One Wrong Step (Borderline Book 2)

by Laura Griffin

  “Your friend going home?”

  John saw his puzzled expression reflected in Vincent’s mirrored shades. “My friend?”

  “That girl you were with? The one who just left?”

  “What?” John rushed to the door and peered through the glass. His Jeep was right there in the parking lot.

  “She just took off.” Vincent removed his sunglasses and frowned at him. “What, you didn’t know she was leaving?”

  “Where?” John shoved open the door and ran into the parking lot. He didn’t see any cars on the long gravel road to the main highway.

  “No, man.” Vincent was right behind him. “She took off. In the Cessna.”

  John’s stomach dropped. “She left in a plane ?”

  “Yeah, not five minutes ago. Some guy was with her.”

  CHAPTER

  21

  “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  But he wasn’t kidding. John could tell by the perplexed look on Vincent’s face that he was completely serious.

  John grabbed his arm. “Who was she with? Was she hurt? How long ago did she leave?”

  “Damn, man…” Vincent glanced at his watch. “I dunno. Three minutes? Four? She looked fine to me—”

  John looked over Vincent’s shoulder and saw the man from the parking lot standing near the airplane hangar. He was gesturing at the runway and talking to someone.

  John charged toward him. He must have sensed John coming because his head whipped around and his eyes widened.

  “Where’d she go?” John demanded.

  “I don’t know, I—”

  “Bullshit!” John shoved him with both hands, and he tripped backward and landed on his ass.

  “Hey!”

  John straddled his chest and jerked his head up by the collar of his golf shirt. “Where the fuck did she go?”

  “I don’t—”

  John socked him in the jaw, hard enough that his knuckles stung. Someone grabbed John’s arms and yanked him to his feet.

  “Hey, take it easy.” It was Vincent and the man who had been standing nearby.

  John tried to shake them off. “I saw you watching us! Who do you work for? Who’d you tell we were here?”

  The guy scrambled up and glared at John. He held his lip, which was bleeding now, as he reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a billfold. He flipped it open, revealing a gold badge.

  “Trent Abrams, FBI.” He spat blood on the pavement and scowled at John.

  John stared at him. “What the hell—”

  “I work with Rowe and Stevenski. I was assigned to keep tabs on Cecelia Wells, which I was doing fine until she went into the women’s dressing room. Now she’s not there. A plane just took off, and I think she might have been on it.”

  “She was,” said the man holding John’s right arm. He and Vincent loosened their grip. “I saw her get in.”

  John shook off the restraints and stomped toward the empty runway. He turned to Vincent. “Can you follow it? The Cessna?”

  He looked him up and down, his expression wary. “If I knew where it was going, I could.”

  “How do we find out?” John heard the desperation in his voice. He looked at the agent. “Do you know?”

  “No.” He jerked a phone out of his pocket and started dialing. “Rowe? It’s Abrams. I’ve got a problem….”

  John turned to Vincent. “Can we track them somehow?”

  “It’s not easy,” he answered. “This is a public airstrip. We might be able to find a pilot around here who had his radio on, might have overheard the Cessna pilot relay what he was doing right after take-off, but that won’t tell us his final destination.”

  “Doesn’t he have to file a flight plan? Something?”

  “Nah, man,” Vincent said. “Doesn’t work that way. This is an uncontrolled airstrip. People announce their intentions on the radio, follow certain right-of-way rules, and that’s pretty much it.”

  “Fuck!” John’s heart was racing. Every minute that ticked by was one more minute of Celie in the presence of some drug trafficking dirtbag who probably planned to kill her.

  John had to choke down the bile in his throat. He looked up at Vincent. “I’ll pay you five thousand dollars if you’ll just get me in the air.”

  “It’s not that simple. I can’t—”

  “Ten thousand. I know they’re going to Mexico. We can at least head south. As soon as we’re airborne, I’ll get on my cell phone and figure out where they’re landing.” He had no idea how he’d do this, or if his phone would even work at that altitude, but he had to get up there.

