Legal Heirs - Box Set Edition: Books 5-8 (Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles) (35 page)

“Stop, crying, fuck! That’s not what I’m here to do…
not
that
,” he yelled. He rubbed his eyes and muttered something she didn’t quite catch.

“Okay, I’m taking your word for it. I believe you,” she said, wiping her nose, her sapphire eyes bloodshot and bright with tears and terror. There were three metal chairs near the mattress, and she sat down   wearily in one of them. “What
are
you here to do? Whatever it is, just do it quickly. If there’s any good left inside you, I don’t want the baby to… feel it. He should go back to wherever babies come from only knowing the beat of my heart.”

He watched her as she began to sponge her face, neck, and arms as best she could. She sat and washed her legs, then pulled up the front of her shirt just a tiny bit, and the baby kicked and tumbled as she smoothed the cloth over her taut belly. She smiled and glanced up just then, and the look of wonder on Christopher’s face was a revelation. He
felt
, he was in there somewhere—hidden, to be sure, but human, after all. He averted his eyes when he noticed her watching him, and quick as a flash she leaned forward and grabbed his hand. His head whipped around to face her, but she had already clamped his big hand firmly on her stomach and the baby did a perfect somersault as if on cue.

“His name’s Charlie,” she said softly, “John Charles is what we were planning on. I think Christopher Charles might be better, it’s my brother’s name. Your name, Christopher, and our father is Charles Tremont. Tell me you’re getting this, please. Do you get it, that we’re related, the same blood, the same father?”

His eyes lost their hard edge as he squinted and studied her, then he jerked his hand away as if he’d been burned.

“Stop talking and go to sleep, the woman is coming tomorrow. She wants you alert when… she gets here.” He covered her mouth with his hand, then dragged her over to the new mattress and pushed her down onto it. He picked up a brown paper bag from the floor and handed it to her. Inside were cold tamales and a bottle of water. She gulped the water and nibbled the food, trying desperately not to throw up again. He sat in a chair near the mattress, sharpening a huge knife, and Charlotte pushed the food aside, turned away from him, and curled into a ball.

*

Charlotte woke the next morning with a pounding headache and a desperate craving for caffeine. She loved her morning coffee, and she had intended to give it up, surely it wasn’t good for the baby. There was a toilet partially shielded from view behind a pile of wooded packing crates. She waved the Ghost away, stepped behind the improvised screen, and peed for a good ten minutes. She rinsed her hands and made her way to one of the chairs, stretching, one hand on the small of her back where the muscles were kinked and aching. She stopped and faced him as he stood still and looked down at her. She was tall, but he was much taller. He was absolutely beautiful, and she hated herself for thinking such a shallow thought when she was so close to death. If they’d known each other before, if they’d met on the street or a beach… but hadn’t they? She felt a twinge of remembrance, of having spoken a few words to him, of shielding the sun’s glare from her face and smiling up into eyes that were so much like her own….

“Lukewarm coffee?” she asked, as he handed her a paper Starbucks cup. She sipped from it, knowing she was way past the dangers of caffeine and chemicals. She smiled sadly, smelling the familiar smell of the coffee, feeling the perfect weight of the cup in her hand. How strange, there was a Starbucks in the middle of a city that was one of the murder capitals of the world.
Who the hell dared to leave their homes to work there?
She wondered, with the underlings of the drug cartels prowling the streets, mowing down the guilty and the innocent with equal amounts of zeal?
Good, this is mental anesthesia, it’s better to think about coffee and the unknown dead, much better than imagining the feel of that awful, sharp knife he’s going to use….

Charlotte hadn’t realized there were other men in the room, five of them. Their faces were grim and hardened although they were still young, in their early twenties, most likely. A small, heavily armed group of thugs or soldiers—who knew the difference with the drug wars running rampant in the streets? They paced the warehouse floor and handled their rifles as if they were a part of them, never setting the weapons down. They looked like toy soldiers, dressed in their camouflaged clothing and heavy, dusty boots. They whispered and laughed amongst themselves, and never once looked at Charlotte. They kept their distance from her, glancing now and again at the Ghost. They were fierce-looking men, men who had surely seen and done unimaginably bad things. Men who didn’t know fear, but she saw touches of apprehension when any of them lifted their eyes toward the Ghost.

