by Julie Leto
“I’m consistently thorough when I’m in pursuit of something I want. Turn me down if you must, Ms. Morales, but don’t delude yourself with thinking you can stay one step ahead of me or my associates. You can’t. It reflects no weakness on your part. I am simply better equipped.”
A few seconds later, a dark sedan identical to the one she’d ridden in last night parked not thirty yards away, on the opposite side of a bay where two mechanics were pounding out the dented side of a Ford truck. She didn’t recognize the driver, but when the back window rolled down, she exchanged nods with Max, Ian Blake’s right-hand man.
She couldn’t contain an impressed grin. The man certainly knew how to illustrate his power. She wondered if his goons had taken care of Frankie, too, since he and his rusted Chevy were nowhere co be seen.
“Why are you following me? You obviously have my number. You could have just called.”
“I’m on a bit of a time crunch, I’m afraid. I’d love to have the luxury of enticing you slowly into Titan, Ms. Morales, but I can’t afford such seduction at the current time. So I’ll cut to the chase.”
The dollar amount he recited, double of what he’d promised last night, on top of his skillful use of words like luxury and seduction made Marisela drop her phone. Luckily, Lia had gotten out of the car and with quick reflexes, caught the cellular device before it crashed onto the asphalt.
But her friend didn’t return the phone, even after Marisela stretched out her hand.
“Who are you talking to?”
Marisela snatched the phone from her friend and held the receiver to her breast. “If you don’t want both of our asses kicked by guys who could easily dump our bodies where we’d never be found, get in the car. Now.”
Terror froze Lia’s eyes into a wide stare. Marisela stepped forward and gently laid her hand on Lia’s arm. Her skin was clammy and hot, so she injected her friend with confidence courtesy of a wicked smile.
“Chica, we’ll be fine. You just have to listen to me, okay?”
For some reason that Marisela had never been able to explain or understand since the day Sister Agnes placed Lia and Marisela at the same table in kindergarten, Lia trusted her. She managed a tiny nod, then sprung around to the passenger side of the car, got in, and buckled her seatbelt.
Marisela stepped back toward her car, opened her door, and leaned casually over the frame rather than sliding inside. No doubt, Max was reporting her every move to Blake. She didn’t want to look like she was ready to take off.
“That’s a generous offer, Mr. Blake. What am I supposed to do for this money?”
“Very simple. Rescue a missing child.
She laughed. No way was this guy altruistic. “How charitable of you.”
“Charity has nothing to do with it, Ms. Morales. The girl’s family is paying me a great deal of money to retrieve her from her father, a dangerous man who does not have legal custody. I will fill you in on the details once you accept my offer. You have to understand the value of discretion in these matters.”
“The only thing I understand is the value of a dollar,” she said, not sure her words were entirely honest. Marisela could always fire herself up with a benevolent cause. In such cases, her motto ran along the lines of the ends justifying the means. And while her outlook often landed her in trouble, taking the safe route in life often led absolutely nowhere except living with her parents and searching constantly for a perfect job that likely didn’t exist.
Or maybe she’d finally found the ideal profession, in the least likely of places.
“I’m interested in your proposal, Mr. Blake, but I can’t make a decision until I hear the details. In the meantime, you’ll have to trust my ability to keep my mouth shut.”
Marisela scanned the street and parking lot and saw no evidence that Frankie had followed after she’d ditched him at the light. Would he return to her parents’ house and wait for her there…or did it matter, now that Blake’s men were watching her back?
“In that case, we need to meet immediately.”
She laughed. “Are you implying I can’t keep quiet?”
“Do I have reason to believe otherwise?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” Marisela responded. Keeping secrets and covering with lies was an art form to her. “But you’ll have to trust me because I’m busy today. First, I have to bring my friend home and calm her down, which won’t be so easy now that you’ve threatened to blow her up. I need time to smooth things over. If she blabs to my parents, your cover is blown. The last thing you need is the entire Morales clan descending on you like locusts, right?”
He cleared his throat. “I leave town on Sunday.”
“Sunday it is. Where do you want to meet?”
“I’ll have the directions delivered to your house.”
The possibility of accepting the offer from Ian Blake added a swagger to her step that she hadn’t realized was missing until right that moment. She waved at the guys in the sedan then practically hopped into her car seat.
“What do I bring with me?”
“Just your favorite workout clothes. Any weapons you prefer. We’ll provide everything else you’ll need, including a cover story for your parents.”
“No shit? You’re a full-service employer.”
“We try to cover all our bases. Feel free to tell your parents about a job interview and training session you’ll be attending in Boston for a Titan investigator position in our new Tampa office. As far as they are concerned, you’ll be flown out Sunday morning and should return in two weeks. The trip is all expenses paid, of course.”
“Papi will never believe it.”
“I’m sure you can be convincing when properly motivated. When you return home later today, you’ll find a packet of information on Titan’s petty crimes division, as well as a flattering article from the New York Times on our part in exposing a major credit card fraud scheme. The indisputable facts will bolster your story.”
Marisela started the car and did a U-turn so she could take an alternate route home. “I can tell my family that I work for Titan International?”
