“Could you take your socks off first?” she asked.
He kissed her neck. “No.”
“Please? For me?”
He glided a finger inside her. “No. I’m wearing socks for the entire honeymoon.”
“Even in the shower?”
“Yes. I only brought one pair.” He slid the finger back out. “Do you want me to get you off first?”
She ran her fingers down his back. “I want you inside me.”
“Not too sore?”
It stung a little but wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. “Not yet. You’ve got your work cut out for you.”
He slid inside her, starting to kiss her neck again. “How many times do you think we can have sex on a transatlantic flight?”
She giggled softly. “Let’s find out.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mexico
Caroline jerked awake, wiping at a surprisingly dry face. That was the first time she’d been able to do that, force herself to wake up. Because damn it, it didn’t matter how fucking hard it was to be on a fucking plane, she didn’t want to relive the rest of that memory in a tiny cabin full of men.
This latest straw had broken her back. She didn’t care if she had to stay awake for every moment of every day and every night for the rest of her life. She had to be free. No more fucking memories. She had to smash them all, blast them to bits, extinguish every last scorching fragment until they no longer tortured her.
Gabe rubbed her shoulder. She prayed she hadn’t talked in her sleep. Caroline kept forgetting to ask him if she’d ever said anything when they shared a bed, and wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know the answer.
“How you feeling?” he asked.
She rubbed her eyes. “Where are we?”
“I’m not sure, but we’re getting close. You’ve been asleep since takeoff.”
Yeah, she’d noticed. All she saw below them was a mess of farms and fields. “We aren’t going to the airport here, either. Right?”
“We weren’t planning on announcing our arrival, no. There’s a runway outside the city where we’re going to try to land.”
Well, that sounded enormously safe and totally legal. And with their cargo and their pilot, it made complete sense. “Great. I love rough landings.”
Gabe rubbed her shoulder again. “It’ll be fine.”
She did her best not to cringe. His touch wasn’t nearly as comforting as it used to be.
Gig was sitting up front with Maverick, and turned to face them. “Almost there. Hardest part is over.”
Easy for him to say. If takeoff had sucked the landing would be worse. Caroline could see the outskirts of Tijuana the lower they got to the ground, and knew they’d have to do some walking to get to anyplace inhabited. Hopefully she could call out her Spanish skills if they needed to find a place to stay for the night.
The landing was just as bad as she’d anticipated. Their knapsacks ended up on top of them and Crunch and Jones looked ready to toss their cookies. But they were no longer airborne, which was all Caroline cared about. She grabbed her bag and got off the plane as soon as the door opened, tempted to kiss the ground when her foot touched brown earth.
Maverick shook Gig’s hand. “I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure, but it’s only business.” He gleefully eyed the duffel bag Gig had handed him. No doubt he was looking forward to an even larger payment from someone else. “Thanks for the memories.”
Caroline was glad to see the tail end of him. If he was indeed picking up a load of drugs, she wanted to make sure that they were far away from him when it happened. “Let’s get going, then,” she said. “Which way to town?”
Gig glanced at a map that he’d magically produced from his backpack. “Two miles that way.”
The sun would be setting soon. They didn’t have much time. Caroline didn’t want to be in the middle of Mexican bumblefuck in the dark. “Then let’s roll.” They hiked until they found a dirt road that led into the city. She could see a highway off in the distance just as the sun started disappearing on the horizon.
“We have to be careful,” Gabe said. “It’s illegal to transport weapons into Mexico without permission.”
Oh, now he had to point that out. Caroline was feeling good enough to be a bit acerbic. “It’s only a crime if you get caught,” she said.
Jones draped his arm around her as they headed toward the highway. “You’re pretty funny sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?” she shot back.
“Aren’t you afraid the big bad government might put a case on you for something someday?”
She smiled. “They already tried that. How’d that work out for them?”
He guffawed. “Fucking right, Princess. Fucking right.”
“But we’re in Mexico now,” Crunch said. “Aren’t their legal procedures different?”
“Don’t wreck our routine,” Jones said. “We’re on a roll.”
“Pascal’s untouchable,” Gig said. He’d never really taken to calling her Diana. Seemed to prefer her last name and wasn’t a big fan of her nickname. Caroline didn’t mind.
“Like, literally?” Jones asked, starting to remove his arm.
She shoved him with her shoulder. “Nah. We’re fine.” She glanced around. “You know where we’re staying, Gabe?”
He stopped short. “The first place we find.”
That wasn’t entirely accurate. They ended up having to walk another mile or two into town before they found a motel close to where they were going to cross the border. Gig had done his research but wasn’t saying much. Caroline hoped he’d open up after he’d gotten a few hours of sleep. The motel was pretty impressive, all things considered. Gig, Jones, and Crunch had already gone to sleep but Caroline sat on the couch dreading the idea of pulling out the bed and laying down. Even though she knew she wouldn’t have any dreams. Not without a goddamn fight.
Gabe put down his book and sat by her. “Tired?”
“Not really.”
“You haven’t said much since we got here. And you and I haven’t really talked in days.”
