Betrayal on the Border

by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

  Her gaze dropped, and she picked up a stick and began drawing squiggles in the dirt around her feet. “You know. Sorting out some feelings and getting my mind straight for the assault the next day. That’s where I was when the first mortar round hit the camp. If I’d been in my tent where I belonged—where my com equipment was set up—I could have sent out the call for help. Maybe I could even have gotten Lorraine out.” Her voice choked off. She was referring to her tent mate, DEA agent Lorraine Hitchins, also numbered among the dead. Maddie cleared her throat. “As it was, I had to run back toward my tent, and then suddenly I was blown off my feet, and everything went black. Finito! That’s the extent of my memories.”

  Sights, sounds, smells from that night flooded Chris’s senses, and he inhaled sharply against the wrenching memory. In his mind’s eye, the first blast illuminated the camp like daylight. Several tents, including his, where his cameraman had been asleep on a cot, were obliterated in a stink of sulfur and smoke. In that moment, Chris’s heart had attempted to jackhammer a hole in his chest, but he’d stood frozen. Combat-trained Maddie had raced past him, not knowing his presence in the dark.

  “If you had been in your tent,” he said, “you’d be dead along with Lorraine. Yours was the next to go. You wouldn’t have had time to send your distress signal.”

  Her gaze narrowed on him. “You’re sure about that?”

  “Positive.”

  Her expression brightened then went dark. “Makes no difference. I was still away from my post. Where were you when the attack started?”

  The wattage of her glare let Chris know this question burned in her heart. What could he tell her without treading on territory where he dared not go?

  “I wasn’t in my tent, either.”

  Her nostrils flared. “Why not?”

  “Couldn’t sleep.” He shrugged. Did she see through his nonchalance?

  She frowned but said nothing. Clearly, he needed to elaborate or risk deepening her mistrust of him. But there was no way he could confess he wasn’t in his tent because he was watching her from the shadows and fighting a desire to draw close and gamble his heart on a stolen a kiss.

  “I was keyed up about what the next day might bring,” he said. “I was drawn to the river, too. In fact, I saw you there and might have made my presence known but then the attack started. You reacted instantly, but it took me a second or two to shake off my disbelief. Then I was yards behind you in racing into camp. The next barrage hit, taking out the com tent, among other things, and you flew into the air and landed almost at my feet. I thought you were dead.”

  His voice cracked on the final word, and he cleared his throat. Even now, recalling that instant in time struck him nearly dumb with his heart in his throat—not because he had stood so near to danger, but because he’d nearly lost Maddie. How pathetic was the intensity of his fear of losing her when he couldn’t risk telling her how much he cared?

  Her wide eyes devoured him. He could almost see the wheels of thought turning in her head. “What did you do next?”

  “Are you going to believe me if I tell you?”

  She pursed her lips then jerked a tiny nod. “Let’s assume that.”

  Chris inhaled a deep breath, like a swimmer about to take a plunge. “I’m aware that it’s not recommended to move an injured person before professional help arrives, but we were both in danger of being obliterated at any second if we stayed where we were. So I picked you up and took off into the desert, away from the attack zone.”

  Maddie’s jaw dropped. “That’s how I ended up several hundred yards away from the destroyed camp when the rescuers found me.”

  “Bingo.”

  “But the report said I was lying unattended when they recovered me. Where did you go?”

  “To get help, but the first unit I encountered bundled me away willy-nilly. I never saw you again. They wouldn’t even let me visit you in the military hospital.”

  “You tried to visit me?”

  “I sent flowers and a card. Didn’t you get them?”

  “Negative. I suspect the investigators weren’t into allowing contact between the survivors while they were looking into the catastrophe and assigning blame in the most face-saving way possible for the bigwigs.” She stopped speaking with her mouth open, like she was searching for her next words. Her gaze slid away from his. “Thanks for saving my life, by the way.”

  Chris’s heart leaped. “So you do believe me?”

