“Bull.” She looked over at Ben. “Wexler lied to Bobby. He took in the shipment.”
“I don’t think so, Darcy. Bobby says he got sick as hell all over the pavement. He has to be really sick. Mick swears the water’s contaminated in the cooler. He’s putting in a fresh bottle.”
Interesting. She filed that tidbit of information. If Wexler was really sick, then maybe he was being gotten out of the way, too. Maybe he wasn’t the one accepting the shipment. He couldn’t have been—unless GRID was done with him and wanted to wipe out the connection between them by taking Wexler out. Still there had to be someone else involved. But who else—
Mick.
His name came to mind and wouldn’t let go. He’d been at the bar when Needle and Santana’s cohorts were there. He’d been at Los Casas when the truck had come in. He’d been at Traveler’s Inn when she’d spotted Kunz there. And he’d been outside the warehouse with Elizabeth.
He’d been in all the right places to be doing all the wrong things. Question was, had he actually done the wrong things. All the evidence pointed to Wexler.
And what if that was by design?
She asked Ben, “Did you see Mick tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“What color was his shirt?”
“Damn, Darcy.” Ben grabbed hold of the dash. “Slow down. You’re going to kill somebody. My leg won’t be any more broken in five minutes.”
Darcy ignored the turn for the hospital, took the one for Los Casas and slammed her foot down on the gas. “It might be if you don’t answer my question. What color was Mick’s shirt?”
In the bar, it had been red. Outside the hotel, red. Tonight, red. “Damn it, Ben. It’s not just Wexler. It’s Mick, too!”
“No, Darcy. Not Mick.” Ben shot her a look that she was way off base. “Wexler’s taking the numbers and passing them on. We heard and saw it firsthand.”
“Why would he do that?” She asked herself more so than Ben, yet he answered.
“Mick’s having an affair with Elizabeth. Lucas meets his women at Mick’s. It’s a neat little arrangement.”
“And Lucas Wexler doesn’t want that screwed up. So he takes the numbers for Mick and shoots a little pool. Kunz and Santana think they’re dealing with Wexler, only they’re not. They’re dealing with Mick. It’s protection. Mick knows anonymity is all that will keep him alive when GRID is done with him. Wexler hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing.”
Darcy saw more clearly. “Mick gave them something to make them sick—Grady and Wexler,” Darcy said. “He wanted them out—away from Los Casas.”
“Oh, hell. The first truck was a decoy. He’s not yet put through the real shipment.” Ben motioned. “Faster, faster.”
“Get me the phone. I need to call this in.”
Ben scrounged through her purse, pulled it out and passed it to her. Moments later, Maggie was on the line. “Code One, Maggie. Get forces to the border. Mick is working with GRID and Santana and blackmailing Wexler, who probably figures Mick’s running numbers or some other type of gambling stint. Santana’s dead.”
“Are you sure? With GRID, we have a lot of corpses turning up to fight another day.”
“I shot and killed him,” Darcy said. “He’s dead.”
“Verified. Hold on.” She was gone a second, and then returned. “Colonel Drake and General Shaw are on the line with me, Darcy.”
“Darcy?” It was Colonel Drake’s voice, and she was severely worried. “Rank it.”
The colonel ranked everything on a scale of one to ten. “Ten, ma’am. Quick upshot. The shipment we followed was a decoy. It burned at the warehouse. Not radioactive, not filled with bombs, not even with fireworks. Grain would be my guess. I smelled it when I first entered the warehouse. I got one whiff of gunpowder. I figure it was the charge Kunz later set to facilitate his escape.”
“Where’s the real shipment?”
Good question. “One moment, ma’am.” She told Ben, “Call Los Casas. If Mick is back out there, then the shipment isn’t in yet. Who’s working graveyard?”
“Bobby Meyers.”
Darcy grunted. “I’ve got ten that says he’s gotten the flu and Mick’s been called back in to cover for him.”
“I won’t be taking that bet.” Ben dialed the phone.
“Los Casas.”
“Mick?” Ben grimaced. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, Ben. What’s up, buddy?”
“Nothing. Just checking to see if Bobby needed any help tonight. I’m feeling a little better.”
“He’s sick with the crud, like the rest of them. Called me while I was downtown. Hey, did you hear the warehouse on Main caught fire?”
“No, I didn’t know that,” Ben lied. “You need help out there?”
“Naw. It’s deader than dirt tonight. Ain’t a soul crossed in the last hour. Just marking time.”
“Okay, then. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“’Night.” Ben disconnected, then looked at Darcy. “You win.”
Darcy relayed to Colonel Drake.
“Why is the border open this late?” Colonel Drake asked.
“Commercial interests only. It’s so hot here that the loaded trucks overheat during the day. They travel at night for safety reasons—it’s strongly recommended for flammables.”
“Fireworks are that,” the colonel said. “So what’s your ETA?”
Darcy checked her watch. One-twenty in the morning. “I estimate a 1:35 a.m. arrival at Los Casas, ma’am.”
“The shipment has to be coming across the border at any time,” Ben said. “Remember, we’re closed from two to three.”
