Ripped Apart

by Miriam Minger

  “One of the orphanages is outside of Monterrey about a half hour or so. I told you about it—”

  “I remember.” She’d snapped at him but her mind was starting to spin. “I don’t understand. Are we going to hide there until we come up with another plan?”

  “We’re leaving Mexico, Clare. Father Gregorio knows someone there with a plane—”

  “No.” Clare got up and moved to the opposite end of the pew and away from Jake, panicking. “No, we’re not leaving without Tyler.”

  “He might not even be in Mexico anymore, Clare. Ruiz and his wife were heading to the airport—”

  “That doesn’t mean they’ve left!” Clare spun around to face Jake who’d followed her to the end of his pew. “Leave if you want to, I don’t care what you do. I’m not leaving this country without my son.”

  She’d shouted at him but didn’t care, hoping desperately that she had opened her eyes into a dream and Jake and his new plan to abandon Tyler weren’t real at all, only a figment of her worst fears. Jake came toward her and she ducked down another pew, but he caught her by the tail of her jacket. The next thing she knew he’d climbed over the pew and drawn her against him to try and subdue her.

  “Clare, you’re making this harder than it has to be—”

  “How would you know? Tyler isn’t your son. It means nothing for you to leave him. Nothing!” She ground a heel into his foot in a desperate effort to free herself but he only drew her closer, his mouth against her ear.

  “If he’s still here, Clare, he’s behind thick walls and guarded gates. We can’t get to him in a place like that—and even if we could get close, Mike has probably called out everyone he knows to hunt us down. I believe it was his intent at first to help us, maybe because he wanted Ruiz dead and thought we’d take care of it for him but something changed his mind, okay? Ruiz’s people were bad enough but with the two of them combined—”

  “Twenty million dollars changed his mind, the price Ruiz put on my head. Twenty million…” Clare fell still in Jake’s arms, her legs feeling so weak she would have crumpled to the floor if he hadn’t held her so closely.

  That amount was so enormous, so incredible, she couldn’t comprehend it and her pronouncement had clearly surprised Jake. He’d grown still, too, so much so that it seemed he had stopped breathing.

  “Mike told you this?”

  Clare nodded, Jake’s voice so low that she’d barely heard him. “His payment in exchange for making me dead. Tonight. But not until he’d had some fun with me first like he said he’d done to your wife—oh, God.”

  Clare felt so sick that she gagged and doubled over. It hadn’t struck her until that moment just how narrowly she’d escaped a brutal rape. As Jake eased his hold on her, she forced herself to breathe, to calm down.

  “You’re okay, Clare, easy…easy…”

  He didn’t let her go but sat down with her in a pew while Clare closed her eyes and bent her head. She had no physical strength left in her to fight him. All she had was words. She didn’t look at him, she couldn’t. Still queasy, she kept her head down, her voice a whisper.

  “I told you in San Antonio I’d do anything to get back my son and I meant it. What are we going to do, Jake? What are we going to do?”

  He didn’t answer her, his silence cutting Clare to the quick.

  It was true. He’d only come to Mexico for himself, not her, not Tyler. He’d learned what he wanted to know and now he was ready to return to Texas, case closed—at least the part of it that had anything to do with her. She wasn’t of any more use to him.

  “You see?” she said, shaking her head. “We mean nothing to you—”

  “Bullshit! You’re no good to Tyler dead, Clare. We’ll come up with another plan but for now we have to leave. You can’t fight against twenty million dollars, no one can. If I know Reed, we’ll be lucky to make it alive out of this city.”

  “Jake? Miss Carson?”

  At the sound of Father Gregorio’s voice, Jake pulled Clare to her feet and she didn’t resist him.

  It was true, too, what he’d said about the twenty million. She couldn’t stay in Mexico and fight against the terror that kind of money could buy. She could only run and try to stay alive for Tyler. She pushed away from Jake.

  “I don’t need your help.”

  “Your knee—”

  “I said I don’t need your help.” Jake’s gaze bored into her but she ignored it and focused on Father Gregorio, wanting to put as much space as possible between herself and Jake Wyatt.

