Page 42 of Freeing Camila

Pid pointed to a heavy door guarded by two men. Two succinct shots, and they were down.

Jeeves was through the door before the dust cleared.

There he was.

El Sombra.

Even though only three years had passed, he appeared older than the photos showed. Grayer. But his eyes held the same cold calculation. The same smirk he’d worn when he murdered women and children. Cammie had mentioned it. The same smug, self-satisfied smirk that graced his lips as she’d described when he gave the order for Cammie to be subjected to torture, a smirk that perfectly encapsulated his cold-blooded nature.

Jeeves didn’t wait for an introduction.

He drove the butt of his rifle into the man’s face, then his gut, sending him crashing back into a metal desk. “Remember her?” he growled, stepping into the man’s space, pressing the muzzle of his weapon to El Sombra’s head.

The man spat blood. “Which one?”

Rage detonated behind Jeeves’s ribs. It took everything he had not to pull the trigger.

“She got away,” Jeeves hissed.

“Zunga,” El Sombra spat, and Jeeves knew enough Spanish curse words to know that he’d just called her a whore.

Jeeves saw red. “She survived you. And now I’m here to make sure you never touch another woman again.”

Pid, Aleck, and Mustang moved in. Secured the room. Shackled El Sombra?the Colombian government had requested he be brought in alive, if at all possible.

Jeeves stepped back, fists trembling.

He wanted vengeance, yes. But more than that, he wantedpeacefor Cammie.

Outside the windows, the dawn mist clung to the canopy like a veil, and Jeeves kept his rifle raised, every nerve on high alert. El Sombra stood, hands zip-tied, flanked by Aleck and Pid. Even bound and bruised, the bastard held himself like he still owned the ground under his feet, as if capture was just a temporary inconvenience, not the end of the road.

They were about to march him out of the building to head toward the landing zone where the chopper would extract them—when everything unraveled.

A rustle of fabric.A screech of metal on concrete. Jeeves caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. A flash of steel. Aleck stumbled back, blood oozing from his leg. A boy, no older than twelve, the culprit.

“Son of a bitch,” Aleck cursed. The boy had startled them all, having popped up seemingly out of nowhere. In reality, he’d been hiding under the cot in the corner.

Amidst the distraction, El Sombra lunged.

He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t look back. In the chaos, he broke his zip ties, grabbed the wounded Aleck’s sidearm with the precision of a man who’d done this too many times.

“Hijueputa!” El Sombra fired once while yelling motherfucker—wild, erratic—and then turned, jumped through the glassless window and disappeared into the thick green with the precision of a man who knew the terrain better than his own name.

“Fuck!” Jeeves took off after him, diving out the same window. He rolled and shot to his feet in one smooth move, heart thundering like it wanted out of his chest. Leaves slapped his face, mud kicked up around his boots, and every inch of him screamed for this toend.

The bastard was fast. Wounded, maybe, but desperate—and desperation made people dangerous.

Jeeves broke into a small clearing just as El Sombra turned, gun raised.

For one suspended second, their eyes locked. Cold cruelty stared back at him, mocking, unrepentant.

“She’s my property,” El Sombra sneered. “She will be again?—”

Jeeves fired.

Once. Then again. Clean. Center mass.

The cartel leader staggered backward, a look of stunned disbelief twisting his face. He crumpled like a felled tree, hitting the jungle floor with a sickening finality.

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