by Misty Evans
Rosalie. She couldn’t leave the woman behind.
Going back to her bedroom, she threw on dark clothes and went to retrieve her gun from its hiding place behind the dresser.
Have to save her.
But the gun wasn’t there.
She whirled around, trying to remember if she’d left it in its holster or somewhere else.
No, she’d put it back just like always.
Had Rodrigo searched her apartment?
Not Rodrigo. Blue.
Sophie swore. The CIA agent had made sure she couldn’t get to her gun and shoot him on his last visit.
She didn’t have time to worry about that now. Pulling out the top drawer, she scooted around scarves and earrings until she found what she wanted.
Her mother’s good luck charm.
One of them, anyway. The tiny troll grinned at her, its blue eyes nearly rubbed off, chunks of its bright hair missing.
It wasn’t Rosalie’s lucky charm, but it was the best Sophie could do. Rosalie was scared, maybe had even pretended to lose her lucky charms as a form of self-sabotage. Sophie knew the addiction—she’d self-sabotaged a few times in her own life.
What Rosalie needed wasn’t a silly plastic toy, but the empathy of another woman. Sophie would try to be that woman tonight.
Like her, Rosalie had no family. No support system. There was no one to share the happy times with, no one to lean on during the bad times. While Rosalie’s life in Tijuana was a sad and lonely one after Ciro Morales had kicked her to the curb, it was less scary than the unknown of America.
Better the devil you know.
Pocketing the troll, Sophie left the apartment. She scooted across the compound to the garage. Inside, she flipped on the lights. A row of expensive cars sat in a line, the overhead lights reflecting on their shiny hoods.
Sophie walked down the line, letting her fingers trail over the hood ornaments. Mercedes, Jaguar, Porsche, Land Rover.
She could use something more nondescript, but nondescript was not a word in Rodrigo’s vocabulary.
At least the Benz was black.
Climbing in, she found the keys hanging in the ignition. She punched the garage door opener and checked the time. It was earlier than she thought, a few minutes after eight. Getting past the guard at the gate was her only real challenge, and she had an idea for that.
The car started with a deep purr. Sophie played with buttons and knobs until she found the lights. Turning them on, she put the car in gear and drove out of the garage.
Along with all of the other cars in the stable, the Mercedes had an onboard computer system linked to the gate, signaling it to open as she approached. A light was on in the guardhouse, spotlighting the guard who was eating his dinner.
At her approach, he did a double take, his face immediately on display.
Xavier. Why couldn’t it be Sanny or one of the others? Xavier was a cruel bully, and a massive one at that.
But then he shifted to his left and Sophie saw an opportunity. Kristine was in the booth with him.
The woman had a crush on him. She regularly brought him food. Tonight, with Rodrigo gone, she’d probably decided to bring him a special desert along with the main course.
Gotcha.
Sophie braked as Xavier flagged her down, stepping from the guardhouse to lean down and look inside the car. Fat drops of rain began to fall and Sophie only rolled the window down a crack.
Xavier addressed her in Spanish. “Where the hell do you think you’re off to?”
She held up one of Lexie’s bracelets. After playing dolls, the two of them had made several together. “Alexa made a good luck bracelet for Rodrigo tonight, but he forgot to wear it. The poor little girl is going out of her head. You know how she is, she is so scared of losing him after what happened to her mama and papa. She swears he’s going to be killed in a poker game if he doesn’t have this bracelet on. I told her I would take it to him.”
Xavier refused to speak to her in English. “It is not safe for you to leave the compound, especially without a guard.”
Sophie answered in English; she could be stubborn too. “Once I’m at the bingo hall, I’ll text Rodrigo’s bodyguard to come out and get it. I won’t even leave the car.”
“I must have authorization in order to let you out alone.”
“Are you sure about that? You want to bother Rodrigo during poker night when you know that if it involves Alexa and her happiness, he’s going to insist one of us brings this bracelet to him.” She purposely looked over at the guardhouse and Kristine. “Your dinner is getting cold, and I have nothing better to do tonight, but if you want to be the one to drive into town and take this to him, by all means.”
