Ivy
Breakfast had been a somber affair. Cami sat with a worried expression on her face, occasionally glancing up at me with tear-rimmed eyes. Johnny and his team spoke in hushed voices as they stood in the kitchen around the bar, while the Shadow Force team remained silent.
It was clear we were all worried about whether we’d find Oscar in time. My heart was touched by how much these men and women loved him. It was the fierceness of their devotion to him that gave me hope.
“I’ll do the dishes,” Cami announced as she jumped up suddenly and rushed over to the sink.
One by one, we stood to give our plates to her to clean. When it was my turn, I placed a hand on her shoulder. She stopped moving, closing her eyes then slowly turning to face me.
“It’s going to be okay.”
“You don’t know that,” she whispered on a ragged breath.
“I do. Whatever happens, it will all be okay eventually. We’ll find him.”
Suddenly, Cami pulled me tight against her, hugging me so hard I was sure she cracked a rib. “Come back to me. You hear me? Come back or I will be so freaking pissed at you.”
I chuckled and released her. “Okay, I will.”
She turned back to washing dishes, and I followed Ryder and Jolie out to the van. The other guys had loaded up in another van and had already pulled out. We were planning to ride around for an hour before following them to the Aquarium. Then we had another hour or two before showtime. All the waiting around was driving me crazy.
My legs bounced up and down as the nerves I was feeling coursed through my body. I wanted to just get this over with, and yet, I dreaded it. Dreaded being in the presence of Santos and The Vicar once more. They were evil incarnate. Not benevolent deities, but demons from hell. And I was ready for them to be sent right back from where they came. Anything I could do to help that process along, I was ready and willing.
I clutched the locket between my fingers, bringing it up to my lips to kiss before releasing a pent-up breath.
“Ready?” Jolie asked when it was time to go, a ball cap pulled down tightly over her eyes.
“As I’ll ever be.”
She nodded, and the two of them followed behind me, hand in hand. The plan was for me to walk in, buy a ticket, and they would play the role of tourists enjoying the city. Jolie had a fanny pack on her hip, as well as a ball cap and walking shoes. Ryder also had a hat on his head and wore joggers and a T-shirt. They looked the part as much as two trained operators could.
It was hard to believe that Jolie had only been doing the job for a few months, and had only just recently participated in her first real op. She was a natural, and I envied that she’d figured out what she wanted to do with her life. When this was over, I had some soul-searching to do. I knew for a fact, acting was out for me. I had no desire to move back to Hollywood or even try my hand here in Atlanta. That part of my life was done.
I wanted to move on, and move on with Oscar. I wanted to have a family with him, and that meant being there when the kids got home from school, not working on a set for hours on end. What that meant for me in terms of career or my future, I wasn’t sure yet. I just knew whatever it was would include Oscar in it.
The Aquarium was crowded at that time of day. There was a huge conference taking place in the city, plus it was a popular day for field trips. I waited in line for almost thirty minutes, but fortunately we’d done our research and had accounted for the extra time in line.
I entered the building wishing I was there for pleasure and not trying to save my husband’s life. The place was dimly lit, with exhibit entrances dispersed creatively through the building. I made my way to the huge aquarium in the center and took a moment to watch the fish swim.
Glancing around as discreetly as I could, I caught sight of Ryder and Jolie reading the signs of an exhibit. I moved my gaze to the other side and saw Cruz watching the giant aquarium where I stood.
Good. Everyone was in place.
Johnny’s team all seemed like good guys, and I knew they were dispersed through the building watching exits and keeping their eyes peeled for any signs of Santos, Vicario, or Angel. It was good to know that I had the force of two well-trained security teams on my side, regardless of how frightened I was.
I wandered slowly towards the tunnel, delaying the inevitable. I didn’t have an earpiece in like the rest of the team. Since I’d be getting close to the bad guys, we didn’t want to give ourselves away immediately with a comm device in my ear. Unfortunately, that left me alone with my thoughts and no way to communicate with the team what I was feeling or seeing.
