Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 96167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
The ringing echoed again, chiming a tune he hadn’t heard in a year, waking a phone only one person had the number to.
He vaulted off the bed. “Get out.”
With a racing pulse, he sprinted toward the dresser. Following the muffled bleeps, he dug through piles of weapons, papers, and clothes that scattered the surface. There! He grabbed it.
Unknown number.
His hand shook as he tapped the screen and accepted the call.
Dead air.
No, no, no. He missed it. Hitting the call back button, he rubbed a hand down his face. Come on, come on.
The screen flashed. Call failed.
Vicious rage tore through his body, inflaming his muscles. He spun and found the blonde taking her sweet-ass time dragging on clothes, her gaze on his softening cock.
He grabbed a chambered .45 from the dresser, flicked off the safety, and aimed it at her head, his voice cold and lethal. “Get the fuck out.”
Eyes wide, she snatched her shirt from the floor and shut the door behind her.
He set down the gun and returned to the phone, deafening in its silence and still plugged in since the day he left it on the dresser. Call me back, goddammit.
It was illogical to hope. Camila was gone. Anyone could’ve accidentally dialed him. But wasn’t hope the reason he’d kept the number all this time?
He stared at the blank screen, willing it to come back to life.
A moment later, it lit up. Unknown Number. The cascading ring tone penetrated his chest, stabbing interior scars with excruciating precision.
Tempering his breaths, he answered. “Who is this?”
Silence. Then a soft exhale. “It’s me.”
He stopped breathing, every cell in his body screaming in denial. His countless enemies were insidious in their efforts to destroy him. How hard would it be to procure this number and impersonate her husky voice?
He lifted his arm, zeroing in on the white pockmark on the inside of his wrist. “How old was I when I got my first scar?”
“So paranoid.” A sigh ruffled through the ear piece. “Guess that means you still work for them.”
His jaw set, his tone clipped with suspicion. “How old?”
“I was…uh, six. So you were eight?”
He gripped the edge of the dresser, his rib cage tightening. But any one of their friends or neighbors could’ve been tortured for that information.
Relaxing his grip, he sharpened his voice. “Tell me how it happened.”
“I hate your asshole games.”
Exactly how Camila would’ve responded, and the lack of warmth in the voice was perfectly her. But he couldn’t trust it. “Tell me.”
She growled in frustration. “You slipped in a stream and punctured your arm on a rock.”
That was the story they told their families, an innocent lie to protect a mangy dog. Only Camila knew the truth.
His hope crashed, burning in his stomach. “Wrong answer.”
“Seriously? We swore to take that secret to our graves.” She cleared her throat. “Rambo wasn’t a bad dog. He just didn’t appreciate you taking his bone. You deserved that bite.”
Camila. All the air evacuated his lungs as his mind spun and wrenched apart his painfully constructed acceptance of her death. Convincing himself she was gone had been a grueling effort in self-destruction, reinforced with irreparable distractions. The business, drugs, women, blood… So much fucking blood.
He couldn’t feel his legs beneath the grip of shock, his mouth dry and acidic. “You’re not dead.”
“Nope,” she said, casually. Too detached, even for her. “Did you look for me?”
Every damn day. “Are you safe?” He snagged a pair of jeans, his hands sweating as he shoved them on. “Where are you?”
“I’m safe, but listen, I just escaped a fucked up situation and need to lie low for a while.”
Escaped? Impossible. No one escaped a highly-organized human trafficking ring. Especially not a seventeen-year-old girl. Eighteen now. She’d been in captivity for a fucking year. Did they beat her? Rape her? Take her virginity?
His insides boiled with murderous wrath and overwhelming guilt. They were supposed to be each other’s firsts. She was only sixteen when the cartel came for him, and though he hadn’t seen her since that night, he’d waited for her, holding on to an impossible dream through their secret phone calls. Until she vanished.
“You haven’t asked what happened to me.” Her tone hardened. “You already know, don’t you? How?”
He couldn’t tell her, not until he was certain she couldn’t run from his answer. “I need to know where you are and how you escaped.”
“Who do you work for?” she asked.
“You know I can’t tell you, mi vida.”
“Don’t call me that.” A muffled rustle of fabric followed, conjuring an image of her pressing the phone to her chest. “Dammit, I want to trust you, but you have to give me something. Anything. What happened to the boy whose thoughts completed mine? What did they do to you?”
That boy was dead. How quickly they’d returned to their exhaustingly endless argument, one he refused to feed. “Tell me where you are.”