The Wolf (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp #2)(45)

This was bad.

José front and centered his phone and called up a familiar number out of his contacts. After two rings, a female voice answered.

“Kim, it’s me,” he said. “Yeah. Good. You? Great. Listen, I know you’re off tonight, but I need a little help at a scene—” He closed his eyes. “You’re the best. Let me give you the address.”

When he hung up, he just stared at the bed. He had heard of an officer by the name of Hernandez-Guerrero on the force, but he hadn’t known she was undercover. Which was the point, wasn’t it.

This had to be the woman Trey had talked about.

Shit.





The best memory Rio had of her younger brother, Luis, was from the afternoon they’d taken their grandfather’s fishing boat out onto Saranac Lake. They’d been twelve and ten, and she’d been in charge of the fifteen-horsepower, hand-crank Evinrude outboard motor that had been mounted on the stern. As they’d putted along, there had been a hypnotic quality to the way they’d rocked a course along the shore. She hadn’t been much for the worms and hooks and poles, but she’d liked being in charge, and Luis and the boat had been her own little kingdom for the time they had been alone.

When she’d finally cut the motor, she could remember clear as day the two of them out there in a calm bay, the subtle sway of the hollow tin hull and the sunshine on her head and shoulders and the bright blue sky over the dark evergreens like a dream.

She was back there now, in the boat, looking past the honey-colored wooden seat in the middle. Luis was at the bow with a line in the lake, his brown eyes fiercely trained on the bobber as if he were willing a smallmouth bass to bite. He had been a scrawny kid with a big mouth, the former a fact of the scale, the latter bluster to cover a tender heart and a worried nature.

If she had known what was coming, she would have been nicer to him that day. She would have been more careful with him, too.

He’d been less hearty than everyone had thought, and that had been at the root of everything that had followed.

Then again, she’d had to find a way to rationalize it all without blaming him. Right after the overdose, she’d tried on what it felt like to hate him, and she hadn’t been able to live with that.

As the boat continued to rock, her thoughts drifted into fragmentation, nothing sticking, not even the supercharged past—

“—scent? We need to mask it.”

“I shall take care of that.”

A man and a woman were talking, very close to her, and that was confusing because how the hell did that happen in the middle of a bay? Giving up on making sense of anything, she was relieved that she recognized the voices, especially the male one. And talk about smells. There was something earthy in her nose.

It wasn’t until she forced her lids to open that she realized they had closed, and as her eyes strained against a dense darkness, there wasn’t much to see—and not because her vision wasn’t working. It was so dim, only a weak glow of light up ahead orientating her.

Oh, and forget the boat stuff. She wasn’t on a lake; she was being carried, her legs bent over, and her torso braced on, someone’s strong arms, a long stride creating the back-and-forth motion.

“Luke?” Or at least, that’s what she tried to say. The name came out like a croak.

“It’s okay, we’re almost there,” he replied tersely.

In the back of her mind, she was aware that she was in deep trouble, and not just because she was an undercover cop going deeper into a drug supplier’s wherever: She had a feeling she was much more seriously injured than she could comprehend—which was what happened when your brain was the thing wounded most on your body.

As her lids weighed seven hundred pounds apiece, she let them slam back down again—and it was right about then that she became aware of an echoing to the footsteps around her, as if she’d been brought into an open area. The smell was different, too: Astringent with a hint of lemon bloomed in her nose. Which was better than the oppressive earth-stink before.

“Over there,” the female voice said. “The last one in the row, please.”

More rocking. Then she was gently put down, and something was pulled over her. After that, there was the sound of a match striking and then a sweet, woodsy scent.

Incense, she thought.

“This will mask the scent.” The woman was brisk, as if she were in charge. “But no one comes here. The Executioner believes it’s bad luck.”

“Okay,” Luke said quietly. “Hey, thanks for this.”

“I am doing this for her.”

“Is she going to live?”

I don’t know, Rio answered for herself.

As fear spiked into her chest, she threw out a hand. A leather sleeve was just where she needed it to be, and she grabbed on as if it were a lifeline.

Because it was.

“Don’t leave me,” she moaned.

There was a pause. Then that drug supplier, Luke, made a vow they both knew he could not keep: “Never.”



Lucan didn’t know what the fuck he was saying. Hell, he barely knew where he was. This had not been part of the plan.

But as he knelt on the floor next to the hospital bed, he had to wonder what the hell he’d thought was going to happen? Rio was much too injured to be in that cold farmhouse by herself all day long.