Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

February 6 th

8:36 A.M.

This was impossible.

Ella had followed the instructions, she was sure she had. Only she didn't have a written copy of them, all she had to go on was what she remembered. Unfortunately for her, following directions was not something she had ever been good at.

Still, how could she be this lost?

Everything else had gone so smoothly. She’d gotten the drug into the cab, to the airport, and onto her plane without incident. Throughout the short flight, she had been constantly on edge, wondering if there were going to be cops waiting for her on the other end, ready to take her into custody and then drag her right back home where she would have to face the music and pay the price for the choices she’d made.

But no one had been there.

Since this wasn’t a vacation, she hadn't packed a suitcase, just stuffed a change of clothes into her bag. Thankfully, she always used quite a large bag, so there was space for the clothes and a few toiletries without the need to bring along a larger bag which would have tipped someone off that she was at Prey to get the drug.

After making it through immigration without incident, she’d headed outside and to the parking lot where she’d found the vehicle Raul said would be waiting for her.

With hands shaking so badly it was a wonder she’d been able to drive at all, she’d made it through the city and out into the jungle, and that’s where things had fallen apart.

She was lost.

Completely and utterly lost.

The roads—well, what counted as a road but was really nothing more than tracks through the ever-thickening jungle—were almost impossible to make out now, and Ella was sure that sooner rather than later, they were going to disappear into nothingness.

What was she supposed to do then?

She’d ditched her cell phone at the airport, and there hadn't been one in the car, guess Raul hadn't wanted her to have second thoughts and call someone to confess everything. That meant she had no way to call him now, no way to bring up a map, although the chances of GPS working out here had to be slim.

Her bad day suddenly turned even worse when the car slowed to a stop and the engine died.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she wailed, turning the key over and over again in hopes that the engine would kick back on.

But it didn't.

Couldn’t.

Because the problem wasn’t the engine.

The car had run out of gas.

It didn't matter how many times she turned the key in the ignition, there was no juice to make the car go. Raul must have wanted a safeguard that she was going to drive to where she’d been told and nowhere else and limited the amount of gas in the car to just enough to get her there.

Obviously, he hadn't counted on her being directionally challenged.

What was she supposed to do now?

If she didn't get to Raul Castillo, bad things were going to happen, she had to get the drug to him like she’d promised she would. But how was she supposed to do that now?

The car wasn’t going anywhere, meaning she would have to walk.

That would be one thing if she knew where she was going, but she didn't. She had no idea where she’d made a wrong turn and wasn’t even sure she knew how to backtrack and find her way to one of the bigger roads where she might be able to find someone.

Even if she could manage to do that, she’d have to hope that the driver she found knew where Raul was and was willing to take her there.

This was a dangerous part of the world. Aside from the fact that the weapons dealer had a house somewhere close by there were cartels, who would do only one thing to her if they found her wandering around in their territory.

Images of her being held down and raped flashed through her mind along with a series of images of what her three friends had been through. Raul had in his possession an arousal drug that was said to keep a woman in a painful state of arousal for hours. According to her friends, all three of them who had fallen victim to the drug’s influence while Raul’s prisoner, had said it felt like there was something inside of you clawing to get out and that you would do almost anything to find relief.

That’s what they had suffered at the hands of the man she was now going to meet.

If anyone ever deserved to burn in Hell for all eternity for their sins, it was her.

She was the lowest form of low. The worst of the worst. And yet, with a weary sigh, she unsnapped her seatbelt, grabbed her purse from the passenger seat, shoved open her door, and climbed out of the vehicle.

Despite the risks, she was going to have to figure this out on foot.

The only other option was to sit in her car and just wait there until she died of dehydration. Even with the muggy heat that would take days, and she wasn’t brave enough to sit there and wait for death to come for her.

Still, she eyed the car once before starting to walk. Maybe that would be the better option. It was certainly what she deserved. Maybe even more than she deserved.

But she couldn’t do it.

Instead, she turned and trudged off into the jungle. Ella still had no idea where she was going. Obviously, somewhere along the way, she’d taken a wrong turn, but she had no idea where.

If she kept going forward, there was a chance she might be able to still find Raul’s property. She couldn’t have gotten so far off track that she wasn’t even in the vicinity. At least that’s what she assured herself as she climbed over a fallen tree trunk.

