Things like that… they don’t just affect the one who dies. There is a ripple effect that touches people you wouldn’t even think of. His parents, his siblings, his classmates, his friends. The people he touched in the past, the people he might have touched in the future. Every death leaves a hole in the fabric of human existence. I couldn’t help but shake the feeling he shouldn’t have died that night.
It should never have happened.
I moved to run my hands over my head again and noticed something that shouldn’t have been there. On the carpet, a long rectangle of light burned where it shouldn’t. All the windows were blackened. The door was closed. There were no other doors.
I stared at the rectangle for a moment, my eyes slowly following it to its source. I jumped up when it became obvious what had happened. The light came from under the bedroom door. Valerie must have managed to break out the window in her room.
I’d told Akker that was a possibility!
It took a second to get the door open, but I wasn’t surprised by what I found when I did. The window was completely missing. And she was gone.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
I went to the window, but there was nothing to see. The flat ground was so hard that I couldn’t find footprints even if I wanted to. Parts of the window were scattered directly below the window frame, the blouse she’d been wearing in my dream dropped beside it all, bloodstains making my heart skip a beat. Had she hurt herself? How badly was she bleeding?
The car was still sitting where I’d left it this morning, untouched from what I could see from here. It was quiet otherwise, like she’d never been here.
I rushed back to the kitchen, snatching up my keys and wallet, running through the door without bothering to shut and lock it behind me. The car started without much finesse, kicking up dust as I tore out of the yard. She couldn’t have gotten far. She didn’t even know where the hell she was!
I shouldn’t have left her alone for so long. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. I was angry. I’d let my personal feelings get in the way. I shouldn’t have let things get as far as they did. The moment I’d walked into that bathroom, I should have turned around and given her some privacy. I should have done what my father taught me: respect. Show a woman respect at every available opportunity. If I’d walked away, there wouldn’t have been the kiss, wouldn’t have been the promise of pleasure, and there wouldn’t have been the grab for the keys.
I knew better. I should never have touched her.
The main road was half a mile from the yard. I drove quickly, then realized I should make sure she hadn’t gone toward the back of the property. I turned the car around, another cloud of dust rising up all around me. The rental car didn’t like driving over the undeveloped land, bouncing and squeaking over almost every bump. I spun to a stop at the back of the property, where the flat land came up to a rocky incline that rose a good twenty feet, looking down over the land. If she’d gone up there in the amount of time she’d been gone, I was never going to find her.
I spun the car around, rushing back to where I’d started. There was only one direction to go from here. The road was undeveloped, much like the property, and it dead-ended into the same incline that wrapped around the back of the property. I turned right and pushed the gas to the floor, keeping an eye out for someone walking along the side of the road, or maybe tire tracks that indicated someone else had been out here. No one should be here. This location was chosen because it was privately owned and miles from the nearest neighbor. The only place she could go was the carretera that ran opposite to this road, five miles away. And she’d have to do those five miles barefoot with a makeshift cast on her leg.
Never in a million years would any normal human being make that walk. But, somehow, it was beginning to look more and more like she had.
What the hell!
I slowed the rental as I approached the busy carretera. Cars were rushing by at 100 kilometers per hour, honking their horns and swerving in and out of lanes like they were competing in a race rather than driving into the city. There was a sign less than a hundred yards from the junction that announced travelers were entering the great metropolis of Mexico City. Just past the sign was a dark-haired woman with a tatter of bright-red cloth coming off her left leg.
“You are a damn stubborn woman, aren’t you?”
She didn’t even slow her steps as I pulled close to her, rolling down the window so that she could hear me.
“Where do you think you’re going to go?”
“This isn’t Pochutla,” she said without even glancing at me.
“No, it’s not.”
“You lied to me!”
“I’ve told a lot of lies. That’s the one that pisses you off?”
She did look at me then, her eyes a storm of emotion. “You’re an asshole!”
“Yes, but I have shoes on.” I leaned across the car and pushed the passenger-side door open. “Get in before you hurt yourself.”
“You really think I’m going to get into that car with you? You must think I’m insane!”
“I think I underestimated you. And I think you deserve to know what’s really going on here. But now is not the time for that.”
“When is? When you’ve packed me off and sent me to some Asian country with new captors? No, thank you.”
“Some Asian country?”
“I read, Oliver. I know where human traffickers send their wares.”
I grunted, resting my head on the shoulder of the car seat for a long moment, showing my exasperation. By the time I sat up again, she was half a dozen yards in front of the car. I hit the gas, the door flying closed as I rushed to catch up with her.
“Your feet must hurt like hell!”
“I can buy shoes when I get to the city.”
“You realize you still have a good fifteen miles until you reach the city center, right? That’s where all the shops are. This part of town is filled with the kind of low life you think I am: drug dealers and gangbangers. You’ll be lucky to make it another two miles.”
“You’re just trying to scare me.”
“A woman as beautiful as you, walking around in that thin dress without the benefit of underwear…” I clicked my tongue. “You won’t be able to beat them back with a stick!”