She’d been silent during dinner, content to listen to the men speak excitedly about the next day’s trek. They were getting up in the middle of the night to cross the border in the dark. Their prospects were better that way. Caroline was too busy thinking about the many things that could go wrong. “I know.”
“We could stay here, you know. Nothing is stopping us. You speak pretty fluent Spanish.”
He thought she was nervous about crossing the border, not feeling guilty about keeping her distance from him. “I do.”
“Here is safe. Relatively speaking.”
An enticing thought, to try to make a life in Mexico. Tijuana was a large city and there would be opportunities present for foreigners. They could live well with a hundred million dollars at their disposal. But the guys didn’t know about that money and would resist any of her efforts to share it with them. And Caroline didn’t want to stay.
“We have to find out if there’s anything in California. To see if everything we’ve done so far has a purpose.” She wrapped her fingers around his wrist. “To see if your sacrifice was worth it, getting me out of there.”
“Whether or not we go to Pendleton has no bearing on what we did at The Fed.”
Caroline pulled her hand away. “I feel obligated to go there. What was the point of any of this if we don’t see it through to the end?”
Gabe smiled. “You don’t need to convince me. I was just letting you know that if you wanted to back out, none of us would blame you.”
“I don’t want to live in Mexico for the rest of my life. I don’t even want to be in California.” It was hard to think the truth and even harder to say it out loud. “I want to go home. Someday. Even if it’s not there anymore.” She turned her head, not wanting Gabe to see her cry.
He grasped her hand in his. “We’ll get there,” he whispered. “We’ll do what we can to help. And if there’s not
hing to be found, we’ll figure it out.”
A decidedly positive perspective. “It’s late,” she said, standing up and helping him pull out the hide-a-bed. “You should get some sleep.”
Gabe stretched out on the mattress, saying the one thing that filled her with both comfort and guilt. “Only if you’re beside me.”
* * * * *
They checked out of the hotel at four the next morning, which gave them a couple of hours of darkness as a cushion. Gig explained the details. They’d cross the border. Get a car. Drive to Pendleton. Then Caroline would get them inside.
The plan seemed easy. Too easy. She felt a sudden surge of panic. “We don’t have any California currency,” she said. “How can we buy a car without any money?”
“Calm down,” Gig said. “I got us the cash last night. Exchange rate was for shit. American dollars barely get any pesos anymore and I basically got shafted twice but we’ll get by.”
She should have known that. He’d gone to the currency exchange before dinner. Yet another thing she’d forgotten. Gig seemed to have a never-ending stream of money available. He really had done well in the private sector, shitty exchange rate or not.
Caroline was growing increasingly concerned about her absentmindedness. But remembering random trivial stuff or focusing on memories was easy. Concentrating on the present was hard. She shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. “Guess I should have figured that out, huh?”
Gig smiled. “I won’t hold it against you. There are a lot of details to remember and you didn’t plan this out. Gabe and I did. Don’t worry.”
How nice of him to try to make her feel better. Hopefully he’d thought of everything else or things would get mighty interesting once they crossed the border.
Things got interesting before then. Caroline about lost her shit when Gig told her they were going to use an old drug smuggling tunnel to cross over into the San Diego border community of Otay Mesa. The guys had known about it beforehand but she’d been kept in the dark. Probably because they knew she’d flip out. Following a path made by drug runners seemed a surefire way to be caught. But they assured her that no one used the tunnel anymore, there were no people at that part of the boundary, and they’d be able to get away with it. Their daring would have been charming if it weren’t so fucking terrifying.
After a short walk north of the airport, they were now inside a fucking drug tunnel on the way to fucking California. Jesus fucking Christ. Caroline stopped and leaned against the dirt wall. It wasn’t a long walk but she’d been tired and thirsty ever since they’d gotten off that puddle jumper the day before. Jones smirked, purposely flicking his flashlight at her.
“Don’t even,” she said, starting to walk again.
“I know you’re thinking about dope, Princess. Think of all that shit those big time cartels must have moved through here.” He gestured toward a random kilo of marijuana resting haphazardly against the wall, its wrapping ripped and its contents falling out. “These guys couldn’t even clean the fuck up after themselves.”
She took a sip of water. She could jab back. “I doubt these were used by the cartels. This isn’t exactly a sophisticated setup. It’s the tunnel equivalent of some kid slinging dope on a street corner in Maryland.”
He playfully grabbed at the bottle. “Don’t be messin’.”
“I wasn’t referring to you,” she said innocently.
Gig shushed them both. “We’re getting close to the other side.”
Jones clapped his hands. “Close to freedom, you mean.”
Gabe pressed a finger to his lips. “Be quiet.”
Jones peered into the small amount of natural light greeting them at the end of the tunnel. “We need to formulate a plan if anybody comes after us. I’ve seen too many movies to know who they’ll shoot first.”
Caroline grinned. “You want us to form a protective circle around you?”
Crunch spoke up. “What about me?”
Jones laughed. “You don’t want to protect me, Crunchy?”
Crunch rolled his eyes. “Man, I’d be the one with the biggest target on my back. Wise up.”
Gig glared at all of them. “Shut the fuck up,” he hissed. “Get your guns out. Tie those bandannas. Don’t want to take any chances.”
