Betrayal on the Border

by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

  Her head injuries had stolen critical memories of that night along the Rio Grande, but the cartel—or more likely an official in their pocket on this side of the river—thought she’d seen something that would expose them. She’d been on the run since their first attempt on her life barely a week after her release from the military hospital.

  Too bad her faceless mortal enemy didn’t know she couldn’t remember whatever it was that might incriminate him. He might not be so set on doing her in then. Of course, a traitor to his country had motive to be hyper-paranoid. He’d probably sign her death warrant regardless, on the off chance that she might remember.

  Now they’d tied up another of their other loose ends by taking out one of their accomplices in the very city where she hid, which meant Chris had probably been on the hunt for her and closing in. His killers had recently rented an apartment where she worked and lived. No coincidence there. Her enemies had located her, and their hired goons had intended her to be their next target...if she hadn’t stumbled onto them first through a mix-up in apartment numbers.

  Random providence? Or the hand of the God she doubted?

  She didn’t have time to seek answers to a spiritual question. As soon as her faceless enemy discovered their boys had been nabbed, they’d maneuver fresh troops into place to finish the job. Maddie’s heart rate slowed, her breathing deepened and her senses sharpened. Even the hum of the refrigerator motor sounded loud in her ears. She’d been in this position before and knew what to do.

  She swift-footed to the bedroom, shedding her tool belt on the way and letting it thump to the carpet. In less than a minute, she had removed her jeans, work boots and button-down shirt that made her look like a skinny tomboy and donned a pair of casual capris, pullover top and running shoes with tennis socks that gave her the appearance of any other lean, mean soccer mom in this middle-class neighborhood. Not that she was a mom. Never yet had that chance in her twenty-eight years of life.

  From the bread-loaf-size purse on the dresser, she removed all the cash, then went to the closet and tugged a string that looked like it went to a lightbulb but didn’t. A hatch she’d made in the ceiling popped open and dropped a bulging backpack. She caught it, then headed for the bathroom, where she tossed into the pack the emergency makeup kit she kept ready for this moment.

  The mirror over the sink betrayed the tension sharpening her rather angular features. Chris was dead? The shock left a vacant cavity in the pit of her stomach. She truly was the only survivor from the massacre on the Rio—but for how long? Tears attempted to pool in the corners of her eyes. She pressed the heels of her palms against her cheekbones then splashed cold water on her face.

  Grief would have to wait—like it always did.

  Maddie turned on her heel and left the apartment, senses alert for threat.

  Two hours later, she descended from the bowels of a metro bus in an industrial district. The bus pulled out with a hiss of air brakes and a spurt of diesel fumes, leaving her standing on the sidewalk.

  Her gaze consumed her surroundings. Pedestrians’ activities raised no red flags. The spotty after-hours traffic behaved normally. Everyone seemed to be minding their own business.

  Excellent!

  She’d spent the past hours switching buses at random until she was reasonably convinced no one followed. The imaginary bull’s-eye between her shoulder blades itched nonetheless. She shrugged her shoulders against the weight of her pack and stepped into the crosswalk. Gathering dusk spread long shadows. Maddie followed hers across the street and into the ground-floor bay of a long-term parking garage.

  The pad-pad of her running shoes echoed faintly in the cavernous space. Her gaze searched the dimness as she trod to the fourth level. The place was deserted this time of the evening when everyone had gone home or out on the town. Not even the tick of a cooling engine invaded the quiet emptiness.

  Maddie halted within sight of her corner stall, offering swift and unimpeded getaway. The ginger-brown front section of a 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass coupe poked out from behind its neighboring late-model Sebring. She slipped the pack onto one shoulder and fished her keys from an outside zipper pocket, then pointed the remote control toward the vehicle and pressed a button. The Cutlass purred to life as gentle and unassuming as its appearance. No fireworks.

