Legend_A Rockstar Romance

by Ellie Danes

  “Doesn’t it make us more suspicious? Wouldn’t the clerk wonder why we didn’t show ID? You could have caught someone’s attention back when they were searching for us,” I snapped.

  Nathan cocked an eyebrow at me. “Cash bribes work, and that’s a good thing. Cash is all we’ve got.”

  I sank onto the foot of the bed then shifted, worried that Nathan would feel my nervous tremors through the cheap mattress. “What are we going to do?” I asked, my back to him.

  “Get some take-out and watch TV,” Nathan said. He clicked on the ancient television set.

  I sprang to my feet. “That’s it? We have to get back across the border!”

  Nathan flipped through a couple more channels before he turned the TV off. “We can go to the American Embassy and see if they believe our story.”

  “What? Are you going to bribe someone there to overlook the fact that we don’t have anything? Not even social security numbers. No one they can even call to confirm that we’re the Cramers.” My knees quaked, and I had to sit back down on the foot of the motel bed.

  Nathan leaned forward but did not reach out to me. “They’ll probably just give us paperwork. We can take it and figure out what to do from there.”

  He leaned over to the bedside table and was happy to discover a small bundle of restaurant menus. I knew then that Nathan had no intention of going to the American Embassy in the morning. Now that he was across the border, he was going to look for Maggie or the New Mexico City Cartel.

  There was no guarantee that Nathan would ever return to America, and the thought tore at my heart. I loved Nathan, I had given him so much, but I wasn’t sure I could trust him anymore.

  I wanted to go home.

  “Want anything special?” Nathan flapped the restaurant menus at me.

  “Anything’s fine. My stomach isn’t feeling so good.” I got up and headed to the bathroom. When Nathan tapped on the door a few minutes later, I groaned. “Go without me. I’m going to take a bath and go to bed.”

  Nathan peeked around the door to see me huddled on the edge of the bathtub. “I’ll get you some tortilla soup. It’ll make you feel better.”

  “Thanks.” I stood up and hugged him, not trusting myself to say anything else.

  “Enjoy your bath,” Nathan said. “I’ll be back before the bubbles are gone.”

  I watched him leave and tried not to double up as sobs wracked my body.

  I had to leave.

  I ran the bathwater for at least ten minutes, just in case Nathan was listening outside. Then I stopped the water and slunk back across the motel room to the door. Nathan was gone and there was no one else in the hallway. I was down the stairs and running across the street before the steam had even cleared the motel bathroom.

  Once I got a few blocks away from our motel, I stopped on a corner. My best chance was to head back toward the border crossing and then try to retrace our steps from there. Anxiety gripped my chest as I thought about the border guards, but it was late at night and they would be preoccupied with checking the cars that wanted to cross so late at night.

  As I neared the border crossing, it was easy to avoid it all together. I just kept the bright lights of the station in my sights as I slipped down the street a block away. When I finally thought I’d gone too far, I turned toward the US border.

  My heart beat so hard, I was surprised it didn’t echo off the industrial warehouses. The streets were vacant, but now most of the buildings were too and the quiet scared me.

  Then I spotted the open field where Nathan and I had wandered in.

  Or I thought it was the field.

  There was only one way to find out, so I skittered across the street and left the last streetlight behind me. The ground was rough, and I had to go slow in the dark to avoid catching my ankle in a deep rut. It would have been beautiful, with a thick scattering of stars above my head, but I was too scared to look up.

  I peered into the darkness and prayed that I didn’t meet anyone else out in the field. A voice in my head hoped I’d be caught by Nathan, wrapped up in his strong arms, but I was all alone now.

  I shivered and moved forward across the dark field. Then I saw a small shape detach itself from a sparse bush and move away from me. It disappeared down the culvert that Nathan and I had used.

  I froze and tried to argue with my senses. There was no way that I had seen a little girl running across the field ahead of me. I was tired, overwrought, and my mind had to be playing tricks on me.

  “Hello?” I tried to call but my voice came out a raspy whisper.

  I edged toward the culvert and peered into the darkness. The little shadow was running away, down the smooth, dry bed. I jumped down and ran after her. No matter who she was, the little girl seemed to know where she was going, and she was heading in the direction I needed to go.

  “Wait, please,” I rasped out.

  The shadow slowed then crouched down to wait for me. I stopped running and held out both my hands as I approached slowly.

  “Who are you?” The little girl’s voice was harsh, a forced attempt at sounding brave.

  “I’m lost,” I told her. “Are you lost, too?”

  The little girl shook her head. Then she flashed a small light into my eyes. I squeezed my eyes shut but didn’t shield my eyes. I wanted her to see that I meant her no harm.

  The beam blinded me for a few seconds and then swept down to the bottom of the dry culvert. “Where are you going?” the little girl asked.

  I pried an eye open and almost screamed. In the dim light of the flashlight, the little girl looked exactly like Maggie from Nathan’s photograph.

  “I’m heading back to the US. Home,” I said when I could breathe again.

  The little girl stood up and frowned at me. “You shouldn’t go this way. You’ll get in trouble.”

  “What about you?” I asked. “Aren’t you scared of getting in trouble?”

