Chapter One

by Judith Rochelle

  She looked at him helplessly. “So now what happens?”

  “Kate, you’ve probably got the one thing that could blow this cartel wide open. That could make the feds’ case for them. We have to do something with it. It won’t help to keep hiding it in my safe forever.”

  “But I don’t know who to trust,” she blurted out. “Besides you, that is. What if...” She shook her head.

  He stroked the side of her face and Kate could tell he was being deliberately gentle. “You do trust me, don’t you? No bullshit here, Kate.”

  She nodded. “Yes. I do.” And that was no lie.

  “I told Jake I’d call him back in the morning. I bought us at least that much time. I don’t want him barging out here and taking control of the situation, which is always a possibility. Let’s invite him out for dinner tomorrow night and tell him your story. He’s doing his job but he’s also a reasonable man. And he won’t want to put you at risk.”

  “As long as he doesn’t think I’m part of this and throw me in jail.”

  “Not gonna happen. So is that okay? Will you talk to him? Let him help us?”

  All she could do was nod her head. Yes. She wanted this nightmare over more than anything. But the knowledge of what she would be facing with Jake had the effect of pulling a plug. Tears pushed against her eyelids and cascaded down her cheeks. Every bit of strength she’d dredged up dissipated in a heartbeat and she wound her arms around his neck, drenching his shirt with huge, unladylike sobs.

  She cried until she thought she had no more tears, than cried again.

  Quinn held her tightly, one hand caressing her back in a soothing motion, his voice soft as he murmured soothing sounds in her ear. When the worst of the storm had passed he pulled out a handkerchief, mopped her face and tucked her loose hair behind her ears.

  When she raised her head at last he looked down at her and asked, “Better?”

  “Yes.” She sniffled, wiped her eyes on the handkerchief, and gave him a watery grin. “For the moment. I hope I don’t start making a habit of this.”

  “Understandable after holding it in for so long. This is a scary situation for anyone, darlin’.”

  “You must think I’m the biggest mess in the world.”

  “I think you’re a very brave, very gutsy lady who kept it together when most people would have given up.”

  Tilting her chin up, he kissed her, slow and sweet, a kiss meant to reassure, but their emotions were so high that it quickly turned hot and demanding. His hands slid under her T-shirt, cupping her breasts, massaging them through the thin material that supported them.

  Kate felt his erection pressing against the curve of her buttocks, insistent and demanding. Her panties were wet and her nipples throbbed, aching for his mouth on them.

  Quinn lifted his head, his eyes dark, his face flushed with passion. “Let’s take this inside.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “We’re through waiting.”

  Less than four hours had passed and Miguel Osuna was once again in Peter’s office, his ugly bodyguard in his usual position behind him. Miguel leaned back in his chair and pulled out a cigar, his thick fingers caressing it as if it were a woman’s body. He never smoked them anymore. Just holding them and stroking them seemed to give him enormous satisfaction.

  “You were just here.” Peter wanted to throttle the man, but he knew what that would cause. “You’ve barely had time to leave and come back. Don’t you think I’d have called you if something showed up? Why don’t you just stay in Sarasota and I’ll keep you updated?”

  “Because so far you haven’t had anything to update us with. Perhaps you need more incentive. El jefe is getting very perturbed and impatient.”

  Peter’s stomach knotted at the threat implied in the statement.

  “She’s dumb,” Peter insisted. “I keep telling you that. And far from resourceful. She’s just been lucky, is all.”

  Miguel’s mouth twisted in a sly smile. “You know, Esai and I wonder, Pedro, if she’s really missing at all.”

  “What do you mean?” He stared at the man. “Of course she’s missing. We saw her leave.”

  “Maybe you and she have a little plot going behind our backs. She pretends to steal the flash drive, you give her the codes, she empties the bank accounts, and the two of you fly off somewhere with the cartel funds.”

  Peter felt himself turn pale, and sweat beaded on his forehead. “Surely no one really thinks that. It would be suicide on my part.”

  Osuna nodded. “You’d certainly never live to spend any of it. Neither of you would.” He uncrossed his thick legs and leaned over the desk.

  “That’s ridiculous.” Peter placed his hands flat on the desk to conceal their trembling. Screwing the cartel was a quick trip to hell. “You have nothing to fear on that account. I assure you.”

  “In any event, we’re making some more changes. I’ve just finished a long telephone conversation with my brother and we’ve made some decisions. That’s why I’m here again today. To tell you in person.”

  “What decisions?” Oh, God, now what?

  “It’s time for you to get your ass out of the office. Take that magic computer of yours and start backtracking every place she’s been. Spread some of that money around the way you’re always bragging you do and see who talks. If money doesn’t work, a little muscle might.”

  “But—”

  “And check all the people already on our payroll. You have a copy of that list, right? In one of your ‘special’ files?”

  “Of course.”

  Another reason to get that flash drive back before anyone could crack the codes.

  “Someone somewhere has gotten a hint of her. I feel it. Go back to the beginning. Do whatever it takes to get that information.”

  “You want me to leave here?” Peter stared at him. “And go where? And what about the law firm?”

