by Misty Evans
Another mile and Sophie saw the first rays of true sunlight break over the horizon. Tucking her legs closer to Nelson’s, she watched the passing air dance in the curls of his hair, let her gaze linger on the back of his deeply tanned neck. What if they were just a biker couple off on an adventure? They could just keep riding, go wherever they wanted, stop whenever they grew tired.
They topped a hill and she saw the glint of the warehouse roof in the distance. The thrill of freedom and the little daydream she’d been entertaining dissolved like the fog burning off from the rising sun’s rays.
The warehouse was of cheap construction, half-hidden in a valley and faded from the sun. A part of her wanted to ignore it, pretend she didn’t see it, so they could keep riding.
Was this how Angelique had felt when she’d run away from home? The freedom, the anonymity? The ability to disappear and reinvent your life?
Just like Angel, Sophie couldn’t outrun her grief. Her sister had ended up in the hands of a human trafficker, and while Sophie knew that wouldn’t happen to her if she kept going on this road with Nelson, at some point, the bike would stop and her responsibilities would come crashing down on her.
“Is that it?” Nelson’s voice was a loud wakeup call.
Sophie nodded, then realized he wasn’t looking at her in the side mirror. He couldn’t see her nod. She pointed over his shoulder at the building and gave him a thumbs up.
“Guards?” he said. “Cameras?”
Product was never left in the building during the day. “No cameras,” she called over the bike’s noise. “No guards, except when workers are present so they don’t help themselves.”
Still, as Nelson pulled the bike off the road and onto the sandy ground, Sophie scanned the area for anyone hanging around. The sun continued to rise in the east, illuminating the tops of the low-lying hills. The warehouse lay in shadows.
Being on the noisy bike and approaching the warehouse head-on made her feel exposed. A target. Only Nelson’s presence—his shear confidence—kept her from cowering behind him. On his bike, he was her shield. A warrior that knew fear but gave it no heed. She was used to being that person; that morning, it was nice to lay her armor down.
Dust rose around them, the desert ground already dry. No shots rang out, no men appeared. A wire fence ran around the perimeter with signs in Spanish and English warning intruders away. Red-brown rust edged the bottoms of the building’s walls, a disease eating the warehouse from the ground up.
Nelson slowed the bike to a crawl. Sophie felt the low rumble more acutely in her blood, her bones, as they crawled across the sand than when they’d flown down the highway doing eighty.
The gate was chained and padlocked. No surprise. Nelson wheeled the bike around to the north side of the building and into the deeper shadows. He cut the engine and Sophie’s ears rang with a phantom vibration.
Nelson waited for her to get off the bike before he dismounted. His boots crunched the rocks under them as he walked the side of the fence. “Doesn’t seem to be electrified,” he murmured, all business.
Sophie decided she was the only electrified thing in the general vicinity. The boots, the biker jacket, the fact she’d just rode over eight miles with her arms around his waist…it left her on edge. What was wrong with her? She’d rode with her head on his shoulder, and all of her female parts vibrating to the rhythm of his bike, wishing for a life that would never be hers. Memories of the previous hours in bed with him had been playing through her head the whole time.
And now he strutted around the warehouse toward the front gate as if he owned the place. She followed on trembling legs, trying to tame her anxiety and wild thoughts.
I’m losing it.
His muscled arms jerked on the padlock. It didn’t give, so he continued to the south side of the fence. Looking for holes? A back way in?
She stopped at the corner where Nelson was surveying the loading dock. An old army truck was backed up to the building. One of its tires was flat. Two windows, high up on the building, were caked with dust.
Nelson glanced back and motioned her over. “Come on,” he said, lacing his fingers together to make a stirrup with his hands. “I’ll boost you up.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
He grabbed the fence with one beefy hand and shook it links. “It’s not electrified. We can climb over.”
There was no barbed wire at the top either. Didn’t mean she relished climbing the fence and hopping over to the other side. “It’s at least ten feet tall.”
“So?” He glanced at the top of the fence, back at her. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights.”
First a bike ride, now fence climbing. She’d been undercover with a dangerous cartel leader for nine months and, in all that time, she hadn’t felt as wild and daring as she did right now. “I wouldn’t have made it past Quantico if I were afraid of heights.”
Ignoring his offer of help, she rubbed her hands together, grabbed the fence, and started up.
His soft chuckle settled her nerves. The fence shimmied as he began climbing as well.
Once he’d cleared the top, he dropped to the ground. Sophie was not so adventurous. She climbed halfway down the other side before letting go.
Strong hands gripped her waist at the same time her feet touched the ground, keeping her from losing her balance. She started to turn, but his hands held her hips in place. He pulled her back against his body, his mouth going just above her ear. “Look at that sunrise,” he said.
Really? He was taking time to watch the sunrise?
But then she looked, and yes, indeed, it was a stunner. Streaks of vibrant peach and pink spread from the golden globe breaking over the hilltop. Long bars of sunlight striped the land and bathed her face in warmth.
The feel of Nelson’s strong body against her back, supporting her, and the weight of his hands on her hips, gave her a sense of peace. Lifting her chin and closing her eyes, she let the feeling wash over her along with the sun’s warmth. Her body relaxed against his and she drew in a deep breath. “It’s beautiful.”
Nelson’s chest vibrated as he spoke soft and low in her ear. “So are you.”
She turned in his arms, rose up on her toes, and kissed him gently. He snugged her into his body and kissed her back, a slow exploration.
Warmth that had nothing to do with the sun flushed her skin. It made her part her lips and allow him access.
She was strong on the outside, but not all the way through. All it took was a touch from him, a smile, and she was toast.
The pull of what he had to offer was strong. Too strong. But she couldn’t completely lose focus. Not until she finished this operation and found the truth about her sister.
“Nelson.” She broke the kiss, hating herself, but knowing this…this…whatever it was she had with him…was not real life. It was a product of the long, lonely hours she’d spent undercover. The long, lonely life she’d lived. She still had a job to do and so did he. “We better look for those missiles.”
He laid his forehead against hers, eyes half-lidded. “You make me want to forget all of this and run away.”
The words caught her off guard. Her throat closed up. It was as if he’d read her mind.
But only because he, too, had to know that regardless of what had happened earlier, when this operation was over, so were they.
The light filtering through the dirty windows was dim. Nelson found a switch on the wall and, a moment later, industrial lighting overhead flooded the warehouse. Rows of work tables took up the center of the concrete floor, each work station equipped with a light, a magnifying glass bolted to the table top, a box of latex gloves, thin metal blades for cutting the product, and cutting boards. At the front and back, raised walkways allowed guards to watch the workers and guard the product.
On the north side was one long, open shelving unit, flat boxes, tape, and other supplies jumbled on it. There were no other rooms, not even a restroom. The ceiling was open to the
rafters.
Dollars to donuts, there were no missiles, hidden or otherwise.
Sophie circled the room, appearing to look for them anyway. She’d suddenly turned all business and now was keeping her distance.
One minute, she was a controlled and disciplined FBI agent, the next, a minx in his bed. And as soon as he showed her the tiniest amount of emotion, she turned tail and ran.
What did you expect? This was her modus operandi. He’d been through this same scenario before, yet, here he was again, falling for her body while he didn’t understand her mind.
Yet, he was getting closer to figuring her out. Anyone who’d ever cared about her had died or left her. Coming from a close family like he did, he couldn’t imagine what that was like.
While his mother had passed a few years ago from a heart attack, his father was still alive and kicking in New Mexico. Nelson saw him and the handful of siblings living close to their childhood home a couple times a year. He and his sister, Brenda, were the only two in California. Both of them had been less traditional than their counterparts and wanted more than a white picket fence and two-point-five kids. Brenda had wanted to be an actress. She’d moved to L.A., done the normal waitressing gigs, and even found an agency to represent her. One walk-on role in a film had landed her a commercial. She’d believed her career was taking off.
Then she had a one-night stand with a fellow struggling actor and no condom and that was all it took. Fiercely independent, she struggled hard to give Carly the best life she could have. It was difficult on a bank teller’s salary, and Nelson secretly picked up some of Carly’s medical bills so Brenda could pay her rent and utilities. One of the specialists Carly saw had suggested a service dog to help out. One trained to warn Carly, Brenda, and Carly’s other care givers when she was about to have a seizure. Brenda had taken on some part-time typing projects at home to pay for one, but at the rate the fund was growing, Carly would be grown before they could afford it.
Sophie was proud and independent like Brenda. Nelson knew she’d turned her grief, guilt, and loneliness inside, locking her ragged emotions away. Normal relationships were alien to her. The moment she started feeling something for him or anyone else, she panicked.
He watched her checking every table and every corner of the room for possible hidden doors or clues as to whether or not the missiles were nearby. While her back was turned to him, he admired her sweet backside.
Suddenly, as if she felt his eyes on her, she whirled. “My ass may be big, but I assure you, it’s not big enough to hide missiles.”
Busted.
“Your ass is perfect, and it’s a lot more interesting to look at than this ugly pill mill.” He took the stairs up to one of the guard walkways. “Tell me what goes on here.”
“Oxycodone and other narcotics shipped to the local low cost clinics are intercepted and brought here. They’re mixed with a new designer drug that comes from Mexico City. The oxycodone is broken down, half of it replaced with inert ingredients like baking soda and repackaged for the clinics. The other half is mixed with the designer drug and blended with sugar or sea salt, then repackaged as bath salts. It’s hauled across the border to America where it’s sold.”
Nelson felt two pieces of his brain snap together. “Project Bliss.”
“What?”
“The taskforce has been working undercover on tracking down the source of an influx of designer bath salts for months. They’re close too, but they don’t know it’s Morales.”
“There are probably several Mexican suppliers, not just him.”
He fumbled in his back pocket for his phone. “Still, I better call Coop.”
“Did you hear anything back from your other guy about the ledgers?”
In fact, he had a text from Dyer. He hadn’t noticed because it had come in when they were in transit on the bike.
Call me was all the text said.
Could be good, could be bad.
Dyer or Cooper, who should he call first?
Sophie was staring at him with her windblown hair and dark, shining eyes.
Dyer it is. “A text came in from him a few minutes ago. He wants me to call him.”
Her face brightened and she moved close as he dialed. Dyer answered on the second ring and Nelson put him on speaker. “Sorry, man. It’s a no-go on decoding that text. If it were computer code, I might have been able to figure it out, but a code written in Spanish is just gibberish to me.”
Sophie dropped her head back looking at the ceiling. Her whole body screamed defeat.
Nelson wasn’t accepting that. “Don’t you have a buddy somewhere in the bowels of the government or some backwoods bar that could have a look?”
“Better than that. I forwarded it to Sara Rios.”
“The fugitive apprehension agent? Why?”
“She’s former CIA. An analyst. Years of experience decoding messages and other intelligence lingo. And…she just happens to be in your neck of the woods at the moment.”
Sophie’s head snapped back up. She lifted her dark brows at Nelson.
“Rios is in Tijuana?” he said.
“With Coop.”
What the hell? Nelson turned off the speaker, bringing the phone back to his ear. Sophie watched him carefully. He turned his back on her and walked a few feet away. “What’s going on? Did Bliss go sideways?”
“Nah. Ronni, Thomas, and Mitch Holton have that covered for now. Dupé has them laying low until Coop gets back to town.”
“Why is Harris here?” He better not be thinking he’s dragging me back to San Diego.
“Coop got new intel on Chica Bonita, something Dupé deemed more critical to check out. Seems someone is using the place again to traffick girls. They’re showing up with forged papers and being placed with families who aren’t actual blood relations, although their papers claim they are. The girls appear to be orphans and runaways, no one on the Mexico side who even knows they exist, hence why they’re being picked up.
“We don’t know how many have made it through, but the CI who talked to Coop had heard about three arriving in the past month. They’re all underage, all of them with horror stories of past abuses by cartels around Mexico City and farther south. If they escape and make it to Chica Bonita, a couple women take them to a safe house along the border where they’re given a set of papers. Later, another woman takes them into a tunnel that runs under the border crossing, and they’re placed in a new home in America. They get enrolled in school and are officially adopted by their new family.”
An underground railroad for illegals. Not the first time he’d heard about one, but this was unusual.
“Since you’re tied up with Agent Diaz,” Dyer continued, “Cooper took Rios and Holton with him to check it out. Dupé thinks it’s bogus, that the girls are still drug mules and these so-called families are part of a larger operation. He wants Cooper to track down the women running the railroad and find out who’s providing the papers for these girls. They’re good, these papers. Looks like a real professional.”
“A government agent?”
“Most likely that or a former agent with experience creating fake IDs.”
The back of his neck tingled. He took a second to process what Dyer had just told him, because the images pinging around in his head weren’t good ones.
“Nelson?” Sophie’s voice cut through what Dyer was saying about catching up with Cooper and letting Sara Rios look at the ledgers. The soft brush of fingertips down his back alerted him to her very near presence. “Is everything okay?”
He turned slowly to face her, knowing that the fake Sophie, the one who pretended to care about him when all she really wanted was for him to drop off the face of the earth and not screw up her operation, was the one touching his back.
“I’ll catch up with you later, man,” he said to Dyer, moving away from those lying fingers as he hung up. Dyer was still talking, but Nelson didn’t care. He couldn’t focus on anything right now except the hollow ringing in
his ears.
“This CIA analyst can’t decipher the files, either, can she?” Sophie’s sad smile and deflated shrug seemed genuine. “It was a long shot, but thank you for trying.”
He sent a text to Coop. Where are you? Then motioned at Sophie. “Let’s get out of here.”
His abrupt turnabout didn’t seem to faze her. They snuck out the back door, locked up, and went over the fence. He was climbing on his motorcycle when his phone buzzed.
Cooper. His reply text was an address, one Nelson knew well. A biker bar two miles down the road from Chica Bonita where the Savages hung out.
Sophie’s arms slipped around his waist. Be there in thirty, he texted back. I have information you need to know.
He pocketed his phone, started the bike, and shot down the highway.
Chapter Nineteen
Sophie hopped off the bike. Her stomach was rumbling, calling for breakfast.
The helmet she’d tossed earlier lay in the mud. She waited for Nelson to shut off the bike’s engine but he started backing it up, heading away.
“Where are you going?” she called over the din of the motor.
He stopped backing up the bike, head down. Why wasn’t he looking at her?
Finding out that Nelson’s team couldn’t decipher the coded ledgers had been the last straw. When the time came, she would turn them over to the FBI with the rest of the evidence she still had in her possession. Like she had explained to Nelson, it would take months before someone in the Bureau figured out everything written in them, but she had no other choice now.
Nelson killed the bike’s engine. He glanced around, keeping an eye out for security, until finally his gaze landed on her.
Not her face, though. He was staring at her kneecaps.
His voice was low, quiet. “I have to go meet someone outside of town. Stay here. You’ll be safe.”
“You’re leaving? What if Guido or one of his men shows up?”
“At five-thirty in the morning? Guido’s still in his pajamas and his men are sleeping off last night’s party. I have the security team here up to snuff. Stay inside these walls, stay inside your apartment with the door locked. I won’t be gone long.”