  “Let’s just say that this information fills a gap in my understanding of events in a fairly plausible manner.”

  A sour taste coated Chris’s tongue. What had he expected? Instant warmth and new best-friend status? Her walls of self-defense had been up too long for a brief conversation to tear them down. Maybe he’d chipped away at the bricks a bit, but he’d be a fool to push her shaky trust level by offering the rest of his story. Even he could hardly believe that part.

  “I’m going to grab that siesta,” she said.

  He grunted and put the binoculars to his eyes. Probably a waste of time to look for suspicious activity in broad daylight. Maybe he should follow Maddie’s lead and indulge in a little shut-eye. The next hours passed in fitful snoozing, stretching their legs and snacking on their provisions. At last, quitting time arrived for the employees, the parking lot emptied, and darkness wrapped an inky fist around the area. The moon and stars were apparently taking a snooze beneath a cloud-cover blanket.

  A few pinpricks of light above entrances and loading docks offered markers for a single uniformed security guard who made the rounds once and then twice before midnight. Chris’s spirits fell. Rumors of his nosy presence should have rattled enough cages to produce some kind of response if this was a drug distribution depot, but there was no hint of clandestine activity at this location.

  “Why is a light still on in a second-floor office?” Maddie asked in his ear.

  “Security guard station?”

  “Not on the second floor.”

  “You tell me then.”

  She chuckled. “Someone’s working late, or they’re waiting for an after-hours visitor.”

  Headlights appeared on the road leading up to the factory. A car pulled into the parking lot, and a dark figure emerged—a man, judging from size and build, but it was too dark to see his features even with the binoculars. Chris followed the man’s stride toward the front door anyway. The security guard opened the entrance from the inside, and the midnight visitor passed beneath the overhead light. Just before he went inside, the man glanced over his shoulder, presenting a three-quarter profile in the binocular’s lens. Chris sucked air between his teeth.

  “What?” Maddie’s stage whisper broadcast impatience.

  He lowered the binoculars. “Why would DEA Agent Clyde Ramsey visit a paper plant in the middle of the night?”

  SIX

  Out of the darkness, Chris’s teeth gleamed a faint white in a grin that Maddie answered. “Guess I’ll have to slip inside and find out,” she said.

  “You? Try we.”

  “Get real, Mason. Where did you receive reconnaissance training?”

  “I have a doctorate in Snoopology. I’ll let you ‘take point,’ as you like to say, but I’m glued to your heels.”

  “All right, but you’re going to have to help out first by creating a distraction for the security guard.”

  “Whatever you say, but no ditching me once you’re in.”

  “Deal.”

  “I suppose you have a plan?”

  Maddie let out a soft snort. “What else have I had to do so far but play around with possibilities and contingencies in my mind? Dollars will get you donuts that those delivery vans in the parking lot are programmed for antitheft. What do you think the lone security guard will do if several of them sound off at once?”

&
nbsp; “Step out to investigate.”

  “Precisely. One thing I’ve noted about those front doors as people go in and out—they’re slow to close. We’re going to use that knowledge to our advantage.”

  She leaned toward Chris and began to outline the rest of her plan. Concentration on the business at hand was easier said than done with the subtle scent of his masculine aftershave teasing her nostrils and sending warm tingles to her fingers and toes. Maddie mentally kicked herself. This was no time to toy with visions of his lips on hers the way she’d been doing that night along the Rio before the attack started. She was pathetic. Time to get some action going so this doomed attraction didn’t run off with her good sense.

  A half hour later, Chris had disappeared somewhere in the midst of the fleet of delivery vans, and Maddie stood with her back to the cool brick of the factory wall around the corner from the front entrance. She waited, breathing slow and even. Flashing lights and the screech of an alarm suddenly filled the air. First one van and then another and another sounded off.

  A slight shiver ran through her. Good job, Chris, but don’t get carried away.

