Page 72 of Rogue Voice

Rogue’s phone rang, loud and shrill. A good distraction. He put it on speaker phone when he saw it was Agent Rahmer.

“Wait for me,” she said with no preamble. “I’m on my way. So fucking wait for me.”

This was getting boring. “We need a satellite in place.”

“Who the hell do you think I am? The satellite whisperer?” she snapped. But she started barking an order to someone else, and Rogue breathed a sigh of relief. Because as much as he didn’t want to wait, he also wanted to give Bea the best chance of escape. And that meant playing nice, at least for now.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Griffin said, his green eyes bright. He said it in a way that made Rogue think he probably did.

“Then you know I don’t want to talk about it.”

Slate barked out a laugh. “So long as you know you’re stuck with us, Rogue.”

35

Bea

Thorne’s face looked like raw burger meat. He’d finally—finally—lost consciousness, which meant he’d stopped laughing. The man had kept it on for a long time—longer than she would have imagined possible. And the harder he laughed, the more riled up Emiliano got, and the harder he hit him.

At some point, Roberts had left the container. He seemed to be worried about something—perhaps about the noise Emiliano was making, or the fact that her uncle seemed to be coming unstuck. Perhaps the sour, metallic stench to the air was more than he could bear.

Bea had done her best to hold on to hope, but so far nobody had come and it was getting harder and harder to stay hopeful. If this kept going, Bea knew soon she and Emiliano would be the only living people left. She couldn’t let that happen.

Her uncle turned away from Thorne and strode towards her. Bea couldn’t keep her eyes away from his swollen, red, bloody knuckles.

“Ah,” said Emiliano. “I feel good. Invigorated. The only thing that will make me feel better is a hard fuck.”

Bea shrank back against her chair, but she wasn’t going anywhere.

“I’m not going to be able to be careful,mi flor,” he said, grabbing his crotch lasciviously. “I’m going to show you how whores are fucked.”

The knife appeared in his hand as if by magic. She screamed as he flicked it open, the sound muffled by the duct tape over her mouth. The blade sliced once, twice, in quick succession. Before she could comprehend the fact that her hands were free, she was flying, draped over her uncle’s thick, meaty shoulder. She took the chance to rip off the duct tape. It should hurt, but she barely even felt it.

The breath left her lungs all at once as he threw her onto the filthy-looking, velvet couch in the corner. She lay there, stunned, until some animal instinct kicked in and she scrambled backwards. She was almost off the couch when her uncle’s hand grabbed hold of her knees, holding her in place.

He spread her legs open, his hands bruising on her inner thighs.

“No!” she screamed. “Help!” Even though she knew it was hopeless, she kicked with all her strength. Whatever happened, she needed to know she’d foughtas hard as she could.

Tears rolled her cheeks, mixing with the snot coming out of her nose.So this is how it happens.

Her uncle’s hand reached the apex between her thighs—then stopped.

“What the fuck’s going on, Roberts?” he growled. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

It took Bea an instant to realize he wasn’t talking to her, but to whoever was knocking on the door.

36

Rogue

Rogue saw Thorne first. He was strapped to a chair, his chin against his chest, but that chest rose and fell, so he wasn’t dead.

His eyes moved on, found Bea on the couch in the corner. He was struck dumb, for an instant. Struck by relief, because she was there, and alive. He wanted to rub his eyes to make sure she was really there, and at the same time to see her on that couch with her legs splayed open, to see the terrified expression on her eyes—it was by far the most awful thing he’d seen in his life, an image he knew would stay with him until the day he died.

All this he saw in a millisecond—then pushed it away, because the only thing that mattered was the man standing in front of him. Emiliano Cruz.

The drug lord was there, in the flesh, an incongruous, annoyed expression on his face. He’d been expecting somebody else. He’d been yelling for someone else, just before opening the door. And the name of that person resonated in Rogue’s mind like a fucking alarm clock. Roberts.Agent Roberts was working with Cruz.

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