The Agent’s Secret Child

by B. J Daniels

  Abby grabbed hold of the man’s leg, struggling to see her child in the whirling dust, frantic to learn who had taken her, as she tried to pull herself up into the chopper.

  A face came into focus just above her. It was the same man who’d pulled a gun on her on the train.

  JAKE HAD SEEN Abby burst out of the building running, with Elena in her arms. He’d dashed toward her, knowing he wouldn’t get to her in time. He’d called out, trying to warn her as he watched the helicopter swoop down on her and Elena. But he knew she hadn’t heard him. The noise of the chopper drowned out everything but the erratic gunfire still coming from the mining building.

  He ran, his heart thudding as his feet pounded the earth. Helplessly, he watched as someone jumped from the helicopter and grabbed Elena. All his attempts to assure himself that the chopper was the cavalry come to save Abby and Elena failed when a second man swung out the side and opened fire on him.

  He got off one shot, then stopped, afraid he might hit Elena inside the aircraft. It was a lucky shot. The man tumbled off, hitting the ground in a puff of dust.

  He ran all out, closer now, but not close enough. His head pounded harder than his boot soles. His vision blurred. A numbness seemed to wash through his limbs and just lifting his feet took all his energy.

  As he reached the chopper, he saw that Abby had a death grip on the man’s leg and was desperately trying to pull herself up into the chopper.

  The aircraft started to lift off. He jumped up and grabbed onto the chopper’s skids, his body swinging, making the craft wobble in the air. He looked up, unable to see the men inside, only the man’s hand trying to loosen Abby’s grasp on his leg.

  For a moment, it looked as if the man would drag Abby up into the helicopter. Instead, he broke her hold on him. She dropped to the ground and into the dust storm a half dozen feet beneath the chopper.

  With the last of his strength, Jake grabbed the undercarriage and tried to climb up into the helicopter. But a boot heel swung down on his hand, breaking his tenuous hold.

  He fell, dropping hard into the dust, the fall knocking the air from his lungs. He lay in the dirt, gasping for breath, watching as the helicopter hovered for a moment overhead. Then the big bird was gone. With Elena inside it.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Elena!” Abby cried. “Elena! Oh God, no.”

  He pulled her to him, burying her face into his shoulder, searching for words of comfort, but he could find none. The bastards had taken his daughter.

  “Oh, Jake,” Abby cried. “I thought you were—”

  “Yeah,” he said grimacing. “Damned near.”

  He breathed in the scent of her, relishing the feel of her, holding on to her for dear life.

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” she whispered.

  This was the second time he’d thought he’d never see her again. “I know what you mean.” He gazed into her dark eyes as the sky over Big Bend lightened with the approaching sunrise.

  “They took Elena,” she said, her voice thick with tears.

  He nodded and struggled to sit up. But who were they, anyway? And what the hell did they want? All this for the stolen drug money? He found that hard to believe.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yeah,” he lied, his heart breaking with worry over Elena. He could barely see and realized his gunshot wound had started bleeding again. He pressed his shirtsleeve to the bandage, and it came away wet and dark. Several shots echoed from the old mining office.

  “This might be a good time to hit the road,” he said, trying to keep his voice light. Trying hard to keep her from knowing just how worried he was about Elena. Or about their own chances of getting out of this.

  She helped him up, supporting him, as she urged him toward one of the abandoned buildings just ahead of them.

  He stumbled through the thin morning light spilling over the ghost town. The air around him felt too heavy, the dawn too bright, the buzzing in his ears too loud. He didn’t know how much farther he could go.

  She must have sensed his fatigue as she hustled him to the dark side of one of the ruins. “Let’s stop for a minute.” She let go of him and he dropped into the shadows, weak and dizzy and bone-chilling cold.

  Abby knelt beside him, fear tightening her throat and making her heart ache. His bandage was soaked in fresh blood. She didn’t know how badly he was hurt, but she knew he wasn’t going far. Not on his feet, anyway.

