Legal Heirs - Box Set Edition: Books 5-8 (Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles) (34 page)

He clapped his hand over her mouth then, and the look in his eyes was blank and eerily cold.

“No wonder she wants you dead. You’re insane,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Now, the men in the office are not even going to look at you or me, they do not want to know my business. They know who I am, and they value their lives enough to be afraid. You should be afraid too, Charlotte, and I’m no one’s brother.”

*

Finn knew immediately that Charlotte was truly gone. She hadn’t just gone out for a walk or a swim, she’d been taken. There was a faint smell of aviation fuel in the hotel room when he returned from his run on the beach, and it made his blood run cold. Whoever had taken Charlotte was a pilot, most likely, and the Ghost, Christopher Tremont, had been a naval aviator. Charlotte’s cell phone was still charging on the bathroom counter, so there would be no tracking her location. Her purse was on the chaise lounge by the bed, and nothing in the room was out of place. Whatever happened had happened fast, he imagined, and thank God, there were no signs of blood. He wanted to rage, he wanted to put his fist through a wall; he wanted to kill the Ghost with his bare hands. Mostly, he wanted Charlotte and the baby unharmed. He forced his thoughts away from all the terrible scenarios that ran through his mind, atrocities he had witnessed at the hands of the Ghost. He flipped the switch in his brain that changed him from man to assassin. He would find her, he would bring her back, and he would put a bullet in the head of the man who had dared to touch his wife, his love.

“Bly, she’s missing.” Finn’s voice was full of barely contained fury as he spoke into the phone. “I’m looking at security tapes in the private offices at Las Ventanas, I need you to send your jet, ASAP.”

“What are you talking about, Finn? What do you mean, she’s missing—Charlotte’s gone? She’s pregnant, for God’s sake…. Never mind, I’ll be there in an hour with Billy Kipling and West. Meet us at the small airport near the beach. I’ll have West and Billy put out feelers on the intel radar.”

“Right, bring them. We might need an army—it’s going to get bad, no doubt. Tell West this is Lizzie’s doing. Most likely it won’t turn out well,” Finn said. He hung up and went back to the room to get his SAT phone. He would call in some favors from his fellow operatives; he had a bad feeling that he needed an arsenal as well as an army. If the Ghost did have Charlotte, then he was probably working for the top brass of all Mexican cartels. That would mean his wife, Lizzie, wanted information from Charlotte about Beau and Skyler, the children she had abandoned. They would torture, then kill Charlotte, there was absolutely no question about that. And they were holding her in Mexico, on their own turf, a definite home court advantage.

Bly must have told his pilot and copilot not to worry how much fuel the jet burned, just push it up to the clacker and
GO
. The jet touched down on the tarmac in Cabo, barely rolled to a stop, and Finn was there, climbing the stairs to the cabin, tossing duffel bags filled with weapons on board.

“Juarez,” he said. “Let’s go, hit it. I know who has her. A man who has reason to hate me—we’ve had dealings on the battlefield, in a manner of speaking. Who knows how these things come to be, but he must be working for Lizzie. All my eyes in Mexico say a woman is behind this. But why would he hold Charlotte in a border town? That’s not how the cartels work, they like deep cover, low visibility; it doesn’t make sense.”

The jet lifted off and made a steep climb until it reached cruising altitude, and Finn could tell by the roar of the engines, and a series of sudden banks and turns, that the controls weren’t on autopilot. The pilot was in control, and he was flying fast and hard. He knew they were on a mission.

“No, it’s not Lizzie,” West said. He was sitting back in his seat with an array of handguns spread out in front of him. “Its Evangeline’s crazy sister, Gabrielle. Bennet Sommerfeld was her son, and in her mind Alex is the reason Bennet is dead. Billy Kipling stayed behind—he picked up your mother and daughter, Finn. They’re safe with Atticus at Bly’s estate. So all’s well on the home front, at least.”