  She exhaled a long breath. They hadn’t found this vehicle. It wasn’t registered to Madison Jameson or Madeleine Jerrard, but she’d learned to be safe rather than sorry with her hunters. Their noses were sharp and their reach was long. She hurried toward the vehicle. The sooner this city faded in her rearview mirror, the better.

  The engine revved and the Cutlass sprang forward. Maddie skidded to a halt feet from the grill, bitterness coating her tongue. Someone sat behind the wheel. No way to discern more than a silhouette in the dimness, but whoever it was couldn’t be a friend. She had no more of those.

  Maddie whirled and ran. The vehicle followed, and a voice called her full name—her real name. Sure, they’d mock her identity at the end. No bullet for her. Just a hit and run with her own car. A greasy spot on the pavement.

  She wasn’t about to let them win that easily. As she ran, her hand dove inside her pack and closed around the handle of a 10 mm Glock pistol. She tossed the pack and disengaged the safety on the pistol.

  “Maddie!” the male voice called again. Too familiar. And impossible!

  Her racing feet jerked to a halt, and she pivoted on her heel, Glock extended in both hands. The Oldsmobile’s tires locked, and the car skidded toward her. The scent of burnt rubber met Maddie’s nostrils as she leaped up and forward. The vehicle rocked to a halt, bumper covering the spot where she’d been standing. She landed atop the hood on her knees and the knuckles of one fist. The other arm trained the Glock on the driver.

  He lifted his hands, palms out, lips pressed into a tight line.

  Blood pounded in Maddie’s ears and blackness edged her vision. It was him.

  The most gorgeous man on the planet. He was supposed to be dead, but he was alive. She should shoot him.

  TWO

  Chris Mason stared past the gun barrel and into the tawny eyes of Madeleine Jerrard. His insides melted. She could put a bullet in him right now, and he’d die a happy man. What kind of a fool did that make him?

  God, this has got to be Your best joke on me yet.

  He knew better than to fall for the subject of an investigation. Years back, as an eager-eyed neophyte in the reporting business, he’d paid too high a price for that mistake and vowed never again. He gritted his teeth as if a tense jaw could steel him against the unwanted stirrings in his heart for this woman who could kill him in a heartbeat—and had good reason to do it. Or thought she did. A year of stretching every investigative skill and resource, and he’d found her. But at what cost? They were both on enemy radar now.

  “What are you doing in my car?”

  Her demand reached him through the driver’s-side window he’d opened in order to call her name.

  He shrugged. “Trying not to run you over, but this thing’s got more power in the tap of a toe than my toasted rental had if I floored it.”

  Maddie grinned and slid off the hood of the Oldsmobile. She stood a few feet from the open window, gun lowered, but not all the way. “Ginger looks like granny wheels but drives like a Ferrari.” The gun lifted. “How did you find this car?”

  “It wasn’t easy, and it looked hopeless, but then I found something in my notes from those weeks I spent with the team during preparation for the mission.”

  “What was that?” Interest sparked in Maddie’s gaze though her tone wielded a sharp edge.

  “If you recall, I asked everyone a trivia question for a human-interest angle I was hoping to develop. You said the two people you admired most in history were Harriet Tubman, because she risked her life to free others, and Joan o
f Arc, because she took up the sword for what she believed was a divine cause. When that piece of information clicked in my brain, and I ran a DMV search, guess what I found in San Antonio?”

  “A vehicle registered to Joan Tubman.”

  “Bingo! A little more digging uncovered a long-term parking space rental for the same vehicle. But don’t worry. I handled the searches personally. Our mutual friends don’t know about this car.”

  “So you admit they’re your friends.”

  Chris snorted. “Don’t you recognize sarcasm when you hear it? Friends don’t blow up friends.”

  Maddie frowned, and her gaze scanned his face. “Unless there’s a deeper game.”

  “What might that be?”

  “I’ll let you know when I figure it out. Answer me this—how did you get inside? I always lock my vehicles.”

