Prisoner of Night (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #16.5)(19)

So much unsaid. So many amends that would never be made.

Why did people always learn things about themselves too late, he thought.





11




THE ATV COVERED THE increasingly rugged, but no less green, topography with the gait of a bucking bronco and the demureness of Sid Vicious.

As Ahmare held on to a pair of grips by the seat—because the other option was Duran’s body—she was bounced around, ass popping up and landing just off-center so many times she developed a core competency in median relocation. Worse, the scream of the engine was doing her nut in. The high-pitched, eardrum-rattling whine was too close in pitch to the anxiety that was vibrating through her body and her brain, the adrenaline load way over her limit.

She couldn’t handle one more second of delay. And yet here she was, close to dawn, with nothing but hours and hours of inactivity ahead of her while her brother was in Chalen’s custody. It was like a nightmare where you were trying to get home but obstacle after obstacle tripped you up: cars that broke down, blocked roads, missteps of direction followed by locked doors with keys that didn’t work.

When her brother hadn’t come back at dawn three nights ago, and then hadn’t answered his cell phone, posted anything on social media, or showed up by the following midnight, Ahmare had gone into his room in the apartment they shared and pulled open the bottom drawer of his dresser. There, in among his second-favorite concert T-shirts, semi-worn-out jeans, and that flannel button-down that was his go-to starting in September, was a Mead brand business envelope sealed and labeled in his messy handwriting.

“In Case of Emergency.”

About nine months before, just as he’d been leaving for the night, he’d told her he wanted to make sure she always knew where he was. She’d asked him what he thought cell phones were for, but Ahlan had gotten serious, for once, and told her about the envelope and where it was. She hadn’t thought anything further about it.

That was how she’d gotten in touch with Chalen. She’d called the ten-digit, out-of-state number, and after some routing, found herself talking to Ahlan’s “employer.”

She’d known her brother was dealing drugs. At first, when tightly rolled bundles of cash had started turning up in his pockets, and a new TV the size of an Olympic swimming pool had been delivered, she’d refused to look too closely at what he might be doing for a living. It had been one of those things, like his sex life with various women and females, that she resolutely refused to think about.

But then he’d started using.

The glassy eyes. The staccato speech. The growing paranoia.

And finally, a human male, Rollie, had begun stopping by.

She’d had to confront Ahlan about the man one night. As soon as that twitchy, toothless, stinky human had left, she’d had it out with her brother and he’d promised he was going to stop. Everything.

Five nights later, he disappeared.

Six nights later, she had opened the envelope. Made the call. Struck the deal.

Tracking Rollie, she had learned about the underage dealing, something that had made her sick because there was no way her brother hadn’t done that as well. Then the trailer and the beheading. The long trip to Chalen.

From the second she’d ended that initial call to the conqueror, she had measured time like a Rolex, aware that her brother was a trauma patient and she was the only one-man ambulance who could save him.

Hours counted. Seconds . . . counted.

Except now, after the double cross and Chalen’s new assignment of what was probably a suicide mission, she was back where she’d been as she’d tracked Rollie and tried to figure out how to kill him: Waiting with a bomb in her lap, the ticking minutes driving her crazy.

As she was whipped by branches and vines, taken deeper into the forest by a stranger, she tried to figure a way around losing time during the day.

She tapped Duran’s shoulder. When he didn’t respond, she tapped harder.

His bearded face turned to the side. Over the din, he said, “Almost there—”

“Stop!” she yelled. “Stop now!”

“. . . you hurt?”

She’d clearly missed the “Are” at the beginning of that. “We need to think about this! There has to be a way—”

As he ignored her, and refocused on the tangle ahead, she realized that if she made him halt just to have a conversation that went nowhere, she was only wasting the very thing she couldn’t stand losing—like a plane crash survivor in the desert using the last of her water to wash her face instead of drink.

But goddamn it, when the hell was she going to make any forward progress here?

Finally, he slowed. Stopped.

“Get off,” he said.

She was already on that, and she was also on the trigger to that collar—in the event this pre-dawn ride was merely an excuse to confirm her opinion about this damp, bug-ridden, leaf-choked place being where the bloated corpses of women were found. Or, in her case, females. Not that her remains would last long. Even with the canopy of vines and tree leaves overhead, the warning prickle on her skin told her that the sun was gathering momentum on its rise.

“We go on foot for the rest of the way.”

Ahmare was grateful as he took off at a jog, that backpack of his strapped on so tight, it was like the saddle on a horse, nothing loose and slappy.