Even if she made it through the jungle and by some miracle got to his place, he wasn’t going to believe her when she said she’d just gotten lost. There would be some punishment she’d be forced to endure, and she had already decided she would take it without complaint.

It was the least she owed her friends.

Being lost aside, there was every chance she wouldn't even make it through the jungle. There were so many predators out there, both animal and human. Plus, she had zero supplies and wasn’t even dressed to be traipsing through the jungle. At least she’d swapped out her usual dresses and heels for a sensible pair of jeans and sneakers.

Despite the early morning, it was already hot and humid. Hot enough that she shrugged out of her hoodie and tied it around her waist. Tonight, when the temperature dropped, she’d need it again, but right now it was too warm to keep it on.

After only several minutes of walking, Ella was already thirsty, but she’d finished the bottle of water from the plane in the car before she realized she was lost and had taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way.

The outdoors was not her thing, she was an inside girl. When she wasn’t working or hanging out with her friends, she was either reading or practicing. Coming from a family of classical musicians, it had always been assumed that she would follow in their footsteps. It wasn’t that she wasn’t talented enough, she’d been a child prodigy, playing multiple instruments before she could even read and write. Cello was her favorite, and even though she’d chosen a different path for her life, she still occasionally performed in front of large audiences, her fame as a child meaning she got plenty of invites.

Music was her happy place. Not that she had ever once second-guessed her decision not to make music her career. She’d made the right choices, the best ones for her, and she’d done a lot of good work at Prey.

Too bad it was all tainted now.

All anyone would ever remember of her was that she had taken a drug she’d designed with her friends and sold it to a weapons dealer. Nobody would care to dig deeper and find out the whys.

That hurt.

Maybe more than it should given that Ella was aware that she was the bad guy in this situation. If her friends didn't believe in her then that was her own fault.

Things didn’t have to go this way. She could have made a different choice, but she hadn't. She’d made this choice and now had no other option but to follow it through to the end.

Whatever the end looked like.

Whether she wound up getting killed by an animal, dehydration, exposure, a cartel, Raul, or one of his men, it didn't really make much difference.

Whatever she got she would deserve.

February 6 th

11:37 A.M.

The usual rush he got when off on a mission with his team was lacking today.

If anything, Miguel would rather be anywhere but there.

Despite knowing the mountain of evidence against Ella, he couldn’t shake a sense that something wasn’t adding up.

Sure, the Prey guys had an explanation for why Ella would set up her friends and get them abducted when she already had the formula for the drug. Even if she had a grudge against them, and so far, no one seemed to be able to come up with a logical answer as to why she would have a grudge and what exactly the grudge would be, that didn't explain the three other Athena Team members own accounts of their kidnappings.

From Scarlett to Lucy to Cassie, all three women repeated versions of the same story. They’d been taken, imprisoned, and tortured into giving up the formula for the drug. If Raul had access to the formula through Ella, why torture them?

Why specifically torture them to get them to talk?

If it was just about revenge for some perceived slight that had Ella setting up the abductions, there was no need for Raul to try to get them to give up the formula. He still could have tortured them, but why was the man so intent on getting the formula if he already had it?

It didn't make sense.

Straight up didn't.

The theory that the abductions were because of a grudge Ella had against her teammates only worked if you just took her into consideration. As soon as you added Raul to the equation, the whole theory became as shaky as a stack of dominos.

And like dominoes, he felt that everything was about to come tumbling down.

Right now, though, it wasn’t his job to figure out if Ella was guilty of all the crimes she had been accused of. There were a few things that weren't up for debate. She had taken the Reactivator from a hidden safe inside a fridge in the lab. She had fled the country on a flight to Mexico. She had gotten off that flight and then disappeared.

With this new revelation about Ella, everyone at Prey had dropped what they were doing, and all energy and resources were focused on finding her. While he and his team had taken one of Prey’s private jets down to Mexico, every single one of Prey’s tech people was going over footage of the airport in Mexico, trying to find a glimpse of Ella so they could figure out where she was heading next.

And they’d found her.

The woman hadn't put on any disguise and hadn't even changed clothes from what she’d been wearing in the lab when she took the drug. She was seen exiting the building wearing her jeans and a pink hoodie that made her stand out. No hat, no glasses, the woman didn't even duck her head as she walked even though she had to know her image was being captured by CCTV cameras.

