Texas Hold 'Em (16 page)

“You’re committing a serious crime,” she choked out. “Murder during the commission of a specific crime such as kidnapping can result in a death penalty sentence. The same penalty—” She had to stop and cough, the filth from the bag halting her rote recitation. “The s-same penalty exists for attempted murder of a public safety officer.” Squinting against the flashlight’s harsh glare, she suddenly lost her composure and, with it, her professional distance. “You’re making a terrible mistake. When you’re caught, you’re gonna fry.”

Nervous laughter filled the darkness beyond the light. The sounds died when the man stuck the silver tip of his boot beneath her chin and lifted her head until it was out of the beam.

Juan Enrique. The boy he’d once been still lingered in his eyes, but the promise of a better future had been erased by the drugs he’d taken and those he’d sold. Despite her threat, suddenly all she could think about was who he could have been, given the chance.

He pointed to a ramshackle cabin behind him, her intimidation ignored. “I’ve been preparing for your visit for quite some time. I think we need to talk about that instead.”

Her eyes flicked toward the house then came back to him. “My men will figure out you took me. And then they’ll come after you.” As she spoke, she realized the truth of what she’d just said; Santos would never stop looking for her. Never. She’d meant her warning to frighten Enrique, but instead it gave her strength. “They’ll find you,” she said with absolute conviction.

“Like they found Pablo Ortega?” His words mocked her. He obviously already knew what had happened.

Reina’s theory flashed through Rose’s mind, Enrique’s contempt for the cartel leader’s name surprising but not totally unexpected. “They’ll find you,” she repeated. “And then they’ll find him. He’s too big to miss.”

Enrique’s lips lifted in a sly smile. He almost looked proud of himself. “
El Brujo
only seems big because that’s what I wanted. You thought he sent
asasinos
to kill you and put men inside your home, you thought he murdered Concepción, you thought he had all the power. You’re wrong. Pablo Ortega isn’t the fierce
cabron
you think he is.”

“Your ego has control of your mouth. You’re a tiny fish in his very large pond.”

Instead of the anger she expected, Enrique grinned even larger and held out his hands. “If I’m such a minnow, then no one will look for me. The shark is the fish everyone wants to catch.”

She released a slow breath as his meaning became clear. She’d never even considered this possibility, nor had Reina or Santos. Ortega’s men hadn’t been lying; Enrique had manipulated the situation like a talented puppet master.

“You set him up,” she said almost to herself.

“
El Brujo’s
a very bad man, and he has done many bad things, including the kidnapping of a Texas sheriff. Even when my men screwed up and didn’t get you the first time, I was able to turn that to my advantage. People will think he kept trying to grab you until he was successful. When your body is found, no stone will go unturned to find The Sorcerer. No one else will care what’s going on beneath their noses.”

“You thought we’d arrest him for everything that’s been happening. That would get him out of your way. Then you could take things back to how they’d been before.” It wasn’t a question.

He smiled.

Any sign of fear on her part would only make him more confident. She tried a different tack. “What happened to you, Juan?” she asked quietly. “I thought you were smarter than to end up like this.”

He narrowed his eyes at her unexpected question before recovering quickly. “I’m a wealthy man. A powerful man. I wouldn’t call that stupid.”

“Your
abeula
didn’t work two jobs so you could end up here.”

“Leave my grandmother out of this.”

“Do you think she’d be proud of you right now?” Rose pressed. “Do you think she’d like seeing you stand over a helpless woman, kicking dirt in her face?”

“You haven’t walked in my shoes. Keep your lectures to yourself.”

She changed the topic again. “If you don’t want to talk about her, then think about your mother. And your brother. They were both devastated by your ‘death.’ Did you think about that detail when you killed the man you left in your house?”

“They know the truth now.”

“But they didn’t then. I was there when we found that hacked up body. Your brother was shattered. He’ll never forgive you for that.”

Enrique’s eyes darkened, and Rose thought about one of Silas’s favorite maxims.
The truth hurts
.

She didn’t stop. “If you don’t care about them, that’s your business, but Ortega disappeared tonight. Did your plan take that possibility into consideration?”

“Then I accomplished my goal and proved my point. He didn’t have the
cojones
to stay here. I’ll be in charge, and he will not be returning.”

