by Amy Gamet
Jackie nodded. “She’s fine.”
Mac entered the room, and Razorback held on to Jackie’s hand when she would have pulled it away. “This is Mac, my boss.”
“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am. Looks like we missed most of the action.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Razorback joked.
“I’m going to run down to the cafeteria with Selena for some lunch,” said Jackie. “Would either of you like anything?”
“No, thanks,” said Razorback, watching as she left.
“That was a close call today,” said Mac. “Cowboy tells me they got there just in time.”
“Another five minutes and we wouldn’t have made it out. It’s time to go to Washington and get this game over with once and for all. She won’t be safe until then. Do you know if Jax was able to get those passports?”
“Got an email from him an hour ago. No can do. You’re going to have to get into the country another way. Cowboy used to work border patrol before he became a SEAL. He says you can cross on foot over the mountains into Texas, but you’re not up for that trip. Maybe Dire could do it.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Maybe you didn’t notice, but you’re sitting in a hospital bed hooked up to a bunch of machines after getting toasted like a piece of bread.”
“They’re just keeping me for observation. I’ll be good as new in the morning.”
“You’re a doctor, for God’s sake. You know that’s bullshit.”
“I know there’s nothing they can do for me here. I’m not leaving Jackie.”
Mac put his hands on his hips. “And what if you hold her back? You thought about that? What if you’re physically unable to make the trip?”
He hadn’t considered that possibility, and much as he hated to admit it, Mac was right. “I’ll have them do a stress test in the morning before they discharge me. Make sure my heart’s up to it.”
“And if they won’t?”
“Then I’ll have Logan help me and do it myself.”
“You’ve got a skull thicker than a concrete slab. You know that?”
“I need to see this through. She and her daughter deserve a new beginning.”
Mac shook his head and sighed heavily. “Just be careful. In my experience, people don’t always get what they deserve.”
18
Jackie stood between Razorback and Cowboy, gazing at the map spread out on the table of the hotel room that had been her temporary home while Razorback recuperated at the hospital. Her fingernails dug into her palms. Lines and colors. Arbitrary determinations that had deeply affected her life. She was still an American in her heart, and always would be.
Even if I’ve got to sneak back into my own damn country.
She’d been hoping HERO Force would come through with a passport and a nice, comfy first-class flight into Dulles, but it seemed their options were this or nothing. They would go across the Rio Grande and into South Texas, the way hundreds of migrants entered the United States every year.
If they survived the journey.
She’d heard of this trail before. It was legendary for the human remains that littered the route, all that was left of those unable to complete the arduous trek. The area was hot, drought-ridden, and paradoxically humid—a potentially deadly combination for a hike this long, and the forecasted highs for the next week were well over a hundred degrees.
But it was the only way, and she trusted Razorback to lead her. He was a Navy SEAL, for God’s sake. If anyone could get her through hell and back, it was him.
She glanced at his face and serious expression. They hadn’t been alone since they left the resort when HERO Force arrived, hadn’t even had a chance to talk. Now they were setting off with the barest of essentials for a grueling hike, alone.
Cowboy pointed at the map. “You’ll cross the Rio Grande here tomorrow morning at oh four hundred hours. I’ll meet you on the other side at the first set of coordinates and drive you fifty-five miles north.” He pointed again. “That’s when you need to get out. The Falfurrias checkpoint is set up on the main highway just to look for illegals. We can’t drive you through it, so you’ll hike around the checkpoint and I’ll pick you up at the second set of coordinates. It’s mostly ranchland.”
“What if Border Patrol sees us when we cross the river?” Jackie asked.
Cowboy shook his head. “They won’t. Watch for choppers. That’s how they’ll spot you if they do.”
She furrowed her brow. “But they have electronic surveillance cameras up and down the river.”
Cowboy met her stare. “Jackie, you’re not going to get caught.”
Understanding dawned. They wouldn’t be caught because Cowboy had made sure they’d have safe passage. “Oh.”
Razorback pushed away from the table. “I’m going to finish packing. Be ready in ten.”
“Ian,” said Cowboy. “Just so we’re clear, once you get out of my truck, you’re on your own. Jax’s instructions were clear. HERO Force can’t swoop in and save you unless you make it to the coordinates.”
“Understood.” Razorback walked out the door, calling over his shoulder, “We’ll make it.”
She stared at the closed door. “What happens if we get caught?”
Cowboy hitched his hip on the edge of a dresser. “To him? Nothing. To you, with your situation? God only knows. Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
“I don’t have a choice.” In truth she felt ready for nothing, anxiety permeating her nervous system like a toxin. What could possibly prepare her for the journey ahead, a trip back in time to the place she swore never to return, and the trail through a desert where so many had died? She didn’t like it one bit. “How sure are you about this route?”
“Born and raised just a few miles from there. This is your best chance into the country.”
She nodded. Cowboy instilled confidence, just as the other men she’d met from HERO Force. They were a formidable crew, exactly the type of men she imagined protected the United States at the elitist levels of the military. Too bad she didn’t have as much confidence in herself. “How long will it take us to walk?”
