“You have to follow my lead, Erin,” Zander said urgently. “I’m not going to get hurt. I’ve got too much to live for. But we have to do this smart. These people are trying to steal three hundred thousand dollars from you. That’s a lot of money no matter where you are, but it’s especially a lot of money in this cesspool, so they may be pretty motivated to keep it. You got me? If they ask you a question, you make sure I’m good with the answer before you give it. If they say go, you make sure I give you the sign to move. Deal?”
“Deal,” Erin said, clutching the straps of her pack, slung tight over her shoulders. And she did feel better. The danger was there, now more so than ever, but so was the understanding that she could do this. They could do this. It was like that long-ago promise of walking into a thousand sunsets, she realized. It was going to be okay, as long as they were together. She nodded again as sudden emotion flooded her. “That’s just fine,” she said. “You go in first. I follow you.”
Zander gave her an odd look. “Right. Follow my lead.”
He turned and moved ahead of her down the narrow alley, past a few cars and even an official-looking white government van. Her nerves tightened again as the small parking lot that marked the rear of the Playa Del Sol bar came into view. They paused a second in the alley, regarding the back of the building. The place still looked deserted, but the door was propped open with a small brick.
This is it, she thought. The meeting was happening, and it was all coming down to this.
At the last second, Zander turned back to her. “Kiss for good luck?” he asked, grinning down at her.
“Yes!” She stood on her tiptoes and reached up, and Zander leaned down, pressing his lips against hers with an urgency that made her heart kick into a higher gear. He was nervous, too—nervous or amped or, she wasn’t sure how or what he was—but unlike her dark and cloying fear, his energy was high, intense, ready for action. Maybe that’s all this was, Erin thought. A matter of looking at the same kind of challenge a different way. That no matter what life handed you, it didn’t have to be scary, so much as…exciting. Like jumping off a cliff was exciting, or racing a fast car.
If only she didn’t have to test that theory out in a situation where people could get killed if she did the wrong thing.
Without saying another word, Zander strode out of the alley and into parking lot, both of his hands on the straps of his own pack, like any camper heading out on a long hike. Erin, hurrying behind him, didn’t have any more time to think, as Zander pushed his way into the back of the restaurant without stopping.
Right on his heels, Erin found herself in a cramped kitchen, ringed with steel fixtures and cabinets. The place was clean, cleaner than she would have expected, honestly, but that wasn’t what arrested her attention. Instead, her eyes locked onto a woman standing in front of a heavy butcher-block island, right in the center of the room. A woman she hadn’t laid eyes on in so long that her brain couldn’t fully process what she was seeing. And who. And how.
“Erin!” her mother cried out, promptly bursting into tears. “You’re here!”
Erin stood frozen on the linoleum floor, staring as she always did when she first saw her mother, and freshly taken aback by the inevitable emotional outburst that followed. Her mother’s long, jet-black hair hung loose over her shoulders, her skin darkened by the sun, but still youthful, still fresh, her guileless blue eyes the kind that made people want to hand over whatever they could to help her. She was beautiful even when she cried, her wide eyes staring at Erin as if she was the one who was some sort of ghost returned from the dead, as if she was the one in danger.
“Did you bring the money?” The boyfriend’s voice was tight, and more than a little panicked, but how could she blame him? Erin shifted her gaze to him. Mike something or other looked pretty good, all things considered. It was just the two of them in the kitchen, though, no guards. Surely it wasn’t that easy, right?
Erin’s mind was spinning out of control, trying to process it all. How long had her mother been held, two weeks? While she looked whole and healthy, there was no way of knowing what sort of damage had been done to her. Erin hadn’t even been the one kidnapped, and she’d been damaged by this process. How much worse had it been for her mom?
Still, at least both her mother and Mike looked…stable. Unharmed, just like the man had said on the phone. Mike’s khakis were only slightly wrinkled, his pale-blue polo shirt setting off a head of thinning blond hair. He had tired, stressed-out blue eyes that darted around, and Erin watched as his gaze fixed on the doorway that led deeper into the restaurant.
