“Dying?” He exchanged a startled look with Van then scanned her up and down, pausing on her midsection. “How? Is it your injury from the crash in Peru?”
“I don’t know.” It was a terrible truth, one she should’ve figured out by now. “But if I’m not where I’m supposed to be by dawn, I won’t get my medicine. And if I don’t get that injection, I’ll be in respiratory failure by lunchtime.”
He went still. So still the air around him thinned and charged, sweeping over her like a blanket of static and raising the hairs on her arms. He looked floored, volatile, teetering on the brink of eruption.
“Tate—”
“You’re telling me you’re terminally ill.” Denial flexed at the edge of his voice.
“Yes.”
“But you don’t know what’s wrong with you?”
“No, I… I don’t know the medical diagnosis.”
“How can you not—?” He swiped a hand down his face and glared at her. “Tell me the symptoms.”
“I don’t have time for this.”
His eyes were as deep and turbulent as the ocean, his lips perfectly arched despite the pressed line of disapproval. Muscles twitched across his bare chest and broadcasted his impatience. But it was his demeanor that demanded her attention.
He rendered her immobile simply by standing there, looking utterly self-possessed and cavalier, like a saintly king or a gallant warrior. Or a sociopath. Whatever it was that made him so damn compelling seemed to glow like a backdrop for his powerful legs, broad chest, and brutally gorgeous features.
He was strong enough, assertive enough to take her burdens so she wouldn’t have to carry them by herself. It was his presence that spoke to her, commanded her at a cellular level, and she obeyed.
“The symptoms vary, but what I experience most is chronic nausea, abdominal pain, hematemesis, migraines, bradycardia, tremors, ataxia, seizures, muscle paralysis…” She released a breath of exhausted pain.
“Fucking Christ.” He lowered his head and squeezed the bridge of his nose. Then he was staring at her again, his expression dangerous. “Are you experiencing any of that tonight?”
“Some, yeah.”
“Told you she was too thin,” Van said from the couch.
Tate tossed him a warning glare and softened his eyes as he looked back at her. “Badell gives you medicine? It helps?”
“His doctors developed a treatment. The injection is the only thing keeping me alive.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Yes, and I know what you’re thinking.” With trembling hands, she snatched her guns from the table and holstered them in her waistband. “Sometimes he lets me see just how close to death I can get. I’ve tasted it, Tate. Felt its icy breath suck the life from my body. Have you ever experienced that? The abject, black void of extinction? The dismal nothingness? There’s no bright light at the end of the tunnel. There’s no fucking tunnel. When your heart stops, there’s nothing.”
“You’re leaving with me, Lucia. Right now. We’ll go directly to the hospital.”
“I’ll be dead within hours. Long before they can diagnose me.”
His nostrils flared. “Badell knows what’s wrong with you?”
“Of course. As long as he keeps my condition a secret and the antidote locked in his safe, I can’t leave.”
“Have you tried to find—?” He swore under his breath. “That’s why you asked me if I was a doctor.”
Tiago owned every medical practitioner in the neighborhood. Moonlighting at the sex club twice a month was her only opportunity to furtively search for visiting doctors. She just hadn’t had any luck.
“If I had more time…” She glanced at the window, where the graying sky signaled the coming of dawn. “I’d tell you all about my attempts to escape, my failed visit with a doctor, and the bloodshed that followed.”
She strode toward the door, opened it, and wobbled on the threshold.
“You can’t fix this, Tate. Go home. And tell my sister…” Keeping her back to the room, she swallowed the heartache shredding her voice. “Tell her I’m already dead.”
Forcing one foot in front of the other, she walked out and closed the door behind her.
CHAPTER 11
The door shut, slamming Tate’s pulse into overdrive.
“Goddammit.” He spun, searching for shoes, a gun, his phone… “She’s not walking away from me again.”
“She just did.” Van threw a bullet-resistant shirt at him and shoved on his own shoes.
“I need you to stay here.” He dressed at breakneck speeds and grabbed a burner phone. “Watch the guards from the window and call me if there’s trouble.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed.” Van gripped the back of Tate’s waistband and wedged a gun against his butt crack.
