“Joseph, sir. The plan was solid. We should have had more men or the kill order … Yes, he gave it now, but before it was alive only … I’m good for a day, but that bastard shot me and … yes, I appreciate it. I can make it easily, it’s only five or six miles and I have a vehicle … of course. That is the goal, sir. Thank you.”
Movement and shuffling. Kane moved out of sight, toward the jeep. It seemed as if the bastard kidnapper was meeting up with someone. Five or six miles … probably Mainero. Juarez had a presence there and it was six miles southeast. Nothing else was that close.
Kane had to assume that Joseph had already called in reinforcements. Siobhan had said he had, but Kane hadn’t seen or sensed anyone, and his instincts were sharp, especially when he was on full alert. Yet … they could be waiting for him. Waiting for him to come to them, in Juarez-controlled territory. Kane could defend himself against one, two, even more … but not against a virtual army. He didn’t have a death wish, he had no backup, and he needed to get out alive—with information that would help find Tobias.
He was going to end this now.
Kane listened as the door opened on rusty hinges. The kidnapper stepped out. Looked around. Winced at the pain in his leg. He had a backpack over his shoulder, and a gun in his hand.
Kane didn’t even need to step out of his hiding spot. He shot the kidnapper in his already injured leg. The man collapsed in the dirt. He still held his gun, fired in the direction Kane had been, but Kane had already moved away. He rushed the kidnapper before the bastard could get his bearings and kicked the gun out of his hand.
The bastard laughed. “You won’t get out of Mexico alive.”
“So I’ve been told many times.”
“You’re a dead man. Juarez has already sealed off the border.”
Bluff? Kane had crossed into Juarez territory more than an hour ago. Maybe he’d spent too much time being cautious. Waiting.
“Kill me,” he said. “Joseph will kill me anyway because your little redheaded bitch saw me and lived.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Kane said. “You’re going to tell me what I need to know.”
He laughed. “I’m not scared of you.”
The bastard was in pain. Kane stepped on his shot-up leg and the asshole screamed.
“Fuck you!”
“Why was the order originally a capture-alive order?”
“Probably to torture you,” he hissed. “Many people want to take a crack at your skull.”
“What did Tobias and Joseph think I would tell you?”
He was silent. Kane applied more pressure to his leg. To his credit, he didn’t cry out this time. He grunted instead.
Kane hit him in the jaw. “That’s for touching the redhead.”
Kane wanted to kill him. He also wanted to take him into custody and interrogate him—or turn him over to the feds. And—he wanted to leave him and let Tobias clean up his own mess.
Kane rolled the kidnapper over. He tried to crawl away, but Kane put his boot on his back and held him down. He searched his pockets. Located a knife, wallet, US passport, keys. He flipped over the passport.
Adam Duncan Dover III.
He opened the wallet. Inside he found another ID. A federal ID.
“You fucking traitor.”
Kane was torn. He couldn’t get out of Juarez territory dragging an injured, uncooperative prisoner. But he couldn’t just let this traitor go.
A sound registered in his subconscious. From down on the road.
If Dover was right and Juarez had sealed the border, they were going to sweep until they caught his scent.
Kane picked up Dover’s gun, his backpack, and kept his ID. Dover pushed himself up and leaned against the shack. “The war on drugs was lost before it started, Rogan. You’re fucking Don Quixote, and you remember what happened to him—he was beaten and died.”
Kane didn’t say anything. If this was only about the war on drugs, Kane would have quit years ago. It might have started out that way, but it was more than that now. Kane didn’t consider himself a hero, and he certainly wasn’t a saint. He didn’t believe in God and he didn’t believe in Hell. The only thing he believed in was evil, and it was rooted in bastards like Adam Dover and Joseph Contreras and Nicole Rollins and Tobias.