  * * *

  “Get the fuck away from me.” Mike Reed leaned against the sedan as Hector dropped his hand from Mike’s arm like he’d been stung and hurried to open the door for him.

  Mike collapsed into the back seat, his head throbbing so mercilessly he thought he might be having a stroke. Damn that bitch. The car door slammed, then Hector’s, making Mike groan and drop his head into his hands.

  “Mr. Reed, the hospital isn’t far from here.“

  “Quit with the nursemaid act and focus on your job.” Mike glanced up to find Hector staring at him in the rearview mirror, but he dropped his gaze and started up the engine. “Take me to where you dropped off the woman.”

  The sedan sped into motion with a screech of rubber. Mike slumped against the seat and rested his pounding head against the leather cushion.

  At least he wasn’t seeing double anymore. He couldn’t say how long he’d lain on the floor moving in and out of consciousness before he was able to roll over onto his side and haul himself to his feet. It must have been too soon because his legs had gone out from under him, Hector finally arriving to find him sprawled out on the floor.

  Mike groaned again. Clare Carson had made a mess of things and he’d make her pay, but right now he was more furious at himself for screwing up so badly.

  How the hell could he have let her get away from him? He’d had her in his house, by the hair and dragging her up the stairs. The twenty million dollars had been as good as collecting interest in his bank account, his days of working with Eduardo done and over. He’d underestimated her, a big mistake, but a bigger error had been underestimating Jake Wyatt.

  All it had taken for Mike was a glance into the guardhouse where Jorge lay strangled to death on the floor, his face a mottled purple, to guess that Jake had survived the ambush and managed to track down Clare. Hector had reported that a white van had followed them from the house, and when he’d turned the sedan around after dropping off the woman, he’d seen a gringo at the wheel and not Pablo, confirming Mike’s conclusion.

  “Thanks at least for that much, Wyatt.” No more Pablo, making one less problem. If Jake had the van, Sosa had to be dead which suited Mike just fine. He’d been planning to get rid of him first thing in the morning anyway, but Jake had saved him the trouble of tying up that loose end.

  He should have knocked Pablo off four years ago when Jake had disappeared. Pablo had known too damned much even then, but holding his wife and children’s safety over his head had ensured his absolute silence. Mike hadn’t known when he might be able to use him again, either, so it had been a win-win for both of them.

  Until tonight. Now that he thought about it, maybe Pablo had run off his mouth to Jake before he died. How else would Jake have known where to find the woman? Things were spiraling so fucking out of control.

  He could sense it, feel it, and even taste it.

  Jake and Clare Carson were together again, which meant Mike was screwed if he didn’t find them.

  Why had he been so stupid to spill his guts to that bitch about Isabella? If Jake hadn’t a clue before as to what had happened to his wife other than the bullshit Mike had fed him about Eduardo, Mike might now as well have painted a big red bull’s eye on his forehead.

  “Should have shot him dead outside the bar,” Mike muttered under his breath, making Hector glance nervously at him again in the rearview mirror. “How close are we to where you left her off?”

  “We�
��ll be there soon, sir, very soon.”

  Mike swore under his breath and closed his eyes while he rubbed his throbbing temples.

  He had suspected from the start when he heard from the contact in San Antonio who’d cut Xavier’s throat that Clare Carson’s mysterious friend might be Jake. The guy’s description had jumped out at Mike like a fist connecting to his gut—dark hair, blue eyes, six foot or better—but he had decided to wait and see before he made any move or said a word to Eduardo.

  The next thing he knew, Jake had confirmed his intuition and called him from Tampico, Eduardo’s latest threat still ringing in Mike’s ear.

  Why not help Jake take out that pompous piece of shit? Mike had had enough of Eduardo’s threats. Things would have gone exactly as planned, too, knowing Jake’s training, only the table had turned as quickly as Mike had set it up. A better deal had come his way all around—freedom at last from Eduardo and loads of money—until he’d fucked it up—

  “Here, Mr. Reed, this is the place.”