They were all wearing black tops and pants, with black stocking caps and red bandannas tied around their necks to boot. Maybe they could rob a stagecoach on their way to Camp Pendleton. Caroline gulped, pulling her bandanna up over her nose. “Excuse me?”
Gig shoved a hand into his knapsack and produced his own handgun. “Shit might get real. I couldn’t see anyone but I got a bad feeling about this.”
Jones nudged Caroline while rooting around for his own gun. “I’m still not sure I like him. He’s got a real shitty attitude.”
Gig whirled around, his own bandanna already covering his face. “Let’s make a go of it. Come on. We’ll never know until we try.”
They scrambled out of the tunnel. Caroline waited to hear gunfire or the sound of a vehicle driving up. Anything to let them know they’d been caught. It was eerily silent. When a spotlight flashed on and bathed them in a yellow glow, her heart sank.
Random voices yelled at them. Random men ran in their direction. She couldn’t tell how many. It didn’t matter. They’d been spotted.
“Move!” Gig yelled. He aimed and shot at one of the men so quickly that Caroline almost dropped her own pistol.
Jones shoved himself in front of Caroline, shielding her. “You heard the man. Get your ass in gear.”
One gunshot, then another. Rifle shots. Semi-automatic. A flash on her right. Crunch had fired his gun. The spotlight went dark. He must have hit it.
Caroline could see a man in fatigues coming after them and before she even realized what she’d done, she fired in his direction and watched him fall.
“Shit,” she screamed, scrambling backwards as Jones hauled her up by the collar of her shirt.
“Fucking move already!” Gig yelled. “We don’t have much time. Move while they can’t fucking see us.”
The rifle shots ceased and Caroline kept running, with Jones at her back and Gig and Crunch in front of her. She saw Gabe out of the corner of her eye. They were all alive, though she couldn’t tell if anyone had been shot.
They kept running. Running until her lungs hurt and her eyes were watering. She kept waiting for more border agents to arrive, for any number of vehicles to drive up with armed men demanding their surrender. Gig led them toward an open space west of the industrial area near the Otay Mesa airport. Weaving canyons dotted with brush. A safe place to hide until they could figure out what to do next.
Caroline threw a nasty glare at Gabe. “I thought you said there weren’t any fucking border patrols,” she snapped.
“Those weren’t government agents,” Gig said. “They were straight up vigilantes. Wearing urban camo and shit.”
If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. They had money grubbing, unscrupulous truck drivers and meth traffickers helping them out in exchange for wads of cash, and they were only one step ahead of government goons and self-proclaimed freedom fighters. No place was safe, no one could really be trusted, and no one did anything for the right reasons anymore.
“We should have taken their truck,” Jones panted.
Gig rummaged around in his bag, withdrawing a box of ammunition. “That wouldn’t have worked,” he said. “I shot out a couple of tires.”
“Fuck.” Crunch was staring at his gun. “That happened so fucking fast. All those guys. Jesus Christ.”
“There were only two,” Gabe said. “Didn’t you see?”
Two? It felt like more than that. “Are you sure?” Caroline asked.
“Damn sure.” Gig handed her the box. “I got one and you got the other.”
She’d been trying not to think about that. There had been two occasions when she’d fired a gun at another human being but this was the first time she had proof that she’d hit her inte
nded target. “I shot someone,” she said.
Jones patted her back. “Gotta do what you gotta do, Princess. Your trigger finger is tight.”
Caroline was glad her stomach was empty, because the more she thought about it the sicker she felt. “Did I kill him?”
Gig crouched down beside her, taking her gun and examining it before patting her arm. She hadn’t noticed that her hands were shaking.
“Don’t you worry about that,” he said. “You got him in the leg. I saw. Enough to slow him down.”
Gabe was pouring water over his head. “Do you think they’ll come after us?”
“I sure hope not,” Gig said. “Not if it was just the two of them. It was dark. We’re wearing nondescript clothes. I doubt they’ll be able to identify us. Just in case, change your shirts and lose the bandannas.”
It seemed like forever before the sun rose, and even longer before they felt safe emerging from the park and walking toward the industrial area where a number of small car dealerships were located. The sun beat down on all of them and they jogged quickly to the first open car lot they saw, hanging back while Crunch negotiated with a skeevy looking man for a beat up Honda. It looked like shit and sounded even worse, but it ran. Only sixty miles left in their journey. God willing, the car would get them where they needed to go. Which naturally meant that it broke down two miles south of Camp Pendleton.
Chapter Thirty
California
It wasn’t particularly hot, but that didn’t matter when you were wearing long sleeves and had a knapsack strapped to your back. They kept to the highway, staying off the road and walking on the shoulder, hopping into the grass when necessary. Caroline prayed there weren’t any cops looking for hitchhikers. Did the police do that sort of thing anymore, patrol for vagrants? She wasn’t too keen to find out.
“Maybe another quarter mile,” Gig called out.
Caroline wiped her brow. “Good thing. I’m about to die.”
Jones grinned. “Four hundred yards to glory, Princess.”
The Bellator Saga: The First Trilogy (Dissident, Conscience, and Sojourn) Page 91
