossible,” Javier muttered. “I don’t care what he said, it’s impossible.”

  Cora turned her gelding around, giving it a soothing stroke on its neck when it whinnied again. Was it picking up the tension in the air, or was it the murder of crows that had begun cawing above their heads that was freaking it out?

  She couldn’t blame it. Her skin crawled like worms were burrowing around under it.

  “Fuck!” Javier stabbed at a button on the phone and shoved it back in his saddle bag. His eyes flashed onto her, dark and suddenly desperate. “Did your father give you the archives?”

  “Who was that?”

  Javier waved away her questions with an angry swipe of her hand. “The archives! Do you have them?” Javier’s scanned her face, watched her mouth for a second, and then thumped a fist on his pommel. “Where are they?”

  “I…I don’t…” She barely managed to keep her hand from lifting to the Santa Muerte pendant around her neck. She’d put it back on this morning, and ignore Ana’s pointed grimace in its direction when she and Silvia had seen them off at the stables.

  Was that what her father had given her? Some archive of information? If so, why was Javier so upset that she had it on her?

  “Tell me!” Javier bellowed.

  “Tío…”

  He gave her a derisive sneer. But his eyes were still frantic. “He will destroy me, now that he knows of this place. I need those files!”

  That was what he was worried about? She forced a swallow, pitiful as it was. The urge to tell Javier, to show him the secret way her pendant opened, was intense. But another urge slowly crept over her. One that told her to wait. To see what would happen. To try and judge where Javier’s loyalties truly lay.

  But Javier lost his patience. His spur caught the light an instant before he thrust it into his horse’s soft belly. “Keep up!” he yelled.

  And then he was off, his horse tearing over the land in a streak of white. Cora stared after Javier for a moment before she could untangle her thoughts long enough to tap her gelding into a trot. Then a canter, gritting her teeth as her breasts bounced hard, and finally a gallop.

  The horse stretched out under her. It was all she could do to stay in the saddle, her knees gripping the horse as she gave slack on the reigns and prayed to Santa Muerte that this wouldn’t be her last day on earth.

  Please, help me, Santa Muerte. I’ll do anything. I don’t care if you send me an angel or a demon—I just want to see him one more time.

  And she had no idea who she was referring to in that moment.

  Her gelding caught up with Javier’s a few minutes later. The horses seemed to be competing with each other, stretching out their noses like they were both hankering for a photo finish at the tracks.

  Javier didn’t seem to notice. His cowboy hat had been swept from his head and bobbed in the wind behind him, its leather strap just above his Adam’s apple. His face was set in a grim snarl.

  She tried keeping her hat on her head with one hand, but then let it go. She hadn’t tightened the strap, so it whipped away and disappeared behind her own dust cloud. Her pendant bounced on her breastbone, and she hurriedly tore it off from around her neck and shoved in the pocket of her jeans before it could bounce loose and became just another dusty artifact.

  Her gelding seemed to know the land better than her; sidestepping chunks of rocks and the occasional mesquite while barely breaking its speed.

  “Ha!” Javier yelled, and his horse whickered when he shoved that spur into its belly again.

  His gelding inched forward, and soon Cora had to force her gelding to the side to avoid the dust Javier kicked in her face.

  Something spattered onto her hand. She glanced down, and caught sight of a mound of foam before the wind tore it off her skin.

  Her horse blew under her, lungs bursting every time it hauled breath through foam-speckled lips.

  “Tío!” Cora yelled, and then, “Javier!”

  But either he ignored her, or he couldn’t hear. He was almost out of sight behind his own dust cloud now.

  She could feel the rhythm of her horse changing. Its once smooth gallop became sluggish. Then erratic.

  Cora hurriedly drew back on the reigns, squeezing the gelding with shivering thighs.

  It ignored her.

  As a wild horse would do.

  “Whoa!” she screamed. “Whoa! Whoa!”

  But it broke into a gallop again, as if all her words had done was spur it on.

  “Mierde!” Fear had her in its grip now. The landscape was a stream of beige, and tears blurred her vision. She was numb from her ribs down, and her hands were sweating against the reigns. “Whoa!” she yelled, and again tried to use every cue she could think of to get the gelding to slow.

  Perhaps he hadn’t been taught any. What he had learned, however, was how to get his bit between his teeth.

  She’d lost all control of the beast between her legs.

  She yanked on the reigns, knowing instantly how suicidal it was. The horse, thank god, didn’t rear. Instead, it tossed its head hard enough to rip the reigns from her hand. She screamed, floundered, and almost tumbled backward over the horse. If one flailing hand hadn’t found the pommel and gripped it, she would have been found on the desert floor, bent like a broken toy.

  Her gelding—had Javier even named the beast?—darted to the side to avoid a large rock. And its hooves lost traction on a patch of stones.

  It didn’t happen in slow motion. It happened too fast, almost instantly. Something impossibly strong and invisible ripped Cora from the saddle. Pain speared through her leg, her hips, her arm. Her head struck something, and scraped over dirt. There was no sound. Just the taste of blood and dust—a disgusting, organic mud—on her tongue. Her jaw stung, as did her cheek.

