Ransom (Dead Man's Ink Series Book 3) (7 page)

“Right. So how do we get this guy outta there without Sophia finding out?”

Cade taps a finger on the blank screen of his cell phone, frowning. I’ve been through hell and back with this man. I’ve seen him wear this expression so many times before that it seems almost commonplace now. It shouldn’t have to be, though. He shouldn’t have to be this pissed off and stressed out ninety percent of the time. When we got out of the military, that should have been the end of this kind of worry for the both of us, but instead he lost his sister, was accosted by a mad woman in Columbia, got locked up in Chino for a spell, and now he’s dealing with this bullshit. There has to be an end at some point for the poor bastard.

“I don’t know yet,” he says. “But we’ll figure it out right. We always do.”

I grunt. “Yeah. Because if Hector Ramirez is known for anything, it’s making good on his threats. Alan Romera isn’t the kind of man who can withstand torture for very long, Cade. He isn’t that kind of man at all.”

The sound of something smashing over my shoulder had Cade and up on his feet in an instant. I twist around, my pulse slamming, my body ready to fight, and I see Sophia standing on the other side of the bar, her face white as a sheet. She looks like she’s about to burst into tears.
 

“She fucking heard us,” Cade says softly. “So much for keeping her out of this, man. Jesus Christ.” He leans back in his seat, groaning, but I can’t take my eyes off Sophia. She’s locked onto me, bottom lip trembling, accusation in her eyes, as though I’m the one who’s been keeping secrets from her this whole time. I mean, yes, I wasn’t going to tell her about this particular problem until we had a solution to it, but still. That’s excusable. That would have been for her own good.
 

“Rebel?” she whispers.
 

I can hear her perfectly, which makes it all the more reasonable that she could hear the lulled words I was sharing with Cade. Damn it. So fucking stupid. “Come on, Soph. Come sit down. We need to talk.”

She slowly shakes her head. “I don’t want to. I—I can’t.”

“You need to, sugar.”

Her head shaking grows more violent. “I need some fresh air.” She charges out of the clubhouse, palms crashing into the wood of the door, making a loud slapping noise as she bolts out into the blistering sunlight. I’m up and out of my seat before Cade can even suggest it; the very last thing Sophia needs right now is to freak the fuck out and go speeding off on her motorcycle, trying to find her father. This is exactly what I find her trying to do when I head outside into the courtyard. She’s throwing one leg over the seat of the slick Ducati I bought her with the Irish green gas tank, and her hand is in her pocket, presumably searching for her key.
 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I stand in front of her, placing one leg on either side of the front wheel, my hands on the handlebars of the Ducati. If she wants to go burning out of her, all hot under the collar, then she’s literally going to have to run me over, junk first. I’m hoping she likes my junk far too much to do that.
 

“Move,” she snaps. The fire in her eyes is wild, almost out of control. The blaze has already caught inside her, and is burning hotter and hotter by the second. I have little hope of putting it out.
 

“Sophia, what do you think you’re going to accomplish by racing over there? You’re gonna give Hector exactly what he wants. He’ll cuff you in the basement and let each and every single one of his boys fuck you, and he won’t let your father go. He’ll end up dead, and you’ll end up broken and bleeding. And then
I’ll
end up dead, too.”

“No, you won’t.” Her dark eyes glint with steel, like she’s seeing some other outcome to this course of action.
 

“Of course I will. Do you think I’ll let you leave here without me? Fuck, Sophia, do you think I wouldn’t die trying to break into that place to get you out? Jesus Christ. Did you think I was just gonna sit here on my ass while you went off half cocked to confront one of the most dangerous men in the goddamn country?”

She doesn’t look impressed by my anger. “You can do whatever you like, Jamie. If my father is in trouble,”—pain flashes in her eyes now—“in trouble because of
me
, because I didn’t go home when I should have, then it’s up to me to rectify the situation.” She pulls her keys out of her back pocket finally and fumbles them, trying to get them into the motorcycle’s ignition. I watch her for a second, wrestling with myself. How the fuck am I supposed to talk her down right now? If I were in her position, I’d be feeling exactly the same. Nothing would stop me from going after Hector. Nothing at all. Except, maybe…

“Sophia? Sophia, look at me.” I place my hand over hers, stilling it as she struggles to stop shaking long enough to slide the key home. She looks up at me, furious and scared, and my heart aches.
 

