Sloane Cross, a friend of both Vivian and Dot, and T.J.’s former bounty-hunting partner. After taking a bullet that nearly ended her life during the raid on the Ybarra ranch, Sloane had been forced to retire out of the business. She now assisted Cherry in running the bed and breakfast. But how much was Sloane actually helping Cherry? Vivian was aware of Sloane’s frequent calls from T.J., of which neither knew Vivian knew about.

  “Sloane has always been too bullheaded to be waylaid by setbacks,” Vivian said.

  Angela handed over a towel and took the dirty clothes from Vivian. “She is not the same woman as before. Shower and dress. We will talk more after.”

  Vivian clutched the towel to her half-naked body and watched Angela close the door to the bedroom. “Cousin … Angela.”

  The elder Ybarra woman hesitated, then stepped back into the room. She said nothing.

  “You’ve shot and killed a man,” Vivian said.

  Angela tilted her head and studied her. “You wonder if these feelings you experience will ever go away?”

  “Yes.”

  After a split second, Angela returned, draped her clothes over an elbow, then cradled Vivian’s face with her calloused hands. “Nire lehengusu sendo eta ederra.”

  Vivian closed her eyes and dipped her chin. The Basque language always sounded musical to her ear.

  “You will experience many emotions; fear and rage will be some of them. Do not let what these vile men tried to do to you steal your soul. You are bred of sterner stuff, enabling you to cope with the evils of this world.”

  Vivian looked up at her cousin. “I will have to do it again. Won’t I?”

  “By partnering with Dorothy, you have opened Pandora’s box.” Angela smoothed back Vivian’s hair like a mother would her daughter. “Your parents would be proud of you. Your grandparents more so.”

  Tears welled in Vivian’s eyes. She had been long orphaned in this world and had built a wall to keep her shored up. But she still missed them. Her mother’s and grandmother’s families had scattered to the four corners. All Vivian had left in her world was Angela and Dot. She could never leave Idaho. Never leave them.

  She slipped into Angela’s embrace and breathed in the musky odor of horses and goats, and mountains. This was her safe place.

  “Shower. It will make you feel much better.” Angela released Vivian.

  When her cousin had left her alone in the room, Vivian released the pent-up tension in her body in a long exhale.

  Angela was right. A shower would do wonders.

  Along with the knowledge that Dot was on her way.

  *

  Vivian was camped out on the porch, watching the goats and the handful of sheep graze the yard. Angela had resumed the practice her father had employed when he did not have time to trim the grass and cut back the weeds. Chickens roamed between the herds, scratching at the exposed earth and clearing out the unwanted pests.

  There was a soothing effect watching the animals wander about, which freed Vivian from dwelling on the actions from the night before.

  Angela, along with Ashley and Bethany, were in the garden harvesting more of the summer bounty to prepare for preservation. Vivian, left to her own devices, just enjoyed being back on the ranch.

  The pack of dogs stirred to life when Cassius’s SUV rolled into the yard. Vivian stood from the deck chair and, barefooted, moved to the edge of the porch. Cassius slid from the cab, turned back to grab something out, and then headed in her direction.

  “How is Loren?” she asked as he mounted the bottom step.

  “Plying his verbal skills on Millie and some of the other locals. Don’t think anyone is buying it.” Cassius held out Vivian’s Glock, grip first. “You better hold on to this.”

  She stared at the black pebbled grip, and kept her hands firmly pressed to her sides.

  Cassius drew the gun back to himself. “Vivian?”

  “I don’t think I could shoot that thing again if I wanted to.”

  “Even if there was another threat to you?” He nodded his head toward the three in the garden. “To them? Or Dot?”

  “You and I both know Dot would never be in a situation where she’d need protection from the likes of me.”

  “True. Especially with Roman as her partner.” Cassius released the clip from the butt and ejected the chambered bullet. “I understand your struggle after last night’s attack.” He set the empty firearm on the porch rail and placed the clip beside it. “And I know it’s going to be some time before you come to grips with it.”

