Lightning Lingers

by Barbara Freethy

  "What are you talking about?" he asked.

  "Your father. This is about him, too."

  "No, this is about TJ, Katherine's brother," Jake corrected.

  "Not entirely. The world is connected in complicated ways; one person seems to have no relationship to another until it all becomes clear."

  Jake gave his great-grandmother an exasperated look. "I don't know what you're talking about, Mamich."

  "Your father is caught between worlds. He calls for help, but I am not the one who can help him. I thought it might be Alicia, because she can sometimes hear his call. But it is you. And it is time."

  Jake paled at her words. Despite his natural cynicism toward the supernatural, his great-grandmother's words had obviously hit him hard. They'd hit Katherine hard, too. She didn't know how TJ and Jake's father could be connected, but there did seem to be a lot of odd coincidences, like two planes being taken out of the air by lightning ten years apart.

  "I came here for Katherine," Jake said firmly. "For her brother. I don't know what you're saying about Dad. He's dead. He's not coming back, and there's nothing I can do to help him."

  "He can't move on until the truth is revealed."

  "What's the truth?" he asked in confusion.

  Sylvia met Jake's gaze. "All I can tell you is that his bones are not where they're supposed to be."

  Jake sucked in a quick breath. "I don't understand."

  "Yes, you do."

  "I don't," he denied. "I know that Alicia thinks that Dad's crash was not an accident. She's hired an investigator to look into it. If anyone is going to find the truth, it will be her, not me."

  "She may not be in the right place to help. Did you see nothing in the lightning that struck your plane and sent you crashing to the ground?"

  "I didn't tell you that lightning struck the plane," Jake said.

  "Did it not?" Sylvia asked.

  His lips tightened. "As a matter of fact, yes, it did."

  "You saw your dad," Katherine interjected.

  Jake's eyes darkened, and he didn't look like he appreciated her comment, but she hadn't been able to stop herself.

  "You saw Wyatt?" Sylvia asked. "What did he tell you?"

  Jake hesitated. "It was just my imagination, Mamich. We'd just been talking about Dad's accident, and I was in a similar situation."

  "What did he say?" Sylvia repeated, not giving up on her question.

  Jake let out a sigh. "I thought he might have said follow me."

  Sylvia nodded. "And you followed."

  "No. I didn't follow him. I crashed."

  "You landed where you were supposed to."

  "I don't think so, because if Dad wanted me to get here sooner, he wouldn't have sent my plane down. Katherine and I have been on the road for days. We weren't even sure we were going to survive."

  "And yet you did, and you are here. You fight so hard not to believe, Jake. What you must do is fight to see the truth," Sylvia said, urgency in her voice. "Don't be afraid of it. Don't turn away. It's too important. Not just for your father, but for you and your family."

  "Okay, we've gotten off track," he said, running a hand through his hair. "We need to find Katherine's brother. That's our first priority. Dad has been gone for ten years, so whatever that truth is can wait a little longer."

  "Of course. That is important, too. Let's go into the house. Carmen cleans at the inn every morning and helps me in the afternoons. If there is a guest in town, she will know."

  They followed Sylvia back into the house.

  "I have your tea ready," Carmen said, greeting them in the kitchen.

  "We will have tea later," Sylvia said. "Carmen, Jake is looking for a man. Have there been any American visitors at the inn the last few days?"

  Carmen nodded. "A young man. I saw him yesterday. He said he was taking pictures of the ruins."

  "Yesterday?" Katherine echoed in amazement. She looked at Jake. "We have to go to the inn right now."

  "Yes," he agreed with a nod.

  "Carmen will go with you," Sylvia said. "She speaks English better than those at the inn. She is one of my best students. She will help you."

  "We'd appreciate that, Carmen."

  The young woman nodded. "Sí, I will help you."

  "We'll be back soon, Mamich," Jake told his great-grandmother.

  "Yes. When this is over, we will have a long talk," she said. "There will be much to discuss."

  "I forgot how spooky she is," Jake muttered as they followed Carmen into town.