She hesitated. A missed step. A bit of tension stiffening her shoulders.
“And those boys, they love you American girls. They don’t see such fine, pale skin very much down here!”
“Fuck you,” she said, the words clearly meant to contain a great deal of venom, but coming out with a tremor that spoke of the fear I’d ignited in her. She yanked the car door open and climbed inside, tucking her knees up against her chest as she hugged herself, burying her face in the skirt of her thin dress.
“Good choice.”
I pulled into the fast-moving traffic, driving into the second lane in an attempt to get to the third and find a turnaround to get going in the other direction. Just as I glanced in the rearview mirror to switch lanes, a van came rushing up behind us, the face of the driver familiar to me.
I reached over and shoved Valerie down as low in the seat as I could get her in the second before the van made impact with the back of the rental.
“What’s that?” she demanded, her voice muffled.
“Stay down.”
The van swerved to the right, the driver struggling to regain control. I pushed down the accelerator, trying to get far enough ahead of him that he wouldn’t have another opportunity to hit us. Unfortunately, my rental was just a little four-door sedan with a teeny engine. It was no match for the massive diesel in that van.
I gripped the wheel with both hands as the van came at us again, slamming so hard into the back of the rental that the rear windshield shattered. Valerie cried out, but she remained low in the seat, practically sliding into the foot space beneath the dash. She peeked up at me, fear so clear in her eyes that it was a distraction. I glanced into the rearview mirror, watching as the van driver again struggled to
keep the vehicle on the road.
When he made a third attempt, I could see the weapon poke out from the passenger-side window. I hadn’t seen the passenger, still couldn’t get a good look at him, but I could guess who it was. Another familiar face. How had they found us? Why weren’t they down in Pochutla looking for her? What had made them come up this far north?
Little pop, pop, pops hit the sides of the car, the gunfire ricocheting all around us a second later. I put my hand on the top of Valerie’s head and shoved her the rest of the way into the floor, grateful for the first time in my life that someone hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt. She laid her head on the seat, her eyes turned toward me. The van hit us again and I bounced forward, but the car remained steady, driving straight on the narrow like nothing had happened. But the back end was beginning to drag, a metal-on-metal sound warning that the damage was beginning to interfere with the normal operation of the car. Like anything about this was normal!
We were entering the city, an urban sprawl becoming evident all around us. There would be policia on these streets, the hope for some sort of interference in this game of cat and mouse. I glanced in the mirror and was relieved to see that the van had fallen back, the engine steaming like he’d blown out his radiator. That was the problem with using a vehicle with the engine in the front as a ramming rod.
“Stay down,” I demanded of Valerie, not glancing at her as I navigated the narrowing road, trying to ease the sedan to the side of the road but get it to continue forward for as long as possible. I needed to put space between them and us, needed to be able to pull a Houdini without them realizing what we were doing.
Another two or three miles and we came upon a shopping center that seemed to be doing pretty impressive business. I pulled off the highway and navigated the sedan into a massive parking lot, listening to something grind as I searched for a parking space between two vehicles, preferably two very large vehicles. I finally found what I was looking for after a good, long search: a pickup and a van parked with a space between them. I slowed and spun the wheel around, pulling the sedan in backward so that the undamaged front section would be what people saw first.
“Get out over here and stay close.”
Valerie nodded, climbing over the seats as I got out. I reached back for her, taking her hand and pulling her body against my side. We headed toward the shops, walking quickly but calmly. I glanced toward the highway once, needing to know what we were up against. But there was no sign of the van.
“What now?” Valerie asked.
Instead of answering, I pulled her into a space between two closely-set buildings, headed for the alley behind them. The urban sprawl went on for miles back here, shops and business mixed in with residents. Off to the left I could see the sign for a familiar hotel chain, and it was tempting. Nice hotel, nice service. But it was too close to this place.
“We’ll call for a taxi.”
I tugged my phone from a back pocket and flipped through the list of apps, looking for one that had been placed there for this specific reason. The taxi was ordered with just the touch of a few buttons, a promise that it would arrive in less than five minutes not as reassuring as it might have been under other circumstances.
“You have a cell phone.”
“I do.”
“Where’s mine?”
“In a box somewhere.”
“What?”
I grabbed her hand and pulled her back through the narrow gap between buildings, stopping just before the entrance. She stopped, too, wedged against me in the small space.
“What now?” she asked again.
“We need to find a safe place to reassess.”
“This isn’t some sort of military battle, Oliver. This is a large, metropolitan city. We should go to the police.”
“The police are the last place we want to go.”
“Why?”
I looked down at her, the urge to touch her too much to resist. I pressed a hand to the side of her face and ran my thumb over her lips. “Because they’re probably involved in this thing—at least some of them. The police in Mexico are incredibly corrupt.”
“I’ve heard that. But we’re American and we were just attacked!”
“Being American doesn’t make us bulletproof. If anything, it makes us more of a target.”
Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t allow a single one to fall. Instead, she took a deep breath and tilted her head back, staring up at the sky for a long moment until she had control of herself. It was a show of courage that made an impression.
“There is an explanation for all of this, Valerie,” I said softly, moving close so that I was practically speaking right into her ear. “What you need to know right now is that those guys are the bad guys. I’m just trying to keep you alive.”
“Why?”
She lowered her head when she asked so that she could look me in the eye, but I’d lowered my head so much that her lips brushed my cheek with her movement. When her breath tickled my lips, I couldn’t help myself. I stole those lips as my own, possessing them the way I’d done hours before, the way I knew I shouldn’t do, but couldn’t help myself when she was standing this close to me.
She responded, her body moving up against mine, her hands slipping over my jaw before her arms wrapped themselves around my neck. It was a hard kiss, a desperate kiss that took me right back to those moments before her fingers had dug into my jean pockets, before she’d turned an intimate moment into a cheap distraction.
There were no keys for her to steal now.
I lifted her up and pressed her hard against the brick wall behind her, pressing my hips as hard against her body as I could get them. She moaned, moving her own hips just enough, just enough to show me that the desire I’d felt coming from her in waves wasn’t all just an act. This woman knew how to drive a man to the edge of sanity, knew the kind of control she could exert with just the wiggle of that perfect body.
Just as my hands began to move the thin material of her skirt, a car’s honk brought me back to reality.
“Taxi’s here,” I muttered against her lips.
“We better go.”
I nodded, pulling back just enough to look into those expressive eyes. Emeralds. They were the most precious emeralds I’d ever seen.
I stepped back, freeing myself from the small space, but not releasing her. Instead, I swung her over my shoulder, making her cry out in surprise as I executed a sort of fireman’s carry as I trudged toward the car. She was laughing when I tossed her into the car, sliding in after her, her body a mess of limbs and that flowered dress trying awfully hard to fly up over her hips.
“What’d you do that for?”
“Couldn’t take a chance of you running off again.” I kissed the tip of her nose before leaning forward and speaking to the driver in quick Spanish. “Llévanos al hotel más baratos que puedes imaginar, por favor.”
The driver nodded, touching his meter as he put the car in gear and drove out of the parking lot. I twisted in my seat, checking out the rear window for any sign of the van. I thought we were in the clear for a moment, but then I saw them, the van battered and still steaming, but moving. They were cruising through the parking lot, looking for the sedan. I quickly ducked down under the top edge of the seat, dragging Valerie down with me.
“What did you say to the driver?”
I pulled back slightly, regarding her face. “You were working in that clinic, helping those poor people, and you can’t speak their language?”
“I was only supposed to work in the clinic for a week.”
“But you live in Houston. How many of your patients there don’t speak English?”
Her expression began to tighten. I didn’t want that. I drew her toward me and stole her lips once more, invading her like an alien taking over some far-off planet. She sighed, falling into me, her head practically resting on my chest as she wrapped her fingers in my shirt, tugging me closer to her. I felt like a teenager making out in the back of
Dad’s car. Lord knows I did that plenty of times in high school. But the girls who would allow me to talk them into it weren’t anything like this woman.
“Disculpa? Hemos llegado.”
Interrupted once more, I peeked my head over the edge of the window and saw the sign for the small roadside motel. I opened the door, pulling Valerie out behind me, slipping the driver a little cash for a tip. We stood side by side for a long moment, looking up at the place. It was a four- or five-story building sandwiched between two other buildings, one that looked like an apartment building, which housed mostly prostitutes, and a diner with a front window that was so coated with grease that it was no longer transparent.
“I don’t suppose anyone in their right mind would look for me here,” Valerie announced.
“I don’t suppose so.”
The clerk on the front desk didn’t look twice at either of us, even with Valerie still hobbling around on that broken cast, her feet bare. The check-in process was fairly quick, just a matter of handing over a handful of cash. Our room was on the third floor, not far from the stairs. I let Valerie into the room, then did a little reconnaissance, searching for weak points. There was only the one elevator, only one set of stairs. There was no fire escape on the outside of the building that I could see, but there was a small balcony outside our room’s window that appeared to be sort of sturdy. It might serve as a good launching point in an emergency, though it was a good three-story fall into an alley that was filled with trash and parked cars that apparently belonged to employees of the two businesses and the tenants next door.
It wasn’t my first choice, but it wasn’t as bad as it could be.
“So, what’s the plan? We hide out here for a few days?”
“We get you some decent clothes and some food, maybe a few hours of rest. Then we make a run for safety.”
“Where’s safety, Oliver?” She studied me from her perched seat on the end of the single bed. “Who’s after us? What kind of danger are we in?”
I knelt on the floor in front of her and, using one of the blades of the scissors I’d stolen from the registration desk downstairs, began half cutting, half sawing away at the makeshift cast that was already falling off her leg.
Caballo Security Box Set Page 10