Selling Scarlett (48 page)

“Are we getting sold or something? Because that would be unbelievable.”

I nod. “I really think we are. Except you...” I'm about to speculate on why they didn't feel a need to tie Cross's hands when the door opens again, and a tall Mexican man walks in.

Chapter Forty-One
~ELIZABETH~

He's wearing all black, from his boots to the fedora-like hat on his head. He has light brown skin and Spanish features. Once I see the dead look in his eyes, all I know is that he's not here to help us. In fact, he's probably here to buy us.
Shit
.

His assessing gaze flicks over me, then over Cross, who I quickly realize has managed to slump over on his side. Did he do that in time to fool the buyer? I'm not sure, because I wasn't watching him. I watch the buyer's face; he's looking down his thin nose at Cross. I don't think he's spared a look for me yet.

He steps closer to Cross, poking his bicep with the tip of his black leather boot.

Then he turns toward the door, flicks his fingers in a come hither motion, and two other men walk in. Neither is as tall as the buyer, and it's clear they're working for him, rather than the other way around. They're wearing black like he is, but they don't look as clean or well-groomed, and where he points, they scurry.

I tense, terrified because I expect them to skip right over Cross and come to me, but instead they each grab one of Cross's shoulders, and they roll him over. He's so limp I wonder if he actually passed out. One of them starts to unbutton his blue jeans, and I shriek.

The buyer's gaze snaps to me. “You can't do that!”

“You be quiet,” he hisses. His accent makes his voice sound like a snake.

“He's not for sale.”

“What about you?” He steps closer to me, taking my face in his hand and running his finger over my cheek. “Are you for sale?” he asks me. “We get many requests for feisty girls.” His gaze flicks between my legs. “They told me you are barely used.”

I blink up at him, feeling like I might be sick.

He releases my face and chuckles. “She is just a baby.”

Abruptly he's leaving my bed and walking toward the door. I glance over at Cross, and I'm relieved to find his jeans still zipped.

The buyer struts toward the door. He pulls something out of his back pocket, and as he reaches the doorway, two men lean in to hear what he has to say. I gasp as I see they're both holding machine guns.

The shock of it is so horrible, I forget to translate what he's telling them. The two sidekicks move to stand behind the buyer, and all of a sudden they're all talking at once. Then the three of them step back, and Priscilla and Lockwood come in. It looks, from the little I saw, like the gunmen actually had to admit them.

Super
.

You would know they're guppies in the big pond.

This time, I can hear their conversation clearly.

The buyer speaks in Spanish: “We'll take them both. The man, especially, will fetch a good price in a larger market. Possibly Europe. Dark hair and blue eyes is a good look. For the woman, I am thinking Asia. I can see she is lacking in experience.”

I keep my eyes trained on the ceiling as my heart races. I dare a quick glance over at Cross. He seems asleep, but is he really?

Lockwood says, “How much?”

The buyer makes a tsking noise and continues speaking in Spanish. “I want to see more of them. A fresh woman is a fresh woman, but what is the size of the man's part?”

“He is large,” Lockwood says in Spanish.

Oh my God. Does he actually know that? My cheeks and head feel too hot, like any moment now, steam might start flowing from my ears.
Please, no
.

“What is the quality of the girl's tits?”

“You can feel for yourself,” Lockwood says, also in Spanish.

He waves at me, and Priscilla holds her arm out like a game show display girl.

I'm swallowing convulsively. The man nears me, and I wonder if I throw my legs up, if I can kick him with my knees despite my tied up ankles. He scrutinizes my face and then he reaches for my chest.

As his hand comes down to grope me, I experience my first real moment of hopelessness. What if this is really my new life? His fingers are inches from my breast when I close my eyes, but his hand never makes it. He crashed to the floor, knocking me off the bed, and his two sidekicks start yelling. The buyer jumps up as I fumble onto my knees, leaning my shoulders on the bed. I'm shocked to see Cross standing, clutching a handgun.

It must belong to the buyer, because the buyer's face is a mask of shock as he reaches into his shirt.

For the longest moment in the history of moments, Cross and the buyer stare each other down. Then, out of nowhere, Lockwood fires a shot at Cross. Cross ducks, and the guards at the door come in and start screaming. One of them has Lockwood on the ground in seconds, aiming what looks like an AK-47 at his face. Priscilla is screaming, sticking her arms in the air, her huge boobs bouncing as she jumps in place. “I give blow jobs! Don't hurt me! I'll give you a blow job!”

At first I think she must have lost her mind, but one of the gunmen actually lowers his rifle and makes a grab at her crotch.

She thrusts toward him, leaving Lockwood, me, Cross and the buyer in our standoff. I shift my attention to translating Cross's Spanish, and I'm stunned to realize he's negotiating some kind of deal.

I catch something about, “Giant stockpile of guns” and “American airplane, not far from here” before my eyes and my attention drift to the buyer.

Part of me will always regret that I don't get to see that play out. When the guards start going berserk again, Priscilla is on her knees, Lockwood is on his back, and Cross, only days out of a coma, has elicited a respectful—if skeptical—expression from the buyer, who is obviously more interested in getting an airplane loaded with weapons than he is in whatever money he could make from us.

