Page 86 of Fighting for Scarlett

As her hands reached the doorknob arms circled her body, dragging her back, away from the only freedom she would find.

“I won't tell you,” she screamed, kicking and thrashing in the man’s grip as she was carried toward the bed.

“Then the last few hours of your life won't be very pleasant,” Raul sneered. “You're going to be injected with the same drug you had the pleasure of trying out last time, only this time my men are going to listen to your pleas. They're going to give you everything you beg for and more. And if you're still stupid enough not to tell me what I want to know then they’re going to keep injecting you, keep taking you until there's nothing left. I should warn you, Ms. Madden, that my men won't be gentle, and you won't survive it.”

At the bed, she was held down by one man as another prepared a vial of the drug that haunted her dreams.

The syringe delivered the drug into her body, and almost immediately, she began to heat inside as arousal took hold. Scarlett wished she had made it to the balcony so she could have ended her life on her own terms and spared herself this horrific death.

January 19th

3:39 P.M.

“I’m not waiting to go in.” For Tate it was as simple as that.

Scarlett was in there.

She needed him.

Already she had been through so much. There was no way he was going to wait until nightfall before mounting a rescue op.

Not when he knew that she was already living on borrowed time.

Just because her body hadn't been found at Walter Gunnerman’s house along with his and those of his family didn't mean that she was even still alive.

They knew that Raul had ordered her death because the bomb the other day was supposed to kill her, and anyone with her. The only other option was that the mole had gone rogue. Not an impossibility, but even if that was true and it was no longer Raul Castillo who was calling the shots, it hardly put Scarlett in a better position.

She was a loose end that needed tying up.

“We don’t know how many men are in there, what they’re armed with, or even if Scarlett is in there,” Rocco said, far too calmly considering the frantic way Tate’s heart was hammering in his chest.

“Walter said she would be here,” he reminded the man of what they’d found when they had searched a mountain cabin owned by the man and his wife. They’d found Walter’s dead body, executed with a simple bullet to the back of the head. Evidence on the bodies of his wife, and three kids, including the daughter Prey and Rocco’s team had rescued years ago, suggested that the wife and kids had been held and tortured before being executed along with Walter.

Marks on their wrists and ankles similar to those Scarlett had from being bound, bruising on top of bruising going back several days at the least, wounds that had partially healed along with fresher ones. Their theory was that Walter wasn’t the mole but another scapegoat to keep the attention off whoever the true mole was.

This theory was backed up by the fact there was a tiny scrap of paper in Walter’s pocket with Scarlett’s name on it and an address.

Since there was no way Tate was wasting time trying to figure out if Walter was the mole, and if he intended to lead them into a trap, he had insisted they go and check out the location immediately.

So they were back in Mexico, outside a house in the remote jungles. This one much smaller than the one they’d rescued Scarlett from last time, but just as grand. From their hiding spot in the trees outside the fence, there didn't appear to be any cars in the driveway, and there were no lights on inside the house.

But this was where the last person to see Scarlett said she was, and he wasn’t leaving until he searched it from top to bottom.

“I'm going in with or without you,” he told the others. If it cost him his job, so be it, if he wound up court-martialed then he’d deal with it. Whatever consequences he had to suffer he would gladly accept so long as he knew that Scarlett was safe. “Come on, man, you should get me even if they don’t,” he said to Phantom. “You went off on your own to Timor-Leste to go after Kalee. How can you ask me to do anything less than you did when we’re talking about the woman I could fall in love with?”

While in his head he kept telling himself Scarlett was just the woman he could fall in love with, he knew it was more than that.

He was already falling.

Hard and fast.

Knowing that the landing might not be the softness and safety of love, acceptance, and belonging, and instead could be cold, lonely, and unforgiving was terrifying.

But knowing he could lose Scarlett was worse.

This was a leap of faith he had to take. Like it was already written in the stars, Scarlett had consumed him since that very first second, and no matter what had happened, or where things would end, he had to try.

Had to let himself fall.

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