“What’s his beef with Senator Ramirez?” Jason asked, glancing over her shoulder.
“I’m still digging. I can’t hypothesize without a clearer picture.”
Mac glanced at his sister-in-law. “With what you do know, can you guess?”
“I hate guessing, Mac.”
“Give it a try.”
“Well, with what I know of Ryan so far, he doesn’t exactly agree with Ramirez’s open border views and is doing everything in his power to force the issue.”
An overwhelming sense of dread hit Mac square in the gut. “How?”
It took several dead silent moments before Sarah answered.
“There are several anti-immigration groups from south Texas to California who will take advantage of any situation as an argument for total shutdown of the borders between the United States and Mexico. From the little I have found on Ryan, he associates with members of one of the more aggressive groups. If you wanted the borders closed, what would be the best way to achieve your objective?” Sarah took a quick glance at the agents around the table. “If I had to guess, Mick Ryan is trying to create a border war between the United States and Mexico.”
Mac stood. “So you predict the next drone attack will come from Mexico into the United States?”
“That’s a guess. There is a lot of data to still process before I can give you a percentage of accuracy.”
“Where does Lexie fit in?”
Sarah shrugged her shoulders. “There is no connection I can find between Ryan and Lexie, nor between the senator and Lexie. I haven’t a clue why Ryan took her. But in my gut, Mac, she’s the victim here, and in a lot of trouble. You have to find her.”
Díaz, who had been unusually quiet throughout the meeting, rose. “Sarah, you and your team stick on Ryan, get us as much information as you can.” He turned to the group of agents. “The rest of us are on that drone.”
“What about Lexie?” Mac asked.
“We may not have had enough to arrest her, but it’s on me that she left this building. We can’t let it to get out that we let a terrorist suspect disappear on our watch. I don’t believe she needs rescuing.”
Mac’s heart tried to scream yes, she does even though he had his own doubts he couldn’t ignore. He took great pride in his position at the FBI. Was he ready to risk it all for an attraction to a woman he barely knew?
Sarah punched him in the arm. “Lexie needs your help.”
“I have no idea where to look. The APD are searching the roads, and agents are going through miles of traffic camera footage.”
Sarah’s eyes softened. She reached out and pressed Mac’s hand. “I may have a crumb of a clue. What is difficult about wiping away your digital footprint is there are things you overlook.” She brought up a map of Texas. “I found a deserted fifty-acre ranch in Ryan’s grandfather’s name out in Brewster County. There haven’t been any utilities turned on the property for more than twenty years, and the place is very isolated.”
“That’s a few miles from Big Bend National Park,” he commented.
She nodded.
“You believe Ryan took Lexie there?”
“It’s just a wild guess, Mac. We know so little about this guy. He may not even be aware of the property.”
“I need you here looking for the damn drone. Not chasing around in the foothills of Big Bend,” Díaz said, his voice harsh, demanding.
“Yeah, but if Lexie is innocent …”
“Look at the evidence. That’s a big if.” Díaz moved toward the door.
It might be a big if, but if Lexie were the victim, then she needed him to act, not just for her, but for Gabriel.
“Can you find me an airport near the ranch?” he asked his sister-in-law.
“Mac, what the hell?” Díaz said from the entrance.
“Joe, you have always appreciated my hunches before. This is the only concrete lead we have and I need to check it out-if only to cover every base. If I find Lexie, then Ryan and the drone will not be far. If Sarah discovers something else while I’m en route, I’ll turn around.”
“We’ll turn around,” Jason said.
Mac placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “No, not this time, Jason. You’re needed here.”
“You’re sure as hell not going alone.”
“Yeah, I am.”
Sarah eased in between them before addressing Díaz. “If my opinion matters, I don’t believe it’s a waste of time. Logically, Ryan couldn’t have a better place to hole up.”
Mac edged around his brother. “I have a buddy with a Cessna. I’ll wait until dark to hike in. Just need twenty-four hours.”
“And if you discover Lexie is working with Ryan?”
“I’ll do my job, sir. I’ll arrest her ass and bring her in.”
Chapter Fourteen
Beads of sweat rolled down Lexie’s spine as a slow, painful throb began just above her left eye. She eased onto her back on the hard cot, her arm draped over her forehead.
It took a moment to realize that her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. What the hell was wrong with her?
The instant she formed the question in her head, everything came flooding into her memory at once: Mac, Cole … Gabriel. Lexie’s breathing grew shallow as a panic attack sucked her under.
She forced her eyes to open and eased into a sitting position. After brushing her tangled hair out of her face, she glanced around the sparse bedroom covered in dust. No wonder she couldn’t find a breath. Dust was her kryptonite.
Faded floral wallpaper peeled away from the wall in large chunks. Sunrays slipped through the cracks of the shutters, casting a ladder of light across the floor. Focusing all her attention on the light, her reasoning slowly returned as bone-deep fear settled over her.
He drugged me.
That bastard Ryan had his men drug her. How long was she out? Where in the hell was Mac? Was he even looking for her?
Even with her muddled mind, she could still see his heated expression as she got into the van. Nothing that was said the night before mattered. He’d found her guilty and convicted her on the sidewalk of the ER.
