In fact, he wasn’t surprised to see him at all.
“You knew I wasn’t dead,” Ryder said.
“I knew.”
“How?”
“Call it…instinct. Marco and the others, they have seen one or two dead men. I’ve seen enough to smell death.”
“But you didn’t tell them.”
The man shrugged. “They don’t care much for my opinion. And they figured if you weren’t you would be soon enough, banged up as you were. Coyotes, cougars, something would have finished you off.” He flashed an interested look at Ryder’s battered face. “Obviously they underestimated you.”
Ryder shifted his grip on the pistol. Denny was sitting—or rather kneeling—on the floor in front of the table that held the bank of candles. The thump he’d heard, he guessed. There was no weapon in evidence, but he doubted the man would have it in plain sight. He’d told Ana to wait outside until he assessed the odd situation, and so far, she was doing as he asked. But he also doubted she would stay there for long.
Just as he was doubting that this man was as stupid as his co-conspirators thought he was.
“So,” he said casually, “how’s the dumb-as-a-brick act working for you?”
For an instant, something flickered in the man’s eyes. Or maybe it was the candlelight, making him look as if he were smiling.
“Are you after the baby, or the network?” The man asked it as if he were a salesclerk asking a customer which product he preferred.
“Yes,” Ryder said, then added, “in that order.”
The smile was real this time, then the man gave the barest of nods. “I suspected as much. Is it yours?”
“No,” Ryder said. And then, he added the most important qualifier. “And yes.”
Denny tilted his head sideways, in the same way he had when he’d been pondering Ryder’s reaction to seeing Maria. As he thought of her name, Ryder realized with a little shock he hadn’t even known it then.
Ryder wasn’t even sure why he was talking to this man, as if there were some kind of rational discussion to be had, as if this were a civilized conversation instead of a dangerous meeting about a despicable act.
“I presume you already found Marco and Carl?”
“Yes.”
Denny nodded again. “I’m guessing Marco directed you here?”
Again with the politeness, Ryder thought, on the edge of losing patience with this whole charade.
“If you want to call it directed,” he snapped out.
“Are they dead?”
“Not yet,” Ryder said, deciding it might be wise to take out a little insurance. Not that he expected any of these scumbags to particularly care if another died, beyond some blow to their pride. “But if I don’t make some calls by morning, it’s a definite possibility.”
Again Denny seemed to ponder this, and apparently decided he believed him. At least, once more he nodded.
At this point, Ryder had no idea how this was going to go. Wasn’t even sure how to approach this lowlife with the odd demeanor.
And then it was taken out of his hands, as Ana walked through the door, bared blade glinting in her hand. Denny’s head came up and, as he looked at Ana, his eyes widened speculatively. And then filled with understanding, as if it had all been explained to him.
“This is taking too much time,” she said, eyeing the man, first with suspicion, then with comprehension. “If you think God will forgive you for a few prayers, you are misguided.”
Denny nodded yet again. “How well I know. That—” Ryder tensed as he raised a hand, but Denny only gestured in the general direction of the door “—was my grandfather’s church, once.”
“Then he would be ashamed of you.”
Ryder thought of Boots, wondered what he would make of this, if he would believe in this apparent paroxysm of guilt and repentance.
“I have no doubt he is,” Denny said. Then, briskly, “The man you are looking for is Dr. Gary Breither.”
“Bingo,” Ryder whispered.
He’d long suspected the man, from the moment he’d heard that the notoriously incompetent physician was suddenly doing noticeably better financially. And had been making regular trips south of the border, declaring self-aggrandizingly that he was doing extensive charity work.
Ryder had thought this the perfect cover, and had wondered if the services he’d offered had been to poor, pregnant women, whose babies he had then offered up to the smugglers. But he’d hidden his tracks well—he might be inept as a doctor, but as a financial sneak he was stellar—and even the feds hadn’t yet been able to trace his money trail.
Ana, however, was still suspicious. “Why should we believe you, when you give up so easily?”
Denny shrugged. “As you wish.”
“Why did you give it up so easily?” Ryder asked, for the first time looking at Denny as a man rather than just one of the maggots feeding on the desperation of others.
“I suspect,” Denny said, shifting his oddly steady gaze to Ryder, “for much the same reason you nearly threw your life away. Because the package was no longer just a package.”
It flashed through Ryder’s mind again, that moment when he’d unzipped the bag and realized the baby inside was the same one he’d brought into the world a few days before. Remembered the puzzled, almost bewildered expression that had crossed Denny’s face as he worked to figure it out.
And again he thought of Boots. Of everything he’d spoken of, everything he’d tried to teach him. Going with his gut, Ryder slipped the safety back on the purloined Mac 10 and stuffed it back in his belt.
“You believe him?” Ana said, sounding a little startled.
“I do. Let’s go.”
“We are just going to leave him here? Free to call and warn this doctor?”
“I don’t think he will.”
“I will not,” Denny confirmed.
Ana’s hand tightened around the hilt of her knife. She was clearly not willing to trust Ryder’s judgment on this.