  She slipped to the edge of the building and glanced back up the hillside, memory playing again the horrible moments when Elena was pulled into the helicopter.

  Elena. Oh God. Elena. Her tears tasted bitter and her aching heart labored in her chest. She had to get Jake out of here. Get him to a doctor. Then she could figure out what to do. If only she could remember her training. She’d never needed it more than she did right now.

  She focused again on the large building set back against the mountainside. She didn’t think anyone had followed them. But she couldn’t be sure someone hadn’t seen them, knew where they were and would be coming soon.

  Several more shots drifted down from the hillside. Who was still up there, still exchanging volleys? She didn’t even know who was fighting whom.

  “We can’t stay here,” Jake whispered behind her.

  “I know. Just for a few minutes.” She went to him. “Until you catch your breath.”

  He smiled up at her, his fingers lifting to touch her cheek, tears welling in his eyes and in her own. She quickly touched her fingers to his lips and shook her head. If he even mentioned Elena, she would fall apart.

  He kissed her fingers, his gaze understanding. “I found this hidden in Sweet Ana,” he whispered as he dug something out of his pocket. He handed her a small key. “I want you to have it, just in case something happens to me.”

  “Nothing is going to happen to you.” Oh God, how badly was he wounded? Did he know something she didn’t? She stared at the key for a moment. It could be the key to getting Elena back. “You found it inside the doll?”

  “The stitching was a different color and crudely sewn on that side of the cloth body,” he said.

  She closed the key in her fist, the sharp metal digging into her palm. Elena’s lost doll. It had been lying beside Julio’s dead body. “Julio was going to take Elena with him. He was planning to use her.” And the doll. A man and his daughter looked less suspicious than a man traveling alone.

  He started to get up. “I hid the Explorer behind the old church. If we could—”

  “Are the keys in it?”

  He nodded.

  “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

  She left before he could argue, running along the shadowed sides of the buildings, keeping out of sight, until she reached the Explorer. She started it quickly and drove back to where she’d left Jake.

  He’d gotten to his feet and stood propped against the adobe wall. She leaned over to shove open the passenger-side door. He slid in and slammed the door just as the glint of a chrome bumper appeared from behind a stand of brushy trees up on the mountainside. The vehicle came out of a cloud of dust, moving fast, headed her way.

  She hit the gas, tires spinning in the dirt as she flipped a cookie. Dust rooster-tailed behind the Explorer, as she headed south toward the Rio Grande.

  “I think you should know, Abby Diaz was one helluva driver, especially in this kind of situation,” Jake said.

  She glanced over at him, not at all sure that was true. He’d buckled his seat belt and was now leaning back into the seat, his eyes closed, his face ashen in the glow of the dash lights. “You’d better hope so.”

  She skidded onto Farm Route 170 headed west, the pavement disappearing under the hood in a blur, and looked back to see not one, but two vehicles in hot pursuit.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, knowing if he’d been all right he’d have been driving.

  He opened his eyes and gave her a wan smile. “Good enough.”

 
; The truth was, he felt light-headed, his pulse throbbing to the buzzing in his head, and he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes open.

  “Do you have any idea who that might be behind us?” she asked.

  “Not a clue. At this point, I just figure everyone wants us dead. How about you?”

  She shook her head. “Could be Frank. He’s the one who took Elena and me from the house after you were shot.”

  “Jordan?”

  “He was with some of Calderone’s men, including possibly the man who killed Julio, a man named Ramon.”

  Ramon Hernandez and Frank Jordan in Study Butte, working together. “I was afraid Frank was involved when we got the report on you,” he said quietly, cursing silently to himself. Frank.

  “He swears he didn’t have anything to do with what happened six years ago or my abduction by Julio. Nor does he admit he knew I was being held in Mexico,” she said, sounding as disbelieving as he was.