Kane left Dover alive but immobile, not going down the path toward the road because that was the direction of the sound. But he needed a vehicle. He’d have to hoof it to Mainero, where he could hot-wire a car. Or maybe he could reach Dover’s jeep and use it to get to Mainero. He’d have to head through the mountains to escape because every major road in this area would have a Juarez sentry. His plane was forty miles to the northwest. Not impossible to get to on foot, but it would take time. It would be dangerous, but he didn’t have a choice.
He moved out.
Ten minutes later he heard a single gunshot behind him.
Good-bye, traitor.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Samantha Archer fell back into bed and closed her eyes. Why had she let Brad stay?
Because you’re still in love with him.
She’d tried to tell herself she wasn’t. They’d been involved years ago, when they were both in Phoenix. She’d moved to the Houston office first, then she’d been promoted to lead the DEA’s San Antonio Resident Agency. When Brad had transferred here, as her subordinate, she remembered all the reasons she’d loved him before … and all the reasons it hadn’t worked out. Because she was his direct supervisor, it was easy to maintain the emotional distance. There had been a couple of times when they’d almost fallen in bed together, but she’d always put an end to it. And Brad finally stopped pushing.
Until last week.
Brad Donnelly was the kind of guy who was both very good and very bad for her. Gorgeous and alpha and brave. Cocky and hotheaded. Smart, and a smart-ass. He took too many risks, but he was usually right. He broke too many rules, but he also saved lives. He believed in their mission. He was loyal.
But one day he would cross a line they couldn’t come back from. One day he would end up fired or dead. And she, as his boss, didn’t want to be his lover when that day inevitably came.
Maybe in her next life.
She stretched and wished she could go back to sleep, but her brain wouldn’t stop thinking. For a few blissful hours she’d slept dreamlessly curled next to Brad, able to block the pain of yesterday, from seeing her dead agents to telling their families they were dead. It had been hell. Worse. She’d sell her soul if that meant she could turn the clock back twenty-four hours and stop the violence that defined June 15 and would forever be a day of mourning for the DEA.
“It’s five,” she mumbled as she dragged herself out of bed. She had a full day ahead of her. The ASAC of the Houston DEA office was coming in this morning for a big briefing at the FBI—but he wanted to meet with her first. Nine a.m., her office, even though she’d spent an hour on a video conference call with her boss, the AUSA, and higher-ups in the DOJ late yesterday afternoon.
Her headache was already returning.
She stretched, padded down the long hall to her kitchen to start the coffee, then back to her bedroom for a shower. She liked her house. She’d bought into a new subdivision shortly after taking the position in San Antonio. It was the smallest model in the area, though at over twenty-four hundred square feet it was more than enough for her. She’d been tired of renting apartments, and the one condo she’d bought, when she lived and worked in Phoenix, hadn’t retained its value. It was basically like renting, with more headaches.
But she’d had this house for four years, and she didn’t plan on moving anytime soon. She liked her job, liked her position, and if she got promoted into DC? Well, she’d cross that bridge when she came to it. She’d probably keep the house because she loved San Antonio and planned to retire here.
She’d washed her hair last night when she and Brad showered together. But she needed a quick, cold rinse to wake up. Two minutes later she stepped out and
grabbed the towel off the hook.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement in the long, steamed mirror.
But it was too late to do anything. She had no gun in the bathroom, no phone, and she’d sent Brad packing thirty minutes ago. The fleeting thought that he’d returned disappeared when Nicole Rollins stepped into the doorway.
Nicole fired the gun. The bullet hit Sam in the right knee, shattering it. Blinding pain rushed every nerve and she collapsed to the tile floor.
Sam wanted to tell Nicole that she wouldn’t get away with this, that they would track her down and find her, that she’d go to prison for the rest of her miserable life. Sam wanted to tell Nicole to go to hell, that she wasn’t afraid of her.
But Sam was afraid. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to die naked in her bathroom. She didn’t want to die at the age of forty-two when she had so much she still wanted to do.
Nicole smiled.
