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Mateo tightened his grip.

“Forget him. Rafael’s organizing Ciro’s men while we stand here. If he gets the armory and the gates under his control, we’re trapped.”

Marcela lowered the gun.

She turned toward the door, then stopped and looked back over her shoulder.

“Keep the corpses company, pet. By the time I return, the smell of them rotting might make you grateful I still want you.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

Mateo pushed the camera operator into the corridor, stepped over the dead man at the door, and followed with the man’s pistol in his hand.

Marcela went last.

The dungeon door slammed shut.

A key turned in the lock.

Their footsteps faded beneath the growing noise of the compound coming apart.

I waited.

One breath.

Two.

No one came back.

Ciro lay sprawled on the floor, his eyes open and empty. The grip of his pistol showed beneath his jacket, no more than six feet from my chair.

Once the cuffs came off, it was mine.

Beyond the door, radios snapped back and forth. Boots pounded down the corridor. Men shouted over one another, and somewhere a gunshot cracked through the noise.

The scent of orange blossom reached me just before Isabella stepped in front of me with a small backpack over one shoulder and the key clenched in her hand.

Chapter nineteen

“Isabella.”

Lachlan’s voice stopped me the moment he saw me.

I turned and scanned him from head to foot.

Of course I did. I hadn’t been able to see much through the sliver of the open panel, but I’d heard enough to know how badly everything had gone wrong.

He was still cuffed to the chair, but he was alive, with no fresh bullet wounds or obvious new injuries after the room had gone insane while I hid behind the wall listening to it happen.

His green eyes locked on mine.

Relief hit hard enough that I nearly forgot how to breathe.

“Jesus Christ, Mouse.” His voice came out rough. “You scared the hell out of me when you opened that panel with a room full of bloodthirsty armed men only feet away.”

I blinked.

For some reason, the fact that I’d frightened him hit harder than the scolding. I’d spent what felt like forever terrified someone would shoot him, and all that time he’d been worried about me behind the wall.