She held out the bracelet through the crack in the window.
Xavier hesitated. His gaze darted to the guardhouse where Kristine waited, then back to Sophie and the bracelet. Sophie’s heart fluttered inside her chest, pulse thrumming under her skin, as Xavier took a full sixty seconds to decide what he was going to do.
He knew it was a risk, and it took everything inside Sophie not to keep talking, to try to convince him. She bit her lower lip in an effort to stay silent. Xavier was old-school Mexican; the harder a female pushed him, the more likely he was to push back.
Just when she was about to give up and hit the gas pedal—consequences be damned—he took a step back and put his hands on his hips. He cocked his head and jutted out his chin, motioning for her to go. “Don’t damage the car.”
No surprise that he was more worried about the vehicle than about her, but she didn’t need to be told twice. In English or Spanish.
Pulling the bracelet back inside, she punched the gas and sailed through the gate.
Eight minutes later, she hit the outskirts of the city. The squatters’ houses were a conglomerate of lumps against the hillsides, no streetlights in the vicinity, and a steady rain drenching their fires in the fire pits.
It certainly wasn’t the neighborhood for a sleek Mercedes-Benz, and Sophia slowly edged the car down the barely wide enough footpaths, searching for Rosalie’s tent.
Her lights flashed over a garden gnome with a faded red hat. Bingo. Parking the car, she got out and made her way to the makeshift door. “Rosalie? It’s Maria-Sophia. Are you home?”
She heard grunting from inside; Rosalie lifting her body off a chair? Several seconds later, the flap opened a few inches.
Rosalie screwed up her face as if she’d chewed on a jalapeño. “What are you doing here?” she said in Spanish.
Sophie didn’t reply. She only held up the troll.
The woman’s face softened. Her gaze dropped to the ground. “I cannot go.”
“You can. No one is stopping you, except for yourself. But it is your choice. I’m only here to tell you that I understand. Whether you stay here or go to America, the decision is life-changing. Scary. I know because I’ve been in that situation. I just wanted you to have this.”
She handed the troll to Rosalie. “It was my mother’s. Her favorite. He brought her a lot of good luck.” Until it didn’t. Until nothing about her mother’s life was lucky. “I don’t need it anymore, but I think maybe you do.”
Rosalie took the troll and hugged it to her chest, eyes closed. “You have done too much for me already. Save someone else.”
“I will help plenty of other women, I promise.” And in that moment, Sophie knew it was true. “But those papers are yours, Rosalie. No one else can use them, just like no one else can live your life for you. You have the means to save yourself, right here, tonight. There are people waiting to help you. You have people in America who want you to come and live with them, work for them as their nanny. All you have to do is give yourself permission to accept that help. Accept the love we’re all trying to show you.”
In the dim illumination from the car’s headlights, Sophie saw tears tracking down Rosalie’s face. She wanted to grab the woman and tell her goodbye, but she knew it was better for both of them if she kep
t her distance. Otherwise they would both be crying.
Taking a step back, she started to turn around, those tears she didn’t want to cry burning in her eyes. The steady rain had drenched her, so no one would see them if they did fall.
She took two steps, then couldn’t stand it. Whipping back around, she closed the distance to Rosalie, shoving the curtain aside and throwing her arms around the woman.
One bear hug later, Sophie released her, and without another word or look, jogged toward the car. She’d just reached for the door handle when she heard a yell.
“Wait,” Rosalie called.
Sophie turned.
Rosalie still held the troll. She heaved a giant breath and wiped at the tears on her cheeks. “My bag. I need my bag.”
Sophie watched her disappear into the shadows of the tent. A minute later, she reappeared, bag and troll in hand. With one last look back, she waddled to the Benz, head down as the rain poured down.
Chapter Twenty-four
Chica Bonita was dead. As in, dead-end.