“Depends how fast you go. It’s forty miles of sandy, uneven terrain. Punishing heat. You’ll be able to cover one to two miles an hour. How’s your endurance?”
“I run ten miles a week.”
“Then for you, I’d say three days, give or take.” He folded up the map.
“The Democratic National Conference starts tomorrow!”
“And runs for four days. You can still make it before they officially make him the nominee.”
“Three damn days to hike.” She shook her head. “How long would it take Razorback without me?”
“Normally? Day and a half, maybe two.” He shrugged and handed her the map. “With his lungs healing from the smoke inhalation? I’m not sure.”
Logan had declared Razorback to have one very lucky set of lungs, but he’d also advised he lie low for a few days—the exact opposite of what was about to happen.
She stared at the map. The convention was in Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. Her daughter would be thousands of miles away. A physical ache seemed to stab at her abdomen. “Do you have kids?”
“No, ma’am, though I hope to one day.”
She sniffed, tucking the map into her back pocket. “I’ve never been away from her. Not for a single day of her life.” Saying goodbye to Selena that morning had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done, though she’d kept up a good front, insisting it was just a fun trip with a friend.
“Sloan will take good care of her until her passport comes through. Maybe she’ll even make it to the States before you do.”
She nodded. “Let’s hope so.” There was a knock at the door. “That must be the lawyer.”
“I’ll let him in on my way out. I wish you well, Jackie.” He touched the rim of his cowboy hat. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to watch a political convention on TV.” H
e kissed her cheek. “Safe travels.”
Cowboy left and the solicitor walked in. Jackie drew in a shaking breath. Seven and a half years after Selena’s birth, it was finally time to fill in the blank on her daughter’s birth certificate.
19
Razorback drove Bill’s pickup truck with Jackie by his side, the seat hard and awkward against his back. The air conditioning didn’t work, so the windows were rolled down to the thick, humid air, which rushed through the cab with a deafening sound.
At least the noise made the silence between them easier to take, neither of them having spoken since they’d climbed in here more than two hours earlier. Hell, he might have talked if he’d had a damn clue what to say, or if he wasn’t so blown away by what had transpired.
He’d stood behind her as she signed the official documents that made Selena legally his daughter, and when she penned the explanatory letter to go with her new will, describing a reunion with Ian Rhodes and Jackie’s desire for him to take his rightful place in their daughter’s life, should anything happen to Jackie.
It was a lie. A ruse. Deception. But it was more real than anything else in his life, a tie that bound him legally to another human being. A child, no less.
He wasn’t sure what to do with that.
He had no business being a guardian to a hamster or a goddamn goldfish, much less a child. And while he knew he would do everything in his power to protect Jackie on this journey, he could only imagine what they might come up against when they challenged the political machine. SVX might be the least of their worries. This could be a hell of a lot worse.
Her death was a very real possibility, as was his own. He’d be lying if he said otherwise. So he’d driven alongside her in silence, unsure of what to say, both deeply touched and profoundly unsettled.
While the hike around the checkpoint was a difficult task, it was bound to be the easiest of those that awaited them in the next few days. How would Jackie fare on the trek? She appeared to be physically fit, but there were different types of fitness and this situation would require an inner strength not everyone possessed.
He allowed himself a glance in her direction. Her skin was shiny from the heat, her hair blowing in the breeze. Her serene expression made her appear lit from within. She looked formidable. Capable. Determined. Yes, she had the fortitude for what lay ahead.
He took a ramp to the right, merging onto a smaller road that would take them into the town where they would spend the night before beginning their hike in the morning.
The sun hung low and blazed through the windshield, the glare of it combined with the heat radiating off the dashboard reminding him of Icarus, his wax wings melting as he neared certain death. That might be where they were heading, after all.
“I’m sorry,” she said, loudly enough to be heard over the rushing of air past his ears.
“What for?”
He saw her turn toward him in his peripheral vision. “You know.”
For needing his name on that document, for pulling him so securely and deeply into her life with the simple stroke of a pen. He, who clearly wasn’t father material. He, who knew better than to attach himself to a woman when he was only half a man. He reached for her hand and held it. “It’s all right.”
“Can we stop pretending, please? With everything else, I just don’t have the energy for make-believe.”
She sounded so tired, so sincere, so beautiful. The thought struck him. Yes, she was physically beautiful, but now that everything else had been stripped away—the resort, her daughter—the raw, battered beauty of her very self was shining through, as stunning as the flaming sun now setting in the sky.
He longed to pull to the side of the road, to stare at that face, touch it, hold her jaw in his hands. Meet the stare that would be empty and so completely full of truth. She was as broken as he was, and he yearned to stretch alongside her and shore up her weaknesses where he was strong. Fit his body to hers and find a semblance of perfection in a world that had veered so damn far away from it. The desire was so strong he was dizzy with his need for her.
“Are we almost there?” she asked.