“But,” Denny said, eyeing her with something Ryder would have sworn was appreciation, “you may take my cell phone. It’s on the table by the door.”
Ryder nodded. Ana gaped at them both. “I do not understand. Why do you trust this man? He was one of the ones who beat you, is he not?”
“I’m not sure he ever really landed a blow. But he’s got bigger problems right now. Because he knows—” he gestured at the candles “—that you’re right. God won’t forgive him, for a few prayers.”
“So we are just going to leave him here?”
Again Ryder thought of Boots. “He’ll punish himself more than we ever could. Or his God will.”
Denny lowered his eyes, focusing on the candles. And Ryder wondered if he would choose to end his torture with a bullet to his head, or spend his life trying to atone, as Boots had.
Either way, Dr. Breither had lost his driver.
Ana wondered briefly if she were a fool for trusting this man, and his judgment about the man they’d just left. She watched him as he drove, studied his profile, the faint shadows of the marks on his skin where the men who had Maria had beaten him. She remembered the marks on his body as well, across that lovely chest and along the ribs above his narrow, flat waist…
The sudden heat embarrassed her. Even though she knew he couldn’t see her in the faint light of the truck cab, she lowered her gaze and focused on what truly mattered, what it must be costing him to simply keep going through the pain.
For Maria, she reminded herself. And tried to quash the tiny ache inside, the burgeoning emotions that made her wish it was a little bit for her, too.
They were a couple of blocks from the church when her cell phone rang. Thankful she had changed the ring or she’d be sorting through the pile of phones they had accumulated, she grabbed it.
“It says restricted number,” she told Ryder as she handed it to him as he drove, although she knew no one would be calling her at this hour except perhaps Jewel.
She felt a pang. On Ryder’s instructions she had left a note saying only that she was well and with a friend, and would be in touch when she could. They had no way of knowing if one of the children had been manipulated into betraying Maria’s existence to the smuggling ring.
But Ana knew that despite the note, the woman who had done so much for her would be beyond worried when she found both Ana and Maria gone unexpectedly. Ana had no real friends in the area, she could only hope Jewel would wait before telling anyone.
Ryder answered, listened, said nothing for what seemed like an endless stretch, then said, “Got it,” and snapped the phone closed.
“Ryder?” she said when he didn’t speak. Surely he wasn’t going to refuse to tell her what his contact had said.
“They got the same name,” he said after a minute. “Out of one of the couples who paid for a baby they never got.”
It hit Ana then, that somewhere perhaps there was a desperate couple who had paid for Maria.
“Despreciable,” she muttered.
“Yes, it would be despicable, if they knew,” Ryder said. “But these guys are smooth, Ana. They have…well, salesmen on the other end, guys who convince people these are unwanted children, given up voluntarily. Or children who would be abused or abandoned—or worse—if left where they are.”
“You are saying these people think they are saving these babies?”
“I can’t say they all do, I’m sure some of them suspect it’s not all legit, but yes, I think some do.”
Ana pondered that for a moment. “I suppose,” she said reluctantly, “I can understand someone wanting a baby so much.”
Ryder made a sound, a male sort of grunt Ana had learned early in life served as an answer when a man had no answer for you.
“You do not believe in such a great need for a child?”
“I have to believe in it. This smuggling ring wouldn’t exist if that need didn’t.”
“But you…you do not have this need yourself.”
He shifted as if uncomfortable. But when he finally answered, she knew she was getting the truth. “No,” he said. “I’ve never had it.”
She turned this over and over in her mind, looking for a way to resolve the seeming contradiction. Finally, even knowing he would likely just grunt again, she spoke.
“Yet you risked your life for Maria. You could have died for her.”
He did not even grunt. He said nothing. And she realized that she should have put it in the form of a question; another thing she had learned, belatedly, was that men tended to be quite literal, especially when dealing with aspects of emotion.
“Why?” she said, correcting her lapse.
She thought he still might not answer, but at last he said, somewhat lamely, “She’s already here.”
It made a strange sort of sense, Ana supposed. But she couldn’t resist probing further.
“But if you feel nothing for children, why did you—”
“I didn’t say I felt nothing. Just that I didn’t feel the need to have them myself.”
His mouth quirked, and she had the feeling he’d gone out of his way to make certain it had never happened. Odd, she thought. If she had fallen in love with someone like Ryder instead of Alberto, she would not be in this situation.
A burst of that unexpected warmth flooded her again as she sat in the dark cab of the truck, looking at the man behind the wheel. Despite his casual attitude and his protestations of a lack of interest in children, she had never forgotten the look on his face when he had held her baby in his hands.
And he had tried to save Maria, even knowing he had no chance against four armed men.
What would it be like to be in love with such a man? To have him love you in turn? Not an arrogant, unprincipled user like Alberto, but a man who, even if he was not happy about it, would help and not hurt?
He glanced at her then. “What is it with women and babies, anyway?” he asked, sounding almost exasperated.
“The continuation of the human race?” Ana said dryly, a bit stung by his tone.
