Safe Heart (Dreamspun Desires Book 102)

by Amy Lane

  She smiled at him, probably thrilled to have all her stock bought instead of having to take it home, and began wrapping the pastries in paper. Glen was bathing in sweat, but she was barely dewy, and he had a moment to wish he played for the other team. She would probably be happy to flirt with him if she was interested, and if they did share a night together, she would probably still be there in the morning when he awoke.

  “Go ahead,” Cash muttered. “I’m obviously too much of a fuckup to make this work.”

  Glen raised his eyebrows. “Your only fuckup was not letting me help. But I’m here now—we can fix that.”

  “Yeah, but what’s my price?” Cash asked meanly, and Glen’s temper rose.

  “Oh, kid, you don’t got to pay me a red cent you don’t want to. Just don’t look at me with those big cow eyes and beg me for anything either, because right now, help is the only thing I’ve got to offer.”

  Cash looked away, and the mutinous quiver in his lower lip eased up. “I deserved that,” he said in wonder.

  “Damned straight. Now do you want to hear my plan or not?”

  “I’ll take suggestions,” Cash said on a sigh—but not a sorry. Well, apparently that’s how he played this game. Now Glen knew. This didn’t have to be anything but a search-and-rescue operation from here on out. Glen was good at those; that was his job and the purpose of his company when they weren’t shuttling people or hauling freight.

  Clive was paying him top dollar to get Cash back in time to go on tour with his band. Glen wouldn’t let him down.

  TWO hours later, Glen wasn’t so sure about that.

  “You did what?”

  Cash’s lips parted in dismay, and Glen sighed. They were standing in the dusty woods outside Tranquilo Paz, and Glen was really wishing Cash had decided to go on a bender by the beach instead of a rescue mission so close to the desert. His pit stains had pit stains.

  “Well, I was standing behind the mansion, and two of the muscle guys saw me!”

  “So why didn’t you get on the back of that glue factory and go!” Glen’s heart pounded in his chest, and he cursed the shakiness in his hands. Glen had done some recon, and the gorillas in crew-cuts and madras he’d seen at strategic exit points around the grounds weren’t a joke. Glen had quizzed Cash extensively before they’d taken off across what was essentially a dirt path that connected Agujero en la Roca to the oak-paneled castle with extensive—and wilting—British-style grounds. What sort of clientele did this Tranquilo Paz have? Who helped the guru/cult leader/scam artist enforce his rules? What sort of electronics did the place have? What security measures were obvious, and which ones weren’t so obvious?

  Glen had picked the kid’s brain and then suggested going in for a closer look. He’d walked the motorbike the last half-mile toward the grounds, thinking it probably hadn’t been far enough, given how quiet the place was—at least this yo-yo had the “tranquil” part right. Then he’d left Cash with the wheezing horse and the motorbike and disappeared to check the place out.

  He found it to be assailable—but not leaky.

  There were two kinds of guards—locals and pros—and while the pros were few and badass, the locals weren’t organized. They stood or sat in random corners of the mansion or the grounds—maybe four of them visible on what Glen would have to guess was sixty combined acres of manicured grounds and dusty pine forest, with the big impractical mansion in the middle. Glen didn’t hear any generators, and Agujero en la Roca had been without all but the most basic amenities, so he imagined that wood and stone edifice was hot as balls inside.

  He spotted the cameras right off. There weren’t any in the surrounding forest, and the cameras on the grounds and near the house had great gaps in the coverage. The side facing the direction of Jalisco had a hill directly behind it, but it wasn’t a cliff. Coming and going from that direction would be a little noisy and a little dirty, but not impossible, and a river flowed about a quarter mile away. If there were boats down there, Tranquilo Paz could evacuate his hostages/cult members in about twenty minutes, and Glen couldn’t do much to stop him.

  “I didn’t want them to find you,” Cash said, like that should be obvious. “I told them I was looking for a place to park the horse and the motorcycle and asked them for help.”

  Glen stared at him. “You asked them for….”

  “And they said sure. They could put everything in the barn. I should stay right here.”

