by Vicki Tharp
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Boomer said. At this rate, Jenna figured Boomer would have to skip the cuss jar and just buy Pepita’s saddle outright. Would be cheaper. “That narrows the likely suspects in the county by about four.”
“Quit,” Sidney chided.
Boomer clenched his jaw and slid farther down in his seat, but he shut up.
Finn eyed Boomer, and when he was apparently satisfied that Boomer would hold his tongue, the agent continued, “Wyoming plates, but from the partial the kids noticed, we suspect they were stolen off another vehicle.”
“Was she hurt? Did she try to fight them?” Sidney asked.
Jenna admired Sidney’s composure. Sidney was focused on the problem and finding a solution. Jenna didn’t know how she did that. Jenna would be in pieces. Hell, she was in pieces.
“As far as we know, she’s unhurt,” Agent Soto said. Bright purple eye shadow and thick eyeliner made her brown eyes look larger. She had on Finn’s FBI jacket over an even more vivid purple form-hugging Lycra dress. “From what the kids said, El Verdugo pulled up, told her to get in. No fight. No argument.”
There weren’t enough chairs in the room. Mac leaned against one of the walls. “Why wouldn’t she run? Surely she recognized El Verdugo. Even with the mustache.”
“He called her hija,” Finn added.
Sidney glanced at Boomer for translation.
“Daughter,” he said. All the fight left Boomer’s body. And Sidney looked like she’d taken a couple body blows from Mike Tyson.
“Do you think El Verdugo is Pepita’s father?” The words came out of Sidney’s mouth, but the way she said it, the way she looked from St. John to Finn to Soto, she was hoping, waiting, for them to deny it.
Boomer blew out a breath. “Makes sense.”
“It’s an avenue we’ve considered,” St. John allowed.
“Since when?” Boomer’s eyes narrowed at the sheriff. “Why is this the first we’ve heard of this? How many times have you guys questioned Pepita? The therapists? The psychologists? How did this never come to our attention?”
“Your daughter is very smart.” Finn got a nod of acknowledgment from Boomer. “She knew you were looking for relatives. We believe she feared being sent back. So she pretended not to know who her father was.”
Soto added, “The men captured four years ago said that they didn’t know who her parents were. We suspect they did but were too afraid of El Verdugo to tell us.”
“The lab had linked Pepita’s DNA to someone at the camp, but without a known sample from El Verdugo there was no way to match them. It was a dead end.”
Boomer nodded his head as the words sank in. He reached a hand to his shoulder and gave Sidney’s hand a squeeze. “We’d always wondered how a girl as young as Pepita managed to survive in the cartel’s camp without someone hurting her, abusing her. If El Verdugo was her father, it would fit. To touch her would have meant a death sentence.”
Jenna asked, “How would El Verdugo know where to find her?”
“It wasn’t a secret that we had her,” Sidney said. “It was even on the news early on, when we were searching for her parents. Maybe he’d been planning all along to come back for her.”
“Put us back in there,” Quinn said. “We can help.”
Finn smoothed the wrinkles on the front of his shirt. “That’s a bad idea.”
“You got anyone else who can get near them right now. Today?” Quinn refused to let it drop.
“There’s a good chance they know you have connections with the Lazy S. It could make it that much more dangerous for you.”
“We don’t care,” Jenna said.
Sidney gave her a sad, appreciative smile. “We can’t let you do that.”
“Jenna stays. Quinn can do it,” Boomer said. He apparently had no qualms about sacrificing Quinn for Pepita.
“If Quinn goes, I go.”
“Jenna,” Hank said. “You need to sit this one out.”
Sit this one out? Jenna jumped out of her seat and turned to her father. “It’s my fault she was taken. I can’t sit it out.” Her voice cracked, and she swiped at the dampness on her cheeks. To Sidney and Boomer, she said, “We’ll get her back.”
Sidney said, “It’s not your fault.”
Boomer’s lips pressed into a thin line. He didn’t believe Sidney for a minute, but he respected Hank enough not to say it out loud, even if it was what everyone believed.