  "She seems very wise and very convincing. Maybe there is something more to know about your dad's death."

  "Well, right now I just want to focus on TJ."

  She nodded, feeling in complete agreement and also a little more hopeful. "I think he's here. The man Carmen spoke to has to be him."

  "I really hope so, Kat."

  "Although, it feels a little—easy."

  "Easy?" he asked, shooting her an amazed look. "You call the last few days easy? Because, if so, you and I have a very different definition of easy."

  "Not then—now. We're just going to walk into the inn, and he'll be there? It doesn't seem possible."

  "He has to be somewhere. Why not there?"

  "I just have a bad feeling."

  "That's because Mamich spooked you, too, but all her talk was about my father, not your brother."

  "She said they're connected."

  "How could she know that?"

  "I have no idea. But I hope this does turn out to be easy. I want to give TJ a big hug and then punch him in the face for getting all of us into this mess."

  Jake laughed. "That sounds about right for a sister." He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "This is almost over, babe."

  She wanted to believe that, but she couldn't shake the worried feeling as they entered the inn. Carmen spoke with the innkeeper in Spanish, then she grabbed a key from behind the desk and told them TJ was staying in room number two at the top of the stairs.

  They went up to the second floor, and she knocked on the door. When there was no answer, she used the key.

  The guestroom was furnished with an iron-framed queen bed, a nightstand and a desk. But her gaze went immediately from the décor to the T-shirt lying in a crumpled heap on the bed. She picked it up. It was warm to the touch, as if someone had recently taken it off. As she shook it out, she saw the logo on the back for the Houston Astros. Her stomach turned over.

  "This is TJ's shirt," she said, looking at Jake. "I sent it to him last Christmas. This is his room."

  "Okay," Jake said carefully. "Now we just need to find him."

  "He has to be close by. Maybe he went to the market or the café." She moved over to the window.

  The room looked out over the street. There were only a few people in sight; two old men sitting in chairs in front of the market and three little girls standing on the sidewalk sucking on Popsicles and kicking a ball between them. As her gaze moved down the street, she saw a man come out of the bank. He wore jeans and a forest-green T-shirt. He had a baseball cap on his head, and sunglasses over his eyes, but there was no denying the familiarity of his walk. She'd recognize that lazy, loping stride anywhere.

  "Oh, my God, there he is," she cried. "There's TJ." She tried to open the window, but it wouldn't budge. Jake added his muscle, but the window didn't move, so she turned and ran out of the room, hurrying down the stairs and through the front door.

  When she hit the sidewalk, she was surprised to see a black van flying down the street, almost running over one of the kids who had gone into the street to grab their ball.

  The van came to an abrupt stop when it reached TJ and before she could take her next breath, two men jumped out of the back of the van, grabbed her brother and threw him inside the vehicle.

  "No," she screamed, running down the street after them.

  But it was too late. The van was gone in a cloud of dust, and so was TJ.

  Fourteen

  "No, no, no!" She st
opped at the end of the block. The road disappeared into the trees, and there was no way she could catch up to the van on foot. She couldn't believe her brother had been taken right before her eyes. "He's gone. They got him," she said as Jake put his arm around her.

  "I know. I'm sorry."

  She jerked away from him, adrenaline still coursing through her body. "How could we get so close and not reach him in time? If we'd come into town and gone to the inn right when we got here, this might not have happened."

  "You don't know that."

  "Neither do you."

  "Look, Katherine, we don't have time for the blame game right now."

  "We don't have time?" she asked, waving her hand in angry bewilderment. "What else do we have to do? We're in the middle of nowhere. We have no way of going after those men, and they could be hurting my brother right now." As her imagination leapt to the worst possible scenario, her stomach heaved and she had to bite down on her bottom lip to stop herself from throwing up. "Oh, God, I feel sick."

  "Let's focus on making a plan to rescue him."

  "What plan would that be?" she asked, feeling hopeless. They'd been battling for days, and she was exhausted. She'd really thought she'd get to TJ before the worst happened, but she'd been wrong.