Surveillance was nearly always a long, drawn out affair. Tonight, the minutes ticked by like a clock caught in syrup. Nelson’s ass ached, his eyes were dry from straining at the dark cluster of rundown buildings inside the fence, and the rain hitting the roof was making him sleepy.
Three hours had passed since they’d camped in the alley across the street from Chica Bonita. Not one car had driven past. Not a soul had entered the area. One warm body had left—probably a vagrant—crawling under a large gap in the fence and disappearing into the long alley that ran behind the buildings and ended in a vacant lot. Harris had given chase, but ended up empty-handed. Rios had tried her contact, calling and texting, and ended up with the same. No answer, no response to voice mail.
Harris had contacted whoever had called him in the first place and double-checked their intel. Yes, they were sure the underground railroad was moving someone tonight. The meet was the same: Chica Bonita.
So they sat and sat some more, barely able to keep up a decent surveillance because of the heavy rain.
“I hate to break up the party,” Nelson said, not hating it at all as he checked the time, “but I’ve got to touch base with Morales and tell him I failed to catch Agent Blue.”
And then I can get back to Sophie. He had plans for her tonight. Plans that involved waking her up and making sure she stayed naked until sunrise.
“No one is out in this weather,” Rios said. “Maybe if it clears off before morning…?”
Harris rubbed his close-cropped hair with a beefy hand. “Who else is working undercover in this area? Any ideas?”
“Agent Cruz, Agent Diaz, Agent Blue.” Rios shrugged. “That’s all I know of.”
“The papers are legitimate documents. The real thing. No one but a federal employee would have access to them.”
“Well, it’s not me or Sophie.” Nelson yawned. “And Agent Blue doesn’t seem like the bleeding heart type to help a few young women jump the border.”
Harris started the car, shaking his head. “Has to be someone, maybe not an undercover operative. Someone with connections in town. We need to check with all the federal agencies and come up with a suspect list.”
The words came out of Nelson’s mouth before he realized how weird it was that he—an ICE agent—was saying them. “Do we really care? A couple of girls get into the US with legal-looking papers. Are they terrorists? Drug dealers? Gun runners? No. Most likely they’re mules but it’s not like they’re carrying enough product to keep major dealers in business. We have bigger fish to fry right now, don’t you think?”
Harris grunted. “Not my call. Orders from Dupé are to flush out whoever’s helping these women get into the States with legit papers that technically aren’t legit, and shut them down.”
The windshield wipers flipped up and down, making no dent in the water streaming down the window. Harris put the SUV in gear and started to pull out of the alley when car lights suddenly swept around the corner of the block.
Jamming the SUV back into park, he cut the motor.
A dark sedan crawled down the street as if lost. The three of them inside the SUV ducked as the cars headlights grew closer. Nelson held his breath as the vehicle drove past them and kept going. He peeked over the front seat and watched the taillights as the car drove on.
Harris was watching too. “That’s the first car we’ve seen in this neighborhood since we arrived.”
“No one in a Mercedes Benz comes to this part of town at this time of night,” Nelson stated. “Unless it’s a drug dealer doing a drop.”
“Or a CIA operative doing one,” Agent Rios added.
Harris eyeballed her. “You think it could be Blue?”
“It’s not Blue,” Nelson said. The car’s brake lights flashed as it turned the corner at the far end of the block. There was a sticker on the back bumper, and although he couldn’t read it with the dark and the rain, he didn’t need to. It was a Holy Francis sticker. The convent where Lexie went to school. “That car belongs to Rodrigo Morales.”
“What the hell is he doing out here?”
“He’s not. He’s still warm and dry at the poker game.” Nelson had seen the outlines of two people in the front seat. While one of them was tall and heavy, the driver had been petite. He’d seen the outline of her face in the dash’s illumination, the dark ring of a bracelet circling her wrist as she kept one hand high on the steering wheel.
But it had taken his poor brain several seconds to catch up. “Maybe one of his off-duty guards is taking the boss’s car for a little outing.”
