Their Cartel Princess: The Complete Series: A Dark Reverse Harem Box Set Read online

  “Easy, buddy,” Lars said.

  He recognized the guy. It was the one that had brought the message from Zachary West. Angel, wasn’t it?

  “Don’t move,” Angel said. He began retreating with Cora, sliding an arm around her throat and dragging her after him. The young man—he probably had less than two years on Cora—threw a look over his shoulder and made for a doorway that looked sturdy enough that it possibly lead out of the villa.

  Cora’s eyes begged for help above the bloodstained bandage gagging her.

  But when Lars shifted an inch just to get a better balance on his feet, Angel cocked the pistol.

  Jesus Christ, if that fucker tripped…Cora’s brains would have to be washed off the nearest wall.

  He followed though. As slow as molasses in snow, but he followed. At first, Angel didn’t seem to notice. He was staring at the door handle as if wondering which third hand he was going to use to open it with.

  “You don’t need her,” Lars said. “I can get you out of here. Take me.”

  “Quiet,” Angel snapped. He’d begun to sweat, and it could have been from the afternoon sun blinding them both, or from exertion, or the wound on what looked to be a very puffy hand.

  A delirious, trigger-happy Mexican. Just what he fucking needed in his life right now.

  “Come on, buddy. What good is she? She can’t even drive. I can take you anywhere you need to go.”

  Angel grimaced at this. Then he took a few hurried steps to the side and tipped his chin toward the door. “Open.”

  Lars moved cautiously, hands raised, and tried urging his brain to think of anything except how fucking close that bullet was to Cora’s skull.

  Maybe he wasn’t the only one who’d lost a cool head over this girl. Her eyes shone like bronze coins, but she wasn’t crying. Because she’d cried herself out, or she was too terrified for tears?

  Lars opened the door, and it was an inch ajar before he realized he could have told Angel it was locked.

  Get a fucking grip!

  He took a quick glance outside. Nothing but dust and scrub.

  “Move,” Angel said, and Lars stepped aside so the young man could haul Cora out through the door.

  Finally, something in his fucked-up mind congealed into a thought. “Hey, Angel?”

  The guy looked back. Shifted his grip on Cora and the gun, making sure it was tight against her temple. Cora flinched and pressed her eyes closed, as if she could already feel that bullet splintering her skull.

  “Listen, it’s probably not my place or anything, but just how far do you think you’ll get?”

  Angel frowned, and then gave a small shrug. “Far enough.”

  “Yeah?” Lars pointed at Cora with a limp hand. Fuck, but his head hurt. Did he have a concussion? “With her? Banged up as she is? She looks about to pass out.”

  Let Cora get the fucking message. Dear lord, let her get the message.

  Cora swooned against Angel. The guy grappled her, almost let her slip to the floor, and then yanked her up by the belt of her jeans.

  Damn, that must have hurt.

  “She is fine,” Angel said.

  “And when you reach the wall? You did see the wall coming in, right?” Lars cocked his head and took a slow step closer. He reached up with a hand, blinking when it made the world tilt. “Big. Pretty fucking tall. Hard to miss, that wall. You gonna climb it?” He glanced at Cora. “You gonna drag her over?”

  Angel’s mouth paled as he pressed it into a thin line. “I leave.” He had angry spots on his cheeks now. “What comes, comes. But I leave.”

  Lars put his hands out again, like someone trying to soothe a nervous horse. “Look, if you go easy on her, I can help.”

  “How can you help?” Angel snapped, but he looked uneasy now. His eyes darted over the landscape, perhaps noticing for the first time how much land there was to cover. And both of them barefoot, Cora—apparently—barely conscious. “How?” he asked again, urgently this time.

  “There’s a car,” Lars said, pointing to the villa and where he guessed the drive might be in relation to their position. “We were meant to be leaving in it right now. It’s ready and waiting. I can use it to get you out of here.”

  Cora had begun sliding down to earth again, and Angel hitched at her belt to get up. Maybe she had fainted, because she didn’t seem to react to that jarring motion. “A car?”