  "We'll walk back to the inn and see if anyone on the street recognized the van or the men who grabbed your brother. This isn't over, Katherine. We won't stop looking until we find him. We didn't come all this way to fail. As long as we keep trying, we have a chance. Don't quit on me now."

  She stared at him, the determination in his voice inspiring her. "You're right. I didn't come here to fail. Okay. Let's do it. Let's talk to people and find out who took my brother."

  Despite Jake's plan to identify her brother's kidnappers, they had little success getting information from anyone on the street. Most of the people disappeared inside their shops when they approached and the few people they did speak to either said they didn't understand or didn't know what they were asking.

  Carmen was their last hope. She stood in front of the inn, a worried expression on her face. "What happened?"

  "Some men in a black van grabbed my brother and drove away. We've asked around, but no one claims to have seen anything."

  Carmen's face paled. "A black van?"

  "Do you know who drives a black van?" she asked.

  "Sí. Los hombres de el diablo—the devil's men."

  "Who's the devil?" Jake asked. "What's his name?"

  "We must go back to the house—quickly now." Carmen practically ran down the street, not slowing her pace until they were inside Sylvia's home. She greeted Sylvia with a barrage of Spanish and then left the room.

  "Did Carmen just tell you what happened?" Katherine asked. "My brother was taken off the street by three men in a black van."

  "Did they see you?" Sylvia asked, concern in her dark eyes.

  "I don't know. I don't think so."

  "Katherine and I were running after them," Jake put in. "But the van kicked up a lot of dust, and the windows in the back were blacked out. I'm not sure they could see anything, but it's possible they did."

  She suddenly realized that she might have put TJ in more danger by running after the van. "Do you know anything about this van?" she asked. "Carmen said it's driven by the devil's men, but that's all she would tell us."

  "Come and sit." Sylvia led the way into the small living room. "I will tell you what I know."

  Katherine sat on the couch with Jake while Sylvia took the adjacent chair.

  "There is a large ranch in the mountains about ten miles from here," Sylvia said. "Years ago, it was a working cattle ranch owned by Jose Calderon. He was a good man. He lost his wife during the birth of his third son, so he raised his boys on his own. Unfortunately, without a mother's touch, the boys ran wild. When Jose died, he left the ranch to all of them, but the sons turned the ranch away from cattle and began running drugs. The oldest, Martine, was in charge for the next few years. Then his younger brothers waged war against him. In the end, Martine and the middle brother, Hector, were killed by the youngest—Rodrigo."

  "He killed his brothers?" Katherine asked in shock. "Why?"

  "Greed, evil," she said. "Rodrigo has been in charge the last two years. The ranch became off-limits to the locals. Anyone who trespassed was killed, their body left in the road as a warning to others. The villagers began to call him El Diablo—the devil."

  "Oh, God," Katherine murmured, putting a hand to her mouth as she thought about her brother in the hands of this evil man. "Why hasn't anyone arrested him? Where are the police?"

  "It is complicated," Sylvia said.

  "How is it complicated?" Jake challenged.

  "The Calderons always took care of this community—as well as others in the area. Even after Jose died, Martine carried on the tradition. For years, once a month, the black van came to town. It stopped at the bank. The driver went inside and left money for electricity, water, and road repairs."

  "So the Calderons bought the silence of the locals," Jake said with a disgusted shake of his head.

  "Sí. The money was desperately needed and happily accepted for many years," Sylvia replied. "But since Rodrigo took over, many people have been hurt, not just those who got too close to the ranch. Last month a child was run down by the van. The little boy barely survived. We want someone to stop Rodrigo from hurting anyone else, but we have nowhere to turn. The police look the other way."

  "Maybe they can't look the other way this time. Rodrigo has kidnapped a US citizen, an employee of a powerful corporation," Jake said.

  "Perhaps his company should get involved in his rescue," Sylvia suggested, giving Katherine a hopeful look.