  Glen swallowed, sweat prickling all over his body. “Cash?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Run.”

  Glen turned and started off, legs pumping, hoping he could spare them both the argument and get the hell out of there before the gorillas brought back reinforcements. He heard Cash rattling through the underbrush next to him and gave the kid a quick glance as they pelted through the trees.

  Yeah, Cash saw what he’d done. He’d probably assumed the guys would think he was still with the commune or whatever. What he’d actually done was give two goons their only means of transportation and a way of catching Glen and Cash if they were skulking around the property.

  And now—now they were fucked.

  Or they would have been, but God intervened.

  They were running, hell for leather, Glen keeping the trail to his left but staying off of it, when they broke into a clearing. Glen poured on the speed, hoping snakes would hear the ruckus and get the hell out of the way, and Cash kept to his heels. Their breathing wasn’t bad, so Glen had a little hope. If they’d run fast enough, if Tranquilo’s goons had taken their time believing Cash to be low-hanging fruit, they might make it. They might make it and—

  “The fuck?”

  The ground rippled under their feet. One minute, Glen was putting one foot in front of the other, and the next he was flying while the land turned into the ocean.

  He landed face first in the tall grass and heard Cash’s “Oof” at his side. He paused, wild-eyed, trying to figure out if that had been an earthquake or divine intervention, when they both heard voices and the sound of a gas-powered engine.

  Glen rolled enough to look through the tall grass and saw a jeep struggling to stay on the road. The grasses they were in stood about four feet over their heads, and while the ground was full of stickers like little pincushions, turning their clothes into sandpaper, it worked as decent concealment. As Glen watched, the jeep pulled itself back onto the road and turned around, obviously deciding Glen and Cash were secondary to whatever was going on at the mansion.

  They waited until even the sound of the engine receded before Glen stood up and started to dust himself off. He took special care to get rid of stickers—and any critters they might have encountered—and then asked Cash to check his back when he was done with the front.

  It wasn’t until he felt Cash’s hands moving across his shoulders that he remembered the night before… and froze.

  “Here,” Cash murmured. “Got one.” Glen felt the tug of a burr on the back of his head, and then Cash fluffed Glen’s hair from the scalp—an unconsciously sensual act that served to torture Glen for his lapse in judgment.

  “Here,” Cash said, putting his back to Glen. Nothing in his tone betrayed anything—remorse, memory, anything. “You do me.”

  Glen was the asshole who would usually say it. Heh heh heh—been there, done that. But he didn’t. He silently patted Cash down, hands gentle on the narrow shoulders and slim waist, fingers nimble in the thick, sandy-brown hair.

  He found a tick making its way under Cash’s collar and flicked the thing away, shuddering.

  “Done,” he said gruffly, and Cash turned to him before Glen could start moving forward.

  “Thanks,” he said, voice low.

  “Basic hygiene,” Glen said, and without waiting for a reaction, he started marching forward.

  They didn’t say anything during the three-hour trudge back to Agujero en la Roca—mostly because they were hot and thirsty, but also because Glen didn’t want to.

  Talking
to Cash was fun. It was seductive. It made Glen want to find out what made this kid so afraid—and fix him.

  Better not to talk. Better to get to town and… and what?

  “What next?” Cash asked about halfway through their walk.

  Glen pulled out his phone, unsurprised to see no bars and not much power left either.

  “Remember the general store?” he asked as he strode down the path.

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “Had the only electric lamp in the town—and that includes the church.” The town itself sported maybe half a dozen outbuildings. Glen was sure there were cabins or houses back beyond the tree line, but “town” had consisted of the bakery, a feed store, a post office, the church, and a small restaurant that probably served whatever the owners felt like. And the general store, which was likely the town’s only source of internet and power.

  “So?”

  “I bet we can place a call there—”

  “Call?” Cash asked, voice squeaking. “Call who?”

  Glen rolled his eyes. “My best friend, business partner, and guy who generally bails my ass out of the fire, that’s who.”