  The pilot turned and looked glumly down the airstrip. “I don’t know, man.”

  John was going to be sick. If Vincent refused to help him, he’d have no way to get to Celie. The Mexican border was at least five hours away by car, even speeding, and then who knew where they were going?

  “Fifteen thousand.”

  “That’s not the problem. I—”

  “You’ve got to help me!” John turned to the guy standing next to the FBI agent. He had no fucking clue who he was. “You know how to fly a plane? Can you get me to Mexico?”

  “If I might say something—”

  “Shit, I’ll take you,” Vincent said, interrupting Abrams. “We just have to find out where the hell we’re going. ”

  “I might be able to find out,” Abrams offered.

  “How?” John fixed his attention on the young agent. He had light brown hair and doe eyes. He barely looked old enough to drive, but if he could help find Celie, John would bow down and kiss his feet.

  Abrams cleared his throat. “Homeland Security’s got a Customs and Border Protection division that has drones and surveillance planes patrolling the border. I can contact my SAC in San Antonio and have him ask CBP to get a fix on any low-flying aircraft that go across, find out where they’re heading.”

  “You can do that?” John raked a hand through his hair.

  “I can try.”

  “Try. Right now.” The agent’s eyes narrowed, and John hurried to add some diplomacy. “Please? It’s a good idea. Please get on the phone and call whoever in San Antonio.”

  John turned to Vincent. “Can you get me in the air?”

  Celie sat in the airplane, her fear like a snake coiled in her stomach. She looked across the aisle at the man who’d abducted her. Despite his neatly tailored clothes and manicured fingernails, he somehow managed to look even more threatening than the armed thugs who had carjacked her.

  He glanced at Celie. It was the eyes, definitely. Cold. Calculating. Like someone who had seen or done terrible things and wasn’t easily moved to sympathy. Celie’s palms started to sweat.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, trying to keep her voice level.

  He watched her for a moment, and she decided he wasn’t going to answer the question. She’d already asked this and many other questions several times since they’d boarded the plane, but he hadn’t responded. He hadn’t said anything, in fact, except to address the pilot in rapid Spanish.

  “We are going to see someone,” he answered unexpectedly. “Someone who’s eager to meet you.”

  “Who?”

  He smiled. “My uncle. Manuel Saledo. You may have heard of him?”

  Celie tried not to react. She turned and looked out the window, down at the flat Texas farmland gliding below them. At least she thought it was Texas. For all she knew, they could be over Mexico by now. She’d lost all sense of time.

  “Why does your uncle want to meet me?” she asked, still facing the window. If he’d just wanted her dead, he could have accomplished that back in Texas.

  The man didn’t answer, and Celie stole a glance at him. He was tearing the cellophane off a pack of Marlboro Reds as he seemed to consider the question. He offered her a cigarette, and she shook her head.

  “You never know with him.” He took out a gold lighter and held the flame to the end of his cigarette. He shifted in his seat, as if settl
ing in for a conversation with a friend, and blew out a stream of smoke. “Maybe he wants to meet one of the few women who’s ever crossed him.”

  “How did I cross him?”

  “You stole his money.”

  “My ex-husband stole his money.”

  He grinned, displaying a mouth full of perfectly straight white teeth. Between the flawless English and the orthodontics, Celie guessed Manny Saledo’s nephew had had a privileged upbringing.

  “I, for one, appreciate what you did. I have a sense of humor about these things, and the money is negligible.” He took another drag. “My uncle, however, is not amused. He is a proud man. Many would say arrogant. Some people believe his arrogance will be his undoing.”

  Celie watched him, wondering why he was telling her all this.

  He leaned toward her, and she felt a spasm between her shoulder blades. “A word of advice. Do not lie to my uncle. He becomes angry when people do that. Not a nice thing to watch.”

