No Way Out

by Brennan, Allison

  They hadn’t tied him up, but Kane didn’t know how badly his brother was hurt.

  The men stayed on the far side of the barn. They all had guns, except for the two younger boys, one of whom was sporting a broken nose and bruised jaw. Had Sean fought the kid when he escaped? Or had the kid been punished because he was supposed to keep an eye on Sean?

  The teens looked scared. They were clean-cut, dressed better than the others. Hired, Kane figured. Lured in by promises of quick money.

  It was because of boys like them that Kane did this job. It was why he fought the cartels and the traffickers. He didn’t want teenage boys to feel they had no option except to work for criminals. It was a surefire way to die young.

  Maybe they were a lost cause. Maybe they could be saved. But right now, they were not Kane’s concern. They had made their choice of their own free will. They had driven two of the trucks. They were the enemy, until they proved otherwise.

  Kane’s concern was Sean.

  Kane cleared his throat. Sean slowly turned his head and looked at him. The side of his face was bloodied from a cut on his forehead. He had multiple bruises.

  “Hey,” Sean said, his voice rough.

  Rage burned in Kane that Juarez had had Sean beaten.

  “They’ll pay for this,” Kane said, his voice low.

  Sean winced. “Me.”

  Kane stared, having no idea what Sean meant.

  “I stole a car. They ran me into a ditch.”

  “Anything broken?”

  “No.”

  But Sean was in pain, it shone in his eyes. Concussion. Maybe internal bleeding, a cracked rib. But as long as nothing was broken, they had a chance.

  “Stay with me, kid.”

  “Um-hmm.”

  Dammit, Sean was worse off than he looked, and he looked pretty pathetic.

  Juarez himself had left with half his men two hours ago. They hadn’t returned, and Kane didn’t think that they would, at least until he was ready to call his daughter.

  Kane planned on being long gone.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the men talking in the corner. The teens sat on one side, either being punished or sulking. The other four men were in a semicircle, facing Kane, but in a heated conversation. One of the men was clearly American—he had no accent, but spoke Spanish well. He was doing most of the arguing, and it seemed to have something to do with one of the younger boys. Then he heard the word hermanos and realized that one of the kids was his brother, and his brother had screwed up, but ultimately it would be up to Juarez as to what the punishment would be.

  Men like Juarez used systems of rewards and punishments to keep his people in line. Rewards were generally access to women and booze, and punishments were beatings. If the older brother was trying to get into the gang—though why, Kane didn’t know, since Juarez worked south of the border exclusively—then Juarez would cut them both off. He didn’t like incompetence. When Kane had eluded Juarez’s men eighteen months ago in their own territory, he’d heard through the grapevine that Juarez killed the two in charge as an example.

  Kane had stayed away from anything Juarez did, mostly because of the situation with Hestia, but he would have heard if he was branching out. It didn’t make sense, but Juarez had to have contacts here in order to recruit locals who knew the area.

  Juarez could have reached out to one of the local gangs, and they brought in the young Americans. Definitely the most likely scenario. Money talked, after all, and some people wanted the easy money.

  And some people were desperate.

  Little did they know that nothing was easy when working for men like Juarez.

  “Sean,” Kane said in a low voice. He didn’t want to draw attention to them, and the fact that they hadn’t tied Sean up.

  Sean didn’t answer.

  “Kid,” Kane said, slightly louder. Sean groaned.

  “I’m here.”

  “You’re not going to be able to escape.”

  “I will. I just need a few minutes.”

  Kane hoped Sean was right.

  “I have matches in my pocket,” Sean said. “And a knife. Right front.”

  “Okay. Wait for my cue.”

  Kane had to make sure that Sean could run. He wasn’t leaving him behind, so he’d give him a little time.

  But not too much. Because if they were still here when Juarez returned, they would both be dead.

  Chapter Twelve

  Two agents from the local FBI satellite office had already been to the ranch and left, setting up the phone and computer so that when Juarez called in the morning, they would hopefully be able to trace the call. They tested the connection with ASAC Dean Hooper in Sacramento to make sure that they could seamlessly bring Hazel Lopez into the conversation without any telltale clicks. Once they confirmed everything worked, they left, and promised to return before the morning call.