  “So your boyfriend,” Cash snarled, but he sounded almost relieved.

  Glen stopped walking and pinned Cash with a glare. “If he’d been my boyfriend, last night would not have happened,” he said, voice hard. “No. He’s my copilot, my best friend, and my business partner. Some people you’d die for. Me and Damie, we’re tight like that. Not the other way.” Glen shrugged. “Just never happened. Would have been like kissing my brother—and I like my brother and all, but ew. Just ew.”

  Cash let out what might have been a giggle. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I was—”

  “Just finding a reason to make ditching me this morning all right. I get it.” Glen had always favored a “let me slip this condom off before I go” approach to things, but, then, he’d pretty much let all his hookups know that was going to happen before the condom went on.

  Last night had been… special. He’d known—thought he’d known—Cash would have to be there in the morning. His disappointment at the empty bed had been acute.

  “Well, you didn’t seem all that happy to see me when you caught up with me,” Cash muttered sullenly.

  “Kid—”

  “I’m not a kid,” Cash retorted.

  “Men stay,” Glen fired back, and Cash shut up.

  Well, he should. Glen could count on one hand the times he’d tried to have a relationship, and that had been the only guiding principle he’d had. If it was more than sex, more than a blowjob, more than a quickie, then that meant men stayed.

  Usually it had been the other guy to blow. In the military it had been, well, the military that had driven them away. Low pay, lots of moving, and never knowing when Glen and Damien would get deployed wore on someone’s nerves. The two times Glen had tried after he and Damie had started the business had been disasters for the same reasons.

  Part of why Glen was rooting so hard for Damien to hook up with Preston, Glen’s brother, was that he wanted to see one of them happy. He wanted to see how Damien made it work. Damien was better with people. Or was usually, until the helicopter crash. But Glen had faith that Damien would come back from that; of the two of them, Damien had the more resilient soul.

  Glen hoped so. He really did miss his best friend. Particularly right now when Damien would probably be flying a helicopter and have some useful ideas for how to get Cash’s friend from a badly guarded fortress without anybody getting their tail feathers shot off.

  “So we call your friend and what?” Cash asked when they were maybe half a mile from town.

  “He’ll fly down, maybe bring my brother and some of his very helpful dogs, and we can come up with a plan. Right now there’s too many gorillas with guns and gas-powered jeeps for us to go in half-cocked without an escape plan. If nothing else, if Damien flies in from Cali, he can get a chopper from our friend Buddy and land in the town square. A chopper would be damned useful right now. He’s also ex-military, and we’re both weapons trained. Now that Tranquilo Paz knows you’re back with a friend, I don’t like our odds of going in unprepared.”

  Cash grunted. “God, what a mess. Do you think we should call law enforcement?”

  Glen grimaced. “Kid, how strong do you think that earthquake was?”

  Cash shook his head. “How would I know?”

  “Well, I spent some of my training time in San Diego, which is close enough to LA to give me an idea. I’d guess it was a solid seven-five. Which means Jalisco and Las Varas are going to be very preoccupied digging people out of rubble for a while. No, if we want to get her in the next forty-eight hours, Damien’s our best bet.”

  “Rubble?” Cash sounded skeptical. “What do you mean, rub—” The dirt road they were on widened to the small, unpaved square of the town. “—ble.”

  Glen tightened his jaw and took stock. The restaurant was on fire, and the feed store had crumbled. People had mostly succeeded in putting the fire out, using the well in the square. Hopefully it hadn’t spread beyond the town. Glen scanned the surrounding brush and forest and saw that the area behind the fire had been thoroughly soaked—not even a smolder—so that was reassuring. People living this far away from amenities had to know their shit.

  A happy cry went up at that moment, and a man emerged from the feed store, crawling from under one of the downed wooden walls. He answered excited questions with a shake of his head, and Glen let out a sigh of relief.

  “Okay,” he said, looking at the sky. People here were safe, and that would have been his first priority if they hadn’t been. As it was, night was falling, and he and Cash were going to need to find shelter and a place to charge his phone. “Let’s hit up the general store and see if Damien can bring some aid. I have the feeling they’ll be needing some nonperishable food and drinking water. Their well can’t have much left.”

