by DJ Erfert
Mark hit his brakes and slid a few feet before coming to a standstill.
“What is it?” he asked, watching her take out her gun from under her pant leg.
Lucy threw open her door. “I saw something—” she said, getting out.
Mark ran around the truck, taking his weapon out of its holster, and looked at Lucy. She must have seen something serious for that kind of reaction. She bent down and peered under the truck. “What did you see?”
“Look,” she said pointing at the other tracks. “They stopped here.” Lucy looked at him and softly said, “And got out.”
“What happened?” Jason asked, stopping his truck next to his partner.
Watching Lucy study the desert floor, Mark said, “She saw something I missed.” He looked at Jason. “Come on. We need to follow her.”
CHAPTER TWO
Lucy’s pulse pounded loudly in her ears. She knew something was wrong. There were three sets of boot prints in the sand much larger than her own—men’s prints. She tracked them for only a short distance before she saw the reason for her anxiety.
“Oh no!” Lucy ran to a prone, bloody figure lying behind the ocotillo. The two men behind her looked surprised and bewildered at the dead body. “This—was—Juan Miguel Marquez,” Lucy said softly. “He was coming across with his eighteen-year-old son …” She ran around the dead man a dozen more steps and then fell to her knees.
“Eduardo,” she cried softly, gently touching the dead boy on his back. Her heart broke. “Lo siento,” Lucy whispered her apology, her voice breaking.
“Agent James—” Jason asked, “are you okay?”
Lucy nodded slowly. It was another moment before she spoke. “Do you see any backpacks? They both had packs.”
“We’ll look, Lucy,” Mark said, glancing around.
“You can put your weapons away.” Lucy sat back on her heels and she told the agents, “The shooters are gone. The footprints go in both directions. Juan was shot twice—Eduardo … once.”
“That’s the three shots we heard,” Mark said.
Lucy looked over her shoulder. “They shot these two men and left them for dead, and I want to know who did it—and why.”
A sound of a helicopter took her attention away from the dead bodies. “They need to search in that direction”—Lucy pointed toward the way they came from—“and look for Ana and her children. They couldn’t have come as far as Juan and his son.” She stood up and faced Mark and Jason. “Could you radio the pilot to look for her? Please?” Lucy felt her emotions push to the surface. When a tear breached her lashes, she felt foolish, unprofessional. With a quick swipe of her finger, Lucy removed the tear falling on her face.
“Yeah,” Mark said quietly. “I’ll tell him. Is there … is there anything—”
“No,” Lucy said, cutting him off before he could offer any sympathy. She didn’t need sympathy. She wasn’t the one shot to death.
“I’ll find out what’s keeping the other chopper and have our back-up come code-three now that we know we have killers looking for your group.” Mark stepped closer. “Look, Lucy. We have set procedures for when things like this happen—”
Horrified, she asked, “How often does it happen?”
“More times than we’d like to believe. Is there any chance they were after you?”
Chills flashed across her arms, the hairs prickling at the thought that she’d blown her cover in some way. She replayed the last week in her mind. “I don’t believe so.”
“You said they had packs? Do you know what they were carrying? Was it personal property?”
Lucy turned away from his probing eyes. “Not unless all the men decided to coordinate their outfits.”
“What do you mean?” Mark moved next to her side.
“The backpacks all looked exactly the same. Black with a red stripe along the bottom.” Looking down at the boy’s dead body, Lucy shook her head. “I’m not sure what it means.”
Mark rested his hand on her shoulder. “But you said you had a theory? Do you think they might have been transporting drugs?” When Lucy hesitated, he asked, “How well did you know your companions?”
“Not too—”
The sounds of distant gunshots made her jump. She stopped counting after six.
“They were west of us,” Jason said, running to his truck.
“We’ll have to come back here later, Lucy.” Mark grabbed her elbow and pulled her toward the truck. “Let’s go.”