That’s where the kidnappers were, she realized. Watching them, waiting.
“Erin!” her mother chimed in, her voice shrill, bringing Erin’s attention back to her. “Did you bring the money?”
Erin’s gaze darted to Zander, who nodded, his eyes also now fixed on the far doorway.
“Yes,” she said, pitching her voice to be heard in the next room. “Yes, I brought all of it. It’s in the blue backpack.”
There still was no movement, but a familiar voice rang out from the next room. “Put it on the table. Now.” Erin’s gaze snapped back to Zander’s. This was the man on the phone, she knew it was. As they both hesitated, a man strode into the room, his face covered with a nylon mask, completely obscuring his features. Erin’s mother and Mike the boyfriend cringed away from him, and Erin’s stomach tightened. “I said, put it on the table,” the man said. “If you insist on trying my patience, I can just as easily kill all of you.” He lifted a gun, aiming at Erin’s mother. “In fact, it would give me great pleasure to kill her, in particular.”
“No!” Erin’s mother gasped, crumpling into her boyfriend’s arms as the tears flowed anew, and Zander strode forward.
“That’s not necessary,” he said very loudly, to be heard over the sobbing. “I have the money in this pack. All of it.”
“Then put it down!” The man gestured angrily with the pistol. “Put it down or she dies.”
The man was interrupted by a loud knocking at the front of the restaurant, and everyone shut up, even Erin’s mother, who sniffled and clung more closely to Mike.
A voice rang out in the stillness. “Hey, anybody in there? It’s Rio!”
Erin almost swallowed her tongue, too scared to even look at Zander. The voice outside sounded exactly like Rey’s, but that would make no sense. Whoever it was kept pounding on the door, however, his deeply accented voice growing more urgent. “C’mon, man, I know you’re in there. It’s Rio! Open the door!”
“Mateo!” the man in the mask growled, never moving his gun. There was some shuffling in the next room, then a second man, also shrouded in a nylon mask, looked in. The two spoke in rapid-fire Spanish, then Mateo disappeared again. The first man took his gun off of Erin’s mother long enough to gesture toward Zander.
“You, now, with the money, put it down.”
“Okay, okay.” Zander unslung the bag and set it on the counter, reaching for the zipper.
“Step away from it!” The man’s voice was sharp, and Zander held up his hands, looking as guileless as she’d ever seen him.
“Sorry, man, I just wanted to show you the money. It’s all there, I swear it, we just hid it under those clothes—”
“Get back!”
As Zander stepped away, the big man stepped forward, yanking open the pack. He stuck his hand into the bag, shoving aside a T-shirt as he scowled at Zander. Then he glanced down, his fingers clearly having connected with the stacks of cash. His face broke into a grin, and for a split second, he let the gun he was holding in his right hand angle off to the side, his left hand pawing through the money. “Ah! It is here, that is—”
“Get down!” Erin jolted as Zander’s shout tore through the kitchen, louder and more forceful than anything she’d ever heard from him—from anyone in her life. “Now!”
Whether through terror, instinct, or just blind trust at the authority in Zander’s voice, Erin didn’t paus
e, didn’t think, just hit the floor as her gaze whipped around to him, to see Zander wrenching something out of the back of his collar, high in the center of his back—the area that had been covered by the heavy weight of the backpack until now. Zander brought Rey’s gun around in a flash of metal, and didn’t waste time with any more words. With a quick blast of gunfire, he shot the kidnapper, whose right hand seemed to explode backward, blood arcing as the gun went flying in one direction, the bag in the other. In the next second, Zander bounded toward the man he’d just shot.
From her crouching position on the floor, Erin’s vision was filled with nothing but Zander. Her onetime high school boyfriend looked like a totally different person now—a grown-up, hard-bodied man. A machine, almost. He raced forward, his intense efficiency completely at odds with his T-shirt, shorts, and sandals. As fast as a blink while she watched, he punched the kidnapper in the neck with his hand held in a sharp, chopping position. The guy went down like a sack, and Zander hit him twice more, sending him sprawling across the floor.