“Eat this bread,” her brother, the Ghost, said to her, his eyes meeting hers for a split second with what seemed to be a touch of concern. He handed her a warm roll that smelled of yeast, and of course those basic niceties—a glance, the warm pastry in her hand, the earthy aroma of the yeast—sent tears rushing down her cheeks. She swiped at them with the back of her hand, but there was no stopping them. She had fallen off the edge of the world into a well of hopelessness.

Her brother wouldn’t look at her after that. He told her to sit on the mattress and to keep her eyes down or he would blindfold her. Then he shouted at the men in Spanish and his voice was hard and sharp like the blade he’d honed so precisely. She recognized the Spanish word for “hurry up,” and she thought her heart would stop when she heard a woman’s voice in the room.

“Ah, the smell of expensive French perfume mingling with the putrid sweat of these bottom feeding murderers, how very droll. My dear Charlotte, you don’t know me, do you? And yet, I’ve used the very money Alexander paid to care for me to purchase your death. My sister wears that same perfume, isn’t that odd? Quelques Fleurs, isn’t it? His mother and his lover wear the same scent. How Shakespearean, how disgustingly trite.”

The woman stood above Charlotte as she spoke, the toe of her Louboutin pump resting on the edge of the mattress. Her eyes were filled with madness as they bore into Charlotte with barely contained loathing. Charlotte could scarcely draw a breath, she was suddenly so petrified with fear. This mad woman was Evangeline’s sister, Bly’s aunt, the mother of a man Charlotte had watched die. She was Bennet Sommerfeld’s mother, Gabrielle, and her son was dead because he had held a knife to the throat of Charlotte and Bly’s son, Atticus.

“I’m truly sorry about your son, Gabrielle, but he held my child at knife point. He would have cut a seven-year-old boy’s throat out of some sort of grudge against Bly. Atticus has the scar from that knife wound, he would have died if it had hit the artery….”

“Shut up, shut the fuck up! You lying whore. Bennet was a good man, a better man than Alexander by far. Your son should have died, and my son should be alive today. I gave Alexander a choice, you or your son, but he won’t turn the boy over to the Ghost to be butchered. He’s coming here to witness your death, dear girl. I’m sure he’s a few miles from here in El Paso right now, just waiting for my call,” Gabrielle said, and she motioned for the five young men to come closer. She said something to them, and they looked confused. Gabrielle and Evangeline had grown up in Brazil, where Portuguese was their native language. In her mind, if these Mexican soldiers, or whatever they were, spoke Spanish, they should damn well understand Portuguese. But it definitely lost some of its meaning in translation.

They crossed the room, ready to do what they were told, even if the older lady was speaking some weird dialect. They had gotten a look at Charlotte and they liked what they saw. What a long tall drink of water in the desert she was! They thought she could use a little more meat on her bones, but she was hot and ripe, with that sweet little belly poking out in front. It stirred the men up, her pregnant belly. It meant she liked what a man had to offer, that she was good at spreading those long, perfect legs. She reminded them of a fashion model, with those blue eyes that looked like big jewels in her white face. And man, her mouth, oh, the things they intended to do to that succulent mouth. She huddled on the mattress as they approached, and that sealed the deal. She was scared, and that was the best part of all. She would put up a fight, and that would make raping her a sweet, sweet deal. The men all knew a fucking little
gringa
bitch like her just needed a good stiff cock, and they couldn’t wait to give it to her.  

The Ghost said something to the salivating men, and they stopped in their tracks a few yards from where Charlotte sat shaking with both fear and anger.

“You really expected Bly to hand over a little boy to be murdered? You’re insane, Gabrielle, INSANE!” Charlotte screamed as tears dripped from her eyes. She turned to the Ghost. “Would you have done it? Was that the deal you made with her? Then I’m glad it’s me. It makes it a little easier knowing I denied you the pleasure of using your skills on my son. You’ll only be guilty of killing your sister and an unborn baby.”