It was the truth.
If Jenna hadn’t been naked in Quinn’s bed, if she hadn’t been late, none of this would have happened.
That sense of dread that had seeded and germinated in her belly grew gnarly roots, digging into her soul and siphoning the life out of her, growing bigger and stronger ounce by ounce as she grew weaker and weaker.
“What do you say, Agent Finn?” Jenna focused on him. He ran the task force. Finn was the person to convince. “Put us back out there. We have to at least try.”
Finn glanced around. St. John shrugged. Soto raised her brows and made a what-do-we-have-to-lose? face. Finn blew out a breath. “Fine. Go home. Clean up. Wait for Soto to contact you with details.”
Jenna ran her hands over her mussy hair and wished to hell she’d remembered her cowboy hat. Glancing down, she noticed she’d snapped her shirt all wrong. Great.
Everyone filed out of the room. Quinn held back. “You coming?” Jenna asked.
“Be right there.”
“Bryan,” Sidney said. “Let’s go.”
“Give me a minute.” Boomer’s eyes never left Quinn’s.
Jenna and Sidney went to leave, but before Jenna closed the door, Mac stuck her head back in. “You boys behave yourselves.”
* * * *
You boys behave yourselves. Mac’s words bounced around the near-empty conference room at the sheriff’s office, in Quinn’s head. Not gonna happen. Boomer was itching for a fight.
“We’re okay.” Boomer’s unforgiving tone said otherwise. Boomer put one hand on the doorknob and the other on top of Mac’s head. She let him push her out of the room. He closed the door. He felt for a lock, but there wasn’t one.
Shame, Quinn thought. He was itching for a fight, too.
“We’ll find her,” Quinn said.
Boomer crossed his arms over his chest. He was taller, more muscular than Quinn. Stronger. Madder. Quinn would put up a fight, but he didn’t kid himself into thinking he’d come out on top.
“You damn well better.” Boomer stepped up to him, invading Quinn’s personal space. “What the hell were you two thinking?”
Before Quinn could reply, Boomer went on. “Oh, that’s right. You weren’t thinking, at least not with your big head.”
Quinn moderated his tone as his anger rose. “You need to be very careful what you say next, buddy.” But Quinn wasn’t sure his words came close to registering.
“While you two were screwing around, my daughter was kidnapped.”
“Look—”
“Don’t bother denying it. Jenna’s hair is all messed up. Her shirt is untucked, snapped all wrong. The stink of sex on the both of you. While you were fuck—”
Quinn’s temper flashed. His fist flew. He connected with Boomer’s jaw with a satisfying smack. Pain shot up from his knuckles to his shoulder. Hitting a slab of granite might have hurt less.
Boomer caught himself on the table and rubbed his hand over his jaw.
Mac popped her head back in the room. “Everything good here?”
Boomer grunted. Quinn gave her a curt nod.
The door closed and Boomer said, “That’s your one free shot.”
“We’ll get her back,” Quinn said again.
“See that you do.”
Boomer left, and Quinn gave him a couple minutes to clear the building. The door opened, and Jenna stepped in. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself.” He walked over to her. Ran his fingers through her messy hair and straightened the mis-snapped snaps on her shirt. Her eyes were red and her complexion blotchy, but she was still so damn beautiful.
He kissed her forehead and pulled her in tight, holding her head to his chest. “It’s going to be okay, Jenn.”
“I can’t believe I left her there. If I’d been paying attention, I would have noticed my watch had stopped, and this would never have happened.”
He took a step back and tipped her chin up with his finger. “You don’t know that. If the Hangman hadn’t taken her now, he would have found her another time.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t take the guilt away.”
* * * *
“I can’t believe we’re back here,” Jenna said as she and Quinn slid into a booth opposite each other at Cruisers. Kurt’s dog tags, which she’d slipped into her bra for good luck, had warmed against her skin. She didn’t have the energy to pretend to play pool, and the beer in front of her was too tempting to pour down a drain or into a potted plant, even if there’d been one nearby.