  The general store looked like it had been built in the sixties—right down to the small, almost empty ice cream freezer. But there was an end-cap refrigerator with cold bottled water and, thank God, what appeared to be a working computer—Apple.

  Glen checked his phone and saw he had reception right before it went gray-screen and died. Well, shit.

  He conversed rapidly with the older man behind the counter—in his sixties, maybe, with a face giving way to lines and a kindly air. He asked how much for a charge, and the shop owner, Enrique, hooked the phone up for free. The screen stayed black, and Glen cursed his luck. It might take all night attached to the computer for the thing to even get enough charge to text again. Damien had been on Glen’s ass for two years to get a new model. Damn him for being right.

  Glen glanced outside and saw night hadn’t simply approached, it had clamped down. He looked around and said in Spanish, “I don’t suppose you have a hotel around here?”

  Enrique laughed. “No. But I have two cots in back.” He opened a nearly hidden door, revealing a room that was maybe six-by-eight. It was almost a porch, though, and screens wrapped around the top third of the room. The cots were side by side, and while there wasn’t an electric light in the room, there was a ceiling fan, moving fast enough to make the air not horrible.

  “It’ll work,” Glen said. “How much?”

  “Is nothing.” Enrique waved his hand. “We let lost travelers stay here often. Now food—that you can buy.”

  Glen thought regretfully of the restaurant and looked around the little space that sold flour, eggs, milk, and other staples. The bottled waters and ice cream were a nice touch, but this wasn’t a place you could find a microwave burrito. Except…. Glen sniffed the air and caught a familiar scent underneath the acrid smoke from the restaurant. He gave a happy little grunt.

  “Tamales?” he asked hopefully.

  “Sí.” The man gestured to a foil-lined bag that appeared to be nearly empty. “My wife makes them daily. We usually trade them to the restaurant so people can buy them for the evening meal, b
ut….” He sighed. “Diego barely escaped. I helped at the beginning, but once the grounds around it were safe, they didn’t need me anymore.”

  “Well, their loss is my gain,” Glen said, meaning it. “We really appreciate you being here and open. I’m assuming people will be coming for supplies and help if their homes were affected?”

  Enrique nodded. “Sí. So far the houses are still standing—only the two buildings you see here collapsed. But it doesn’t always end with one quake, does it?”

  Glen felt a foreboding in his stomach. “No, no it doesn’t. When my phone’s charged up, I’m calling my friend. He can come with supplies. Be sure to let me know if there’s anything you need, yes?”

  Enrique’s face wrinkled a little and he gave a smile with a few missing teeth but all of his heart. “Sí.”

  “Excellent.” Next to him Cash yawned. “I think we’ll take our tamales and some water now,” he said, pulling out the cash he’d brought with him. He gave the old man twice what the food was worth, because the kindness was so very appreciated.

  He and Cash collapsed then, one to a cot, to eat their tamales gratefully and guzzle water.

  “Not too fast, you’ll make yourself sick,” Glen warned.

  “Thanks, Dad,” Cash retorted, and Glen winced.

  “Not the bad guy, Cash.”

  Cash closed his eyes and leaned back against the plywood wall. “I know,” he said. “You’re right. I’m being an asshole.”

  “Won’t argue.” Glen took the corn husks used to wrap the tamales and rolled them into a ball and then folded his waste in the tattered cloth napkin Enrique had served him with. Enrique had closed up shop as they’d eaten, telling them to leave their trash on top of the little bedstand in the corner of the room. Cash watched him and then echoed his motions, making sure he’d eaten the very last bit of tamale from the wrapping.

  The two of them washed using water that Enrique had pumped into a basin for them, and then had taken turns using the utilitarian toilet in the cubicle next door to the little porch room. Glen thought maybe it was the only one of its kind in the village; he had the feeling everybody else relied on outhouses beyond the perimeter. A place this small, this low-tech, there wasn’t much in the way of amenities.