Taking Aim (10 page)

Her heartbeat picking up, Jacie recalled Cara Jo saying something about Tracie staring at her phone the whole time she’d been in the diner. Had she tried to call Bruce and he hadn’t answered? Or had she been calling another contact to verify whatever she’d found?

Jacie hit the on button and waited. The screen flickered to life; a battery with a red line blinked into view. Great. Low battery. The screen warning cleared, replaced by another screen requiring a four-digit pass code.

Stumped, Jacie stared at the little boxes and rows of numbers. What would Tracie have used? She keyed in the month and day of Tracie’s birthday. That didn’t open it. She keyed in the month and year. Another failed attempt. The little battery indicator in the top corner indicated eleven percent.

Her heart racing, Jacie dug through her sister’s belongings, searching for her phone charger. When she didn’t find one, she slipped on her shirt and jeans, grabbed Tracie’s car keys and ran out to the little economy car she’d driven up from San Antonio. Surely she had a charger in the car.

Once again, she struck out and her own cell phone charger didn’t work on her sister’s model. When Jacie emerged from the little car, she trudged back to the house. She probably only had a few more tries before either the phone locked up or the battery died.

As she stepped up on the porch, the sound of gravel shifting brought her out of her intense concentration on her sister’s phone, and Jacie glanced around.

The moon shone down on the lodge and cabins, casting long shadows at the corners and sides.

Jacie listened for the sound again. Perhaps a raccoon was on its way through to the barn to get into the feed, or one of the ranch dogs had scampered into the shadows. With a shrug, Jacie entered the cottage quickly and closed the door, locking it behind her. Never had she felt unsafe at the Big Elk Ranch. All this cloak-and-dagger stuff had her spooked and she found herself wishing Zach was there with her.

How could one man become so much a part of her life in so short a time? Jacie stared at her sister’s cell phone she’d laid on the bed. Maybe she’d think of the code while shampooing the dirt out of her hair.

Once again, she slipped out of her clothes, grabbed a towel out of the linen closet of the tiny cabin and stepped into the closet-sized bathroom. At least the bathtub was a normal size. Opting for a bath instead of a shower, she filled the tub and added some of the bath salts Tracie had given her for Christmas. She realized this was the first time she’d used them and she wanted to cry.

When the tub was full, she sank into the steamy water, sliding low to immerse her hair. She came up, blinking water from her eyes, and squirted a healthy dose of shampoo into her hand. Jacie went to work washing away the dust from her nearly fatal helicopter ride of earlier that day. Had it only been that morning? So much had happened since then. And yet so little.

Jacie slipped beneath the surface again, rinsing the bubbles out of her hair. A dull thump sounded through the bathtub water.

She sat up straight, water splashing over the edge of the tub, her ears perked.

A soft scraping sound reached her ears and sent her flying out of the tub, wrapping a towel around her middle as she emerged from the bathroom. “Who’s there?”

The scraping had stopped and nothing but an eerie silence surrounded Jacie. She reached for the nine-millimeter Glock she kept in her nightstand, fully loaded.

“I have a gun and I know how to use it,” she called out. Normally she’d feel silly about saying that out loud. But nothing about the past two days had been normal. A shiver rippled down her spine.

She rushed through the little cabin, turning off the lights. If someone was out there, he wouldn’t be able to see a shadow moving around inside, and she might possibly see his figure moving around the outside. Jacie dressed in clean work clothes instead of her pajamas.

Unable to sleep and seriously afraid, she pulled the mattress off the bed and laid it on the floor, then wrapped her mother’s quilt around her body. Propping her back against the wall, she pointed her gun at the only door into and out of the house. She waited for morning and the return of Zach and her sanity.

Chapter Ten

Zach forced Juan to take the lead as they found their way through the twists and turns of the canyon. The horses picked their way carefully over stones and around boulders, sliding in some places.

By the light of a near-full moon, Zach studied the walls, rock formations and crevices, memorizing them in case he ended up finding his way out of the maze on his own.