  “God as my witness,” Lars said. “Ready to go. We were about to leave. Then, well…” his eyes slid to Cora. “Then all this shit happened.”

  Angel glanced around, mouth working in that thin line as he considered his options.

  “Si.” Angel nodded vigorously, got a better grip on Cora, and glanced around. “You bring here.”

  “The truck?” Lars pointed at the door they came through. “Uh…just wondering, did you notice the size of—”

  “Drive around!” Angel yelled, waving what Lars assumed was Miguel’s pistol at the corners of the villa. “You bring car. Or I kill her.” He pushed the gun hard into Cora’s skull again, and she whimpered.

  She actually fucking whimpered.

  The sound did something to Lars. Okay, it did several things to him. It fucking pissed him off. It made him want to tear Angel limb from limb. And it made him want to slap Cora for making that noise in the first place and grabbing a hold of his heart right through his ribcage.

  He couldn’t care about her right now. Where Milo’s mistake had been to obsess to the point of idiocy, he of all people, especially now, had to keep a clear fucking head.

  Which was really difficult when his heart felt like it would burst from fear any second.

  “You have one minute,” Angel said. “And I see someone, not you, anything but car—” he glanced left and right, indicating the sides of the villa, “I shoot.”

  “That’s cutting it a bit—”

  “Fifty seconds,” Angel said, being a completely unreasonable ass of a kidnapper.

  Lars turned and ran, ignoring the way the world rocked under him. He cut through the passage and sped into the villa’s central garden like his feet had wings. There he paused, hunting for any sight of movement.

  Like a mirage, Finn darted up from the stairs and came to a halt on the ground level of the villa. And then, like a fucking demon, Javier appeared on the other side of the goddamn garden.

  And, for some reason, judging from his contorted face, utterly fucked off.

  52

  Kill him

  Finn caught sight of Lars and headed down the ground floor hallway toward him. He spotted movement on the other side of the villa’s gardens, but whoever had been walking there moved out of sight before he could recognize them.

  Lars threw him a wild gesture, pointing for the front entrance of the villa.

  But he hadn’t found Cora yet. He’d obviously missed whoever had taken her, and they’d cleared the stairs before he’d come down into the cells. They could be anywhere by now. He gave his head a hard shake and picked up speed. Lars looked left, then right, and then turned around and disappeared.

  And then Javier stormed onto the second floor, sending two of his henchmen down either side of the corridor before heading for Cora’s room.

  Because he still thought she was inside.

  Fuck.

  Finn did another quick scan, failed to see Lars anywhere, and made a run toward the patio. When he passed Javier’s study, someone was just coming out of the room. One of Javier’s sicarios, possibly. Finn skidded to a halt, but he’d seen him running and gave him a suspicious look, before going for the handheld radio clipped to his shirt pocket. Finn jutted out his hand, fingers straight and stiff as a blade, and struck the man’s trachea. The guard fumbled for his rifle, which had been dangling from a strap at his side, but Finn drove his elbow into the guard’s stomach, kneed him in the groin, and ripped the weapon free while the man was still folding to the floor, making an ugly gurgling sound.

  He shoved open the door. He unloaded the rifle
’s chamber and tossed it far back into the room, dropping the now useless rifle at the man’s feet. An assault rifle would help him none—he had a pistol. If he needed more bullets than the magazine contained, then he was fucked anyway.

  A random thought flashed across his mind.

  What if Lars had been signaling that he’d found Cora? Maybe he had her in a car, ready to go. Just waiting for him.

  Finn hurried toward the villa’s entrance. He’d almost made it before a shout came from behind. He spun, eyes fixing on Javier. The man stood in the corridor outside Cora’s room, hands gripping the railings as he leaned forward.

  “Kill him!” Javier bellowed, and the men at his side dispersed like well-trained mercenaries. A third, familiar enough that he could have been one of Javier’s personal bodyguards, lifted an AR-223 rifle, and aimed through the front sight toward Finn.

  The bullet struck the door’s lintel as Finn surged through it. A chunk of plaster spat against his leg. It felt like a bee sting, but he ignored it. Ignored everything except forcing his legs to move faster.