Darcy couldn’t risk it. “Ma’am, they’ve got a fifteen-minute window before we arrive. And they’ve got a twenty-five-minute window after we arrive. Then the station closes for an hour to do a daily security sweep. You’d better get overt forces down there now.”
“They’re already in position, Darcy.” Colonel Drake let out a sigh fraught with relief. “When you called for backup, we included Los Casas in the equation.”
“Did Kunz get to Mexico?”
“We’re told no.”
Darcy didn’t believe it. Not for a second. “Is he at Broken Branch Redemption?”
“Definitely not. We’ve had them under surveillance since you left here.”
Where the hell had Kunz gone, then? “Anything else, Colonel?”
She hesitated.
Darcy waited, and then realized what Colonel Drake wanted to know but didn’t want to offend Darcy by asking. “I’m fine, ma’am.”
“Oh, good.” She cleared her throat, but her relief stuck in her voice. “Of course you are, Darcy. Of course.”
When they arrived at Los Casas, the FBI had seized control of the border crossing. Mick stood against the cinder block wall, his hands behind him in cuffs. An unmarked eighteen-wheeler pulling two trailers was pulled past the stalls and onto the open dirt road. The two men who had been in it were being loaded into the backseat of an unmarked sedan. Darcy recognized one of the female FBI agents she’d seen at Traveler’s Inn.
“Stay in the Jeep, Ben.”
“Why?”
“No sense in testing your leg. It’s done.”
He looked through the window at Mick and sadness filled his eyes. “Mick set it up to look like Wexler had done it all. He wanted to get rid of him to clear the way for Mick and Elizabeth.”
“I guess so.” Disgusted, Darcy walked over to the agent, identified herself, then went to Mick.
“How did you know?” He didn’t bother denying his part in the attack.
“Your red shirt,” she answered honestly, though the reasons had been far more in number than she’d disclosed.
The whole truth was that something had warned her. Something so nebulous she couldn’t begin to describe or explain it, though she knew exactly when she’d first felt it. It had come to her with the first fire, along with her total recall.
And tonight it had worked to s
ave thousands of lives.
For someone who had so often in the past five years felt cursed, at the moment, she felt decidedly blessed. She glanced over at Ben; saw him watching her through the Jeep’s passenger window. Decidedly blessed.
Winning on all fronts would have been fabulous. But in this war on terror, it was unrealistic. Like Amanda, Kate, Maggie and the rest of the S.A.S.S., she’d have to be content to take her successes where she found them—one battle at a time—and to pray for many more victories.
Along the way, she’d be grateful. She had enjoyed some personal gains on this mission, too. She’d faced her guilt, her fear of fire, and reclaimed her life. She’d rediscovered the power of love to overcome even the greatest fear.
Those were pretty significant gains she never again wanted to forget—and since she had perfect recall, she wouldn’t.
Smiling to herself about that, she walked back to the Jeep and got in beside Ben. “I guess we’d better see about that leg.”
“Only if you’re through saving the world.”
“I am.” She sniffed. “For tonight.”
He laughed and rubbed her shoulder. “You amaze me, Darcy Clark.”
She tried not to, but she couldn’t help herself. She laughed with him. “Tell me that twenty years from now, and I might just believe it.”
“You got it.” He turned on the radio. “And that, you can commit to memory.”
“I will.” She already had. Darcy smiled. “Finally, a personal perk in having total recall.”
Everything you love about romance…
and more!
Please turn the page for Signature Select™
Bonus Features.
Bonus Features:
Author Interviews
Doranna Durgin
Meredith Fletcher
Vicki Hinze
Author’s Journal by Doranna Durgin
Tips & Tricks
Six Tips To Improve Your Memory by Vicki Hinze
Top Ten
Cool Technology by Meredith Fletcher
Buzz on Bombshell
Sneak Peek
CHECKMATE by Doranna Durgin
DOUBLE VISION by Vicki Hinze
BONUS FEATURES
Doranna Durgin
Tell us a bit about how you began your writing career.
At the age of three, when I wrote and illustrated (and bound!) my first book. Or at the age of 12, when I wrote (and illustrated and bound) my first novel. After that, the words never stopped flowing. I did stop binding them, though.
At 12, I received my first rejection from Paramount (Hey, who knew you had to be agented? Or write in actual screenplay format?) and at 14 my first short-story rejection. At that point the adults in my world decided I was weird, and I went more underground with my writing (but never stopped or even slowed down). Finally, just out of college and living in a remote area where I couldn’t use my degree or indeed get any job at all (or even meet anyone for the first six months…), I decided I’d try to publish again. Didn’t let anyone discourage me this time. Took a while, though!
Was there a particular person, place or thing that inspired this story?
Not this time. Just a whole bunch of little things that came together into a whole with that synergistic power the muse sometimes wields.
What’s your writing routine?