“Proudly. Our company has a long, respected history. Not all of our cases are featured in the public arena, but I think we’ll pass your father’s scrutiny. After you’ve convinced your family this opportunity is on the up-and-up, meet me at the arranged location and we’ll complete the final phase of your recruitment.”
“That sounds a little scary,” she commented, though in all honesty, the possibilities excited her beyond belief.
Ian’s chuckle on the other end of the line caused a field of gooseflesh over her bare arms. “Recruitment will be the easy part. Next comes training. Then, the mission.”
After a brief good-bye, Marisela disconnected the call. Only after they were headed back toward her house did she even remember that the pale-faced woman in the seat beside her was her very best friend in the world.
“Marisela, what was that about?”
“A job. Looks like I finally have one.”
“Doing what? Stunt driving?” Lia quipped.
Lying to her parents was one thing. Lying to Lia was something else.
“Stunt driving might be in the job description, actually,” she answered. She wouldn’t tell Lia about rescuing the kid—not until she had details.
“Who’s your boss?” Lia asked.
“I can tell you that his sense of style is better than his sense of humor. He didn’t mean his little threat, by the way.”
At this, Lia let loose a string of curses that sounded more natural coming out of Marisela’s mouth than her friend’s.
“Marisela, this isn’t funny. Those guys looked dangerous. For once in your life, chica, can’t you follow a safer route?”
“Safer? And do what? Go back to working at Wal-Mart? Lia, I know you and my parents don’t see it, but I actually have skills that other people will pay big money for.”
“People like who? Criminals?”
“Well, the li
ttle stains on my record don’t exactly make me appealing to the police academy. Besides, I think this guy is legit, relatively speaking. He owns a company called Titan International out of Boston. It’s a top private investigation firm.”
“And you know this because he told you?”
“I may be a fool about a lot of things, Lia, but I’m damned good at recognizing truths from lies. That claim is too easy to check out. In fact, instead of the beach, why don’t we detour to your place? You can verify who he is for yourself.”
* * *
Marisela knew just about every inch of Tampa, but the breezy, barren docksides near Rattlesnake Point were a whole new world. Just one day after she and Lia checked out Titan and decided they were for real, she turned into the cracked shell parking lot beside Riptide Marine and braced herself. From this point on, her old life would pale in comparison to what Titan offered. She couldn’t wait.
Her tires crunched across the field, stirring up white dust that reflected off the Sunday morning sunshine. She’d had one day to put her affairs in order, as Blake had said, not so gently invoking the idea that she might not return home alive. The guy was slick, but could be painfully transparent. He wanted to intimidate her, possibly ensure her capitulation through the tried-and-true tradition of fear. Well, Marisela decided the first thing she’d do after she took his money was show him a thing or two about how she reacted when someone messed with her mind.
But right now, she had to concentrate on finding her way around this graveyard of rusted boats and dock equipment. She grabbed the map Ian had had delivered to her with the directions to their rendezvous point. For all her assets, Marisela’s sense of direction sucked.
Once she’d traversed the junk yard, a monstrous warehouse loomed on the bleak landscape. She parked where Blake instructed her. The place looked entirely deserted. She turned off her engine and cracked her door, not surprised to hear a surly wind whistling across the warehouse’s expanse of concrete and waxy glass.
From the trunk, she retrieved her gym bag, stuffed with her favorite sweats and lingerie, the only items her new boss had said she’d need. Of course, she’d also brought her favorite CDs, her must-have makeup, deodorant, nail polish, her gun cleaning kit, and last but not least, her gun, which technically wasn’t in the bag, but safely tucked beneath her arm, hidden by the cropped denim jacket she wore over her hot pink halter. All identifying information—maxed out credit cards, driver’s license, social security card—now lived with Lia, tucked away in her safety deposit box, along with a note to her parents and the police, just in case she didn’t return from her first foray into covert operations.
She scanned the area with a scowl, her skin prickling with the sensation that something wasn’t right. Slamming the car trunk, she shouldered her bag and climbed up the concrete stairs to the docking bays when a car engine revved behind her. Sand and shell shot into the air as tires spun in her direction.
For a moment, she squinted through her sunglasses trying to see who’d pulled in so fast, but the jolt up her spine told her to screw that and get the hell out of sight. The warehouse was long and open, with nothing but the bay doors to offer her haven and the industrial-size padlocks wouldn’t be giving way anytime soon. She turned, ran to the opposite end of the building and hurdled the railing to the ground below. The impact sent a hot jolt up her ankle, but the minute bullets sprayed across the building, denting the bay doors and crashing into the cement block, she had her weapon drawn.
The firepower from the car was semiautomatic. Nothing industrial like an AK-47. Was this another of Ian Blake’s goddamned tests?
She shoved her bag beneath some underbrush, along with her anger and her fear. Right now, she had to concentrate on staying alive. She sped toward the back of the building, where the Inter-coastal waterway might provide an escape route. She spit out the grit coating the inside of her mouth and kept her back to the wall, her eyes darting behind her and in front of her, not knowing when or where to expect an attack.