“Your sister? Why yes, it’s really quite obvious, how could I possibly have missed the resemblance? I’ll tell you what I want you to do to your
sister
,” Gabrielle said to the Ghost, who stood staring coldly down at Charlotte. “I want you to fuck her, and I want you to do it now, and then again when Alexander gets here. Don’t worry, I haven’t called him yet. I want her to look near death when he lays eyes on her. We’ll see if she is the woman of his dreams when you’ve worked her over a few times. Go ahead, are you suddenly shy? You kill and butcher on a whim, but you don’t fuck in front of an audience? Or would it be too much like fucking yourself? She looks so much like you, you have to admit. But, maybe there’s a thrill in that, something taboo, an incestuous rush of arousal. She likes her men handsome, I’ll give her that. Her husband and my nephew are really something to look at. But not as pretty as you, my dear assassin. Your face is beautiful… just like your sister’s.”

“That’s enough. Where’s the money?” he asked, averting his eyes from the shell-shocked, horrified look in Charlotte’s eyes. “I need to see the cash, all of it. Open the bag and dump the money on the floor.”

“What do you think I am, your fucking slave to order around? I’m paying you, motherfucker, and don’t forget it! There, it’s all there in cold, hard cash. Now, drop your fucking pants, and let me hear the girl scream. You work for me, so give me my money’s worth.”

Gabrielle had knelt on the floor to empty the bag. This fucking Ghost needed to learn a thing or two about taking orders, and she intended to teach him a lesson. She had it all worked out in her head: The Ghost would kill Charlotte while Alex watched, then he would turn the gun or knife on Alex, and that would be that. While that was all going on, she would make a deal with the five gawking
pendejos
. They could have all the cash for killing the Ghost so he couldn’t come after her later.
Pendejos
—she bet if she called them that, they would understand she meant business. She’d learned a lot of derogatory terms in the years she lived in Los Angeles with each of her rich husbands. Of course, she had only heard such words used behind her back by the hired help. Words like that had a nasty ring to them, and they had a way of sticking in Gabrielle’s head, which was nice for a time like this when she wanted to call someone an idiot or a useless little pubic hair.

“She’s yours and so is the money,” the Ghost told the soldiers. Three of the men went straight to the stacks of hundred dollar bills on the ground. The other two started toward Charlotte, “Not her. The other one, the woman who’s willing to pay to murder children.”

Gabrielle moved quickly when she realized she was being handed over to a group of thugs hungry for a taste of rape and murder. Charlotte screamed as she saw her draw the knife the Ghost had sharpened to a fine point. His eyes turned to Charlotte just long enough for Gabrielle to deliver one long gash across his chest. He slapped the knife out of her hand and then the soldiers were on her, wrestling her to the ground as she cursed them all.

Christopher’s shirt had begun to darken with blood when he reached for Charlotte’s hand to help her stand. Her knees buckled beneath her, so he carried her to the Jeep, and then, after they had left the mean streets behind, he lifted her into the small plane at the airstrip.

“Who am I?” he asked, as they flew north, then east, with the noonday sun high overhead.

She smiled and said, “Right now, you’re my hero.”

Chapter Two

“Wear the vests, they have armor plates in them. This is going to be up close and personal,” Finn told Bly and West when the jet circled, preparing to land on the outskirts of Juarez. “We land at this airstrip, drive ten or fifteen minutes to the warehouse where she’s being held, and we walk right in and get her. That’s the plan, quick and easy. We’re in and we’re out. The Ghost and that bitch responsible for this are already dead as far as I’m concerned.”

Minutes later the jet touched down, and the three men got into a Humvee driven by an ex-SEAL buddy of Finn’s.

“I’ve been watching the warehouse since you contacted me,” the ex-SEAL told Finn. “I’ve been scoping the place using thermal. There are six people inside emitting body heat. Five of them moving around, one of them is stationary. The one who isn’t moving is in a prone position, the other five have been… up and down, using the one who’s lying down, I’d guess. Sorry man, I had zero backup, or I would’ve done the extraction myself.”