“Hopefully for the last time.”
They both took a short pull from their beers. They weren’t about to get drunk, but half a beer, to take the edge off, after the crap day they’d had? Damn straight.
There were more people in Cruisers than there had ever been before. Only a few empty stools at the bar. A few tables here and there were unoccupied. The pool table was crowded with biker dudes who barely knew the front end of the cue from the back end, but that didn’t stop their fun.
Quinn reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “Hang tight. This will be over before—”
Quinn’s gaze went to the door, and Jenna turned. Moose and a couple of his guys strode into the bar, not as if they owned the place, but as if they owned the place and everyone inside it, too. Moose spotted them and headed straight over, motioning with his hand. One guy slid in next to Quinn, and the other next to her.
Moose stole a chair from beneath a guy at the table behind him, spun it around backward, and sat. He rested his arms on the back of the chair. “You’re looking to buy?”
“Quality is good.” Quinn slid Moose a piece of paper with quantities of the drugs they wanted and the hundred thousand dollars they—well, the task force—was willing to pay.
Moose’s brows went up. “You don’t mess around.”
“I have a lot of demand. But even for me, that’s a lot of cash. I want to meet the guy I’m dealing with if I’m spending that kind of money.”
“You’re looking at him.”
“Dude.” Quinn gave Moose a don’t-shit-a-shitter smile.
Moose held his gaze for a long moment and left the table. By the time he returned, Jenna had drained all her beer. Moose plopped a bar napkin facedown on the table and slid it over to Quinn. “Tonight. Nine p.m. That address. Come alone. We’ll be watching. Don’t be late.”
Quinn nodded his head. “Nine it is.”
Moose stepped back and motioned for his men to follow. To the guy next to Jenna, he said, “Her, too.”
Jenna’s heart double-tapped in her chest as if Vader had nailed her with his back hooves. She struggled to breathe, and her eyes darted to Quinn. From the back of the bar near the pool tables, somebody laughed, but this was no joke.
“She’s not—” The guy shoved Quinn back in his seat with a firm hand on his shoulder, and a gun to Quinn’s ribs. “Easy now.” To Moose, Quinn said, “What do you want with the girl?”
“Insurance,” Moose said. “My boss is cautious. That’s a lot of money, a lot of merchandise, a lot of risk. He’s looking to minimize that risk.”
“No deal, then,” Quinn said.
“Quinn, I’ll be fine.” Maybe. All she knew was she couldn’t walk away from this without finding Pepita. It was her fault Pepita had been kidnapped. No way was Jenna returning to the ranch without her.
“Listen to your woman,” Moose said.
“You can’t take her.”
“Who’s gonna stop me?”
Quinn looked around the bar. The reality was, they were on their own. Finn and Soto hadn’t predicted this issue. No one was sitting in a car waiting to pull them over and rescue her. They were waiting back at the sheriff’s office for Quinn and Jenna’s phone update.
With a shake of his head, Quinn said, “This is not cool.”
“Do as I say and you’ve got nothing to worry about. I give you my word.” Moose stuck out his hand.
After a moment, Quinn shook it. “I’m counting on you to stick to that.”
Moose didn’t bother replying as he turned and walked out the door. The guy pulled Jenna out of the booth by her arm. Quinn looked like he was about to come over the top of the table, despite the fact that the other guy still had the gun shoved against Quinn’s ribs.
“Don’t be a hero, man,” the guy said as he slid out of the booth. “You won’t do her any good dead.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Cruisers’ front door closed behind Jenna. Quinn had planned on waiting for a twenty count before he left. He made it to nine.
A very quick nine.
Quinn ran into the parking lot to see Moose’s man shoving Jenna into the backseat of a black four-door Jeep, and sliding in beside her. He sprinted to Kurt’s Mustang as the Jeep pulled out.