“Your goal is going to end up with you in prison. I knew you were involved in this from the very beginning, and my guys will figure out I was right. You’ll be very, very sorry when that happens.” She shook her head as if to correct herself, her voice hardening. “Actually, you’ll probably be very, very dead. They get carried away sometimes.”

His fists balled, his body growing tight and still. Had she gone too far? Would she die in this lonely, forgotten spot and be buried in the desert, never to be seen again? She decided it didn’t matter. Santos had been right. Someone had to stop the men who were drenching the border in violence.

“Rio County is mine,” Enrique spat out. “Ortega is the one who will be sorry. If you fail to find him, then I will. He’s the one who should watch his back.”

In the silence of the desert, her voice was quiet and steady. “When the danger is past, the coward gives his warning.”

Enrique made a sound like a hiss and took a step toward her. She ignored it. “Pablo Ortega will face judgment, Enrique. And so will you.”

Chapter Seventeen

Santos had never pushed the Harley to its real limit. But now he forced the big bike past that point as it flew down the dark highway toward Las Lomas. Like a horse commanded to do better, go faster, jump higher, the motorcycle not only responded to his urgings, it surpassed them. The starry sky overhead and the empty road before him added to the impression of speed. On another day at another time, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to control the Harley.

In the distance ahead, Dan’s taillights flashed, and the truck swerved to the right, the vehicle fishtailing to a stop as soon as it was off the blacktop. Santos followed. The hunting guide stumbled from his vehicle, then sprinted toward the gate where he wrestled the chain that secured the heavy barrier to a concrete post off to one side. As Dan worked the lock’s combination, Santos stuffed stainless steel scouring pads in the pipes of the Harley before the baffles. He couldn’t make the motorcycle completely silent, but he could dampen the roar.

Hoping to go undetected, they’d agreed the best route would be to go in through Dan’s lease then cut through the back acres to Las Lomas. If Enrique wasn’t holding Rose there, Santos feared she might already be across the border. He’d called Padilla as he’d raced toward the ranch and told the
federale
to be on the lookout, but the border was long and dark. There were a thousand places where Enrique could take her over, and no one would ever know.

Santos hadn’t thought it possible for the night to get any darker. As they bounced over the deer lease’s gravel road without their lights on, he realized he’d been wrong. The highway’s reflective stripes had at least given him an idea of where they road was; now the bike was climbing up a barren, rock-filled track not much wider than a sidewalk, and doing so blindly. He dodged a cactus looming over the tortured maze, realizing the bike was heading straight for a pair of massive boulders. Yanking the Harley to the center, he managed to clear the obstacles at the last minute.Then the road leveled out.

A barbed wire fence stretched both ways before him for as far as he could see. In the inky night, a pale yellow light winked dimly in the distance. A mile? Maybe a little less. Dan pulled to a stop, and Santos followed. The only other team member with them, Joaquim, eased his bike in behind Santos’s. He had positioned the remaining ACES at various strategic spots along the ranch’s perimeter.

They climbed off their bikes, and Dan hopped out of the truck. Their boots scraped over the rocks as they approached the fence line. Santos’s pulse thrummed in the silence, a harsh fear coursing through his blood. Rose had to be terrified if she was in this isolated spot at the mercy of the psychopath who held her—whoever it was. Santos knew he’d be scared spitless. Right now, all he wanted was to get his hands around the throat of her captor.

Behind them, Joaquim opened the long scabbard mounted near his saddlebags. The zipper sounded louder than it was, and Santos flinched. There was no way anyone at the cabin could hear it, he told himself.

He and Dan each lifted a pair of night vision binoculars. A hut covered with roughhewn stone jumped into focus. Santos twisted the lens, and a window came into view. Flanking it were two chairs, and each held a man with a weapon stretched across his lap. The chairs were tilted with their backs against the building’s exterior. Their remoteness had made them careless.

Dan grunted. “I haven’t seen guns like that before. They look nasty.”

“Those are the weapons Ortega’s selling,” Santos muttered.

A trail of smoke gently drifted above a glowing ember as the men passed something between them. As Santos watched, one lifted a bottle then handed it over, too. They were clearly at ease, thinking they were safe way out here.

Santos clinched the glasses. He intended to prove them wrong.