  Sunlight blinded him. He shaded his eyes, pausing just long enough to orientate himself.

  The drive was empty. A man ran toward the side of the villa, his rifle held out and ready to shoot. At what, fuck knew.

  A second guard who’d been standing staring after his friend turned to Finn, a radio clutched in his hand. It struck the ground as the guard whipped his assault rifle around.

  Finn dove, striking the stone steps hard with his shoulder. A deafening spray of gunfire followed him as he scrambled up and raced behind the ineffectual cover of a nearby hedge.

  He stayed low, following the line of the villa as he ran around, desperately trying to figure out how he could make it to the gate if there was no cover between here and the trees that lined both sides of the gravel drive. And even those were tall and thin; their trunks would offer piss-poor cover for his broad body.

  Fuck.

  He gritted his teeth as a hail of bullets chewed up the ground a few feet ahead of him.

  And then he was around the corner.

  Where he saw Cora, and Lars, and the truck.

  Which was about the same time that the man pressing a gun to Cora’s head saw him.

  53

  La Flaca’s demon

  Cold from the pistol’s muzzle had seeped into her head; it ached and throbbed where that cold metal touched her. Her teeth started a hard, sporadic chatter. She gripped Angel’s arm, but not with the intention of drawing away the choke hold he had on her. It was to hold herself up. Her left leg had gone numb, and her right shook with the effort of holding her weight.

  Why was she so damn weak? Maybe it had been the exertion of the ride, coupled with everything that came after?

  She despised being helpless. She loathed the fear that came with it. The desperate tug of despair that, should someone not be there to help her, it would all be over.

  More than anything, she hated depending on someone else for her safety.

  If she got through this—when she got through this—she’d make sure she was never defenseless again.

  When a SUV came screaming around the corner, leaving a dust cloud twice as large as itself, Angel spun to face it with a hiss of surprise.

  “He wasn’t lying,” Angel murmured to her in Spanish. “You have good friends, señorita.”

  Did Angel not have any idea who she was? Maybe he wouldn’t keep her then, not if he thought she was just—

  “Come, Eleodora. We have far to go still.”

  Her stomach clenched.

  So he did know her. And it sounded like he knew exactly where he’d be taking her, too.

  He’d said he worked for Plata o Plomo…but he’d made it out to sound that he’d been forced into his role. What if he hadn’t? What if he’d been sent here to kidnap her?

  She tried speaking through the gag, but all that came out were a few pitiful moans.

  The truck slid to a halt a few yards from them, and as Lars got out, a gunshot echoed out to them from deeper inside the villa.

  Angel spun to the noise, and then twisted back to Lars. The pistol wasn’t at her temple anymore; he had it pointed at Lars, who was slowly stepping toward them. Lars lifted his hands. “Easy, Angel. I brought the car. You can go wherever you want.”

  “What was that?” Angel asked, waving the gun toward the villa.

  “A gunshot?” Lars said with a shrug. “We may have overstayed our welcome.”

  “Keys?” Angel said.

  “In the ignition. Now, hand me the girl, and I’ll just stand right here while you—”

  “No!” The gun was back on her head. “Not until I’m safe.”

  “Buddy…” Lars took another step closer. “She’s useless to you. Dead weight. In about two seconds, she’s gonna start crying, and trust me on this, you don’t want to listen to a girl blubbering in your ear while you’re trying to escape the fucking Fortress of goddamn Solitude.”

  Angel hesitated, but it was probably just for show. Cora began struggling, hurling words through her gag that Lars would never have been able to decipher. Lars glanced at her, a touch angrily, as if willing her to shut the fuck up so he could talk this guy into letting her go.

  Then came the patter of automatic gunfire. Angel spun, the pistol flashing toward the source of the sound.

  “What?” he yelled. “What did you do?”

  “We’re in as much of a fucking pickle as you are, bud.” Lars was coming closer now, slowly as if trying not to attract Angel’s attention.

