by Cat Johnson
Amanda pressed her lips together. “Probably. She’s redoing the retail space floor and half way up the walls in the front area. That’s a lot of square footage. And it’s hand painted tile so it’s not going to be cheap. That’s why she decided to drive down to get it rather than buy the imported stuff she found at the design center in San Diego.”
That figured. Little miss dumpster diver did like a bargain. This time it might have gotten her into real trouble.
“What time did she leave?” he asked.
“This morning. And she said she should be back for dinner.”
“Hey, bro. What’s up?” Jasper slid the door to the patio closed behind him and crossed to Zach.
After a manly half-handshake, half-backslapping hug, Zach said, “Amanda’s worried about Gabby.”
“Why?” Jasper asked over his shoulder as he made his way to the fridge and emerged with a beer of his own.
“She’s in Tijuana,” Amanda answered.
“She is?” he frowned.
Jeez. Was Jasper as clueless about what was going under his own roof as he seemed? That wasn’t at all encouraging.
“Remember, I’d texted you and told you to make sure Amanda didn’t go to Tijuana with Gabby?” Zach asked.
Jasper’s eyes widened. “You were serious? I thought it was a joke.”
“No, it wasn’t a joke.” Zach resisted the urge to slap the man.
“She was supposed to be back by now.” Amanda was starting to look really worried.
He hated to admit it, but he was getting pretty concerned himself.
“Call her,” Jasper suggested, stealing a cherry tomato from the salad bowl and popping it into his mouth.
“I could do that. Wait. Can I do that? Do cell phone’s work in Mexico?” She looked to Zach.
“Depends on her carrier and her plan.” Zach had a feeling that a woman who got furniture in the trash and drove to Mexico to save a few bucks on tile wouldn’t have a premium cell phone plan that included international roaming.
“I’m gonna try her.” Amanda plunked her glass of iced tea down, pushed away from the island and reached for her cell on the counter.
Zach nodded. “Good plan.”
No one was going to get to eat dinner or talk about anything else but Gabby until Amanda was certain she was okay. And actually, he’d enjoy his night a lot better once he knew that for himself too.
She might be a pain in the ass decorator, but she was his pain in the ass decorator.
“It’s ringing,” Amanda reported.
“Good.” Zach took a swallow of his beer and waited.
“Hello? Gabs?” Amanda pulled the cell away from her face and checked the screen, before pressing it back against her ear. “I can’t hear you. Gabby?”
After a few seconds, Amanda checked the screen again.
She looked from Zach to Jasper. “The call dropped.”
“Call back,” Jasper suggested.
“Okay.” She nodded and tried the call again. Her eyes widened as she lowered the cell. “It went straight to voicemail.”
“Look, sweetie, she probably just has really bad signal where she is.” Jasper moved closer and wrapped his arm around her.
“Yeah. You’re right.” Amanda agreed, accepting her husband’s hug.
Zach wasn’t as willing to let the subject drop as he thought he’d be. “What did she say when you had her on the phone? Could you hear anything?” he asked.
“Barely. Some garbled words I couldn’t understand.” Amanda met his gaze. “Why? Are you worried?”
He tipped his head to one side and lifted a shoulder.
“I knew it! I’m not overreacting. This is bad.” She turned to Jasper. “If Zach is worried, things are really bad. She could be in trouble. Kidnapped. Or arrested. Or . . . or—”
“Human trafficked,” Jasper supplied when Amanda couldn’t come up with any other horrible fates that might have befallen her friend.
Amanda’s eyes flew wide. “Oh my God! You think?”
“Great. Thanks, Jasper. Way to calm her down.” Zach rolled his eyes.
Jasper winced. “Sorry.”
“We have to drive down there. We have to go find her.” Amanda started for the front of the house, as if she was going to jump in the car right this minute to go find Gabby.
Zach reached out and grabbed her arm. “Oh no.”
Amanda shot him a glare. “I’m not going to leave her down there. Alone.”
“And I’m not letting you go.” He leveled a no-nonsense stare on her. “I swear Amanda, I’ll lock you up in handcuffs if I have to.”
“You own handcuffs?” Jasper asked. “What d’you use those for?” He looked a little too interested in the answer.
Both Amanda and Zach shot Jasper a glare.
He backed up a step. “I’m going to check the chicken.”
Zach lifted a brow. “Good idea.”
As Jasper slunk out of the room, Amanda laid a hand on Zach’s forearm. “Will you go look for her? Please?”
“Look where? Tijuana is a big place, Amanda.”
“Wait. I can find out where she went.” Amanda rushed to the counter and grabbed a notepad before rifling through a drawer. Finally she emerged with a pencil and started to scratch it across the pad, like a child who was too young to color and couldn’t stay in the lines.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Gabby called the tile place from here. She wrote the address down on this pad. She took the top piece with her but I should be able to . . . yes! Look. I can see what she wrote.”
Zach wandered closer and looked over her shoulder where an address revealed itself amid the scribble.
“You learn that in Girl Scouts?” he asked.
