SPY IN THE SADDLE

by Dana Marton

  But he’d messed with the wrong girl this time.

  She pushed the gag out of her mouth as best she could and stretched her neck to rub the rag on her shoulder, trying to push it down a little so she could breathe easier. Minutes ticked by before she succeeded.

  She gulped in air that smelled like sheep and manure, then refocused on freeing her hands. She didn’t succeed any better this time, but when she bent to her ankles, she managed to untie the rope that bound them together, even if she broke nearly every nail in the process.

  She did her best to stretch her legs and get her circulation going. Being able to move a little more freely felt nice. Okay, what else could she do?

  The storage container wasn’t tall enough for her to stand. She got on her knees and rammed the lid with her back. It rattled, but nothing gave. They’d probably padlocked it. She rammed it again anyway.

  And then someone kicked it from the outside, hard, scaring her.

  She banged with her bound fists. “Let me out of here! Let me out!”

  “Shut up,” Tank thundered.

  The sheep bleated as something motorized started up somewhere nearby and came closer. Then the container rattled and lifted suddenly, and she fell to her side as her body shifted.

  What was that? A forklift?

  The feed box was definitely moving, which set her head swimming again. She nearly lost her chipotle dinner before the container was set down. And then she heard something slam with a metallic clang.

  She had no idea what that was. “Tank? Don’t do this!”

  A different, louder motor started up next, the ground suddenly vibrating under her.

  She was in the back of a truck; the stark realization hit her. They could take her anywhere, across the border even. “Tank?”

  He didn’t answer. Maybe he was up front, ready to drive her to wherever they planned on executing her and getting rid of her body. Her muscles clenched, cold sweat beading on her forehead despite the heat.

  In case Shep was anywhere within hearing distance, she screamed his name at the top of her lungs. “Shep!”

  There was nothing in this world she wanted as much as she wanted to see him again.

  Chapter Ten

  Three men loitered around the bull pens, talking and spitting tobacco juice in the dust now and then. No sign of Lilly anywhere, as far as Shep could tell. Then Tank and Brian lumbered forward from behind a corrugated-steel building that stood between the bull pens and the sheep, and joined the other three.

  Shep pulled behind a row of portable toilets and called Ryder to give him a status update. “Yes, five men that I can see, including Tank and Brian. I think they have Lilly stashed here somewhere.” He peeked out to scan the building.

  “We can lock the whole place down.”

  Ryder scanned the sprawling area. They probably couldn’t. At least not on their own. The fairgrounds were pretty big and fairly porous. The best they could do in a hurry would be to ask for help from local law enforcement and whatever security was already here for the rodeo, although the security guys were probably undertrained rent-a-cops at best. And there was no telling how many friends Brian and Tank had among them.

  The bastards had to have chosen the fairgrounds for a reason. Because they were familiar here, because they had backup here, because they probably did some kind of illegal business from here.

  Drugs, guns and human trafficking had all been linked to Pebble Creek in the past couple of weeks. One by one, the leaders of the local crime organization had been taken down by Shep and his team. It looked as if Brian was trying to step into the power vacuum to fill it.

  Shep didn’t care about any of that right now. All he wanted was to see Lilly safe.

  “I don’t know if we can do a full lockdown fast enough,” he told Ryder.

  Keith was still in Mexico. Mo and Ray were on border patrol and should probably stay there. “A couple of guys might be able to quickly run through the place and pinpoint her location, take Brian and his goons in, if it’s just the five of them. We can sort them out later.”

  “I can be there with Jamie in twenty minutes. And I’ll call Bree to send over whoever she fully trusts from her department. I’ll call Grace, too. That’s all I can do in a hurry.”

  “It’ll be enough.” He scanned the area and was planning the search already. “You think Grace will come?”

  “It’s not even a question. Of course she will. Do what you can, but try to keep a low profile until we get there. Don’t engage the men. Just see if you can narrow down Lilly’s location.”

  Okay. More than anything, he was glad for Grace. Lilly had sounded strange on the phone. As if she’d been drunk or hazy from blood loss—the possibility occurred to him suddenly and set his teeth on edge.

  Grace Cordero was Ryder’s fiancée, a tough former army medic. If Tank had hurt Lilly—which Shep didn’t even want to think about—Grace would come in handy. She was as good with injuries as she was with hand-to-hand combat.

  “Thanks, man.”

  He hung up then skirted the bull pens, ducking from cover to cover, making his way over to the corrugated-steel building. They had the sheep pens behind that, and a truck parked at the far end. Nobody sat behind the wheel for the moment, so he decided to investigate the building first. The truck didn’t look as if it was going anywhere in a hurry.

  He went around and kept in cover, snuck forward from the side when nobody was looking, then kept behind a row of baled hay. He slipped through the door then ducked into the shadows to his left and waited until his eyes adjusted to the semidarkness, trying to see if he was alone in there.

  He couldn’t see anyone. Nor could he hear any voices in here.

  They had stations set up to groom the sheep, piles of feed, everything the ranchers would need to take care of and show their livestock. The piles of supplies everywhere made it difficult to scan the place fully from where he stood, so he had to go check behind stacks of feed bags and equipment.

