Page 111 of Hidden By His Side

Ramiro shut the door on his muttering.

“I’ll pull the schematics of the house and send them to all of you,” Hayes said, still using that fake as hell mechanical voice. “There aren’t any cameras close enough to tell you what you’re walking into.”

Ramiro grabbed a gun from the trunk, his hand aching like a bitch when he gripped it. He tucked a second in the too tight waistband of his borrowed jeans. “None of them get to live,” he said, but the words came out empty.

He should have been furious or panicked. No one knew if Summer was even still alive.

A fog filled his mind instead, protecting him from thinking too far ahead. He climbed into the back seat of Seb’s clunker and focused on breathing through the pain in his body.

Ramiro had failed her. Somehow, he’d brought the cartel right to their doorstep. He’d figure out how they’d found the house later. Right now, there was only one need: getting to Summer.

He dragged the bandages off his head, letting them fall to the floorboards. His feet were bare. Summer’s feet had been bare when he’d found her on that bridge. He remembered watching her toes curl around the edge, so close to ending things.

She couldn’t be gone. He wouldn’t survive it.

Ramiro stared at the blood seeping into the bandage still wrapped around his hand while Diego parked the car a blockfrom their destination. Seb, pressing a hand to his stomach, pulled up whatever Hayes had sent on his phone.

“There’s no telling where she’s being held, but there are three entrances. The—”

“It’s the blue house?” Ramiro asked, squinting up the street. The neighborhood reminded him of the ones near that long ago bridge. Rich assholes who raised preppy rapist boys and who painted their daughters as sluts instead of victims.

“Yeah, the one with the cherry wood door,” Diego said.

Ramiro pushed out of the car. “I’m going through the front.”

“For fuck’s sake, wait—”

He shut the door on Diego’s protests. The hot asphalt burned his feet. The sun was still up, directly above that goddamn house, one that looked a lot like the one Summer had grown up in.

He heard shouting inside the house, and the sound of glass breaking as one of the cartel shot first.

Ramiro shot inside the broken window, then sank two into the handle of the front door, climbed the porch steps and kicked it open. He shot the man in the hall through the eye and moved through the short entryway to the living room.

The cartel hadn’t expected a frontal assault, and half didn’t yet have their guns out. Ramiro emptied his first gun into the room, accepting the burning in his hand. Blood spattered the coral walls and the white fucking couches. The TV that the men had been watching cracked and fell.

He dropped the gun when it clicked, dragging the next from his waistband as he shifted to the opposite wall. Bullets slammed into the entryway he’d abandoned, making Diego duck next to the broken front door. Ramiro shot the two men still standing even as Diego shot down the hall in the opposite direction, taking out a shooter Ramiro hadn’t seen.

Diego glared but nodded at him to take the lead.

Ramiro tilted his head toward the now quiet living room. “Make sure they’re all dead.”

More shots came from the opposite side of the house.

“Naz took the kitchen. Seb’s got the garage.”

Ramiro nodded and headed deeper into the house, away from the shots. The doors down here looked like bedrooms. Ovidio’s taunting last words circled inside his head. He knew Ovidio Guzman well. He’d want a bed for the nightmare he’d promised to inflict.

The knob turned on the first door, and inside were more men. The picture-perfect family framed in the hall took the bullet meant for him, and Ramiro took out three of the cartel. The next room was empty, but men poured into the hall from a third. Ramiro ducked into the frame of the empty room, squeezing off more shots as fire burned along his arm.

Diego added bullets from farther down the hall.

The only sounds were from the guns and the men. Ramiro’s throat closed more and more when there were no distant sobs, no screams. Not that he wanted to hear Summer screaming, but at least screaming meant she was alive.

More than anything, he wanted Summer to call his name.

Silence fell over the house instead. Ramiro pushed forward to the last door down the hall. The door was locked. Diego kicked it in for him, backing up after.

Ovidio held a gun pointed down at Summer. Ramiro wanted more than anything to look at her, but he also couldn’t look, couldn’t see what he’d let happen.

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