Spiders in the Grove
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, historical events, businesses, companies, products, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, persons living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 Jessica Ann Redmerski
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole, or in part, and in any form.
In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without prior written permission is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
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Cover Design by Jessica Redmerski
Cover Image by VERSUSstudio
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J.A. Redmerski | SPIDERS IN THE GROVE | 1st Edition
Fiction – Crime – Suspense
-PRAISE FOR IN THE COMPANY OF KILLERS-
"Intense and gritty with unpredictable twists and turns."
- Night Owl Reads on THE BLACK WOLF
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"This series is Spectacular!"
- SMI BOOK CLUB
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"Mind-f*ck at its finest and I loved every single minute of it."
- Amazon Customer on THE SWAN & THE JACKAL
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"Say goodbye to your nails..."
- Amazon Customer on KILLING SARAI
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"Dark, compelling, deathly violent and just fan-bloody-tastic!"
- Goodreads Reviewer on REVIVING IZABEL
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"There is no going back for me, this series has me completely and utterly addicted..."
- Books She Reads
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"Expertly and brilliantly well-written…"
- Amazon Customer on BEHIND THE HANDS THAT KILL
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"These books are genius!!!"
- Amazon Customer on SEEDS OF INIQUITY
-ABOUT SPIDERS IN THE GROVE-
Izabel and Naeva find themselves right where they wanted to be in Mexico: captured and held in the slave compounds owned by the Ruiz family. But the two are soon separated and forced into very different—but equally dangerous—situations. Izabel spends the next three weeks playing a role she never expected she would get the opportunity to play, but her luck runs out when Naeva’s life hangs in the balance, and only Izabel can save her.
But at a terrible cost.
If Izabel chooses to help Naeva, it will expose a lie she has been carrying on her shoulders since she met Victor Faust. A lie that will not only potentially make everyone in Victor’s Order distrust her going forward, but one that will also blow her carefully constructed cover In Mexico, and get her killed.
Fredrik, still looking for his serial killer, does not have to look long—the killer finds him. And Niklas’ past catches up to him when an old enemy comes back for revenge.
But it will be Victor’s actions that shake up those left in his Order, and ultimately, be its downfall.
Table of Contents
-PRAISE FOR IN THE COMPANY OF KILLERS-
-ABOUT SPIDERS IN THE GROVE-
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
-OTHER BOOKS BY J.A. REDMERSKI-
-ABOUT THE AUTHOR-
Izabel
The stars toss around chaotically in my vision; the sky is black on blue on purple, fringed by a jagged mountain backdrop, everything blending into something indistinguishable. There should be sound, a lot of tumultuous sound—the buckling of metal, the crushing of rocks, the banging inside my head—but I think I’ve gone temporarily deaf. The light brown of Naeva’s hair is like a black web over my face, glistening in the moonlight, and then it’s gone in a blink as her body is tossed from one end of the van to the other; like a slow-motion nightmare I see her fly by, and I can do nothing to help her.
My head bangs against something hard, and white flashes appear before my eyes, blinding me to everything else. Great, now I’m deaf and blind, and…fuuuck, I can’t move my arms. Or my legs. I’m alive, but I don’t know for how long—the men that were shooting at us will be here soon.
Slowly, my eyes open to a bright white light, but I don’t for a second mistake it for something as ridiculous as the afterlife. It’s one of the van’s headlights—I just want to know how it ended up in front of my face.
Somehow, I manage to set one arm free, and then the other, and then one leg, but the left leg is still trapped beneath the front of the van. I bite down, grinding my teeth in preparation to pull it free, and I’m thankful that the pain is minimal—the leg’s not broken. And, unless I hit my head too hard, it doesn’t feel like anything else is broken, either.
One, two, three—I pull my leg from beneath the warped metal. Ah, there’s the pain. “Ahhh!” I cry out until it passes.
“Sarai,” I hear Naeva call out to me from somewhere nearby. “Where are you? Can you walk?”
She’s alive at least, but if she’s asking me those particular questions instead of coming to find out for herself, it can only mean one thing: she can’t.
With difficulty, I crawl a few feet to the van’s door and I curl my fingers around where the window used to be and use it to help pull me up. The moment my head rises over the door, I see a bloodied, mangled face staring back at me from the driver’s seat, upside-down; blood drips from Ray’s black hair; his eyes are open. So much for my own private coyote; looks like I’ll have to find another one to get us the hell out of here later. If we make it to later.
“Naeva, where are you?” I call out, and scramble around the wreckage, hunched over so no one sees me.
“Over here.”
I make it around to the back of the van to find Naeva trapped beneath it, and at first, I panic a little thinking the worst. But relief washes over me when I realize the van isn’t so much on her as it is all around her, confining her like a cage.