He still wasn’t sure Juan knew where he was going or if the man was leading him straight into a trap. Without much else to go on, Zach had to take his chances.

The crevices narrowed and widened, but they were always wide and cleared enough to allow a four-wheel-drive ATV access.

After they had traveled for nearly an hour, the walls loomed higher, the path narrowed and the shadows made it more difficult to see.

Zach shifted in his saddle to ease the aching muscles of his inner thighs and give his sore tailbone a break. Hopefully they’d get there soon. He didn’t know how effective he would be if he was too stiff to climb off his horse.

Juan halted his gelding at a giant outcropping of boulders and dismounted.

Zach rode up beside him. “Why are you stopping?” he asked, careful to keep his voice low. Sound bounced off the canyon walls, echoing up and down the length.

“This is as far as I go on horseback.” He tugged his horse to the side, into the deepest shadows.

“How much farther ahead is it?” Zach dismounted as well.

“I will show you. But we’ll go on foot. The horses will make too much noise and alert the lookouts.”

Zach tied his horse to a stunted tree, wedged in the crevice between giant boulders. Juan did the same, then led Zach around the outcropping, hugging the shadows along the base of the canyon walls.

They’d gone the equivalent of four football fields when Juan stopped and pointed to a dark spot ahead and on the left. “That’s the cave and this is as far as I go.”

Zach studied the location, the possible areas he could use as cover and concealment. “Okay.” He nodded.

“I’ve done what you asked. Now you can let me go, no?”

Zach shook his head. “Sorry, buddy. I want to make sure you didn’t lead me on a wild-goose chase,
and
I can’t risk you alerting the gang in the cave. You get to stay here and wait for me to return.”

Zach pulled a wad of zip-ties from his back pocket, grabbed Juan’s wrist and whipped it up and behind him. He grabbed the man’s other hand and slipped the zip-tie around Juan’s wrists, tugging it tight.

“What are you doing?” Juan danced around, tugging his hands against the bindings. “You can’t leave me here tied up. I am not a member of Los Lobos. If they knew I led you to them, they would kill me.”

“Then you better keep really quiet so they don’t find you. When I get back, I’ll cut the ties and we’ll mosey on home.” Zach crossed his arms. “Now, are you going to sit so that I can bind your legs, or do I have to knock you down?”

Juan shook his head. “I promise I won’t go anywhere.”

“Since I don’t know you well enough to stake my life on your word, you’ll have to go with the zip-ties. I figure it’ll take you at least as long as it takes me to get up there and back to find a rock to break them on.”

“What about coyotes and snakes? Look, amigo, don’t leave me like this.”

“You’ll be okay for the short time I’m gone.” He pointed to the ground. “Sit.”

With his hands tied behind him, Juan sighed and dropped to his knees and then to his butt, kicking his feet out in front of him. “You’re one tough hombre. If I had my knife...”

“But you don’t, and I might have some discussions with you if this is all a waste of my time.” Zach slipped the plastic strap around Juan’s ankles. Then he pulled a small roll of duct tape from his other back pocket and slapped a piece over Juan’s mouth.

With his guide secured from running away or running his mouth, Zach proceeded around the bend and along the base of the canyon toward the dark shadow that was the mouth of a cave. He didn’t hurry, careful not to scuff gravel or trip over unseen rocks. When he came within twenty yards of the entrance, he stopped and scoped the surrounding area. So far he hadn’t sighted a single guard. Nothing and no one moved in and out of the cave or anywhere else around it.

Zach held his weapon in front of him. From where he stood to the entrance, there were no shadows to hug, no boulders to dive behind. He’d have to make a mad dash in case a sniper spotted him and started taking potshots at him.

With a deep breath, Zach ran toward the entrance, zigzagging so that he didn’t provide an easy target for someone who could halfway shoot a gun.

He climbed a rise and ducked into the cave, slipping into the shadows. Deeper inside, a single light illuminated a small area. Having met no resistance, Zach took the time to let his eyes adjust to the limited lighting before he moved closer to the glow. Voices carried to him, and by the sound of them, they were in Spanish.

