Page 38 of K-9 Confidential

The spotlight died, casting her back into darkness and stealing the hope that’d held her upright.

A laugh Charlie didn’t recognize echoed off the walls.

“You still don’t understand, do you?” Erin’s voice seemed distant now. Alien. Sparks shot up from the floor as her sister dragged the end of the poker along the cracked cement. “Sangre por Sangreisn’t forcing me to do anything against my will, Charlie. That day the cartel sent a lieutenant to kill our father, I proposed a different plan. To use him and his army to our own advantage. Much the same way that Homeland Security agent approached you.”

“What?” Charlie asked.

“You didn’t think I knew about him, but it was so clear to anyone who bothered to notice. I noticed,” Erin said. “The late-night disappearances from your room. The way you’d smile throughout the day when you didn’t think anyone was looking. You changed. You lost your touch during sparring. Like you were distracted. You were more compliant to our father’s commands, and I knew something had changed.”

The spotlight lit up again, burning Charlie’s retinas.

Erin was holding the steel rod back over the edge of the barrel fire, twisting it this way and that, as though she had all the time in the world. “So I followed you. I waited as you slipped out of your bedroom window and met him in the trees. I didn’t recognize him at first, but it wasn’t long before I realized you’d been selling us out. All of us.”

“For you, Erin. I only agreed to give up information on Acker’s Army and our father in exchange for the three of us to get free.” Didn’t she understand that? She’d put her own life on the line for her sisters. Only she’d been too late to save Sage. But she could still help Erin.

“You can tell yourself that all you want, dear sister, but I know the truth.” Erin brought the rod back up in front of her. “We were a team, Charlie. You, me and Sage. It was supposed to be the three of us against our father. We were supposed to be together forever, but I saw how you looked at that agent, how much you wanted to please him, and it seems like nothing has changed. You’re terrified that he’ll be disappointed in you, that he won’t have any use for you. You’re as weak as he was, you know? The man who raised us. All I have to do is push the right buttons. Fortunately for you, I have a way to fix that.”

“What do you mean?” Charlie lost her focus on escape as Erin came back, the steel poker between them. The heat bled through her scrub top. “Fix what?”

“I have a use for you. I can give you purpose again. I can make the past ten years disappear as though they never happened. I have the explosives, thanks to my friends here. All I need from you is your skills in directing the blast,” her sister said.

“The blueprints I found in Dad’s office.” Charlie rushed to make sense of the cartel’s motives. “You wanted him and Acker’s Army to attack the state capitol. Why?”

“There’s something we need.” Erin’s voice had taken on a wispy quality again. Lighter than it should be, considering the circumstances. “Evidence that was taken from us by the DEA. We know it’s being stored in one of their facilities. We just don’t know which one, and I’m kind of in a hurry.”

“You mean drugs.” She couldn’t believe this. Her little sister—the perfect innocent girl she’d helped raise—had sided with a brutal, unforgiving drug cartel. “That’s what all of this is about?”

“I gave my word, Charlie. I promised the cartel I would do whatever it took to help them put their organization back together, in exchange for helping me dismantle Daddy’s life’s work.” Erin pulled at the collar of her shirt, exposing angry and twisted scaring along her collarbone. “But first, I need to know you’re one of us. That you won’t betray me again.”

“Erin, please.” Survival kicked in. Charlie wrenched her wrists and ankles, but there was no give in the rope.

“Don’t worry, Charlie. The pain only lasts a minute.” Erin lowered the steel rod against Charlie’s shoulder.

The heat burned through her scrub top and past layers of skin. Every muscle in her body fought against the scalding pain of hot steel, but there was no relief. Her scream ripped up the back of her throat.

Erin pulled the poker back. Satisfied. “Then you and I are going to get to work.”

* * *

The scream piercedthrough the heavy rhythm of his breathing.

It tunneled past Granger’s focus and pulled him up short.

His gut tightened as pain, agony and hopelessness combined into a hot rage in his veins. “Charlie.”

Granger picked up the pace. Zeus hadn’t been able to pick up her scent yet, but they were getting close. He could feel it. His heart rate hit out-of-control levels the harder he drove himself, but he had no other option. He wasn’t going to lose Charlie. Not again. “Go on, Zeus, go get her!”

The bull terrier vaulted ahead despite the extra thirty pounds on his frame. He disappeared around a corner up ahead, and Granger had to trust the K9 would lead him true. The muscles in his legs protested with every step and aggravated the wound along his rib cage, but there wasn’t anything in the world that would stop him from getting to her.

Not when he was so close.

Granger rounded the corner, following Zeus’s trail.

A gunshot exploded from down the corridor.

He slowed his momentum and listened. Silence seeped through the walls as he waited for a response. Damn it. He’d rip this place apart if something had happened to his K9. He whistled low enough for Zeus to pick up on, a specific tone only the bull terrier would respond to. Granger approached the corner and rounded it without hesitation

A fist flew at him.

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