  "I'm not sure who I would ask at MDT," she replied. "My brother didn't know who to trust at his company, and I don't, either."

  "Maybe that doesn't matter anymore," Jake said. "You witnessed your brother being kidnapped. MDT can't try to tell you you're wrong. They'll have to send someone to investigate."

  "Or they could make sure TJ dies before he's found."

  Jake's lips tightened. "I guess that's possible."

  "I don't understand why a drug lord would take my brother. He's an engineer. He doesn't deal in drugs."

  "TJ is an engineer who works on weapons systems," Jake reminded her. "Some drug cartels have the weapons of a small army. Perhaps they wanted some of the technology that TJ has been working on. Hell, maybe Jerry's contacts were in Mexico. They were never able to find his co-conspirators. They thought he was selling technology to Middle-Eastern countries, but maybe he was selling to drug cartels in Mexico. That actually would have been easier, given the proximity of Texas to Mexico."

  "That makes sense," she said slowly. "When TJ called me, he did say something about he didn't know why they'd sent him to Mexico, but he thought he'd figured it out. I didn't know what that meant at the time, but maybe that's when he realized Mexico was a partner or something…" She paused. "But if TJ knew a local and powerful drug lord might be after him, why would he stay in Mexico? Why would he come to this village? Why not go back to Texas or somewhere else?"

  "It's possible he couldn't get out of the country. He might not have known exactly who was after him, either, so he thought buying some time by disappearing into the wilderness would work."

  "But they found him." She thought about that. "Did we lead them here, Jake? Those men we saw on the highway—maybe we didn't lose them after all."

  "It wasn't the same guys, Katherine. Those men were in a Jeep. They were wearing different clothes."

  "They could have switched cars, or they could have still been working for this Rodrigo. Maybe it was the call back home that triggered something. You talked to Rusty. Did you tell him where we were going? I can't remember."

  "No, I didn't tell him. I just said you had business to take care of, but even if I had told him, who would he tell?"

  "Someone from MDT who went to the airfield asking questions."

  "That'
s a long shot. And I'd trust Rusty with my life. He's been like a second father to me."

  His words sent a shiver down her spine. "That's right. Rusty knew your father. He was around when your dad disappeared, and he was around when your plane suddenly lost power and steering capabilities."

  "What are you getting at, Katherine?" he asked tightly.

  "Just saying it's a coincidence."

  "Rusty didn't sabotage my plane," he said, anger in his eyes.

  "But lightning doesn't normally take down a plane. You told me that."

  "It can. It's been known to happen."

  "To two people in the same family ten years apart?"

  He shook his head. "Why the hell would Rusty want to kill me or my father?"

  "Rusty's charter service caters to MDT executives flying around the world. They could have paid him to sabotage our plane."

  "Okay, you're way out there, Kat. I know you're upset, but—"

  "What about Alicia?" she interrupted. "Alicia has a private investigator looking into your father's accident, researching MDT. Maybe she did something to send someone in our direction. I shouldn't have spoken to her before I came down here. That might have been a mistake."

  "Well, maybe you shouldn't have come to me at all," he said, clearly pissed off. "If you'd flown to Mexico on a commercial jet, I wouldn't have spent the last several days running for my life. So if you want to blame someone, maybe look in the mirror."

  "Jake—Katherine," Sylvia interrupted. "Stop. Fighting with each other won't help. You need to be partners, work together. You are on the same side."

  Sylvia's words made her realize that she was taking her frustration out on Jake. She let out a tense breath. "You're right, Sylvia. I'm sorry, Jake. I'm just really upset."

  Jake didn't look like he wanted to accept her apology, but he finally nodded and said, "Fine. Let's move on."

  She turned to Sylvia. "We have to get to Rodrigo's ranch and figure out how to rescue my brother. We'll need to borrow a car. Are there any men who might be willing to come with us?"

  "I don't know," Sylvia said slowly. "We don't have any local police. The nearest station is ten miles away, and those officers are in Rodrigo's pocket. As for some men, it will be difficult. Everyone is afraid."