  Near at hand, the growl of a man’s voice reached her ears, purpling the air about those blankety-blank raccoons. Maddie chanced a peek around the corner of the building. The guard was already several strides across the parking lot, gun drawn and gaze fixed at the far end where the vans were parked. The door gaped open but it was closing faster than she had anticipated. She dashed on cotton feet and snatched the door handle a nanosecond before it would have clicked shut.

  Heart pounding, she let herself in and went at once to the security station in the rather sterile reception area. Her gaze scanned the equipment and settings. Good. The guard had left his computer portal open.

  She sat down and quickly deleted the segment of camera footage that showed her entrance into the building and

  then turned off the recording capabilities altogether so she and Chris could move freely without leaving behind proof of their presence. She did a rapid check for internal-motion sensors and didn’t find any, but that didn’t mean there were none. She had no time to dig deeper into the system. In another few clicks she deactivated the

  entrance/exit alarms for the maximum period of ten minutes that the night-guard program allowed. They might have to escape the place from the roof. Good thing she had rope in her backpack.

  The clamor from the parking lot diminished and then ceased. The guard would be heading back toward his station. She’d heard no gunfire and took that to mean he hadn’t spotted Christopher Raccoon. A little grin formed on her face at the image of Chris with paws and fur and a burglar mask across his face. The guy was too cute for her peace of mind, even as a critter.

  Her fingers danced a salsa across the keyboard. She only had seconds now. Could she finish her business? Come on, fingers, move! There!

  She leaped up from the guard’s chair and scurried down a dim hallway out of the guard’s line of sight. Her last-instant chore had programmed the surveillance video of the past hour to rerun on the guard’s monitors. If she and Chris hadn’t finished their business and exited the building within that time, the cameras would go live, and the raccoon-hunting guard would have bigger game in his sights. Chris had better be Johnny-on-the-spot waiting for her to let him in at the door she’d designated. They were on the clock.

  Ahead, a doorway loomed. A small night light revealed the words Production Plant—Employees Only. Maddie glided past an employee time clock and entered the plant. A sickly sweet smell greeted her, overlaid by a faint sulfurous tang. She wrinkled her nose. The reddish glow from a number of exit lights around the perimeter cast an eerie ambiance across the vast area populated by shadow monsters of massive equipment. Most of Cowboys Stadium would fit into the place.

  A faint beam of whitish light streaming from above and to her left drew her attention. The second-floor offices had windows overlooking the plant, including the one that was lit, but the curtains were drawn, allowing only a sliver of illumination to escape. Good for Chris and her. The occupants of the office wouldn’t be able to spot movement in the plant area.

  In a cautious trot, Maddie skittered around equipment toward the first metal fire-escape door. She cracked it open and hissed into the warm darkness. A flash of distant lightning followed by a mutter of thunder answered her. The scent of moisture drifted on the breeze, and the electric air stirred hairs on her arms. Storm on the way. Where was Chris? She poked her head outside, and caught the movement of a shadow near a door farther down the outside wall.

  “Over here,” she whisper-called.

  The shadow approached and morphed into Chris. He slipped inside, chuckling softly.

  “That was the most fun I’ve had in a long time,” he said in a soft rush of words. “The coons must drive the night help nuts around here on a regular basis. I’ve never heard a varmint called so many creative names.”

  “You do know the guard had a gun.”

  “Do I look like a raccoon to you?”

  Maddie’s mental Christopher Raccoon image resurfaced, and she swallowed a spurt of laughter. “I’m not sure the guy would have waited to discover the difference if he’d spotted movement out there.”

  “Point taken.”

  Maddie pressed a finger over her mouth and motioned for Chris to follow her toward a set of stairs that led to a door several windows down from the target office. They crept upward on snail time. Maddie winced at every creak and groan of the metal stairs, but the small sounds brought no response from whoever was meeting in the lit-up office. The door hinges could have used a squirt of oil, but at last they stood in a dim, carpeted hallway scented with air freshener that failed to totally mask the pungent odors from the paper-processing plant.

