by B. J Daniels
A gust of wind whirled dirt against the weathered glass, making him jump. He mopped his brow, the slanted early-morning sun bearing down on the booth, making him feel like a target.
“We have a problem,” he said when Tomaso Calderone came on the line.
“You have a problem,” Calderone snapped.
Yeah. Well, Calderone didn’t know the half of it. “Isabella Montenegro and her whelp pulled a fast one and got away, but someone is helping her.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. A gringo. He grabbed her and the kid.”
“Where were you when this happened?” Calderone demanded.
“Staking out the front of the motel,” he lied quickly. “I had two men behind the motel.” He wished. Who would have thought she’d set some sort of fire as a diversion and go out that tiny bathroom window? “The gringo killed three of my men, then shot out the tires on our van when we were in pursuit, destroying it.” Lying came easy. It was probably his second best talent, lying on his feet. Killing was his first.
“I had to commandeer a car,” he continued quickly, wincing at the sight of the large, older-model American car lounging like a lizard in the street. He wasn’t about to tell his boss that he’d had the gringo in his sights and had foolishly killed his pickup instead. It was so hard to get good help these days.
“What did this man look like?” Calderone asked quietly.
Ramon described him.
“Why would he be interested in Julio’s wife and child?” Calderone muttered almost to himself. “Listen to me, Ramon. This man is very dangerous. I want him. And I want my money. You do understand?”
“Si,” he said, feeling sicker. Surely he’d heard wrong. “You don’t want him…alive?”
“Oh, yes. I want them all alive.”
Ramon swore silently. This would be very difficult and a waste of his true talents.
“What do you know of this woman and child?” Calderone asked.
Ramon shrugged to himself and looked out into the street. What did he know of Julio’s life? Like Calderone, he lived farther south in Mexico. He had only seen the woman briefly and had paid little notice to her or the child with her.
“She looked like…a wife,” he answered lamely.
“Mexican?”
“Si.”
“I wonder….” Calderone mused.
“Who is this gringo?” Hernandez asked, a little concerned since he’d now be chasing him into the States.
“Jake Cantrell. He used to be an FBI agent.”
“But he’s not anymore,” Ramon said, relieved he wouldn’t be dealing with the FBI.
“He’ll head for someplace he feels safe,” Calderone said, as if still thinking out loud. “Let me make a call. Give me your number. I will get back to you when I know where he has gone.”
Ramon hung up, wondering how Calderone knew so much about this gringo. Had recognized him immediately from Ramon’s description.
The phone rang a few minutes later. What Calderone told him more than surprised him. Maybe this wouldn’t be so difficult after all. As long as he got the credit for bringing in Jake Cantrell, former FBI agent.
“Do not fail me, amigo,” Calderone said after he’d promised to send him several more men. The line went dead.
As dead as Ramon Hernandez himself would be if he failed. The only good news was that the former FBI agent was traveling with a woman and child. That would hamper any man. And now Ramon would have help.
ISABELLA’S BODY trembled, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“You’re scaring me, Mommy,” Elena cried.
“I’m sorry, chica suena, I don’t mean to scare you.”
“But you hurt him,” she cried, turning to stare out the back window at Jake on the ground beside the gas pump.
“He’ll be fine,” she assured her daughter. “He’ll just have a headache when he wakes up.” How did she know that? How did she know to hit him the way she had and not kill him?
She stared for a moment at her hands gripping the wheel as if they belonged to a stranger. She feared that they did.
Elena swung back around, tears glistening on her sweet face.
Isabella reached over to thumb the wetness from her daughter’s cheeks. The child’s lower lip trembled and big tears welled in her green eyes like pools of spring water. “He is my daddy.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “He is your father.”
“Then why did you do that?” Elena demanded.
“Because I’m not sure we can trust him.” He hadn’t harmed her or Elena. But he’d changed his plans to turn them directly over to the FBI. Because he was afraid she really was Abby? Afraid she remembered that it had been Jake Cantrell who’d tried to kill her six years ago?
She thought of the way Jake had reacted to the locket. He’d appeared almost ready to break down with grief. A strange reaction for a man who’d tried to kill his lover.
She shook her head. She wasn’t sure of anything at this point. Especially her reaction to him. That was why she wasn’t taking any chances. But she couldn’t shake off the memory of what had happened back at the gas pumps. That almost remembered feeling of…what? Passion?
Whatever it had been, it was gone again. And now she couldn’t be sure what she’d felt. If anything.
“You are acting so…different,” Elena said.
“I know, but I have to be strong right now. And you have to be strong. There are people who want to hurt us.”
Elena wiped at a tear. “The people who killed Julio?”
“Yes. And others. I have to keep you safe, no matter what else I have to do. Do you understand?
The child nodded. “You always keep me safe.”
Her eyes burned. “I have always tried.”
“Where are we going?” Elena asked, looking out at the highway ahead.
Good question. As soon as Jake woke up, he’d either figure out a way to free himself or raise such a ruckus, the station attendant would hear him and call someone. Either way, it wouldn’t be long before he’d be after them again. This time, with the help of the FBI, unless she missed her guess.
She’d have to ditch the pickup and get another means of transportation before she could leave Del Rio. How would she do that? Did she know how to hot-wire a car? She thought not. Nor did she expect to be as lucky as Jake had been in Ciudad Acuna.
She pulled up to a stop sign and rolled down her window, letting in the morning air, already hot although it wasn’t even eight yet. In the distance, she heard a train’s whistle.
JAKE WOKE with a start to find the gas station attendant standing over him, holding a dripping empty bucket and wearing a perplexed expression.
“How come you’re handcuffed to my pump?” the boy asked.
For a moment, he couldn’t remember. Or maybe he just didn’t want to. “My girlfriend and I had a little falling-out.”
“Really?” the kid said. “You must have really ticked her off.”
“Yeah.” He sat up. His head ached, and unfortunately, the memory of what had happened came back in minute detail. He still couldn’t believe it. Might not have, except for the bruised skin just below his ribs where she’d jabbed him hard with the gun, and the raised, painful lump on his head where she’d nailed him.
Nor could he forget what he’d seen in her eyes just before she’d hit him. He shook his head and groaned, his head aching from more than the blow as he stumbled to his feet.
Besides the headache and still being handcuffed to a gas pump, he was soaking wet from being doused with a bucket of cold water. But the water had done the trick. He glanced at his watch. He hadn’t been out long. If he hurried—
“Do you have a cell phone?” The boy nodded. “Get it. And bring me a hacksaw, will ya?”
“AMTRAK’S SUNSET LIMITED from New Orleans pulls out of Del Rio, Texas headed for points west at 8:30 a.m. Sunday, Monday, Thursday and Saturday,” the clerk said. It was Thursday.
She had only enough m
oney to buy two coach seats as far as El Paso and just hoped that would be far enough.
“I’m hungry,” Elena told her the minute they got on the train.
“As soon as we leave the station, I’ll get you something to eat.”
She’d gotten a window seat on the station side and pulled down the shade, leaving it open just enough that she could still see the platform. So far she hadn’t spotted any of Calderone’s men. Or Jake Cantrell. Not that she thought she would. He and the FBI would be looking for the red Toyota pickup, expecting her to still be driving it. But how long would it take them to find the truck parked in the junkyard down the road from the train station?
The train started to move. She leaned back, finally beginning to relax a little. Through the window, she watched the last of Del Rio sweep past. She looked for Jake’s face, or Ramon’s and the rest of Calderone’s men, in the people they passed along the way. But she didn’t see anyone who looked familiar.
“Let’s get some breakfast,” she told her daughter when Del Rio had disappeared entirely and only desert stretched to the horizon.
In the dining car, she ordered the Tucson Morning for Elena, two pancakes, butter and syrup, and the Sunrise Limited for herself, eggs and grits.
They ate in silence, Elena making short work of her pancakes and then finishing most of her mother’s eggs and grits. Elena sulked. She’d finally found her father. Only to lose him again. Thanks to her.
When they’d finished breakfast, they went back to their seats and Elena fell asleep to the rocking of the train, while she stared out the window. Miles and miles of flat desert as far as the eye could see. The train clattered along and she had to admit at last, she wasn’t the woman she’d believed she was for the last six years.
JAKE STILL HAD one person in the FBI he thought he could trust. He called Reese Ramsey, a man he’d trusted with his life more than a few times when they’d worked together as agents. Reese, true to form, didn’t ask any questions, just listened until he’d finished.
“Two agents will bring you what you need in the next fifteen minutes,” Reese said. “If you need anything else—”
“Yeah, I know, don’t call.”
“No, I’m here for you, Jake. I don’t believe the rumors going around this place. Not for a minute.”
“Thanks, Reese.” That meant a lot, since Ramsey had been on the team the night Abby died. His injuries from the explosion had left him with a metal plate in his left leg and a painful limp.
Two Feds showed up ten minutes after Jake’s call. By then, he was in the gas-station office drinking a soda and watching a rerun on the black and white.
“Reese put an APB out on the woman and the pickup,” one of the federal agents informed him. “He suggested you might want to check in with Frank.”
Yeah, right. Jake only nodded and took the items he’d requested with a hurried “thanks.” He handed them a plastic bag with the handcuffs in it. “You’ll find two sets of fresh prints on these. Ask Reese to check them against the files and let me know what he comes up with.”
He went into the john and changed quickly into the dry new clothing: jeans, socks, boots, shirt and jean jacket. Then he strapped on the shoulder holster, pocketed the money and slipped the cell phone and extra clips for the weapons into his coat pocket.
As he walked out to the nondescript car waiting for him beside the gas pump, he asked himself: what would Isabella Montenegro do? Probably try to hightail it out of town in the pickup. Just like Reese thought she would. In that case, it would just be a matter of waiting for a call from Reese that she’d been pulled over.
But he no longer believed he was dealing with Isabella Montenegro. He was looking for a woman who’d escaped from a rundown motel in broad daylight, who’d put a shot between a man’s eyes without hesitation, who’d pulled a gun on him, handcuffed him to a gas pump, knocked him out and stolen his weapon, money and previously “stolen” truck.
He thought he knew now who he was dealing with. But still, he just couldn’t be sure. Not yet. The fingerprints on the handcuffs would tell the tale. But he knew he couldn’t wait for that. There was one other way to find out exactly who she was.
He walked to the car and laid his arms over the top. The metal was hot to the touch, the sun low and blinding, the air scented with unleaded gasoline and Texas dust.
That woman, the one who’d known exactly where to point the barrel end of the gun, was too smart not to ditch the truck. But was she smart enough to steal another rig? Did she have the know-how? Abby hadn’t been good at appropriating automobiles.
Then what? Another bus? A sound from earlier seemed to echo through his aching head. A train whistle off in the distance.
“Hey,” he called back to the gas station attendant. “Is there a passenger train that comes through town?”
The boy nodded, his eyes still glued to the tube. “The Sunset Limited,” he called back.
“The one I just heard? Where is it headed?”
“Los Angeles, California.” He turned to look at Jake then, as if the words held some sort of magic.
“Do you know what time it left?”
“Eight-thirty. Only time it comes through, headed west.”
Jake glanced at his watch. “What’s its next stop?”
Chapter Eight
She dozed, waking abruptly to the swaying of the train, and reached automatically for her daughter, fear seizing her for those few seconds before her hand touched warm skin.
Elena slept, curled toward her in the adjacent seat, the morning light on her precious face.
It was impossible now not to see Jake in her daughter. For a long time, she just stared down at that face, trying to make sense of everything. Jake was Elena’s father. Any fool could see that. But even if she hadn’t seen it with her eyes, her heart now knew it was so. Then why didn’t her heart tell her that she and Jake had once been lovers?
Her head ached. She felt as if she were trying to put together a puzzle with most of the pieces missing and no idea of the finished picture. Was there any chance at all that Elena wasn’t her own child?
She thought back to the difficult birth, trying desperately to remember the exact moment she’d first seen her daughter through the flurry of doctors and nurses and the pain. Such pain. The doctor had given her something to help with the birth. He said there was “una problema.”
She opened her eyes with a start. She hadn’t seen Elena until after the birth. Long enough after it that she couldn’t be sure Elena was the child she’d given birth to.
She felt sick. And weak. And scared. Was it possible? But who would want to do such a thing to her? Calderone had the power, there was no doubt about that. But why would he? Why go to so much trouble? And for what? It made no sense.
She studied Elena, searching for signs of herself in the child, then sighed. It didn’t matter if the babies had been switched. Elena was hers. Would always be hers. Calderone be damned. He might have set the wheels in motion, but she was now at the controls.
The thought almost made her laugh. What did she know about control? For the last six years she’d had no control at all over her life.
Just the thought of Julio—had anything he’d told her been true? It didn’t appear so. Not based on what she’d seen of herself lately.
She shivered, thinking she should be shocked by her behavior. But she wasn’t. She definitely liked this woman better than the defenseless and frightened Isabella Montenegro. But that was the past, she told herself. She wasn’t Isabella Montenegro, the woman who took whatever she had to to survive. Not anymore. She was—
She wasn’t Abby Diaz, either. Even if she had been six years ago, she wasn’t that Abby anymore. She didn’t know who she was. A stranger. A stranger who was in a lot of trouble, but who was resourceful and strong. It was heady stuff. She liked this new feeling. A lot.
Now all she needed was a plan.
WHEN THE SUNRISE LIMITED stopped in Sanderson, Texas, Jake Cantrell was wai
ting at the station. He’d driven fast and furiously to beat the train and now kept out of sight, watching to make sure that Isabella and Elena didn’t get off. If they were even on the train. His instincts told him that they were. And that wasn’t all his instincts told him.
He waited until the last moment before he boarded, getting on the end car. He knew Frank Jordan would be expecting a call. The FBI bureau chief would be furious that he hadn’t heard from him.
But Jake didn’t work for Frank Jordan anymore. He reported to Mitchell Forbes now and Mitchell gave him free rein. Probably because Mitchell knew him and knew that was the way he worked best. The only way he worked now.
Frank should know Jake, too. At least well enough not to be waiting by the phone. They’d once been friends, Frank a mentor, a father figure. They’d worked closely together. Right up until the last case. Right up until the night Abby was killed.
Right or wrong, he blamed the FBI, blamed Frank, for what happened that night. It was supposed to have been part of a routine investigation. They’d been undermanned, not realizing what they’d walked into. One long-time agent, Buster McNorton, had been killed, along with rookies Dell Harper and Abby Diaz. Reese Ramsey had been injured.
Only he and Frank had walked away without injury.
There’d been an investigation, but it hadn’t turned up anything at the time. Just bad luck that they’d stumbled onto one of Tomaso Calderone’s operations.
Jake had quit the Bureau, bitter as hell because he’d lost everything when he’d lost Abby.
Frank had gone on to work his way up the FBI ladder. So had Reese Ramsey.
He hadn’t seen Frank in six years. Hadn’t talked to him. And he wasn’t ready just yet to call him. Especially after seeing the so-called evidence against him collected by the FBI. Why now, after all these years?
He took a seat by the train window, unable to shake the feeling he’d had since he woke up handcuffed to a gas pump: that he had to get to the woman and kid, pronto. The feeling was so strong, it took everything in him to wait until the train got moving. What if his instincts were wrong? What if she and the kid weren’t on the train?