  Hector veered the sedan over to the curb and Mike leaned closer to the window, scanning the sidewalk in front of a movie theater. “Which way did she go?”

  “Around the corner and down that street.“

  “Follow it, then, idiot.”

  Hector obliged him while Mike glanced from one side of the street to the other. Salsa bars, discos, a couple of seedy-looking restaurants, no way. She wouldn’t have stopped in any of those places. She would have kept moving to find somewhere that looked more safe, but where?

  An intersection loomed ahead, the street choked with traffic and people partying into the wee hours. Mike gestured for Hector to slow the car as they neared the light so he could scan in both directions—

  “Turn left. Head over to that church.”

  Mike couldn’t believe it, the excruciating pain in his head forgotten as he stared at the white van pulled up on the curb near a side entrance to the church. He already had his semi-automatic pistol out of its holster and his other hand on the door handle. Something told him Jake would never make it this easy for him but he threw open the car door before Hector brought the vehicle to a complete stop and lunged out onto the sidewalk.

  The wooden door leading into the church was ajar, which made Mike brace himself just outside the entrance for a moment and glance over at the van.

  Nothing. No movement, the front windows rolled down. His instincts told him that Jake would have been a fool not to find another vehicle than to keep driving the van. Mike doubted he’d find anyone inside the church but he had to check to make sure. He kicked open the door and ducked inside to take cover behind the nearest pillar, no sound greeting him but the door creaking slowly back into place.

  Mike spied it then, the pistol Clare had taken from him lying on the floor near an altar ten feet away.

  She had been here, hiding probably, catching her breath, and Jake had found her. The pistol told Mike something else, too, that they had left in such a hurry that they hadn’t bothered to retrieve the weapon. So now where the hell had they gone?

  Mike picked up the handgun and then rushed back outside to where Hector had pulled over the sedan and thrown open a door for him. Mike didn’t jump into the car, though, but stopped to look back at the church. A single spire pierced the night sky that appeared more orange than black from the city lights. A memory tugged at him, maybe even more an intuition.

  He hadn’t been inside any church since Jake and Isabella’s wedding, but it had been a grander building with two spires and not falling into disrepair like this one. Isabella’s brother was a priest and had performed the wedding. What was his name? Geoffrey…Gabriel…

  “Gregorio.” Mike scarcely breathed, his body tense and his intuition clamoring like an alarm.

  God, it couldn’t be that easy.

  Before he’d left the house, he’d already called his police and military contacts in Monterrey to ensure armed men were posted at the major roads running out of the city to watch for two gringos, a man and a woman, who might claim to be Canadian citizens. Dropping Eduardo Ruiz’s name always got him the results he wanted.

  He was the Facilitator after all. He made things happen. He got things done. He also had twenty million dollars at stake—his goddamned money—but don’t tell him that Jake might not have even attempted to leave the city yet and had taken refuge at some church with his former brother-in-law…

  Mike climbed into the back seat and yelled at Hector, “Iglesia San Jose. You know the way?”

  Hector swerved the sedan back out into the street in answer and sped up so suddenly that Mike lost his balance, but caught himself before he cracked his head on the window. Instead of cursing at Hector, though, he gestured for him to go faster at the same moment his cell phone rang.

  Had to be Eduardo. They hadn’t spoken since the fiasco at Hospital San Pedro, and no doubt he was anxious about what had happened and if everything was under control.

  Too fucking bad. No way was Mike going to answer the phone.

  The last conversation he intended to have with Eduardo Ruiz would be where he informed him Clare Carson was dead, and gave him the routing number of the offshore Caribbean account for his twenty million dollars. Then he’d disappear without a trace, nowhere to be found, cool island breezes, beautiful native women climbing all over him, two or three at a time or more if he wanted, oh, yeah. Whoever said money couldn’t buy love was dead wrong.

