Take It On Faith

by M. L. Rhodes

  Elizabeth cried out, but he kissed away the sound and any others that might escape, dominating her, forcing her to wrap her arms around his neck and hang on for dear life.

  His penis throbbed inside her pussy. Then he began to move, pulling out and shoving home again, harder. Faster. It wasn't gentle or sweet. It wasn't cultured or politically correct. It was fucking in its most urgent form. Full of passion and raw emotion. The kind of emotion that got churned up from the very bottom of one's gut, that hurt because it was almost too much to bear.

  He held her against the wall and pounded into her mercilessly, until she was boneless, until she could barely hang on to him. Orgasm ripped through her with such intensity she thought she might pass out. Yet somehow, some way she managed to stay conscious. He swallowed her sobs, and, with a deep, animalistic growl, ground his own release into her pliant body.

  A wild, dizzying freedom washed through her, and she knew she'd never be the same again.

  * * * *

  At some point they managed to untangle themselves, but it didn't last long. Although she'd just showered last night, Miguel's entreaty to join him while he took one ended with another round of mind-bending sex.

  But the atmosphere eventually turned back to serious matters, and as they drank coffee and ate toasted frozen waffles—only one of the very American things they'd discovered in his cousin Javier's freezer—Miguel went back to work on his laptop.

  "Is that some of the video you recorded from the mesa?"

  "Yeah. I've had the camera running up there for three months, pointed at what I feel sure is Galista's main compound. But in all the hours of recording and watching, I haven't gotten much of anything. A few people coming and going, but none that we recognize as being important."

  "By important you mean people who are known to be involved with the drug cartels?"

  "Exactly.” Miguel glanced up at her as he swallowed a gulp of coffee from a black stoneware mug. Then a half-smile curved his lips. “Just what all did you learn from reading those action adventure books?"

  Elizabeth grinned. “Oh, all kinds of terribly important stuff. Not! It's fiction. Men with big guns charging around saving helpless women who are always half-dressed and have big tits."

  His eyebrows rose, and he stroked a hand over his gun where it lay on the table next to the laptop. As he did that, he eyed her from head to toe, but lingered on the half-buttoned shirt she had on with no bra, which exposed a fair amount of cleavage. She had pulled her panties back on again, but that and the shirt were all she wore.

  A blush crept up her cheeks. “I'm not helpless,” was all she could manage.

  His rumbling chuckle filled her with a sated warmth.

  "My Beth. You're something else, you know that?” He speared his fingers through her hair and dragged her close for a bone-melting kiss.

  When she came up for air, she smiled. “Why do you call me Beth?"

  "Sometimes you're just all soft and warm and gentle, and you seem more like a Beth than an Elizabeth."

  "My mom used to call me Beth. You're the only other one who's ever done it."

  "Does it bother you that I do?"

  "No. I like it.” Her gaze focused back on the computer screen. “Hey! What's that?"

  Miguel was instantly in work mode. “Did you see something? Let me rewind."

  The video paused, moved backward at high speed, then started again. As they watched, a black limo pulled up at a security gate, was ushered through, and stopped in what almost looked like an old-fashioned porte cochère. It was hard to tell for sure because the recording had been made from such a long distance. The house itself was hidden from view by the surrounding rocks and numerous trees that had clearly been planted with the intention of hiding everything the rocks didn't. In fact ... the porte cochère probably wouldn't be visible from any other angle than the one from which they were looking.

  "How did you manage to find a place for your camera that gave you this view?"

  "I spent two weeks out there, hiking around, hoping to find a spot I could see some of the comings and goings. That's how I found the hot spring."

  The car in the video was in shadow since the overhang blocked out the sun, but it was still possible to make out a hulking figure emerge from the car, followed by another of equally enormous size. Bodyguards, maybe? Then a smaller figure stepped out. A woman. A long mane of platinum blond hair fell around her back. It was one of the only details Elizabeth could make out in the recording.