  The good news was that all the mess also provided him with cover. He moved silently and stayed low as he stole forward, little by little. Lilly could be tied up and gagged, hidden just about anywhere in here.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket. A text message from Grace Cordero. I’m here. Where R U?

  Corrugatd steel bldng by sheep, he texted back.

  She’d come a lot faster than he’d expected. Then again, she was a veterinarian in her post-army career. Maybe she’d already been out at the fairgrounds, taking care of some sick animal. Whatever the reason for her speedy arrival, the important thing was that she was here. Shep moved forward.

  Voices sounded behind him, at the entrance. He hurried to the end of a row of feed sacks and stuck his head out enough to see. Brian and Tank were coming back in.

  The good news was, they might lead him to Lilly.

  The bad news was, they had a couple of sheepdogs following them.

  And, of course, the dogs sniffed the ground and caught his scent pretty fast. They barked as they ran straight to Shep.

  They didn’t attack, friendly as anything, playing greeting committee, blissfully unaware that they’d just given away his location.

  Tank and Brian spread out and moved toward him. He didn’t want to play hide-and-seek. He wanted Lilly. Shep drew his weapon and stepped out into the open.

  He aimed at Tank while keeping an eye on Brian. “Where is she?”

  Brian lifted his hands immediately and stopped next to a workstation, pulled closer to it to use it as cover if needed. Tank didn’t look scared. Shep knew Tank usually carried a weapon and therefore kept his gun aimed at him rather than Brian.

  “Stop where you are.” He dropped the goofy Pennsylvania rodeo-cowboy act altogether and went for this commando voice and stance. “Hands in the air. On your stom
ach, on the ground.”

  But Tank just shot him a fearsome dark look and kept moving forward, his mouth set into a narrow line, anger flaring in his eyes. He reached his right hand toward his back.

  Shep aimed for his shoulder.

  But before he could squeeze the trigger, there was a sudden movement to his left and something punched him in the neck.

  What the hell? It stung. A burning sensation began spreading down his arm.

  He pulled out the dart as his gaze switched to Brian, who was holding a tranquilizer gun. He’d stopped at that workstation for a reason, Shep realized too late.

  The man gave a cocky chuckle. “Just got it a few weeks ago. I thought it might be nice to have in case a bull goes crazy during training. I put too much money into some of my boys to let them get hurt.”

  Shep swung his weapon toward him. He meant to, in any case. His arm sagged instead, his knees buckling. That stuff worked fast. That was the point, of course, if anyone had an angry bull charging at them.

  The average rodeo bull weighed close to two thousand pounds. Even as hard as Shep fought, the tranquilizer took him down in seconds.

  * * *

  ON HER KNEES AGAIN, Lilly kept ramming her back into the top of the storage container, still hoping to break through the heavy plastic.

  At first, she could hear other cars. The truck had driven through town. But then the ride got bumpier and the sounds of the road stopped. They were on rougher ground somewhere, off-roading it.

  Her entire back ached and was probably bruised, but she didn’t care. She had a fair idea where they were going: somewhere isolated. And she had an ever better idea of what the men would do when they got there.

  They probably thought her an undercover, overeager border agent. They needed to make her disappear. Lord knew the possibilities for that were endless in the South Texas borderlands. She knew who they were and she knew their dirty business. They simply couldn’t afford to let her live.

  She alternated pushing with her shoulders then lying on her back and kicking with her feet.

  She had no idea how long she had before they would stop, but she meant to break free before that. Her best chance for escape was if she could either open the back door and jump from the truck without them noticing or, at least, stand ready by the door and jump on them from above as they came to get her. She’d have the element of surprise.

  If she could knock them down, if she could grab a gun—

  A pained groan outside her dark box interrupted that optimistic fantasy, startling her. She stilled and listened.

  Nothing.

  Maybe she’d only imagined it.

  But just as she was about to start her efforts again, the groan repeated. This was no sheep they might have put in the back of the truck with her. The sound was decidedly human.

  Friend or foe was the question. She meant to find out the answer. She banged her fist on the side of the crate. “Hey! Who is that?”

  Even if it was Tank, maybe she could talk him into opening the lid for a second. If she could somehow grab his weapon...

  But no response came.

  She banged again. “I’m in here. Help me!”

  Another minute of silence, then a rusty, croaking sound that might have been “Lilly?”

  The familiar voice flooded her with relief. “Shep? I’m stuck in here. Can you help?”

  “Give me a minute.”

  He sounded strange, slow and dazed. Was he injured? Maybe they’d beaten him before they’d tossed him in the back of the truck with her. That would explain why he hadn’t responded to her banging before. Maybe he’d been beaten unconscious. “Are you okay?”

  A moment of silence followed, then, “What are you doing in there?”

  All the frustration inside her surged to the front. “Getting a pedicure. What do you think?”

  “Okay,” he said after a minute. “Move away from the lid.”

  She flattened herself to the bottom of the container and pulled some feed bags on top of her.