“No. Hallmark Mysteries and Movies Channel.”
He shook his head and took the pad from her, trying to decipher the letters. Between Gabby’s scrawl and the fact he was trying to read through the pencil lead, it was challenging.
Zach typed what he thought the address might be into his cell’s browser and it came up.
“Well?” Amanda asked, trying to see his screen.
“It is the address of a tile manufacturer in Tijuana.”
Her eyes flew wide. “Oh my God. Can you go there?”
“They’re going to be closed at this hour.”
“But if you drive there and she broke down along the road or something, you’ll find her. She put the address in her Waze App. If you do the same thing, the app will give you the same directions it gave her, right?” Amanda looked excited by her plan to solve this mystery of her missing friend.
“Yeah. I guess.”
Amanda gripped his arm in both of her hands. “Please, Zach. She’s got no one else here who cares about her but me. If you won’t let me go, then who will help her?”
He never had been able to resist Amanda when she begged. Not when she was little and wanted him to give her his last cookie. Not when she’d come home in tears and wanted him to go threaten the boy who’d been mean to her in middle school.
And he couldn’t resist her pleas now.
He glanced wistfully at the door leading to the patio where the grilled chicken he wasn’t going to get to enjoy was starting to smell really good.
Knowing he was going to live to regret his words, he said, “Okay. I’ll go.”
She threw her arms around him. “Thank you so much.”
“Don’t thank me. You’re going to owe me for this one.”
“Anything. I promise.”
“Yeah, we’ll see.” He let out a huff of air. “Okay. Let me get going. I’ll call the minute I know anything.”
“Yes. No matter what time it is. Even if it’s the middle of the night.”
God, he hoped he wasn’t going to be up all night looking for her, but there was a good chance he would be.
This is what he got for being a nice guy.
He hauled himself into his truck and opened his contacts list on his cell.
Unlike Gabby, Zach wasn’t going to go roaming around Tijuana without anyone knowing exactly where he was. Finding the contact he wanted, he hit the screen to make the call.
“Z-man. Hey, dude. What’s up?” Hawk asked when he answered the phone.
“I’m on my way to Tijuana,” Zach answered.
“Sounds like fun.”
“Yeah, not exactly.” Zach gave Hawk a quick rundown of the situation.
He needed someone besides Amanda to know where he was and what he was doing. Someone capable of doing something about it if things went sideways.
“Jesus. That’s a hell of a story. You need me to come with you?” Hawk asked. “You know the buddy rule.”
Zach knew the rule. Sailors were supposed to cross the border with a buddy. “Technically, I’m on leave,” he said.
“Technically, you are,” Hawk agreed. “But if you want the back up, I’m here. All I’m doing is packing up to head home.”
A reminder Zach didn’t enjoy.
“No, dude, it’s fine. I’m hoping to be in and out quick,” Zach began.
With any luck he’d find Gabby fast and get her back to the states with or without her load of tile.
He considered what he’d do if Gabby had been arrested by border control. That could slow things down considerably.
“But there is one thing you might be able to do for me,” Zach said.”
“Sure. Anything you need, you got it.”
“Didn’t you mention you know that SEAL who took a bullet for a senator in that shooting down in D.C.?” Zach asked.
“Zane Alexander. Yeah. I know him. I mean we’re not close friends—he didn’t invite me to his wedding or anything—but I know him well enough I could call him if I needed to. Why? What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking if I have to get someone out of a Tijuana jail, you might have to make that call.”
“Jesus, let’s hope not. But yeah. No problem. I got you covered, Z-man.”
“Thanks. Call you with the sit rep later.”
“You better,” Hawk warned.
“I promise.” Zach disconnected the call and headed south for the border. It was going to be an interesting evening.
FOURTEEN
Things were going too well . . . and in Gabby’s lifetime of experience, that didn’t happen to her. Things didn’t go smoothly. Something always went wrong.
So what was going to go wrong?
Given that she was about to drive an SUV full of Mexican tiles through Customs and Border Patrol into the US, she figured there were any number of things that could go wrong.
The nagging feeling accompanied her for miles. She couldn’t even enjoy the audiobook she had playing on her Kindle, which was riding shotgun in the passenger seat.
She turned off Protected by a SEAL to save for later when she could enjoy it fully. She’d have to listen to the adventures of the Hollywood diva damsel in distress being rescued by the big bruiser of her Navy SEAL bodyguard later, when she wasn’t afraid of being thrown into prison for trafficking tile.
She’d definitely feel better about this border crossing if it were a real SEAL sitting in the passenger seat protecting her from whatever might happen next, rather than her eReader.
Since she only knew one big scary SEAL, and yesterday she hadn’t been brave enough to ask him to go with her on this trip, she was flying solo. Or rather driving, if she could even call this driving as she slowed for the ever increasing traffic heading toward the US border.
She’d read online in her Tijuana research that there could be a two-hour wait at the border. Even worse on weekends. She’d chosen to come mid-week, hoping for less of a delay getting back into the States.
But as the US border grew nearer, according to the GPS app on her cell, she was starting to hope for a delay because she wasn’t ready for this.
