Complete Mia Kazmaroff Romantic Suspense Series, 1-4

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  Carino said it was as it should be. Maria was special. At night he would talk to her and ask her about her life in her village. It was a hard life and he would hold her when she sobbed and told of the times Papa would drink too much and slip into her room only to pretend in the morning that nothing had happened. Carino held her and wiped her tears away when she talked of her brother, José, too. She knew José was looking for her. He was such a good brother.

  One day, Carino came to her as she was taking a bath and sat by her as she shaved her legs. He watched her with such benevolence in his eyes.

  “I need you to do something for me, Maria,” he said to her.

  Maria looked up, surprised at his tone, because he seemed sad. “Yes, my love,” she said. “Anything.”

  “I have had some little trouble in town with a debt that I owe a very dangerous man.”

  Maria dropped her razor and sat up, covering her breasts with her hands, although Carino had seen them many times. “Carino,” she said. “Will he try to hurt you?” She was not unfamiliar with stories in her village of unscrupulous men who would loan money hoping you could not pay it back.

  “Not if you help me,” he said, his eyes filled with hope.

  “What can I do?” she asked, doubtfully.

  “This man has seen you in the house,” Carino said. “He has said he will forgive the debt for one hour with you.”

  Maria stared at him, uncomprehending.

  “In this bedroom.”

  She covered her mouth with her hand and stifled a sound. “My love,” she gasped. “What are you asking?”

  “I would not ask you, my dearest love, my Maria,” Carino said, “if I didn’t believe my life depended on it. Can you not do this for me? I beg you.”

  Maria stared at him in horror and as the tears fell down her cheeks, felt herself nodding.

  *****

  The drive to Shakerag was lined on both sides of the road by peaceful pastures and tree farms. Mia had insisted she and Jack go forward with their investigation. She could tell he wasn’t sure—after all, she’d been attacked just hours ago—but she knew he was eager to continue the hunt.

  “So,” she said, watching the pastureland, bland and bleached of color, fly by her window. “Any of your neighbors see anything?”

  “Possibly,” he said, his eyes on the road.

  “Well? Are you going to tell me?”

  “Huh?” He looked at her and then shook his head as if to clear it. She knew he was unhappy about something. Things had been awkward between them for awhile now.

  Were they getting to the point where they couldn’t work together? She reminded herself that they had yet to really work together.

  “Come on, Jack,” she said. “This is our chance to show how we do together.”

  He looked at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Our agency? Our partnership? Well, this is us working together. And so far it feels like a square peg being firmly forced into a round hole so what’s the problem?”

  “No problem.”

  “Fine. But if you don’t talk about it with me—which is the first rung of any relationship, communication—”

  “That’s rich coming from you.”

  Mia’s mouth fell open. “So you do have a bone to pick with me. Well, I wish to hell you’d tell me what it is. Why do you make me get it out of you in bits and pieces?”

  “I don’t have a bone to pick with you.”

  “Then why did you just intimate that I’m not communicating with you?”

  “Okay, fine,” he said, and she could see he was getting frustrated. “Why is it I have to find out from your mother that you’re seeing someone?” He kept his eyes firmly glued to the road ahead.

  Well, she certainly hadn’t expected that.

  “How does my mother know?”

  “I don’t know but she does and she’s as curious as I am about why it’s such a big secret.”

  Mia looked out the window. Clouds were bunching up in the north. They were probably due for some rain.

  How in the world did they find out about Ben? Is my phone bugged?

  “It’s not a secret,” she said.

  “Oh no? Then why the private conversation today in your car?”

  “God, can’t I have a personal conversation anymore? When you’re dating someone, do you want the whole world listening in?”

  “So you are dating someone.”

  “Again, I’m amazed you think that has something to do with you.”

  “It has nothing to do with me,” he said, biting off every word. “Except when you go about preaching about communication between partners and shit. I’d back it up a little on the holier than thou act.”

  “You are thoroughly pissing me off, Jack,” she said tightly. “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t acting that way and the kind of communication I was referring to had to do with the investigation, not my personal life.”

  “Well, excuse me and thank you for that clarification. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

  “You’re going to miss the turn.” Where does he get off? He doesn’t want the two of us to date but I’m not allowed to see anyone else? Really?

  “I’ve been here enough times, Mia. I’m not going to miss the turn.” He spun the steering wheel jerking the car onto the shoulder making it abundantly clear, at least to Mia, that he’d forgotten the turn.

  The road turned into a bumpy combination of dirt and pebbles, bordered on one side by the ubiquitous slat fences that identify Georgia’s horse farms, and on the other by a small lake. Mia scanned the pasture for grazing horses. Shiloh was kept in the north pasture, not the western one here, but it was an ingrained habit that defied logic.

  “Park at the upper barn,” she said, “by the outdoor dressage ring.”

  “I know where I’m going.”