  She didn’t know she could move until a cough wracked her hard enough to send her sprawling onto her back. Some of that bloody mud oozed down her throat and she retched. Agony tore through her body as her muscles contracted to expel the mud in her throat.

  And above, that murder of crows circled and circled. Demons who’d found a crack in hell’s abyss and torn and fought their way onto earth.

  A shadow eclipsed the merciless sun.

  “Elle,” Javier panted. “Can you move your legs?”

  For a petrifying second, she couldn’t. And then her left foot twitched and scraped through the dirt.

  Hot, furious pain arrived a second later. She cried out, rolling onto her side and bringing her fingertips to hover over the exposed skin where her jeans had been torn open. Blood. Flesh. A sliver of pink-specked knee bone. And sand embedded through everything.

  Javier scooped her up, and hoisted her onto the back of his blowing horse. It whickered, and he slapped its rump with a ring-bedazzled hand hard enough that it pawed at the ground with a hoof. But it didn’t bolt. Didn’t fight.

  Perhaps because it was too horrified by the twisted, ruined body of its fallen comrade.

  Cora squeezed her eyes shut, trying to will away the image of the horse she’d been riding. It lay on its side, two legs showing bone, and its once white hide spotted with blood and foam and dust.

  It lifted a tired head when Javier came close, and then dropped it again, hard enough that dust puffed up and settled
over its beautiful face.

  Javier took a pistol from his holster, aimed, and shot the horse in the head.

  The pistol crack seemed to go on forever. Ghostly echoes found their way back, but by then Javier was hoisting himself up behind her on the saddle. He laced an arm around her waist, murmuring something soothing when she yelped in pain, and spurred his horse forward.

  When they arrived back at his compound, she couldn’t feel her left leg anymore. Which was wonderful, because the pain was gone. But as a flurry of grooms and stable hands rushed over to them to help her off the horse and take Javier’s gelding to get cooled down, she was worried that she couldn’t feel that pain anymore because she’d been paralyzed. Or badly concussed.

  Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she lost consciousness…but not before catching a glimpse of the sky.

  And that same circle of black birds.

  Patiently circling as they waited for something—someone—to die.

  44

  No one leaves

  Lars slammed on the brakes, and the SUV slid forward a foot before coming to a rest. Dust crawled over them, hitting Finn in the face as he kicked open his door and made for the guard hut a few yards away.

  Two guards came out, their rifles aimed and ready to shoot. Finn waved the red envelope. “Message for Martin.” When nothing changed in their expressions, he added, “El Guapo.”

  The guard who was busy chewing a toothpick ambled over as if it was ten minutes to lunch and he’d been working a double shift. He waved a hand. “I take.”

  Finn snapped the envelope away before the man could grab a hold of it. “No. We will take it.”

  “Milo,” Lars called out.

  “Señor,” the guard said easily, giving Finn a broad, fake smile. “I promise on my mother’s life, it is safe with me. I take it right away.”

  He reached again for the envelope. Finn had his pistol out a second later, aimed for the man’s forehead.

  “This is important,” he murmured. “Call up the towers and tell them we’re coming through. And tell El Guapo that Antonio Rivera is still alive.”

  If the fact that he had a pistol pointed at him did fazed the guard in any way, he didn’t show it. He spat out his toothpick and trudged back to the hut. His friend watched with a strange asymmetrical smile on his face, rifle never wavering.

  A minute later, the guard returned. He gave a sarcastic, wide wave to Finn, sweeping a hand toward Javier’s still hidden compound. “You go.”

  Finn leapt back in the car as Lars started it forward. The towers came into few a minute later, gates already open. Two guards stood on either side of the gravel drive beyond, but Lars didn’t slow and they didn’t attempt to stop them when they came flying past.

  The road to Martin’s villa went on forever. Finn kept tapping a finger against the envelope, catching whiffs of perfume whenever a swirl of air found its way in through the cracked open window.

  Five guards waited outside the villa for them, forming a rough semi-circle by the driveway. Finn got out, flashed the envelope.

  “Where’s Javier?”

  “Out,” one of the men said. It could have been Ricardo, but he wasn’t sure. “He’ll be back soon.”

  “This can’t wait. If he’s—”

  “He’s not here,” the guard cut in. Then he held out a hand. “I will give it to—”

  “We’re not handing it over,” Lars said as he got out the car.

  Three guards began walking around the car. As soon as the first of them saw Angel in the back of the car, he whistled and aimed his assault rifle into the backseat.

  “Easy!” Lars slid in front of the guard, hands in the air. “We checked him.”

  The guard waved Lars aside with his rifle. “We check again.”

  Lars stepped aside with ill grace, throwing Finn a glare over the hood of the SUV as the guard ripped Angel from the backseat. The young man fell to his hands and knees, and didn’t seem able to get up unaided. Aid which the guard supplied after giving him a rough frisking. He slammed Angel against the car door and pointed his rifle at him.