~*~
Mark glanced sideways and saw the determined stare in Lucy’s eyes. Her face was streaked with dirt, but she’d kept her emotion in check for the past few minutes while he followed the vague tracks in front of them.
“It was the same caliber,” Lucy said.
“It sounded like it.”
“West. We’re heading west.”
“Yeah.”
“How do you suppose …”
Mark waited. He glanced at her face again, but she’d lost focus. Her eyes were on his GPS unit attached to the dashboard. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“Three men shot Juan and Eduardo, probably for something they were carrying. They could have taken them along or just left them alone, but instead they chose to commit two murders.” Lucy looked sharply at him. “Why do you think that is?”
“We have bandits along the southern border.” Mark shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “They don’t really care about the victims, and leaving them dead isn’t something out of the ordinary.”
“How do you suppose they found them?” Lucy suddenly sat upright and touched the GPS. “They found Juan and now they’ve fired six more shots within fifteen minutes.” She swung her stare up at him again. “How could they have found any more of my group, especially that quickly?”
“You’re making a big leap here. You don’t know that the men who killed your companions hunted them.” Mark squeezed the steering wheel tighter.
“Are you saying that it’s a coincidence that they found these guys?” Lucy gestured out toward the back of the truck. “And do border bandits routinely drive big SUVs?”
“How do you know—”
“The wheel base is as big as your truck’s.” Lucy leaned closer. “And I don’t believe in coincidences. I think those packs have a GPS locator inside them, and this was planned.”
Mark felt tension in the truck rise like static electricity. “Bandits have no set MO, except they hit both illegals and Americans alike, as long as they’re isolated in the desert. But,” he caught Lucy’s glare and said, “if you’re right, and it’s not by chance this is happening, then … I hope our back-up gets here sooner rather than later.”
“Then we need to hurry. According to your GPS, the arroyo flows northwest for the most part, but then it takes a westward bend before it splits into several narrower channels. How far away did the shots sound to you?”
“Not as far away as Juan and his son. They sounded louder, either from being closer—”
“Or because they were in the arroyo, too.”
“Yeah.” Mark kept his eyes moving from the faint tracks on the hard, pebbly riverbed to the distant landscape. Rocks and cactus jutted out sporadically and kept him alert. He lifted his radio and contacted the helicopter pilot and told him about the gunfire.
“Can’t you drive faster?”
“I can drive a lot faster, but I don’t want to miss tracks in case they left the arroyo.” Mark might have expected the agent to be irritated at his answer, but when she gasped, he got alarmed. Something had happened.
~*~
An icy wind blew across Lucy’s face, stealing her breath. The sickly cold sensation she knew went unfelt by anyone except her. It was a precursor to a phenomenon she’d known since she was a young child—a warning that someone was about to be killed.
It’s happening!
The world faded in front of her eyes to the dull black and white and slippery silvers Lucy had grown used to over her lifetime. The air-conditioning tha
t had cooled her skin suddenly stopped as the sound of the truck’s engine stilled into total silence.
Lucy turned her gaze on Agent Whittier. He looked like a colorless photograph. Behind her, the vehicle with the young Agent Morelli inside was draped in vivid, surrealistic color and still moving. It reminded Lucy of a huge frameless window into which she could peer into and see his promised death.
Up ahead, another colorful window painted the narrow corridor of the arroyo. In the next moment, Lucy’s perspective changed, and she knew she had to pay attention to every detail if she was going to save the people still moving in that narrow window of death.
Among the four men Lucy saw standing in a small sheltered cove, one she recognized as Raul Fernandez, from her group. His crying wife was being pulled away deeper into the cove by a man with the tattoo “west” written in script on his left hand and dressed in a gray plaid shirt—he had a gun aimed at her head. Raul went after them and received a bullet in his back by a man wearing a white button-down shirt. He died trying to save his wife from the unspeakable assault Lucy had to witness before they killed her.