He drew back slightly. And after a moment, she saw one corner of his mouth quirk. “Well, if you put it like that…”
Something about his reaction then made her say, almost shyly, “Thank you for trying to help Maria then, and for helping me now. It is good to know a man who will do the right thing.”
For a moment he was very quiet. Then, softly, he said into the darkness, “Don’t put your faith in me, Ana. I’ll only let you down. It’s what I’m best at.”
“I don’t believe that.”
He laughed, a short, sharp, harsh sound. “Want a list of ‘Ryder’s-worse-than-useless’ references? I can give you one. A very long one, with my brother, and probably my little sister, at the top. I’m the proverbial black sheep, in their book.”
Ana could think of nothing to say to that. It seemed that, in his way, Ryder was as isolated from his family as she was from hers. He seemed to be saying he was the problem, not them. Yet she had no doubt that he was a good man, not anymore. She had had her doubts, even after the night of Maria’s birth, but they had vanished by now.
“We’re going to have to move fast,” he said then, clearly changing the subject. “They’re going to be right on my tail.”
“We should have tied that man up as well,” Ana said.
Ryder’s mouth quirked again. “I didn’t mean those guys.”
It took her a moment to realize he meant the people he’d talked to on the phone.
“But…is that not a good thing?”
“Not for Maria.”
Ana’s breath caught. “What do you mean?”
“Their goal is to break this ring. To them, Maria’s just another baby. If they get the job done in time to save her, fine, but that’s not their focus.”
She did not miss the subtext of that statement, that Maria was more than that to him. But this was not the time to dwell on that. She made herself concentrate on what he was saying.
“You mean that we must get the truth from this man, this doctor, quickly.”
Ryder nodded. “I’ve suspected him for a while now, but all I had was circumstantial. I could never find any solid evidence to tie him to the ring. And the feds, they’re big on solid evidence. It doesn’t do them any good to know who’s guilty if they can’t prove it.”
“I do not care if they can prove it. All I want is my baby.”
“I know.”
“You think he is the leader of this baby-smuggling ring?”
“He’s the most likely suspect I’ve come across.”
“Then he will know where Maria has been taken. Who—” she stumbled over the horrible words “—has paid for her.”
To her surprise, he reached out and took her hand, squeezed it. “We’ll get her back, Ana. I swear we will get her back.”
His hand felt warm, strong, comforting. Reassuring. And despite his warning not to put her faith in him, she found herself doing just that.
She hoped she would not regret it.
She prayed her daughter would not.
Chapter 16
Ryder had never had a wingman. He’d never needed one. Or so he’d thought. Now he seemed to have acquired one, albeit a wing-woman. And a beautiful, determined, and annoyingly smart one to boot.
He knew law enforcement people often worked with partners—even Furnell—and he’d always assumed it was for a very simple reason—two guns were better than one. But now he was beginning to understand the benefit of simply having someone else to bounce plans and ideas off.
And that’s all it was. Nothing more than the benefit of having someone else there who called up odd feelings inside him. He didn’t want to admit that because of Ana, he wondered what it would be like to have someone around all the time.
There was that forever thing again. He shoved it aside, but it was getting harder. He needed to focus, to concentrate. And he told himself to remember that Ana’s determination to save her baby could well cloud what wou
ld normally be a razor-sharp thought process.
Again he wondered how she’d gotten herself into her situation.
“Where is Maria’s father?” he asked bluntly. “Why isn’t he helping you?”
For a moment she didn’t answer, and he felt she might be too embarrassed, or simply deciding if he had the right to ask. When she did finally speak, it was an answer, but not exactly the one he’d been after.
“I would not accept his help.”
“Why? You must have loved him.”
He realized as soon as he said it that, on some level, he’d already known Ana Morales would never sleep with a man she didn’t love. For some reason he didn’t have time—or the desire—to stop and analyze why he was so edgy.
He thought he had heard emotion rising in her voice, and when she took a breath and went on, it burst through. “I hope he will soon be in prison, where he belongs.”
Something knotted up hard deep in Ryder’s gut. The anger, the scorn in her voice was unmistakable.
Well, now, he thought, there’s a way to smash her trust in you. Just tell her you’re doing this to get out of prison.
“Why?” he asked carefully. Then, as a horrible thought occurred to him, he slowed the car to look over at her. “Ana, he didn’t rape you?”
She laughed, harshly. “He did not have to. He was my fiancé.”
Ryder wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not. He put his eyes back on the road. “So you did love him.”
“I loved who I thought he was. He was not that man.” He heard an odd little sound in the darkness, realized she was taking in a deep breath, as if fighting back tears. He wished suddenly he’d never started this. “He is a criminal, brutal, wicked and immoral. And he is in league with a man who is even worse.”
“Worse.”
“My father,” she said, and for the first time, despite all she’d been through, there was bitterness in her voice.
“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling stupid for not having anything better to say.
“It killed my mother when she found out. I did not know this, until I learned the truth myself, but then it became clear.” She let out a harsh, compressed breath. “Do you have any idea what it is like to despise your own father?”
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