  Seconds later, while Finn was wondering if he should try and push through the guards and go looking for Javier himself, commotion deeper inside the villa drew two of the guards away.

  “What’s happening?” Finn asked the guard closest to him.

  The man gave him a sneer, and then went over to the guard keeping an eye on Lars and Angel and murmured something to him in Spanish. The man shrugged, and they went back to their positions, both looking uneasy.

  Finn saw a flash of white through the villa’s open front portal. Maids? Then another. There was a cry, and the sound of more feet.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” Finn bellowed.

  He knew it was Cora, just as he knew whatever had happened to her had been Javier’s fault. Both certainties thrummed through him like the knowledge of which shoe went on which foot.

  One of the guards who’d hurried inside a minute ago returned. He rattled off something urgent in Spanish and waved a hand.

  Finn was already moving forward, and his guard seemed happy to let him take lead as the five of them rushed inside the villa.

  Silence now. No one in sight, no running feet. Finn faltered, not knowing which direction to turn, and Ricardo—it had to be Ricardo—took lead as he led the small party at a brisk pace. He didn’t lead them toward the rooms or the entertainment area. They took another route, headed toward the west of the villa. Down a stone pathway bordered with immaculately manicured hedges and screened by tall and slender pines.

  When they rounded a corner, Finn saw the shapes of distant buildings. Barns, sheds. And the few stragglers who were racing over the land, aiming straight for the small crowd that had gathered in front of the stables.

  Finn could see some of those servants turning to speak to each other. Could see their mouths forming words.

  Eleodora.

  He didn’t know he’d been running until he stopped and his chest was burning. He caught a glimpse of Javier’s head before it was obscured by someone leading a tired-looking horse past. The animal’s hide shivered, and its head hung low. But despite that, its kept showing the whites of its eyes with a wild look that promised death and destruction on everyone in sight. Its gait was unsteady too, but that could just have been the uneven ground the groom had to take to avoid the small cluster of people.

  The crowd parted for him when he arrived. Javier turned to him, face creased with anger. When he saw Finn, his eyes sparked, and that concern was gone, replaced with urgency.

  “Come.” Martin waved an impatient hand and began leading them back to the villa.

  “Where is she?” Finn grated. He swung back to where Javier had been standing.

  Someone lay on the floor.

  “Cora!” His knees thudded onto the ground. She lay sprawled on her back, eyes squeezed shut in pain as someone roughly bandaged her leg. Her clothes were dirty and torn, and her face and arms were scraped raw. When she heard his voice, her eyes flew open. But just as soon, they turned upward to the sky. So intense was her gaze, Finn’s own eyes were drawn upward. He twisted his head, squinting at the sun, and then down at her again.

  Relief softened Cora’s face. “They’re gone,” she whispered. She fumbled for his hand, found it, squeezed it. “Muchos gracias, Santa Muerte,” she murmured.

  Her eyes fluttered as if they wanted to close, but he squeezed her hand hard enough that they flew open again. “What happened?”

  “Fell,” she murmured through dry lips. “Going too fast.”

  “Your leg?”

  She gave him a shrug, and he realized someone—perhaps the studious man at her side busy bandaging her leg—had given her something. A sedative or a pain killer. He looked up, caught the man’s wrist.

  “How bad is it?” he asked.

  The man gave him a contemptuous glance, tugged away his hand, and murmured, “No Inglés.”

  Then he rose, dusted off his clo
thes, and clicked his fingers almost like Javier had a habit of doing. Four men hurried forward and hoisted Cora up by her shoulders and hips, carrying her toward the villa.

  Ahead, Javier called, “Come!” with a hard swipe of his arm as if his patience had long since evaporated.

  When Finn rose, Lars was at his side. If the man had said anything, like, ‘she’ll be fine,’ or ‘it was an accident,’ he would have punched him in the gut.

  But Lars just let out a sigh and strode forward with a mumbled, “He’ll pay for this, Milo.”

  Lars made a habit of reading his mind.

  45

  No negotiating

  Javier’s distant figure led Lars and Milo to the villa and through a different set of hallways until they arrived at a study. Lars gave a low whistle, which Finn didn’t seem to appreciate. The study was filled with modern furniture and a state-of-the-art Apple computer. The capo sat on the office chair that looked as unused as the computer and the sleek desk it occupied.

  For the first time, Lars could take a good look at the man. He had dust in his hair and on his clothes. Some blood on his shirt. But otherwise, he looked uninjured.

  Javier flicked a hand and said, “Let me see it.”

  Lars sank down in one of the chairs arranged in front of the desk and looked over at Finn. The man wore a scowl as he handed over that perfumed envelope, like he was loathe to close the distance to hand it to Javier.

  Milo was about ten seconds away from ending El Guapo. That fierce protectiveness he’d sensed the first time Finn and Cora had been in the same room together—the one Milo had given him when he’d been standing over Cora’s hogtied body in the cabin—that possessiveness had transformed into something animal.

  Mine.

  There was silence in the room while Martin read. Perhaps he read it a few times, because there wasn’t really that much on that folded note.