  Was he going to try to shoot the padlock off? She didn’t think Brian and Tank would have let him keep his weapon. They’d certainly taken everything she had.

  Bang!

  Then suddenly the lid popped up, and Shep was there, gripping it with one hand while holding a fire extinguisher with the other. He blinked at her slowly, looking out-of-this-world stoned, his irises wide, his movements not altogether coordinated.

  “When did Brian give you a roofie?” She sat up, grateful to be able to breathe freely at last, every muscle in her body aching. Her clothes stuck to her with sweat, but she was uninjured, miraculously. She climbed out, with his help.

  “Bull tranquilizer,” he said, his eyes glazed over. “I pulled it out, so I don’t think I got the full dosage.”

  “Thank God.” The full dosage might have killed him. “Brian slipped me a roofie,” she told him.

  He scanned her with thunder on his face, reaching for her hands.

  “Not for that purpose,” she said to ease his obvious worries. “Just so they could move me around easier.” But his touch felt nice, so she didn’t pull away for a few seconds.

  Enough daylight filtered in through the cracks under the door, and a small hole in the roof so she could scan the back of the truck. Other than the crate, the fire extinguisher and the two of them, it was empty. “Now what?”

  “Now we escape. Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.” She wasn’t sure it was entirely smart, but she did trust him anyway. He’d come for her. He didn’t leave her to her fate, he didn’t abandon her—he came.

  Since he was bound, hands and feet, she helped him break free, then he helped untie her wrists.

  She rubbed her bruised skin before shaking off the minor injury. “Good to go.”

  But even as she said that, the truck began to slow, coming to a full stop after a minute. Then they heard car doors slamming and two men arguing in Spanish.

  “¡Idiota! Why didn’t you fill up the tank?”

  “The boss said to hurry. Didn’t want to stop before we hit the border. The next gas station is at the factory. I thought we’d make it.”

  The other one swore. “Now what do we do?”

  “Walk?”

  “To the factory? ¡Zurramato!”

  Lilly stayed still and silent as she shot a questioning look at Shep.

  Dumb ass. He mouthed the translation as the conversation continued outside.

  “And the ones in the back?” one of the men asked. “The boss said the Coyote would want to talk to them.”

  “The boss also said to shoot them if we run into any trouble.”

  “We could get good money for the chica down south.”

  “You want to carry her on your back?”

  The other one swore. “Let’s do it, then, so we can get going.” He swore again, more vehemently this time. “It’s still a waste just to shoot her.”

  “You do what you want with her first, but I’m not waiting for you. Your business if you want to die out here.”

  A threatening growl escaped Shep’s throat as he stepped up to the truck’s back door, the fire extinguisher lifted and ready. Lilly moved next to him, going down into a crouch. Whatever she had to do, she wasn’t going to become entertainment for those two bastards out there.

  The roofie had worn off. She was ready. They wouldn’t find her quite as easy prey this time around.

  Then the doors popped open, revealing two men holding guns. One gave a surprised shout, but that was that. Shep slammed the bottom of the fire extinguisher into his face, while Lilly vaulted onto the other guy, knocking him to the ground, driving her elbow into his solar plexus.

  Dust flew up around them as he tried to roll her, but her self-defense skills put her o
n top in quick order. All good, except for the damned gun trapped between them.

  The man grinned into her face. He shifted his arm just an inch or so, but that would be enough. “Hasta la vista, puta.”

  She tried to grab the gun, but just as the top of her fingers reached metal, he pulled the trigger.

  She yanked her other elbow down hard at the same split second, hitting his forearm. Then she froze, waiting to see which one of them got hit.

  “Lilly?” Shep was grabbing her and pulling her up.

  She moved with him. That had to be a good sign, right? She didn’t feel pain, but she wouldn’t necessarily. The adrenaline surge after a major injury often came with a minute of reprieve.

  There was blood on her, but there was blood on the man staring up at them, too. His eyes filled with surprise before they went dull and lifeless in just seconds.

  Shep shook her. “Lilly.”

  She rolled her shoulders. “I’m okay.”

  He yanked her to him and wrapped his arms around her so tightly, she could barely breathe. She let herself accept the comfort for a few seconds. Then her gaze caught on the second man over Shep’s shoulder, on the ground behind him, blood pooling under his head, the dry ground drinking it in.

  She pulled away.

  Shep followed her gaze, his expression darkening. “Hit him too hard.” He swore. “I misjudged it. Didn’t know how good my muscles were working with all the drugs in my system.”

  The men were both dead, beyond questioning.

  For the first time, she looked around and examined the landscape. They were in the middle of nowhere, nothing but desert and cacti as far as the eye could see. “I’m pretty sure we’re in Mexico.”

  Shep nodded, gathering up the guns and giving her one of them. Then he searched the men’s pockets. “Enrique Lopez and Gus Garcia.” He considered the lifeless men with an aggravated look on his face. “The names say anything to you?”

  She shook her head. “Brian’s hired goons, no doubt. I don’t remember seeing them at the bar, though. But this all ties to him. They probably worked at one of his other businesses.”