“Dude, get your dick beaters away from me.” Twisting away, he moved the weapon from his ass to the front of his jeans.
“Dick beaters?”
“Your fucking hands, man. We’re gonna talk about boundaries when I get back.”
“Are you sure you want to put the gun there?” With the arch of an impish brow, Van stared at Tate’s groin. “It would be a shame if you shoot your dick off.”
The thought made his balls shrivel, but it was a helluva lot quicker to draw a gun from the front than to reach around the back.
“My dick isn’t your concern.” He crouched to lace his boots. “I’m going to follow her, find out how she enters her apartment, and come right back.”
Cole had said there was only one way in and out of her unit, but that couldn’t be right. How did she slip past the guards at her door?
She had too many secrets, but he’d find a way to unwrap her, crack her open, and expose all her mysteries.
I’m dying.
That one had hit him sideways, and he still felt off-balance and outraged from the blow. And doubtful. She seemed pretty fucking resigned to die, but he wanted proof, validation from a professional, someone not connected to Badell. There were ways to go about that, but the logistics would be tricky and could put her at risk.
“Now we know why Cole couldn’t find medical records on her.” He tied the second boot and stood.
“Badell figured out how to hold her captive,” Van said, his voice eerily calm, “without locks or shackles.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t get her out.”
Maybe he could get a blood sample and ship it to a lab? Could it be that easy? Not likely.
Gun, phone, armored shirt… He had everything he needed and raced to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob. “Did you record her symptoms?”
“I captured the entire conversation.” Van held up a small recording device. “What about you? Any luck with the tracker?”
“I stuck one on each of her Berettas when she handed them to me.” He opened the door and scanned the vacant hall.
The trackers—courtesy of Cole—were also listening devices. A spy camera on her body would’ve been ideal, especially since Tate had no choice but to let her return to Badell this morning, but wearable cameras were bulky, and the battery life was shit.
Putting audio transmitters on her weapons was risky enough. If someone discovered them, Lucia would pay the price.
“Try not to die,” Van called after him as he closed the door.
Down the stairs, out the main entrance, and along the empty street, he sprinted to catch up with her. The half-light minutes just before dawn was the sleepiest time in Caracas. There were fewer gunshots. No passing motorists. No people anywhere. Just the pound of his boots hitting concrete and the heave of his lungs.
He rounded the first corner of his building, ran a block toward her apartment, and slowed at the next bend. If he turned right
, he’d walk into her alley and the guards who waited for her.
Removing his phone, he pulled up the tracking program and pinpointed her location. She’d gone around the block? Why? Maybe to circle the rear of her apartment complex to enter a side door? But how would she get in from there? He’d seen the blueprints of the building and her one-room unit. The front door was the only way into her living quarters.
He followed her moving location, veered left, and ran two blocks out of the way, which spit him out at the rear of her T-shaped building. Sticking to the shadows, he kept his senses sharp and aware. But he couldn’t watch his back while sweeping the shadows in front of him.
And that was how he ended up with the unmistakable press of a gun against the back of his head.
He froze, spine twitching and pulse thrashing in his ears. For a hopeful second, he thought Lucia was behind him, aiming a Beretta with irritation twisting her gorgeous face.
Couldn’t be her, though. This gunslinger was a mouth-breather, hacking air with a scratchy throat and reeking of cigarettes.
The string of words that followed were spat in Spanish. A man’s voice. A tall man, given the height and direction of sound. His impatience was evident in the jab of the gun against Tate’s head.
Each shout and jab made his muscles tense to react, to knock the man on his ass. But he forced himself to remain still and think through the best course of action.
He’d practiced this exact scenario with Cole before they left the States. A little movement to the side, just a quick-second shift would remove his head from the path of the bullet. But he wouldn’t have time to pause after that. It had to be a single flow of motion. Shift to the side, reach back for the gun while dropping, turning, drawing his own gun, and firing without hesitation.
Christ, it was a shot in the dark. Literally. The odds of turning before he ate a bullet weren’t in his favor, but it was the only shot he had.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Then he moved.
A gunshot rang out—a single jarring bang that resounded in his chest, disorientating him. He blinked at the gun in his hand, at the finger that never made it to the trigger.