Page 19 of K-9 Justice

She licked at his face, then sneezed from the amount of crust that covered his skin, before dropping onto all fours.

“Had I known you were going to kiss me, I would’ve showered first.” He caught sight of a toolbox splayed open with an array of potential weapons. Sebastian might’ve taken his gun, but the son of a bitch wasn’t going to take anything else from him. Carson collected a heavy wrench capable of a lot of damage if swung hard enough. “Now, what do you say we go get your mom?”

CHAPTER EIGHT

The crash jolted her awake.

Though she wasn’t entirely sure she’d fallen asleep as Sebastian—if that was his real name—fed into his own desperation for answers. Where was her team? Where would they strike next? Had they learned about this location? Her body hurt. Every inch. Blood dripped from her hair onto the floor below, staining the cement.

A bark reached through the haze closing in around Ivy’s awareness. Through the seal her brain had created to protect itself. She knew that bark.

“I never liked that dog.” Sebastian stepped into view, her pocketknife in hand. Coated with her blood.

“She’s a…good judge of character.” She’d lost count of how many lacerations he’d cut into her arms, legs and stomach. Nothing vital. He knew what he was doing, how to bleed her to death without so much as raising her body’s alarm systems until it was too late. Her mouth felt full. As though she’d attempted to swallow a handful of bees. Adrenaline had left the party a while ago. She couldn’t count on it to get her out of this as she had so many times before. Adrenaline didn’t consider logic or others. It was pure survival. Her arms ached as she attempted to break through the zip ties one more time. In vain. The angle was wrong. Not enough force.

“Don’t go anywhere. We’re not finished.” He flipped the pocketknife to face down in his palm and stabbed it into thedrywall near a door she hadn’t noticed until then. In a single breath, her abductor—her torturer—was gone.

A sliver of hope that had no business sparking lit up inside of her. The crash. She wasn’t sure of the source, but given Max was alive, Ivy was willing to bet Carson was, too. That he’d been the one to cause the disruption of Sebastian’s latest masterpiece. Ivy struggled against gravity and exhaustion to duck her chin into her chest. There wasn’t much she could do in the way of getting her hands around her feet for better access.

But there was another way.

She forced air into her lungs, then breathed out harder than necessary. It had been years since she’d dislocated her shoulder, courtesy of her stepfather, but old wounds never really healed right. There was a chance this could work. If she was willing to endure just a little longer. For Carson. For Max. For the family she’d created in a world full of nothing but brutality and betrayal. Ivy clamped her back teeth together, stretching her bound wrists toward the floor.

The idea of inflicting pain on herself when she’d intentionally built Socorro to protect her and others from going through what she had as a child gripped her hard. But the possibility of losing everything—her partner, her team, her dog—hurt so much more.

“One.” Her stomach protested the pain coming. “Two.” She bounced her straightened arms to get a feel for the momentum needed. “Three.”

She put everything she had into disconnecting her right shoulder. The muscles screamed as they twisted in the entirely wrong direction. Inky blackness encroached into the edges of her vision, but she had to hang on. She had to keep going. Her wrists followed the path of the zip tie as she brought them forward. Every breath helped ease the pain, but her body had hit a wall. It couldn’t take much more.

Ivy fought through the drowning sensation pulling her into unconsciousness. If she blacked out now, Sebastian would have free rein to kill her and everyone she loved. There would be no one to stop him. No. She couldn’t give in. No matter how much she wanted to. She’d survived before. She could—she would—do it again.

Reaching for her feet, she attempted to curl her upper body forward. But the lacerations across her midsection only slowed her down. She fell back and let the relief take hold. Just for a moment. There was a chance she’d never be able to lift a weapon with her damaged arm, but for now, all she needed it to do was get her closer to the tow hook holding her hostage. Ivy tried again. A groan backed up in her throat as her fingertips brushed the end of the hook.

“Closer.” She collapsed again. The room swirled in her vision as she released the air she hadn’t realized she’d been holding on to. Time seemed to slip through her fingers without any effort. Seconds, minutes, an hour. She wasn’t sure how long she hung there. The rhythmic patter of blood dripping onto the floor kept in time with the pulse thudding in her throat. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

She pried her eyes open.

And stared straight into the face of a dead man. As real as Sebastian, as Carson, as the operatives on her team. He hadn’t aged a day despite twenty-seven years since she’d seen him.

“What did I always tell you, Ives?” her stepfather said. “You’re not strong enough to beat me.”

“You’re not real.” The words slurred due to the swelling in her face and lips. “You’re not here.”

His sneer pooled dread at the base of her spine. It was that same sneer he’d given her when he’d dared her to pull the trigger that night. Right before he’d lunged at her to take the gun. She’d shot him at just ten years old, scared, desperate tohelp her mother, to keep him from killing them both. Then she’d shot him again. He’d dropped to the floor right there in the entryway of their small Jacksonville house, hand to his chest. And she’d stood over him, watching. Waiting for him to take his last breath. Her mother had called the paramedics with a broken arm and two missing teeth, and the EMTs had somehow kept him alive. Only he’d never come home after leaving the hospital. He was still out there. Still haunting her memories, her nightmares.

“You’re a coward, Ives. Same as you’ve always been.” Her stepfather moved in closer. So close, she could almost smell that sickening scent of his aftershave. “You think you’re protecting people, but the truth is, you’re just protecting yourself. Like a child. All you ever cared about was yourself, what you wanted. That’s why you shot me. It wasn’t to protect your mama. Look what happened to her after that night.”

“No.” Tears burned in her eyes, giving away the echoing feelings of helplessness when faced with this particular threat. She didn’t want to think about that. About how after the incident her mother hadn’t been able to find a job, how she hadn’t been able to put food on the table and then just gave up trying. Life had beaten her mother down long after her stepfather had gone, had stolen any glimpse of hope. Until there was nothing left but drugs, a revolving door of men and a final overdose.

“She died because of you. You know that, right?” His words surfaced and took shape from within; they’d followed her through high school, college, into the FBI, and were controlling her now. “If you hadn’t shot me, she’d still be here. You’re pathetic, Ivy Bardot. You’re nothing. You can’t save anyone. You can’t even save yourself.”

“Stop.” Tears mixed with blood across her face. The image—the hallucination—of her stepfather waned. Years of building her personal armor, of becoming the woman she was, seemed todisintegrate at the accusations living in her head. Ivy shook her head as though it would make him go away. “It’s not true.”

The thing that made everything not so bad was knowing, sooner or later, I was coming home to you.Carson’s words cut through the self-hatred and worked to repair the damage done to her heart. They burned through her, cleansing and clarifying. Ivy set her attention on the figment of her imagination. Carson was out there right now. Fighting to survive. Fighting for her. Just as he’d done during their last case together. They were still here because they’d refused to give up on one another. And she wasn’t going to let the past stand in the way now.

“You’re wrong.” Confidence replenished some of the strength she’d lost since coming to this hellhole. “I was a child, asshole. Everything that happened in our family was the responsibility of two adults who should’ve made better choices.”

Anger creased her stepfather’s expression. He reached for her, but Ivy thrust herself upward with everything she had left. Her fingers latched on to the tow hook. She gripped the cold steel with force enough to crush a diamond, hauling her bound ankles over the lip of the hook. Just as quickly, her strength gave out. She hit the floor, her legs collapsing out from under her. It was enough. She was free.

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