Defending Zara (Mountain Mercenaries #6)

Defending Zara (Mountain Mercenaries #6)

Susan Stoker



Chapter One

“They’re beating the crap out of them! We’ve got to do something!” Gabriella exclaimed.

“We can’t go out there yet, they’ll just turn on us,” Mags said patiently, but she had a worried look in her eye.

Personally, Zara wasn’t sure if they should go out and help the two men currently getting the shit kicked out of them. Growing up the way she had, in the poor barrios of Lima, Peru, Zara had learned to always take care of herself first. Everyone and everything else took second place to her innate need to survive. But she couldn’t help feeling awful about the men being thrashed just yards away.

It was the middle of the night, and the women had watched from afar as a pair of soldiers from the Peruvian military prepared to raid one of the houses with a team of men from the United States.

Once upon a time, Zara might’ve done whatever she could to gain the attention of those Americans . . . now all she wanted was to run away and stay safe.

But because she liked and respected Mags, the leader of their ragtag group, she stood her ground behind the women huddled around the door of the shanty and watched two Americans get beaten up by a gang of bullies who lived in the barrio they all called home. No one outwardly defied those men, though Mags and their group did what they could to silently and secretly resist them.

But the fact that the men had begun to steal children to sell to Roberto del Rio, the notorious and ruthless leader of the biggest sex-trafficking ring in Peru, had changed things. Mags wasn’t going to stand for that. No way.

Pushing her short brown hair out of her eyes, Zara absently made a mental note to cut it soon. It was getting too long, and the last thing she wanted was for someone to look at her and realize she was a woman. As it was, with her short hair, slight build, breasts bound tightly to her chest, and short stature, they saw what she wanted them to see. A dirty, poor teenage boy named Zed. She’d worked hard over the years to cultivate that image, and while Mags had somehow seen through her disguise in a heartbeat, most people didn’t take a second glance at her.

Which was how Zara liked it. And how she’d managed to survive the last fifteen years living on the streets and in the barrios of Lima. She could barely remember her life before. Didn’t want to remember it. That life was gone for good. This was her life now.

“They’re running away,” Teresa whispered in Spanish. “Something must’ve scared them.”

“Are they still alive?” Gabriella asked.

“I don’t . . . Wait, yeah. The one closest to us just moved his foot,” Teresa said.

“Okay, we have to be quick.” It was something everyone already knew. This wasn’t the first time they’d gone out of their way to help some poor soul who’d had the misfortune to be on the receiving end of the brutal gang’s attention. “We’ll grab the first guy, bring him back here, then Zed can load him up while the rest of us go back to get the other one.”

“Why don’t we just leave them there?” Bonita asked.

That was what Zara wanted to know, though she’d never voice it. The injured men were strangers. They weren’t even from here. They weren’t from the barrio, so why put their own lives at risk for them?

“Because they’re here trying to help,” Mags stated firmly. “They obviously don’t know the men from the military are corrupt. They don’t know that their mission was likely to fail from the start, simply because those soldiers are pocketing money from del Rio. If one of these men was yours, a good man who was fighting against the evils of the world instead of working for Satan, would you want them to die like that?”

All of them were silent in response.

Zara had spent a lot of time with the women around her. She trusted them. They all knew suffering intimately.

Maria was twenty-nine and from Mexico. She’d been married off when she was fifteen and had fled her abusive husband a few years ago. She had ended up penniless and alone in Peru, and Mags had taken her under her wing.

Bonita and Carmen were thirty-two and thirty-five, respectively. They’d both been sold when they were only twelve years old by their own families to Roberto del Rio. They’d been “retired” from del Rio’s service for five years or so, and had spent most of that time with Mags.

Gabriella was the youngest of their group at twenty-one and had grown up in the barrio, much like Zara. She’d managed to avoid being “recruited” by del Rio, but only by sheer luck and because Mags had done her best to keep her hidden from the scouts who frequented the area. Teresa was from Brazil and had been with them for around six months. She’d been “fired” by del Rio and left to fend for herself.

Interestingly enough, no one knew Mags’s story . . . but it was obvious she’d suffered the most. She was friendly to their motley crew and did her best to help others, but she never talked about herself or how she’d ended up being the sort-of den mother to a group of broken and desperate women.

Everyone shook their heads at her question. If the Americans were “good men,” as Mags had put it, then no, they didn’t want them to suffer at the hands of the barrio’s meanest bully, Ruben, and his mob.

“Right. On the count of three, we’ll all go out and drag that first man back. Teresa, you’re responsible for getting rid of the drag marks so if the gang comes back, they don’t know where he went. Zed, you get the ambulance prepared.”