  Celie looked out the window again. Tears burned her eyes. The fear in her stomach seemed to be slithering through her entire body now. It traveled up her neck and sunk its fangs into her skull. Celie needed an Imitrex, but her purse was up near the cockpit. That was three rows ahead, beyond three oversize leather seats just like the one she was sitting in.

  “How long until we land?” Celie asked, knowing that every minute they stayed in the air diminished her chances of being rescued. The chances were already low, she figured, unless she could determine where she was when they landed and find a phone.

  “Don’t worry,” Saledo’s nephew said pleasantly. “We’re almost there.”

  John was still on the ground.

  Celie had been whisked away in an airplane fifty-two minutes ago and John was still on the fucking ground. Worse, he wasn’t anywhere near an airplane. He was stuck in the fucking office of the fucking skydiving school watching a fucking idiot talk on the phone.

  “Can we go yet?” John asked Vincent. “Because if I have to stand here another minute, I’m gonna fucking kill someone.” John stared at Abrams as he said this, and he knew Vincent could tell he wasn’t joking.

  “Dude, McAllister. This isn’t helping.” Vincent stepped between John and the agent, who had been yapping away on his phone for nearly an hour and still hadn’t managed to figure out where the hell Celie’s plane had gone.

  During the wait, Vincent had spoken with the skydiving school’s owner, who had agreed to rent them his personal plane and his favorite pilot, which was good, John supposed. But Vincent had insisted that taking off without a destination would be a waste of time and fuel. So John was stuck on the ground with his pilot and the FBI agent, all of them pacing the office, a huge map of North America spread out before them on the desk—a map that had provided exactly zero leads as to Celie’s whereabouts.

  John shot Vincent a glare. “It’s been almost an hour. A fucking hour, and he’s come up with nothing! You’ve got to get me airborne, or I swear I’m gonna lose it. Right this minute Celie could be—”

  John’s cell phone vibrated, and he snapped it open.

  “I’ve got something for you,” Marco Juarez said.

  John nearly wept. “What is it?”

  “I may have a location. Hang on a sec while I double-check my map, okay?”

  “Sure,” John said, feeling numb all of a sudden. They had a lead. He’d called Marco in a desperate effort to learn something—anything—that might narrow down the list of possible destinations for the Cessna. John knew if anyone could come through for him, it would be Marco. Manny Saledo had played a role in the murder of Marco’s sister several years back, and the PI had spent a good chunk of time and energy since then investigating Saledo and his network.

  “Okay,” Marco said, “this is a little thin, but I think it will help.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’ve got four known locations for homes owned by Saledo in Mexico. The first is in Michoacán. It’s the headquarters for the family business. The second—”

  “Shit, hold on.” John glanced around the crowded office, searching frantically for a pen.

  “—is an apartment in Mexico City.”

  John snagged a dry-erase marker off the desk and started scribbling on a phone book. “Okay, keep going.”

  “The third is new. It’s on the Pacific, a place called Costa Careyes. The resort is small, and I hear there’s not even an airstrip nearby, so I doubt that’s where they’re going. The last place is your best bet, I think. It’s a hacienda in Nuevo Leon, northeast of Monterrey.”

  “So they’re landing in Monterrey?”

  “Doubtful. The city’s about a forty-five-minute drive. Plus, I just talked to someone at the main airport there, and he says Saledo’s planes don’t go through there because he’s got a private airfield right on his property.”

  “Okay,” John said, getting excited. “That sounds promising. But why not the first two? Why wouldn’t he take her to the headquarters?”

  “He might. But it’s pretty far south. Plus, American and Mexican law enforcement typically keep an eye on the place, if not a full crew staked out there. Manny got wise to that, so he started moving around more, running things from lower-profile locations.”

  “Nuevo Leon,” John said, racking his brain. “That’s just over the border, right?”

  “Right. The state’s traversed by a couple major highways. A lot of product moves through there on its way north.”

  “Hey,” Abrams cut in. “We’ve got a low-flying plane recently spotted, slipping over the border heading toward…”

  John waited, his heart thundering in his chest, as the agent listened to his phone.