“In this neighborhood?” Rios asked.
He wasn’t about to jump to conclusions. He also wasn’t about to wait here any longer. He was crawling out of his skin. “Take me back. I’ll look into it.”
Harris started the car again. “What about Morales and his orders for you to trap Blue?”
Nelson dialed the cartel leader’s phone. His call went to voicemail. “Hey, boss. Blue is laying low. I can’t get any bites from his men or any leads on him. I’m heading back to the compound. I’ve snagged a ride.”
He disconnected and nodded at Harris. “Let’s go.”
En route, Harris’s phone buzzed and he put the caller on speaker. “Yeah, Thomas,” he answered. “What is it?”
“Mitch and I traced that last shipment of bath salts to a warehouse in Oceanside. We found bodies.”
“Shit. How many?”
“Two dozen. But they’re not human.”
“What? Our connection is bad. Sounded like you said they’re not human.”
“The connection sucks, but you heard me. The bodies we found… They’re snakes, Coop.”
Harris was silent for a moment. “What’s the punch line, Mann? What the hell are snakes doing at the warehouse?”
A new voice came across the airwaves. Mitch Holton. “They’ve been gutted and tossed in a heap, sir. There are rat carcasses with ’em. My guess is that they’re mules.”
“Drug mules?”
“Yes, sir. These are no ordinary garden snakes, either. They couldn’t have crossed the border without proper documentation covering exporting and importing exotic pets.”
Nelson sat forward. “What kind of snakes?”
“Big-ass ones,” Thomas answered. “A couple of six foot anacondas and several more I’m unfamiliar with.”
Rios shifted to look at Nelson. “Doesn’t Morales deal in exotic snakes?”
“Collects them. And gemstones,” he told her as Harris turned onto a main street and merged with one-way traffic. The brighter lights here were still not enough to attract anyone in this storm. “According to Agent Diaz, Morales is an expert with diamonds and shit.”
Rios nodded. “He studied gemology at university according to his file.”
“I’ve seen some of the uncut stones and they look just like the gravel on the bottom of the cages.” Nelson stared out the window, lost in thought. “What if the snakes weren’t carrying
drugs? What if they were transporting uncut diamonds, both in their habitat and in their bodies?”
“Have the snakes tested,” Harris told the two agents on the phone. “For drugs and for…whatever the hell you test for when it comes to diamonds.”
“Yes, sir,” Thomas said.
“We’ll keep you posted,” Mitch added.
The line went dead.
“The exchange tomorrow,” Nelson said. “It’s under the guise of Morales obtaining some new exotic snake, but maybe it’s more than that.”
Rios nodded. “It may have nothing to do with missiles either.”
“Transporting uncut diamonds in snakes?” Harris blew air through his lips as they hit the highway. “And I thought I’d seen it all.”
Nelson sat back in his seat. “But Morales isn’t interested in expanding into the U.S. He keeps talking to Agent Diaz about Europe.”
“Which is why he’s meeting with the European dealer,” Rios said. “He’s looking for a new transporter.”
“That son-of-a-bitch.” Nelson scrubbed his face, an exhaustion that had nothing to do with the long night, gripping his bones. “He’s not getting out of the cartel business and going legit. He’s switching his product.”
When the Morales compound came into view a few minutes later, Nelson told Harris to pull over and let him out. He didn’t want the vehicle to be seen by the guards. Besides, he needed to clear his head, even if it was raining like a banshee.
He stuck the ledger under his coat and zipped it to the top to keep the thing dry. “I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
Harris pulled to the side of the road and shot Nelson a hard look over the seat. “Keep your head down and don’t rock the boat tonight, Agent Cruz. The CIA will take down Morales at the exchange tomorrow, and then you can help Agent Rios and I find the person responsible for the Chica Bonita underground railroad.”
His voice and his gaze brokered no argument, so although Nelson had promised Sophie he’d make sure she got her man, he decided it was better to lie than disagree. “Roger, that, boss.”