  His anger made him weaker, more worried for Elena, more worried for Abby. Frank had to be behind Elena’s kidnapping, but he’d never seemed like the kind of agent who could be corrupted by mere money. The FBI had always been too important to him, his rise to the top and the power that came with that. What had changed?

  He swore as he looked out at the road ahead. Just when he’d thought things couldn’t get any worse, they were on the wrong road out of town!

  He looked over at the speedometer, then back at the two cars on their butt. He closed his eyes again, no longer worried about his gunshot wound or his health. He’d never survive this car ride.

  They flew through the town of Lajitas, an old army post built to protect this part of Texas from Pancho Villa. The irony didn’t escape him, even in his weakened state. They raced through the frontier-style town with its plank sidewalks and hitching rails, the streets empty at this hour, the two pursuing vehicles staying right with them.

  Jake wondered where the cops were. Probably in bed. He wished that was where he was. With Abby. With Elena just across the hall, sleeping peacefully. He squeezed his eyes tight, fighting the pain, fighting images of Elena, the feel of her small hand securely in his, the scent of lilac on her skin as he leaned down to kiss her good-night—

  He opened his eyes at the sound of Abby’s shocked curse. She’d reached El Camino del Rio, a fifty-mile stretch of pavement that wound like a dark and dangerous snake beside the Rio Grande from Lajitas to Presidio. The narrow blacktop twisted and turned up and down and around the volcanic and limestone rock formations of the Bofecillos Mountains, finally dumping out into the fertile river valley at Presidio.

  If they were that lucky.

  But there was no turning back. Not with whoever was right behind them.

  “You’ve driven this road before,” he told Abby, trying to sound confident and unconcerned. Driving the road going the speed limit in broad daylight was precarious. At close to a hundred miles an hour at first light, it was beyond dangerous. Add two carloads of probable killers and you had a very bad situation.

  She shot him a look.

  “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “You can handle this with your eyes closed.”

  “Right.” She let out a small, scared laugh, but at least it was a laugh and he knew the old Abby Diaz was at the wheel. He felt a little better, a little more optimistic about their chances. At least Isabella Montenegro wasn’t driving.

  The route was the same one Pancho Villa used for his mule trains during the Mexican Revolution. He doubted it had changed much. Someone had just thrown a little blacktop on it and called it a scenic route.

  Abby took the first hairpin curve with a determined look and a white-knuckled grip on the wheel. The Rio Grande stayed with them, quicksilver in the early light. So did the vehicles behind them.

  He noticed that the first one, a green Dodge pickup, was gaining. Moving in for the kill? The way they were driving, they knew the road well. He’d figured their pursuers had been waiting for this hazardous stretch of highway to make their move.

  The pickup came up fast behind them.

  “Jake!” Abby cried.

  He braced himself. The truck slammed into their back bumper. Metal crunched as they were thrown forward. But Abby kept the rig on the road.

  “Never fear, darlin’,” he said as he hurriedly rolled down his window. The early-morning air was already hot and scented with dust. He felt drunk, only running on a couple of cylinders, not all pistons firing. But he thought he could still shoot.

  Unbuckling his seat belt, he leaned out the car window and fired back at the truck. The bullet made a clean entry into the windshield, leaving a web of white the size of his head in the glass but on the passenger side instead of the driver’s. Settle down. The pickup backed off, but not fast enough. He fired again.

  The left front tire exploded in a puff of gray smoke. The pickup began to rock, the front veering from side to side. Rock and roll. The truck took the ditch flying, smacked into the side of the mountain and disappeared in a rolling cloud of dust.

  One down, he thought grimly. He flopped back into his seat, almost too weak to roll up the window.

  Abby let out a breath. “Nice shooting.”

  “Thanks.” He saw the second vehicle, a Chevy Suburban, come up fast in the side mirror. The gleam of a shotgun barrel came out the passenger-side window.

  “Get down!” he yelled.