  They crept closer to the office where light peeped from beneath the door. The sound of voices grew louder, but words were indistinct. Maddie noted a stairway from the other direction that likely led down to the reception area where the guard lurked. The stairs they had just used were metal and steep and offered no cover should they be pursued. Not a good scenario if they needed to vamoose suddenly. The skin on the back of her neck crawled, but she ignored the sensation. If they never took chances they’d never uncover the truth.

  Please, God, let this midnight meeting shine a spotlight on the guilty parties.

  Maddie took a few more steps forward, then the next step began to creak beneath her feet, and she froze. Chris brushed up against her, and his warm breath feathered through her hair, cascading tingles through her. She dismissed the sensation as she edged toward the other side of the hall and then proceeded forward. The voices were becoming more distinct. Agent Ramsey’s she recognized. Two others belonged to strangers.

  A click sounded behind her, and she whirled in combat stance. Chris jumped back, mouth agape. In one hand, he held a small recorder. Tension ebbed from Maddie’s muscles, and she eased to her full height, scowling and shaking her head. Chris held his recorder toward the conversation that began to become clear in bits and snatches.

  “...dangerous to move the stuff now.” Agent Ramsey’s gravel tones reached them.

  A calmer voice replied, but only snatches were intelligible. There was something familiar about the man’s polished tone and cadence, but Maddie couldn’t figure out what.

  “If we don’t fulfill our end of the bargain in full and on time—” the man’s volume rose “—Fernando will be very disappointed, and we can’t risk that.”

  Maddie’s ears perked up. Fernando? As in Fernando Ortiz, the leader of the Ortiz Drug Cartel, the ruthless thug who took credit for the Rio Grande Massacre and thumbed his nose at any authority trying to stop him from pursuing his evil business?

  “...don’t like it,” inserted Agent Ramsey. “...nosy reporter at my door...”

  “The issue is being addressed,” a deep, bull voice pronou
nced. No problem hearing what this guy said.

  “Your way of addressing the issue hasn’t worked well so far.” Ramsey’s tone took on heightened clarity. “They’re still alive.”

  “You’re spooked over shadows,” said the man with the bull voice. “We need to make our move when the cops are distracted and run ragged. We’re not canceling the shipment.”

  Maddie met Chris’s gaze, and he mouthed shipment. She nodded.

  The calmer voice began to speak again, but little could be understood. Maddie allowed Chris to edge past her, recorder extended. She made out a few tidbits wafting from inside the office. Something about “midnight,” “golden opportunity” and “fourth.” Fourth what?

  Chris took a baby step forward, then began another. Maddie suddenly spotted tell-tale pinpricks of red light embedded in the walls directly ahead of them, and her heart seized. Laser motion detectors. She grabbed for Chris to halt him in his tracks.

  Too late!

  * * *

  The shriek of an alarm yanked Chris’s heart to a halt. A hand in his collar whirled him and shoved him up the hall in the direction they’d come. His pulse went into overdrive and hot blood flooded his extremities. He dashed toward that second set of stairs they’d passed, but a shove sent him onward toward the stairs they’d come up.

  “Not into the waiting arms of that trigger-happy guard!” Maddie’s yell carried to him faintly above the alarm.

  A bee-sound buzzed past his ear and something jerked at his hair. Great! Someone coming out of the office was armed, too, and he and Maddie were fish in a barrel in this hallway. He ducked low, scuttling along. At least it was semidark out here. His recorder shattered in his hand and a burning sensation traveled up his arm. No time to check if the bullet had drawn blood. He hit the door with his shoulder and held it for Maddie to charge through.

  “Go! Go!” She punched his arm. “Hide among the equipment, then escape through the first door you can.”

  Chris hesitated, and she slugged him again. “No time for chivalry. You’ll get us both killed.”