Who was the bigger asshole? Ryan, for destroying her life from the inside out, or Mac McNeil, for not having a little faith in her?
Her hands covered her face and her heart took a nose dive. Gabriel! Was he still with Jason and Sarah?
She jumped off the cot and hugged her waist as she paced. There was no noise coming from the other part of the house. She moved to the window. After a quick glance between the slits in the shutter, dread like she had never known churned alongside the fear. There was nothing but harsh desert, sparse bush, and spiny, leafless cacti blistering under the afternoon sun. “Where the hell am I?” Lexie’s scratchy whisper filled the room.
“My grandfather’s ranch,” Ryan said from behind her.
She spun around. Seeing Ryan so casually propped against the doorjamb morphed her fear into hot, sizzling anger. She charged across the room and raised a hand to slap the stupid expression off his face, but he caught her wrist in his grip. When she raised the other hand, he grabbed it, too, and slammed her back into the wall. His irises darkened to almost black.
“I hit back hard, Lexie.” He flipped her around so her face was rammed into the filthy wallpaper, and bound her arms behind her back. He pressed his body against hers with his mouth at her right ear. “Understand?”
Ryan was a fighter. Big mistake taking on an adversary she didn’t know.
“Yes,” she cried out as he brought her arms up her back.
He yanked her away from the wall and shoved her onto the cot. Her shoulder slammed against the wall. Out of well-practiced instinct, she curled her body into the far front corner of the cot. Ryan didn’t approach, but instead grabbed the only chair in the room. He reached for the ceiling fan chain hanging just above his head and pulled it twice. The blades twirled faster, blowing warm air down onto her.
“It’s almost 100 degrees. Too damn hot for this
shit. Here, drink,” he said, tossing her a water bottle.
Lexie grabbed the bottle and twisted the cap. The liquid was cool, not cold, but it felt wonderful as it slid down her parched throat. After two gulps, she choked out, “What do you want with me?”
Ryan pulled the chair up to the cot and saddled it. “Not to hurt you, unless you force me to.”
“I have nothing you need.”
He brushed his palm over the sweat at his hairline. “That’s where you are wrong. You’re exactly what I need.”
“Don’t you get it? I’ve only worked for Roland a few months. I know nothing. I never worked on the drone or—”
“I have a well-trained team. You’re not here as mission support.”
“Then why am I here? I have a son. He needs me.”
This time, focusing on Gabriel didn’t help with the panic attack. It sent her into overdrive and the room began to spin as she searched for something to throw up into. One second her body was curled in a ball in the corner of the cot, and the next she stood with her back braced against Ryan’s chest.
“Breathe with me,” he said, his voice low, almost soothing. “We’re going to let it out slowly to the count of ten.”
She tried to tune Ryan out and draw her focus inward, but his very presence sent her into a full-hell panic attack mode, the worst she’d had in a long time.
“Again, Lexie. Slowly, no gulps, and we’ll let it out as we did before.”
It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. His hand rubbed up and down her back in an unhurried rhythm. “Now repeat after me, ‘At all times, focused, alert, and in control.’ Try it,” he whispered at her ear.
She centered in on his voice and began reciting the phrase, the repetition comforting. It took several minutes, but her heart rate slowly lowered and the nausea subsided. She eased away from him and crossed the room.
He reached for her bottle of water and handed it to her. “Take a sip.”
The water settled in her stomach. The attack had taken so much out of her, she could barely stand. If Ryan weren’t blocking the cot, she would have laid down. Instead, she leaned her shoulder against the window frame and allowed her eyes to roam the starkly beautiful landscape visible through the slits.
“You need to eat something. There isn’t running water or electricity, but there is food.” He moved to the door and eased it open with his boot. “The sun’s beating down on this side of the house. It’s cooler in the other room, or we can go out on the porch.”
Lexie wasn’t sure where she got the strength, but she moved away from the window and followed Ryan into the other room. The large L-shaped room was empty of furnishings except for a weather-beaten wooden table sitting in the middle of what used to be a dining area. The cupboards, counter, and appliances had been removed, leaving behind only a faded outline of what the kitchen once looked like.
Several maps of Texas and Mexico covered the long wall of the living room. Red pushpin flags marked different border crossings from the southernmost point in Texas in Brownsville to El Paso. Surrounding the map were several aerial views of the border crossing, not just from the United States into Mexico but from Mexico into the United States. More aerial views of rooftops were pinned off to the side.
“What is all this?” she asked, moving in for a closer look.
“We’ll get to that.” He reached for one of two cardboard boxes sitting in the middle of the table. He ripped off the top of the gray pouch inside the cardboard. “Meal-Ready-to-Eat. Beef chili is my favorite. It’s still very hot from the flameless heating unit, so handle it from the sides.” Pulling out a wrapped plastic spoon, he handed it to her. “Almost as good as home cooked.” He gave her a quick smile. “At least that’s what I like to tell myself. Go on, chow down. We’ll talk after you get something in your stomach.”
She took the package and gave it a quick sniff. The chunks of stew meat looked real, and it didn’t smell bad. She couldn’t remember the last time she had a meal.
