Then Rey flashed another big grin into the rearview mirror. “And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen,” he said with a flourish. “Welcome to the United States.”
Chapter 24
The white van drove quickly along the American side of the river, but Erin’s mind wouldn’t settle down. She clenched her fists in her lap, trying to sort out what to do next. Her mother and Mike had no money, no passport, no ID. Everything had been taken from them except for their clothes, and…she stopped. Wait a minute.
“You had fake IDs over there, right?” she asked. “Fake passports?”
Her sudden question caught both of them up short, and they stared at her nervously. Mike answered first. “We did,” he said. “We didn’t want to risk—”
“Yeah, yeah, I got that,” Erin said. She didn’t want to look at them, so she fixed her gaze on the space above her mother’s right shoulder. All she could think of was Gran’s beautiful brownstone, which she’d mortgaged to the hilt. She’d gotten all the money back, but that didn’t change what her mother had asked of her. Expected of her.
Focus. She tried again. “But where are your real passports? Surely you have them somewhere on this side, to get you home, rent your car, get on a plane, whatever.”
“But all of our money is gone,” her mother said, and the querulous tone was back in her voice. “They took every—”
“I’m not asking about your money,” Erin snapped, cutting her mother off. “I’m asking about your documents. Where did you stash those?”
Mike hesitated as her mother just stared at her. “San Antonio,” he finally said. “We flew in there, got a deal with a self-storage place that holds smaller items. Right at the airport. We put our IDs in there. No money, though,” he said. “Your mom’s right. That’s all gone.”
“Yeah, well, you’re alive. That’s a good trade-off,” Erin said stiffly. That shut them up again. So, okay. This wasn’t so bad. She had her credit cards, cash, and a few prepaid Visa cards in her wallet that should get them home. At least they had their ID. She’d picked up her mother before when she didn’t even have a scrap of identification to her name. She sure as hell wasn’t in the mood to deal with that kind of insanity right now.
She sat back against the built-in seat of the CONAFOR van as they rumbled through Laredo. She should be feeling better, but she wasn’t. She should feel relieved, but she didn’t. She felt like the mission hadn’t ended, the op was still active, or whatever the appropriate lingo was for a special agent deployed on a super-secret mission. Her mother and Mike were home, they were safe.
But now she didn’t feel safe. She felt at loose ends, out of phase. Like somewhere along the line she’d made a wrong turn and she didn’t even know what continent she was on anymore.
“This is our stop!” Rey said, his heavy Mexican accent once more lacing his words. “Get yourselves a nice car and get out of the city, pronto. You, my friend,” he said, looking at Zander with a wide grin. “You already have your tickets, eh?”
“But tickets to what?” Zander asked gruffly. “What’s waiting for us at the airport?”
“I look like Triple A? Sometimes you need to know when not to ask.” Rey ratcheted his faux-Mexican singsong voice up a few decibels, and Erin couldn’t help but smile. She’d miss the colorful cabbie…or whatever he was. She’d miss his vibrancy and flair.
She wouldn’t miss Mexico, though. She’d had enough south-of-the-border color to last her for a lifetime. And yet…
“Well, this is it, then,” Zander said, interrupting her reverie. She flicked her gaze forward to see him reaching over, pulling something free from the blue backpack—a stack of cash. He handed it to Rey, but the cabbie waved him off.
“Nah, you’re good, man. Most fun I’ve had in months. And besides, our mutual friend? He already offered to pay me. So we’re good.”
“Really.” Zander’s tone was deceptively mild, but Erin’s brain was already jumping tracks. She still had to pay Zander. She wanted to pay Zander—hell, now she had more money than she knew what to do with, so she could absolutely pay Zander. But what kind of payment would he really want? And what would happen to them both after that?
The van rumbled to a stop. Her mother and Mike scrambled up, and all of them piled out of the van. Glad for the distraction, Erin pushed off the future yet again, more than willing to focus on cleaning up the present instead.