  Now, Lucy, Siobhan, and Andie were studying maps and aerial photos of the surrounding area trying to figure out the most likely place that Juarez could keep hostages, but the area was too big for an effective search. And because they assumed, based on the tire tracks, that there were at least half a dozen men—and probably twice that—as part of Juarez’s force, they needed a strong counterforce, otherwise they’d risk getting the hostages killed. The FBI and Sheriff’s Department were working to put together several SWAT teams to go in—once they had a location. They, too, would be on standby.

  A knock on the door had Lucy and Siobhan both jumping out of their seats. It was after two in the morning and middle-of-the-night visitors were always bad.

  Andie answered the door. She had a gun in hand, partly concealed at her side. She’d been a rock, and Lucy was so glad she was there. Not just because she was trained and competent, but also because she kept Siobhan calm and focused on the task at hand.

  A police officer in uniform stood there. He was thirty, trim, with broad shoulders.

  “I’m Joseph Quezada, from McAllen. I spoke to Agent Kincaid earlier.”

  Lucy motioned for Andie to let him in. “I’m Lucy Kincaid. This is Lieutenant Colonel Andrea Walsh and her sister, Siobhan.”

  “I got a call that the Chevy registered to my mother was found in a ditch off a county road northeast of Santa Maria, a tiny town about thirty minutes from here. No one was there—the truck had been hit from behind and the initial report indicates it was a high-speed collision. Not far from the accident are a dozen trailers that were flooded in early September. They’re owned by one of the melon farms, housing for ranch hands, and everyone moved out. It’s the only thing out there—I’m heading there now, thought you’d like to join me. If there was an accident, and my brother is wandering around injured . . .”

  His voice trailed.

  “May I call you Joseph?”

  “Joe, please. My mom is the only one who calls me Joseph.”

  “Joe, we have to bring in a team.” Lucy wanted to run out there herself, but she knew that would be foolhardy. “We can’t do this alone, because we don’t know what to expect. If they are holding Kane and Sean at those trailers, they have a minimum of half a dozen armed men.”

  “A deputy is out there with the truck,” he said. “He didn’t see any activity in the fields.”

  Lucy didn’t think Joe recognized the seriousness of their situation.

  “The man behind this already intends to kill his hostages once he gets what he wants—which he’s not going to get.”

  “Maybe you’d better fill me in.”

  She didn’t know if she could trust him, but he was a cop, and he knew the area. Plus, he also had someone he cared about in a dangerous situation. If his brother was as good a kid as Joe seemed to think, maybe the cop could talk to him.

  Lucy glanced at Siobhan, as if asking what she thought. Siobhan immediately started talking. “It’s my fiancé and Lucy’s husband who were taken. Kane rescued a young girl nine years ago and Felipe Juarez is her father. He is cruel and abusive and I made a huge
mistake in visiting the girl now that she’s all grown up and graduated from college. I should have stayed away—it was my own stupid fault.”

  “Siobhan,” Andie snapped. “What did I tell you?”

  “I can’t help it! I didn’t think, okay? She has a new name and a new family and she’s happy. And I should have known that Juarez would be watching me for the rest of my life, hoping I would lead him to her. And now he took the man I love because I never think about the consequences!”

  Lucy said to Joe, “Kane Rogan is a well-trained mercenary who specializes in hostage rescue south of the border. Sean, my husband and Kane’s brother, is a computer security expert. Juarez knows this, so he has certainly restrained them. We don’t know what is going on with your truck, but I definitely want to inspect it. I can get a team ready quickly.”

  At that moment Jack walked in. Lucy had never been so happy to see anyone. She gave him a hug and introduced him to Officer Quezada.

  “Where are we?” Jack asked.

  “We found one of the trucks used in the kidnapping crashed about twenty minutes from here. It’s registered to Joe’s mother, and his brother may have been driving.”

