“Sure,” I replied, rolling my eyes in the dark.
As all three of us reached the closed door, the smile on her face morphed into an arrogant sneer. “The men in my family have always lacked patience for anything. They want everything now, now, now. But I told them, ‘bide your time and watch Carrera. He’s not as inhuman as you think. Eventually, we’ll find his weakness. When we do, take it. Carrera will come to us.’ You’re his weakness, Eden. We women, we’re powerful creatures. In our lifetime, there will always be one man who will die for us.” She stared at me and ran a painted red nail down my tangled hair. “No man is immune to our power—even the almighty El Muerte.”
“I told you, Valentin Carrera—”
“Congratulations on being the woman who brought down the giant.” Opening the door, each Muñoz sibling grabbed one of my arms and faced me forward. With a shove from each of them, I didn’t even have a chance to touch the first few steps before I tumbled head first.
My toes barely grazed the tip of the fifth or sixth stair as I fell down the entire flight, darkness and light intermingling with intolerable pain. After what seemed like a never-ending fall, my broken body hit the concrete floor with a sickening thud as they slammed the door.
“Help…” It was all I could manage as the wet cough overtook me again, my mouth filling up with so much blood, I had to turn my head so as not to choke.
I have to get out of here or I’m going to die.
Crying out with every move, I dragged myself into a kneeling position, every pull of breath into my lungs, feeling like a hundred daggers stabbing me at once. As I crawled toward the center of the room, a voice broke the ragged silence.
“Eden…”
It took every concerted effort I had to lift my head and focus. The moment I did, the pain in my chest and limbs dulled compared to the searing, ripping apart of my heart.
“You,” I whispered, wishing Manuel Muñoz had killed me when he had the chance.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Valentin
After pacing for twenty minutes in an alley behind the district attorney’s office in Houston, my phone finally rang. “Harcourt, tell me you have it.”
“I can do better than that,” he replied, his voice anxious and short.
I rolled my shoulders in a futile attempt at releasing the knot of tension in my back. “I don’t have time for this, Brody. I’ve been trying to find this house myself all fucking day, but according to everything I’ve researched, the damn thing doesn’t exist.” Glancing at my watch, I cursed the late hour. “Give me Eden’s location and get the hell off the phone.”
From five-hundred feet in front of me, the door swung open to a gray BMW. Black slacks emerged, followed by a crisp white shirt, a red power tie, and a pressed black suit jacket. A self-satisfied smirk planted across his face as he brushed back his annoying mop of dark blond hair. “How about I take you there myself?”
Gritting my teeth, I stomped past him. “How about you don’t?”
Slamming his door, Brody shed his suit jacket as he raced to catch up with me. “You need me, Carrera. I know where she is, and I need you. I can’t go in there alone. I’ll never make it out.”
“You’ve got that right.”
“Look,” he said, placing a hand on my shoulder and stopping our movement. “She doesn’t want me, man. I don’t know what you’ve got going on with Cherry, but it’s obvious you care about her. I may not like you, but that’s enough for me. I just want her safe.”
“She’s mine.” After his proclamation, I had no idea why I felt the need to stake my claim like a goddamn caveman, but the words just slipped out.
“Fine, she’s yours. Can we go get her now?”
I narrowed my eyes, suspicious of his motives. “If you have no interest in her, why are you so dead set on walking into a massacre? You do understand this isn’t the movies, right? These men are real. They have real guns with real bullets and a lot of people will die. I can’t guarantee you won’t be one of them. My only concern will be Eden.”
Much to my surprise, he didn’t flinch. “You think I haven’t talked to Manuel Muñoz one-on-one, Carrera? I know exactly what kind of sick fuck he is. Let’s just say, I’m hoping if I do this, you’ll owe me one.”
“How so?”
“If Muñoz makes it out of there, and I don’t, I need you to promise me something.”
“I don’t make promises, Harcourt.”
He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I’ll protect Eden with my life, no matter what. I’ll even accept that she’s yours, but you have to promise me, if something happens to me, you’ll make sure nothing happens to my sister.”
“No way.”
“Please, Val,” he begged, his eyes reddening with remnants of hidden fear. “She’s an innocent. Her name is Leighton Harcourt. She’s a senior at Texas State, and that bastard threatened to gut her like a fish.”
“Jefe, my bartender is an innocent. When I went back out, her car was gone. If they have her, you know what will happen.”
“It’s a shame he had to rip that sexy, little black number to shreds when he gutted her.”
Two separate moments in time collided with two different conversations from two different men as Brody Harcourt stood in front of me begging for his sister’s life. Eden’s face flashed before my eyes, and I knew I couldn’t deny him or cause him the same fear I held in my heart.
Turning around, I motioned for Mateo. “Drive fast.”
“Are you sure this is it?” Rubbing my palm across my chin, I stared out the window at the modest half-brick, run-down house that sat in the middle of fifteen acres off Highway 90 and Lake Houston Parkway. I had my doubts Brody had tracked the correct address.
“Carrera, did you know I’d been working behind your back this whole time?”
The reminder pissed me off to the point of snapping his neck. “No,” I bit out.
“My point exactly. I find out shit because people underestimate me. I made a call to the Texas Housing Agency. It seems that only structures with physical house numbers show up in a search.” He held up his phone for emphasis. “No building permit, no house number. It doesn’t actually exist per the state of Texas.”
“So, how did you find it?”
Waving the gun Mateo gave him in his other hand, Brody flashed a wide smile. “Let’s go get your girl.”
“I don’t—”
“Jefe!” Mateo broke in, wiping a layer of sweat off his brow. “Are we going to sit here debating how the gringo charmed some virgin receptionist in the attorney general’s office, or are we going to go kick some Muñoz ass?”
Glancing at them both, I gave Mateo a quick nod, and we made our way to the door. No surprise, it was locked.
Mateo gestured toward the back while nodding to Brody. “We’ll go around to the back and see if there’s a rear entrance. You head off to the side and see if—” A loud crack broke our whispers as his side erupted in a mushroom of red. With his face twisted in pain, he waved his gun around the corner of the house. “Go! Jesus, go, now!”