  The blast shattered the rear window sending glass showering over the backseat. He swung around and fired through the gaping hole, putting one in the grill and doing only cosmetic damage to the hood with the second.

  The Suburban roared up beside the Explorer. Another shotgun blast took out the back side window.

  Jake swore as Abby took a curve on two wheels and for a moment he thought this would be it. Adios. He pulled up and fired as the Suburban dropped back only a little for the curve, then started to make another run at them.

  The gun felt too heavy, his finger too weak on the trigger, his vision blurred, the whole scene surreal. But he got off another shot, then another. The Suburban was too close to take out a tire. It moved up the left side of them again. The barrel of the shotgun glinted dully in the dawn as it leveled at Abby.

  He threw himself over the back of the seat and emptied the clip through the missing side window. The man with the shotgun saw it coming and ducked, but the driver didn’t. He slumped over the wheel as one shot hit home.

  The man with the shotgun came up again, unaware that his driver had been hit. Abby went into a tight right-hand curve. The Suburban left the road going over eighty. But not before the man with the shotgun got off one last blast.

  The shot was off-center. It peppered Abby’s door with buckshot and got just enough of Abby’s side window to shatter it. Glass showered over both of them.

  “Are you all right?” Jake cried.

  She didn’t answer, the Explorer rocking as she fought the wheel.

  “Abby?”

  “Yeah,” she said finally, after she got it back under control. Behind them, the Suburban had dropped off the side of the mountain and was now cartwheeling toward the river.

  Abby topped a hill and they dropped down into the farming community of Redford with its collection of adobe and wood-frame houses. A church, the Redford Co-op Goat Cheese Factory and the Cordera Store blurred past, seeming too normal.

  Abby slowed the Explorer. He crawled back into the front seat, buckled up again and took a deep breath, no longer feeling much of anything. Abby didn’t say a word. He watched the side mirror, but no other vehicles appeared. It wasn’t over and he knew Abby was more than aware of that. It wouldn’t be over until they got their little girl back. And they would get her back. He wouldn’t let himself think anything else. Couldn’t.

  He felt sick, more tired than he’d ever remembered being, and cold, as if his body had caught fire and was burning from the inside out.

  They rolled into Presidio as the sun rose over the tops of the rugged mountains. The “Hottest Town in Texas”
was just waking as they drove in. Across the border, Ojinaga, its Mexican sister city, dozed in the sunshine.

  “Neuvo Real Presidio de Nuestra Senora de Betlena y Santiago de Las Amarillas de La Junta de Los Rios Norte y Conchos,” he said, then singsang the words like a mantra, feeling oddly light as if he were floating. Or drunk.

  Abby looked over at him and frowned. “New Royal Garrison of Our Lady of Bethlehem and St. James on the Banks of the Junction of the Rio Grand and Conchos Rivers?”

  He nodded. “Wonder why they shortened it to Presidio? Just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?” His gaze fell on her and he smiled. It felt crooked even to his lips. “You are one hell of a woman behind a wheel. I take back everything I ever said about your driving.” He laughed. It sounded to his ears as if he were down in a well. “You are one hell of a woman.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” he heard her ask from a distance. She reached across the seat to touch his forehead. “Jake, you’re freezing.”

  He laughed. At least he thought he did. It had a carnival-midway feel to it inside his head. Then he remembered something. “Abby, there’s something I should have told—” He lost the thought as he lost consciousness.

  HIS TANNED, square-jawed, handsome face was pale against the white hospital sheets. He opened his eyes. They’d never looked more green. Never looked more like Elena’s, she thought, with a stab of pain.

  She smiled down at him. “How ya doin’?”

  He returned her smile. “You tell me.”

  “Just fine,” she said softly as she brushed a dark lock of hair back from his forehead. He felt warm. But he’d lost a lot of blood. “Looks like you might make it.”

  “Good.” He started to get up. “Let’s get out of here, then.”