  “Stupido. Until we get that flash drive back, the law firm can’t afford to operate as usual, not knowing who’s watching us. We have to close the doors. Which makes the head of operations very unhappy.”

  “Close the firm?” Peter still couldn’t get his mind around it. “What the hell for?”

  “Aren’t you listening to me? We have no idea who she’s shown the flash drive to. Who might be checking us out even now. It doesn’t even have to be the feds, which would be even worse. Who knows if we’ve somehow been compromised? Everything is at risk.”

  “But—”

  “Call it a paid vacation for everyone and send them home. We’ll set it up so someone takes the calls in case a stranger dials in by accident. Do it today. Then get on a plane for Los Angeles and start your hunt from there.”

  Peter had to swallow the urge to scream. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

  “Esai is sending you a list of all our contacts from Texas to California,” Miguel went on, as if Peter hadn’t spoken at all. “Once you get to L.A., get with the locals on one of your special secure phones, have them meet you at the terminal and start asking questions. Find out what the hell is going on. Get me that puta.”

  He stopped as he reached the door and turned around.

  “Oh, and by the way. Since you don’t seem to take me too seriously, from now on you’ll be reporting to Esai. And el jefe. So don’t make any mistakes.” He pinned Peter with a cold stare. “I want that bitch. You hear me? That’s your number one priority.”

  The door closed softly behind him.

  ****

  Peter wondered if it wouldn’t just be easier to cut his throat now and get it over with. He was getting sick of the whole thing. Being yanked out of his comfortable position in Florida. Flying across the country on a wild goose chase. Having Esai Osuna calling him on his cell every half hour.

  And whose stupid idea was it to start at the Los Angeles bus terminal and try to pick up leads? The woman had been gone from there for four days. There wouldn’t be a soul who even remembered her. The ticket clerks barely knew ea
ch other. Esai and Miguel thought there might still be a way to trace her there, a starting point, but they’d never set foot in this place filled with masses of teeming humanity.

  For two men who ran a billion-dollar, complex drug cartel, they didn’t seem to have a lot of brains.

  But they really aren’t the ones who run it. And that person isn’t someone you want to argue with.

  Not many people knew that the Osuna brothers weren’t the real heads of the cartel. The true identity would shock a lot of people. And Peter wasn’t eager to get on this person’s bad side.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  “Show her picture around,” Esai had told him when Peter tried to point out the uselessness of the whole exercise. “The boss has ordered it. Then check all the buses that left within an hour of the time our idiots took the wrong female. See where they went. Call your contacts in those places. This is a direct order from the boss.”

  Trying to get a little ahead of things, he’d called everyone, all the people who sucked money out of the Osunas, anyone who might be able to tell him anything. Calculating how far or fast she might travel in a day, he’d hit their people in ten states. A fucking pain in the ass, he grumbled to himself. Complaining to anyone else did no good. They’d simply point out it was his mess he was cleaning up. Whatever, no one knew anything or no one was talking, an unhappy state of affairs either way.

  So here he was, in the L.A. bus terminal with two more idiots that Esai had sent to help him, on an impossible task.

  He bought a cold drink from a vending machine and rolled the icy can across his forehead, trying to stave off the familiar headache. So far they’d wasted two hours here, no one knew anything, and he was sure he’d caught at least ten different diseases from the people gathered in the big waiting area. Rubbing elbows with the great unwashed wasn’t his idea of a great way to spend an afternoon.

  And then, against all odds, they caught a slight break.

  “Pedro?”

  Diego Salazar moved up beside him. Thin and swarthy, he had the ability to blend in any place, and possessed a skill with a knife second to none. Too bad he couldn’t think, Peter thought.

  “Find out anything?” Peter asked.

  He pointed to the man with him. “Mickey did.”

  Mickey Salado was Salazar’s physical opposite, big and with his mother’s fair coloring. And an intimidating presence that loosened a lot of tongues.

  “I finally got a ticket clerk to admit he thinks he remembers her. Maybe. He thought. Said he only noticed her because she was acting so weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  “Nervous,” Mickey explained. “Edgy.”

  “Maybe?” Peter let his sarcasm show. He hated working with these men. “He thought?”

  “It’s more than we had before,” Diego pointed out. “At least we know she was definitely here.”

  “Maybe,” Peter repeated. “And we already figured that since she cashed the second check at the bank across the street. Just like in North Carolina. It still tells us nothing. For all we know, she flushed herself down the toilet.”

  “But—”

  “Never mind. Anything else?”

  Mickey looked at the tiny notebook in his big hand. “Four buses left about the time the men took the wrong woman that day,” he reported. “Albuquerque, Denver, Seattle, and Jackson Hole.”

  Peter pressed the can harder against his throbbing head. How to decide which bus the bitch had taken? This was a fool’s errand and he’d tried to tell Esai.

  “What if she’s not taking buses anymore?” Diego suggested.

  Peter’s eyes popped open. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what if two close calls at bus stations were enough for her. You said she got all that cash. Maybe she bought a car with some of that money she pulled out of her account.”

  Peter was about to curse him for the idiocy of his idea when he realized the man might actually be onto something. Kathryn might be dumb but she wasn’t entirely stupid. If she’d figured out buses no longer gave her the anonymity she wanted, she might make other choices.

