She laughed and said firmly, “Where they’re going, Mark, appearance is the last thing I’m looking for. It’s all about taste, right?” She saw a slight hitch come to one corner of his mouth over her teasing, and then proclaimed, “These taste great!” and she reached for more.
Mark looked relieved as she continued wolfing down the broken cookie bits. Then, he slowly reached over and took a few of the larger chunks. Popping them into his mouth, he chewed on them.
“They’re really good, aren’t they?” Mattie said, a big smile on her face.
“Yeah,” he mumbled, “they’re not bad …”
“Well, don’t look so surprised, Reuss. Like I said, you can’t mess up a cookie!” She grabbed several more fragments of cookie and saw his shoulders, which had been taut, relax.
Now, Mattie knew why he’d been tense during lunch: Mark was worried the cookies would taste bad even if his tuna efforts were a success. How many times had Jeb criticized him? Probably too many to count, which explained his demeanor right now. Was he expecting her to tear into him? Tell him he was no good at doing anything like Jeb always had? Mattie would never do that to him—or to anyone else.
To her relief, she watched a boyish grin broaden across his face. At last, he believed her, and was accepting her praise. He’d heard all his life he was no good, that he wouldn’t amount to anything, and that he couldn’t do anything right. Now, he was learning that he could succeed at something, and it filled her with pride.
After they picked through the cookies, nothing but some tiny crumbs were left at the bottom of the plastic box. Mark picked it up, snapped the lid back on, and slid it into the plastic bag. Leaning over, he opened the thermos and produced two heavy mugs.
“Coffee to go with our cookies,” he teased, pouring her a cup.
“Thanks, this is the perfect feast, Mark. I’m full, my tummy is happy, and my taste buds are singing.” She saw a rare sparkle, in his eyes as he allowed himself to lap up her genuine praise.
“I’m glad.” He set his red plastic mug aside, capped the thermos, and set it near the bags. Picking up his coffee mug again, he cradled the cup in both hands between his crossed legs. “Mattie, there’s something I want to discuss with you,” he began heavily, his brows pinched. “I think you need to know about it.”
“Okay,” she said, hearing the seriousness in his voice, the apprehension and low tone of it. “Mark, I’m here for you. I always have been. Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it together.”
He was quiet a moment, then began, “No one has been more loyal, true, and honest with me than you have, Mattie.” He moved his hands around the cup, staring down at it for a moment, trying to gather the words he wanted to say. Heaving a ragged sigh, he forced himself to hold her gaze. “And I trust you more than anyone on this earth. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do, Mark.”
“Well,” he muttered, “I have something so top secret, so damned dangerous, that if it got into the wrong hands, it could become deadly. But I need to share it with you, anyway. Because if I don’t, I’m afraid I’ll lose you. And I’ve lost everything else in my life. You’ve been the only one to stand by me come hell or high water. You’ve defended me. You’ve always cared for me, like a mama bear with her cub.”
Shaken by the tone in his tightening voice, the utter bleakness in his expression, Mattie felt fear race through her. When Mark said, “top secret,” what did that really mean? Was he going to tell her something from his past as a Marine? “Mark, just tell me, please. What on earth is going on?”
CHAPTER 10
Mark tried to gird himself for what he was about to share with Mattie. His gut was as tight as a rock, his pulse skyrocketing, adrenaline starting to leak into his bloodstream.
Mattie sat there, trying to convey calm despite the fears that began to rise within her. She was determined to give him all the support he needed.
Mark looked up at her and felt so much damned love for her that he could barely admit it to himself. He knew he had to get this out in the open because if he didn’t, he’d lose her. It was an instinctive knowing that had saved his life, and Mark always paid attention to it.
“What I’m going to say can never be repeated to anyone, Mattie, not even Wyatt. I know how close you are to your brother, but he’s in the security business at the highest levels. I love him like he was the brother I never had, but he can’t know of this conversation. Do you promise?” He drilled her with a hard look to emphasize how important this was to them both. Mark could see her wrestling with his request.