  “I will never come to grips with it. I went into practicing law, not to enforce it. The hunting, shooting, war stuff, that’s all Dot. Angela, too, to an extent. It’s not me.”

  “No one said you had to be Dot. Hell, from my short history with her, I know damn well Dot doesn’t want you to be like her. But she’s never going to feel any relief if she’s always worried about your safety. Face it, you’ve been caught up in her orbit, which means you’re going to be a target.”

  Vivian sighed and unclenched her fists. She barely knew this man, and he spoke to her as if he’d known her for years.

  “Boise PD let me know that they have your phone and personal belongings in custody. When I get back, I’ll have them release those to me.”

  “Did they tell you if they were able to trace Hal’s call to me?”

  He shook his head. “It was a burner phone.” A pensive expression appeared. “I still can’t figure out how those men got into the building.” Something seemed to cross his mind as his features slipped into a scowl.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing.” He checked his watch. “I’m gonna head back to the B and B and catch some shut-eye. If T.J. and Dot get here sooner than I anticipate, give me a call. If trouble pops up …” He gave her a slow smile. “You know what to do.”

  Vivian crossed her arms and let herself smile. “I’ll let Angela handle it.”

  “Oh, I know she will.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Caleb passed in and out of consciousness. He knew he’d sustained a significant concussion when his head had been beaten against the wall. He recognized the signs and symptoms. Had suffered through it multiple times before. One of the times when he came to, he threw up, repeatedly. His prison stank of vomit, piss, and shit.

  This was worse than a normal concussion. He feared the tumor had burst. With no medical intervention he wouldn’t survive this go-around.

  Mina had gone silent. The only way he knew she was still alive was by the clinking of her chains. Her caterwauling and pleading ended hours ago. How long, Caleb wasn’t sure. A new kind of nausea took hold of him when he thought about the nightmare she would be subjected to when her captors came back for her. He understood all too well why she’d begged him to kill her. Mina knew what was coming too.

  The rain had stopped while he was passed out. Time fluxed and twined until he no longer knew what day it was. While in the Corps, he could gauge the passing of time by how long his facial hair had grown. That was no longer the case after he’d grown the scraggly beard to help hide most of the scarring on his face.

  Caleb managed to pull himself into a corner and used the walls to support his battered body, away from the makeshift shitter inches from him. He’d gotten only as far as the chain’s length.

  Above him, a prick of light came through the tiny hole. It had to be daytime if the brightness was an indicator.

  Something rattled and echoed through the interior. Too far away to be Mina moving about.

  Caleb tilted his head back and listened.

  The noise came again and was prolonged. This time Mina stirred.

  Her terrified whimper gutted Caleb.

  “Mina, be strong,” he said in Dari, low enough for her to hear but not be heard elsewhere.

  She began sobbing.

  The loud squeal of hinges reverberated in his battered brain. He cringed and covered his ears. The squealing stopped with a thud of something heavy hitting wood. Light flooded the building, and blinded Caleb.

  “Fuck.”

  The clap of shoes echoed against hard flooring. Caleb waited until the owners of said shoes stopped close to his prison. His eyes finally adjusted to the bright light, and he made out the metal bars encasing the upper area of the stall, blocking his whole view.

  Mina shrieked.

  “Leave her alone,” Caleb barked, regretting it as the sound of his voice slammed into his bruised brain.

  One of the men rotated toward the stall. Through the blurry haze coating his eyesight, Caleb made out the man’s features. A slick smile crossed the man’s face. If Caleb could still vomit, he would.

  “Hassin. Should have known Revach would send his right-hand man to take care of the cleanup.” Caleb tried to sit up better. “You like raping innocent children too?”

  “Ahh, the consummate hero,” he said as he shifted to stand before the metal rails. “Only half a man.” He sniffed.

  “I’m more of a man than you fuckers who steal, rape, and traffic children.”