Two men sat in front of a fire, one holding a stick at the end of which was some dead, skinned animal, roasting in the flame. The other smoked a cigarette. Both men had weapons, but they lay on the ground beside them. Apparently they weren’t expecting company or anyone else.

Besides the men and the fire, there were small wooden crates and cardboard boxes lining the walls. Zach passed one after the other. Most of them were empty.

As he neared the fire, one of the men spoke in rapid-fire Spanish telling a raucous story about a woman and her mother. The other burst out laughing.

Zach stepped forward, his weapon drawn. In Spanish he asked, “Are you Los Lobos?”

The men reached for their weapons.

Still speaking in Spanish, Zach warned, “Reach for your guns and I’ll shoot you. Hands up.”

One man looked at the other and dove for his gun.

Zach shot him in the shoulder, knocking him backward into a wall.

The man grabbed his shoulder and slid to the ground, moaning.

“Don’t shoot,” the other man said in halting English. He kicked both weapons toward Zach, his hands still in the air.

“Are you Los Lobos?”

“No.”

Zach pointed at the downed man’s other shoulder. “No lies.”

The bleeding man raised his good, bloodied hand. “
Sí
,
señor.
We are Los Lobos.”

“Where is the woman?” Zach asked.

Both men looked at each other, their foreheads wrinkled in frowns.

The man who was still standing shook his head. “What woman?”

“The one the Los Lobos murdered two La Familia Diablos guys to get.”

Again the standing man shook his head. “Los Lobos didn’t take a woman. With the FBI and DEA all over the canyon, we couldn’t leave our stuff here. The boss had us move it. We stayed to clean up the last of it.” He blinked, glancing over Zach’s shoulder.

Before Zach could spin, a hard poke in his back made him think twice.

“Drop your gun,” a heavily accented voice demanded.

Zach had no intention of giving up his weapon. In a lightning-fast move, he ducked to the side and knocked the barrel of the rifle the man held downward, causing the stock to lever up and hit his attacker in the jaw.

The man pulled the trigger and a bullet ricocheted off the floor, disappearing into the shadows.

The unarmed men dropped to the ground.

Zach jerked the rifle out of the man’s hands and pressed his Glock into the guy’s cheek. “Are there any more of you hiding or coming?”

The man with the gun in his cheek shook his head, his eyes wide.
“No comprende.”

The other man translated and received a response in Spanish. The translator faced Zach. “There are two more on their way to help move the rest of the stuff.”

“Then let’s get down to business.” Zach nudged the gun deeper into the man’s face. “Where’s the woman?”

A thin sheen of sweat broke out on the man’s face and he fired off his answer in such garbled Spanish Zach couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“What did he say?” Zach demanded of the translator.

“Los Lobos didn’t take the woman. La Familia Diablos did.”

Zach shook his head. “Then Los Lobos killed the two Diablos who took her, and now Los Lobos has her.”

The man with the gun in his cheek shook his head and rattled off more Spanish.

“That is not the truth,
señor.
La Familia still has her. Someone made it look like Los Lobos killed those men.”

“How about I shoot one of you at a time until someone tells me the truth?” Zach said.

All three men held up their hands. The man who understood English best spoke. “We are telling you the truth. Ramon just returned to pick us up. News from the boss is La Familia Diablos set it up to look like Los Lobos took the woman so that the Federales would look in the wrong place for her and cause troubles for Los Lobos.”

For a long moment Zach continued to hold his weapon to the man’s cheek. In his gut he knew what they were saying was most likely the truth. Finally he eased away from the trio, backing toward the cave entrance. He scooped up the other two weapons and slung all three over his shoulder while still holding the Glock on them.

“I’ll let you live this time. Believe me when I say, if what you’ve told me is all lies, I’ll find you and I’ll rip your limbs off one at a time and make you wish you were dead long before you are.”

Without waiting for them to respond, Zach slipped out of the cave and ran back across the wide-open space, weighed down by the three extra guns. When he reached the relative safety of a large boulder, he removed the bolts from the Los Lobos rifles and tossed the weapons on the ground.

