Rush of Redemption (Rush Series #2) (23 page)

~*~

It was early morning and Rush was giving Blake a bottle while Alex
gave him a rundown on what he’d been able to gather since they’d listened to
Trinity’s message the night before.

“You were right. The phone
has been shut off. Not only that, it…” Alex paused before saying quietly, “it
was disabled.” He saw Rush cringe.

“She probably did it
herself. I told you she would do that. 
Dumb girl,” Rush
muttered, even as he swallowed hard.

Rush muttered a curse when
his cellphone which seemed to go off every damned minute began to vibrate on
the desk. Glancing at the phone, he immediately gave his son to Anna, who had
just arrived from Savannah an hour before. Snatching the phone up, his stomach
roiled and his jaw tightened. It was a picture of Trinity… she looked dead. But
no, that made no sense. 
Tiko
 wouldn’t kill
her until he had the money. But she looked so bad. What was wrong with her? His
chest heaved as he struggled to breathe. With everything he could muster, he
read the text under the picture: 
How much closer to death must she be
before you pay?

Thrusting the phone at Alex,
Rush turned and walked away, lifting both hands, he interlocked his fingers and
laid them on the back of his neck as he stared unseeingly out the window.

Without inflection, Rush
said, “Alex, I need you to find her. I’ve got to find her. 
Tiko
 is running on fumes. If you think there’s a
chance to get her, I’ll give him the damned money. I don’t care about the
money. I only want her back… I’ve got to get her back. She’s sick. Did you see?
She’s so sick…”

Alex cleared his throat to
stop Rush’s rambling. “I’ve got a couple of leads we need to look into first.
Rush… I don’t have to tell you that once you give him the money, it’ll be
over,” he ended quietly.

“NO! It will never be
over.” Rush spun around, “We will find her. Do you understand me, Alex? Failure
is not an option!” Rush shouted, causing Blake to shriek his distress. Rush
took several deep breaths before taking the baby from Anna and cradling him
against his chest. “I need some of your men, at least two, here with Anna and
the baby. I don’t want them left alone. Understood?”

“Understood,” Alex replied
calmly.

Alex was turning away to
leave when Rush’s phone vibrated again. Giving the still whimpering child back
to Anna, he glanced down at the phone, cringed, and motioned Alex to wait.

“
Tiko
,”
Rush answered abruptly. “What the hell have you done to her? You better hope
she makes it out of this…”

Cutting him off, 
Tiko
 said with a smirk, “There’s nothing wrong with
her that a few aspirin won’t cure. Right now, I have control, but the longer
this drags out, the more chances there are for things to happen. My men have
been eyeing her luscious body for days. I don’t know how much longer I can keep
them away. Who knows? I might decide to be the first to sample her. It must be
pretty good if you want her. Am I right?”

“Listen to me, you
son-of-a-bitch, if you so much as touch a hair on her head…” Rush shouted
before Alex caught his eye and shook his head. Taking a deep breath, Rush said
with deadly calm, “If she is touched, I will kill you. Mark my words. You know
I can find you, I’ve done it before.”

“I want my money. I’ll kill
her and your brat, also. Don’t threaten me when I’m holding all the
cards,” 
Tiko
 said before hanging up.

Rush closed his eyes at the
truth in his words. Looking to Alex, pain pouring from every fiber, he said,
“We’ve got to find her… fast!”

Alex nodded before once
again exiting the room.

~*~

“Drink it, you stupid bitch,” 
Tiko
 Mars
yelled at Trinity as he tried to force pills and water down her throat, but she
was unconscious. “Damn it!”Placing some tablets on the floor, he
ground them with his heel before scooping up the crushed pills and dissolving
them in a bottle of water. Forcing her mouth open, he poured the liquid down
her throat, causing her to gag and sputter. Still she didn’t wake.

Chapter Fourteen

Rush was on the phone with one of the contacts he’d used before to
find 
Tiko
 Mars. The problem was, 
Tiko
 moved around and Rush wasn’t sure
where 
Tiko
 had Trinity. He figured it was
either here in El Paso or in Mexico. His eyes flashed to the door when he heard
a knock. One of Alex’s security team opened the door and Alex strode in quickly
followed in by a beautiful Hispanic woman. The woman had to be somewhere in her
late twenties. True to her heritage, she had dark hair and dark eyes. She had
golden skin, and a voluptuous figure.

Because of the level of
high intensity Alex gave off, Rush finished his call and clicked off his
cellphone. He looked from Alex to the beautiful woman behind him.

“What?” Rush asked simply.

“We found them,” Alex said
just as simply.

Rush didn’t respond at
first, refusing to believe his words. 
“Where?” he
finally asked softly.

“Juarez, Mexico,” Alex
responded.

Rush looked pointedly from Alex
to the woman behind him.

Alex seemed to shift his
body in a way which indicated protectiveness for some reason. “This is Devon
Montanez. She is one of my former contacts in Mexico.”

Rush looked between the two
of them as he tried to make his mind slow down and think rationally. “I’m
assuming since you’re here and Trinity is not, that there is a problem in
getting her?”

“Apparently, 
Tiko
 has stepped up his game and is now playing with
the big boys. It seems he owes some very serious money to a local gang called
the Los Rojas and is looking to have you pay his debt,” Alex supplied.

“Okay?” Rush asked,
obviously asking how this impacted Trinity.

“
Tiko
 has
a huge compound in Juarez. It’s fenced and is currently being guarded by the
Los Rojas. They are protecting their investment, it seems.”

Rush exhaled deeply and ran
his hand through his hair. “So what do we do?”

Stepping forward, Devon
Montanez said in her soft, Spanish accent, “We make 
Tiko
 give
her to us.”

“How do we do that
exactly?” Rush asked impatiently.

“
Tiko
 has
a daughter in a private school in Chihuahua, Mexico,” Alex said as if it
answered any lingering questions.

“And that helps us how?”
Rush’s impatience now reaching an all-time high.

Devon Montanez met his gaze
steadily. “We take his daughter and exchange her for the target.”

Rush cringed and growled,
“Trinity is NOT a target.”

Devon glanced at Alex and
Alex shook his head at her, speaking some private, silent language.

Once again Rush dragged his
hand through his hair. “So, the best we can come up with is to kidnap a young
girl in order to convince another kidnapper to release his hostage. What’s the
guarantee he won’t just kill Trinity?”

“He won’t kill his only
salvation from the Los Rojas,” Alex replied assuredly.

“We wouldn’t have to
actually kidnap his daughter. Only make 
Tiko
 
think
 we
did,” Devon supplied.

“That seems really risky,”
Rush said, unconvinced.

Alex cast his eyes over to
Devon and she gave a small nod of her head, again in their silent language.

“Devon’s family has… ties
to the 
Vato
 Locos, which is a rival gang to
the Los Rojas. All it would take is for you to tell 
Tiko
 we
have her stashed with the
Vato
 Locos and for his
daughter and someone from the 
Vato
 Locos to
be seen sitting together… it could be as simple as a café or even a church, and
he’d believe it.”Alex met Rush’s agonized eyes firmly. “Rush, he
won’t kill his meal ticket.”

Rush flinched at the words
and pressed his palms firmly against his eyes. “
Alex,
 is
this the only way?” he asked softly.

Alex thought it through for
a long moment before answering. “At this point, without having an army to back
us up, the only way we will ever get her is if
Tiko
 brings
her to us.”

“How
long?”

Alex exhaled deeply. “Two
days.”

Rush closed his eyes. “I
don’t think she’ll last that long. You saw the pictures.”

“We’ll set it up as fast as
we can,” Alex promised.

“What do you need me to
do?” Rush asked more decisively, now that the plan had been accepted in his
mind.

“I’ll set it up on my end
first and get the picture. Also, Alex told me 
Tiko
 doesn’t
know you have your son?” Devon asked.

“That’s right.”

“Make him squirm with that
also. He might try to unload the sick one for someone he doesn’t have, if he
believes that person is even more valuable to you,” Devon said solemnly.

Rush met her eyes steadily
before nodding his head.

After they departed, Rush sat down heavily on the end of the bed
and looked around the plush living area of the suite. Here he sat in all this
opulence and Trinity was lying naked on a bare concrete floor, being gazed upon
by those animals. His chest tightened so much that he nearly couldn’t breathe.
With a sweep of his hand he knocked everything from the table onto the floor
savagely. What if she didn’t make it out? What if he couldn’t save her? How
could he endure that? Falling back on the bed, he allowed tears to slide
unashamedly down the sides of his face.

I never wanted this life
, she’d told him. And here she was, right back where she’d been
twice before. Maybe it would be better for her if he let her go. Even though it
made his chest constrict even further, he promised himself that if that was
what she wanted, he’d let her go. He wouldn’t keep trying to hold onto her so
tight. 
God, please give me the chance to make things right,
 he
begged with his eyes shut.

~*~

It was midnight and Rush was sitting staring at the flickering
lights of the television with the sound muted. He held a sleeping Blake against
his chest, needing the contact of his body against his own. He rubbed his thumb
and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. His eyes were gritty but he
refused to give in to sleep, not while Trinity was out there suffering.

He jumped when his cellphone
began to jump and rattle on the table as it vibrated. His heart leaped into his
throat when he saw it was 
Tiko
 Mars.
Rolling his head on his neck, he answered.

“Unless you’re calling to
tell me where to pick up my family, I don’t think we have anything else to talk
about,” Rush said with deadly calm, speaking in quiet tones so as not to wake
Blake.

“Your girl 
ain’t
 
doin
’ so well. You
might need to rethink this whole ‘wait and see thing’ you got going on,” 
Tiko
 said just as calmly.

“What do you mean she’s not
doing so well?”

“I don’t know, man. She
caught some kind of bug or something… totally not my fault. A freak of nature,
I guess you could say,” 
Tiko
 replied
smoothly.

“Let me speak to her,” Rush
said as he gently laid his son down and moved to the adjoining room. “I want to
speak to her now, or I swear you will never see one red cent,” he said with
malice. The silence on the other end of the phone filled him with panic.

“Well, here’s the thing.
Your girl, she’s like… she won’t wake up. If you’re 
wanting
 to
see her alive, you might need to start dealing with me now. So here’s the final
deal… and I do mean final, she won’t make it much longer. Tomorrow, at nine
o’clock, I will call you and tell you where you can pick up your girl and your
son… only after the ten million is transferred to a specified account. Nine
o’clock is the deadline. If the money isn’t transferred to the account number I
text you, I’m digging a hole big enough for the both of them. I hope for your
sake, she makes it that long.”

“
Tiko
,
I swear…” Rush was left speaking to air. Rush tried calling the number back,
but as always, it was blocked.

Bending at the waist to
suck great gulps of air into his lungs, Rush panted at the pain. She was dying.
What if she didn’t make it till morning? Rising, he pressed the heels of his
hands against the extreme pain behind his eyes. What if she was already dead?
No! This wasn’t going to happen. He didn’t care what it took. Moving through
the suite, he tapped on Anna’s door. After only a few moments, she answered, “I
need to go out. Blake is asleep on my bed. Can you sit with him for a little
while?” She nodded.