Throwing his head back, Manuel laughed with a roar. “No, but I’ve got a game we can play.” Pulling his gun away from Eden’s temple, he bounced it between her head and my chest, each word he spoke, punctuated by an aim of the muzzle. “Eeny, meenie, minie, moe...”
The moment his mouth formed the last word, I looked into the barrel of his gun. As I reached for my ankle holster, I heard Eden scream my name, but it melted into ripples of white, hot heat as pain shredded my insides like a warm knife through butter.
I take that back…sometimes, a man absolutely knows when he’s been shot.
Chaos ensued around me as multiple shots rang out, and shouting echoed in a warped bubble above my head. One word repeated on my lips as I hit the ground.
“Eden…”
Chapter Thirty-Five
BRODY
“You’ve been shot!”
Soaked with blood and holding his side with a hard grimace, Mateo still managed to shoot me a disgusted glare out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah, and you’re a fucking genius.” Grunting in pain, he waved his gun across the street. “Get in the car.”
“And leave you here? Have you been hoping for an early death or are you just really masochistic?” Why I stood there instead of hauling my ass inside four panels of reinforced steel remained a mystery to me. What had happened in the last hour to alter everything I held sacred and cause me to jump head first into the inferno between life and death? Six hours ago, I sat in my orderly tenth-floor office where everything made sense and life had order. With one phone call and a snap decision, I’d found myself neck deep in a drug-war stand-off with bullets flying at me from all angles.
All because two women had found themselves on Manuel Muñoz’s radar. One who had done nothing but love me, and one who had done anything but. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
Gunshots rang out in the distance, along with angry shouts in clipped Spanish.
“Shit!” Mateo coughed, blood pooling in the corner of his mouth and trickling down his chin. With another garbled curse, he smeared it across his cheek with the back of his hand while waving his gun at me. “We don’t have time for this. I said get in the car, Brody. I got this.”
The shouts became closer and more heated as Mateo wheezed and attempted to steady a shaking trigger finger. Boldly rolling my eyes at the second in command of the Houston leg of the Carrera Cartel, I grabbed his wrist and hauled his arm around my shoulder for support.
“Yeah, you reallygotthis, don’t you? You can barely breathe as it is. Whether you like it or not, lieutenant, you need me, and whether I like it or not, my conscience won’t let me turn my back on you, Eden, or even fucking Carrera. So, how about you stop arguing and try working with me, huh?”
I expected an argument. When he simply nodded his head around the back of the house where Val had disappeared moments earlier, I raised an eyebrow. Supporting his arm, I stumbled around the corner with Mateo draped over my shoulder. I didn’t take much time to consider why I wasn’t more nervous about what we were doing. If I’d stopped to think about it, I’d realize we were walking into a mass suicide, and the thoughts I’d allow myself would probably be my last. I didn’t have the years of gun handling expertise these men had. They’d avoided taking a bullet to the back of the head their entire lives. My target practice included weekend paintball with my fraternity brothers where I got my ass handed to me.
“Are you sure about this? My loyalty is with Val. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Mateo dug his feet into the grass, causing us to come to a complete stop. He glanced up, his bloodshot eyes raising from his bowed head, serious and unwavering.
Steeling my chin, I turned away, the decrepit building in my line of sight. Somewhere inside those mildewed walls, Eden needed me. I was no idiot. I knew I’d lost her to Carrera. For a while, I would’ve fought to have had a chance at something real with her, but I wouldn’t kid myself. A man didn’t fight a Carrera on anything, especially something he considered his. Plus, I knew Cherry better than she knew herself. If she didn’t want to be with him, even the almighty Valentin Carrera couldn’t force her into it. Whatever existed between the two of them was something I didn’t stand a chance in breaking.
And, I had to admit, without Carrera alive and on my side, there was no possibility in protecting Leighton on my own. I needed Manuel Muñoz dead, and for my sister, I’d die trying. I’d be damned if Leighton would pay the price for my choices.
Removing Mateo’s arm from my shoulder, I steadied him on his feet. “Worry about yourself, lieutenant. I’ve got this.” Plastering a noncommittal smile on my lips, I stalked past him, invisibility the least of my worries as we stood in the middle of a cross fire. I should’ve felt exposed and afraid for my life. Instead, I vibrated with a deep-seated need for a control I’d lacked for months.
I’d barely taken three steps when a crack broke through the air as loud as thunder and with the raw power of a storm. It reverberated in my ears, ringing out in an echo and shattering the window in front of me as if on auto delay. As a second shot ripped the wood paneling off the house two feet from where I stood, I gripped the gun in my damp palm, turning to either take a lucky shot or face my executioner when a blast exploded beside me.
Holy shit.
Reaching down, I ran my hand down my shirt, searching for a gaping wound, or at the very least, splotches of blood that signaled my impending demise. As my fingers scanned the rough fabric, I swallowed as all they encountered was shaking panic and sweat. Before I could rationalize what had happened, or thank God for the fact I was still alive, a third shot rang out, pulling attention toward the man twenty-five feet in front of me whose chest had erupted in a cloud of red. As blood poured from both corners of his mouth, his knees buckled, and he dropped face first to the ground.
Mateo lowered his smoking gun and turned back to face me. “You okay?”
“What the hell just happened?”
“You were showing me how much you’vegot this,” he mocked, displaying a wide grin.
“You know what,” I argued, throwing my arms wide, “that’s unnecessary. You think you could show a little gratitude for dragging your ass—”
“My ass?” he interrupted. “I just saved your—”
A fourth gunshot cut him off mid-sentence, but this one came from inside the house. Neither of us spoke another word as silence surrounded the blast. Not a sound or a scream followed the fire, and I didn’t have to look at Mateo to know we had the same concern.
Someone was dead.