“Is this about something illegal?” she asked, finally. “Because if it is, maybe you’d better not tell me, Mark.”
He knew the gossip around town the last several months was that he’d gone into the drug trade as a drug soldier. There was nothing he could do to stop that kind of talk, but he could see Mattie knew about it. “This isn’t illegal. It’s top secret.”
“Okay …” she whispered, rubbing her brow.
“I hope you know better than to listen to gossip, Mattie.”
She snorted a little. “Ever since you suddenly disappeared and someone saw you driving a truck with a Mexican license plate across the US border at El Paso and into Ciudad Juarez the word was out. You were tagged a drug runner,” she winced. “And worse.”
He shook his head, looking uncomfortable, but not guilty. “I know there’s gossip from some of the town folk that I’m a no-good drug runner.”
“Well, I never believed it!” Mattie declared strongly, straightening, her fists clenching momentarily. “You warned us before the Cardona cartel came across our property that night just before Christmas. You saved Wyatt’s life, too.” Her voice broke. “Mark, whatever you were doing, you came through for us that night. That’s all that matters to me.” She pressed her hand against her heart. “You proved you were on the right side of the law. You saved my brother, and I don’t need to know anything else.”
“I know you don’t think I’m a bad guy.”
She stared hard at him. “Then what are you going to tell me? Does it have something to do with that night?”
He squirmed again. Mattie’s unerring intuition had hit the mark. “Yeah,” was the clipped reply. “Yeah, it’s part of it, but not the whole story. But after I tell all of it to you, Mattie, you can never speak of it again to anyone but me. If you do, you can put us and both our families at risk.”
She blanched, her mouth tightening. “I promise to tell no one. Go on …” she told him.
“When I was in the Marine Recons, one of my best friends, a buddy in my unit, was Sergeant Juan Martinez. We saved each other’s hides so many times in Afghanistan that I lost count. Juan was happily married to Maria. They had a home in Nogales, Arizona. Paloma, their baby daughter, had just been born when Juan and I got assigned to the recon unit over there.”
He looked around as if to assure himself no one was nearby, then returned his attention to Mattie, who sat tensely, hands tightly clasped. “We were together in that same unit for five years, Mattie. Juan became like a brother to me, just as Wyatt is. He got out when his enlistment was up two years ago and I lost track of him. He just seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. I tried to get hold of Maria by Skype and email, but she’d disappeared, too.”
“That seems odd …” Mattie murmured. “Good friends usually keep in touch.”
“Yeah,” he said, heaving a raspy sigh. “It was totally unlike them. When I wasn’t on deployment, I was at their home in Nogales, Arizona, sleeping on their couch. We were all very close, and little Paloma always remembered me when I showed up. I came home, once a year for thirty days of leave, and they asked me to stay with them. So, yes, it was upsetting to me to lose track of them. Something didn’t feel right.”
Mattie nodded. She was feeling concern about Mark’s friends, too.
“When my enlistment finished, I went straight to Nogales to look up Maria, hoping to find Juan and find out what was going
on with them. The house they had bought was no longer theirs—it had been sold and someone else was living there. The new owners didn’t know where Juan and Maria had gone. Then, when I was at a family kind of joint called Dollar Diner over in Rio Rico, on the way back north from their place, I got a call on my cell from the DEA four months after coming home. They wanted me to stop in Tucson and talk to the regional director. They had a job offer for me.”
“The DEA?” she muttered, scowling. “The Drug Enforcement Administration?”
“Yes … of course I did as they asked and stopped by the federal building in Tucson. The director wanted to hire me for a special undercover assignment. He told me that Juan Martinez had been a DEA undercover agent since he’d left the Marine Corps. He was working his way up through the Cardona cartel in Chihuahua, Mexico. The DEA wanted to capture Diego Cardona, their leader, by luring him across the US border. It was Juan’s job to figure out Diego’s comings and goings, and he’d spent two years insinuating himself into the cartel.”
“Uh, oh. Something happened, didn’t it?”