“You should consider yourself honored that I wanted to kill you myself,” she said.
“What the fuck do you want?” Her voice was weak, the pain in her leg making her nauseous. She’d never been shot before. Seventeen years in the DEA and she’d never once been shot.
“I want many things, Samantha. And I will get them all, because I always win.”
Nicole stepped into the bathroom and looked around with a smirk on her face. “I heard Brad was here last night. Let me clue you in on a little secret about Brad.”
Sam looked around in vain for anything she could use as a weapon. There was nothing. Even her can of hair spray was on the far side of the counter.
A gun trumped hair spray any day.
Nicole was going to kill her.
And there was nothing Sam could do about it.
Her bottom lip involuntarily quivered.
Nicole said, “Never mind.”
“What?”
“I don’t have time, and it doesn’t matter anyway. Brad will die this week. And Tom, down in McAllen, who figured out I used the money from the evidence locker to set up that hooker. My fault, really—but he’s going to die for it anyway. He’s on my list.” She looked at her watch. “Hmm, well, he’s already dead by now. And then I have a list of FBI agents who irritate me—at the top of it is that bitch who fucked with me. You did surprise me, though, letting her go down to Mexico in direct violation of every FBI protocol on the books. And didn’t even tell her boss about it. I was surprised, because I’ve never known you to bend let alone break the rules.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Nicole, let me help you. Please. Don’t—don’t kill me.”
Sam didn’t want to beg—God, she didn’t want to beg—but she didn’t want to die. She grabbed the counter and pulled herself up. Her knee was bleeding, pooling with the water on the damp tiles. It throbbed, alternately numb and hot.
Nicole looked at her quizzically. “You really didn’t know that Lucy Kincaid went down to Mexico with Kane Rogan to rescue Brad?”
Sam blinked. Now things began to make sense. Brad’s complete trust in Lucy, why he wanted to work with her all the time, why he was spending more time at FBI headquarters than in the DEA office. Sam had thought Brad had the hots for Lucy, until she found out the agent was living with a guy. But she’d saved his life, which explained his complete trust.
Sam had followed the rules when Brad was kidnapped. She’d gone through the proper channels, knowing that the longer they delayed, the greater the chances he would be dead. But she couldn’t do it any other way.
“Nicole—”
“I don’t want you to feel too bad. You were marginally competent. I had to be careful, especially around Brad. But I fooled you, and I fooled him, for years. Took me a long time to build up his trust, but then he trusted me more than anyone. And just for the record? You were dead as soon as I transferred into your office three years ago.”
Sam felt the bullet pierce her chest. She toppled over, facedown on the tile, vainly trying to grab the counter. The pain was worse than anything she could have imagined. Worse than the knee. She couldn’t breathe.
“I’d wanted to shoot you in the gut and let you die slowly, but Joseph reminded me that you might live long enough to drag your sorry ass to the phone. Not that you know anything, but it’s better this way.”
Sam didn’t feel the last bullet as it exploded in her brain.
Nicole fired twice more just because she felt like it.
* * *
Joseph drove Nicole the long way back to their hideout west of San Antonio. He stayed off the interstate as well as the state highways. The police had roadblocks earlier, but not on every road and they focused on highways heading toward the border. They couldn’t stop all cars leaving San Antonio all day, every day, and once they found the helicopter a hundred miles away, they pulled much of their local resources into the expanded zone.
Which had been Nicole’s plan all along. She understood how her former colleagues thought, how they operated, how they divided resources. And so far, she’d been right about everything. Another reason he loved her.
Joseph knew southern Texas better than any native, knew every road, mapped and unmapped. He’d picked the property years ago, when he moved to San Antonio ahead of Nicole. It would take the feds—even the best of them—time and resources to track the ownership, and that would presuppose that they would even know where to start looking. The remote property could access three different state highways within ten minutes, and he had seven different escape routes. Now, because it was a dry summer, he had an extra route—a dry creek bed where he’d hidden a four-wheel drive. If the feds got close, they couldn’t cut off all passages, and they wouldn’t even consider the creek bed. And if there was an early-summer storm or they found the jeep? He had a plane.