  “Okay. She wouldn’t buy from a regular dealership,” he mused, trying to make his aching head function. “Too much paperwork and she might not have the ID they’d require. Also, she’d probably be stingy with her money. So, a junk shop. And one pretty close to here.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and gestured toward Mickey. “Get the car and bring it around to the front. We’ll start a canvass in a tight circle. This isn’t the best neighborhood in the world. There have to be plenty of used car places who don’t care about anything but cash.”

  And please let us find it soon, he prayed. I want a motel room, a thick steak, and a bottle of bourbon. And maybe not even in that order.

  Traffic was thick, as it always was in L.A., and the constant stop and start and honking of horns did little to soothe Peter’s nerves. Nor did the fact his cell rang five minutes after they got into the car. When he saw the number he cursed under his breath.

  “Yes, Esai.” Can’t the asshole leave me alone for an hour?

  “So. Any results?”

  “We’re working on it. We have an idea.” He looked at the two men with him. “Actually it was Diego’s.”

  He explained to Esai what they were doing and waited through a long silence.

  “Not bad,” the man said at last. “Call Jaime Lucero and have him pick up the bus station canvass. You keep on this track. You may just be onto something.”

  Please, Lord, let it happen.

  “Fine. I’ll call him right now.” His disconnected the call before Esai could spew forth any other orders. The call to Jaime was brief and unpleasant. The man thought the bus station idea just as stupid as Peter did, but he also liked breathing through his nose instead of a slit in his throat.

  “All right. I’ll get my people and we’ll check those locations. Also up and down the line to each location.” Jaime sighed. “What a fucking pain in the ass. By the time we find this bitch we’ll be fighting over who gets to have at her first.”

  An hour later Peter was sure L.A. had more cheap car lots than any other place on the planet and not one of them would give him the information he was looking for.

  But when they stopped at Highway Harry’s they hit pay dirt. The man couldn’t quite hide his reaction when they described the woman and asked him about recent customers.

  Harry took a tad of convincing, but like the brothers had said, a little muscle or a little money and you got results. Peter left there with the license number of the car Harry had sold to a woman on the day they mentioned, a woman who “looks something like that. But she used a different name.”

  Which eventually he was only too happy to provide them with.

  “I need to go back to the motel,” he told Mickey, who was driving. “I need a wireless connection so I can boot up my laptop.”

  Get ready, Kathryn. I’m coming after you.

  Chapter Twelve

  One would have thought the earlier activity would have taken the edge off their desire for each other, but instead it only intensified it. They tore at their clothes impatiently, flinging them haphazardly at the chair and tumbling onto the bed.

  “I wanted to go slow this time,” Quinn panted. “Seduce you. This morning I could barely control myself. But if I’m not inside you in the next five seconds I might lose my mind.”

  “I’m ready,” she whispered.

  When he touched her heated center, the moisture gathered there told him she was right.

  “I want you.” Her voice was hoarse with passion. “Now. Please.”

  With no foreplay or delicate touches, Quinn positioned himself and in one stroke thrust completely inside her. He held his body motionless, catching his weight on his forearms and looking directly into her eyes.

  “I never thought I’d have this again,” he rasped. “I never thought I’d allow myself to have it. Funny, I knew Lisa a long time before we married, but in some way
s, in just a few days, I feel a deeper connection to you. Am I crazy?”

  “If you are, so am I. I feel it, too.”

  Then the time for talking was done. Quinn lifted her legs to his shoulders to give him a deeper angle of penetration and began the slow glide in and out of her slick, wet core. He rocked against her, hitting that sweet spot that made her catch her breath.

  As aroused as they were, an orgasm rolled over them with speed and intensity that shook them both, every muscle in their bodies quivering as hips thrust and liquid heat bathed them both.

  They lay there afterwards joined together, hearts thudding against each other, hers racing just a bit faster.

  “Kate?”

  “Mm hmm?”

  He raised his head and kissed her with such tenderness she wanted to cry. “I’m glad I stopped on the road the other night.”

  She couldn’t catch her breath to speak. It was new for her, this powerful linking. He had poured himself into her in a coupling as emotional as it was physical. Against all odds, at the very worst moment of her life, a man had walked into it and in the blink of an eye captured her heart.

  Suddenly she was able to think about the future.

  They dozed lightly, pleasantly exhausted by their physical efforts. Kate woke to movement, Quinn’s body hovering over her, his thick erection moving in and out of her again, with slow, quiet strokes. He was watching her with those dark, penetrating eyes.

  This time he took much longer, the edge gone from the frantic need to mate. He tasted her lips with the tip of his tongue, probing her mouth with kisses that stole her breath. Their tongues met in a choreographed ballet.

  His big hands pulled her to him, stroking her back, the swell of her hips, the cleft between her buttocks. Just like that she was ready for him again. He held her at the edge, not giving her the release she sought, and she gripped him with her hands, moaning, begging.

  Please, please, please.

  Ready to explode himself, he thrust hard into her one last time and they climaxed together, bodies shaking and clenching.