The Virgin's Night Out by Shiloh Walker

“Boone is missing. He was on a job and nobody has heard from him in weeks.”
    “ Heard from him? Are you waiting for a phone call?” she demanded.
    Under her hand, the baby fluttered.
    The baby …
    Boone’s baby .
    “Go find him!” she half-shouted, looking at Hal. “Send a team and go find him.”
    “Sloane.” His voice was gentle. “We have looked. We’ve been looking for three weeks. He’s just…”
    No. She covered her ears with her hands and turned away.
    The room started to spin around her as she wrapped her arms protectively around herself, covering the small, helpless life within.
    Black dots swirled in front of her eyes and she staggered.
    Taylor jumped to catch her.
    But she never noticed.
    She passed out.

 
     
     
Chapter Ten
     
     
    “They cut you good this time, D.B.”
    Brooding, the man stared ahead at the wall while the other stood behind him, cleaning the deep laceration that ran across D.B.’s left shoulder.
    Somebody had tried to come at him from behind.
    Again.
    That somebody was now dead and D.B. was leaking blood all over the floor.
    “You going to let me put stitches in this time?”
    “No.” His voice was broken, rough and gravelly. He didn’t know if he’d always sounded that way, but he had a scar around his throat, fading now, so he suspected that injury—probably another attempt to kill him—was responsible for the harsh sound of his voice.
    “One of these days, you will remember and tell me why you don’t like needles. You can take a knife to the gut and live, but no needles? Loco, my friend.”
    D.B. had been called worse than crazy. In the past four months, he was pretty sure he’d had every insult imaginable hurled his way and some of the men watched him with fear when he wasn’t looking.
    Some of them were the reason he’d had to defend himself—with force—the first few months he’d been in the prison.
    He didn’t know why he was there, barely remembered anything from his past, but his roommate, a skinny man by the name of Hector, said he hadn’t been in the prison long before he was injured.
    That he’d survived was nothing short of a miracle.
    He owed Hector his life. Hector, and the man’s boss.
    D.B. was in Hector’s debt. That wouldn’t rub him raw, but the idea of owing Luis Mendez Castillo—head of one of the largest drug cartels—burned his ass.
    Still, he had plans to stay alive long enough to get out of this hellhole, to be in a place where the air was clean and fresh, to feel a woman’s body against his own.
    There was a woman. He didn’t remember her name. It had taken him weeks to remember his own after the head injury that had nearly killed him.
    But he knew her face. He knew her smile. And he knew if he covered her wide, mobile mouth with his, he’d know her taste.
    Because of her, and those memories, he ignored the prostitutes that Luis was able to get into the prison. In this section of the prison, it was more like a resort, a laughable mockery, considering what most of the men were in here for. This was where the power was—men with money could get just about anything and being in jail didn’t change anything. Money could make a jail stay a lavish vacation, whores brought in for your pleasure, top-end electronics so a man could keep up with his business and cells that looked more like apartments . It was no wonder the drug trade still thrived—and not just because people in the States wanted those drugs with a blind obsession but putting the heads of the cartels in prison didn’t do shit to shut down a cartel.
    “He wants to see you.”
    D.B. slanted a look over his shoulder at Hector.
    There was no point in asking who he was.
    It could only be Luis.
    “Yeah?”
    Hector, nervous now, nodded.
    “He wanted me to let you know it’s time for you to return the favor.”
    Fuck . Morosely, D.B. stared at the floor.
    Luis hadn’t saved his life out of mercy or as a magnanimous gesture. He’d done it because he’d decided D.B.