“Okay,” she said, turning to her mom. “Let me get you a car. Just try not to get pulled over on your way to San Antonio, since you don’t have—”
“Actually, why don’t I do that,” Zander said, interrupting her. “You guys sit here in the shade.”
He turned to walk off and Erin started after him. “I’ll be right back,” she called back to her mother and Mike, who were looking mutinous again. They were like children to her right now, but that didn’t mean they wanted to be treated like children. She knew that, but she didn’t feel like catering to their delicate sensibilities. She was in no mood to do much of anything but scream, and she didn’t know why. She didn’t feel right at all.
“Hey,” she said, as she entered the heavily air-conditioned outer lobby of the car-rental agency. “I can handle this. It’s my mom, after all.”
“I know.” Zander turned to her, regarding her so seriously that Erin took a step back, every nerve on high alert. What was this?
His next words hit her like a physical blow. “She is your mom, Erin. She’s fucked up more times than you’ve even told me, I’m sure. She’s been a despicable human being. But she’s no longer the child and you’re no longer the adult here. You don’t have to bail her out of every stupid decision she’s going to make going forward, but you do have a responsibility to talk to her. She’s your mother.”
She frowned at him. “I know that, Zander.”
“I don’t think you do.” He shook his head. “You’ve been giving her the cold shoulder since we laid eyes on her. You can’t even touch her. You won’t let her touch you. That’s not healthy, Erin. And that’s not you.”
“What do you mean, touch her?” she all but hissed. “I don’t want anything to do with her. You don’t know what it’s like, Zander. You don’t—”
Zander cut her off. “You’re right, I don’t. And I’m never going to know what it’s like. Because my dad isn’t here anymore. We fought and we yelled, and in the end we went four years without talking to each other. Four years.” He pressed his lips together, and Erin’s heart was suddenly pierced with a vicious ache. “Four years of being mad over stupid shit, of not knowing where the other person really stood. Four years of not fixing what really wasn’t that badly broken. Now, your mom, she’s definitely broken. Hell, she’s busted into a dozen different pieces. But she’s still here.” He stared at her, his eyes imploring. As if with this one little request, he was taking the first step on his own long road toward self-forgiveness. “Talk to her for a few minutes. It’s not going to kill you.” He glanced through the agency doors. “This is going to take a little while.”
And he turned and went into the inner room.
Erin stared after him for a long minute, then she sighed and trudged out of the rental agency, her eyes squinting into the bright sun. She saw her mom and Mike then. Her mom had scooched around to where she could lay her head on Mike’s shoulder, and he had his arm wrapped around her. They seemed like…a unit, Erin realized. Separate and inviolable, a club that she could never be a part of.
She stalked toward them and they broke apart, as if they were two guilty teenagers caught in an act of PDA. “You were able to get a car?” Mike asked.
“Zander is handling that.” She sat down heavily. “Look, guys—”
“No, Erin, let me say something.” She blinked up at her mother, who was gazing mournfully at her, her face now seeming more lined than Erin remembered it, and certainly more tired. “I know today was not my best moment. Everything—it happened so fast at the end. But I’ve had a lot of free time these past few weeks
to think about things. To think about what I asked you to do, in particular. Even though, up to the very end, I really did just think it was about the money. And I really did mean to repay you for that.”
Erin’s fingers clenched into fists in her lap. “I’m sure you did.” She hated the way her voice had gone slightly flat, but how many times had she heard this speech? How many times before had the apology come after the crisis?
There was a shift of movement on the table, and she realized that Mike had reached out to hold her mother’s hand, the move exactly like Erin’s own reflexive clasping of her hands—only she had no one to hold on to but herself.
Her mother continued, her gaze pinned on Erin. “But then you showed up, with your…your boyfriend, and you saved the day. Again. And it suddenly occurred to me that I’ve been asking you to do that for a very long time.” Erin watched as her mother’s fingers tightened on Mike’s, gripping harder.
