Caught in the Act (30 page)

“No, but it means the risk is lessened. The recent arrests have broken up Moreno’s crew and he can’t control things as easily from a distance. Some of the cartels, including his, also have strict codes against killing women, but there are exceptions.”

Kari swallowed hard, trying not to picture Sasha’s dead body again.

“Ordering a hit against you would be frowned upon in their circles. I personally don’t believe Moreno would jeopardize his tenuous position by making such an unpopular move. Chuy Pena is another story. His behavior is hard to predict.”

“Can I go home?” Kari asked.

Special Agent Nolan nodded. “For the time being, we’ll have an unmarked car stationed outside your residence. If you need to leave the house, we ask that you notify our officers. We also recommend that you rent or borrow a different vehicle because your van is so easily recognizable.”

Kari didn’t want to see that deathmobile ever again, let alone drive it, so she accepted the agent’s terms without complaint. “What about my sister’s autopsy? I need to make funeral arrangements.”

“Her remains should be released today.”

When Nolan inquired about Maria, Kari handed him her cell phone, watching him listen to the barely audible message. “I’ll have the number traced,” he promised, thanking her for the information.

She set the phone aside. “Have you heard anything about Adam?”

“Adam?”

“Officer Cortez. He was shot yesterday.”

“Oh, right. The CBP officer. No, I’m sorry. I haven’t been updated on his condition.”

She rode home in a squad car, feeling numb. The first thing she did was head straight to the shower, tearing off the clothes she’d never wear again. When she felt clean, she donned her robe and threw the garments in the trash.

Going back to sleep was out of the question, so she made a fresh pot of coffee. Then she stared at her cell phone, willing it to ring. If Adam was alive and conscious, he had no excuse for not calling.

Maybe he was dead.

Or maybe he was just done with her. He’d seemed pretty cold-blooded at the border. What had he told her about handling no-strings affairs? Kiss the person goodbye, say you had a nice time, and walk away.

Hands trembling, she picked up the remote control and turned on the news. Sure enough, yesterday’s shootout was the top story. They flashed a mug shot of Chuy Pena, looking like a bulldog, along with a surveillance photo of Moreno. Even from a distance, he was lean and handsome. If he ever went to prison, he’d have plenty of lonely, troubled women writing to him. Bastard.

Kari wanted to throw her coffee at the screen.

The next picture was of Armando Villarreal. He was barely recognizable in sunglasses and a windbreaker, his inelegant face turned to the side. Black hair, dark skin, medium build. Half of the men in San Diego fit that description. Including Adam.

The newscaster said that Armando had been found in a ditch near the border. He was in critical condition.

“Good,” Kari muttered, sipping her coffee. Of the three men, she hated Armando the least, but she wasn’t going to cry a river for him.

There was almost no information about the two officers who had been injured in the melee. According to the report, both had been working undercover and were hospitalized at an undisclosed location. Their identities were not revealed.

“Damn it,” she said, switching off the TV.

This was bullshit.

Setting her coffee aside, she snatched her phone from the counter and dialed Adam’s cell phone number. His voice mail picked up, crisp and controlled. “If you’re alive, fuck you,” she said after the beep, her voice shaking. “And if you’re not—”

She ended the call, appalled by the sob that rose up in her throat.

“If you’re not, fuck
me
,” she whispered. She couldn’t handle her sister’s death or Maria’s disappearance. Being kept in the dark about Adam was an additional torture. She wanted him alive so she could hate him.

Her sister was dead
.

Leaving the coffee behind, she went into the bedroom. Heart aching, she crawled under the blankets, cradling the phone beside her.

* * *

When Maria came to, she was slumped in the backseat, her arms tied behind her back.

She lifted her face from the leather seat, smothering a moan as the interior of the car spun out of focus. Her mouth tasted awful and her stomach roiled with nausea. Squeezing her eyes shut, she took a few steady breaths, hoping she wouldn’t throw up.

After a few seconds, the dizziness passed. She opened her eyes and looked around again, trying to orient herself.

She didn’t recognize her surroundings. They were parked on a dirt road in front of a ramshackle house. It was a rural area, probably the hills of east Tijuana.

The car door was open and Chuy Pena stood outside, his back to her. Two other men were with him. They appeared to be waiting for someone. Judging by Chuy’s defensive stance, his feet braced wide, it wasn’t going to be a pleasant meeting.

A silver Mercedes came to a stop behind the vehicle she was in. The man who climbed out was angry. His lips curled into a grimace as he strode forward, clenching his hand into a fist. His greeting for Chuy was a punch in the mouth.

This was Carlos Moreno.

Chuy fell down to his knees in the dirt. He spat out blood but didn’t retaliate in any way. Instead of getting up, he stayed there. Although he was obviously not top dog, his posture didn’t indicate submission. He reminded her of a mongrel who would wait for a better time to bite. After he was fed, perhaps.

Moreno didn’t seem to think Chuy’s demeanor was
respectful enough, either. He kicked him in the face, snarling.

The other men stepped back, giving Moreno more room to play.

Chuy rolled over, pressing a hand to his flayed cheek. The first blow had merely insulted him; the second really hurt. “I’m sorry,” he said, breathing heavy. “Give me a chance to explain.”

Moreno’s bunched shoulders relaxed a little, but he didn’t offer Chuy a hand to get up. “It better be good.”

Chuy maneuvered into a sitting position, resting his shoulders against the wheel well. “Armando is a rat.”

“Bullshit,” he said succinctly.

“He was working with an undercover agent. Some guy named Foster.”

“How do you know?”

“I caught him on the phone, talking about the shipment.”

“This Foster was a customer of yours, I assume.”

Bracing himself for another blow, Chuy nodded.

“Who shot Armando?”

