Chapter 21
The window farthest from the street was narrow and low to the ground. Gabe flattened his back against the wall. The stucco felt cool and rough on his back. He scanned the neighborhood without moving his head. The night was quiet, as if it was safe. But safety was nothing more than an illusion. Perhaps Alejdro felt secure behind his locked doors, but locks could be picked in a heartbeat, windows jimmied just as quickly. Turning toward the building, he slipped the blade of his knife between the sill and the casing.
“Alejdro!” The name was loud and shrill, echoed by a raucous pounding on the front door. “Alejdro Garza, please, I must speak to you.”
It seemed to take Gabe a lifetime to recognize Edwards’ voice, longer still to grind his teeth and stalk to the corner of the house. But the door opened before he could confront her. An unseen man spoke from the interior of the little hacienda. His words were a jumble of inarticulate Spanish, but the cocking of his shotgun was perfectly clear.
Gabe swore in silence and tightened his grip on the handle of his own modest weapon.
Edwards, just visible past the trailing blossoms of a flowering shrub, lifted her hands and backed away. If she had noticed him, she didn’t let on. “Please.” Her voice was very soft. “Don’t shoot.”
“Abondonar! Dejar o te vas a morir!”
“American,” she said. Her face was midwinter pale in the light that seeped from the open door. Her hands were shaking. If it were an act, she was in the wrong profession. “I’m an American.”
Holy shit! Gabe ground his teeth. Why not advertise her nationality, in case Garza hadn’t yet decided if he wanted to kidnap her?
An unseen woman spoke rapid fire Spanish from the bowels of the house.
“I’m sorry,” Edwards said and fell suddenly to her knees. Gabe jerked at the unexpected movement, but in a moment, he realized she had knelt of her own accord. “Please. I need to know.”
“Abandonar!” the man ordered again, but Edwards had dropped her face into her hands and was sobbing softly.
What the fuck was going on?
“Ir!” Alejdro snapped, but the woman spoke again, her English broken.
“Why is it you are come here?”
Edwards lifted her head. Hair as fine as corn-silk spilled around her face like a veil. “You found a…you found a body.” She barely whispered the words, but Alejdro spoke before she could continue.
“Leave!”
She struggled to her feet. “My sister…Trish…she’s been missing for thirteen days.”
“I know nothing of this.” The door creaked closed, but Edwards rushed forward. The sound of wood crashing against the sole of her boot boomed in the darkness.
“Please. Just tell me where she was.”
Gabe gritted his teeth. The man had a shotgun, a 12-gauge by the sound of it. And Gabe had never been a fan of showing up at a gunfight with a knife no matter how nice the blade was, but he had little choice in the matter. Tightening his grip on the handle, he gritted his teeth and stepped forward, but the unseen woman spoke again.
“Let her in,” she ordered.
There was a moment of heated silence. The night pulsed around them.
“Come,” Alejdro said finally, and Edwards stepped inside.
Gabe closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and cursed in silence. He should have tied her to the bed, after all. Should have knocked her unconscious. Should have taken one look at her peaches and cream perfection and run like hell. Or limped, limped like hell. He paced the perimeter, peering in every window, but he could see nothing inside the house’s dim interior. On the other hand, there were no shots fired either. No screams of pain. No shouts of outrage.
And she was a trained professional. She’d fought like a tiger in the Blue Oyster’s latrine. But somehow, that particular memory failed to improve his mood.
A gasp sounded from inside. He jerked toward the door, but barging into the house had a high probability of causing more harm than good. And in a matter of seconds, Edwards was stepping outside, seemingly with all limbs attached and no arterial blood spewing from gaping wounds.
“Thank you.” Her voice was soft, barely audible. “Thank you, señor,” she breathed and stumbled toward the Jeep.
The door closed quietly behind her. Gabe jerked his attention toward it then hurried after her.
She gasped as he curled his hand around her arm.
“Durrand!” Her eyes were as wide as a fawn’s when she raised them toward his. “You scared the life out of me.”
“I scared you?” he rasped.
“Shh,” she admonished and glanced toward the modest house behind them before jerking the Jeep’s door open and sliding behind the steering wheel.
There didn’t seem to be much Gabe could do but hurry around to the passenger side. By the time his ass hit the seat, she was already pulling away from the crumbling curb.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he growled and tried to work up a good head of steam. Certainly, he deserved to be outraged, but she was already taking the corner at a speed that would have traumatized an Andretti, making it difficult to focus on her past sins.
“I was thinking we wanted to know where the body was found without adding another death to the toll.”
He glared at her and tightened his grip on the oh shit handle. “I didn’t say I was going to kill him.”
“You didn’t say you weren’t going to kill him.”
