Her skin felt warm and alive, her face still above water. Still breathing.
Hang on, Vera.
There wasn’t enough room in the dome for both of them. So he tucked his head downward, kicked his legs to maintain buoyancy, and blindly unbuckled the spider gag.
A sudden, searing prick erupted on his forearm. He screamed, unable to control the reaction, and his lungs expelled precious bubbles of air.
Motherfucking fuck! That hurt!
It was just one bite. God only knew how many she’d suffered already.
His pulse pounded as his fingers located her lips and pried the metal ring from her mouth. Pulling the gag away, he tackled the rope on her hands.
He couldn’t hear anything, didn’t know if the cartel was yelling for him. He couldn’t care. His lungs burned for air, but he needed her out of this rope.
When the knot around her hands finally gave, his chest was on fire. He kicked hard, shooting upward and surfacing only long enough to take a huge breath. Then he dove for her feet.
The rope there took longer, the knot too tight to loosen with fingers. He wasted invaluable seconds trying to untie it from the cement block.
They’d done this before. Everything was too perfectly measured. From the anchor to the life vest, her body was stretched in a vertical line, allowing no wriggle room. The dome was fastened to the vest, which she should be able to unzip and slip—
Her knees bent above his hands, eliminating the taut stretch of her legs. She’d removed the vest.
Soft fingers curled around his, and together they tore at the knot around her ankles.
He wanted to sigh beneath her living, breathing touch. He ached to hold her and whisper kisses across her skin and show her how much he loved her.
The rope fell away.
They reached the surface together to the sounds of Marco shouting from the shore.
“Mr. Smith, bring her here.”
“Did you get bitten?” he whispered.
“Just a few times.” She cupped his face in the dark, her legs sliding soundlessly against his as she stayed afloat.
She was close enough that he could make out her exquisitely fierce features. And the movement in her hair.
Near her temple, a black widow clung with long legs, seemingly tangled in a curly lock.
“Oh, God, there’s one in my hair, isn’t there?” Her question rode on a hesitant breath.
“Hold still.” His chest constricted as he pinched the hard black body, cringing as he flung it away.
“Thank you.”
“I love you.”
“Luke—”
He covered her mouth with his hand. “You’re dead.”
“John Smith!” Marco called again.
“She went underwater, goddammit! If she’s dead, I’ll be extremely displeased.” He whirled, finding the shoe with the phone in it floating nearby. He pushed it toward her while pulling her close and whispering quickly. “This contains a phone and Silvia’s key card. My team is on standby in Orange County. Call them. Help them find you. I’m going to create a diversion.”
Her eyes turned colder than the Greenland ice sheet, flickering with flames of rage. “You can go to hell.”
“On my way. But I need you to do this.” He rattled off a phone number, his nerves raging with frantic energy. “Repeat it back to me.”
Her jaw set. Then she whispered the numbers. “I’m not leaving you again.”
“If we both run, we’re both dead. Go.”
Her gaze, as sharp as a blade, absorbed everything from the restless men on the shore to the dense trees on the other side. She knew he was right, and she hated him for it.
“You can’t fake my death,” she said. “They’ll search the pond for my body.”
“That’ll take time and daylight. Avoid the cameras and get to that breach in the wall before sunrise. I know you can do it.” He kissed her hard and fast. Then he pushed away and started screaming.
“Ow! Fuck. Get them off of me!” As he splashed around in the water, he marked her retreat.
She swam beneath the surface, guiding the shoe along the top as she raced to the far shore.
“Get me out of here!” He continued to thrash, moving away from the floating dome of spiders. “I can’t find her, you son of a bitch! Get your men in here and fix this!”
The spotlight switched on, blinding his eyes. It pointed away from the direction she’d swam. The cover of trees should hide her exit from the water, but he kept flailing, ensuring all attention remained on him.
No one came to his rescue. They stood around like the heartless fucks that they were and waited for him to drag his ass to the shore. He took his time and made a lot of noise, giving her an extra minute to flee.
“You killed her.” He trudged out of the pond and collapsed onto his knees, heaving. “You owe me three million and a lot of goddamn groveling. Take me to my plane.”
“I don’t think so.” Marco prowled forward.
Yeah, he hadn’t thought so, either.
As he pushed to stand, he was so focused on not looking for Vera on the far shore that he missed the butt of a rifle swinging toward his head. He saw it just as it collided with his skull.
Pain ricocheted. The ground rose up, and the world went black.
Luke woke without clothes.
The room was austerely gray. Prosaic. No windows. One door. Fluorescent lights. Concrete walls. And a large steel table, which he was bent over. With his feet on the floor, his arms stretched over his head, his hands were shackled with handcuffs—the standard-issue police variety.
It was a cartel interrogation room.
The cuffs connected to a chain that fastened beneath the table. A rod between his ankles forced them apart and secured to something beneath him. He gave the restraints a testing yank. No give.
His skull pounded from the collision with a rifle, and a burning itch flared on his forearm around two red fang marks. But those were the least of his problems.
He wasn’t alone.
“Oh, good,” he murmured, his voice cracking with dry rot. “The whole family is here.”
Ignoring him, Silvia and her four brothers communed beside a wall of shelves filled with fetish equipment and instruments of torture.
He was no stranger to the array of tools that sadists used to correct, fuck, and break a body. Eight years ago, he’d learned how to endure the full spectrum of pain, purgatory and hell, and every torment in between. He’d barely survived those weeks.
I won’t survive it again.
That disparaging thought was overshadowed by a more pressing one.
Vera.
Was she still alive? Had she made it through the breach in the wall? What if she’d been bitten too many times to recover?
He shook off his worst fears and fantasized about her sprinting through the junkyard in the cloak of darkness, armed with weapons from the armory, reaching a busy street, and waving down a motorist with a gun.
It was an impossible notion. She’d had three years to escape, and God knew she’d tried.
But maybe this time was different. The cartel was distracted with whatever they were planning for him. And she had Silvia’s key, which gave her access to places she hadn’t been able to go before. Places she could hide without cameras. But if she’d gone to the armory, she would’ve been detected. Alarms would’ve sounded.