“Just a few miles more.” An omniscient certainty settled inside him. Their lives were intersecting, one piercing the other like a razor-sharp knife.
He knew as he pulled into the parking lot of the small strip motel that she felt it, too, and he wasn’t surprised when she said, “Only one room, Ian,” as he got out of the truck.
He closed the door and leaned back into the window, taking in that stoic, pragmatic face of hers, so bold and honest in what she wanted. The air between them seemed to hum with energy, his body like a grounding rod in an electrical storm. “You’re sure?”
Her eyes were dark, the green seemingly overtaken by the black of her irises. “Yes.”
With a nod, he stepped back from the vehicle and headed inside. His vision was wavy, whether from the heat of the baking pavement or his heightened physiological state, he couldn’t be sure. This was crazy, insane, yet it made perfect sense. The final segment of a circle being drawn, the direction of the pen and the curve of the line making the shape’s completion all but inevitable.
And he wanted her.
Damn, how he wanted her.
He signed for the room, the jagged edge of the old-fashioned key digging into his hand, and he pushed back outside. Jackie stood on the sidewalk with her back to him, his eyes drinking in the curves of her body before he spoke. “Room seven.”
She fell into step beside him, her arm lightly brushing his, and his cock pressed against the fly of his shorts. He opened the door, gesturing for her to go first, then followed her inside. The air was comfortably cool and smelled like clean laundry.
“I’d like to take a shower,” she said.
“Okay. I’m going to hit that store across the street. You want anything?”
“Wine would be nice. Would you bring my bag in for me? I should have grabbed it.”
“Sure thing.”
“And if they have a mailbox, you can mail the package.”
The box from the hallway closet that contained her proof of McGrath’s heritage. They were shipping it to themselves at a post office across the border, where it would be held.
Razorback got the bag first, leaving it outside the closed bathroom door. The sound of the shower was an unexpected intimacy and he paused, listening to the water as it fell. When was the last time a woman had showered around him? His wife? The women he slept with these days didn’t know where he lived, and they sure as fuck didn’t shower at his place.
But all that was changing.
He furrowed his brow. He’d accepted the role of Selena’s father, if it came to that. He wasn’t the same man he was yesterday, or the day before, or the year before that. The feet that had been frozen in place since his world imploded had been forced into movement, forward motion, and despite his resentment, he knew it was good.
His eyes went to the bed, his mind to the memory of his first trip to Mexico. It had been his honeymoon, for God’s sake, and even that felt less momentous than this, less ceremonial. Tonight he and Jackie would make love, solidifying their connection and the promises he’d made to protect her and Selena forever.
He left the room and went back into the heat, his immediate need for condoms the only thing strong enough to pull him away from her.
20
Jackie let the warm water run down her face, turning her head for a deep breath of steamy air. She hadn’t been alone, hadn’t been allowed to just be a woman by herself in years. She was a mother first, a business owner second, and an exhausted ghost of herself the rest of the time.
But right now, she was just a woman in a shower, waiting on a man. Was it selfish of her to think that way? To revel in this moment, enjoy the sweet anticipation of the next? Tomorrow would be grueling, and the day after that—the difficulty and trials that lay ahead too much to contemplate. She couldn’t let herself think of Selena, wouldn’t torture herself
with what-ifs.
No.
Tonight she would focus her attention within these four walls, take Ian in her hands and hold him against her body, feel the solid weight of him between her legs, where she hadn’t felt a man in far too long. She’d once been a deeply sensual being, the chance to be with him rousing that part of her from a long and dreamless sleep.
He’d been quiet after the paternity ruse, brooding in the truck, and she didn’t blame him for his discomfort. But the magnitude of that request had brought him closer, even as he railed against it, firmly pushing him across the line that had kept them apart.
She turned off the water and stepped out, drying herself off with a towel. His hands would soon be on her skin. She cupped one breast, imagining it was he who touched her. She sighed, dropping her hand before wiping the condensation off the mirror and staring at her reflection.
He called, “Your things are right outside the door,” making her jump. A burst of adrenaline had her heart beating quickly.
“Thank you.” She was wasting time. She got her clothes and dressed quickly before entering the bedroom. He sat on the edge of the far bed with his forearms on his knees, the lamp on the nightstand throwing the unmarred half of his face into deep shadow. He was looking at her so intently she stopped moving. God, he was sexy. Danger and a handsome beauty mixed across the striking features of his face.
His eyes fell and he looked to the nightstand. Two motel keys sat on its surface.
Two keys. Not one.
The prowess that had filled her in the shower drained into the floor, rejection curling in her stomach like too much wine.
“Jackie…” he said, his voice gravelly and deep. “We can’t do this.”
He was leaving her. He wouldn’t stay. After all her fantasies in the shower, the certainty he’d be with her in the night. “Why?” She sounded small and childish, and she hated that she asked the question.
He stood, turning his back to her and picking up one of the keys. “I left the wine you wanted and some food. Don’t drink too much or you’ll be dehydrated for the trek tomorrow.”