I fall onto my knees and peer inside the glassless window at her.
“Are you all right? Is anything broken?”
She shakes her head. “No, but there’s blood on my head”—she reaches up to touch it—“I-I think it’s mine; I don’t know.”
“OK.”
I peer into the window closer, studying her predicament, and try to figure out how to free her. But I don’t have time as I hear the rumbling of a truck’s engine and rocks breaking underneath swift tires.
“They’re coming!”
“What do we do?” Naeva’s voice shakes with panic.
There’s nothing we can do, and I know it so I don’t answer.
Bright headlights bounce around in the darkness as the truck speeds its way toward us over the rocky terrain. There’s nowhere to go; we’re in the Middle of Nowhere, Mexico, and our ri
de has been reduced to a useless hunk of metal riddled with bullet holes and four obliterated tires. I curse myself for making a deal with a coyote who didn’t pay his debts.
And then I wait.
To be shot on sight?
To be raped first and then beheaded?
But why am I not afraid?
Because fuck that!
Several men jump out of the back of the truck before it comes to a full stop; guns blaze at me in the darkness, surrounded by the blinding beams of flashlights; black eyes stare down at me with determination and intent.
“He’s dead!” a man shouts from the other side of the van.
Another man standing in front of me barely looks up. “Search the van! Search around it!” He looks back down at me. “How many of you were there?” he asks in accented English.
“Three,” I also respond in English—I don’t want them to know I can understand Spanish; I hope like hell Naeva remembers the importance of that.
“Me, and Uma”—I point in Naeva’s direction—“and the driver; that’s all. There were more when we crossed the border yesterday, but they got out a long time ago.”
A shot of white-hot pain whips through the bone in my face, and I see a flash of gray light; my hands come up quickly to cover my nose; tears burn around my eyelids. Only when I can open my eyes again do I realize it was the gun that had landed hotly across my face. Blood trickles from one nostril; I lick it away from my upper lip.
“How many?” the man repeats through clenched teeth.
“Just three! I swear it! Only us three!” I force the tears to the surface, and at least try to look afraid, because if I show the slightest bit of defiance he’ll probably kill me on the spot.
In the background I hear Naeva shriek.
“Bring her here!” the man standing over me orders.
A second later Naeva is shoved on the ground next to me; there’s a lot of blood in her hair; I wonder how they got her out from underneath the van so quickly.
She looks over at me, terrified, shaking. I smile behind the veil of my face, thinking to myself: She’s not afraid, either; she’s just as good at this as I am. And then I realize we’re both insane for not being afraid.
The last thing I see is a fist tearing through the darkness toward me, and I wake up sometime later to the sound of trickling water.
Izabel
Regret? Never. I have come a long way since the last time I was here, in this place, in this nightmare, in this hell. I’m a different person. Sarai no longer exists except in Naeva’s memory; this girl, sitting here now on the dirt floor, hands bound in front of her, blood in her hair and in her mouth, she is a different kind of victim, the most dangerous kind; she’s the kind that’s shaped and molded by her torturers, not broken by them, into the stuff of nightmares. I left Mexico as Sarai, and came back as Izabel. And once I have what I came here to get, I will kill them all.
I hear footfalls in the hallway outside the door. Voices. The shuffling of clothing. But they don’t come into the room, and the sounds fade as they get farther away.
Naeva breathes a sigh of relief.
I breathe a sigh of disappointment.
I don’t know where the sound of water is coming from, but it’s a steady trickle; a leaky pipe, perhaps.
“I never thought I’d be here again,” Naeva says, sitting next to me. “Definitely not on purpose.”
I stare at the dim wedge of light underneath the door; her voice is sharp, distinct in my ear, but my thoughts eclipse it.
“I don’t regret it, though. And I’d do it a hundred times if I had to. For Leo.”
Breaking from my thoughts, I look over at her.
“You really love him.”
She nods, smiles faintly; I can tell whenever I look at her, whenever she talks about this man, that he’s the only thing in the world that makes her smiles real.
I think of Victor. I love him, and I always will. But I’m not smiling, so I look away from her, finding the light underneath the door less competitive.
I don’t know what time it is, but I’m going to say it’s 1:00 a.m. We’ve been locked in this room for more than an hour, and not one person has come to talk to us, or beat us, or even to check on us. Not that they really need to, seeing as how there are no windows, and the only way in or out is the door; I’m sure there are men guarding in the hallway somewhere. And in addition to our bound hands, there’s rope tied around our ankles. Pressing my hands into the dirt behind me, I try to adjust my position. I lean my head against the wall and fall asleep.
I must’ve slept an hour. Still, no one has entered the room. I need to pee.