  Joe explained, “I promise you, he didn’t know what was going on. Since we talked on the phone, Lucy, I pulled Michael Laredo’s record. He’s twenty, been in and out of trouble, and I feared for a while that his brother Juan was following in his path, but Juan seemed to want what Peter wanted—a college education, a way out. They’re both smart kids. I have to find a way to get my brother out of this before it goes south. He’ll listen to me, I promise you that.”

  Lucy was sympathetic, but wanted him to understand the stakes. “You can come with us, but Joe, you have to realize that Juarez’s people do not negotiate. They are brutal and they’re not local. That’s both good and bad—good in that you know the area; bad in that they don’t have allegiances. They will kill and disappear. We are on the clock—Juarez is calling at seven a.m. expecting to talk to his daughter. We’re setting it up. But he’ll kill Kane either way. All that does is buy us time to find him.” Though in the back of her head, Lucy couldn’t help but think that Kane was already dead.

  She turned to Siobhan. “I’m going with Jack and Joe, and calling in the FBI SWAT team to meet us at the accident site. If we don’t return before seven, you must get proof of life before you let him talk to Hazel. No compromise on that. Proof of life for both Kane and Sean.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Siobhan said. “Do you think you can find them first?”

  “I hope so. But proof of life is nonnegotiable.”

  Andie agreed. “I’ll be here the entire time. We’ll get this done.”

  “I think they’re still alive because Juarez knows we’ll have no incentive to turn over his daughter if Kane is dead. It will also keep him on the phone longer, and give our people time to trace the call.”

  Siobhan hugged Lucy. It felt awkward and Lucy couldn’t relax. “I’m sorry, Lucy. I’m really sorry.”

  “That’s enough,” Lucy said, and stepped back. “Andie is right. You didn’t marry off a thirteen-year-old to a forty-year-old pervert. You saved her. And we’re going to find them. If Padre calls or returns, have him call me.” She knew that he was a former Army Ranger and that he had street smarts, but he was still a Catholic priest who hadn’t been out in the field for years. “I have no idea what he’s doing, and I don’t want him going out on his own and getting caught in the crossfire.”

  * * *

  Lucy contacted the FBI SWAT team out of McAllen about the new information, and they indicated they could be onsite in two hours, an hour earlier than the previous schedule, and would attempt to deploy earlier. Unlike on television, most SWAT teams didn’t sit around waiting for action. They had regular law enforcement duties, they trained regularly, and they couldn’t work unusually long hours, because of the high intensity of their operations. They needed a location and actionable intelligence before they’d stage for engagement.

  Jack and Lucy were following Joe Quezada in his patrol car as he headed out to Santa Maria. “Have you slept?” Jack asked her.

  “Have you?”

  “Yes. Megan’s brother flew me out. He’s sleeping in the bunkhouse and will be up at oh-six-hundred if we need him.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “Just need to know that you’re not going to snap. Sleep deprivation is serious. I’m trained for this, but I’m older now and can’t always trust my reflexes when I’m overtired.”

  “Fortunately, I’m a lot younger than you.” She was trying to make light of the conversation, but it sounded more confrontational. “I’m worried. And I have to keep it together. Not just for Siobhan, but because I’m a cop. I can’t fall apart because my husband is missing. He needs me to be smart and focused.”

  “You don’t fall apart, Lucy,” Jack said. “That doesn’t mean you can’t be worried. Tell me about Quezada.”

  She told him what she knew, about the kids involved in the kidnapping, and how they traced the trucks. Her conversation with Peter’s mother, and then Joe. Finally, about Hazel being willing to talk to her father. “I don’t want her to have to do that,” Lucy said. “We need this to end before seven.”

  They had less than five hours. It seemed like forever—and it seemed woefully short.

  “Thank you for coming,” Lucy said.

  “Everyone’s a little ticked off that Kane planned on getting married without us.”

  “You did the same thing. Went off to Hawaii and married Megan.”

  “It was spontaneous. And even though it was eight years ago, Megan’s brother is still mad at us about it. But I’m sticking around for the wedding, and Kane is just going to have to deal with it.”