“Everybody out!” Zander roared, stepping over the man to grab his gun. When he whirled back around to them, Erin was already up and across the kitchen, shoving her mother and Mike forward as the three of them fled out the door, running for their lives.
Chapter 23
“The van!”
Zander was herding them all back up the alley, only now they were all flat-out sprinting, and suddenly Erin realized what they were running toward: the large, white government van, with the word CONAFOR on its side, along with more words she couldn’t understand.
And there was Rey running from the other direction, pounding up to the van’s driver’s side. Her gaze focused on their cabbie and she took him in as if for the first time: his long, loose body, his gray-green uniform, his hair slicked back…and the sleek, government-grade rifle gripped in his right hand as he wrenched open the driver’s-side door.
“Hola!” he shouted, just as Erin’s mother and Mike reached the vehicle. Then Zander was there, hustling them all forward, shoving them into the confines of the vehicle like kindergartners forced onto a bus. He tossed a shocked Erin the backpack full of money, then hauled the door shut.
“Any trouble?” Zander barked to Rey as he half stumbled, half fell into the front seat. Erin’s mother was rocking on the floor now, tears streaming down her face. Clutching both backpacks now, Erin made an impulsive move toward her, then jerked back, startled, as Mike pulled her mom into his embrace, pushing her hair out of her face and crooning to her in a soft, low baritone that barely resonated above the crash and rumble of the van but still stole Erin’s breath away.
He was singing to her mother.
She was so not dealing with this right now.
She turned around resolutely and lurched her way to the front of the van, catching Rey’s glance in the rearview mirror as she sat, dumping the packs at her feet. “Hola,” he said again, grinning broadly as she settled in behind him. “Your boyfriend, he’s not so bad for a pretty boy.”
“Just drive, Taco Bell,” Zander snapped, and Erin glanced at him now, really seeing him for the first time since she’d started running. He looked sharp, tough, once again not the man she’d known for all these years, but a harder, smarter version of that man. A warrior. Zander half-turned in his seat as Rey bounced over the curb and onto the main road, and pinned Erin with worried eyes. “You okay?” he asked.
“Me? You’re the one who just shot…who got us all out…I can’t believe you even got the backpack…,” Erin stuttered, not able to form words any more coherently.
“Speaking of what I got.” Zander reached down and picked up the kidnapper’s gun, wiping it with his T-shirt. He did something to the base of it and a slender rectangle fell out of the handle into his hand. “Turn down the next alley.”
“Piece of shit anyway,” Rey agreed, looking over at the weapon. He turned into a side street thirty seconds later, and Zander tossed the now-unloaded gun through the passenger window, into a pile of trash bags. It’d be found, certainly. But not by the kidnappers.
Erin’s heart was still pounding, and she wrapped her arms around herself tightly, chills rolling up and down her skin. “You could have gotten killed,” she finally managed to say, but Zander shook his head, his gaze swinging back to her.
“These guys were not experts, Erin,” he said. “Just like we suspected. He didn’t check me for a weapon, or you either. Yes, he had his gun on your mom, but he was sloppy and stupid.” His gaze shifted to Rey. “Looks like you handled his buddy pretty easily.”
“Well, only because I am so good at my work.” Rey grinned, expertly weaving the van through traffic. “The friend was a skilled martial artist, a trained ninja, I am thinking. It is only through my highly advanced abilities that you are all still alive.”
Zander snorted a laugh. “Right.”
“Hey, you don’t want to brag, I respect that, that is you,” Rey protested. “Me, I am happy to take credit where credit is due.” He sobered then as he looked into the rearview mirror. “But we are not quite finished yet, yes? Now we drive back over the border, as fast as we possibly can, and we hope that no one asks questions. But with this van, see?” He patted the dashboard. “It is most likely that no one will ask questions. So nothing should go wrong.”
Erin nodded. They weren’t out of this yet. Rey was right. They still had to get across the river into the United States, hidden in a Mexican-government van. “Of course not,” she said, watching the city streets fly by. “How could anything go wrong?”
