“Santa Muerte, Harcourt.”
“What?”
“Santa Muerte.” I imagined breathing in the deepest scent of citrus and vanilla when I clasped the rosary around Eden’s neck. “I don’t need to judge. We all stand face-to-face with death eventually, andSanta Muertejudges us all for our own actions. I’ve made peace with the sentence I’ll be handed. What about you, Brody? How do you think you’ll be judged when death comes calling for you?”
Before he could answer, I disconnected the call. As I stood there staring at the phone, the bombs of the conversation exploded at once, and I kicked it across the room. Watching my phone skid across the tile floor, it hit me.
Brody Harcourt heard the call about collecting the debt from Lachey.
Non-Carrera men came into the hardware store and freaked out Eden.
The scapegoat wouldn’t take Muñoz’s tracking device from Brody.
The bottom of my stomach fell out, and I scrambled for my gun. “Mateo! Gather whatever men you can in one room, now!”
This wasn’t just a kidnapping. It was a sadistic, sick game.
And Eden was the star.
Chapter Thirty-One
EDEN
HOUSTON, TEXAS
“Edie, what the hell are you doing? Get down from there. You’re going to break your neck!”
Ascending one more branch, I plopped down and hung from my fingertips onto the jagged bark. “Didn’t you read the archives, Nash? There’s no death certificate. God, how could I have been so stupid?”
He tilted his chin, squinting into the afternoon sun. “So, climbing a tree like a spoiled brat makes it better?”
“Piss off.”
Chuckling, he swung his long arms and legs around the trunk and folded his muscular forearms around the thick branch underneath me within seconds. “Look kiddo, so Mom took off. Yeah, it sucks, and she’s a worthless piece of shit for it. But do you really think suspending yourself like some sort of monkey makes it any better?”
“I’m the one that caused her to leave, Nash,” I whispered, my voice cracking as my arms started to shake from the tension.
Nash just smiled. “No, you didn’t. She left us long before you were born. She just walked out because she couldn’t handle living with a living example of everything she’d never be.” For the first time since learning the truth that had devastated my world, a smile broke through the tears. “Now, how about you get down from there before you pull your arms completely out of their sockets, and I have to miss football to take you to the ER?”
A combination of a sob and a laugh escaped my lips as I dangled from my fingers, dropping toward a lower branch. “Pain in the ass.”
“Brat.”
Opening my eyes proved to be more and more difficult each time I tried to do it. Beyond the crushing pain in the back of my head and above my eyes, the first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t feel my hands or feet. After attempting to move them, a sharp tingling sensation shot through my limbs, causing me to twitch.
Why do my arms hurt so much?
I felt weightless and heavy at the same time, which confused me so much that I forced my eyes into submission. Everything was black on top of dark. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.
Which was my first clue that things were very wrong.
A gravelly clanging had me swallowing the panic growing in my throat. I couldn’t find my hand. It was tied above my head, along with the other one over a support beam with the floor barely dusting underneath my feet.
They’d hung me from the rafters by a chain.
Rope and metal cut into my already scarred and mangled skin so tightly that blood ran down my arms in wet trails. In a futile attempt to loosen the ties, I tried wiggling, which only twisted the chain. The chain’s length had been carefully measured during my unconsciousness to make it short enough to restrict my movement, but long enough to prevent my arms from snapping.
The pain of everything I’d been through hit me in the awkward position, amplifying my injuries. Logically, I knew calling for help would be useless. However, regardless of how remote I knew the location had to be, I did it anyway.
