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She smoothed her hands over her face and emerged with a frown tugging at the corners of her full lips. Ever since she’d intruded on his space, her emotions had been galloping across her face in an everchanging kaleidoscope. An unwelcome stab of guilt pricked Justin’s conscience, and an even more unwelcome jolt of desire knotted his gut.
“The less you know about us, the safer it is for you. I’ll help you collect your things from Chad’s car and give you a lift home. Your role in this little drama is over.”
He examined the trunk’s broken lock, which showed signs of tampering. Did the informant escape or did someone follow the woman here and remove him from the trunk? Icy fingers tripped up his spine.
“There’s a trace of blood in here.” As he ran his hands over the inside of the trunk, he heard the rumble of an engine build, its low roar coming closer until tires screeched around the corner. His head shot up. A dark sedan rocketed down the street toward them.
He yelled, “Get down.”
Dragging a bag out of the trunk, she looked up, mouth agape. He tackled her. The car slowed down. He stuffed her under Chad’s car with one hand, reaching for his Glock with the other. A bullet pierced the air, slamming into the curb beside him. He leveled his weapon at the hooded figure leaning out the car window and shot back.
Another bullet whizzed past his ear and clanged against the bumper. The soft body beneath him jerked. He fired once more at the retreating car before it sped around the corner, choking the air with exhaust.
The woman raised her head, her eyes occupying half her face. “Who was that? What’s going on?”
He pulled her up. “Looks like you were followed after all or picked up at the border. Or that’s your dead man taking revenge for his mode of transportation. You okay?”
Before she could answer, a man stepped out on his porch and yelled, “What the hell is going on out here?”
Justin waved his arm. “Just some kids lighting some leftover firecrackers. I chased them off.”
“Damn kids.” The man retreated, banging his screen door behind him.
Still clutching his gun at his side, Justin propelled the woman across the street and into his house. He yanked a duffel bag out of the closet and started shoveling clothes into it.
He said over his shoulder, “We have to get out of here.” Turning, he saw her standing in the middle of the room knotting her hands in front of her.
He had no intention of becoming this woman’s white knight, but he could show her a little courtesy for her trouble. He stopped packing. “Sit down. I’ll get you a soda or something.”
She shot a glance at the window, her breath coming in short spurts. “Will they come back?”
“Not now. They’ll be afraid the gunshots will attract the police, but they won’t stay away for long.” He handed her a can of soda, and she gulped it. He studied her face, its delicate planes creased with anxiety. Damn Chad.
She lifted her eyes to his and the trust shining from them chipped at a hard corner of his heart. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“To safety. Is there anyone expecting you, family, husband?” He held his breath.
Her long, golden lashes swept down to veil her eyes for a moment. “No, I’m not expected back from Mexico for another week.” A grin twisted her lips. “I left early to get a jump on recording my research.”
He returned the grin then finished packing. After dropping his bag by the door, he disconnected his laptop and stowed it in its case. He gave the small house a final glance. He’d have to abandon it, just as he had a few others along the way.
His gaze shifted to the woman on his couch, her feet curled beneath her long tanned legs. She held the can of soda pressed against her cheek, her eyes closed. He realized with a start he didn’t even know her name. How did Chad address her in the letter? Lisa? Lily?
They had a long drive ahead of them, and he had to call her something. “What’s your name?”
She drained the can of soda and answered, “Lila Monroe.” She hesitated. “Justin, why do I have to come with you? Why can’t you just take me home?”
The sound of his name on her lips touched him, and he felt his face shutting down, his barriers rising. He wouldn’t allow himself any messy emotional attachments. He just had a job to do. “We’re not dealing with ordinary criminals here. You don’t want these people discovering who you are, where you live, where your family lives. If I dropped you off at your home now and they followed us, you’d never be safe.”
She breathed out, “I’m scared.”
He stood rooted to the floor, fighting impulses he’d long held at bay. The sincerity of her emotions touched a core within him, a core he guarded and protected with a hardened shell. How had she insinuated herself there so easily?
He picked up his bags. “We need to leave, Lila. You’ll be safe where I’m taking you. Get another soda for the road, and grab one for me, too. We’ll get something to eat along the way.”
Stowing his bags in the bed of his truck along with the camping gear he always kept there, he ordered Lila to climb in the cab and wait. He stole out to Chad’s car, keeping his weapon ready, and grabbed the gear from the open trunk. He swept the contents of the glove compartment into a bag and then loaded everything into his truck.
Lila sat in the passenger seat staring ahead at nothing, her face pale beneath sun-kissed skin. Justin cursed Chad and his lust, not for the first time. It was, however, the last. His breath hitched in his throat.
