Legal Heirs 4

By Kimball Lee

The Ghost has Charlotte, Angus has Skyler... so many lives hang in the balance! Bly and Finn will have to strike a serious bargain and come to terms over Charlotte’s love... more than once. Holden and Hadley find their bliss, but Hadley’s career is about to sky-rocket, and... there’s a new bad-boy in town. Atticus has some serious soul searching to do, is he truly “a child of luck and fortune”? Big changes are in store in this final book of the Legal Heirs series, paving the way for the final four books to come in Legal Legacy!!!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kimball Lee
• Release date: Mar 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311465122

Kimball Lee

Hi, I'm Kimball Lee and I'd like to welcome you to the many worlds of my imagination! The topics of my novels and novella-series will vary but my style of writing remains the same. I don't write 700 page books padded with useless words that take three chapters to describe a doorknob! I do write funny, interesting, happy, sad, romantic, often titillating and always thought provoking works that pack a lot of good reading into just the right number of pages. I hope you enjoy my writing and know that it comes from the heart and I give every spare moment to creating characters you would want to have as friends and worlds you would want to visit or live in. Happy reading! Kimball Thank you for visiting my author page, please connect with me on my social media sites! [e-mail]

Book preview

Legal Heirs 4

The lost and found…

Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles

Book 8

By Kimball Lee

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Copyright 2014. Kimball Lee

Smashwords Edition

Chapter One

Charlotte thought she was going to die by the time the Ghost landed the airplane. When he opened the door and roughly helped her step out onto the wing, she was practically screaming behind the duct tape. Her hands were still taped behind her back, but she had managed to sit up in the rear seat as they flew along. She realized they had been flying low, probably to stay under the radar, and they had only been in the air for a few hours. Still, where they were, and whether or not she was about to die, wasn’t foremost on her mind at the moment. She was six months pregnant and more than anything in the world, at that moment, she needed to pee.

This is Mexico, do you understand? And it’s not a nice town in Mexico. It’s drug cartel country. This is where they train murderers who don’t give a fuck if you’re beautiful and pregnant. They’d just as soon cut you to pieces and stuff your body in an oil drum filled with acid, got it? The Ghost held her eyes with his as he spoke, and he cut the tape binding her hands with a quick swipe of a razor-sharp knife. He removed the tape from her mouth in a single quick motion.

Ouch, damn! Charlotte said without thinking, and he gave her a look that easily conveyed his message that she’d better keep her mouth shut. He was both beautiful and scary, and she didn’t want to provoke him, but she did want to find a bathroom or a bush to squat behind before she wet herself. I have to go, she said as he dragged her to a nearby Jeep and held the door, growling at her to get in. Listen to me! I have to use the bathroom before I wet my pants, and you are my brother!

Quiet. I mean that. Shut up or the tape goes back on your mouth. Come on, he said and led her inside a small building made from a patchwork of rusted metal sheets.

Inside, two men sat behind battered desks. Neither of them looked up as her brother ushered her into a small bathroom. The bathroom was tiny and reeked of urine, and he was watching her, but at that point she was beyond caring.

Will you at least turn around, or do you have some weird fetish for watching women pee? she asked as she unzipped her shorts.

He actually looked embarrassed for a moment and quickly turned his back to give her a bit of privacy.

Pretty freaking embarrassing, she thought, but it felt so good to relieve herself she almost moaned out loud. When she was finished, she wedged her body past him and washed her hands, then she turned to face him and spoke, keeping her voice low.

I don’t want to make you mad or anything, and it’s probably really bad that I know your… true identity. But the thing is, you don’t want to kill me, because I’m your sister. You’re Christopher Tremont, right? Well, I’m Charlotte…

He clapped his hand over her mouth then, and the look in his eyes was blank and eerily cold.

No wonder she wants you dead. You’re insane, he hissed through clenched teeth. Now, the men in the office are not even going to look at you or me, they do not want to know my business. They know who I am, and they value their lives enough to be afraid. You should be afraid too, Charlotte, and I’m no one’s brother.