The buyer is wearing his skeptical-but-coming-around expression, and Cross is owning it, and I am just sitting there, not like a badass heroine at all, wondering if they're just going to kill us when they realize there’s no plane, when another man with a big machine gun runs into the room and cries, “Chota!”

“Chota?” the buyer says.

“Chota!”

“CHOTA!”

And, just like that, the buyer, his sidekicks, and his gunmen run like hell.

I'm freaking out now, too, so I struggle to stand up, and Cross grabs me and pushes me under the bed. Right before my face mashes into the dirty, tile floor, I notice Cross's ankles are still bound, and he's balancing on the outside of his soles.

Then there's a gunshot...but it's not Cross firing. He's in the process of crouching down behind me; I can feel something sharp between my skin and the rope, first on my hands and then my ankles. Then I turn to find Cross freeing his feet. Then he stands and whirls toward the door, where the sound of footsteps echoes.

He mutters a confused-sounding curse. “Hunter West?”

I jump up and get a glimpse of Hunter, leaning in the doorway. I know the exact moment he sees me, because relief makes his eyes widen and his mouth fall open. His gaze flies over me, and he rushes toward me. I'm already anticipating his arms around me. I can practically feel them. But before he reaches me, a loud boom wrenches the air, and Hunter flies into the wall.

“OH MY GOD!”

I watch in horror as he slumps down to the floor, his face twisting in agony as his right hand fumbles toward his bright red, left shoulder. He lifts his head, and his wild eyes comb the room until they settle on my face.

“Hunter!” I rush him, noting dimly as I fly across the room that Cross is on top of Lockwood, pummeling his face.

“Hunter! HUNTER! NO, no, no,
no, please!
” I grab his body, shocked and terrified by how limp he is already.

“Libby.” His hands grab at me as he starts panting, which quickly turns to horrible choking. “Libby...” he gasps, “you...okay?”

That's the last thing he says before his eyes roll back into his head.

I start to scream, and somewhere far away, I hear one of my would-be kidnappers cry: “Chota!”

Chapter Forty-Two
~HUNTER~

I must have died and gone to hell, because I'm burning. The fire spreads through my upper body, quickly overwhelming all my senses. Then I'm dragged down into darkness. How many layers of hell are there supposed to be? I can't remember, but I must be going deep.

The burning is more intense now. I hear a man moaning and wonder if it’s me. I hear a woman moan, too, and I’m worried the woman is Libby. I scream her name over and over, but I don’t get an answer. Libby's not here. Michael Lockwood took her.

I relive the moments after she disappeared from my vineyard. I'm outside screaming her name, and Dave is there almost immediately. By chance he’d picked up Lockwood’s trail that morning and eventually followed him to my home.

When Lockwood was able to gain easy entry—because I didn't lock the door behind Libby when she came inside—Dave hid his bike and tried to get a peek. He was at the side of the house when he heard two cars pull up, and he got to the front just in time to see a silver Audi he didn’t recognize spirit Cross and Libby away.

We jump on Dave’s bike and give chase, but we haven’t caught them by the time we leave the neighborhood. Dave has an idea. A terrible one. Lockwood spent two hours at a tiny airstrip before coming to my house.

We arrive just as a Lear Jet goes airborne. I call the FBI, and it takes them almost an hour to give the local cops the clearance to examine the flight records. They arrive in time to spend another hour figuring out the records have been falsified. The plane claimed to be headed north, toward Redding, California, but tracking software shows it actually went south.

The FBI has to wait for orders, but I don’t. Hal and I get on my plane. It’s several hellish hours before the plane we're chasing lands—in a rural area outside San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico. My pilot, Victor, lands in a field, and Hal and I start trying to trace a path from the empty plane to Libby. Fifty bucks gets us a hotel name, and two hundred gets us a dinged up dirt bike. We pull out just as another plane—the FBI, Hal says—flies low overhead.

I'm moaning again, and just like before, the woman is crying. There's something clutching my hand. Someone, and I feel sure it’s Libby. She’s crying.

I squeeze her hand as hard as I can, and the crying stops. “It's okay, Libby.”

I have the strange suspicion that I'm only managing a whisper. She’s crying again. I mean, she is really going at it. I squeeze her hand, and the crying turns to sobbing.

Damnit, Libby.

Her sobs make the burn worse. Darkness starts to fade, and I can see white flames. I feel like I'm choking and I start to struggle against the invisible hands that hold me.

Fuck—oh fuck. I don't like this. Not at all. There are so many voices rising up around me. Someone slaps my face, and I don't think it's hard, but I'm already on edge.

And then there is light. Fluorescent light.

Holy shit. I turn my head left and right, squeezing my eyes shut against the searing pain, and there is Libby, bent over me and crying. And I really must be confused about what's going on, because she's wearing scrubs. Libby looks beautiful in scrubs.

*

~ELIZABETH~

Hunter is in and out of consciousness for almost two days. They say it's not that long considering the bullet's trajectory—through his left lung—and where it lodged, by one of the branches of his axillary artery. He almost bled to death in the hour-long helicopter ride to UC San Diego hospital, and when we got here, they wheeled him straight into surgery, which lasted four excruciating hours.