  Chris smirked. “Hanging out with your unit taught me skills for functioning in enemy territory, like reaching the locking mechanism of an older model car with a wedge and a coat hanger. All I needed to do was let you start the car. I never did get a lesson on hot-wiring.”

  She sniffed and her eyes narrowed. “Why weren’t you French fried in that sedan at the hotel? I thought you were dead.”

  “No such luck, sweetheart.”

  She scowled.

  “You saved my life,” he continued.

  “Me!”

  “Ever since Mexico, I use the remote start before I get behind the wheel. A tip you shared.”

  “Hurray for me. Now, get out.” She motioned with the gun.

  Chris shook his head. “You’ll have to pull that trigger and dump my dead body. You’re stuck with me. Apparently, my search for you picked up a tail, and they’re trying to kill me, too.”

  “Thanks for leading them to my hidey-hole.” Her lips thinned. “How do I know you’re not still working for them?”

  “Still?” Irritation spiked in Chris’s breast. “Did you forget that I was investigated and exonerated?”

  “Not by me.”

  “Obviously.” Chris scowled. “Maddie, they tried to kill me! Doesn’t that prove my innocence?”

  “I know I’m not the one who betrayed the coalition. Everyone else is dead, except the investigative reporter the big shots saddled us with during the touchiest mission of our lives. Do the math.” She raised her chin. “Attempting to blow you to kingdom come proves you’ve made them nervous that you may be a liability—nothing more.”

  Chris’s molars ground together. “Since I’ve clearly made their hit list, we might as well go on the lam together until we can figure out a way to put a stop to this evil.”

  “Stop it? That’s what we were doing in Nuevo Laredo until someone tipped off the cartel to our location.”

  “That someone was not me.” Chris glared at Maddie. “Believe it or not, I may be the only person who can and will help you expose the cartel’s state-side allies. Our survival depends on delivering them, gift-wrapped, to the Senate subcommittee.”

  Maddie sniffed. “The same committee that publicly blamed my unit in order to save their pitiful reputations over the failed mission they authorized? In case you haven’t noticed, my career in the army is blown to the winds like dandelion fluff. And apparently someone thinks I might remember something from the night of the attack that is worth hunting me down.”

  Chris leveled a long look at Maddie. Her high cheekbones stood out above tensed muscles, and her nostrils flared beneath a molten amber gaze. She looked wild and beautiful...and off-limits to this hard-nosed reporter. And don’t you forget it, he told his heart. This was about a story, maybe the biggest of his career, but one wrong move and he’d see nothing of Maddie but dust. Patience, Mason, patience.

  “Whatever you think of me,” he said, “both our lives are in danger from the same people. I won’t last ten minutes without you.”

  “You said a mouthful, buckaroo.”

  “And you will never be able to lead a normal life until we gather enough solid evidence about what really happened at the Rio Grande for me to go public with it. If anyone knows how to go about getting that evidence, I do, but I need your help to stay alive that long.”

  Maddie’s generous lower lip disappeared between her teeth and her gaze darted away, then returned. The chill in her eyes skewered his hopes. He’d taken his best shot and lost.

  “Shove over.” She motioned with the gun, then trotted toward the spot where she’d tossed her pack.

  Chris complied in haste, twisting his long body into crazy contortions to surmount the center console and settle into the bucket seat on the passenger side. He wasn’t about to step out of the vehicle and have her change her mind, then leave him sucking exhaust. Her reasons for letting him ride along, given what she thought of him, were likely as layered as her personality, but he wouldn’t find them out until she chose to share them.

  Maddie climbed in, maneuvered the stick shift, and they drove, smooth as glass, out of the parking garage. “Where to, Mr. Investigative Reporter?”

  “Grab I-35 south toward Laredo.”

  Maddie frowned, but headed the vehicle in the proper direction to catch the Interstate. “Back to the scene of the crime?”

  “It’s a good place to start.”

  “And the last place our enemies would think to look for us.” She grinned wolfishly. “I may not trust you, but I like the way you think.”