*

Finn knew immediately that Charlotte was truly gone. She hadn’t just gone out for a walk or a swim, she’d been taken. There was a faint smell of aviation fuel in the hotel room when he returned from his run on the beach, and it made his blood run cold. Whoever had taken Charlotte was a pilot, most likely, and the Ghost, Christopher Tremont, had been a naval aviator. Charlotte’s cell phone was still charging on the bathroom counter, so there would be no tracking her location. Her purse was on the chaise lounge by the bed, and nothing in the room was out of place. Whatever happened had happened fast, he imagined, and thank God, there were no signs of blood. He wanted to rage, he wanted to put his fist through a wall; he wanted to kill the Ghost with his bare hands. Mostly, he wanted Charlotte and the baby unharmed. He forced his thoughts away from all the terrible scenarios that ran through his mind, atrocities he had witnessed at the hands of the Ghost. He flipped the switch in his brain that changed him from man to assassin. He would find her, he would bring her back, and he would put a bullet in the head of the man who had dared to touch his wife, his love.

Bly, she’s missing. Finn’s voice was full of barely contained fury as he spoke into the phone. I’m looking at security tapes in the private offices at Las Ventanas, I need you to send your jet, ASAP.

What are you talking about, Finn? What do you mean, she’s missing—Charlotte’s gone? She’s pregnant, for God’s sake…. Never mind, I’ll be there in an hour with Billy Kipling and West. Meet us at the small airport near the beach. I’ll have West and Billy put out feelers on the intel radar.

Right, bring them. We might need an army—it’s going to get bad, no doubt. Tell West this is Lizzie’s doing. Most likely it won’t turn out well, Finn said. He hung up and went back to the room to get his SAT phone. He would call in some favors from his fellow operatives; he had a bad feeling that he needed an arsenal as well as an army. If the Ghost did have Charlotte, then he was probably working for the top brass of all Mexican cartels. That would mean his wife, Lizzie, wanted information from Charlotte about Beau and Skyler, the children she had abandoned. They would torture, then kill Charlotte, there was absolutely no question about that. And they were holding her in Mexico, on their own turf, a definite home court advantage.

Bly must have told his pilot and copilot not to worry how much fuel the jet burned, just push it up to the clacker and GO. The jet touched down on the tarmac in Cabo, barely rolled to a stop, and Finn was there, climbing the stairs to the cabin, tossing duffel bags filled with weapons on board.

Juarez, he said. Let’s go, hit it. I know who has her. A man who has reason to hate me—we’ve had dealings on the battlefield, in a manner of speaking. Who knows how these things come to be, but he must be working for Lizzie. All my eyes in Mexico say a woman is behind this. But why would he hold Charlotte in a border town? That’s not how the cartels work, they like deep cover, low visibility; it doesn’t make sense.

The jet lifted off and made a steep climb until it reached cruising altitude, and Finn could tell by the roar of the engines, and a series of sudden banks and turns, that the controls weren’t on autopilot. The pilot was in control, and he was flying fast and hard. He knew they were on a mission.

No, it’s not Lizzie, West said. He was sitting back in his seat with an array of handguns spread out in front of him. Its Evangeline’s crazy sister, Gabrielle. Bennet Sommerfeld was her son, and in her mind Alex is the reason Bennet is dead. Billy Kipling stayed behind—he picked up your mother and daughter, Finn. They’re safe with Atticus at Bly’s estate. So all’s well on the home front, at least.

My aunt is a lunatic, as crazy as her son was, Bly cut in, running a hand through his hair. Finn’s rage had turned to a calculating calmness, but Bly’s fury was pure agitation. "She called from El Paso just after I talked to you, Finn. She used a prepaid cell phone, so there’s no tracing the call. She said I’d be given the specifics when she’s ready. She also gave me two choices: