Page 46 of Newly Tied

“Now I wish I hadn’t left my jacket at work,” Lang said, still checking both sides of the street. “I could have given it to her.”

“She’s not cold.” I was certain. “She’s scared.”

He nodded as his phone chirped, and he answered, “Yes, our witness says they’ve taken over her building. And that plays, as we got the background on that Venezuelan gang that had taken over different buildings last week, remember?”

I listened to Lang talk even as I crouched next to Carmen, ready to shield her with my body at a moment’s notice.

“They have,” Lang continued. “They run drugs out of it, prey on the girls who live there, prostitute them, and it’s a one-stop shop.”

He was quiet, and I knew he was listening.

“How far did you run?” I asked Carmen.

“Maybe six blocks.”

That was a surprise. “Are you kiddin’?”

Her soft laughter was good to hear. “I run track. I’m the anchor on the 4x400, the 4x800, and I also run the 1500 and the 5K.”

I could only stare.

“That means five kilometers,” she explained, since I clearly didn’t understand.

I stood up from my crouch, and Lang looked at me, still talking to Ching.

“What?” he asked me.

“She ditched those guys chasin’ her. No way they have any idea where she is.”

“How?”

“This kid runs track for both speed and distance. She smoked them.”

Lang smiled at her, and her smile for him back was nice to see. “You’re a badass.”

His praise lit her up for a moment, so when she suddenly gasped, I sank back down in front of her.

“What’s wrong?”

“They were getting Marta too. She lives one floor up.”

“We have to find Marta,” I told Lang.

“We’re going now,” Lang said even as I heard the sound of the BearCats rolling up on us. That brrp-brrp was loud, and the lights, the size, and just the intimidating look of the heavy-duty vehicles was enough to cause instant alarm in people. What made Carmen start to immediately shake was probably the sheer number of them.

Ching wasn’t screwing around. He’d called in everyone for the breach at the apartment complex, and once Carmen was in the passenger seat, belted in like she was going to go parachute jumping—there were a lot of belts holding whoever sat there—we were off. It made sense. If they were ramming into something, you didn’t want to go flying through the windshield. With all the straps and buckles, no way was Carmen going anywhere.

And she’d been very pleased to see Stowe, who was driving, and I understood. As good as Lang and I had been, a woman was better. As soon as Stowe had exited the massive utility vehicle and approached us, Carmen immediately went to her.

Our caravan made it to the apartment in minutes, and already CPD, SWAT, Homeland, and ICE were on the scene.

“You promised ICE would not be here,” Carmen choked out the words, looking at me with what I read as both sadness and betrayal.

“Oh no,” Stowe assured her. “That’s for the gang, sweetheart. No one living in the building will be touched. You have our word.”

She broke down sobbing then. It had to be so scary to want help but be afraid of the ramifications of that aid.

“You ran from here to where we picked you up?” Stowe asked Carmen once she’d calmed a bit, and when the young woman confirmed that she had, she was praised by Ching’s second-in-command. “That is kick-ass, kid.”