  Finn had appeared around the corner, running like a hellhound was on his tail. Angel tensed. Finn skidded to a halt when he saw the three of them, the truck. The pistol that was once again flush to her head.

  “I said no one!” Angel yelled.

  It was as if the spirit of Santa Muerte possessed her. She drove her elbow into Angel’s stomach, and dropped to the ground with all her weight. His arm caught her chin, but she was out of range of the pistol when it went off.

  That bang was so loud, her vision went white and she found herself on her hands and knees a second later, scrambling away from Angel while a banshee shrieked in her ears. All other sounds were muffled, indistinct things. Her gimp leg dragged behind her in the dirt, but for now there was no pain.

  It could come later, of course.

  Something brushed her leg, and then a body fell beside her. Angel, Lars on top of him. A hand grabbed her arm, but she managed to shake it off and crawl away a little further. She was at the truck’s front grill, and used the fender to haul herself up.

  The banshee’s wail became a high-pitched whine. She turned, saw Lars and Angel scrabbling in the dirt like kids on a playground, and then looked up as Finn came hurtling toward her.

  He grabbed her. Dragged her along the side of the car. Flung open the backseat. And shoved her in.

  She half-fell, half-clambered inside, but when she glanced back, she could see Lars getting to his feet, pistol in hand, pointing it to the limp shape of Angel where the man lay in the dirt.

  Angel didn’t put up his hands. Didn’t bother trying to kick out Lars’s legs from under him or roll away. He lay like a corpse, as if he’d already surrendered and was ready for whatever saint he worshiped to take him wherever his life choices had led him.

  Please, help me, Santa Muerte. I don’t care if you send me an angel or a demon.

  La Flaca had heard her prayer. And the saint had decided to send her a demon in the guise of Angel.

  “No!” Cora screamed, her voice cracking.

  As if her yell had summoned them, a troop of Javier’s men rounded the corner of the villa, rifles raised and ready to shoot.

  She leapt from the car. Finn tried grabbing her shoulder, her hair, anything—but she evaded him with a twist of her body. This time, it wasn’t Santa Muerte who’d possessed her—a part of her brain she didn’t understand yet had decided to ignore the pain and stiffness in her leg, and forced her body to run.
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br />   It was an uneven, hobbling run, but she made it to Angel’s side a second later. Grabbed his shirt. Began dragging him to the car.

  Lars had his mouth open, shock writ large on his wide, green eyes. “What the fuck are you doing?” he yelled. “Leave him!”

  There wasn’t time to explain. But she threw Lars a desperate, pleading look, and staggered back another step. Her leg was on fire now; invisible flames licked and chewed at her flesh and bones. Tears slid over her cheeks—first from that pain, and then from sheer desperation.

  When Lars still didn’t move, she yelled, “You damn well help me!”

  And then Finn appeared. He grabbed Angel like a sack of flour, hoisted the young man over his shoulder, and ran back to the truck. She was still following their progress when Lars scooped her off her feet and made after Finn. As her head bobbed, she glanced behind them. Javier’s men were closing in, most aiming at them through their scopes, some circling to the side and speaking into hand-held radios.

  Why weren’t they shooting?

  A single shot rang out; one of the men had gone into a crouch and begun looking particularly keenly at them. The man beside him’s mouth moved, and he punched the guy in the side of his head so hard that he looked dead when he hit the ground.

  Because she was here.

  The thought was a strange one. It made her angry, but it made her proud at the same time. It was as if she’d cast some kind of protection spell over these men—her aura was a shield that no bullet could penetrate, because no one would dare fire in case that bullet lodged in her flesh.

  The same couldn’t be said for the truck. There was a pop, and the truck listed about an inch to the side.

  He’d shot out a tire.

  Neither of her men seemed to notice. Finn threw Angel in the backseat, and was already running for the driver’s door when Lars set her down in the back. He urged her down, until she was crowding against Angel’s limp body, and then slid into the passenger seat as Finn threw the truck into gear.

  Beside her, Angel stirred. She was lying half on top of him, but when she tried to lift herself up, Finn snapped, “Stay the fuck down!”