“I did. He was running away from me. The fuckup at the hotel was his fault. As soon as I pulled the trigger, his cop buddy came out of nowhere.”

“I heard a woman was killed.”

Chuy stared at the ground, swallowing. He didn’t have to pretend that this detail bothered him. “She got caught in the crossfire.”

“Do you remember what I told you the last time that happened?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“Why should I keep you alive?”

“Because I’ll even the score,” Chuy said, meeting his gaze. “I’ll make Armando pay for betraying you.”

Moreno crouched down, fisting his hand in Chuy’s shirt. “You should have done that yesterday, you stupid fuck. When you shoot a man like him in the back, you’d better make sure he stays down.”

“I’ll find him,” Chuy promised.

“Too late,
cabrón
,” he said, giving him a hard shake. “He’s already been found. According to the news, he’s in the hospital, comatose.”

Maria couldn’t hold back a tiny gasp of distress. She was glad Armando was alive, but appalled that Chuy would lay all of the blame at his former partner’s feet. If Moreno believed Chuy’s outrageous lies, he was a fool.

The boss glanced into the backseat of the car, noticing her prone form. Maria stared off into space, feigning semiconsciousness. “Who’s that?”

“A maid from the hotel. She helped Armando get away.”

“If he was a rat, why would he try to get away from the police?”

“I don’t know. I think he was working with
los otros
as well.”

Moreno shoved Chuy down in the dirt, disgusted. “You’re a fucking liar,” he said, straightening. “He’d never go back to his old crew after what they did to his wife.”

“I have proof.”

“Where?”

Chuy removed Armando’s letter from his pocket, handing it to Moreno. He read the message, his expression skeptical. “This doesn’t prove anything,” he said, keeping the envelope. But perhaps the letter hinted at
Armando’s divided loyalties, because he dropped the subject. “You’ve got some balls to bring a beaten woman here, Pena. Are you incapable of taking direction, or do you enjoy taunting me?”

“Armando likes her. So does Foster. I thought she might be useful.”

“You thought she might make a statement to the police, you mean.”

He inclined his head. “Yes. But I can take direction,
jefe
. If not for your orders, I would have just gotten rid of her.”

Pulse pounding, Maria closed her eyes. She felt Moreno’s dispassionate gaze wander over her slack face. “Even you wouldn’t waste such a pretty one,” he said. “Bring her in until I decide what to do with her. And if you lay a hand on her, or anything else, I will cut your fucking dick off,
comprendes
?”

Chuy said he understood. One of his comrades pulled her out of the backseat and carried her into the house. She was taken to a basement or wine cellar, some kind of underground room. The man cut her bonds and left her on a dirt floor. Before she could get a sense of the place, the only door slammed shut, casting her new world into darkness.

21

Over the next two days, Maria searched every inch of the cramped cellar for an escape route or an impromptu weapon.

To no avail.

The amenities consisted of a thin sleeping mat and single blanket. A large bag of tortilla chips and a small bag of oranges offered sustenance. She’d been given a gallon of drinking water and a plastic bucket.

Although the walls and floor were dirt, it was hard-packed. She had no tools to dig with and no way to pick the lock. She was stuck.

Listening to the men was her only form of entertainment, so she spent hours on the stairs, looking through a sliver of space under the door. She could hear muted conversations and watch their booted feet pass by.

She wanted to signal Moreno somehow, to tell him that Chuy was lying. He seemed more sympathetic to women, less likely to kill her. But he was never alone and she didn’t want to risk Chuy’s wrath by shouting out his secrets at the wrong moment.

An opening came during the third afternoon of her
capture. It was Friday, by her estimation, although the meager light made it difficult to keep track of time. The claustrophobic conditions didn’t help. She felt like she’d been trapped forever.

Last night the men had sat at the kitchen table and played poker until late. The tension in the room was palpable, underscored by the clinking of liquor bottles and taut silences. At one point Moreno accused Chuy of being high. Chuy denied it but Moreno pushed the table over anyway, sending the cards flying. “Fucking heroin,” he’d said, furious. “I didn’t want to dirty my hands with it, so I let you take over. Worst mistake of my life.”

When he stormed out of the kitchen, no one said a word. Chuy and the rest of the men picked up the mess and resumed their poker game.

Maria assumed they were sleeping off hangovers, because she hadn’t heard any footsteps since they retired. After an endless day of lying on the stairs, drowsing on and off, she noticed Moreno’s telltale shuffle. He wore expensive tennis shoes like an American. She held her breath, watching under the door while he looked in the refrigerator and sat down at the table. He rolled an object along the surface, back and forth, back and forth. When it fell over the edge, clattering to the floor, she saw that it was a syringe.

Maria shoved her fingers through the space under the door, wiggling them frantically. She was afraid to make noise but desperate to speak with him.

Moreno rose to pick up the syringe and approached the cellar door, standing close. “What do you want?” he asked in Spanish, his voice flat.

She leapt to her feet, pressing her cheek to the door. “Don’t do it.”

After a long moment he opened it, just a crack. The eye she could see was bleary, bloodshot. “Don’t do what?”

“That,” she said, gesturing at the syringe.

“Why not? Quitting didn’t help.”

“You have to stay alert. Chuy is lying to you.”

Moreno rubbed a hand over his scruffy jaw, unsurprised by the charge. Or perhaps
unconcerned
was a better word. “This is a business of liars.”

“Not Armando,” she insisted, her pulse racing. “He didn’t betray you. I overhead Chuy tell Sonia that Kari was a decoy. I was the one who told Foster about the shipment. When Chuy tried to shoot me, Armando stopped him.”

Moreno processed this information without reacting. “Did you see Armando get shot?”

“Yes. I helped him walk to an animal clinic. He thought the vet might fix him up.”

“Where was he hit?”

“In the side.”