“Tyler’s lucky it’s Friday.” By that, Kendra meant she had gotten her paycheck tonight. Like the rest of them, Kendra was always broke by the end of the financial week, which for her ended on Fridays. Which was why she had offered to pick up groceries for Sam. Sam’s week ended on Saturday nights, when A+ Collateral ponied up.
“I’ll pay you back Sunday,” Sam said.
“I know,” Kendra answered. “Will you be done soon?”
“Should be. I’m on the trail of this BMW. When I find it, that’s it for the night.”
“Nice car.” Kendra’s voice perked up. “Maybe the owner will be around. If he owns a BMW, he could be your ticket.”
“If his BMW is being repossessed, I doubt it,” Sam retorted. “Anyway, I don’t need that kind of ticket. Tyler and I are doing just fine.”
“Yeah, I heard it before.” Kendra was determined to get her fixed up, and Sam was just as determined to resist. Tyler was a wonderful gift, but his father—not so much. In fact, as soon as he’d found out Sam was pregnant he’d cut and run. Sam had seen him exactly twice since. He’d contributed zero dollars to Tyler’s support, and since he didn’t have a steady job there was nothing Sam could do about it. They were the same age, and he was still running around free as the wind, while she—she had grown up. And in the process pretty much sworn off men for life.
“Got to go,” Sam said as the locater affixed to the dashboard beeped, and disconnected. The beep meant she was getting close. Fortunately, the car she was after was only two years old and fancy enough to have its own built-in GPS, with its own built-in special signal. Sam’s equipment wasn’t exactly state of the art, but it was up to date enough to lock onto the signal once she was within a few blocks of her quarry.
Left on First, another left on Hennessey. Right down by the river. The night was black and breezy, and the mighty Mississippi gleamed like an oil slick under the light of the pale full moon. Across the river in St. Louis proper, she could see the twinkling lights of the big paddleboats that were the city’s floating casinos. The bridges, the Arch, the tall buildings that made up the St. Louis skyline—all were glowing with light and, from this distance, beautiful.
Across the river in Illinois, where Sam lived, East St. Louis was like that other St. Louis’s really ugly stepsister.
“There you are,” Sam murmured with satisfaction as her beeper started going off insistently. The car she was looking for was parked at the end of Fortnum, just up from the warehouse district. She spotted the big black Beemer with a satisfied smile. A distant glow from the security lighting on the warehouses was all the light there was. On a nearby corner, the only streetlamp for a couple of blocks wasn’t working. From the look of it, it had been beaten into submission long ago. There were other cars on the street, most of them junkers, none parked too close to her objective. The buildings across the street were brick tenements, condemned and slated for destruction as part of the city’s effort to combat blight. Started before the economy tanked, it probably had seemed like a good idea at the time. But besides moving the tenants out and boarding up the windows, nothing more had been done. And now the buildings were reoccupied, by the local gangs and drug dealers, free of charge. A lot of activity going on over there tonight. Probably something she wanted to keep her eye on, in case the Beemer’s owner was across the street making a buy.
People, especially men, had a tendency to object if they caught her repoing their cars. Which was why she worked in the middle of the night, and at least part of the reason she kept the gun and tire iron handy.
Maneuvering the truck to within about nine feet of the Beemer’s front bumper, Sam lowered the winch, shoved the gun into the waistband of her jeans and pulled her work shirt down over it, and got out, casting a quick glance inside the Beemer just to make sure that it was as empty as she’d thought at first glance: it was. All black leather, clean and expensive, with no personal belongings in view. Good. Personal belongings were a bitch: people were always claiming they’d been stolen.
A gust of warm summer wind sent a tendril of her hair skittering across her mouth. Impatiently Sam pulled it free, tucked it behind her ear. The mass of her hair she’d confined in a low ponytail to keep it out of the way, but it was thick and wavy with a mind of its own, and strands inevitably worked loose. So close by the river, the air smelled a little like dead fish, with a hint of something acrid—probably burning meth or crack. The chug of her truck engine was loud, and so was the clank of the big metal chain as she got it into position. The racket always made her a little nervous—no covering up that sound—and given the activity across the way it could conceivably attract attention.
Keeping an eagle eye cocked for trouble, Sam got to work. Her truck was a piece of crap, but she’d used it long enough that she knew its quirks inside and out, and could work fast. Grabbing the heavy chain and yanking in order to extend it fully, she hooked it to the BMW, secured the safety straps, and pushed the lever that would haul the BMW up on its back tires.
That done, she was just checking the straps one last time before getting back into the truck when she noticed that the Beemer’s trunk had popped open. The trunk’s interior light hadn’t come on, but the lid was up and rocking. Frowning, casting a cautious look at the boarded-up houses where things were really starting to hop, she walked around behind the Beemer to shut the trunk before taking off for the drop yard.
She was within a foot of the rear bumper, her hand already up in the air reaching for the trunk lid, when she saw that there was a man, bloody and bound and looking like he’d been beaten to within an inch of his life, in the trunk.