A shout sounded behind him. He leaned around the boulder. The three men emerged from the cave, headed in his direction.

Zach fired off a round, kicking up the rocks at their feet. They hurried back to the cave entrance.

With no more time to play around, Zach ran back to where he’d left Juan. With Juan’s switchblade, he severed the zip-ties. “Let’s go.”

Juan ripped the tape off his mouth. “Did you find the woman?”

“No. If you want to live, you’ll get moving.” Zach didn’t wait for Juan; he ran back the way they’d come, reaching the horses before Juan.

The sound of engines revving echoed off the canyon walls as Zach and Juan mounted the horses.

Now that he knew that most of Los Lobos had vacated the canyon, Zach wasn’t as concerned about noise as he was about getting a bullet in his back. He urged his horse to a trot, praying the animal wouldn’t break a leg on the rocky terrain. They maneuvered through the maze of canyon corridors until they emerged at the base of the ridge where Tracie had been taken.

* * *

A
FTER
SITTING
IN
the dark on the floor for what felt like an hour, Jacie glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes? It had only been thirty minutes? That’s it? She refused to wait around her cabin another moment. She had to get back out to the canyon. Zach could be in trouble. Maybe he’d found Tracie and they were fighting their way out and needed an extra gun to even the odds.

Jacie dressed in clean black jeans, a black T-shirt and her black leather jacket. She knotted her long hair in a rubber band and shoved it under a black baseball cap Richard had given her. After loading her rifle and her Glock with rounds, she shoved a box of bullets in each jacket pocket and shoved the chair away from the door.

If someone was out there, she was loaded and wouldn’t hesitate to shoot. She switched on the porch light and flung open the door.

The porch was empty and nothing moved as far as she could see into the shadows past the illumination. When she turned to lock the door, she noticed that the oil-rubbed bronze door lock had fresh scratches in it.

Her gut tightened. Someone had definitely been trying to get in. On instinct, she went back inside, closed the door and grabbed her sister’s credentials and cell phone. She shoved them beneath a plastic bag of moldy tomatoes in the bottom of her miniature refrigerator. No one would bother them there.

Having hidden the only two things she considered of any interest to anyone, she locked the front door and slipped across the compound to the barn, weapon drawn and ready.

Once inside the barn, she fumbled in the tack room for a flashlight, switching it on and shining the light around the interior for good measure. She’d had that creepy, being-watched feeling since she’d come back to the Big Elk.

Satisfied she was alone, she led D’Artagnan, her bay gelding, from his stall and tossed a saddle over his back. Once she had the saddle cinched and the bridle settled over the horse’s head, she turned to lead him out the back of the barn.

A hinge squeaked and the overhead lights blinked on. Richard leaned in the doorway, fully dressed and ready to ride. “Wondered when you’d make a run for it.”

“Oh, Richard, I’m sorry. My head tells me I should stay and wait for Zach to return, but my gut says he’s in trouble and might need some help. The least I can do is cover his back.”

“Thought you’d feel that way. I guess it wouldn’t do me any good to tell you not to go.”

She shook her head, her fingers tightening on the horse’s reins. “I have to go.”

“You’re not going by yourself.”

“I don’t want to put anyone else in danger.”

“Too bad. You’re not going by yourself. My horse is ready and waiting out front. You have to put up with me in this crazy midnight rodeo.”

“You could be shot at.”

“Heck, I get shot at all the time by these darned fool weekend hunters who can’t figure out the business end of a gun.” Richard chuckled. “Come on. Let’s you and me go for a ride in the moonlight. It’s a mighty fine night for it.”

Jacie choked back her response, afraid her voice would shake with her gratitude. Richard had always told her he appreciated her ability to avoid the feminine hysterics most women were prone to. It was one of the reasons he’d hired her. She was a straight shooter and not at all froufrou.

Her heart a little lighter, Jacie led her gelding out into the barnyard where, sure as he’d said, Richard had his black quarter horse saddled and ready to go.