…

Enrique’s men kicked Rose to her feet and grasped her elbows, half-dragging, half-prodding her up two steps and over a threshold into the cabin. She managed a quick look around, the smells of fried meat and musty furnishing telling her they hadn’t been holed up in the abandoned home for very long. A filthy kitchen, a blackened fireplace, one window, nothing more. Five more steps, then a fist landed in the center of her back and shoved her forward. She stumbled, almost falling. The man behind her laughed and slammed the door.

Why hadn’t they simply killed her and been done with it?

This isn’t just a career choice for these guys—they enjoy this kind of crap
. Inside her head, Santos’s words suddenly pulsed like a blinking neon sign. Was that what Enrique had in mind for her?

She turned around slowly and surveyed her surroundings. This room was as nasty as the one they’d just passed through. A mixture of dirt and dried grass had collected in one corner. She lifted her eyes to the slats of tin that served as roof and ceiling. The panels, some rusted through completely, rose to a ragged peak about seven feet above her, a broken light fixture dangling from its apex. Right above her head, so low she could almost touch it, a weathered beam spanned the room. There was no furniture in the room except a lopsided chest and a soiled cot leaning against one of the flaking plaster walls like drunken soldiers.

Her gaze went to the blurry window that faced the front porch. Twisted metal rods covered the opening, and she could see the two men who’d grabbed her sitting outside, their guns on their laps. She forced down the voice inside of her that cried “hopeless” and walked closer to the window. The bars looked as new as the house was old. The welded crosspieces were attached with screws sunk into the window frame, and they weren’t coming out without some serious effort. And tools she didn’t have. She remembered the bathroom they’d found at Enrique’s house. The one with the broken fingernails and bloody claw marks. Did he make it a habit of locking up women? Her mother had said she hadn’t been inside. Had it even be his home? Maybe it belonged to the poor bastard whose body he’d butchered and left in the bedroom to rot. Maybe the blood and nails had belonged to him, as well.

On the horizon, a blink of light unexpectedly flashed then disappeared, the whispering whine of a vehicle fading with it. Hope surged through her.

Had she imagined it? She held her breath and watched. Once they’d turned off the highway, the men had driven the SUV at least twenty minutes before stopping. And from the silence that had blanketed them once they’d stepped out of the vehicle, she was sure they were somewhere extremely isolated, maybe even over the border.

Could Santos be out there, somewhere in the dark? Had she seen the Harley’s light? Heard its growl?

She gripped the windowsill and stared at the shadow of the mountains, willing the lights to return, but they didn’t. Deciding she’d best depend on herself, she turned away and focused her attention on the door.

Crouching until her eyes were level with its two locks, the plastic tie that held her wrists biting into her skin, she studied the shiny metal. They were keyed deadbolts, brand new and sturdy. She had as much of a chance at getting them open as she did getting past the burglar bars.

Abandoning that idea, she switched her gaze to the opposite edge of the door and the hinges. They were rusted and old. With the right kind of instrument and enough time, she might be able to work out the pins, but it wouldn’t be a quiet endeavor or a fast one.

She leaned back on her haunches and reevaluated the situation. One step at a time, she told herself. First things first. Cross that bridge when you come to it. The clichés were silly, but they worked, and she stood up.

Widening her stance, she bent deeply from the waist, her hair falling over her face to brush the floor. She’d practiced the move for what had felt like a hundred times in a tactical class she’d taken three years earlier. At the time, she’d complained about the sore wrists the exercise had left behind. Now that pain seemed an insignificant price to pay.

Raising her tied hands as far above her as possible, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and slashed her hands down to her butt with a grunt, pushing outward at the same time.

The tie didn’t break.

She did the maneuver again.

The second time, it snapped. The broken pieces of plastic flew into different corners of the room and she sucked in the sting that razored across her wrists, swallowing a silent gasp as she straightened.

Rubbing her raw skin, she concentrated on her next move. All she had to do now was get Enrique to open the door. As soon as she figured out how to do that, she’d take down the guards, find her mother, and then save the rest of the world.

No problemo
.

…

“What do you think?”

Joaquim’s rifle had a folding stock to make it easier to carry on his motorcycle. Extending it completely, he snapped it in place with a soft click and steadied the compact bipod that held it up, stretching out behind the weapon to stare through the scope.

“Well?” Santos prodded after a few long minutes.

Joaquim didn’t move. “Might work, might not.”

The team sniper adjusted the eyepiece and looked again. Santos trained his own binoculars back on the house. A shadow suddenly filled his view, and he sucked in a breath. “Rose just passed by the window. I saw her. Did you catch her, Joaquim? She’s inside the front room, to the left of the door.”