He lowered his brows and considered telling her that he wasn’t a murderer, but his stomach was already creeping toward his esophagus. In the past, his squad had thought it the funniest thing in the world when he’d toss his cookies after every jump. Or during…during his exit from the plane was even more hilarious.
“What’d you find out?” Did his voice sound a little sulky? Shit. Forty-eight hours in her company and he was turning into a toddler.
“She wasn’t one of Miller’s people.”
He shook his head and tried to verbalize a question, but she was already continuing.
“The woman who was killed. She wasn’t one of Miller’s team.”
“That’s what you asked?”
“I thought if she were, we would know where—”
He laughed out loud. “Holy shit, Edwards, I could have told you that without risking your damned life.”
She shifted her gaze from the street long enough to glare at him. It took every ounce of his self-control to resist screaming that she should watch the damned road. “You said you didn’t know who was on his team.”
“I said I didn’t know who. I did know Miller would consider a one-legged goat before he’d hired a woman.”
“Well, maybe you should have shared that information with me.”
“Shared that—” He snorted. “You’re supposed to be the intel here. Hell! Did you think I brought you along for muscle? Or maybe—”
“The body was found five miles west of where the Tortuga branches into the Putumayo.”
He drew a deep breath and tried to marshal his senses. Sometimes, he had a temper. Sometimes, he was just an ass. And sometimes, it was hard as hell to differentiate between the two. “When did she die?”
“I don’t know. The bartender said she’d been found on Tuesday. Alejdro agreed. He also said she had a unicorn tattoo on her neck.”
“A unicorn?” He scowled into the darkness. She took a left turn like a launched missile, careening around the corner while staring at the GPS. He tightened his grip until his fingers ached. “And he could still identify the tat?”
She nodded.
“So she hadn’t been ravaged.”
“Even though she was on the banks of a major river, miles from civilization.”
“Couldn’t have been there long then.”
“Probably not more than a few hours. Certainly not overnight.”
“What time of day did the tourists find her?”
“Early afternoon, 1500 hours or so.”
“Did Alejdro think it was Herrera?”
“He didn’t know,” she said.
“Didn’t know, or wouldn’t say?”
“I don’t have any reason to believe he was lying about his uncertainty.”
“I do,” he said and scowled at her naiveté.
“That’s because you didn’t see Angelique.”
He deepened his scowl.
“His daughter. Three years old.” She exhaled softly, as if trying to de-stress. Good luck with that. “Eyes like an angel.”
He shook his head.
“His wife suggested that he imagine what it would be like if their little girl went missing.”
Gabe scowled as Zoey’s image popped into his head, snaggle-toothed smile watermelon wide as she razzed him about his inability to whistle. The irritating little monkey had failed to show him a modicum of fear from the moment she was born. He blamed Kelsey. But the thought of his niece being in danger did something deadly to his heart.
In retrospect, making Alejdro imagine his daughter missing might have been a worse fate than threatening his life.
It also might have been cleverer. He glanced out at the night as they careened into their hostel’s bumpy parking lot. The Jeep jolted to a halt. His stomach stopped more slowly.
Edwards turned the key and stared across the seat at him. “You okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know. You look a little green.”
“Let’s go,” he said. “We’ve got an early day tomorrow.” Opening his door, he took a deep breath, found his equilibrium and stepped onto the gravel.
Yanking the key from the ignition, Edwards popped open the driver’s door. “When do you think we’ll reach the gulch?”
“Depends how long it takes to get ahold of Javier?”
“Who?”
“Weapons specialist.”
They were side by side now, striding toward the hostel. “Where’s he located?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Then how are you going to find him?”
“He’s going to meet us.”
“Where?”
“I’ll let you know as soon as he tells me.”
She stuck the room key in the door and looked over her shoulder in surprise. He glanced away, feeling foolish. It wasn’t as if he was thrilled with the system, but Reynolds had warned him that Javier was slippery.
“Paranoid?” she guessed.
He shrugged and studied the area behind him. It was as dark as silt in the lea of the little hostel. “Maybe just Colombian.”
“There are good people everywhere,” she said. Her tone was a little judgmental. She jiggled the key. Nothing happened.
He glanced to the right, imagining a half dozen men approaching in the darkness. The nearest had a blade clamped between teeth as white as coca powder.
She jiggled the key again, but he pressed her aside. “Holy shit, we’ll be dead before morning at this rate,” he said and unlocking the door, crowded her inside.
“Speaking of paranoia…” she said.
He could feel her scowl, but he had already moved to the window. Pushing aside a faded curtain, he studied the night. Nothing moved. He let the fabric fall back across the pane.
“What you call paranoia has saved my life a hundred times.”
She stared at him a second, brows slightly raised. “Just think what a nice case of psychosis could do for you then.”
“I can only dream,” he said.