Her perspective changed again. The three men must have thought they were alone in the desert. They had lingered long enough for Mark and Jason to catch up. When they came around the corner of the short bluff and into their sheltered cove, two of the murderous men were able to pull weapons and fire. Mark returned fire and took out two of the men, but Jason died before Lucy’s window disappeared.
Then it was like it never happened.
Time had rewound.
Lucy leaned her hand against the dashboard and took a deep breath.
“Are you okay?” Mark asked slowing down. “We don’t know their condition.”
“What?” Lucy looked in the direction he nodded and saw two bloody bodies lying off to the side of the tire tracks. She recognized them from her group. He touched the brakes, slowing down.
“Don’t stop,” Lucy said, reaching under her pant leg and taking out her .380 from its holster.
“Why not?” Mark asked sharply. “One of them might still be alive—”
“You don’t believe that,” Lucy said softly. “They’re dead. There’s nothing we can do for these victims. But right now we have a chance to catch their killers and to stop anybody else from dying.” She turned her stare to the border agent. “We don’t have much time.” Pointing at the GPS Lucy said, “They’re still in the arroyo about … three miles from here, where it narrows and channels off.”
Mark brought the truck to a dead stop. “How do you know that?”
“I—those men.” Lucy couldn’t lie to him, yet she couldn’t tell him the truth either. It would take too long to explain the gift she’d had since birth, and he’d never believe it anyway. “Please, listen to me and start driving before it’s too late.” She felt the hard stare he kept on her, but it didn’t last long before he picked up the radio.
“Jason, we’re going after the shooters. Stay alert and keep up,” Mark said into the mic, as he hit the gas. “We can’t be too far behind them. I think we have a good chance of overtaking them,” he continued quietly, “especially if they don’t know we’re on their trail.”
Lucy nodded her head. “Now you understand.”
“Not totally,” he said. “I don’t know that the men who killed your companions haven’t left the arroyo and have gone home for the day. And I don’t understand how you seem to know exactly where they are.”
Lucy held her breath and waited for him to change his mind. If he did, then she’d commandeer his truck and go on her own. It might be better that way. Leaving both border agents would guarantee their safety, and there were only three men waiting for her up ahead.
“Did you hear more gunfire?” Jason asked through the radio.
Mark glanced at Lucy before replying. “No, but Lucy has … a—a feeling that we need to go with.”
“It’s more than a feeling,” Lucy whispered harshly, letting her anger surface. Lucy needed to be there before the bandits found Mariposa and Raul, and before the men knew they were being followed.
“There,” Mark said, pointing out of the windshield. “That looks like dust from a vehicle.”
“Are you sure?” Lucy squinted in the bright sunshine. “It’s not much.”
“This riverbed’s more like beach sand. It doesn’t kick up a lot of dust. We’re close,” he muttered. “Lucy, if they’re still in their truck, I’m going to do a felony stop on them, and I want you to stay in my truck—”
“Not a chance.” She saw a familiar landmark from her window. “Stop here, quickly.” Lucy held onto the dashboard when the truck skidded a few feet.
“What happened?” Jason asked through the radio.
“I don’t know,” Mark told him. “What happened, Lucy?”
Unbuckling her seatbelt, she said, “I want surprise on our side. If we get any closer with the truck they might hear our engines.” Lucy opened the door and jumped out. “We go in by foot from here.”
Their trucks went dead silent as she ran along the arroyo. In the distance, the faint sound of another motor confirmed to her that she wasn’t too late. The sand crunching under her feet thundered in her ears, competing with her fast-paced pulse.
Lucy didn’t bother looking back to see if she had the border agents running behind her—she didn’t care. As soon as her window disappeared and she had the agents going, things had started to change. The outcome of her window would be different. She just didn’t know how it would end.
But with a cheater’s glimpse into the future, she had a heads up on how many bad guys there were, where they were, and what they were planning to do. That kind of intelligence was priceless to a CIA agent.