Why?

Prey was the best, a world-renowned company, she had worked for them for the past five years, so had to know they would be looking for her and even knew where to look. The ticket was in her name, she knew they knew where she was heading, yet she didn't take a single preventative measure to try to hide herself.

If he didn't know better, he would almost think that she wanted to be spotted.

Wait.

Did she?

Miguel was so confused. There was evidence that suggested for sure that Ella had stolen the drug, he wasn’t arguing with that, his problem was the why. Unlike everyone else, he wasn’t buying that she just up and decided to sell the drug and have her teammates horribly tortured. No way was he going to accept that until someone could give him a legitimate reason why she would want to do that.

If something didn't make sense, then chances were, it wasn’t true.

They were missing something here.

Ella was smart enough to cover her tracks and yet she wasn’t. She had brazenly taken the drug out of the lab and walked it through the building, knowing she would be captured on camera. She booked a ticket in her own name and made no attempts to hide her appearance, it felt like she was leading them on a journey, hoping they would follow along.

The only reason he could see that she would do that was if she needed help but was unable to ask for it.

She wanted Prey to know where she was, which seemed obvious to him even if it didn't to anyone else, and he wasn’t sold on the idea that someone hadn't threatened her or somebody she loved.

Sure, her family had been questioned and not a single one of them mentioned being threatened, but that didn't mean that Ella hadn't been told that the people she loved would be harmed if she didn't comply with orders.

Was that a real possibility?

Miguel believed it was, and he didn't think it was just because he thought the woman was hot and would have loved a shot at her.

There were plenty of women out there and given the development of his brother hooking up with Ella’s friend, he likely wouldn't have pursued her anyway.

Guilty or innocent, it wasn’t up to him to decide.

If she was innocent, then he hoped she was able to prove it for her sake. And if she was guilty, then he hated to say it, but she would deserve whatever was coming her way.

You do the crime you do the time.

That was a favorite saying of his foster parents, and it was one he thought of regularly in his line of work. As a SEAL, he saw a lot of evil and he’d never once felt bad for anyone who had suffered the consequences of their actions.

Life was full of choices, and if you made bad ones, what else could you expect but bad outcomes?

Regardless of her guilt or innocence, Ella had to be found and brought home. He would have no control over what happened to her once she got there, but if she was honest then perhaps she would be able to work out a deal of some sort, save herself some prison time. Although, if Eagle Oswald was out for blood, then the woman didn't stand a chance. He had power, influence, and money, and Ella had stolen from his company. If he wanted her punished to the fullest extent of the law, it would happen.

“Hey, there’s a car up ahead,” one of the guys on his team suddenly announced, and Miguel stopped with the internal debate over Ella and what she had or hadn't done and looked out the front window.

Sure enough, sitting in the middle of the track they were following through the jungle was a vehicle.

“I think it’s hers,” he said. Once they had the license plate of the vehicle Ella was traveling in, the Prey people were able to direct them along the same route that she’d taken. Heading in this direction was the last time she’d been spotted, and since there were no more cameras out there, he and his team had spent the last couple of hours traveling along various roads in the hopes they’d find either Ella or wherever she was heading.

Weapons in hands, they jumped out of their vehicle and approached Ella’s warily. She was an unknown, they had no idea how much she had participated in the events of the previous month, where her loyalties lay, how desperate she was, and what her motivations were. There was every chance she would try something stupid, and while he didn't want it to come down to that, sometimes threats had to be eliminated.

As he approached, it quickly became apparent that the vehicle had been abandoned.

There was no sign of Ella or anyone else.

A quick check showed she had taken her purse with her, so she still had the drug, but had she left because she’d met up with Raul, or had there been another car there waiting for her to change to it so it would make her harder to follow?

“Ran out of gas,” one of his guys announced.

“Did she get into another car or is she walking?” another asked the same questions he’d been pondering.

Scanning the area, he quickly noticed signs that someone had recently disturbed the undergrowth heading in the same direction the road went. “I think she walked,” he said, indicating what he’d found.

It was time to go hunting. Playing the what-if game wasn’t useful. It wasn’t his job to figure out what crimes Ella had committed, all he had to do was find her and deliver her back home to face the metaphorical firing squad.

Miguel just hoped that she deserved what she got.