She could hear the car spinning its tires in front of the building, the occupants whooping like kids pulling a prank. Thanks to a tall, chain-link fence, they couldn’t get to her by following her route, not in the car anyway. But they could easily go around to the other side of the building and she’d be cornered.
Behind her, a man leaped to the ground precisely where she had, the black steel of a gun pointed in her direction. Adrenaline and self-preservation sent her running, feinting right and left just enough to make her a hard target to hit, but not enough to slow her down. Bullets screamed by pinging off the building and exploding just behind the heels of her boots. She turned the corner in time to see the car that had followed her spin around the back of the warehouse. The front end crashed through a trio of metal drums, flinging them into the air like bowling pins.
Towers of metal crates, large enough to hold small cars, were stacked along the waterside. Marisela dove into the maze of enclosures, desperate for cover while bullets whizzed by.
One ripped through the sleeve of her jacket, searing her with white-hot pain and tripping her momentum. She swallowed a scream and shifted her weight so she didn’t land on her injured arm. When she caught up to Ian Blake, she was going to rip his throat out. Where were his men? Where was he? Or were her attackers on his payroll yet again?
Bullets rent the steel and aluminum behind her. Marisela struggled to catch her breath, boxed in by crates, her lungs squeezed by terror. Flattening herself to the crate’s hot aluminum side, she gulped in air and checked the blood oozing from her bicep and soaking into her jacket. While the scorching pain of torn flesh watered her eyes, she trusted she would live, at least long enough to make sure she exacted a little payback on the comemierda who’d shot her.
She heard his footsteps before he whistled a sweet upbeat tune usually used to call a dog.
“Come on, baby. You can’t hide. Your time is up.”
The accent was unmistakable—too incredibly like her own to be someone who worked for Blake.
Marisela squeezed further into the maze of crates, one ear trained to hear if someone was approaching from the other side. This wasn’t a test. This wasn’t about Blake. Marisela could smell reality in the overpowering stench of her hunter’s cologne.
She caught sight of a slim space between two crates across from her. In a dash, she folded herself into the suffocating darkness, willing her lungs to accept what little air she could give them, desperate not to pant and give herself away even when she brushed her wound and jolted her body with another explosion of pain. Not twenty yards away, where the crates opened up to reveal the hull of a large ship docked alongside the mooring, she could hear the continued whoop and victorious hollers of her stalker’s compadres. She could, maybe, take this one. But what about the others?
She shook her head—forced away the treacherous thought of failure and focused on the here, the now. With one hand, she raised her weapon, prepared to kill or be killed.
Again.
This was wrong. She was supposed to meet Blake here. Where the hell was he?
“Come on, puta. We’re just having fun. You know, we just want you to tell us where you put Nestor. He’s our boy, you know. We can’t let some bitch turn him in every time she needs new shoes.”
Marisela grimaced. New shoes? Who was this asshole kidding? For the money she’d made bringing Nestor Rocha in, she could afford a whole fucking outfit.
She winced, certain she shouldn’t joke about the dead, particularly when she’d pulled the trigger. She cleared her head and assessed the situation.
Apparently, his boys thought she’d only dragged him into custody somewhere. They weren’t the brightest bulbs in the string of Christmas lights. Rocha had been gone for two days. Didn’t they realize he would have made his one phone call by now?
She twisted her hips and wedged her shoulders between the walls of the crates for leverage, determined not to be taken down by such idiots. The minute she caught sight of a gun, she
kicked out with her boot and sent the weapon flying. When he dived forward for his gun, she jumped out and kicked him hard in the small of his back, sending him flat to the ground.
She kept him there by jamming her gun into the exact spot where his spine met his skull.
“Don’t,” she warned, her eyes trained on the two inches between his fingers and his gun. She grabbed his hair and yanked back, glad to see the shells beneath their feet had sliced his cheek. Pain and fear could buy her the time she needed.
“You won’t shoot me, you bitch.”
She didn’t have the time nor the inclination for a conversation and she had nothing to prove to this pendejo. The car that had been spinning around them now idled loudly, the passengers shouting for Miguelito to bring her out.
She pistol-whipped him to silence.
“Looks like you bought a few more hours of life, Miguelito,” she whispered, then took his gun and proceeded forward, a deadly weapon in each hand.
“Two guns won’t cut it, vidita. There are at least four of them out there, sniffing for your blood.”
The voice twisted up her spine like a wild, determined vine. She didn’t bother to turn around. Frankie Vega possessed an icy smooth timbre unlike that of any other man.
“Aren’t they your hombres, Frankie?” she asked, careful not to move. “Did you come to help them out, maybe shoot me in the back?”
He chuckled, but she refused to let the sound relax her. She scanned her surroundings, but with less than two feet of space between the crates, a known enemy behind her and an unknown army of angry, possibly drunk Latinos seething for her blood somewhere around the corner not twenty yards away, she had nowhere to run or hide. She glanced up, but the crates were smooth and stacked three or four high.
“As much as I hate to admit it, I’m not here to shoot you, Marisela; I’m here to save you.”
Footsteps chomped and skidded up ahead. Voices shouted in Spanish. Directions. Orders. They were coming for her. She spun to the side, pointing one gun in front of her—and one leveled on the threat that had snuck up from behind.
