Walk Through Fire (Chaos #4)(168)

“They... they were Mexican,” she said.

He was right.

Valenzuela.

“Older? Younger?” he asked.

“Younger than you,” she answered.

Valenzuela was close to his age.

That meant soldiers.

“Dressed nice?” he went on.

She nodded.

“The color of their SUV, you remember?” he pushed.

“B-black,” she said.

“Did you see the kind of SUV they were in?”

She shook her head.

“What’d they say to you?” he kept at his girl.

“Just that... that...” She pressed her lips together and when High was near to losing complete hold on his patience, she continued talking. “They were friends of yours and they had something in their car for you. A present. A surprise. Something special. They asked me to come get it and bring it to you. I know it was stupid,” she whispered the last, sounding beaten. “But I... I...” She shoved into her sister. “This is a nice neighborhood. Millie has a really pretty house. They seemed nice.” She took another broken breath. “I didn’t think they were bad.”

She just didn’t think. She knew better. Even High had drilled the don’t talk to strangers shit into her head since she could cogitate.

Then again, a ten-year-old shouldn’t have to know what kind of bad could knock on the door in any neighborhood.

“Is Millie... ?” Cleo started, and got her old man’s attention, paused, then pushed on. “Did Millie do something bad?”

Only the kind he gave her.

But this shit should never touch his girls. Any of them. He should never be in the position to field questions that would lead to the kind of answers he’d have to give.

That was on Valenzuela too.

“No,” he told his big girl. “Millie’s good to the core.”

“So why—?” Cleo began.

“That’s not for now, Cleo,” High stated, straightening.

“Is she... ?” That was Zadie and he looked to his baby who was pulling away from her sister, looking up at her dad. “Do you think she’s gonna be okay?”

He knew she’d better be.

“She’s gonna be fine,” he told her.

Her lip trembled.

His phone rang.

He stepped away from them, looking at it. When he saw the caller, he took the call.

“Where are we?” he asked as greeting.

“Keely’s headed over,” Tack told him. “Brothers are rendezvousing at the Compound. Mitch and Slim have been informed.”

High stopped at the side of Millie’s couch. “Keely?”

“She’s closest to you,” Tack explained. “She should be there in a few.”

The girls had met Keely only a couple of times. They barely knew her. More, after she lost Black, pulling her into Chaos mess was not cool.

He’d prefer Tyra, Lanie, Tab, Elvira.

He’d have to take Keely because he had to get out of there. He was holding it together but only because his girls were watching. Inside, it felt like he was about to come out of his skin.

“He’s not gonna do shit to her, brother,” Tack assured him.

High wanted that to be true.

But Valenzuela was ready to roll. He was bringing it. He was forcing it so Chaos would shove it back.

Which meant anything could happen.

Millie

I sat curled into myself on the bed in a motel room that wasn’t all that nice but it wasn’t shabby either.

I did this and I didn’t take my eyes off Benito Valenzuela, who was standing at the door with his henchmen.

Another man who was even scarier than Valenzuela was standing in the corner, surveying the entirety of the scene (in other words, keeping his eye on me as well as the action at the door) even as a woman walked my way.

She got my attention when she sat on the edge of the bed.

She was a hooker.

It wasn’t like she was wearing Julia Roberts’s stretchy outfit and thigh-high boots from Pretty Woman but still, she was seriously made up and her clothes were revealing and it wasn’t even noon on a Sunday, so I didn’t think it was jumping to conclusions to guess her occupation.

“Got some ice from the machine outside,” she said quietly, offering me a wet, bulky towel. “You should put that on your eye, shug.”

She was right.

I took the ice and put it to my eye.

Then I turned the one eye I could still see out of toward Valenzuela just as I heard him whisper, “. . . do with you after this colossal f*ckup.”

“You said force it, jefe,” the one who grabbed me replied.

“I meant scare her, not f*cking kidnap her,” Valenzuela bit back.

“Still, think this’ll force it, Benito,” the one who hit me said. “Chaos ain’t gonna let this stand.”

I felt something and tore my eyes from the conversation at the door to look at the woman seated on the bed in a not-too-shabby motel with me.

“They aren’t, are they?” she whispered, and she didn’t sound happy.

In fact, she sounded absolutely, one hundred percent freaked out.

Considering I was that, and more, I didn’t need her freaking out with me.