—
Zander tried to ratchet his adrenaline down a few notches, grateful for Rey’s incessant chatter as he shucked himself out of the makeshift gun holster he’d rigged across his bare back in the hotel bathroom. Erin, her mother, and the boyfriend were now stone silent in the back of the van, facing each other. They hadn’t talked. They’d barely looked at each other. Her mom had finally laid off of the crying, but she hadn’t dared to begin a conversation. How do you talk to the child you just led into danger, the child you were willing to bankrupt, the child you could have just gotten killed?
His lips twitched as he slid his shirt back over his head. He didn’t envy Erin and her mother that conversation, and yet…he did. It was still a conversation, something out of reach between him and his father.
What would he have said to his old man now, if given the chance? What would he have asked him? Those questions were bothering him more than they should. Hell, everything was bothering him more than it should, it seemed, and it had since he’d gotten word his dad had passed. He felt like a man lost to himself, wandering alone in a desert he wasn’t sure had an end.
“So, I had some time on my hands waiting for you finally to close this deal today,” Rey began conversationally, and for the moment any trace of his fake Mexican accent was gone, or any of his authentic one for that matter. “Before you two hauled your asses over to the bar, I checked in with my buddies, sent some texts.”
“Some texts,” Zander repeated dryly. “Please tell me you didn’t tag us on Facebook.”
“No, but as it turns out, you’ve got some people worried about you.”
That did catch his attention. Rey had the grace to keep his voice low, and Zander shot him a look. “Some people like who?”
“Some people like a friend of a friend, I’m told, sort of like how you found me. This friend is pretty resourceful, it seems. Started looking for you right after you disappeared from home sweet home, found you this morning.”
Zander shook his head. “Impossible. Nobody knew where I was going.”
“Well, someone did, and he decided to send you and your señorita a ticket home.”
Zander considered Rey’s words. He’d kept everything pretty locked down, but he’d had to make a lot of calls in a very short time. He’d needed to dig up a pile of intel on the local drug scene before he’d found Rey. But he hadn’t sworn all the guys to secrecy or any of that shit. He hadn’t needed to. He wasn
’t planning on doing anything illegal. He flashed a weary smile into hot sun. He hadn’t done anything illegal, either. The gun wasn’t registered to him, the kidnapper’s injuries were minor. Or minor enough. “I have no clue who it could be,” Zander said. “And what do you mean, ticket?”
“I mean, ticket as in ticket.” Rey fished inside his shirt pocket and pulled out a slip of paper, handing it to Zander as he shifted his glance to the rearview mirror. He called to the back of the van. “Here we are, everyone, and a few words from your captain now. We should not get stopped. If we do get stopped, look super-American, okay? You were mugged while hiking at the Rio Grande, pulled across the river, all your identification stolen, and you were too freaked out to cross back, thinking you’d be arrested without your ID. You dried out and wandered around until you were half-starving, and lucky for you, I found you.” He grinned into whatever image he saw in the mirror. “You’ll do great. Americans freak out all the time down here, and the fact that you don’t want to press charges or file a complaint or really do anything other than get the hell back home will resonate with the border guards. But my friend at CONAFOR assured me that he makes this crossing a dozen times a week. We shouldn’t be stopped.”
There was a nervous murmur of assent in the back, and it was Zander’s turn to glance into the rearview mirror. Erin’s voice wasn’t among those speaking. She sat perfectly straight, her face composed, her slender shoulders not even trembling. By contrast, her mom and the boyfriend gripped each other like they were about to go up against a firing squad. It probably had never occurred to them until the bitter end just what they had gotten themselves into. Sometimes ignorance really was bliss. And sometimes it just took the right moment for you to see your actions for what they truly were: selfish, stupid, and deadly.
The traffic moved in fits and starts, but finally they got onto the bridge, Rey gradually picking up speed until, at last, they reached the crossing and the light switched green as soon as they approached. The electric eye scanned the CONAFOR truck’s pass sticker dispassionately, as the guard inside the glassed-in cage yelled on the phone over some other problem, barely sparing them a look. They drove through just like any other car full of commercial workers, but no one inside the van spoke until they were off the bridge completely.
Want It Page 19
