Page 37 of K-9 Confidential

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“I see you got my message.” This voice was different than her abductor’s. Familiar.

Charlie pried her eyes open, instantly overwhelmed in the center of a portable spotlight. Pressure built in her head to the point she wasn’t sure her stomach could take it anymore. Then the spotlight cut out.

She faced off with the darkness, trying to see through the shapes her brain summoned to make sense of her surroundings.

The light burned her retinas a second time. Charlie pressed her head against the cold steel at her back. Her wrists were tied, her ankles bound with rope to individual posts. Zip ties would’ve been so much easier to break through.

The spotlight went dark again.

“What message? I don’t know you.” The assault to her senses was keeping her from focusing fully. Not to mention the severe dryness in her mouth and the migraine thudding hard at the back of her head. Her abductor. He’d been here. Watching her in the dark. He must’ve knocked her out. And now she had no sense of time or location. Charlie pulled at the rope, sawing through the first layer of skin at her wrist and aggravating the healing rash she’d sustained during her abduction. Her entire body felt as though it were on fire.

Movement cut across the spotlight as it flicked back on, and a smaller feminine frame was outlined in its glow. “Oh, Charlie. Of course you do. One could argue you know everything about me. Just as I know everything about you. My favorite foods, my favorite book I wanted to read every night before bed. How I hated the taste of homemade toothpaste, and my fear of being excluded from all the reindeer games my big sisters never let me be part of growing up.”

Her brain struggled to connect the pieces. “I don’t… I don’t understand. Who…”

No. It wasn’t possible. Charlie pressed her head back into the scaffolding holding her hostage. “You… You died.”

The spotlight darkened, and everything inside Charlie wanted to turn it back on to confirm her worst fears.

Light blazed across the space.

And the woman was right there. Standing in front of her with nothing more than three feet between them. Back from the dead. “It felt like that the entire time I was waiting for you to keep your promise. It felt like dying. Over and over, a thousand times.”

“Erin.” Her sister’s name left her mouth as nothing more than a whisper as she battled with logic and exhaustion and confusion. “What have you done?”

“I took control of my life, Charlie. Isn’t that what you wanted me to do? Why you ran and left me behind?” Her younger sister sidestepped to Charlie’s left, the spotlight highlighting the ten-year difference between the girl she’d known and the woman she’d become. Erin’s hair was shorter, cut for convenience rather than inspired by the magazines she’d hidden under her mattress away from their father. Her face seemed thinner. Features Charlie had associated with the fifteen-year-old she’d loved no longer existed. Instead, there was something almost foreign about her. Detached. “There wasn’t a single day of the past ten years that I didn’t think about you. Not one moment that I didn’t wonder if you thought about me.”

“Of course I did. Everything I did, every choice I made, was to help you escape Vaughn.” Charlie forced herself to stare into the spotlight in order to adapt her vision faster. Another glow pulled at her attention, near where Erin stood. “To finally get you out. But when I heard you’d died… I thought I was too late.”

The spotlight went dark.

Leaving the familiar outline of her sister’s shape.

And the glow of a barrel fire.

Metallic scraping got her attention and raised goose bumps along Charlie’s arms.

“There’s that promise again. The same one you told me the night we set the charges on the Alamo pipeline. You were going to find a way out of Acker’s Army. I lost count of how many times I went to bed with that hope.” Erin’s voice had changed. No longer familiar and soothing, but dark. “But instead, you ran away, and you left me and Sage there to die. I managed to escape before police got to the scene. Barely. I waited, you know. For you to come back. For you to keep your promise. But you never came.”

The spotlight found a new life.

Exposing the steel rod in Erin’s hand. The tip glowed orange, flickering with heat—like a brand—as her sister neared. Erin angled the rod closer to Charlie, letting her feel the scalding heat against her face. Her sister’s features took second priority as Charlie focused on the threat of feeling that rod on her skin.

“Erin, you don’t have to do this. Please. Dad is dead. You can leave.” Her voice shook. Charlie pulled against the ropes as the final conversation between her and her father filtered across her mind in a desperate attempt to come up with something—anything—to neutralize her sister’s hatred.

“I already have, Charlie. Don’t you understand?” Erin waved the steel poker back and forth, illuminating her own face in the process. A dreamlike daze seemed to relax her sister’s expression. “Once I realized you weren’t going to keep your promise, I devised my own plan to escape Daddy’s control.”

Understanding hit. “Sangre por Sangre.But how?”

“You remember those construction sites our father used to send us to for explosives?” Erin said. “Every single one of them was owned by the cartel through a number of shell corporations. Upper management may have discovered who was responsible a few months ago after Daddy accidentally let the information slip. The cartel may have then sent one of their lieutenants to take care of the problem. And I may have convinced him we could work together. I would help them salvage what remained of their organization, and, in exchange for that help, they would destroy Acker’s Army.”

“He knew, didn’t he? Dad knew.” Why hadn’t she seen it before? Why hadn’t she put the pieces together before now? “That’s why he wouldn’t tell me about the deal he made withSangre por Sangre. He was willing to provide manpower and weapons because of you. In his mind, everything he’s done has been for our benefit. Yours, Sage’s and mine. And giving you up wasn’t an option.”

Erin stared at the glowing tip of the steel rod. “A mistake on his part. I always thought our father was a hard man who demanded perfection at every turn, but in reality, he was very easily manipulated if you managed to hit the right buttons. And now he’s dead.”

“That means you’re free, Erin. You can live your life without him hanging over your head.” Charlie tried to wiggle free from the ropes around her wrists, but her sister had known exactly what she was capable of. The scaffolding she’d been bound to shook, and for the first time since she’d regained consciousness, she realized she and Erin weren’t alone. A man stood behind the spotlight. Most likely the one who’d knocked her unconscious in the first place. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Whatever it is the cartel has planned, whatever they’re making you do, you don’t have to be a part of it. We can leave. We can start over. Together. You just have to loosen the ropes. I can take care of everything else.”

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