  "Stop."

  Miguel froze the frame on the woman, her back to the camera.

  "Who is she?"

  "Not sure. This is only the second time I've seen her. She showed up the first time about a month ago. I saw her go in, but didn't see her come out. Which means nothing because she could have left at night. There are plenty of vehicles that come and go at night, but in the dark I can't tell who's getting in them, even with infrared. It's just too far away. We tried to check her out based on the long blonde hair, but it wasn't much to go on. We finally decided she might be a girlfriend."

  "I've seen that hair,” Elizabeth murmured. “I think it's safe to say nobody has hair that color naturally, and very few have hair that long. That's why I had you go back."

  "Where have you seen it?"

  She bit her lip as she thought. And then it came to her.

  "Don't be mad at me, but I just remembered something."

  "I'm not mad at you. Tell me what you're thinking."

  "Remember I told you I was supposed to meet Lionel for lunch at a restaurant the day before yesterday?"

  "El Tulipán, yes, I remember."

  "Lionel wrote down the address for me before he left that morning. He said it was close enough I could walk there. But when I tried to find the place I got lost. It turned out he'd told me the wrong street name. It was supposed to be something like Camin..."

  "Camino? It means street."

  "Yes, that's it. It should have been Camino something Reinas, but he'd written Camino something Reyes."

  "One means kings’ street, the other is queens’ street."

  "Well, I went to the wrong one. I ended up on Reyes Street. I didn't see a blue building with flowers—Lionel had told me that's what the restaurant looked like. So I went in another restaurant, a small one that was in between some stores, to ask for directions. The maitre ‘d was rude to me. I'm not sure what he said since he was speaking Spanish, but he had an attitude. Finally, in English, he said something about a private party, then he ushered me out the door and I heard him lock up behind me."

  "Private party?"

  "That's what he said. And before he pushed me out the door, I glanced in the direction he indicated, and through a doorway I saw a woman with long platinum hair like that"—she pointed at the computer screen—"sitting at a table with a couple of men."

  "What did the men look like?"

  Elizabeth thought for a moment, trying to bring the scene to mind. “I just had a quick glance, but one was older with graying hair. The other one was younger with hair longer than yours. Both men were dressed in business suits. And the woman, in spite of the fake blonde hair, had an olive complexion."

  "Do you remember the name of the restaurant?"

  Elizabeth scrunched her face. “I'm sorry, I don't. As you've already seen, my Spanish is hopeless. But the woman didn't look like a girlfriend to me. Instead she looked ... well, kind of like you do right now. All intense and in charge. Plus, she was sitting at the head of the table, and I got the sense—nothing concrete mind you, just a gut feel—that she was leading the discussion."

  Miguel stared at her. Then at the frozen picture on the screen. Then back at her.

  "Damn."

  He put the picture in motion again, but there was nothing else to see. The threesome disappeared into what, Elizabeth had to assume, was the hidden house. Miguel rewound it and watched the short scene again. Then he minimized the video and his fingers flew on the keyboard as he typed. It looked like he w
as running a search on the internet.

  With his focus on the computer, she gathered up the paper plates they'd eaten off of and took them to the trash. Then she pulled on her jeans and tied the tails of Miguel's shirt around her waist.

  She heard him place a phone call. He told someone about the events of the past two days. But Miguel's next words had her jerking her head around to stare at him.

  "I think Galista's a woman,” he said to the person on the phone. “The blonde woman.” He proceeded to tell about the video and what she'd seen. “And I just ran a search and discovered the head waiter at Casa Robles, which is a restaurant on Camino de los Reyes, was found shot in the head night before last."

  Elizabeth gasped. The rude man who'd shooed her out had been killed?

  There were a lot of yes and no responses, then Miguel hung up.

  "Get your stuff together. We're leaving."

  "We are?"