“Yes.” His voice grew tighter, and Mark was clearly fighting back his emotions. “One of Cardona’s men didn’t trust Juan. No one knew why. But Juan received intel that they were going to set him up and kill him. He found out the details of the plan from one of his cartel buddies who didn’t want to see him taken out. The plan was to take Juan across the border to the US and shoot him in the head, placing his body in the vehicle and burning it so he’d never be identified.”
“Oh … no!” Mattie cried. “How horrible!”
“When the director told me that, I knew I’d take his assignment. The DEA wanted me to go directly to Cardona’s headquarters and try to get hired by them. They gave me a fake name and a fake history that would be verifiable when the cartel checked me out. I grew a beard so they wouldn’t know what I looked like without one. It was just part of my cover.”
Her eyes widened. “Did Juan know about this?”
“Eventually, when he saw me show up, he knew something was up. Of course, I wasn’t at all sure I could pull off what the DEA wanted. They were trying to save Juan and his family. To do that, I’d have to be adopted by the cartel and accept a challenge from the drug lord to test my loyalty.”
“What does that mean?” Mattie asked.
“Every drug soldier has to go out and kill someone Diego wants murdered. If the soldier refuses, he’s shot by a loyal soldier in the head and disposed of. The DEA wanted me to offer to take Juan across the border as proof of my loyalty to the drug lord of the cartel.”
Grimacing, Mattie stared at him for a long moment. “You weren’t really going to kill him, were you?”
“No. But nearly three months into my undercover assignment, I overheard Diego talking to his lieutenants. They decided that they wanted Juan’s body found in the US, somewhere in Arizona, knowing he was an American citizen. They decided to get Juan transferred to the US under some phony order, where they’d kill him, keeping Cardona’s hands clean in his home country. They would stage the murder far from the El Paso border area and have it occur in Arizona. That way, they were hoping authorities in the US would think it was a robbery gone bad.”
Mattie sat taking this all in. Who would have suspected what Mark had gone through, when others were thinking he was a drug runner? He was a hero!
Mark went on, not looking at Mattie, his thoughts back in the past he was describing. “Cardona didn’t want to lead law enforcement back to Mexico, or to kick up the DEA’s interest in his Mexican operations in Texas. He was afraid there would be issues with his shipments across the border to the US. They wanted Juan killed quietly in Arizona and leave no trace of their involvement.”
“Why wouldn’t Cardona make you kill someone earlier than three months?”
“Because I became his personal driver. I wasn’t out doing drug trafficking runs. Diego took a liking to me, and I don’t know why. But when I went to talk to him and ask for a job, he said he needed a driver more than he needed another drug soldier. His other driver, Oscar, had just been killed in a shootout with a rival Mexican cartel that was trying to take over some of Diego’s turf in the Sonora region. I told him I was a damned good driver and a mechanic. He took me at my word and I was hired.”
“That was lucky,” Mattie breathed.
“Everything about an undercover assignment is dicey, Mattie. Yes, I got lucky.”
“But what about Juan? Was he there at HQ, too?”
“Yes, but in a different capacity. He was a drug soldier. He drove one of the four trucks that carried marijuana, packages of cocaine, and pharmaceutical drugs to Diego’s headquarters from different parts of Mexico.”
“When he saw you, what did he do?”
“Nothing. He kept his game face on just like I did.”
“Did you ever get a chance to talk with him alone, away from Cardona and his men?”
“Yes, about three weeks into my assignment, we had an opportunity and took it. Then, I told Juan everything. He was relieved but he, like me, knew the DEA mission I’d volunteered for had less than a fifty-percent chance of success. Juan was more worried about Maria and Paloma being murdered, than about himself. I told him the DEA had already whisked them into the Witness Protection Program so they couldn’t be found and killed. He was relieved to know if we pulled this off, he would be immediately reunited with his family.”
She gave him a worried look. “You all had such terrible stress to deal with! Did Maria know what was going on?”
