Saving Tess

by M. S. Parker

  Every word she spoke was full of how much she cared for Brianne, and I wondered how she’d hidden it this whole time. The way the two of them had talked in the kitchen had made it sound like they’d gone their separate ways and loved the lives they had now.

  Sylvia stopped and grabbed my hands, her expression earnest. “Getting that call from Bri the other night made me realize that even though I’ve been happy in the years since she and I broke up, there’s been something missing. It was like…if you asked someone who’s been on oxygen for years, even though it’s giving them life and they can enjoy the world around them, most of them would give anything to go outside and breathe real air.”

  I found myself nodding at her illustration. I understood it all too well. It was exactly how I felt after seeing Clay again, no matter how pissed I’d been at him at the time.

  When I was in college, my roommate loved romantic comedies from the late 90s and early 2000s, and I’d done everything I could to avoid watching them, but one night, for some reason, I’d found myself watching Reese Witherspoon say that she’d given her heart away years ago and had never really gotten it back.

  It was the first, and only, time I’d ever identified with the heroine in a rom-com. I hadn’t consciously acknowledged it at the time because I hadn’t wanted to admit how badly I’d still been missing Clay.

  “I thought I had time,” Sylvia said with a tight smile. “I thought that she’d come back to me. Not because she needed a place to stay, but because she needed me. I hadn’t considered that the next time I saw her, she’d be in a relationship that makes her as happy as she made me.”

  My mind immediately conjured up images of Clay with another woman, perhaps even this mysterious Rona, and my heart twisted painfully. What if he returned to Denver and she realized that she’d made a mistake in letting him go? I didn’t know the details of the circumstances surrounding their break-up, but if she wanted him back, it was entirely within the realm of possibility that he could go to her.

  An even worse thought hit me. What if I’d been his rebound? What if he’d only had sex with me because it was a convenient way to get over her?

  Sylvia squeezed my hand, pulling me away from my negative thoughts. “Take my advice. If you want him, fight for him. Don’t find yourself in my position in a few years, wishing you’d done everything you could to keep him.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her that I’d think it all over, but before I could, a familiar figure came up the sidewalk toward us. I’d almost forgotten why Sylvia and I were out here in the first place. Seeing Luis, however, brought it all rushing back.

  I needed to focus.

  I didn’t have time for games or romance or whatever else might get in the way of what was most important. I needed to get Clay and Bri out of Costa Rica before I even thought about anything else.

  Twenty-Three

  Clay

  I hadn’t realized how late it was getting until Brianne and I passed the second café filling up with people getting off work. My stomach growled, and I tried to remember what time it’d been when we’d picked up granizados – mine coconut and hers mango – and queso palmito at a small stand. It hadn’t been more than a couple hours, but I was hungry again. Absently, I wondered how many miles we’d walked.

  “This probably would’ve worked better if we’d had specific search perimeters,” Brianne said, her voice nearly a growl of frustration.

  I didn’t acknowledge the statement. Almost from the moment we’d left the house, she’d been criticizing how Tess had handled things, and arguing with her wouldn’t do anything but rile her up and annoy me, so I ignored her. The fact that she didn’t seem to notice, or care, could have been a blessing or a curse. I hadn’t yet decided.

  Then again, when I considered that we could’ve spent this entire time arguing, it was easier to see Brianne’s complaints as positives rather than negatives.

  I snuck a glance at the older sister, considering her in this new light.

  More than two weeks together and I still had a difficult time accepting this version of the girl who’d been my friend for so much of my childhood and adolescence. True, I’d always been closer to Tess, even before I’d realized that my feelings for her were different than how I felt about other friends, but I’d always considered Brianne one of my closest friends too. When Tess and I had found each other again, even with Brianne’s lie between us, we’d fallen back into the same comfortable rhythm we’d always had. That hadn’t happened with Bri and me, and it wasn’t a sex thing.

  Honestly, I didn’t know what the hell had happened. Sure, after I’d found out she’d lied to Tess, I’d been pissed, but that wasn’t it. I’d heard more than once that the opposite of love wasn’t hate, it’s indifference. While what Brianne and I had experienced wasn’t in the realm of romantic love, we’d still cared about each other. But now…I was angry; she didn’t care.

  No, that wasn’t entirely accurate. It wasn’t that she didn’t care. She was treating Tess the same way, and I knew she loved her sister. It was more like Bri was keeping us at arm’s length. She’d always been a private person, but this was beyond keeping certain things to herself. She’d put up walls against every person in her life, and every gut instinct and FBI agent intuition I possessed was telling me that she had a bigger secret than being the girlfriend of the secretary of state’s sister-in-law.

  Which meant it was a huge-ass secret.

  “It doesn’t look like they’re back yet,” I said as Brianne and I reached Sylvia’s house. “None of the lights are on.”

  Brianne glanced at the house, then turned her attention in the direction Tess and Sylvia had gone. “I don’t have a key,” she said. “And I don’t really like sitting around doing nothing. I’m going after them. You do whatever you want.”