The tunnel was just ahead, and people were backed up, waiting to go in. The place was crawling with spectators—children in matching school T-shirts, harried moms and teachers trying to keep everyone together, and even a few businessmen and women in tailored suits on lunch break. My head started to spin from all the noises and sounds, but I tried to keep my attention on the bend at the end of the line. The line that would lead me to Santos, since he’d be the only person I would recognize outside of The Vicar, and I knew this job was beneath him. And since Santos was the one who got me into this mess to begin with three months ago when he’d shown up at my restaurant, I was hoping he’d pay a higher price than the others when the team took him down today.
I had yet to ask Oscar or any of the other team members if they thought my meeting Santos had been intentional. I got the feeling, since they’d recruited Javier to spy on the team, that the Cabs knew a lot more about each individual on the team than they had realized. Perhaps they’d found our marriage certificate and had tracked me down specifically because I was Oscar’s wife, knowing it would make him vulnerable. It was a definite possibility, since they’d targeted Ryder and Cruz in much the same way. Only, they’d hit the jackpot when my blood had turned out to be so valuable. And in some ways so had I—since otherwise I’d already be dead.
The line veered, and the opening to the underwater tunnel opened up in front of me. It was hard not to be distracted by the large sharks and other fish swimming above me as I made my way through the narrow corridor. I glanced behind me to see Ryder and Jolie pointing at different fish above them and caught sight of Cade and one of Johnny’s men at the entrance. I whipped my head back around, and Johnny and one of his men were standing at the exit. Levi, Cruz, and two more were close by as well, even if I couldn’t see them. I relaxed slightly, knowing everyone was where they needed to be.
That was until I saw Santos separate himself from the crowd. He was standing near the exit, his arms folded over his chest, his eyes set firmly on me. Nerves danced across my skin like ballerinas on a stage. He nodded to me, letting me know he saw me. I didn’t pick up my pace. Instead, I stayed my course, each step slowly drawing me closer.
Suddenly, a large group of high school kids pushed by me, rushing to get through the tunnel, shouting and laughing riotously. I tried to get out of their way, but I was swept up in the crowd and pushed forward. Strong hands forced me towards Santos. Twisting and pulling away from them, I tried moving against the flow, tried to walk back to Ryder and Jolie, but it was no use.
A hand reached out and grabbed my arm, and a harsh whisper sounded in my ear. “I thought I told you to come alone.”
I was pulled towards the exit, but there were so many young people, I couldn’t see Cade or any of the other team members. Santos had my arm tightly in his bruising grip, and I struggled against him, pulling with all my might to free myself. He dragged me through the throngs of people and out a side door just at the end of the tunnel. I heard Ryder shout my name, and turned as he jumped up, peering over the crowd, trying to find me. His gaze caught mine as the door slammed shut behind me.
The exit emptied into a long, gray hallway, and Santos dragged me, my feet tripping over themselves, as he ran to the outside door. I couldn’t keep up, and had he not had such a grip on my arm, I would have fallen several times. He was relentless, though, and just yanked me sharply against him, forcing me to maintain his pace.
Santos pushed open the outside door, and bright light blinded me from the sun as we exited outside the building. I blinked rapidly, trying to get my eyes to adjust.
“Go!” Santos yelled as he shoved me into the back of a black sedan. Just as I was in, the car peeled out of the bay area and out to the side streets. Angel looked at me in the rearview mirror.
“I take it she wasn’t alone.”
“Of course not. Apparently, she doesn’t value her husband’s life as much as we thought she did.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Sweetheart, there’s always a choice. Fortunately, we planned for this. No harm done.”
I sank onto the back seat, grateful for the GPS tracker, similar to the original one, on my arm. It was my only saving grace. Angel pulled out onto the highway and headed north.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To see your husband.”
“Out of the goodness of your heart—right?”
“Of course not. We’re hoping that he can help us keep you in line. Make you a bit more cooperative.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, and I prayed to God that the tracker was working and the team was right behind me.
As if conjured by my thoughts, Angel’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror, and he punched the gas. “We’ve got company.”
I turned around to find a black van closing the distance fast.
Santos cursed colorfully under his breath. “They must have a tracker on her.” He glared at me and pulled a gun from his waistband. “Where is it?”