  Jack’s unspoken optimism that there would be a wedding calmed Lucy. They would find Kane and Sean and take down Felipe Juarez and everything would be fine.

  The deputy who’d found Peter’s truck had put out flares because the tow truck hadn’t arrived and a portion of the smashed truck blocked the road. The headlamps from the squad car shined bright on the crumpled metal frame.

  Lucy surveyed the damage as Deputy Ynez spoke. “About quarter, half mile down the road there’s signs of a broken headlight. Whoever rammed the truck lost at least one beam. It seems they hit them again, then spun the vehicle off the road. They were going fast—at least that’s my guess based on the skid pattern—but I’ll leave that to the crime scene experts. They’ll be out at dawn, with the tow truck.”

  Lucy looked in the cab. There was blood on the airbag, and a few drops on the ground. Probably a head injury or broken nose. The force of the airbag could easily cause a bloody nose, even if it wasn’t broken. Only the driver’s door was open, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

  Had Peter Quezada fled his partners and been hunted down? Or had Sean and Kane escaped, only to be pursued and re-captured? She was betting on the second scenario.

  “Can one of you stay here, and one come with us to search the flooded housing?” Lucy asked.

  Ynez left his partner with his cruiser and the truck and hopped into Joe’s squad car.

  The entrance to the melon farm’s employee housing was a mile down the road, just past the initial broken glass. The road into the field had about a dozen trailers spread far enough apart to give some privacy, but not too far that they had to put in additional roads.

  They pulled into the center of the plot and looked around. There were no vehicles, and the place was quiet. Ynez knew the history because his nephew, one of the field hands, had lived here. The farmer who owned the property had a thousand acres of melons; fortunately most of the land hadn’t been seriously damaged, and he had another lot to put in temporary housing, according to the deputy.

  “It’s a good gig,” Ynez said. “I worked for the same farm out of high school. My brother and I had our own place out here, worked for two years. Hard, honest work, paid pretty good. Then Mick joined the Army and
I became a cop.”

  Ynez was chatty, and Lucy blocked him out. They shined the lights of the two vehicles around and from the depressions and fresh dirt, quickly determined that two trucks had been parked outside one of the trailers.

  She was grateful Jack hadn’t told her to stand aside as they approached the trailer with guns and flashlights out. She knew that there could be bodies inside. She braced herself as Jack went in first, and she stepped in behind him.

  The trailer reeked of mold and dirt. A rat scurried across the floor, startled by the light. To the right was a small kitchen, rope strewn near a chair. The rope was too clean for this place; it was new.

  Jack searched the rest of the trailer. “Someone escaped through the back window,” he said when he returned.

  “Only one person was here,” Lucy said. “One chair, one rope.”

  Joe called out. “I found something!”

  Lucy and Jack walked over to a trailer fifty yards away.

  Joe said, “The door has been busted, this glass hasn’t been here long.” He shined his light on the ground. “And smell that?”

  “Chemical fire?” Lucy asked.

  “Yeah, of sorts.” Joe shined his light to a burned cushion. A blackened plastic jug lay shriveled beside it. “I didn’t want to touch it, it smells pretty bad.”

  Either Sean or Kane could have done something like this, but she knew who it was.

  “It’s Sean,” Lucy said.

  “Why?” Jack said.

  “We know there were six vehicles at the ranch. By the tire patterns, two were left here, including Peter’s truck. If you were holding a computer guy and a mercenary, who would you assign more men to guard?”

  “Point taken,” Jack said. “So they separated them.” He was about to say something else, but didn’t.

  “Because Juarez wants to torture Kane. Or wants Kane to think that Sean is dead. Or because he thinks together, they might have a better chance of escaping. If Sean was driving that truck, he’s injured. He had to have had the key. It’s a newer model, no sign of hotwiring, and Sean didn’t have his electronics to possibly bypass the ignition chip. So either Peter gave him the keys or Sean stole them, or maybe Peter left them in the car.” She looked at Joe. He clearly wanted to say something, but didn’t. “Sean wouldn’t hurt a kid,” Lucy said. “Not unless his life was in immediate danger.”