  “You used to like a lot more about me than that.”

  Chris could have slapped himself. Why did he shoot off his mouth about the mutual attraction they’d danced around since the day they were first introduced? So what if they’d flirted with their eyes and sometimes their banter during the training days before the mission? Romance between them was strictly off-limits.

  “Don’t remind me of my bad judgment.” She shot him a glare that could have sizzled bacon.

  “Is there some reason you don’t think someone on the Mexican side of the equation could have betrayed our location?”

  She snorted. “They’re as dead as the rest of the U.S. forces. Only a member of the coalition team on the ground with us would have known which of half a dozen designated safe zones we chose to bivouac that final night before the assault on the cartel was to begin. We operated under close cover for a reason. Even the Mexicans know plenty of their officials are on the cartel’s payroll. What our good U.S. citizens don’t like to face is that drug money talks as loudly on our side of the border. Government pension isn’t that good.”

  “I hear you.” Chris nodded. “That’s why I want to start by talking to the DEA agents in the Laredo field office. I ferreted out their home addresses before I took my flight to San Antonio.”

  “Good thought.” She ghosted a grim smile. “They lost comrades. Some of them were in on the planning phase. Some may even be dirty. If anyone can dig out a nugget that the FBI investigation missed, it’s The Man with the Golden Tongue from World News.”

  She laughed but Chris frowned. He slumped against his seat, closed his eyes and pretended to fall asleep. The real thing eluded him, as usual. For the past year, exhaustion and a latent sense of desperation had dogged his every step. Maddie had no idea how many sleepless nights he’d spent since that horror in the desert.

  When he slept the dreams came. The scream of incoming mortar rounds. Visions of smoke and fire and the scent of burning flesh. Worse, he saw her broken and bloodied body sprawled on the ground in the middle of the encampment. He’d carried her in his arms away from the war zone to save her life, but in the end she’d saved his. Someone had followed them away from the camp and started taking potshots at them. Maddie revived long enough to draw her sidearm and return fire. Did she remember any of that? Clearly not. And he couldn’t explain right now. Anything he said or did was suspect.

  In her mind, the fact that he was the onl
y one to escape that night without harm equated complicity with the attack. The logic made sense on the surface...only that wasn’t what happened, and he had no idea how to convince her otherwise.

  Lord, you’ve got to help me here. I have no idea how to regain this woman’s trust.

  * * *

  Maddie glanced at her passenger. He was pretending to sleep. The twitch of a muscle under his jaw betrayed him. He was frustrated, probably angry with her for not buying into his innocence the minute he gazed at her with those baby blues and exercised his honeyed voice. She’d been tempted. Mightily. But too many of her friends had lost their lives for her to trust anyone involved who was still breathing. Not until she knew for sure what really happened.

  Chris said he wanted to help with that. Well, all right. He had the skills. She didn’t. She’d give him some rope and see where it led. Letting him into her car, inviting him back into her life, had to number among the gutsiest things she’d ever done, because now she couldn’t trust herself any more than she trusted him. The attraction was too strong. She’d have to make sure her head stayed in charge.

  Right! Like hugging a viper ever turned out well.

  Her foot itched to press on the brakes. She should pull over and toss him out. One fact stopped her. Death dogged her trail, with or without him by her side. What was that old saying? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. The frenemy in her passenger seat would betray himself one way or another soon enough.

  “Did you soup up this car yourself?”

  His question jolted Maddie. He suddenly wanted conversation? She glanced toward the passenger seat and found him sitting up straight and alert, subterfuge laid aside for the moment. If that was the way he wanted to play it, she could be cool and cordial, too.

  Maddie shook her head. “Ginger was my big brother’s pride and joy. He restored her chassis to near original, but supercharged her insides. Then he was deployed to Afghanistan, and a roadside bomb ended his life before he got to enjoy the fruits of his labor. I inherited her, and she’s one possession I’m not about to give up, even when I’m on the run for my life.”