Erin could only nod. As reconciliations went, this one wasn’t the stuff of Hollywood. But she still couldn’t bring herself to speak, to even look her mother in the eyes. There was still so much she wanted to say—needed to say. And still so much she couldn’t say, not yet.
“And you did everything right, sunshine,” her mother said. That did bring Erin’s head up. Her mother hadn’t called her that since Erin was a child, before the trips, before the nights away. “You came in and you saved us. Not only saved us, but you brought in someone else to save us, and thank God you did, but I…I understand now, finally. I can’t keep doing that to you. I won’t.” Her voice broke on the last word, and it came out more like a sob. “I won’t. I promise you.”
“Why did you ever?” Erin asked, and her own words sounded strange and hollow. The sound of a question that echoed across nearly twenty long years. “How could you do that to me…and why?”
Her mother shook her head, looking away. “I just…I just got tired, Erin,” she said heavily, staring blindly at the busy Laredo street. “Tired of being a mother. Tired of being the responsible one. Your father, the men after, none of them ever did what they promised they would do. Not one. They came and they took and they left and I…I just couldn’t deal with that anymore.” She shrugged, her voice filled with self-loathing. “So I didn’t.”
“But I didn’t leave you,” Erin whispered. It was no use, though. Her mother’s hands gripped Mike’s once more, and Erin realized that her mother was shaking uncontrollably, her confession over for the moment, and she was holding on to her boyfriend like a lifeline.
While Erin felt more lost than ever.
Chapter 25
Zander stood at the side of the lot, watching Erin hug her mother good-bye. Their movements were still awkward, uncertain, but the glassy look Erin’s eyes had as she approached him actually boded well. He didn’t know what it was going to take to get the woman to cry, but at least she was closer now. She’d buried her emotions so deep that there was going to be a hell of a storm when they finally came out.
He wanted to be there for her when that happened.
Erin didn’t say anything as she approached, clearly still composing herself, so he contented himself with an encouraging nod as he led her out toward the main street. A cab waited for them, and she frowned at it. “A regular cab?” she asked. “You mean James Bond isn’t going to jump out and zap us or anything?”
“Well, the cab is regular,” Zander said. “Where it’s taking us, maybe not so much.”
Erin slid into the back of the cab ahead of him, and Zander pulled out the sheet of paper, reading off the directions to the cabbie. To his surprise, the man wasn’t confused. “Private terminal,” he said, nodding. “Corporate planes fly in and out of there all the time. Very nice!” He eyed Zander happily, and Zander mentally added another ten dollars to the tip. He still couldn’t offer Erin any explanation, though, not even when they turned off from the main airport access road to run alongside the facility, eventually turning into an entirely separate terminal area. The cabbie stopped, and Zander gladly paid him as Erin got out of the car. A plane stood gleaming on the runway, its nose pointed away, the words emblazoned on its tail hidden from his view. Erin’s surprised voice reached him just as he pushed his own door open.
“Who’s Jackson Security?” she asked.
Zander sighed, finally squinting toward the plane. “You have got to be shitting me.”
—
Erin was too stunned to offer any comment, but she stayed close to Zander’s side as he strode with grim determination toward the plane that apparently had been ordered just for them, which admittedly looked really nice sitting there on its own private runway. A man lounged in the shade of the hangar’s open doorway, munching on a sandwich. He straightened when Zander approached. “Staff Sergeant Zander James?” he asked, and Zander stopped a few feet shy of him. “And Erin Connelly. Miss.” The man nodded to her, and Erin felt like she should salute, except she wasn’t actually military. But the man definitely was, or he had been. And sometime pretty recently, too.
“That’s me,” Zander said, all business. “You mind telling me what we’re here for?”
“Just your ride home, sir, compliments of Jackson Security.” The man grinned as Zander closed his eyes and cursed. “He told me you might say something like that. If you have everything you need, we can be airborne in just a few minutes.”