  He opened one of the dresser drawers and pulled out a navy blue T-shirt. As he yanked it down over his head and his rippling chest and abs, he said, “My cover's history. There's nothing else I can do here. And Galista wants you dead before you can identify her. One of my partners is in Mexico City this week, so they're sending a team to get us out of here and back to the States."

  Icy fear spread through Elizabeth at Miguel's blunt words. Galista wanted her dead. Dead. All because she'd seen a woman in a restaurant.

  "The man I spoke with. He was killed?"

  Miguel closed his laptop. “I'm sure his job was to guard the door. But he allowed you to enter, gave you a chance to see Galista. A mistake like that when you work for someone like Galista is guaranteed death."

  "Oh, God,” she whispered.

  Miguel took her by the arm and pulled her against him for a quick hug, then released her. “Come on. There's no place to set a chopper down around here in the mountains, so we're driving to meet them."

  When she still hesitated, frozen to the spot, he cupped her cheek. The warmth of his hand brought a little life back to her. “It's going to be okay, Beth. We're going to get out of here."

  She swallowed past the knot of ice in her throat and nodded.

  CHAPTER 9

  An hour later they were on the road heading toward the pick-up point. With the back window history from the shooting yesterday, and all the windows down, the hot, dry afternoon air blew through the Explorer, whipping Miguel's hair around his face. Whipping Elizabeth's long, dark waves around hers as well.

  "Why didn't they just come after me right there on the street? When I left the restaurant?” Elizabeth asked.

  She'd been quiet, pale, and until now hadn't said a word since they left the cabin.

  He reached across the console and squeezed her hand, which was cold in spite of the afternoon heat. “Did the woman actually see you looking at her? Did you make eye contact with her?"

  She picked up one of his elastic bands from the dash and tamed her hair into a pony tail. “Nooo,” she said slowly, as if replaying the scene in her head. “I don't think so."

  "Then that's probably why. She might not have seen you, might not have even heard you—you said she and the two men were in another room, yes?"

  "Yes."

  "It's possible she didn't know you'd been there until after you were gone, if the guard didn't mention it until later."

  "But how did they find me? You said yesterday they'd followed me to the bar."

  "You asked the man in the restaurant for directions, which means you probably told him you were looking for El Tulipán. They could have gone there after you'd already left. But if Lionel had made a reservation, and they could describe how you looked, how you were dressed, the staff at El Tulipán probably told them who you were. From there you'd be easy to track down. I told you, your impending wedding was in the paper. And your dad's hotel, The Acapulco Sandringham, makes it pretty obvious where they could find you."

  She was quiet again for a long stretch, staring out the passenger window.

  "So what happens now? You said drug lords have lots of resources. What's to stop her from following us to the States and killing me there?"

  "I have resources, too. I'm not going to let anyone kill you. The organization I work for will keep you safe until we get Galista.” He brought her hand up and brushed his lips over it.

  "Keep me safe. What does that mean? Are you saying I have to go into the witness protection program or something?” Now she did turn to him, and when he glanced at her, frown lines marred the smooth skin of her forehead, and her blue eyes were wide with fear and frustration.

  "No, there are other ways...” He glanced in the rearview mirror as he spoke and saw two vehicles coming up on them at high speed. “Fuck!"

  "Oh, God, what now?"

  Miguel stepped on the gas. They were currently traveling through a canyon, which left him feeling trapped. He'd like it a lot better when they broke free of it and came out in the open again.

  Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder. “They're catching up. Drive faster ... faster!"

  His foot pressed harder on the gas pedal, flooring it. He could see where the canyon widened out, just after a short rise ahead. Almost there.

  He jerked his cell phone from the case on his belt and hit speed dial. “We're being followed,” he growled into the phone. “This'd be a good time for some hel—Oh, shit!"

  A third vehicle had just popped up over the hill in front of them, heading toward them and driving on their side of the narrow highway. A fourth vehicle appeared behind it in the adjoining lane. With the canyon walls still rising around them, there was no way to swerve off the road to avoid the oncoming cars. Miguel dropped the phone and had to slam on the brakes to keep from having a head-on collision.