  The little girl looked back the way we’d come and shook her head. “I just want to go home.”

  My heart stumbled and raced. It was an impossible coincidence, but she looked so much like the little girl in the photograph. Had I managed to find Maggie the same way Nathan, and I had managed to stumble across the border?

  She turned off the flashlight, and I resisted the urge to grab her arm. I couldn’t let her run off again, not until I knew.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  The little girl folded her arms over her chest but looked ready to bolt. “Maggie,” she said.

  My head reeled but I forced my voice to sound calm. “Hello, Maggie. I’m Bree.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Nathan

  I crumpled up the last wrapper from my dinner and made a long shot across the motel room into the small, wire wastebasket. Then I checked my watch for the hundredth time.

  Bree still wasn’t back.

  The small hope I had that she was running an errand or just trying to teach me a lesson had ebbed over the last few hours.

  Bree was gone, and she wasn’t coming back.

  I had let the food sit untouched for the first hour as I paced the small motel room. As many times as horrible possibilities jumped into my head, the same hollow thought rang out: Bree had finally made a smart move.

  For all her innocence and naïveté, Bree was a smart woman. I had no idea why she had stuck it out so long with me.

  She’d made the right decision. Too bad that thought brought me no comfort. It occurred to me that leaving might not have been her choice at all. What if the cartel had found us and taken Bree?

  I hauled myself off the bed and began to pace again. It was one thing to wait and to hope, but it was another to just sit around while Bree was in trouble. Why hadn’t I turned around and gone to find her the second I realized our motel room was empty?

  “Bree’s smart. She’ll make it,” I said. The words sounded so implausible out loud.

  I balled my hand into a fist and punch the mattress as hard as I
could. I had to clear my mind. Every sign pointed to Bree getting fed up and leaving me. She didn’t want me screwing up her life anymore. Or protecting her. I punched the air, pretending to knock down every horrific scenario I imagined Bree would get caught up in.

  “And she calls me reckless,” I muttered.

  I dug into the brown paper bag of supplies I had bought, but whiskey just didn’t seem right. I needed a clear mind to think about what to do next. Now that Bree was gone, I could focus on my plan without worrying about keeping her safe.

  The last thing I needed to do was run out the door in the middle of the night and go stumbling across the dark field in the hopes of catching Bree before she was back across the border.

  I didn’t need her. All I needed was a plan.

  I turned the TV off and sat down at the small motel desk with a resolute sigh. I took three more deep, long breaths, but nothing came to me but the urge to pace. I stood up so fast that I almost knocked the desk chair over backward.

  My first lap around the tiny motel room forced me to admit that I wasn’t leaving Mexico anytime soon. That was the reason I hadn’t rushed out the door to try to intercept Bree. Now that I was across the border, I was too close to Maggie and the cartel to turn back.

  I still needed to find out more about Adrian Juarez and this was the best place to do it. What kind of deals did he make? What was his rank in the cartel? What connection, if any, did he have to Maggie?

  And why would I owe a man like that anything?

  I ran my fingers through my hair and almost pulled out a clump. The only thing that calmed me was taking apart and cleaning my gun. Besides a wad of cash, the gun had been the only thing on me when Bree and I had abandoned our car.

  I checked the gun and wondered again what I had gotten myself into.

  Did it matter now that Bree was gone?

  I felt the reckless impulses leap inside me again. Without Bree to rein me in and make me see reason, I wanted to stride into the first open bar and announce I needed to see Adrian Juarez.

  I put the gun down and looked at myself in the mirror. Just how far had I gone and how far was I willing to go?

  My eyes zeroed in on the Seals insignia on my upper arm. I should have gone back to base weeks ago. As soon as I woke up with holes in my memory, I should have called in.

  Memories knocked me down to the foot of the motel bed. I sat there and remembered an extraction mission we’d managed our second tour out. It was similar to my situation in the fact that we had headed into enemy territory blind. Landing with no contacts and no resources, we had still managed to locate our target. The mission had been a success.

  I hadn’t been alone then. The Seals worked as one fully integrated team. And I had turned my back on that.

  Suddenly my body felt heavy, weighted down. I couldn’t think straight, and I needed to sleep. I kicked off my shoes and settled back on the motel bed but my mind wouldn’t quiet down. Bree, the little girl in the photograph, my Seal team, and the long string of anonymous motel rooms we’d seen over the past few weeks all spun together.

  I turned on the TV just to hear a coherent thought. It didn’t matter that the first thing I saw was a flashy and confusing commercial for laundry detergent that involved an elephant and a woman in a bear costume.

  That small voice in my head, the one that told me I could still call my team, the one that nagged me to run out and find Bree, kept telling me I was close. But close to what?

  I was in Mexico, but that didn’t mean I could stroll into the cartel’s stronghold in the morning. I needed to get my bearings. I was useless without a concrete target.

  I squirmed, uncomfortable alone on the bed. Bree had somehow made all the motel rooms and bad mattresses bearable.

  I changed channels and forced my body to stay in one position no matter how much the worn spring poked into my back. The channel was playing the local news but it was all in rapid-fire Spanish. I strained to hear anything that might help me.