“She was told Juan was in trouble, but the agency didn’t go into the details with her because the less she knew, the better. The DEA had agents come to her home and tell her that if she didn’t sell the house and come with them, Diego would order his drug soldiers to murder her and her daughter. She willingly went into WITSEC, the US Witness Security Program. They’re now safe.”
Rubbing her brow, she whispered, “My God, Mark, this is so dangerous—for all of you!”
“I went in knowing that I might not make it out, Mattie. I knew I had to try because these people are like family to me. They’ve always had my back, always cared for me, and now I wanted to return the favor.”
“How did you do it? I mean, this seems like such a risky situation.”
“All undercover work is,” he said grimly. “If I hadn’t been a Recon behind the lines, as well as having worked in black ops, I don’t think I could have pulled this off.”
“What happened?”
“In the end, I persuaded Diego to let me prove my “manhood” and loyalty to him by taking Juan across the border, near Nogales, Arizona, to kill him. He was very pleased with the idea and gave me permission. Juan was handcuffed and I drove him across the border one night in an old, rusted Ford pickup truck. I had no one else with me, but Cardona wanted a video of Juan’s body in the truck I drove when I returned to his HQ. I told him I’d get it.”
“So you both escaped?”
“Well, the DEA met us at a pre-arranged spot on American soil that night. They had a male cadaver with them and we put it in the truck, threw on the gasoline and burned him and the truck while I took the video. They immediately took Juan back to Tucson. I headed back to Cardona with the proof because it was important he think Juan was dead. We didn’t want that cartel to think otherwise or they’d try and find him and kill him and his family.
I took the video to Cardona and he was pleased, congratulated me and now I was a full fledged member of his ‘family.’ At the same time? I knew of the semi-trucks that were going to come across Wyatt’s ranch a week after that, so I stayed around to take part in it. I was able to contact the DEA and notify them. I then wanted to warn Wyatt through you, Mattie, which is why I came up for that visit just before Christmas, to warn you. Except, Tal Culver was there and cut it short.
I pivoted, told you to tell Wyatt and left, going back over the border to wait for the mission to take place two days later. It was the best I could do to warn your famil
y ahead of time.”
Mattie shook her head, “This is so complex, and so dangerous for you, Mark. You’re incredibly brave.”
“I decided that night after the government agencies stopped Cardona’s trucks on that dirt road on Lockwood ranch property, that I wasn’t going back to Cardona. I was finished. Seeing Wyatt almost die of a heart attack did something to me, Mattie. I just wanted out of this business of killing all together. That’s when I came to you to help me with my broken arm, and you did. I holed up in a warehouse about a mile from where you lived. My handler called the next day, and they sent a car from El Paso to come and pick me up. I quit the DEA and I came home to you. To a life I wanted more than anything else.”
Mattie stared in disbelief at him. “Oh, Mark, that was such a dangerous operation to undertake!”
Shrugging, he asked, “What in life isn’t?”
“So Juan and his family now have new names and identities?”
“Yes. Even I don’t know where they’re at and I don’t want to know. They deserve to have a permanent safety net so they can go on and lead normal lives. Juan served his country in the military, and then he joined the DEA after his service, and again, sacrificed himself and his family. I’m glad the DEA had his back and supported him when everything went to hell in a hand basket.”
“But you sacrificed, too, Mark.”
“I would do this mission in a heartbeat all over again if I had to, Mattie. I love that man like a brother. I always will. Love doesn’t die or stop just because things get rough and challenging.”
She compressed her lips. “I’m so proud of you, Mark.”
“You know, I take care of the people who are important to me, Mattie. I’d go to hell and back for them. That’s why I came to your kindergarten class, to warn you that Cardona was going to drive across Rocking L land.”
“And no one knows what you’ve done to help so many others,” she rattled, tears coming to her eyes. “If they only knew …”
He reached out, his hand covering hers for a moment. “Mattie, what they think doesn’t concern me. What does concern me is how you see me. I wanted you to know the truth, and in divulging it to you, I’ve now put you at risk. I’ve put our families at risk, too.”
Secret Page 11