“I got her,” Joaquim said. “See anyone else inside?”

“I can’t tell.”

In two hurried steps, Dan was beside them. “I just saw Rose.”

“We did, too.” Santos kept the glasses pressed to his eyes. “What do you think, Joaquim?”

Joaquim plucked up a blade of dried grass, then dropped it, the wind catching the straw and gently setting it adrift. He did that two more times. Returning to his scope, he stared for another long minute. Santos could feel his heart ticking down the minutes. Every second they waited was another second of danger for Rose. He wanted to hurry the sniper’s decision, but he held himself back. Joaquim wasn’t the kind of man you pressured.

After an eternity, Joaquim lifted his gaze. Disappointment swamped Santos as he read the sniper’s answer in his eyes.

“It’s too dangerous, Santos.” Joaquim shook his head. “That far away, this much wind… I might hit her. Plus the walls on that place are like paper. Any caliber bullet could penetrate them. I’m not going to risk it.”

“You’re too good to make that kind of mistake,” Santos insisted. Even though he knew it was dangerous to push for the wrong answer, he couldn’t hold back with Rose’s life on the line. “Are you absolutely sure? We could give it a little time, let the wind die down, maybe move closer? You could get the guys on the porch. That would draw out anyone else who’s inside.”

For the very briefest moment, Joaquim’s expression opened up, and Santos caught a glimpse of the silent man behind the mask. The other man understood his desperation. In fact, Santos knew Joaquim felt the same way, but history had taught him the bitter results of doing something that uncertain. Santos also knew nothing would change his mind.

“Too risky.” Reaching for his weapon without another word, the sniper rose to his feet and walked back to his bike.

Dan stared at Joaquim’s back in disbelief. “He’s not even going to try?”

“He can’t,” Santos answered. “It’d be pointless. He might even wind up hitting Rose. If Joaquim says it can’t be done, I’m not about to argue with him.”

“Then what are you gonna do? Just stand here and watch it play out?”

Gritting his teeth, he fought down his first reply. “No. I’m not going to stand here and do nothing. I’m going down there and getting her out.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll decide after I get there.”

…

Gunfire that sounded as if it would never stop broke out just as Rose saw a glint of something in the corner. Kicking over the dirt and grass, she uncovered the treasure, a jagged piece of glass that matched the hole in the light fixture overhead. She paused as the sound continued, but she didn’t stop. Squatting down she hastily picked up the six-inch shard, then jumped to her feet.

A set of rapid boot steps pounded over the wooden floor outside her prison. Her mouth went dry. Then she realized Enrique was rushing outside instead of toward her. His footsteps made the rotting wooden floor beneath her rise and fall in an earthquake-like wave. She heard him throw open the front door, the doorknob smashing into the wall behind it. She watched in horror as the corresponding spot flexed on her side of the room. The whole wall suddenly seemed in jeopardy of collapse, and hope washed over her.

“Go to the gate,” she heard him cry in Spanish. “Someone has found us, you idiots. Don’t just stand there, go see who it is!”

Rose’s gaze flew to the window. Grabbing their weapons, the men jumped to their feet, their inelegant seating arrangement crashing to the rickety porch. The chairs landed together on the wooden slats, where a hole instantly opened. A shower of splinters flew up from the rotting boards, and Rose lurched backward in alarm, throwing her arms up to protect her eyes.

She should have been prepared, but she wasn’t.

The floor beneath her feet trembled, groaned, then crumbled just like the rotting boards outside. Stifling a scream, she tumbled through the breech and fell to the stony ground beneath the house.

She landed awkwardly, the two-foot drop jolting the air from her lungs with a
whoosh
. Dust billowed instantly around her in a cloud, and she snapped her eyes shut against it, sharp rocks and gravel digging into her back where her T-shirt had ripped on the way down. Racked with coughing, she instinctively turned away, raising her head.

And smacked her temple straight into one of the beams under the house. She cursed in pain, and lifted her hand to her head. It came back wet. Her vision still swimming, she finally managed to open her eyes. The rough cedar brace just above her had a stain that matched the one on her fingers. The crawlspace was claustrophobically close, with barely enough room for her to move. At least there was no one pointing a gun to her head, she thought groggily. Compared to falling off a water tower, this tumble had been nothing.