  “Are you sure?” Abrams turned toward John. “It looks like they’re going to Monterrey.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  Celie followed Saledo’s nephew from the landing strip to a high adobe wall. When the plane had flown over this spot, Celie had taken in every detail of the landscape—the arid flatlands, the craggy cliffs jutting up to the west, the strip of green scrub bushes stretching from north to south, where she guessed there might be a river or stream. Celie longed to make a break for it, but the trio of men standing alongside the landing strip had convinced her not to risk it.

  Or rather, their machine guns had.

  Celie turned her gaze toward the steep hillside up ahead of her. Atop it sat a hulking adobe house, its warm brown color so close to that of the surrounding rock, it almost blended in. The house was tall, with at least four levels and ornate wrought-iron balconies outside the many windows. A road zigzagged down from the top of the hill, its route announced by the startlingly yellow Hummer making its way through all the switchbacks right now. Celie wondered if this vehicle would transport her up to the main house.

  And was Manny Saledo at the wheel?

  The nephew stopped in front of a rough-hewn wooden gate and punched a code into a keypad mounted on the wall. The gate, which looked deceptively rustic, made a clicking noise and swung back on an electronic arm. Soon the Hummer ground to a stop right beside Celie. Saledo’s nephew opened the back door.

  “Please,” he said, gesturing for her to get in.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the airfield, willing a helicopter full of paratroopers to drop down from the sky. But the landing strip was just as empty as the azure sky above it.

  Celie climbed inside the monstrous car. As she scooted across the seat, she realized her purse was still on the plane.

  “We forgot my purse. Could I get it, please? It has my medicine in it.”

  The nephew got in beside her, not acknowledging that she’d said a word. He pulled the door shut and snapped a command at the driver, who Celie noticed was only a boy. The child couldn’t have been more than thirteen.

  Instead of heading up toward the house, they cut across a field. The Hummer bulldozed over sagebrush and giant prickly pear cacti and spiky plants that looked like agave. They drove over a cattle guard and th
rough an opening in a barbed-wire fence before continuing down a bumpy incline. They lurched over a dried-up creek bed, and Celie had to grip the handle beside the door to keep from careening to the other side of the vehicle. A smile played on the boy’s lips, and he seemed to think this was a game.

  Saledo’s nephew barked out another order, and soon the Hummer rolled to a stop. Celie looked through the windshield and saw a short, portly man striding toward them, a shotgun slung over his shoulders like a yoke.

  The nephew popped open his door and jerked his head to the side, signaling for Celie to follow him.

  She couldn’t move. Her body was cemented to the seat as the man with the shotgun came closer.

  The nephew reached a hand inside the door and beckoned her to get out. “Come on. My uncle wants to meet you.”

  This was an order, not a request. Celie slid across the seat and stumbled out. She stood up and found herself standing eye to eye with a balding, middle-aged man.

  This was Manny Saledo?

  With his faded blue jeans and western-style shirt, he was the polar opposite of his nephew. He had a strong nose and big jowls and a gut that hung over the top of his gold belt buckle. His black, ostrich-skin boots were caked with reddish-brown mud.

  A discussion ensued between the two Saledos, and, although Celie couldn’t understand a word of it, she knew it was about her. She scanned the landscape around her and noticed a pair of boys off in the distance. They were separated by about fifty feet or so, and each stood beside a skeet-shooting machine.

  Finally, the nephew turned to her. “My uncle says you surprise him. He was expecting a blonde Amazon, I think.”

  Celie’s eyes widened, and she looked at Saledo. What on earth had he heard about her?

  She stood there, trying to look meek and harmless, hoping Saledo would realize she was no threat to him, that this was all some huge mistake.

  Saledo said something to his nephew, and then turned his back. Suddenly his great baritone voice boomed across the field. The boys jumped into action, and a clay pigeon shot into the air. In a lightning flash, Saledo raised his shotgun, fired, then swung the weapon toward a second pigeon coming from the opposite side. He reduced both targets to dust.