  Bree had always been better at scanning the local news for clues.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to concentrate on what the newscaster was saying. It didn’t work. She was in my head, and I had to open my eyes again to get rid of her image.

  “Bree, where are you?” I asked the empty motel room.

  I could have strangled myself for acting so pathetic. Instead, I struggled to find a more comfortable position on the sagging motel bed and focused on the local news.

  The reporters introduced a video with grim faces before the on-the-scene cameras cut to an eruption of violence. People ran as two groups fired at each other.

  I studied it with a tactical eye. It looked like two groups having a territory dispute. Innocent bystanders ducking behind cars; men shouting in the streets; gunfire popping chunks out of the buildings on either side of the street. And from the flashes of map graphics, I knew it was somewhere nearby.

  I sat up, surprised I hadn’t heard the gunfire earlier, then my heart stopped. It only started again when I studied the graphics again and concluded the fray was in the opposite direction that I knew Bree was heading.

  I leaned back again the thin motel pillows and bumped my head on the headboard. I was glad when the news changed to a story about a monkey in the local zoo. It would be hours until I managed to fall asleep. Every time my muscles started to relax, I thought about Bree on her own.

  That gunfire could have been the cartel. But who was firing against them? Bree could have been caught in the middle. I could almost see her, ducked behind a parked car, her hands hovering by her ears as the gunfire rattled around here.

  The dream morphed into my memory of when the gunmen found us outside the bank. My mind canceled out the sound and replaced it with the background noise of detergent commercials and the late, late show. In my memory, Bree was in my arms, in another motel, but that didn’t matter.

  I clung to the dream, wanting Bree with me just a little while longer.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Bree

  “Wait! No! I’m here to help you,” I cried as the little shadow scrambled up the other side of the culvert and darted away from me in the dark. “Maggie, come back!”

  The shadow faltered as I heaved myself out of the dry bed. “How do you know my name? Are you one of them?”

  “One of them? Who? I’m not a kidnapper, Maggie. I want to make sure you get home safe,” I said.

  The little girl shook her head of tangled hair. It was the only detail I caught before she melted back into the shadows.

  I chased her another twenty yards before I called out again. “Maggie, please. I just want to help you.”

  “I don’t have time. They’ll know. I have to go now,” Maggie said.

  I plucked at her sleeve, just enough to swing her eyes back to mine. Even in the dark, I could see the little girl’s tears. “Do you want to go?” I asked her.

  Maggie snuffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “No. But I have to.”

  “Fine. Then I’ll go with you,” I said.

  Maggie’s eyes widened and a smile almost curved the edges of her lips. Then she hung her head. “You can’t. I’m supposed to be alone.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t have to be alone. I’m American and my friend is a Navy Seal. He wants to help you get back to your family.”

  “A Navy Seal? Like a soldier?” Maggie asked.

  I nodded. “A very tough soldier. And he’s been looking for you. We came down here to find you.”

  Maggie tipped her head to one side. “What’s his name?”

  “Nathan.” I held out my hand to the little girl but there was nothing there.

  The little shadow darted between gorse bushes and off across the field. I chased her but lost sight of her after a few minutes. I stopped to catch my breath and hope that I could hear her somehow.

  “Maggie, please. You can trust me. I’ll follow you all night to prove it.” I held up both hands and turned under a pale moon. “I haven’t tried t
o grab you. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m not forcing you to come with me. It’s an invitation, Maggie. If you don’t want to be alone, you can come with me, and Nathan will help you.”

  A ragged figure lifted out of a low crouch. “You’re strangers,” she said.

  “You and I are, maybe, but I think you know Nathan. He has a postcard from you,” I said.

  Maggie inched a little closer. “What was on the postcard?”

  I smiled, glad for her interrogation. The faster the little girl trusted me, the faster I could get us back to the safety of the motel. And Nathan.

  “It was a photograph of a mission church in El Paso,” I told her.

  Maggie took another step toward me. “And what did it say on the back?”

  “You told Nathan about Ginger Park Road,” I said.

  Fireworks burst up from the rooftop of one of the larger hotels nearby. Maggie fled in the sparkling light, back toward the culvert. She scurried down inside and sprinted along toward the US border. I ran alongside, gasping as my ankles wobbled on the uneven ground.

  “Maggie, please. Don’t be scared of me. I need your help, too,” I called.

  Maggie looked back as I stumbled and banged my knees down hard on the edge of the concrete river bed. She slowed down and then stopped. When she came back toward me, it was with all the caution of a young doe.

  “You need my help?” Maggie asked.

  I nodded. “I don’t want to be alone out here either.”

  “It’s not so bad, if you don’t believe in ghosts,” Maggie said.

  I slipped down into the culvert next to her and gave an exaggerated shiver. “Did you say ghosts? Is that why there’s no one around here? They’re all scared of the ghosts?”

  Maggie nodded and bit her lip to hide a shy smile. “Wanna know a secret?”

  “Are you a ghost?” I asked, covering my mouth as if I might scream.

  Maggie giggled. “No, silly. There are no ghosts. They just made up those stories so no one would come out here at night.”

  “But you’re not scared?” I asked Maggie.