Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
“Timeo—”
The video goes black. With shaking hands, I click the final link.
I brace myself, but it isn’t enough. When the pictures and data begin to populate, I have to lean against the car for support.
Robert Johnson.
46 years old
Executed at the compound
I… I knew these men.
I'm gasping for breath as I scan the names and faces. I close my eyes. I push forward.
David Anderson
69 years old
Executed at the compound
The man who abused me in the fellowship.
James Wilson
68 years old
Escaped. Sent to jail.
Executed via hit in jail.
My schoolteacher who told me that my place was under my father's roof.
William Soul
55 years old
Executed at the compound
My father. Killed that day at the compound.
Timeo did this. He hunted and he killed them. And he told his brothers that he was going undercover, but all the while…
I scroll through the pictures, my stomach queasy.
Executed.
Executed.
Executed.
My heart is thundering in my chest as I go through names that I found out later were the cartel, men I only vaguely knew who lived on the periphery of the compound.
Marco Hernandez
29.
Executed
Carlos Lopez
33.
Executed.
Executed.
Executed.
Executed.
The words blur as I read them, marked in red. But at the very bottom of the page… there’s one still in green.
I stare at the picture of my torturer, the man I saw not ten minutes ago.
Manuel Rodriguez.
52.
At large.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Timeo
"Fuck, it feels good to get out from behind bars,” Rodriguez says, like he’s a man on vacation. He gives me a sidelong look, satisfied that I am cuffed to a chair in the main cabin of the boat as Fern sits across from me. A couple of his men wander around but I don’t recognize them.
“Why did you do it?" I ask her.
She shrugs. “They paid me better than you did.”
“Nah,” I say, denying her statement. “People don’t stoop to this level of betrayal easily. Not for money. You could’ve done shit all for money. What was the real reason?”
“Don’t talk to him,” Rodriguez snaps. He slides up to her and puts his hand on her lower back. The way he holds her gives me an idea.
"Did you drug Starla?”
She blows out a breath and laughs.
“Of course I did. Imagine my surprise when I came to the bar tonight and found a corner of the envelope with all my intel on you just sticking out under the counter beneath the register. It looks like somebody was trying to get it out, Timeo. Would you happen to know anything about that?”
I raise my brows and smirk. “Wow. Kept it at the bar. What a great idea."
I want to antagonize her, make her angry. She loses control of herself when she gets angry.
Like a fish led to bait, she snaps. "I wasn't exactly going to take it with me wherever I went. I spent more time in the bar than anywhere else. Don’t you dare mock me.”
I turn away from her as if bored.
“Rodriguez, you're going to have to release me if you want me to give you the intel that I promised. It's a thumb to thumbprint identification to get onto my phone, where it's stored. And there's nobody else that can access it because I constructed the format myself. "
Rodriguez rolls his eyes. "Well, that isn't the easiest trick in the book."
Of course it is, but I'm not done yet.
“I’ve set it up with biometric readings, so it won’t be accessible if I’m stressed, under pressure, or you cut off my thumb and use it to access it.”
“Of course you fucking did,” he says on a growl, then comes to a sudden halt.
“Boss, you hear that?”
He slams his palm in the air.
Silence.
Then the faint sound of a chop chop chop, growing louder.
My heart soars. The harbor patrol isn’t coming.
My brothers are here.
The sound of a voice on a loudspeaker rises above us as a beam like headlights illuminates the dark around us. "We have in our possession Javier Perez and Eduardo Ramirez. Release Timeo Montavio. We repeat, release Timeo Montavio and you will get the information you are after.”
Rodriguez may have suspected the harbor patrol would follow him. He was banking on my family never finding him.
But he didn't know the Montavio fucking Brotherhood has a helicopter with night vision and weapons with military precision. They hadn’t gotten very far.
“You have ten seconds.”
“My God!” Fern says. “They don’t lie. You know that. Give them what they want, or they’ll kill us!”
“Stop panicking. They’re bluffing.”
Machine gun fire erupts into the water. Windows shatter. Someone’s an excellent shot.
Rodriguez throws his arms up in surrender, but I know him. He's not surrendering. He's not going back to jail. He would rather die than do that.
Thump.
Thump.
My brothers have boarded the ship.
Boom. Rodriguez grabs Fern and tries to barricade himself in a room, but Ricco is quicker and pulls Fern away from him.
Rodriguez points his gun at me, and I kick it out of his hand. "Ricco, he's fucking mine."