“I don’t know how you can sleep through any of this?” Naeva says.
“Have to sometime.”
“I tried, but my mind won’t stop racing.”
“How are you going to find this Leo,” I say, “while you’re locked in here with me? How do you even know where he is, if he’s even still alive?”
“He’s alive.”
“How do you know?”
“The same way you know we’re in the right place.” She sighs thoughtfully. “And because I feel it. I feel him. I would know it if he was dead.”
“Then how do you plan to find him?” I repeat.
We had no opportunity to discuss these things when we left Arizona with Ray. Too many ears listening. Too many eyes watching.
She pauses and then answers, “I won’t have to find him—he’ll find me as soon as he knows I’m here.”
I can’t lie and say I’m not curious about how she plans to pull this off, but I’m too focused on my own plans to cater too much to hers right now. My plans that have been seriously altered because I brought her with me. Alone would’ve been so much easier. Now, I have her to worry about. I couldn’t live with myself if I just set her free into the belly of this beast and never looked back. No, she’s my responsibility. But more than that, she’s my friend.
“Is that really how you know?” she asks. “That you’re in the right place—can you just sense it? Can’t really see much in this tiny room, so it can’t be anything visual. Unless you saw something familiar on our way in. I didn’t see anything familiar. Or anyone. Oh, that’s right—you killed them all.” She laughs shortly under her breath.
I fake-smile a little in the darkness. Killed them all? No, not all of them…
“To be fair,” I say, “I had a lot of help the last time I was here. I didn’t pull it off myself.” I glance over. “But how I know we’re in one of the Ruiz compounds is that I secured a ride with a coyote who’d take me through the Ruiz territory. Here, all roads lead to the Ruiz compounds. And yeah, I can kinda feel it, too.”
“I wonder how many are left?” Naeva says.
“Compounds? All of them are always still there. But family members of Javier who run the compounds? That’s a good question.”
“Are you sure you don’t need me to help you?” she asks.
“No,” I answer right away. “We’re both here together, but once we leave this room, we’re on different paths.”
Naeva sits with her knees pressed together, her legs drawn beneath her, inches from me; I see her face just barely in the windowless room, and I wonder how I can see her at all with only the tiny light underneath the door. She looks so frail sitting there, like a little egg…like Huevito. I’ve been trying to tell myself since we left that I can’t stray from my plan to help her, that she’s strong enough to handle it on her own, but…who the hell am I kidding?
My hands bound, I raise myself from the wall and peer through the darkness at her. “Listen to me, Naeva,” I say with determination. “When—not if—we get separated, I want you to know that I won’t leave you here; no matter what my plans are, I’ll get you out of here. OK?”
Naeva smiles, and then nods. “I never thought you would leave me here anyway,” she says. “Not that I was counting on it, or taking advantage, but I just knew.” She scoots over to sit closer, our shoulders touching. �
�And I’ll do the same for you.”
Unfortunately, I knew that about her, too. And that’s what worries me the most. I don’t want her risking herself for me, but I know she will anyway. We may not have ever really known each other, we may have only spoken a few words to one another before she came to me the night we left, but because we were both slaves to the same people, our bond as sisters is as strong as a bond between two women who’ve known each other their whole lives.
No matter our individual plans, Naeva and I are in this together, so it’s probably better we start acting like it.
“Tell me about Leo,” I offer.
She raises her head from my shoulder; her eyes are radiant, eager, filled with…what I wish mine were filled with when I talk about Victor.
“What do you want to know?”
I glance around the dark, dank, room. “Everything,” I say. “What else do we have to do to pass the time?”
Naeva sits up fully next to me, using the wall to balance her. I adjust, making myself more comfortable for what I know will be a long story.
And it certainly turns out to be. Naeva talks throughout the night, hours and hours, through hunger and thirst, and my painful need to pee. But the story helps me forget all of that stuff, and my heart breaks for her and bursts for her and does things I didn’t know it could do for another person. And after her story is over as night becomes day, I finally understand her. And I understand myself. I understand why I’m so envious of her relationship with Leo Moreno: because theirs was a love built on trust, and because I hate myself for lying to Victor since I’ve known him.
“Our love was born of breath and bone,” she says longingly of Leo. “That’s what he told me once: ‘God breathed life back into my bones when I met you’, he’d said.” She looks away from me, perhaps trying to hide the tears glistening in the corners of her eyes.
“Your turn,” she says then, changing the subject. “Tell me how you met my brother.”
I start to pass on the chance—talking about how I met Victor is the last thing I want right now—until I hear voices and footsteps coming down the hallway, the first I’ve heard since before 1:00 a.m., and we turn immediately to watch the door.