  Hassin tsked. “I don’t degrade myself to that level.”

  “No, you just feed into the system. That makes you worse.”

  “It makes me rich.”

  If Caleb had the bodily fluids to do so, he’d spit on the man.

  Hassin leaned closer to the bars. “They tell me that some associates of yours have intervened and disrupted the supply chain. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, now, would you?”

  “I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about. I have no associates.”

  “None? Not even say a helicopter pilot woman and her beefy man? No associates of yours?”

  Caleb’s head hurt from trying to understand what Hassin was talking about. “Fuck off.”

  Hassin’s smirk grew, and he beckoned to the others. Another man stepped into Caleb’s sight, hauling Mina into view.

  Between the matted black hair was a bloodied and battered face with wide eyes filled with so much terror. She was so painfully young. Not a child, but not a fully grown woman. She was certainly older than they wanted, and it cost her father his life in the process.

  Hassin played with a lock of her dirty hair. “Once she’s cleaned up and had a change of clothes, she’ll make a beautiful bride.” He released her hair and grabbed at her childish breasts, earning a shriek from Mina.

  “I’ll fucking gut you,” Caleb yelled.

  “That will not be possible if you’re dead.” Hassin gestured for his people to leave with Mina.

  Mina began shrieking in Dari, her words so garbled by her screams Caleb couldn’t tell what she was saying but knew by her fear what she was trying to say.

  She would rather die than endure what was to come.

  “Don’t worry. Your time will come.”

  Caleb glared. “Not before I take the whole lot of you down with me.”

  Hassin smiled again and left.

  Caleb listened to the echo of his fading footsteps. Moments later, the door swung shut on the rusty hinges then locked. Darkness once again claimed him.

  Helpless to save Mina. Broken and battered. Left half a man in a stall like a beatdown nag waiting for slaughter. He’d never felt this degraded even after he’d come to in the hospital and realized he was forever altered and his men forever gone from this world.

  They’d left him here to succumb to his own demons. A bullet to the brain was too merciful a way for him to die.

  His humiliation abated into an exhaustion so strong it dragged on his shoulders. Unable to stop the inevitable, Caleb gave in to the blackness as his injured and diseased brain pulled him into oblivion.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Dot was bowled over by fifty pounds of excited child the second she walked through the front door of the Ybarra ancestorial home. She wrapped Bethany in a tight hug and squeezed her until the girl squealed in laughter.

  Damn, it was good to hold the girl and know she was safe. Having Bethany’s gangly arms coiled around her neck carrying an ocean’s worth of trust in her grounded Dot. She could bury the echoes of those five girls’ terror-filled screams and focus on the here and now.

  Bethany, and her mother, Ashley, were the reasons Dot had chosen to uproot her life on the ranch and join T.J.

  Dot leaned her head back and looked the girl in the face. The wide eyes with a girlish sparkle and the sweet cherub face replaced the memory of those girls’ gaunt and dirty visages.

  “Amona said you were coming. I didn’t believe her until I saw you,” Bethany said when Dot set her down.

  T.J. squeezed past the door into the house behind them. “What am I, chopped liver?”

  Bethany giggled and jumped into his arms, wrapping her tiny ones around his thick neck and giving him a raspberry on his bearded cheek. T.J. was the only man Bethany trusted and would allow to touch her. She knew he’d moved heaven and hell to find her not once but twice in her life. It didn’t hurt any that he looked nothing like the men who had terrorized or kidnapped her in the past.

  For his part, T.J. had never been one to want to be around children except for his own nieces and nephews. He saw them so rarely, he’d come to look at Bethany as one of them. She had filled that hole in his heart. The youngster garnered not one, not two, but three overprotective watchdogs in her short lifetime, the first being her own mother.

  Dot spotted Ama standing by a sturdy desk Angela used for business purposes. She was on the phone.