If I told him where it was and the team lost us, Oscar was as good as dead. I shook my head.
Santos cocked the gun and pressed the cold steel to my temple. “Tell me or I’ll shoot.”
“No, you won’t. You need me.”
Santos eyed me carefully, knowing I’d called his bluff. Then he pulled out his phone and dialed a number. “It’s me. Kill him.”
“No!” I screamed, the word tearing from my soul. “Please! Fine—here it is.”
I took the watch off and placed it in his hand.
“Never mind,” Santos said into the phone, and I blew out a sigh of relief. Santos took my chin between his fingers and squeezed. “Don’t mess with me.” The slap came out of nowhere, my head snapping back and cracking against the glass of the window. A small sob escaped me from the pain, but I choked the rest down. I would not let Santos see me as weak.
I met his gaze with fierce determination, my chin lifted high. I was sick and tired of being manhandled and pushed around, slapped, injected with poison, and poked and prodded. I wouldn’t do anything to risk Oscar’s life, but I hoped I’d get the chance to take out my aggression on Santos Casas one way or the other.
“They’re still gaining on us.” Angel said, as Santos threw the tracker out the window. I watched in horror as it busted into a million pieces on the pavement behind us.
Santos leaned out the window, pointing his gun at the van.
“No!” I pulled at his shirt, trying to get him back into the car. He turned slightly and kicked me, the toe of his shoe connecting with my jaw. I flew back against the window, cracking my skull for the second time. My vision was spotty, fading in and out. I held my head in my hands, trying to keep it from spinning.
Santos emptied the clip in his gun, while the van swerved wildly on the road. They slowed down a bit, but after a few seconds picked up speed again.
Santos loaded a new clip and leaned back out the window. “Slow down.”
Angel slowed the car and the van drew near. Santos fired in rapid succession, the bullets pinging off the van’s hood. It came to a screeching stop in the middle of the road, turning at a hundred-and-eighty-degree angle and bouncing back and forth as it came to a lurching stop. Cars blared their horns, and tires screeched to avoid the stopped van, zigzagging all over the road.
“Go!” Santos shouted as he climbed back in the car, and Angel stomped on the gas, sending me backwards in my seat.
I turned to watch the van grow smaller and smaller, and just like my hope of saving Oscar, watched it fade into the distance.
***
Three hours later, we arrived at what looked like a vacant lot, except for a small building, no bigger than an elevator shaft jutting out against the landscape. There was a paved driveway that circled around to the door of the building. Angel stopped the car in front of it, and Santos jumped out. He pulled me out of the car with him and dragged me to the door.
Inside was an elevator, and as we stepped inside, he pushed a button on the panel, making the elevator descend.
“What is this place?”
“It’s Mr. Vicario’s home.”
The sliding doors opened to a lovely foyer. A large vase sat on an elegant table against a wall with a gold-gilded suspended above it. The low ceiling was adorned with a crystal chandelier hanging over a plush oriental rug covering the marble floors. It was weird, this perfectly polished space several floors under the earth.
Santos pulled me along the corridor, and we passed an open-concept floor plan with a large living room, elaborately decorated with taxidermy busts on the walls and animal-skin rugs on the floors. White leather couches sat facing each other in the middle of the room, while a fake electric fireplace boasted a roaring faux fire.
A kitchen sat on the other side with stainless-steel appliances and high-end countertops. The place looked straight out of a modern magazine, and yet we were somewhere below ground in the middle of nowhere. How much did a place like this cost?
However much it was, it was more than I’d pay for it. No way did I ever want to live underground without sunlight filtering through windows looking out over nature. It was too much like living in a tomb.
Any hope I had that the team would find me faded when I realized just how remote this place was and how far underground we were. I had no idea how I could rescue Oscar on my own and get us up an elevator and off the grounds. Even if I got us out of the bunker, we’d still have to find a way off the property, and I hadn’t seen another house for miles. Not to mention, what kind of shape would Oscar be in when I found him? Would he be able to walk? Would he be alive?