Starting the engine, he looked at his silent companion. “You ready?”
She closed her eyes and nodded. He expelled a breath, relaxing the muscles of his face. The eyes were supposed to be windows to the soul, and she seemed to peer right into his. The clear blue light from her eyes probed his inner depths, peeling back one layer of his defenses at a time. From the moment she appeared on his doorstep, he felt transparent under her gaze. And worse, she seemed to understand his defects and pity him for them.
Did she realize Chad’s death lay at his door? Justin should’ve been a better mentor, should’ve been more forceful in telling Chad to hold tight until he got down there. He failed Chad just when Chad needed him most. That thought burned behind his eyes until he doused it. Better not go down that road.
After an hour’s sleep, Lila stirred. Those impossible golden curls shielded one half of her face. Her long lashes with their dark tips lay like a curve of velvet on her cheek. Her lips, even in repose, turned up at the corners.
A Pollyanna, that fit her perfectly, trusting, gullible. Fortunately this experience would cure her of that fatal flaw. Better to be on your guard.
She shoved her hair back from her face, blinking rapidly. Looking out the window, she asked, “Where are we?”
He answered, “Heading north on the I-15.”
Turning her head toward him, she said, “The desert?”
“That’s right. Do you mind driving for a while? I need to make a phone call and sort through Chad’s stuff.”
“I can drive, but can we pull over at a rest stop or something? I feel like I’ve just run a marathon, barefoot, and with wild beasts in pursuit.”
His eyes roamed over her lithe body, and his hands itched to follow. He shook his head and laughed. “Looks like one of those wild beasts caught up with you.”
She cocked her head at him. “You have a nice laugh. You should use it more often.”
He gripped the steering wheel. “Not much to laugh at these days.”
“You’re wrong. The world holds a lot of laughter.”
Not his world. He cut off her homily. “There’s a rest area two miles ahead.”
He maneuvered the car off the interstate and pulled in to the parking lot. While Lila slung a small bag over her shoulder and headed for the restrooms, he leaned against the truck facing the highway.
The flat desert landscape offered safety. An occasional Joshua tree reached up to the sky, proclaiming its indomitability against the suffocating desert heat, but most of the plant life crouched in the hot sand, allowing the naked eye to see for miles.
A couple of truckers hogged several parking spaces between them, and a family with three kids ducked in and out of a large cooler, pulling out sandwiches and drinks. Justin’s chest contracted as the father swung the youngest boy up on his shoulders for a trip to the vending machines.
Lila emerged from the restroom, her dusty denim shorts and wrinkled T-shirt replaced by a pair of khaki hiking shorts and a blue tank top, which exposed her toned arms. A tortoiseshell headband swept her hair off her face, although a few of those riotous curls found freedom. As she stood in front of him, he suppressed an urge to capture one of those ringlets and wrap it around his finger.
She held out her hand. “Keys?” He dropped them into her palm and tossed her bag in the back of the truck. He brought his laptop and the bag containing the contents of Chad’s glove compartment into the front.
Adjusting the seat and starting the engine, she asked, “Same direction for a while?”
He nodded and flipped open his cell phone. Someone picked up after two rings.
He recited, “This is Lone Wolf 58634.” Those searching blue eyes skimmed his profile, so he turned to look out the window at the lunarlike landscape.
The voice on the other end responded, “Hi, Justin, this is Prasad. I mean, Warrior Sheikh 28221. What’s the word, my man? When are you going to Mexico?”
Justin took a deep breath. “Sooner than I planned. Chad’s dead.”
Prasad choked out, “How’d it happen?”
“They shot him. Thank God they didn’t do worse. I think he might’ve discovered something. Can’t think why else he’d plow ahead like that without me.”
“Where was Molina?”
“Following a lead in Costa Rica.”
Justin could hear Prasad measuring his words. “Nobody’s going to blame you. We all know how impulsive he is…was. How’d you find out? We haven’t heard a word here.”
Justin slid his eyes over to Lila, concentrating on the road in front of her. She didn’t fool him. She’d been soaking up every word. “He picked up a woman. She witnessed the murder, then hightailed it out of there.”
Prasad gasped and then chuckled. “Figures there’d be a woman in the mix. Is she hot?”
Justin avoided taking inventory of the lovely lady in the driver’s seat and grunted, “Yeah.” He turned up the air-conditioning.
Prasad continued, “How’d she find you?”
“Chad left her a note with my name and address.”
