Page 80 of Too Lethal to Love

“I sent Beth the token of appreciation. Does she wear it all the time?”

“Fuck.” He’d never had the urge to hurt a woman before, but he did now.“Scarlett. Check the medallion and see if there’s a tracker in it. And find that bitch Evangeline.”

Beth’s head pounded as she peered at the two Chavezes sitting across from her on bench seats spanning the length of a windowless van. Evangeline sat between them, hands bound in front of her with zip ties, like the blubbering filling of a Diablo sandwich. Biceps and another thug flanked Beth. Both smelled like a boy’s gym locker.

She tested the tight bonds at her own wrists. Pain rocketed up her arm. At least she didn’t have duct tape over her mouth like Evangeline.

As the haze from being choked until she’d blacked out cleared, she studied the brothers dressed in black jeans and black leather jackets. If they weren’t cold killers, their nearly identical mellow-brown skin, shoulder-length black hair, and hawkish facial features might make them attractive. To her, they looked like poisonous snakes, especially the thicker one, whose picture had been enough to scare her.

Enrique Chavez.

The enforcer, who’d appeared leaner in his wanted photo, had about ten pounds of muscle and two inchesof height on his brother. His stalker sibling leered at her with an unfocused gaze rimmed by purple bruises above a bandaged nose.

Good. He deserved a brain bleed from his concussion. If she could buy the lamppost he’d crashed into a drink, she would. While his gaze was softer, the intent in their murky brown depths was no less sinister and much creepier than his sibling. He was the only one in the van without a gun in his hand, though.

She swallowed. Saliva burned a path down her abused throat. “Are you twins?”

Her stalker glanced at his brother. “He’s not my twin, although I do have one.”

She struggled to grasp information she knew was stored in her brain but couldn’t find it through the chaos.

“I can see the gears working in your pretty head,querida. You’re wondering if I’m one of the twins who died.” Her stalker held out his hand. “It’s nice to meet you after all this time. I’m Santiago Chavez, the brother who is dead to the world but not to those who love me. Welcome to my family.”

“You’re my stalker.” She shrank into the cold van wall as she addressed him for the first time. If her hands were free, she’d cover her ears to stop his accent from pealing in her head like a death knell. She’d always wondered how she’d feel when she met her stalker face to face. Revulsion at hearing the voice that haunted her dreams hadn’t made the top of her list, but it did now.

“I’m youradmirer.I wish we could have met two years ago, but after your abduction didn’t go as planned, I was relegated to watching you from afar because you were identified as a person of interest regarding Triple X. You needed to concentrate on your work and I respected that. I was so pleased when I got the go-ahead to interact with you again.”

The enforcer waved his gun at his brother. “Two years ago, the job that you took without mother’s approval was toscare her via cyberspace, but you screwed up by making contact. And your job this time was to track her, not send her messages, not steal her cake and watch, and not pay two juvenile delinquents to rob a store and watch again.” He looked at Beth. “Those incidents weren’t part of the Triple X mission, but the obsessed fool enjoys scaring and then watching you for some reason.”

She leaned forward as far as she could without falling off the seat. She’d lost weeks of her life hiding inside her house because of one sibling and the last few days because of the other. Now that she was face to face with the devil brothers who seemed to have some tension between them, she wouldn’t spend another minute cowering. “Why?”

Her voice hitched as she strangled a fear-induced sob. Courage had been so much easier to rally when she fantasized about kicking her stalker’s ass, but she refused to look away from the man who had stolen so much from her. “Why have you made my life a living hell?” She snapped her gaze to the enforcer. “And why are you coming after me? You already have Dr. Sable. She knows much more than I do about Triple X.”

“I’ll let your friend answer that first question.” He ripped the tape off Evangeline’s mouth.

She covered her lips with her bound hands and screamed.

Beth didn’t have the bandwidth to muster sympathy.

“She hired me to meet you online.” Her stalker raised his voice over Evangeline’s sobs. “The plan was to pursue and scare you.”

“What?” Beth’s gaze snapped to her so-called friend. “And why on earth do you know someone in a drug cartel?”

Evangeline shook her head so hard it bounced against Santiago’s shoulder. “I didn’t know who I was hiring. I asked Henry Richardson if he could put me in touch with a talented hacker. Henry said he never liked you anyway,so…”

Beth shot toward Evangeline. The thugs yanked her back. Good thing because she would have killed her before she spilled her sordid story. “Are you stupid?” She already detested Richardson for what he’d done to Scarlett. Full-blown hatred consumed her now. “That man is just as evil as these devil brothers.”

The enforcer pointed his gun at her. “Watch what you say,Cazampulga.”

Beth doubled over. Fighting nausea, she hung her head. She heard her stalker reprimand his brother for yelling at her, but she blocked him and his ominous accent out and concentrated on Evangeline’s gurgled words.

“I’m so, so sorry. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I thought I was hiring some techy nerd, not one of the world’s best hackers. I contracted with him to cyberstalk you for a few weeks, not months. I made it clear that there wasn’t supposed to be any physical contact. And I didn’t hire him to kill Danny, I swear.”

Beth lifted her chin. The world tilted for a second before she caught her breath. “And that makes what you did better? Danny’s dead because of you, and you have the nerve to call me a black widow?”

Evangeline sniffed back a gob of snot dangling from her nose. “Nobody was supposed to get hurt. I just hired him to make your life difficult for a while. You always had it so easy.”

The van hit a bump. Anger exploded with the impact of Beth’s body against the wall. “What the hell does that mean?”

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