The engine stopped. Now was the time for Lucy to make up the distance, and she put on the speed, running faster but staying next to the side of the arroyo’s six-foot tall chiseled walls. The closer she got the faster her heart raced.
Voices floating on the hot afternoon breeze brought her fast pace down to a cautious jog. The arroyo started to narrow, and Lucy stopped before going around the bend.
Ahead, parked in front of a cove dug out by turbulent swirls of water, sat an old gray-toned Suburban SUV.
Mark looked around her shoulder. Breathing heavily, he whispered, “You were right.”
“I know.”
Jason said from around Mark, “You must be psychic.” He looked up at the sky. “How good would that chopper be right now?”
“That would be bad,” Lucy said, softly. “Very bad.”
“You got a plan?” Mark whispered.
Lucy gazed up into his worried eyes and smiled. “Yeah, but you’re not going to like it. I need to go in alone—”
“No.” Mark grabbed her elbow. “We can’t let you do that. They’re murderers.”
Working against her impulse to pull out of his painful grasp, Lucy relaxed her arm and lowered her voice. “You need to trust me, Mark. I know what I’m doing.”
Jason leaned closer and asked, “Are you the woman who blew up the terrorist camp on an island in the Bahamas a few months ago?”
That question set Lucy back. How information from her last mission got leaked and spread out to the deserts of Arizona shocked her—until she remembered all the Steele Reinforcement’s security around her during her hospital stay. One of his men must’ve talked. “I … I can’t tell you. That was classified top secret.” Lucy held her breath, glancing between the two men.
“That’s good enough for me,” Jason said quietly.
Mark pulled her closer, leaned his face near hers, and said, “For me too, Secret Agent Lucy James.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Mariposa?” Lucy called loudly. She kept her language in Spanish, but only after emerging from around the Suburban did she remember that she’d plucked the brown contact lenses out. Her blue eyes would immediately be noticed, not only by the bad guys—the other woman would know something was wrong as soon as she looked at her. With her h
and on her forehead, shielding her face, Lucy staggered toward the group of four men like she was about to faint.
“Lucia,” Mariposa shouted, running toward her.
The man in gray plaid caught Mariposa by the arm, stopping her, and another of the men roughly grabbed Lucy from behind and pushed a gun to her ribs. When Raul got angry, the man in white laughed and reached under his loose-fitting shirt and took out his weapon.
Lucy turned her head just enough to stare into the dark brown eyes of the man stupid enough to hold her and smiled at his astonishment of her Anglo eyes before she grabbed his gun, forcing it away from her body. A swift kick of her heel hyper-extended his knee, sending him down into the sand with a painful cry. He lost his grip on his gun, which she then used on the man in white as he lifted his gun to shoot her. Lucy got her shot off first.
When she heard the young woman cry out again, Lucy saw Mariposa’s captor pull her back away into the cove. Lucy swung her gun around and took careful aim at the man’s shocked face. “Let her go.”
He had a gun on the woman too, but he wasn’t in a position to get rid of his hostage. He kept slowly moving backward—right where Lucy wanted him to go. Two more steps and he had two metal prongs embedded into his shoulder, before fifty-thousand volts of electricity surged through the thin wires. The taser Jason shot from over the top edge sent the man’s rigid body down to the riverbed, releasing Mariposa as he groaned and twitched convulsively.
Jason jumped down next to the man just as Mark came running from around the bend. Lucy grabbed the .45 from the sand, and Raul pulled Mariposa away from the border agents cuffing the man’s now limp body.
It was over. Only one bad guy was killed, but he needed to die: Juan and Eduardo were still dead. “It’s been changed,” Lucy said softly in English, feeling the ice water surge in strong waves through her veins. She knew she only had a few moments left before the side effect of changing a window would overtake her body, and then she’d be helpless. She reached for the dirt wall of the channel. She was barely able to lean against it before she fainted to the ground.