She was shaking.
The border guard would take one look at her and give her a cavity search, because she definitely looked suspicious.
She felt suspicious, even if she had dotted all the I’s and crossed all the T’s. She had her invoice ready to show at the border. She had cash in US Dollars and Pesos, as well as a credit card and her checkbook to pay any duty she might owe on the tile. She should be all set.
Wait, where was that invoice? She panicked and looked down at the seat next to her.
It wasn’t there.
Glancing up she remembered she’d stuck it in the visor, but then the sun had been in her eyes and she’d lowered that so she’d stuck the invoice somewhere else.
One hand on the steering wheel, she glanced at the passenger seat visor, just as her cell phone started to ring in its dashboard holder.
This was the second time Amanda had called since she’d been on the way home.
The first time had been a while ago. She’d answered but the signal had been such crap the call dropped almost immediately.
Amanda was probably worried about her. Gabby needed to at least try to answer.
She reached to touch the screen icon to connect the call, then she had to visually locate and touch the icon to put it on speaker phone.
“Hello!” She yelled at the cell, finally looking up at the highway in front of her just in time.
She hit the brake pedal hard and barely avoided slamming into the car that had zipped into her lane and cut her off.
The sudden stop rocked the SUV hard enough she flew forward toward the steering wheel until the seat belt cutting across her held her back.
The cell phone went flying out of its already precarious perch in the two-dollar vent holder she’d been meaning to replace with a better one.
And the tile—good God, the tile. The thousands of dollars worth of tile, in cardboard boxes with no padding or protection, all slid forward behind her, the boxes crashing against the back of the driver and the passenger seats.
Her Kindle took a header for the floor, but worse than that, she swore she heard the subtle crack of ceramic behind her.
She didn’t know what to rescue first.
The tile—her precious cargo—was uppermost in her mind. But, there was also her cell phone, which might or might not still have a call connected to Amanda active.
However, that was somewhere out of sight on the floorboards. Possibly under the pedals beneath her feet, which could not be good.
What if she hit the accelerator or the brake and the phone was wedged under there? She leaned down and tried to look as the traffic streamed around her stopped car, horns blaring as her nerves reached the breaking point.
She couldn’t see anything under there without a light, which was on her cell phone, lost on the dark floor.
It was clear she had to pull over—across three lanes of traffic to get to the closest shoulder. She’d just have to risk it.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, amid enough chaos and road rage to rattle even the Pope’s nerves, she made her way over to the side of the road.
She stopped the vehicle far enough over she’d be safe from the crazy drivers and threw it into park. Only then did she feel like she could breathe freely again. But there was so much more to do, and she still had to get across the border.
This plan was looking less and less wise as the day progressed.
Nothing she could do about it now.
She unhooked the seatbelt and opened the driver’s side door. First things first. Standing next to the car, she bent down and tried to see the floor. No luck.
Blindly, she reached down and ran her hands around under the seat.
Finally her fingers hit something smooth. She grabbed the cell and pulled it out.
The screen wasn’t broken. That was one stroke of good luck. But it had powered itself off. Not a great sign, but it might be all right.
She hit the power button and waited . . . Finally the little white apple appeared in the center of the screen and she let out the breath she’d been holding.
While the cell powered itself back on, she shoved it
into her back pocket.
Next on her list of priorities was the tile.
She probably should have been more concerned about the thousands of dollars of tile rather than her cell phone in the first place. She’d have to deal with her tech addiction later when she was back on US soil, which she might never leave again after this experience.
Pulled over on the side of the road wasn’t the safest place to be but she needed to calm down a bit from the near crash, and she’d feel a lot better once she’d checked on her cargo.
She spotted the invoice, the cause of all of this mess to begin with. Reaching in, she grabbed it, vowing to keep it in sight until she crossed that border.
The damn thing was written in Spanish but the number of cases was listed in numerals so that she could understand.
Twenty boxes, tight packed in the back of her SUV, just fit with the back seats flipped down.
It was enough to do the shop with a few—very few—to spare in case of breakage. She hoped she hadn’t blown through the extras already by slamming on the brakes.
She had to check. Better to know now.
Slipping her fingers into the crevice in the cardboard, she tugged. It didn’t budge. The flaps were glued shut. She pulled harder and slipped, tearing off the tip of one nail in the process.
“Ow.”
That had hurt. She wasn’t the type who could maintain a manicure since she worked with her hands so often, so she didn’t bother getting her nails done. But perfectly polished or not, she still liked to keep her nails on her fingers.
She inspected the damage, wondering if she even had a nail file in her bag or if she’d have to drive all the way home with the ragged nail.
“Need a little help?” The sound of the man’s voice directly behind her had her jumping.
Hand pressed to her chest, she spun—and let out a breath of relief. “Zach.”
He folded his arms across his chest, his gaze resting on her. “Gabby.”
As her heart continued to pound from the scare, she asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I came to get tile.”
“Yes, so Amanda said. But seriously, driving down here alone—what were you thinking?”