“Sophia. I’m not going to let Hector do anything to hurt your father. Do you trust me?”
 

She blinks. “How can you stop him? What if he’s already hurt him? What then?”

I shake my head. “
Do you trust me, sugar
?”

I know her, and because I do, I know she’s desperately fighting the urge to say that she
did
trust me, but then she found out I was keeping this from her and now she doesn’t know what to think. She knows me, too, though. She knows I wouldn’t have kept information from her unless it was because I wanted to be sure, because I didn’t want to panic her unnecessarily. That knowledge makes her hold her tongue.
 

She says this instead: “What am I supposed to do, then, Jamie? Sit around on my ass and keep my mouth shut until you’ve figured out what our next step should be? Anything could be happening over there in that farmhouse. My father’s not a tough guy, okay? He’s gentle. Soft. He’s a Christian. He’s not cut out for this kind of thing.”

Her words mirror my thoughts. Alan Romera really isn’t cut out for kidnapping and physical abuse. He’s not the kind of man who will be able to withstand extreme violence. Alan’s the kind of man to give his interrogators everything they desire immediately, without question, which is tough because he actually doesn’t possess information or property that Hector wants. His only valuable commodity is his life, and he won’t be in possession of that for very long if we don’t play ball. The weird thing is that Hector hasn’t asked for anything yet. The details of Alan’s kidnapping had to be beaten out of one of Hector’s lackeys, where usually I’d expect him to play his cards right out of the gate. Hector’s hardly patient. He’s hardly the sort of man who sits on an ace when he can lay it out and watch the chaos ensue afterwards, rubbing his hands together in delight as everyone around him falls apart.
 

I sigh, knowing what’s going to come out of my mouth next and not looking forward to it. Sophia isn’t going to like it either, but she’s just going to have to deal with it. “I’ll go over there. Cade and I will go. We’ll talk to him, figure out the lay of the land. It’s our only option.”

Sophia shakes her head, no, even before I’ve finished speaking. “I won’t be left behind. I’ll lose my mind, wondering what the hell is happening to both my father and then you two on top of everything else. I’ll have a goddamn nervous breakdown. I am coming with you, Jamie, whether you like it or not.”

I can see from the look on her face that she means business. She won’t back down. Highly inconvenient, given what that means for us now. She’s going to hate me. “Okay. Fine. You can come.” I rub at the back of my neck, trying not to swear and failing miserably. “Come back inside, though, sugar. We need to talk about it. Figure out what our plan of attack will be.”

My beautiful girl narrows her eyes, swallowing. “Don’t even think about trying to put me off in there, Jamie. I’ve made my mind up.”

“I can see that.”

She stares at me a moment longer and then slowly climbs off the motorcycle. “All right. Let’s do that then. Let’s figure this out, and then let’s get moving. The longer my father’s trapped over there with Ramirez, the worse it’s going to be for him.”

I had so much doubt in my mind when Soph said she wanted to become a Widow Maker. I had no idea if she was going to be strong or fierce enough to handle all the shit we put ourselves though. Ever since she became a prospect, she’s been proving herself braver and more ferocious than many of the oldest club members, though. She’s determined at all times to get her own way, to be involved, to change things somehow.
 

We go back inside and Sophia sits down heavily at the table with Cade, as if her bones are made of solid steel. Cade gives me a knowing look as I go to fetch us all coffee. Neither of them see me fetch the Zolpidem from the drawer underneath the bar—the same sleeping pills Cade used to knock Sophia out on the journey from Julio’s place to New Mexico. Neither of them notice me crushing up three pills and tipping the ground up powder into one of the mugs I’ve filled with dark black liquid. I’m careful to make sure Sophia gets the doctored coffee when I set them down on the table.

“So what do we do? Tell me there’s a way to fix this,” she says, lifting the mug to her mouth and drinking. Cade sends me a look that tells me he knows exactly what I’ve done, and exactly how much trouble I’m going to be in because of it. I scowl at him. Over the next fifteen minutes we talk about ways in which we might be able to rescue Alan, and Sophia starts to go a little cross-eyed. The Zolpidem is potent to say the least.
 

