“There was shouting and gunshots, you dragged me into the hall. We were going to run away—well you were—you wanted to escape, but I froze.” The fear had choked me then.
Freeze. Fight. Flight.
I’d frozen.
The gunshots had come closer. Then…
“You left me,” I said slowly. “To save your own ass, you just left me and the man who chased you knocked me into the wall.” Maybe. That part was very fuzzy. After, I’d woken in the truck far away from Ignacio, the warehouse, and the rest of the “cargo.”
Ignacio’s throat bobbed as if he fought to swallow.
“So what happened when you didn’t show up with your prepared cargo?” Just saying the cold, dehumanized words made bile rise in my throat.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Voodoo pressed the button and Ignacio shook so violently the chair went sideways and he slammed into the concrete floor. The stink of burning hair wreathed the whole damn room. Hair, sweat, and now urine. The man had pissed himself.
In some small way, that felt like a victory. He’d made me feel that way. Now he would understand how it felt.
Hollow victory or not, I’d take it.
“Answer her question,” Voodoo ordered, and the coldness in his tone turned the air frosty. “Now.”
Ignacio looked trapped, his chest rising and falling too fast.
Caught between the fear of lying and the terror of telling the truth. It took three more shocks and Ignacio actually sobbing before he said, “I didn’t go!”
“I ran,” he babbled. “They would have killed me. Cargo is valuable. They slaughtered most of my men. Killed them.” His tears weren’t faked nor were his wracking cries. “I stayed away. The ones who came, they were competitors. They came for what was taken from them. There were others hunting for me—Europeans.”
That actually made him look mystified for a moment.
“They had questions, questions about you.” He looked up at me from where he lay on the floor, trembling. “I barely made it out alive. Then I came here.”
“Why here?” Legend asked and Ignacio jerked, as if he’d forgotten that he was here.
“Because Sinclair has money, has access, he is also in trouble. We could help each other.” Eyes closing, the man sucked in one ragged breath after another, as though he could barely stand to say the words. Or maybe the truth just hurt him.
Good.
“Did he?” I asked, not willing to wait for him to get a grip.
“Not yet,” Ignacio admitted, then he looked up at me with his bloodshot and defeated eyes. “Then I saw you in his office and thought he must have fixed it… You were here. You would be mine again.”
For the first time since I’d stepped into the basement, the nausea wasn’t from the smell or the memories or the pain in the air. It was from disgust.
“I was never yours,” I told him. “When this is done, I’m never going to think of you again. Just passing road kill on the highway of my life.”
The silence stretched and Voodoo glanced at me. Did I have any more questions?
“Only one,” I answered, then blew out a breath. “Were you the one who also took my sister?”
The utter blankness in Ignacio’s expression was the answer. He didn’t know about Amorette. She had been taken. Likely by people just like this son of a bitch. More cargo to be prepared. My stomach bottomed out and I barely kept the urge to vomit again in check.
Barely.