  I heard the rest of what she wanted to say. You do whatever you want.

  At first, I’d been waiting for her to finish ripping into me like she had earlier today, but she hadn’t said a word about it since we’d agreed to focus on what was best for Tess. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that meant she approved, but at least she had her priorities in the right place.

  I followed her as she continued down the sidewalk. Even though I hadn’t said so, I agreed with her assessment of Tess’s search. In fiction, two people in one direction and two in another always resulted in the searched-for person being found. In reality, we’d walked a single street in both directions. Luis could have gone up or down any number of streets and then turned right or left, if he’d turned at all.

  We were never going to find him unless he wanted to be found.

  “How far do you think they got?” Brianne asked the question directly.

  “Probably half of what we did,” I said with a how in the hell should I know shrug. “Tess is still healing from that accident. She’ll push herself past what she should, but there’s only so much her body’s going to let her do.”

  “You don’t think she’s turned back yet.”

  She’d made it a statement, but I felt the need to respond to it anyway. “I don’t think she’ll ever admit she can’t find him. Sylvia or one of us will have to force her to see it.”

  “Shit,” Brianne said with a sigh. “You’re right.”

  I was surprised she didn’t choke on the words. “Do you think Sylvia will feel comfortable enough to tell Tess to stop?”

  “Probably,” Brianne said. “But I doubt Tess will listen.”

  I walked faster, and Brianne matched my pace. The longer I was with her, the bigger my suspicion that there was more to her than I’d originally thought. I’d met soldiers who were tough, but there was an edge to Bri that made me wonder what else she was.

  Neither one of us said anything as we covered the next dozen blocks at a jog. When we reached the corner of another block, I stopped, waiting for Brianne as she went another few feet. She turned around and came back to me, still moving in place to keep herself from tightening up. I stretched and shook out my
limbs.

  “We should have caught up to them by now.” Brianne voiced what I was thinking. “Or at least be able to see them.”

  “Do you think they would’ve gone in another direction?” I asked, turning in a circle to scan the area again. “Maybe Tess thought they should come back a different way.”

  Brianne shook her head. “I don’t think so. They wouldn’t be likely to run into Luis going back toward Sylvia’s house. Not unless he’d just gone out for a walk or something.”

  “You don’t trust him either.”

  Brianne met my gaze with a steady one of her own. “I don’t trust much of anyone, but no, I especially don’t trust him.”

  “Which one of us do you think she’ll be more likely to take a call from?” I asked.

  “You,” Brianne said, her nose curling in distaste of her own answer. “She’s annoyed with you, but she’s pissed at me.”

  Less than two minutes later, we were forced to reconsider that particular position. My call had gone straight to voicemail, which meant she either had the phone off or she’d refused to accept my call. As Brianne tried her luck, I sent a text. Tess didn’t answer either one.

  “Shit,” Bri said as she shoved her phone back into her pocket.

  The possibility I’d been trying to ignore came forward, unable to be pushed aside any longer.

  “What if Luis took her somewhere?” I looked up and down the street as if I’d be able to see the past right there in front of me. “If he pulled up in a car, said he’d bring her back to us, then took off with her, that could explain it.”

  “I don’t think he could take both Tess and Sylvia and get their phones from them.”

  “If he had a gun he could,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “Think about it, Bri. He comes up to them, says he’ll give them a ride, and once they’re in the car, he pulls a gun on them. He threatens to shoot Sylvia if they don’t hand over their phones. Tess might not do it to save herself, but she’d do it to save someone else.”

  Brianne let out a stream of curses.

  “We need to find out if they made it this far,” I continued. “If we have any hope of picking up their trail, we need to find out where he caught up with them.”

  Most of the space behind us was empty, businesses or houses torn down – or in one case, burned down – lots neglected. These were the kinds of places that became overgrown with weeds, nature checked only by the trash people discarded there. It reminded me of the yard around the drug cartel’s house.

  Across the street, however, were a couple small businesses. A laundromat, a place that sold herbal remedies, a massage parlor that might have been something else, and a liquor store.

  “I’ll bet they have security cameras.” I gestured at the liquor store. “Or at least people who pay attention to anything that could threaten their livelihood.”

  A bell rang when we opened the door, and less than five seconds later, someone was right there, greeting us with a smile. I exchanged some small pleasantries as Brianne walked around the store, clearly scoping it out in a way that was more detective than soldier. Yet another thing to file away for future discussion.

  “Hola,” I said with a smile before switching to English. “I was wondering if you’ve seen a friend of ours.”

  Playing the tourist seemed like the better move. If he thought Bri and I were some sort of government officials, he’d most likely clam up, and that was the last thing we wanted.

  “Who is your friend?” He came back with English, but I could still see the suspicion in his eyes.

  “Two friends, actually. Women.” I held up my hand to indicate their approximate heights. “Both short with dark hair. They were looking for another friend of ours, and we aren’t sure if they found him.”

