“Pain in my ass,” Flint whispered, so quietly Diego wouldn’t have heard him.
Diego’s eyes widened when he set eyes on Nash. “What do you want now?” he asked. “I stayed away from her like you said.”
Nash was about to call Diego out on the lie because he knew that he’d been hanging around the bakery, but he caught himself at the last moment. He wasn’t there for that, and he could practically feel the hole Flint was boring into his back.
“FBI,” he said. “We’d like to ask you some questions.”
“What if I don’t want to answer them?” Diego groused.
“We have at least two people who will testify that you used to work for a known drug cartel,” Flint lied. “Trust me, Mr. Suarez, it’s in your best interests to cooperate with us fully.”
There wasn’t much that Diego could have said to that, and he didn’t try. When Nash told him he had to accompany them to the FBI building, he didn’t even try to get out of it. There really wasn’t anything he could have done. They had him over a barrel, and they weren’t prepared to take no for an answer. And Nash in particular had no intention of giving him the chance to worm his way out of this one.
As their group outings went, it was one of their least eventful, not that Nash was complaining. There was a real buzz of excitement around their group when they got back to base. They’d been working on bringing down the cartel for months and Diego was a solid lead in capturing the key players—if they could get him to talk. They had no way of knowing how cooperative he’d be, especially if he thought he was likely to land himself in even more trouble, and worse, if he thought they were going to bring him up on charges, there was every chance he’d decide he had nothing left to lose and start blabbing about the money he paid Aria to marry him. Still, there was no point stewing over it. He’d just have to deal with whatever came his way. He would find a way to protect Aria, whatever the cost.
He pulled out his cell phone to call Aria and tell her they had Diego. Nash needed to warn her that there was a possibility Diego might talk about their arrangement. He swallowed bitter-tasting guilt. If Aria hadn’t met him, she wouldn’t be in such a precarious position, but he hated to think about what the alternative would be. Her suffering years of abuse at Diego’s hands or getting killed when the cartel caught up with him. Either scenario was quite frankly abhorrent. But that didn’t change the fact thathispresence was the one that was causing her distress right now, and that felt beyond wrong.
Nash was just about to dial when his phone started ringing, startling him. He checked the display, surprised to see his brother’s name pop up on the screen.
“Hey, Jake, what’s up?” he answered.
“Nash,” Jake said, his voice raw and breathless. “They’ve got her. They’ve got Aria.”
The blood in Nash’s veins turned to ice. “What are you talking about? Who’s got her?”
But he already knew. Jake confirmed it, anyway.
“There were three Mexican men,” Jake said. “She came out to bring me food and they surrounded us. It all happened so quickly. They were all shouting in Spanish. They had guns and I thought they were going to shoot me, but they hit me over the head. When I came to, Maya was standing over me and trying to wake me up. I’m so sorry. They took her, Nash. They kidnapped her.”
In that split second the whole of Nash’s world came crumbling down around him and pain unlike any he’d known took root in his heart. They’d taken her. He’d only just found his mate, and now he might lose her. Forever.
Chapter Eight
Aria
The house she’d been taken to was old, dirty, and smelled of urine. There were droppings in the corner of the room that looked as if they’d come from rats—which might explain where the smell of pee came from. Then again, one of the men who had kidnapped her was a bit pungent, so perhaps he had done it. It wouldn’t have surprised her. Nothing would have surprised her anymore. Except getting out of here in one piece.
It was typical that just when she’d found Nash and was finally happy, she’d been kidnapped by some very dangerous men who worked for a drug cartel. Well, she supposed it answered one question. Diego hadn’t been merely paranoid. The cartel really had caught up with him.
One of the three men who had taken her and brought her to this God-awful house was the man who had come into the bakery the other day and flirted with her. She’d known something hadn’t been right about him, and her instinct had been spot on. Why hasn’t she listened to her instincts? Why hadn’t she just spoken to Nash about it? Why hadn’t she told Maya, or Cole, or anyone at all? But that didn’t help her now. She didn’t know if anything could. It was a safe bet that she wasn’t going to make it out of this alive. She smothered another sob. She’d seen the men’s faces. Whether she gave them Diego or not, they weren’t going to let her live. She was terrified, and the injustice of it all rankled, but it was the thought that she was never going to see Nash again that made tears sting behind her eyes.
It was hard to say if it was a good thing or not, but the men who had kidnapped her didn’t seem to realize she understood Spanish. They’d been talking in front of her freely since they had kidnapped her, not that it helped her at all. And maybe it was yet another sign that they had no intention of letting her leave alive. The thought sent a fresh shiver through her.
The men were sat around on an old brown sofa in an adjoining room. She’d caught a glimpse of it when they brought her in, and it looked as dirty as everything else in the house.
“The shipment is coming into the port this afternoon,” one of the men said in Spanish. “And Juan came in this morning. We told him we’d have Diego for him by the time he got to the storage facility in Watson. We’ve got to make her talk, or it will be our necks on the line.”
“The boss is going to a lot of trouble for someone who stole so little money,” another man said.
“It’s not the money, it’s the principal,” one of them said. “He needs to make an example of Diego—show people that no one steals from the cartel and gets away with it.”
Aria struggled with the ropes they had used to secure her hands behind her back, but they had tied them too tightly. Each movement, however small, made them rub against her skin until the pain caused her breath to hitch. She knew she’d broken the skin on her wrist, and it was probably bleeding, but she kept working at it. She had to get free. If she could get her hands on one of their guns, she might be able to escape. She wasn’t just going to sit meekly here waiting for them to kill her.
One of the men came in front the adjoining room. Clearly, he’d decided to take matters into his own hands. She tried not to shrink back from him.
He leaned down in front of her face. “Where is Diego?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