There was no screeching of tires or burning rubber. Moose pulled out like he was heading home from the grocery store, not kidnapping a woman at gunpoint.
Two blocks up, the Jeep turned left, and a blue Ford pickup with two people in the cab pulled out of a side street not fifty yards away. Across the bottom edge of the rear windshield, Quinn saw a USMC sticker. Holy hell. Boomer and Mac were following.
Quinn dug his cell phone out of his pocket and punched Mac’s number from his favorites list. “Don’t lose her,” he said, not bothering to identify himself.
“We thought that was her in the backseat. What’s going on?”
“They’re keeping her until I can bring them the money at nine tonight.”
“That’s two hours from now.”
He rattled off the address Moose had given him. “They said they’d be watching. So be careful. You need to find a back way in.”
“Copy that.”
“Finn and Soto know you’re out here?”
“What do you think?” Mac asked. It was a rhetorical question.
“Oorah,” Quinn said.
“Don’t be late.”
“I won’t.”
Finn would lose what little was left of his sanity if he knew Boomer and Mac were out on the streets. But Boomer and Mac weren’t the type of people who sat back and did nothing. Not when the lives of the people they loved were in imminent danger.
And Quinn respected them for that.
He beat it back to the ranch to retrieve the marked money Soto had given him, channeling his inner Dale Earnhardt. The rear end of the Mustang fishtailed on the gravel as he turned onto the Lazy S’s long drive. The car bumped and groaned and bottomed out on the ruts, but Quinn didn’t slow down until he skidded to a stop in front of his cabin. He ran inside, stopping short at the sight of Hank sitting at his kitchen table.
“If you’re here to ask what my intentions are where Jenna is concerned, you’ve picked the wrong time.”
“Where is she?” Hank said. “Mac and Boomer left here to follow you two.”
Quinn couldn’t look him in the eye. He went straight to his bunk and grabbed the duffel bag of money, then dumped the contents out on the table, wanting to make sure, one last time, that all the money was there. He couldn’t take a chance on the deal going sideways because someone hadn’t bothered to count the money correctly. “Mac didn’t call you?”
“Was she supposed to?”
Shit. Had Mac pu
rposely not told Hank about Jenna? Was he not supposed to? He had to tell Hank, even if after doing so, Quinn would be lucky to leave the cabin alive.
He stopped stacking the bundles of money and looked Hank in the eye. Jenna’s father warranted no less. “Moose took Jenna for collateral until I can bring the money to an address at nine tonight. They won’t hurt her. They promised.”
The words sounded lame even as they came out of his mouth, but he didn’t know what else to say. Hank sat back in the chair, stunned into silence. Hank’s color drained away, and the lines around his eyes and his mouth deepened, aging him ten years in ten seconds like one of those age-progression pictures on social media. “And I saw Mac and Boomer. Gave them the address, as well as to Finn and his group. She’s…she’s going to be fine.”
No matter how many times he tried to tell himself that Jenna would be okay, his brain and his heart didn’t believe it.
But she had to be okay.
There was no alternative.
Quinn pulled out the other chair before his knees gave way, and he ended up on his face in the middle of the floor. Placing his elbows on the table, Quinn rubbed his face in his hands. Hank still hadn’t said anything. He didn’t yell or scream or holler or throw a sucker punch. All of which Quinn deserved. It would probably improve Hank’s mood.
His, too.
“I’m surprised you didn’t go with Boomer and Mac,” Quinn said, as he went back to stacking the bundles of twenties, trying to get a response, any response, out of Hank.
“I’d only slow them down. They have the training. Boomer has the equipment. They took the sat phone so that they could contact me if necessary. Act as a go-between, between them and the task force.”
“They’d better be careful. Finn and his men might mistake them for the bad guys.”
Hank’s mouth turned into a grim slash of a grin. “Trust me. They won’t be seen.”
“Still,” Quinn said. “It can’t be easy for you, sitting here knowing your wife and your daughter and your ba—” Quinn choked on the last word. “Anyway, you’re—”
“Back the hell up.”