Black hair, cut short; thirtyish, maybe; tall (from the way he was curled in there like a paper clip); solid-looking shoulders and chest; muscular arms pulled tightly behind his back beneath a short-sleeved T-shirt; narrow hips and long legs in—black, wet, shiny?—jeans.
Black-wet-shiny equaled . . . blood?
All that registered in a stunned instant. As she stared down in shock at the man he groaned.
Sam felt a cold shiver of fear run down her spine.
CHAPTER TWO
Danny figured he’d probably been inhaling fresh air for maybe a couple of breaths before the fact with its concordant implications registered. He had been drifting in and out of consciousness, and it was getting harder and harder to resurface every time he went under. The blood pouring out of his leg was probably largely responsible, but trussed up like he was there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot he could do about it. He needed a tourniquet, or at least a pressure bandage, neither one of which he could do a damned thing about.
The good news was, it was starting to seem more and more likely that he would bleed to death before Veith got back to him.
At least, that was the good news before the fresh air intrigued him enough to bring him to the surface one more time, and he forced his eyes to open long enough to behold a truly startling sight: a girl was staring down at him.
Pretty girl, early twenties, delicate nose and jaw, tendrils of long black hair blowing in the wind. Baseball cap pulled down low over her eyes, which were narrowing even as he met them. Grim cast to a wide, luscious mouth.
His brain was admittedly a little scrambled, but in no way was he hallucinatory: she was definitely there, silhouetted against the starry night sky, one hand on the open trunk lid. She stood maybe five-seven depending on the shoes she wore—he couldn’t see much lower than her waist—and she was wearing a short-sleeved blue shirt with a name badge on it sort of like a service station attendant would wear. She was pale and very slim, and she seemed as surprised to see him as he was to see her.
Only a whole lot less happy about it.
“Help,” he croaked.
Her brows snapped together.
“I’ll call the cops.” She started to turn like she was going to leave.
“Wait! No!” Jesus, it was hard to think coherently, much less talk. But he knew this: if she went running off, he’d be willing to bet do
llars to doughnuts he would never see daylight again. “You’ve got to—”
But he never got to finish what he was going to say.
“What the—” The hastily broken off exclamation from somewhere behind her, uttered in a harsh male voice, was the only head’s-up either one of them got. Even as Danny opened his mouth to warn her, she whirled in response. Too late: a pistol butt slammed hard into her temple. Danny saw the flash of it as the moonlight caught the metal. The resultant thunk made him sick. The girl dropped like a rock. The burly outline of Thug One took her place, staying visible just long enough for Danny to identify him before he disappeared from view, stooping down in the wake of the girl. Sergio Torres, a Zeta enforcer and Veith minion. Thirties, short with no neck, dark hair and skin, got his jollies hurting people. The fact that the girl had absolutely nothing to do with any of this wouldn’t weigh on him in the least. The thought of yelling for help while the opportunity existed occurred, only to be discarded for two reasons: one, he was fairly certain, if Torres was cold-cocking a girl, that there was no one nearby; and two, he was absolutely certain it would earn him a clout over the head, if nothing worse. Danny was just cursing himself and God and the universe in general for his absolute inability to do anything to help her, or to take advantage of this split-second opportunity to shout for help, make a break for it, something, when Torres straightened with the girl in his arms—
—and dumped her into the trunk behind him. Just threw her in like she was a load of garbage. Limp as a rag doll, slumped against his back, she was warm, solid, not particularly heavy, but took up all the extra space there was. The weight of her landing against his hands, bound behind him at the wrists by a pair of plastic zip ties, was excruciating. They’d quit hurting a while back, and now Danny knew that it was because they’d gone numb.
They were numb no longer, and he grimaced as he cautiously moved his injured fingers. At least one of them felt like it was broken.
That was when Danny realized that he was in a weird kind of semifetal position, all scrunched up against the lip on the open end of the trunk. And the reason for that was that the front of the car seemed to have been raised up in the air while he was unconscious. Whatever, the shift had scooted him forward and left a small amount of space behind him. Which the girl’s body now filled.
“See you again soon, Marco,” Torres said.
The trunk lid slammed shut. Once more Danny found himself trapped in cavelike darkness.
Shit. He’d missed his chance.
To do what? He’d already nixed yelling. Jumping from the trunk and running for it likewise wasn’t going to happen, not bound as he was, and not injured as he was. Hell, even if he wasn’t hobbled hand and foot he wasn’t even sure he could walk. Talking them into letting him go wasn’t going to happen, either.
So just what exactly did he think he should have been able to do?
Good question. Answer: something. Because the alternative was lie there and wait to die.
“Why the hell didn’t you just shoot her?” Thug Two demanded. Muffled as they were by the closed trunk lid and the sound of the girl’s breathing and his own pulse hammering in his ears, the words were still audible. Danny heard them, but didn’t recognize the voice.