“My aunt is a lunatic, as crazy as her son was,” Bly cut in, running a hand through his hair. Finn’s rage had turned to a calculating calmness, but Bly’s fury was pure agitation. “She called from El Paso just after I talked to you, Finn. She used a prepaid cell phone, so there’s no tracing the call. She said I’d be given the specifics when she’s ready. She also gave me two choices: Bring Atticus to her, so Charlotte and I can both watch him die, or come alone and stand witness while Charlotte is tortured to death. You’re right, she’s hired a man known as the Ghost. West has heard of him, he’s… efficient at killing with a major amount of pain.” Bly couldn’t stop his voice from wavering. He thought he had known fear before, but it was clear he hadn’t until now.

West could barely stand to look at Bly or Finn, there was such a mixture of dread and hatred between them. Their lives were so tied to Charlotte; she was the sun, and they simply revolved around her, it was as unchangeable as that. Neither one of them could break free of their love for her, and neither one of them wanted to.

“Charlotte is nowhere near safe,” West said. “Fuck, I’m sorry, but the Ghost, he’s…”

“He’s her brother,” Finn said bluntly, looking from Bly to West and back again. “The Ghost is Charlotte’s brother, which also means he’s Charles Tremont’s supposedly deceased son, Christopher. Seems to me he was just MIA and the government wrongly assumed he was dead.”

The duffel bags Finn brought with him lay in the aisle, and he knelt down and unzipped one while Bly and West were still muttering, “What the fuck?” and trying to comprehend what he’d told them about the Ghost.

“Are you fucking serious? How the hell can you be sure he’s Charlotte’s brother? Fuck,” West said, catching the rifle Finn tossed to him. “M4A1, who needs an army with an arsenal like this? For that matter, who needs a woman? Handling a good assault rifle is almost better than sex.”

“I know because I was face to face with him,” Finn said, as he continued to lay out an assortment of weapons on the jet’s plush carpeting. “Charles Tremont has shown me dozens of pictures of his son. It’s the same man, no doubt about it—same sapphire blue eyes, exactly like Tremont, and Charlotte, and Atticus. Take my word for it, he’s Charlotte’s brother, and he’s about to die for real this time. There’s no pity in my heart for this man. He has my wife, and she’s six months pregnant. I hope you’re not too fond of your aunt, Bly, because she dies, too. I’m waiving my morals as far as killing women this one time in particular. No mercy will be shown whatsoever. ” 

“No problem,” Bly said, taking the handgun and rifle West handed him. “I’ll take care of Gabrielle myself. I suppose you pissed the Ghost off with that winning personality of yours, Finn. He’d probably have come after Charlotte anyway to settle some vendetta against you, isn’t that how it works in the assassins’ moral code book? Murder mine before I murder yours?”

Finn was on his feet and his fist would have landed squarely on Bly’s jaw if West hadn’t stopped him. Bly pushed West aside and told him to save his strength for a true adversary and not to waste his energy on a thieving murderer like Finn Hale.

“What the fuck would you know about morality, Bly? You don’t understand shit about respecting what’s mine or what’s yours. Is this about how I stole your son? Are you going to bore us all to tears with that same sad argument? Fuck, you are repetitive. That boy has been calling me Daddy since the day he could say the word, and his mother taught him to. She fucking chose me, she left your sorry ass and never looked back. When will you accept that?” Finn and Bly were standing face to face, and whether by chance, or by the pilots’ choice, the jet banked sharply and they fell into their seats.

“Oh, she never looked back? Did you take a few too many blows to the head when you were off saving the world? It hasn’t been that long since she found her way back to my bed, if you recall,” Bly said, lunging out of his seat toward Finn so that the copilot had to leave the cockpit and help West drag them apart.

“Shut the fuck up, both of you!” West yelled. “Stop this fucking pissing contest and think about the woman you can’t live without. If you kill each other, who’s going to save her, you stupid, stubborn assholes? This shit has gone on and on, and neither one of you is willing to give her up. As much as I like Charlotte, and I do sincerely like her, she has
never
made a decisive choice between the two of you. If she had, it would have been over a long time ago. Now, both of you, man the fuck up. You can either share her, leave her, or get along with one another. I really wish the three of you would crawl into bed together and get it the fuck out of your systems. Sorry to be the one to break the bad news, but your love story is severely fucked up. Time to un-fuck it,” West said, and Finn and Bly just stared at him.