Tobias didn’t know about the plane, or the hidden jeep. Joseph hadn’t told Nicole, either, but he hadn’t lied to her. He was in charge of protecting her; that meant he needed to get her out of danger if it approached.
He was not responsible for Tobias.
“Do you feel better?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said, but she didn’t look happy.
“I did some damage control in Santiago.”
“Damage control,” she said with disdain. “I wanted Kane Rogan.”
“And you will still have him, Niki. Paul is a smart operative. He called in reinforcements. One of the men Rogan killed was his brother-in-law, he wants him dead but he’s willing to turn him over to us to prove his loyalty.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I should never have tried to capture him alive. I wanted to hurt him for what he did to us. But I want his execution recorded, remind him of that. We need proof.”
He’d already told Paul the exact same thing. “He knows,” he said. “At least Rogan’s death should give you some satisfaction.”
“It might. But first Paul has to find him.”
“Rogan is alone. He sent his men back to the States with the girl.”
“Why did he stay?”
“My guess? To track Dover. But Paul took care of that situation. He also has an advantage—he knows the area better than Rogan. Rogan is alone, he doesn’t have a base of operations in Santiago, and now he’s in Juarez territory. Rogan’s men are spread thin, thanks to the operations we’ve put in play over the last three months. Paul has called in a small army, and they are surrounding him as we speak. They’ll squeeze, and he’ll have to come up for air. It’s only a matter of time.”
“I can be very patient, if I know I will win.”
He took her hand and kissed it.
“Shit,” she mumbled. “The flash drive. Tobias distracted me, and Lyle said his people were able to decode Agent Dunbar’s files.”
“We’ll be back in less than an hour.”
“Good. Because I want my money back. None of this means shit if we don’t have that money.”
But when they arrived at the compound, Tobias and Lyle were gone—and so was the flas
h drive.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When Lucy woke up early Tuesday morning, Sean wasn’t in bed. It was barely dawn, but she couldn’t sleep anymore, knowing she had to be up in an hour anyway. They’d be pulling sixteen-hour days until Nicole Rollins was apprehended.
She found Sean on the phone in his downstairs office. He didn’t look at her when she walked in, instead stared straight ahead, his expression hard. She turned to leave but he cleared his throat and waved her in. She sat on the chair across from him, curling her legs under her. A male voice was on the other end, but Lucy couldn’t make it out.
Sean said, “It would be faster if I didn’t have to stop in Hidalgo.”
Again, Sean listened, then said, “Fine. I’ll be there in two hours, but Blitz had better have good intel when I get there or this side trip will cost us time.” He hung up. He looked at Lucy, but his mind was far away. “Kane’s missing.”
“Is this unusual?”
“If Jack’s worried, I’m worried.”
“How long?”
“Last night, when we talked to him, he didn’t tell me that he had sent his entire team with Siobhan to Hidalgo, leaving him alone to track the lone Tobias operative.”
“Siobhan—who?”
“Siobhan Walsh. She’s a freelance photojournalist. Her sister is some big lieutenant colonel at Quantico. Officer school. Kane has known Andie since he enlisted.” He paused. “Remember when I snuck into the FBI academy to see you last fall?”
She almost smiled. “How could I forget?”
“Andie was my buddy who got me through the gate. Anyway, Siobhan travels to impoverished areas and takes pictures that tell a story. I’ll show you some of her work, it’s really good. She mostly works in Mexico and Central America, and she runs into trouble on occasion. Kane gets her out of it. This time, Kane told Jack that someone took Siobhan as bait for him. Kane got her out—but he stayed behind to find out more. He told Blitz—you met him when we rescued the boys—”
“I remember.” She still had nightmares about it, though they were finally few and far apart.
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