  Elizabeth screamed.

  The Explorer slid sideways as he steered into the skid, tires squealing on the pavement. Finally, it juddered to a stop without hitting anything or rolling, which had been his fear.

  The four vehicles immediately boxed them in.

  "Get down!"

  Elizabeth ducked as he reached behind them to grab the rifle from the back seat. But men were already emerging from the vehicles around them, and reality wasn't pretty. They were trapped in the canyon—they'd been only a hundred meters from being free of its confines, damn it! He was one man, they were ten. Ten with heavy arms, a good portion of which were currently pointed at the Explorer. If he were on his own, he might try to hold them off. But invite a full-fledged shoot-out at close range and risk Elizabeth's precious life?

  He swore softly.

  "Get out of the vehicle,” one of the men ordered in Spanish as he looked down the sight of a.45 caliber monster.

  "We'll pass, thanks,” Miguel called, sighting the hulking, suit-clad man down the barrel of his own weapon, but staying alert to what was going on behind the Explorer as well. The nearest group of men were only thirty feet away. Too close for comfort.

  "Put your weapon down and get out. Galista wants to talk."

  "Why do I feel certain Galista's form of ‘talking’ involves people getting killed."

  "Would you prefer we shoot you both here?"

  "You can try, but I guarantee you, I'll take out several of you in the process."

  Miguel heard a softly voiced order coming from the inside the black limo, which had been the second car to come up over the hill in front of them. It just occurred to him that Galista herself might be in it.

  That was confirmed when the man spoke again. “Galista says if you get out now and cooperate, she'll allow the woman to live."

  Miguel glanced at Elizabeth, who'd slid so far down in her seat she was almost on the floor. Her churning gaze met his. He realized she didn't understand the conversation since it was all in Spanish. And maybe it was for the best she didn't.

  "And I'm supposed to believe that? What guarantee do I have for her safety?"

  A shapely leg emerged from the limo—clad in trousers, but obviously feminine from the high-heeled sandal on the
foot. The woman stepped fully out of the car, and even in the long shadows the canyon walls cast across the road and the scrubby brush surrounding it, her long blonde hair falling to her waist was a beacon. But it wasn't until she pulled off her sunglasses, and he got a good look at her face, that the earth opened underneath Miguel. The rifle wavered for a moment as he held it down a few inches so he could get a better look out the windshield. What the hell?

  "You have my guarantee,” the woman said in English, in that husky voice he remembered. “I just want to talk. You have my promise the woman won't be harmed as long as you accommodate me."

  He almost choked on the anger that rose within him. “Accommodate you?” He, too, spoke in English now. She'd always had a snobbish attitude about wanting to speak only English, to make her feel more American. Funny she was now living in Mexico. “Still playing your power games after all these years, I see. Do you honestly think I would trust any promises you might make? Everything about you is a lie. Like the fact you're standing here right now instead of being long dead like you were supposed to be."

  He felt Elizabeth's eyes on him and knew she was trying to sort out what was happening.

  "Out of the car, Delgado!” the man who'd made the demands earlier said.

  But Galista held up a hand to silence him.

  "Miguelito ... I never meant to hurt you. My death was a matter of necessity, and what happened with your brother, an unfortunate accident."

  Elizabeth gasped, and Miguel knew she'd finally realized who Galista was.

  Old rage burned in his gut, but he pushed it away. The past was the past, and he couldn't bring his brother back. He'd realized that the day he pulled the trigger and killed Rosa's father. Revenge hadn't taken away the gaping hole within him. Only time had done that.

  He looked at Elizabeth. “Phone,” he said quietly.

  Her brows drew together, but then she realized what he meant. She patted a hand around the seat and the floor below her, and came up with his cell phone.

  He knew he couldn't use it without being seen. But Beth was well-hidden from view. “Is it still on?"

  "No. It must have disconnected when it fell on the floor."