Zander could say nothing more, just turned and gestured to Erin to precede him up the staircase leading into the plane. When she climbed the dozen or so steps and saw the interior cabin, however, she couldn’t help herself. “We’re flying home in this?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The pilot grinned as he entered the cabin behind her, pulling up the stairs. “I apologize. We have no flight attendant, but Mr. Jackson advised you’d spent some time in flight, sir?”
“Just Zander’s fine,” Zander said, standing aside to let the man into the cockpit area, then following him in. His low whistle at the plane’s controls made Erin smile, while she wandered across the spacious cabin that looked more like a hotel suite than an airplane’s interior. In addition to large, double-wide set of facing overstuffed chairs, there was a conference table with more chairs, a minibar station with a fridge, assorted granola bars in a turbulence-proof case, and a fully functioning bathroom easily three times the size of a typical airplane lavatory. She used her visit to that facility to splash her face with water, frowning at the pink surface of her nose and cheeks. She never sunburned. Then again, she was rarely out in the sunshine anymore, and applying sunscreen hadn’t exactly been a key focus of the last few days.
“Erin? You okay?” Erin jumped a little at the rap on the door, and she quickly hurried back out. Zander stood in the cabin, an open water bottle in his hand, eyeing her with concern.
“Sorry,” she said. “That place is huge. I just kind of zoned out.”
“No problem, but we’re ready to take off and I need you to buckle in.”
“You really are going to play stewardess for me?” she asked, her eyes going a little wider at the unexpected images assaulting her brain. “That could totally work for me, just so you know.”
Zander blinked at her, then he barked a short laugh, and a little of his tension seemed to crack. “Just buckle in, okay? Flight’s only about four hours, according to our captain. Maybe a little more if we don’t have favorable winds.”
She blinked at him. Four hours didn’t seem like a very long time, all of a sudden. “Oh. Well sure, of course.” She turned away before Zander’s keen eyes could see anything on her face she didn’t want him to see, and headed for the seats. The buckling procedure was exactly the same as on a commercial flight, but everything felt more…lush. Lush and protected, like she was in her own private bubble of happiness, far above the cares of the world. At the last second, while Zander was busy doing something at a wall full of blinking lights, she got up again and snagged her own bottle of water and a granola bar from the minibar. She felt like a kid on prom night, riding in her first limo
. The thought made her smile, and she sank back into her luxurious chair as the plane roared to life.
Zander eventually ambled over, buckling in beside her. Eyeing her airplane snacks, he gave her a wry grin. “See? I take you to all the best places.”
Erin looked back at him, ready to make a quip, something light, something expected, and yet the moment she met his gaze she felt a rush of emotion sweep over her. Zander was here, like he said he would be. He’d helped her, like he said he would. And he’d risked his life to do so. All while carefully ensuring the safety of not only her, but her mother and Mike as well. Three civilians he’d taken under his wing, and he’d acted boldly, even audaciously—but not recklessly. He’d controlled the situation. He’d controlled himself. He’d truly fulfilled that promise of being a warrior that was already so present in the younger, wild-eyed Zander—and she’d gotten the chance to see it all play out.
More to the point, he’d done all of this for her. That knowledge sat uneasily in her chest, calling up the same feelings that Zander had so rightly challenged her on, just a few days ago in her house. She did have issues of parity. She did like things quid pro quo. But how did you give back to someone who’d just put it all on the line for you?
She had to start somewhere, though. “I really don’t see how I’m going to repay you, Zander,” she said, and her serious tone seemed to take him off guard.
“Erin.” He shook his head. “I’m not about to take your money, if that’s what you’re going to say next.” His smile was crooked, his brows raised. “I worked too hard to get it back.”
“I know.” Erin glanced to the side of the cabin, where both of their backpacks sat leaning up against each other, as if they, too, were exhausted from the day’s events. “I still can’t believe you did that, actually. I didn’t think…I never dreamed you would. I had written all of that money off.”
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