  Fine. Then what am I doing here, I wonder? She crossed her arms. As soon as he parked the car, she hopped out and slammed the door. The sound echoed across the nearest pasture and she looked at the tack shed by the upper barn, hoping she hadn’t scared any horse getting fed or saddled up. One of the mangy barn dogs came loping toward her from the direction of the round pen.

  Jack came around the car and pocketed his car keys. “You ready?” he said.

  Without answering, she turned and walked up the road they’d just driven down, forcing him to jog to catch up with her.

  “Maybe we should try this again,” he said. She recognized the conciliatory note in his voice and felt instantly guilty. He was her partner. She shouldn’t be treating him like she was some annoyed girlfriend with her nose out of joint.

  “Look,” she said, still not turning to look at him but slowing her pace, “I’m sorry if I’ve been secretive. I just met the guy and until recently didn’t even know I was dating him. So there. You’re as up to speed with my personal life as I am.” She stopped and spread her arms out. “This is where we met José,” she said.

  Jack stopped in the middle of the road and looked at both sides. This close to the barn, the lake had given away to a wild hedge of mountain laurel. He pointed to the north side of the road. “He came from here, right?”

  Mia nodded.

  Jack went to the bushes and she watched him pry apart the branches. “Yeah, something big definitely came through here. Where does this lead?”

  “Well, it skirts the main pasture,” Mia said, trying to put a map of the farm in her head. “You can see there are no trails here. Nothing big enough for a horse to get through.”

  “José had barbwire scratches.”

  “Yes, but not from Shakerag. No horse farm would have barbwire around it.”

  “Okay, so he got cut before he got to Shakerag.”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “You ready?”

  “It’s a long walk, Jack,” Mia said, pulling the bushes apart and stepping into them. “At least two miles of really hard hiking. And then we need to cross the pasture. We could skip it and just take the
car to the far side of the farm.”

  “Yeah, but if we can’t pick up his trail on the far side or know where it was he came in, we’ll just have to come back here and do it the hard way.”

  “Can you track him across the pasture? It’s rained since…you know, since he came through here.”

  “I don’t know what I can do until I see the ground,” Jack said, holding a low hanging branch apart for her to pass through. “If we lose him, we do.”

  They walked in single file without speaking for the next thirty minutes. Jack led the way, stopping every now and then to examine a broken branch or look at the ground. When they finally broke through to open pasture, he paused only a moment. Even Mia could see that the most logical trajectory would be down the deepest slope and straight across to the black horse fencing on the far side.

  The chill soon bowed to the warmth of her exertions and Mia, although physically comfortable, was left with the feeling that she was following the trail of a desperate man’s last act. Every broken branch where he’d placed a hand to push himself further in his journey to find and rescue his sister was a testimony to José’s determination. And love.

  It was all just so heartbreaking.

  She jogged behind Jack across the pasture. She could see Shiloh down by the smaller pond with some of his horse pals. She was tempted to whistle to him and see him raise his head to look for her, but she knew they didn’t have time to stop today.

  Jack looked hunched in his thin windbreaker—one of Dave’s old jackets—as if the wind was still cutting right through him. It probably was. She could tell by the way he walked that he was driven. Maybe all investigators are like this, she thought. At least the really good ones. They get on a trail and they just go. Regardless of the cold, the cow patties, the dips and turns in the path. She loved that about Jack.

  The man just never gave up.

  On the far side of the pasture, Jack climbed over the fence without conversation or hesitation and Mia followed suit. This was outside the farm and its three hundred acres and she’d never had the need or inclination to explore it before. A long and winding track of red clay ran outside the fence. She watched Jack squat and look at something on the road before he straightened up and looked due north.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “You know what’s on the north side of the farm?”

  “Not really. Do you?”

  “I did a little research online. There are several factories out this way.”

  “Factories? No way.”

  He glanced at her. “Not factories in the sense you’d think of them in a city. These are more…processing plants.”

  “Okay, now you have my attention.”

  “Didn’t you tell the detectives today that the guy who attacked you smelled like chickens?”

  “That’s right.” Mia looked over Jack’s head. A hundred feet or so past the clay road was another fence—this one laced with barbwire.

  “There are a series of chicken processing plants on the other side of that fence.”

  “Wait a minute!” She ran to him and grabbed him by the sleeve. “Wait just a damn minute. You think the guy who was hiding in my mom’s garage has something to do with José?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Not until this minute, I didn’t, no!”

  “Well, think about it, Mia,” Jack said patiently. “You pick up a guy who’s likely been involved in a human trafficking situation. A few hours later, he’s killed and I’m nearly killed and a few hours after that you’re attacked. Really? You think that’s a coincidence?”

  Mia sucked in a sharp intake of breath. “You think they followed me and Mom when we went to your house, tried to kill you and José and then went to Mom’s to finish the job?”

  “Everything else fits. Come on,” he said, turning toward the barbwire fence. “Let’s see if Mr. Bushy Eyebrows is on the other side of this fence with all the other chicken shit.”

  6

  They walked across three miles of open, fallow pasture. No horses or cows, just pale, dead grass that finally gave way to a road of rocky, red clay that led to a crooked metal gate. Burton stopped at the gate.