  “You have a lot of friends,” the man observed, eying me closely. “Why were you not with them?”

  Brianne finished making her rounds and came back to stand by me, a bottle of tequila in hand. “Because he was with me.” She gave him a charming smile and wrapped her arm around mine. “I’d like this, please.”

  We followed the man to the register, and as he rang up the tequila, he started to talk again. “I did see a pair of women that looked like Americans. They stopped at the corner over there. A man came to them. About your height, but thinner. Black hair. They talked and then followed him around the corner. I could not see them after that.”

  “That sounds like them.” The expression on my face tightened into a mask of barely controlled fury. “They went around that corner?” I pointed to make sure the man understood.

  “Yes.” The man handed Brianne the tequila. “They might have gotten into a car. There is a parking lot around that corner, and a few minutes after they left, a car came back this way. It was speeding.”

  “Oh, no,” Brianne said, her eyes going wide as she played the damsel. “I hope they didn’t get hurt. Which way did they go? Is there a hospital that way?” She tugged on my arm. “I told you we should have given them phones.”

  “It’ll be all right,” I said, patting her hand as I turned back to the man at the counter. “Would that have been the way someone would go to get to the hospital?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing good is that way.” His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Unless your friends were looking for drugs, they should not have gone that way.”

  Fuck. The cartel.

  “Thank you,” I managed to say before Brianne pulled me out the door.

  We moved a few feet down before either of us said anything.

  “It had to be Luis, right?” I asked. “He’d be the only person Tess and Sylvia would trust enough to get into a car with. Unless you think Sylvia might’ve known the guy.”

  Brianne shook her head. “She knew we were looking for Luis. She wouldn’t have gone off with some guy, no matter how good a friend he was. The only thing I can think is that she might have asked a friend for a ride back to her house, but they would’ve driven back the way we came, not down that way.”

  “You don’t think it’s a coincidence that the car went in the direction that the cartel lives.” I didn’t make it a question because I knew she was thinking the same as me.

  We didn’t believe in coincidences, neither of us.

  “He couldn’t be working for them,” Brianne said. “It wouldn’t have made any sense for him to get her out of his apartment and away from them if he was working for them. Hell, if they were the ones responsible for the accident, why would he have even saved her?”

  “Unless he was double-crossing them,” I said, my own mind working through the possibilities. “He could’ve saved her, thinking he could trade her for something. Money maybe. Drugs.”

  “And he left today to tell them that he had her,” Brianne said. “But why her?”

  “Because she and I screwed up their plans to ransom your Red Care group,” I said. “If they found out we were the ones who rescued you guys, they could want revenge.”

  A bright streak of panic went through me at the thought of what a drug cartel could do to Tess as revenge for what we’d done. I’d seen what they’d done to Brianne when she’d tried to fight them, and I’d seen what they’d done to the two bodies they’d handed over to Tess and me when we’d paid the ransom.

  “It’s my fault,” Brianne said, her face a mask of guilt and anger. “Neither of you would be here if it wasn’t for me.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “You were trying to do something good. You couldn’t know how dangerous it would be.”

  I believed what I said, but something about the way she wouldn’t look at me made me wonder if that was the entire truth.

  Twenty-Four

  Tess

  “Where have you been?” I asked, taking a half-step toward Luis. Sylvia’s hand on my arm kept me from getting any closer. I glanced at her, catching the warning in her eyes. She was right to be wary. We didn’t know why he’d left or anything else, for that matter.

  He smiled at me, that same charmi
ng smile he’d given me before. “I have been making things safe for you.”

  “Making things safe?” It sounded good, but after finding out how my own sister had been lying to me, I refused to take anything for granted.

  “Safe to get you out of the country,” he said. He put his hand on my shoulder, shooting a dirty look at Sylvia when she moved closer to me. “Eventually. First, a safe place for us to wait.”

  “That’s wonderful!” I said. “Clay and Bri will be thrilled to hear it.”

  His expression darkened. “I was not able to find much room. I do not know if they will be able to come with us.”

  “They have to,” I protested, taking a step back.

  “They can safely find their own way home.”

  The knot in the pit of my stomach soured. He hadn’t even thought about Brianne or Clay. Okay, Clay, I could understand. Luis had a crush on me, and clearly, Clay and I had…well, whatever we had. But Brianne was my sister. No matter how pissed I was at her, Luis shouldn’t have assumed that I wouldn’t want her going home safe with me.

  Still, I chose my words carefully.

  “I think we should all stick together.” I took a step back so that his hand fell away from my shoulder. “They should be heading back to Sylvia’s by now.”

  “Maybe you should call them,” Sylvia suggested. “Let them know we’re coming to them.”

  “Good idea.” I started to reach for my purse…and remembered that I didn’t have my phone with me. “Dammit. I took it out of my purse to charge it and forgot.”

  “That is all right,” Luis said with another smile. “I have a car. It will not take us long to get where we are going.”