Reality settled in as I was forced along to my doom. I would have given anything to set Oscar free. Even more so to be free with him and build a life together. But that wasn’t to be. I didn’t understand why we’d found each other again, just to be ripped apart forever. It didn’t seem fair.
We reached the end of the hallway, and the feel of the home changed. A door stood before us like an ominous beacon, and Santos opened it into a white room, fluorescent lights shining blindingly from the ceiling. Ropes hung from a center rafter, and there was blood spilled on the floor. My stomach roiled. I had a feeling I knew whose blood that was.
Santos watched me with glee in his eyes. “Your Oscar wasn’t very forthcoming with the information we wanted. I’m hoping you’ll be a bit more helpful.”
My legs trembled, fear coursing through my body, my fingers tingling with pins and needles from the adrenaline rush. Was he going to beat me? Like he did Oscar? And how could I withstand it?
I wasn’t trained for interrogations or torture. I didn’t think my mind or my body would hold up under that kind of duress. Santos led me away from the ropes and the blood to a small room off to the side. He opened the door to the bare space, another room painted completely white with white lighting; no bed, no windows—nothing but a white bucket in the corner. And Oscar lying on his side in the middle of the floor.
Without thinking, I rushed inside, kneeling beside him and taking his face in my hands. He was unconscious, his head lolling lifelessly against my palms.
“Oscar? Oscar, baby, it’s me. Wake up.”
I suddenly wondered if it was the best thing to have him awake. His face was almost unrecognizable, and I only knew he was alive because I could hear the rattle of his chest as he breathed in and out. I wasn’t a doctor, but even I knew that sound meant trouble.
I whirled around to Santos, who was still standing in the doorway. “You’re killing him. He needs a hospital.”
“He’s not going anywhere.”
“You told me you’d release him if I turned myself in. You have me—now let him go.”
“We also told you to come alone. This is what happens when you disobey us.”
“You did this to him before you knew I’d not followed directions. You never had any intention of releasing him, did you?”
Santos laughed, the sound straight from my worst nightmares. “Of course not. He’ll pay for working for this tainted American Government.”
“Why are you doing this?” I was desperate for answers, to make some sense out of this hell I was living in.
“Revenge. Power. Money. Does it really matter? They’re equal motivators. Let’s just say America owes a debt to my family, and I plan to collect it.”
“What does that have to do with us? We’re not a part of your sordid past. Just let us go.”
“You may not be, but your people are to blame.”
“My people? What—because I’m American?”
“Yes. Each of us has a story—Vicario, Dr. K, Angel, and me. Dr. K’s involved his sister; Angel and The Vicar have yet to speak of the atrocities that plague them—but mine, they’re solely mine to bear.”
Santos walked closer and ripped his shirt over his head, revealing his grotesque tattoos. Tortured souls, angels, and demons. It was the stuff of nightmares, bad dreams that woke you up screaming.
“You like? Look closer.”
Santos knelt next to me, and I could see the textured skin underneath the tattoos. I gasped at the horror of his skin.
“Yes, it is terrible. That’s what being near a blast of a grenade when you’re seven will do to you. As you grow, the scars pull and stretch. The itching is terrible. The pain sometimes blinding. My leg is missing part of the muscle.”
“What happened to you?”
“Your soldiers came into my village looking for someone. They had the wrong village, but they didn’t realize it until they’d already blown half the place up. I was hiding in a closet when it happened. My parents and my little brother weren’t so lucky.”
“You lost your whole family?” It was easy to have compassion for a seven-year-old boy who was injured and had his family torn from him—but that was still no excuse for taking innocent lives.
“Yes. Your government paid for my initial stay in the hospital, but the follow-up surgeries I would need to help me heal were all on me. My grandmother was a widow. She didn’t have that kind of money.”
“I’m sorry for what you endured.” I stroked Oscar’s hair as he lay in my lap, keeping my eyes focused on Santos. “But taking innocent people’s lives won’t make that better. You’re doing something evil to repay something evil that was done to you. How is that justice?”
“The Vicar will make it right in the end. The scales will be balanced, and God will smite the proud. America will fall to her knees, and justice will be served.”