“Out here on the street?” That was Torres replying. “Anybody could be watching.”
“I don’t see nobody.”
“Doesn’t mean they don’t see . . .”
Danny lost the rest of it as they apparently moved away from the trunk. He lay there in the stifling darkness, feeling like there wasn’t enough air in there to permit him to draw a good breath, woozy as all get out, hurting all over, although the pain in his thigh was the worst by far. The carpet covering the floor of the trunk was scratchy against his cheek and the bare skin of his arm. The metal floor beneath was hard as granite.
Jesus Christ, where had the girl come from? Whoever she was, they were going to kill her, too. Nothing else they could do now that they’d thrown her in the trunk with him.
The fact that she was an innocent, a civilian, with nothing to do with any of this wouldn’t even slow them down. Although Danny had never had up-close-and-personal contact with Veith before, Veith was well known to the FBI. He was as ruthless a killer as any hit man the Bureau had ever tracked, and the fact that he was now working for the Zetas would make him an even higher-priority target, providing Danny lived long enough to tell anyone about it. The Zetas themselves were the most notoriously brutal of Mexico’s drug cartels. Just a couple of weeks before, a video had surfaced of them beheading six members of one of their rival gangs, the Gulf cartel. The fact that one of those killed was an undercover DEA agent named Carlos Ramirez was known only to a very limited circle within law enforcement. But it had been that murder that had allowed the newly busted Rick Marco to make his sweetheart deal with the government he had betrayed. It had also created the job opening that called for Danny, who in height and weight and coloring bore enough of a general resemblance to Marco to be tapped to take his place, to pretend to be Marco to draw the Zetas’ fire while the real Marco was whisked off to a secure location to spill the beans about everything he knew.
A loud grinding sound from outside the car refocused Danny’s attention in a hurry. It was accompanied by a jolt: by whatever weird means they were moving, they were under way again now. It felt like the car was being towed, which would at least account for the sensation of the car having been hoisted onto its back wheels.
Clearly he’d been out of it for long enough to have missed something.
Something connected with the girl.
Time to make a move, or pack it in.
“Hey,” he said into the airless darkness. “Hey, girl, can you hear me?”
She lay heavy and inert against his back, increasing the discomfort in his cramping arms and injured hands, her weight pressing him inexorably forward. He could hear her breathing, so at least there was no doubt that she was alive. Remembering the sound of the blow that had struck her down, he figured she might be out for a while. Delicate bones, slender build—a fragile flower, if looks meant anything. Decorative, maybe, but he doubted that she was the type to bounce back fast.
Right now, he needed fast.
Danny cursed under his breath. With him in the shape he was in, she was the only hope either of them had.
“Miss,” he tried again, more politely in case that struck a chord, his tone urgent but not so loud that it would penetrate beyond the confines of the trunk. “Miss, can you hear me? You’ve got to wake up.”
Nothing. Danny tried jostling her, but regretted it almost as soon as he hunched up his back and pushed against her. There wasn’t any room, and moving hurt like a bitch.
He did it again anyway.
“Goddamn it, woman, if you don’t wake up we’re both going to die.”
She groaned. Danny could feel her stiffen against his back. Hope stirred inside him. Was she moving? Had she heard him? It was hard to tell. The car swayed and creaked. The little space they were in tilted and rocked. The impression he got was that the vehicles were turning a corner. At any minute Torres and company might stop and then Veith would show up and then . . .
Bang, bang. You’re dead.
“Miss, can you hear me?” Tension vibrated in Danny’s voice. Keeping himself conscious and focused required increasing effort. He wasn’t going to last much longer, he feared. And if he fainted, they were done for. “Miss?”
She sucked in air, stirred a little. Something—a change in her breathing, in the atmosphere around them—made him think she was conscious.
“Miss?” He felt like a fool calling her that. “What’s your name?”
For a moment he thought he’d been wrong: she wasn’t conscious after all.
Then a wobbly voice muttered, “Sam.”
Danny felt a rush of relief.
“Okay, Sam, this is really important.” Keeping his cool under extreme conditions had saved his life before. It didn’t seem likely tha
t it was going to make much difference now, but he wasn’t ready to give up and die yet, either. “I need you to focus here. We’ve only got a few minutes before they kill us.”
Again with the fluttery breath. “What—happened?” She sounded groggy, confused, but at least she was awake and talking.
He didn’t have time for lengthy explanations. “You ran across some bad guys, got hit in the head and thrown into a car trunk. This car trunk, with me. When we stop moving, the bad guys are going to open the trunk and kill you. And me, too, but probably you first, because they don’t need you for anything.”
“Who . . . ?” she began, still sounding out of it, but he cut her off ruthlessly.
“Doesn’t matter. There’s no time. Did you hear what I said about them killing you?”
He thought she nodded. Then, her voice scarcely more than a reedy breath, she said, “We’re in the trunk of the BMW, aren’t we? The one I was getting ready to tow away.”
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