Prasad exclaimed, “And she actually came straight to you instead of the Federales? Wow, Chad must’ve really done a number on her. You gotta admire the guy. I’m glad he went out in a blaze of glory. We should all be so lucky.”
Shifting in his seat, Justin redirected the conversation, telling Prasad the rest of the story about the two Mexicans who arrived on the scene, the missing body in the trunk and the shoot-out in the street.
Prasad whistled. “You’ve had a busy morning, and all I’ve been doing is monitoring a couple of databases. What do you think happened to the guy in the trunk?”
“Not sure. I think he may have been Chad’s informant. They probably met and got ambushed. If he walked away from that trunk, I have to track him down.”
“Yeah, good luck with that. Do you think the Mexicans who showed up on the scene were working with Chad? Did they kill his murderers?”
“Probably and maybe. The witness claims she wasn’t followed, which only makes sense if the killers are dead.”
“Then how’d their associates find your place?”
“They made Chad’s car and picked it up at the border. She’s lucky…” Lila aimed a sharp glance at him and he trailed off.
Prasad asked, “You discover yet what Chad was in such a fever pitch to find down there that it got him killed? Anything to do with this chatter we’re hearing about a terrorist attack on our soil?”
“I don’t know, but I have a computer disk from his car, and I’m going to pop it in my laptop once I get off the phone. One more thing, Prasad, I’m coming in, and I’m bringing the woman with me. I didn’t want to risk taking her home when we might be followed, but you guys can safely drop her back in. They don’t know who she is.”
Prasad assured him they’d be there for the rest of the night and could resettle the witness.
Justin set up his laptop and inserted the disk, ignoring Lila’s penetrating gaze.
She said, “Are you going to tell me who you are now…Lone Wolf?”
He stopped tapping the keyboard. She had a point. She’d been on the express train to hell and back and deserved to know. “You’ve heard of the Department of Homeland Security?”
She waved her tapered fingers. “Of course, the department that brought us color-coded threat levels.”
“Right. We’re a covert offshoot of that department called Homeland Intelligence Agency or ‘hiya’ as we fondly call ourselves.”
Those lovely lips tightened into a smirk. “As in, ‘Hiya, we’re just a bunch of friendly guys and gals’?”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Yeah, something like that. We’re your best friend if you can give us information about terrorists slipping across our borders.”
Her mouth formed a perfect O, which was way too kissable for comfort. “You’re kidding. That’s what Chad was doing in Mexico?”
“Working undercover…disguised as a surfer. Good disguise, huh?”
Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears as she turned to him. “Yeah, that long blond hair, tanned body, devil-may-care attitude. Perfect disguise.”
Her voice broke, and his gut clenched. Oh, yeah, Chad really did a number on her. Justin left her alone with her grief.
After a few moments and a few sniffles, she tilted her chin toward the laptop. “You find anything yet?”
He’d been scanning the files on the disk, but they contained old news. “No, nothing we hadn’t already gone through together. He called me from Mexico City. Must’ve been a few days before he picked you up. We’ve been searching for a tunnel from Mexico to the U.S., and he made contact with some coyotes down there.”
Her brow creased, and he continued. “The guys who help illegals cross the border. But the illegals we’re after aren’t the ones scrambling to get here to find work. We’re looking for the ones intent on exploding bombs in our shopping malls or on trains or buses.”
She squinted at the asphalt in front of her, chewing her lip. A tunnel? A memory she’d been trying to suppress began solidifying in her mind. Chad kneeling in the dirt. The brutal whip slicing his body. The blood. His long hair swinging back. The gunshot. And before the gunshot? El túnel está aquí.
She jerked the steering wheel, and Justin clutched at the computer. “Hey, watch the road. The highway still kills more people than terrorists do.”
She whispered, “El túnel.”
His eyes glinted as they bored into her. “What did you say?”
She repeated, “Túnel, el túnel está aquí. That’s why he spoke in Spanish. They didn’t understand Spanish. He shouted that to me.”
Justin snapped the laptop shut and turned to her. “Are you telling me Chad yelled out ‘The tunnel is here’ before those men executed him?”
Bobbing her head up and down, she exclaimed, “That’s exactly what I mean. He found this tunnel you’re looking for. It must’ve been right there where they killed him. Maybe he didn’t know that when he wrote me the note. He discovered it, or his contact told him, and they surprised them and killed them.”
His tiger eyes formed two slits as he watched her. Now what? Was he going to get mad at her again? Just when he started to thaw out. He actually laughed…twice.
He spit out, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
She tossed her hair. “You’re unbelievable. I just solved your case for you, and you’re mad because I didn’t do it sooner.”