He was crazy. That was the only explanation for the ramblings coming out of his mouth. And it was clear he believed what he was saying, passionately believed it.
“We have some questions for you, but first, we need to wake him up.”
Santos moved closer to Oscar, and I scrambled to pull him closer to my body, as if my arms could somehow protect him from the evil Saint. Santos laughed his maniacal cackle again and lifted his hand, slapping Oscar across the face with enough force to snap his neck to the side.
Oscar groaned and came to, his head moving from left to right, the rattle in his chest growing more pronounced. As if just realizing I was holding him, he turned to me, his eyes searching mine.
“Ivy?”
“I’m here.”
“No, Ivy. No.” His broken words nearly tore me in two. I placed my hands on his cheeks and stared into his eyes.
“We’ll get out of this. Okay? Just hold on.”
Oscar shook his head and moved to a semi-sitting position. “What do you want, Santos?”
“We need to ask your girl here some questions, and we feel like she’ll be more cooperative with your help.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, and when two men came in with a chair and rope, I knew things were about to go south real quick.
Oscar pushed away from my arms that grasped at him, and slid his body slightly in front of mine. “Leave her alone.”
Santos and the two men strode closer, but instead of reaching for me, they pulled Oscar to his feet. He cried out in pain, most likely from the injuries that were causing him to wheeze. A broken rib? A punctured lung? Both? I jumped to my feet, reaching for Oscar, when one of the men backhanded me across the face. I fell to the ground as Oscar fought against their hold, trying to get to me. I could see the pain in his eyes, and I put my hand up.
“I’m okay. I’m fine.”
The two men tied Oscar to the chair, pulling his arms behind him. One hung slightly lower, and when they tightened the ropes he yelled out again. It was too much. I couldn’t take it.
“Stop. You’re hurting him. What do you want?”
Santos smiled and nodded his head to the two men, who stepped away from Oscar.
“I want you to tell me who Shadow Force works for.”
My gaze shifted to Oscar’s, and he gave a barely perceptible shake of his head, no.
“I don’t know.”
I answered with as much confidence as I could, but Santos tsked. “Now, Ivy, if you don’t want us to hurt Oscar, you need to give us the right answers. He gave a quick jerk of his head to one of the men, who pulled back his fist and punched Oscar across the face. His head snapped back and then lulled to his chest. I wondered if he was unconscious, and silently prayed that he was. The sound of the man’s fist hitting bone would be one I’d remember for the rest of my life.
“Stop!” My voice was raw and ragged, and I felt moisture running down my face. I hadn’t even realized I was crying.
“Now, let’s try this again. Who does Shadow Force work for?”
“The government.” I tried an answer that was close to the truth but not too close. Santos shook his head. “We know that already. But who specifically do they report to?”
“How would I know that?”
“I have a feeling you do.”
I shook my head just as Santos gave the order again to hit Oscar. He roused then, his head lifting off his chest, and his eyes finding mine. I could see the love, the goodbye. I didn’t think he could take another blow to the head. Not now. Not in his condition. The man pulled his fist back.
“Washington!” The word tore out of me on its own accord, the need to keep Oscar alive overwhelming any concern I had for the rest of the team or national security.
Santos lifted a hand, and the man stopped. “Washington? Like in D.C.?”
“Ivy, no,” Oscar pleaded with me.
“No. Like Henry Washington, the president’s advisor.”
I was officially a traitor, but I didn’t see that I had a choice. They would have killed Oscar right there in front of my eyes, and I couldn’t take that chance.
“Very well. We’ll see if that information checks out.” He nodded to the two goons in the room, and they removed the ropes from Oscar, who sank to the floor almost immediately. I rushed over, barely catching him as he slumped to the ground.
“You should say your goodbyes. Time is running out.”
Santos left, turning on his heel and waltzing out of the room as if he didn’t have a care in the world, as if he wasn’t holding our very lives in his hands.
I held Oscar tightly to me, as I stroked his hair back away from his battered face.
“I’m so sorry, Oscar. So sorry.”
“Ivy—”
Oscar’s eyes flitted closed, and I held my husband in my arms, wondering if it would be the last time.