Redemption Road (Vicious Cycle #2)(11)

Conversation floated above me. I began to feel like I was in a coma—that level of consciousness where you are aware of your surroundings, but you can do nothing about it.

“I did good tonight, right, boys?” Johnny asked. Just the sound of his voice now caused my skin to crawl. Gone was any attraction I had once felt for him. Instead, I loathed him for the monster he was—a true wolf in sheep’s clothing.

A hand gripped my jaw and roughly turned my head from side to side. “She’s a little older than the usual pick,” a different man said.

Johnny grunted. “Yeah, well, she was at Pacey’s like all the other girls. I don’t take the f*cking time to ask if they’re eighteen. I go on looks and personality, and she’s the best looker I’ve picked in months.”

A cruel laugh came from my left side. “I’ll agree with you on that one. Mendoza’s gonna cream his pants when he sees her. Just his type. Probably keep her all for himself.”

“Then I suggest we take some now while we still have the chance,” I heard Johnny say.

In that moment, I floated outside of myself. Self-preservation? It felt as if I were standing on train tracks, staring down a charging locomotive. With one foot stuck in the tracks and the other scrambling to find freedom, I could do nothing but watch my impending demise.

Then rough hands were all over me—stripping me of my clothes, touching me in intimate places that brought stinging tears of humiliation to my eyes. Excruciating pain soon replaced the humiliation as I was physically torn and battered. There seemed to be no end—I was trapped in a strange alternate universe of degradation and assault.

And there, in a seedy hotel room while I was gang-raped repeatedly by four strange men, the old Annabel died in a nightmare she never could have fathomed. Her broken spirit slipped away while her ravaged body was forced to go on in a horrific world, alone and hopeless.

FOUR

REV

The van jolted and jostled us over the uneven terrain as we drove farther and farther into no-man’s-land. Glancing out the window, I took in the moonless night and our dark isolation from civilization.

It seemed unbelievable that less than forty-eight hours ago I had sat at a table in the Rising Phoenix and listened to the El Paso Raiders’ attack plan. While I had first been skeptical that they had the resources to take on a cartel lieutenant, they had quickly made me a believer. I had felt more than confident in tonight’s mission and was sure that soon Breakneck would be reunited with his daughter.

Now I threw a glance over my shoulder into the third row, where Breakneck sat next to Bishop. He had flown in yesterday to be a part of the rescue mission. At first, Ghost hadn’t wanted him to come along. “He’s too emotionally invested—it’ll f*ck things up.” But Breakneck had gone toe-to-toe with him to veto any ideas about him staying back at the Raiders’ compound. In the end, I didn’t know what physical condition we were going to find Sarah in, so it made sense to have someone with medical training along.

Because we couldn’t just go storming into a cartel compound half-cocked, it had taken a full day of further research and planning before we felt ready to move. Thankfully, the El Paso Raiders had set the wheels in motion while Bishop and I were on the road. They also had a lot of allies who were willing to get us intel. The room in their roadhouse where they held church looked more like something out of a Pentagon war strategy session as we spent hours poring over maps, aerial images, and printouts from Google Earth.

What we had learned from the Raiders’ sources was that Mendoza ran a relatively small-time trafficking operation. He never housed more than five or six girls at a time before “unloading” them, as it was known. Because of the low numbers, he had fewer than ten men working for him at the compound. With our group of nine in the mission, we were pretty evenly matched.

The location of Mendoza’s slave camp was about fifty miles from any semblance of civilization. The gravel road we now found ourselves on seemed to stretch into a desert oblivion. Close on our tail were two other identical, black-paneled vans. One carried the remaining members of our mission, and the other was loaded down with enough explosives to take out the wired, steel-enforced gate at the front of Mendoza’s compound.

“Fuck, I wanna claw my skin off. I think I’m allergic to this f*cking war paint!” Bishop exclaimed, breaking the tense silence. As a form of camouflage, each of us had slathered black shoe polish onto his face, neck, and arms.

Despite the tense mood, I chuckled. “Jesus, you’re as bad as when you had the chicken pox. Mama and Pop didn’t sleep for three days trying to make sure you didn’t scratch yourself to death.”

“Whatever,” Bishop grumbled.

When the van began slowing down, I sat up a little straighter. Chulo turned around in the passenger seat to face us. “Okay, guys, here is where we leave the vans for safekeeping. We’ll do the last half mile on foot. Then once the front gate is blown, the reserve vans will pull up to wait for us.”

With a nod of my head, I reached for the handle of the door. Once I slid it open, I dropped out onto the soft desert floor. Breakneck came next, with Bishop behind him. They were followed by Ranger and Nero, two of the El Paso Raiders who had been appointed to come with us based on their skills.

At six foot five and three hundred pounds, Ranger got his road name from his time with the Army Rangers. After two tours in Afghanistan, he came home to his MC brothers and worked out his extreme PTSD by beating the hell out of anyone who crossed the Raiders’ path. Like a true Army Ranger, he was our lead man into the compound.