I work on a page quota, seven days a week. Sometimes life happens instead, but not so often that you’d need all your fingers and toes to count the days per year. Usually I have music going in the background, but sometimes I need to quiet my brain and then I don’t. I write on a laptop in Rough Draft and pull it all together in Word Perfect. And I often burn scented candles (sugar cookie, yum!). What time of day I write depends on the weather, season and Other Things Going On. I use a recliner or I stand; I don’t sit at a desk. My only hard and fast rule—aside from that page quota!—is that I don’t actually hold myself to any particular routines. If I feel like doing something different—a different kind of music than ordinarily inspires me, two work sessions a day instead of one, etc.—then it’s no big deal. I know someone who has to have a dozen sharpened pencils at the desk (even when working at the computer). This is not me.
How do you research your stories?
Extensively. Overextensively. I get lost in research. I love the Web, I love my Internet community and their vast collection of knowledge, and I love research books.
Excuse me. Must go build another bookshelf now.
How do you develop your characters?
They develop themselves. That’s trite, I suppose, but I often don’t truly have a good handle on my characters until they’ve gone through a couple scenes and have a chance to play off each other and events. If I need to go back and tweak things to suit, then I do—because sometimes characters grow into something else than I expected (if I’m smart enough to pay attention). Even when I do have a character down cold at the start, I usually discover more about them as I go along.
I don’t do any of those exercises that one can do, involving index cards and character interviews and the like. I do stop and go off to ponder things now and then.
When you’re not writing, what are your favorite activities?
I have four dogs who are in training for various activities—one Cardigan Welsh corgi matriarch, two Cardigan agility dogs and a young beagle now in breed competition who’s starting agility basics; we all go to shows. I also have a Lipizzan whom I ride dressage and who lives on the property. (Lots of pictures on my Web site, [www.doranna.net].) That pretty much keeps me busy!
What are your favorite kinds of vacations? Where do you like to travel?
I’d love to see all sorts of places—Australia, South America, Europe, our very own national parks—but I don’t travel well at all (this is an understatement), so for the most part I see tiny bits of the world through nearby dog shows or convention locations. As for actual vacations…define those for me again?
Meredith Fletcher
Tell us a bit about how you began your writing career.
I’ve wanted to write since I was in third grade. My fourth-and fifth-grade teachers often caught me working on stories during class. Instead of chastising me (I was fortunate to be an A and B student in spite of my extracurricular activities in the classroom!), those teachers read the stories to the class. I’ve written on a regular basis, mostly for myself and to learn the craft, then had the opportunity to begin my career with Harlequin. I’ve got several more books and novellas in me that are dying to come out!
Was there a particular person, place or thing that inspired this story?
I love tech. Sweet and simple, I know, but I really do. I’m constantly fascinated with the computerized world we live in (which most people never seem to notice, or just take for granted), with the medical reconstruction that physicians can do, and with the resiliency of the human body and spirit.
What’s your writing routine?
I write every spare minute I have. Usually early in the day and late at night are best for me. I’m active and like to do things with the rest of my day.
How do you research your stories?
Usually I have an idea and jot it down, kind of get the feel of it. Once the characters and action hook me (which means I can’t stop thinking about the story!), I begin preliminary research. I read every chance I get, and I’ve got a mutant ability to remember a lot of what I’ve read and definitely where I read it. When I do intensive research, I begin with children’s books. They’re absolutely the best for getting the biggest amount of information in a short span of time. Tech books even have a glossary! And books about people and places have tons of photographs! They’re amazing! It’s a wonder more kids aren’t brainiacs. After I have the basics down, I decide where I need to invest most of my time. Rather than studying a particular field, I study parts of a field as they apply to the story I want to write. Or a certain area in a country. Then I look over my notes and see if my additional information lends it
self to changes or developments in the characters or plot sequences.
How do you develop your characters?
I start by figuring them out. What do they want? What experiences have they had that will make a mark on the story I’m trying to tell? What is her greatest fear? Once that’s done, I audition them on the page by writing scenes that may or may not make it into the story I’m writing. I write lots of dialogue. I have to hear them to truly “get” them. Once I have them down, I start over and write the story from beginning to end.
When you’re not writing, what are your favorite activities?
Love reading. Love research. Love gardening (it gives me something to do with my hands while my mind is sorting out a knotty problem!). I love to travel. I’m an amateur photographer, cutting-edge tech whiz, and hobby borrower (if I see someone doing something I think is interesting, I do it, too, till I learn it or get bored).
What are your favorite kinds of vacations? Where do you like to travel?
I love the impromptu vacation, the one when you just get in the car and go. I’ve found more delightful out-of-the-way places and people in this manner than any “planned” vacation. Structure is all right to get you there—sometimes (even that I find arguable!)—but I like to throw the itinerary out the window and go exploring. Caves are awesome. Every time I vacation where there’s a cave, I go see it. I don’t know what that says about me, and probably I don’t want to know. I love going to the Yucatán Peninsula. There’s something about the history of the place, the slow and easy manner of the days, the quick light showers that scatter baby crabs across the beach and vanish just minutes later and the cool blue of the water that is just so relaxing.
Do you have a favorite book or film?
The Princess Bride, in both book and film. I just love it when Westley says, “As you wish.” Both mediums are such a delight.
Any last words to your readers?
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