Eventually Soph begins to realize something’s up. She looks at me, eyes glazed, and I see the moment when she understands what’s happening to her. She glances dopily down at the coffee I gave to her, and the betrayal in her eyes is impossible to miss. “You…motherrr…fuckkker,” she slurs.
 

Cade manages to catch her just as her eyes roll back into her head. I’m gonna be in so much shit when she wakes up.

CHAPTER FIVE

REBEL

Cade swings the Humvee around a sharp bend, hugging the turn so that I need to brace myself against the dash. I’m used to his hectic driving. Two tours together in Afghanistan and I’m really fucking grateful he drives like a Nascar boss. He’s saved our asses more than once by putting his foot down when we were drawing heat. The drive into town is only twenty minutes today, less with Cade at the wheel, but I have enough time to send Danny, the Widow Maker’s resident hacker, a text:
 

Me:
Find me a number for Ramirez? Or one of Ramirez’s men. ASAP?

I get a response twelve minutes later:

Danny:
5O5-328-9887. Hope there’s a shot of Jack headed my way for that, man.
 

There’ll be more than a shot of Jack in it for him if this number puts me in touch with Hector. I copy and paste the number into contacts and hit the green call icon, and then I wait. Cade watches me with one eye as I hold the phone to my ear and I wait. Buildings begin to appear, dotted out in the desert on either side of the road. As the phone continues to ring and ring, more houses and a gas station spring up in front of us, signaling that we’re approaching the town limits.
 

“No one picking up?” Cade asks.
 

“No,” I tell him, canceling the call. “Fucking frustrating. Danny never normally gives out bad information.”

“Danny
never
gives out bad information.
Period
. Maybe try again?”
 

“Yeah.” I about to hit redial when the phone lights up in my hand, flashing
UNKNOWN NUMBER
on the screen in time with the shrill tone that fills the car. I look at Cade. “Coincidence?”

He looks doubtful. “No such thing, right?”

“Mmm.” I answer the call, not saying anything, holding the sleek black metal up against my ear as I wait for the person on the other end of the line to say something. At first, it’s so quiet I think maybe the connection didn’t take, but then a loud cracking distorts the line, followed by a series of smaller cracks and crunches, and I know someone is there. Someone who just so happens to be eating something by the sound of things.
 

“I was wondering how long…” a voice says quietly. It’s Hector, of course. Hector, with his thick accent, eating his godforsaken sugared almonds, sounding as cool and collected as ever. I fucking
despise
the man.
 

I play along. “How long
what
?”

“How long it would take you to call. Or show up. Or do
something
, anyway. Alfonso told me he had a run in with one of your boys. Sounded like your delightful vice president. And in light of the information Mr. Preston obtained, I assumed you’d be in touch sooner rather than later.”

Hector’s a well-educated man. My guess is he was schooled in America. Probably went to an expensive, exclusive college, where he studied economics or business. No doubt his parents, whoever they might be, wanted him to relocate permanently stateside and make a new life for himself. Become something. Accomplish all that they couldn’t in Mexico. Of course, I could be wrong. He could have simply watched a lot of television and learned English that way, or maybe his parents were criminals too and they taught him everything he knows, but listening to him speak now I get the distinct impression that I could easily have studied alongside him at MIT. There’s something really intimate about talking on the phone with him. Like he’s actually here, sitting with me, whispering into my ear, and it’s creeping me the fuck out. My skin is literally crawling.
 

“Let’s meet,” I say. “Somewhere public. Let’s just hash this shit out once and for all, shall we?”

“Hmm, well…” Ramirez ponders this silently. “I have a full schedule today, Jamie. I’d be happy to host you at my rustic, charming farmhouse, though. If you have the time.”

“Oh, come on now, Hector. I’m not that stupid. If I walk through your front door, I won’t be walking out again. You and I both know that.” We’ve had someone watching his place night and day ever since he showed up here in New Mexico, and there are never any less than twenty armed men moving and rotating through his property. If I went on over there, gave a polite knock on the front door and asked to come on in, I’d be dead within a minute.