  Smiling to himself, he ignored the cell phone when it rang a second time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Bastard. Where the hell is he?” Unable to reach the Facilitator, Eduardo tried another number and plugged his right ear to drown out Maria’s incessant weeping coming from the jet’s rear cabin. On the fourth ring, someone picked up but he didn’t wait for a hello. “Manuel, it’s Eduardo.”

  “Eduardo? What the hell are you doing?” There was a pause and a crashing to the floor of what must have been an alarm clock, followed by another curse as Manuel put his mouth back to the phone. “It’s late, damn you. What’s that crying? Is something wrong with Maria?”

  “No, no, she’s fine, just tired. We’ve left Monterrey, that’s why I called. I wanted you to know.”

  “You left tonight? Why so late? Why not wait until morning?”

  “I thought it best to leave as soon as possible—for Maria’s sake.” Eduardo took a deep breath, knowing before he’d called that Manuel would pepper him with questions but it irritated the hell out of him anyway. “She’ll be happier away for awhile, just like you said. I plan to get her settled and then I’ll be returning—”

  “No, you stay by her side.”

  “Manuel, it’s important that I return. We left in such a hurry I didn’t get a chance to finish some urgent business.“

  “I’ll take care of it for you, just tell me what needs to be done. Your place right now is with Maria. Do you understand me? All else pales in importance. I’m pleased that you’ve left, very pleased.”

  Eduardo cursed under his breath. Why had he bothered to call? He should have known Manuel would thwart his plans. He decided then and there to dump Maria and the boy who’d become nothing more to him now than the damnable root of his problems in the town of Cabo San Lucas, and then he’d return as soon as he could to Monterrey—with or without Manuel’s knowledge or permission.

  Something wasn’t right. The Facilitator would have answered his phone if things had gone well outside the airport, but Eduardo hadn’t been able to reach him. If that Carson bitch and her ill-advised companion had once more slipped through their fingers—

  “Your urgent business, Eduardo, I’m waiting. Or do you intend to keep me on the phone all night?”

  “It’s nothing, I’ll handle it later. Maria comes first, just as you say.”

  “Good. She’s still crying, I can hear her, Eduardo. What the hell is going on?”

  “She weeps for her son, why else? I’ll call you when I get her settled at the hotel.” Eduardo hung up the
phone before Manuel could question him further, giving him no small satisfaction that his brother-in-law was probably cursing him for doing so.

  Fuck him. Eduardo could curse, too. He threw the phone on the seat next to him and clutched the armrests. He wanted nothing more than to run back to the rear cabin and throttle the life out of Maria and that American boy, too.

  He could no longer stomach calling him Daniel, no matter the origin of the heart beating in that small chest.

  Eduardo wanted him to die. He wished every second that the boy would die. Anything to stop him whimpering for his mother, which only made Maria more desperate to console him, her weeping and wailing brought on because the boy would have none of her. They had been in the air for over an hour and still the noise had not let up, the howling and useless cajoling enough to drive any sane man mad.

  Eduardo grabbed the phone and tried the Facilitator’s number for the third time.

  Things were spinning out of control. If Clare Carson had been captured and killed, he would have been able to reach that bastard by now unless…

  Eduardo lowered the phone. Maybe things weren’t going so badly after all—at least not for the Facilitator.

  There had been another time when a woman was involved that Eduardo hadn’t been able to reach him, a situation with a female journalist. Eduardo felt disgusted by the recollection and yet undeniably aroused.

  Things had gotten out of hand, the Facilitator had explained as a gross understatement when Eduardo finally tracked him down to a squalid hotel room on the outskirts of Monterrey. The room had reeked heavily of sex and violence, the bruised and battered body of a woman lying spread-eagled on the bloodstained sheets of a king-size bed.

  She’d been close to discovering their collaboration and he’d been forced to kill her, the Facilitator had continued, but she’d been so lovely, so desirable, he couldn’t resist having some fun with her first…

  “Twisted freak.” The memory of Mike Reed scratched up and as covered in blood as the woman made Eduardo grimace but reminded him as well why he’d always been confident that the man he called the Facilitator could be trusted to get the job done.