  “José would’ve had to walk through this farm to get to Shakerag,” he said.

  “So is this where he came from?” Mia squinted in the distance past the gate. She could see the tops of two long metal huts, bleak and unadorned.

  “That’s my guess. We probably should go through the front gate anyway. Less chance of getting shot that way.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Burton unlooped the latch on the gate and swung it open so Mia could walk through, then latched it behind them. The wind whipped by them bringing fluff and feathers with it. As they walked toward the poultry houses, she saw the ground was littered with white feathers. At one point, she nearly stepped on the carcass of a dead chicken.

  They kept walking.

  As they neared the two long metal huts, she could see there were four pick-up trucks and a long windowless van parked in front.

  “It’s creepy here,” she whispered. “And too quiet.”

  Burton didn’t answer. He walked to a blue truck with a sign on the side that read Dinsmore’s Poultry, and peered inside. Mia joined him.

  “What do you think?” she said in a low voice.

  “This matches the description of a truck that was driving up and down my street the night José died.”

  “May I help you folks?”

  The voice was harsh and came from behind them. Mia jumped and grabbed Burton’s arm. He turned, almost casually, to face the man who was approaching them from the front of the closest poultry house. She saw Jack’s eyes went to the eaves of the structure and she realized he was looking for the surveillance camera that must have heralded their presence.

  “Looking for Dinsmore Poultry,” Jack said. “Is that you?”

  The man was big. He looked sunburned to Mia, although how he managed that in January was anyone’s guess. His hair was unkempt and she noticed his nails were dark with dirt. He wore a baggy pair of jeans, his shirt untucked, and an open corduroy jacket.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “That’s pretty shitty customer service, friend,” Burton said, putting his hands on his hips in a stance that Mia recognized as confrontational.

  “I ain’t your friend, sport,” the man said. “And this is private property. I’ll need you to leave.”

  “I don’t think I caught your name,” Burton said, not moving.

  The man hesitated and then pulled out his wallet and dug out a business card. “The name’s Joe Don White,” he said, handing the card to Burton. “But my boss is Zachary Dinsmore. You got a question, you need to call him. This is a business and you are interfering with our operations.”

  Mia took a step away from the two men and a step closer to the poultry hut. Joe Don shot an arm out to bar her way.

  “Get your hand off her,” Burton said quietly.

  Joe Don dropped his hand. “Nobody’s allowed near the poultry processing facility,” he said as if reciting a poem from memory. “It could be dangerous.”

  “I need to use the bathroom,” Mia said.

  “We don’t got any,” he said, his eyes going to Jack as if he didn’t trust him not to push the issue. “Use a bush.”

  “That’s okay,” Mia said. “I can wait.”

  Joe Don adopted Burton’s stance with his hands on his hips. When he did, Mia saw he wore a pistol in a shoulder harness.

  Stalemate.

  “You got a permit for that?” Jack asked.

  “You a cop?”

  Jack didn’t answer.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Joe Don sneered.

  “Come on, Jack,” Mia said putting her hand on his sleeve. “We’ve got the card. Let’s go.”

  As they both turned to leave, the front door to the nearest hut slid open and four men emerged.

  “Hey, go on back in there, ya hear?” Joe Don yelled t
o the group and they stopped and quickly retreated to the interior of the hut but not before Mia saw that all four men were Hispanic.

  Joe Don turned back to them. “Time to go,” he said loudly, jerking his head toward the gate.

  Burton took Mia’s arm and they started walking to the entrance. Mia looked back twice before they reached the gate. Both times, Joe Don stood where they’d left him, his hands on his hips. The men in the poultry barn didn’t reappear.

  “Those men in the barn were Mexican, like José,” Mia whispered as Jack opened the gate.

  “I know. Any of ‘em the guy who attacked you?”

  “No. Did you see their faces? Jack, did you see them?”

  “Yeah, I saw ‘em.”

  Mia tried to erase the expressions on the men’s faces. Each one had the passive, stunned expression of a work animal who knows he must put one step in front of the other just to survive the day.

  She looked over her shoulder at the stark, windowless huts and suddenly realized what they reminded her of—old newsreel footage of Nazi concentration camps. She continued to stare at the scene, her horror building, until she felt Jack’s hand on her shoulder. She turned to him, fighting to keep her voice steady.

  “They’re prisoners,” she said.

  *****

  Maria kept the television on mute as she straightened the living room. She liked to see the images of the gringos in their beautiful houses. She liked to imagine they were Hispanic and that it was a life that would someday be hers.

  She found herself revisiting in her mind the terrible night with the man who Carino owed money, a night of brutality and demands so unlike anything Carino or her boyfriend, Miguel, back home had ever done. Even her Papa was weak and vaguely apologetic.

  This man had not been either.

  The next morning, Carino treated her like a queen but when the terrible night was behind her, Maria realized with surprise that she didn’t feel as if she had saved her dear Carino.