*

Charlotte talked nonstop to Christopher as they drove away from the ramshackle airstrip. She called him by name, determined to ingratiate herself to him, to break through his hard shell. They travelled over rutted dirt roads, through improvised housing projects. She stared out the window of the Jeep at the poorest living conditions she had ever seen. And that was saying a lot, considering she had lived in some pretty derelict foster homes growing up in Mississippi. It brought tears to her eyes, as they passed shacks fashioned from pieces of tin, newspaper, and cardboard. Women, both the very young and the very old, looked up as the Jeep drove past, and the look in their eyes was sadly similar. Charlotte could almost see their chests heave in a collective sigh as they watched her pass them by. They were beaten down by circumstances they had no hope of escaping, and everything about them was resolved to defeat. Their children and babies were skinny, filthy, and mostly naked, and Charlotte sobbed openly hearing the tiny voices squealing with what might have been delight, but was most likely pain and hunger.

“Why are you doing this? Why do you want to hurt me and my baby? Answer me, you soulless bastard! Hurry up and get it over with then, if that’s how it’s meant to be. Kill me and dump my body out right here, do it now in this Godforsaken place. This looks like a good place to die.” He didn’t answer her, although she was sure he might have winced just the slightest bit. “What’s the deal with you? Has my husband wronged you in some way, is that it? He’s a more bloodthirsty killing machine than you are? Fucking testosterone, talk about substance abuse, that shit should be outlawed. Maybe you want to be Cain, is that it? The first murderer the world ever knew, he killed his brother, so you’ll kill your sister? Do you understand that you would be welcomed home joyously by the family who thought you were dead?” she said. He’d left the tape off her mouth, but he had re-taped her hands. If not for that, she would have slapped him. She really wanted to beat him hard with her fists, just knock some sense
into
him while she knocked the living shit
out
of him. “This baby is your nephew, my older son has your eyes, our eyes; it’s not a coincidence….”

He held up the roll of tape as a warning and drove faster, refusing to look her in the eye. She was quiet, thinking, and then trying not to think as grim scenarios played out in her head. They left the paltry suburbs and stopped not long afterward behind a decaying warehouse on some obscure side street of Juarez. The sun was going down over the smog-shrouded city, a dangerous city indeed, Cuidad Juarez. Murderers walked the streets, the police turned a blind eye, the cartels were king, and law and order had fled in their wake. Dogs barked, men laughed, and yelled, and spat obscenities in Spanish. A woman shrieked, somewhere not too far away. Lonely, scary sounds, and inside the warehouse, Charlotte thought,
lonely, scary place
.

It was an old warehouse, about the size of an ordinary cattle barn, empty and hot and musty smelling. The air swirled with dust motes when the door was opened and closed behind them. Just the smallest gust of hot, dry wind that slithered its way in from the Chihuahua Desert and the arid foothills beyond. At least the place didn’t stink, just smelled of leather, Charlotte realized, and the waxes and oils used for tanning the hides of cows or goats or pigs.

In a corner a single mattress lay on the floor, still wrapped in plastic, new and clean. The sight of it sent a shiver of horror through Charlotte and she ran toward a grimy sink, bent her head over it, and vomited. The Ghost stood behind her, muttering, cursing in both English and Spanish, his words running together. He cut her hands lose and turned on the single spigot so that the water flowed, then walked away from her. She had begun to cry and her tears tore through her in great gulping sobs. She rested her forearms on the basin, splashed her face, and rinsed her mouth with the rust tinged water.

Just get it over with and make it quick
, she thought.
Slit my throat, or better yet, put a bullet between my eyes. I hate knives! No hope anyway, just don’t touch me, don’t… rape me, I AM YOUR SISTER!

“I need a bath,” she said, her voice hoarse and barely more than a whisper. “I need a toothbrush, and maybe a cracker or a crust of bread for this nausea. A little privacy wouldn’t hurt either, you know. I’m a dead woman, right? Don’t I get a last wish or two,
beloved brother
?”

He held the roll of tape up for her to see and she made a little gesture as if she were locking her lips and throwing away the key.

He fished a white handkerchief from the pocket of his cargo pants, held it under the running water, and handed it to her. Her face was burning hot, and she held the wet cloth against her forehead, then walked toward the mattress. As she looked down at it, she began to cry silently. Fat tears spilled down her cheeks and fell onto the plastic wrapping.