  Vivian rose from her reclining position on the sofa in front of the fireplace. Ama had outfitted her cousin in some of Dot’s more comfortable, looser-fitting clothing. Despite the size difference, they were still a snug fit on Vivian’s curvier form and made the normally polished and professionally attired Vivian look like an overstressed mother.

  Leaving the chatterbox twins in the doorway, Dot strode across the floor and took hold of her cousin’s shoulders. “I should have never left you alone.”

  “No one could have fathomed any of this would happen. You’re here now. Everyone is safe. Stop beating yourself up over it.”

  “You didn’t sign up for this life. You have no business being dragged into it.”

  “Neither did you.” Vivian looked past Dot to T.J., who had moved closer to them. “Neither of you did. If we’re going to lay blame on anyone, it goes back to Hal and Caleb.”

  “No.” T.J.’s curt reply rumbled through the open space of the living area. “That blame lies solely on the shoulders of the ABCs who decided to recruit people into this fucking dirty business.”

  “Language!” Bethany chirped.

  “Go find me a cookie or whatever your mother has made,” he said, placing the girl on the floor.

  Bethany held out her hand, palm up, and put on the sassiest expression Dot had ever seen from the child. T.J. scowled.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You owe a dollar for the swear can,” Bethany said.

  Dot had to squelch a snort before she earned a spot in the frying pan with T.J.

  “Since when?” he demanded.

  “Since Amona told me you were coming and Mommy started worrying about your potty mouth. Now pay up.”

  Dot lost it. Oh, how she needed this. Vivian joined her laughter with a snort.

  T.J. pointed a damning finger at Dot as he reached into the side pocket of his pants to pull out his cash. “You’re being put on notice too.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

  T.J. forked over the required dollar, and Bethany skipped over to the kitchen where there was an old coffee can with a white sheet of paper stating Swear Can $1.00 scrawled in childish handwriting taped to it.

  God, she missed being here.

  Dot felt her mother touch her shoulder and turned. “Ama, we will not allow a repeat of before to happen here.”

  “Alaba, there will be no worrying of such things. We are well prepared.” Angela caressed Dot’s cheek then gave it a loving pat. “Now clean up. You stink of aviation fuel and dirty men.”

  “I’ll take the aviation fuel over the dirty old men smell any day,” T.J. said as he headed for the hallway.

  “Fuck you,” she snapped at his backside.

  “Swear can!” Bethany singsonged.

  Vivian snickered. “Looks like the favored aunt is doomed to the same fate as big ole bounty hunter.”

  Dot dug out a dollar and stomped over to the counter, where Bethany beamed up at her. “Traitor,” she said.

  “Potty mouth,” Bethany shot back.

  *

  Dot had finished showering and dressed in her childhood bedroom. The door opened and T.J., wearing only a towel around his midsection, and his hair and beard glistening with beads of water, slipped inside.

  “How did you get in here without being spotted?” she asked.

  “They’re all outside.”

  “You could have dressed in the bathroom,” she said, reaching back to pull her damp hair into a braid.

  “Yeah, about that.” He closed the door and moved farther into the room. “I need to talk to you about something in private.”

  “Now you’re needing to have a private conversation? We just did a long-ass drive up here from Boise in private.”

  “You were sleeping. And when we left Las Vegas, you were flying, not the best time to tell you things.”

  She flung the finished braid over her shoulder. “Then what is it?”

  “Eriksson might come searching for us. I cut off his only means of communication back in Vegas.”

  Dot shrugged. “Good riddance.”

  The towel slipped, baring more of T.J. He readjusted it. “Hang on here. You’re good with this? Even if it means you don’t have access to Follman and shutting down his little … whatever the hell trafficking deal he’s doing?”

  “Oh, I’m not through with Follman and his lackeys.” She closed the gap between them. “In fact, I fully expect Follman to come looking for us.”

  “Eriksson warned me that was in the works.”

  “So, we beat him to the punch. Get dressed. We’ve got work to do.” She moved past T.J. to the door.

 

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