The first bite went down, as did the second forkful. It wasn’t the worst thing she ever put in her mouth, but it wasn’t comfort food. Just as she swallowed the fourth bite, the memory of Marcus’s moans as he hit the pavement sliced through her. She set the meal on the table and took a sip of water, hoping it would settle her stomach.
Ryan scrutinized her as he finished his meal. When done, he placed his plastic spoon inside the bag and reached for her half-eaten meal. “That’s all you can get down?”
“Yes.”
He rolled the package and dumped it into a trash bag hanging off a nail in the wall. “If you get hungry, there are other choices, as well as crackers with cheese spread. MREs take getting used to, but you should be okay as long as you drink.”
“Did your men kill Marcus?”
“No. They roughed him up a little. He was patched up at Brackenridge and released a couple of hours ago.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He slid his finger along the display and held it out so she could see it.
The photos of Marcus leaving the ER with Jason McNeil and another agent spread across the screen. His arm was in a sling, and cuts and bruises covered his face from his forehead to his jaw. But he was very much alive.
“Why? What did Cole or Marcus ever do to you?”
Ryan leaned on the table, resting his foot on one of the scarred wooden chairs.
“Nothing. The men are sometimes a little zealous. I needed your location. Had I been there, I would have known that your friend didn’t know anything. My men did what they know how to do.”
“How did you know—”
“That they weren’t lying to me? I read people as easily as I can read the instructions on this package.” He held up an MRE. “Call it my super power. You need to remember that, because I don’t like it when people lie to me.”
Her body shuddered. She wrapped her arms around her waist. If she were going to get back to Gabriel, she couldn’t lose it. With the man in front of her, she wouldn’t survive the attack. “I don’t lie.”
“Good, then we should get along well.”
“I have no money to speak of. There’s Gabriel’s trust fund, which I’m sure you know about, but that would be petty cash to you.”
“I don’t want your money, Lexie.”
“Then what the hell am I doing here?”
“Every great battle throughout history has had its pawn. You’re my pawn.”
Don’t react, damn it, don’t give him anything. Lexie let his words settle until she could find a comeback. “I don’t understand what you're talking about. You have the wrong person. I will not help you to―”
Ryan’s shoulder muscles stiffened as his facial features turned hard. She couldn’t help taking a step back.
“You will help me, Lexie Trevena. I control your future. Without my help, you will be charged with treason and lose everything, including your son. But once you hear me out, I think you’ll be more than willing to do your part.”
Not likely asshole. She planted her practiced blank expression on her face and moved away from him. She now understood the uneasy feeling she’d had about him from the beginning. The man was bat-shit crazy.
“My part?”
“Yes, you have a part to play in this mission.”
“What mission?”
“First we’re going to repair the damage at our borders, and then we’re going to take the man responsible apart piece by piece.”
“Who?” She hoped her words came out in a spineless gasp. Letting him think she was defenseless gave her an edge.
“Senator Daniel Ramirez.”
“What does any of this,” she said, waving her arms at the maps attached to the wall, “have to do with Senator Ramirez? As for hurting the man, you destroyed his home and placed him in the hospital.”
“And when we are done with him, he won’t have a tin cup to pee in.”
“I’m not part of this. I will not help you destroy anyone.”
“Want
to bet?” Ryan stalked toward her, his hands fisted at his side. “Do you think I just picked you off the street, Lexie? That I went through the trouble and expense to put you in this position because our coffee date didn’t go as planned?” He edged her back against the wall and braced his hands on either side of her head. “You’re a bright, intelligent woman. By now you should have realized that I get what I want. Since you matter to our dear senator, you matter to me.”
“The closest I have come to Senator Ramirez was a campaign poster hanging in Marcus’s café. You picked the wrong woman off the street. I’m nothing to the man.”
“You matter a great deal to Ramirez. You’re his bastard, and he has spent the last twenty-four years hiding you from his life.”
Hysterical laughter bubbled up from deep inside her. She tried to swallow it because Ryan wasn’t the type of man who would appreciate being laughed at, but she couldn’t hold back. The guy really was crazy. He’d completely ruined her name for nothing.
“God, Ryan, what hat did you pull that asinine idea from?” She broke free of his hold and stalked to the other side of the room. “No, he isn’t. My father is dead. My mother—”
“Your mother is a lying, mean drunk who has taken her hatred of Ramirez out on you your entire life.”
Any fear in Lexie was now transformed into pure, unleashed hatred. “If my father were Senator Ramirez, my mother would have never allowed him to forget it. She would have used him—”
“But that is exactly what she did. For years, she accepted monthly payments from him. When you married that idiotic agent, he cut her off for good.”
There was such conviction in his words. He believed everything he said. She placed her hand over her heart, trying to separate herself from the pain of the truth. “If that’s true, then he has known—”
A chill settled over her.
“He has known about you since before you were born.” Ryan closed in on the space separating them. “He paid your mother to abort you, but she used the cash on herself instead. Once you were born, she held you over your father’s head. Self-righteous prick has paid her a small fortune.”
Ryan stepped into her personal space, so close the stench of sweat and chili overpowered her.
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