Chapter Thirty-One
As soon as they got back to the house, Linc went into his office, sat down at his desk, and pulled up his e-mail.
Townsend had sent him a Google Maps link showing the property owned by Raul Zapata. When he zoomed in on the satellite photos, the place looked exactly like the fortress Ross had described. A castlelike dwelling even more outlandish than the mansion Linc’s ex-wife had designed sat in the middle of a big chunk of ground surrounded by an impressive wall. Tall wooden gates blocked the entrance.
Privacy Linc well understood, but this seemed a little over the top. He rubbed a hand over his face. At least they now knew where to find him.
He pulled the burner phone out of his briefcase and phoned Tag Joyner. “Tag, it’s Cain.”
“Hey, man, what’s up?”
“We got something. El Jefe’s name is Raul Zapata. Mean anything to you?”
“Zapata. No, man, ain’t heard of him. You sure it’s him?”
“I’m sure. Lives on four hundred acres over near Big Sandy. Owns hotels and a fast-food chain.”
“So I guess we need to call off the bounty.”
“I’ve got a name and location. Money’s still there if someone comes forward with usable information.”
“Right. That sounds good. I’ll get the word out.”
“Do it with care, my friend. We still don’t know enough about this guy to predict what he might do.”
“I get you, man. Stay in touch and stay safe.”
“You, too.”
The line went dead. Frustrated he couldn’t move things along any faster and beginning to feel claustrophobic, Linc walked out of his office, down the hall to the open guest room door. Carly sat at her makeshift desk going over work invoices on her laptop.
“It’s still Sunday,” he said, drawing her attention. “I don’t know about you, but I need some fresh air. How would you like to go fishing?” He wouldn’t have thought of asking any of the other women he’d dated. But this was Carly, and since he loved to fish, it was worth a try.
Her features lit up and she grinned ear to ear. “Really?”
He grinned back. “You really want to go?”
“Of course.” She shoved back her chair and stood up. “Joe took me fishing all the time. I admit I haven’t been since I left home and I’m not all that good at it, but I’d love to go fishing.”
Linc looked into those pretty blue eyes and something shifted inside him. He told himself it was nothing. Hey, what man could resist a woman who liked to fish? But he was no fool and he knew it was way more than that.
The feeling had been building since the day he’d seen her standing in the graveyard, grieving for Hernandez, a man she barely knew, grieving so deeply for her grandfather. Building since he had watched her take the wheel of an eighteen-wheeler and bull it into submission.
Building every time he took her to bed and buried himself in her sweet, responsive body.
The truth burned like a neon sign in his head. Carly Drake was the woman for him.
The problem was he didn’t think she would believe him.
And until he had dealt with El Jefe and Carly was safe, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to convince her.
Putting the thought aside, Linc went out to collect the gear they would need while Carly went to get ready for their fishing trip. She walked out of the house in cut-off jeans with a ragged hem and a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt, her hair plaited into long golden braids, one on each shoulder. A pair of worn, rough out leather hiking boots covered her feet.
“I’m ready,” she said.
Linc grinned. She reminded him of a twenty-first-century Daisy Duke, so damned cute, he wanted to throw her over his shoulder caveman-style and carry her back to bed.
“The way you look, it’s going to be damned hard to concentrate on catching fish,” he grumbled. And he meant hard in more ways than one.
Carly laughed and he forced himself to focus on something besides the tightness in his jeans. “We’re taking the Jeep,” he said, wondering if he could find a place private enough the guards wouldn’t see them, glad he’d tossed a blanket into the back.
Carly’s cell started ringing just as they reached the vehicle. “Hold a sec.” Pulling the phone out of the back pocket of her jean shorts, she pressed it against her ear. “This is Carly.”
When the color leached out of her face, Linc knew his fishing trip was about to be canceled.
* * *
“Ms. Drake. It is good to hear your voice.” Every muscle in Carly’s body went tense. It was him. Raul Zapata.
“I assume you have been expecting my call,” he said.
Her hand shook as she signaled to Linc, who was already striding toward her. Carly held the phone so he could hear.
“If you want the truth,” she said, “I was hoping I’d never hear from you again.”
“Now is that a nice thing to say to your business partner?”
The notion sent a chill down her spine. “What do you want?”
“I have something for you to deliver. You will receive instructions tomorrow, telling you where to pick up the cargo and what time. Have a truck ready to leave.”
“How do you know I’m not still working with the FBI?”
“Because you know what happened to Hernandez and you are smart enough to know if you do not do as I say, it will happen again.” The line went dead.
Her insides were shaking, making her stomach churn. Tears welled, spilled over onto her cheeks. “I wanted to go fishing.”
Linc took the phone from her trembling hand. “Let’s go inside.” As soon as they stepped through the door into the entry, Linc drew her into his arms. He always felt so solid, so strong. A fresh shudder went through her, this time one of relief.
Linc kissed the top of her head. “We’ll go fishing, I promise. Let’s get you settled down a little first.”
“Do you think . . . think the FBI could have traced the call if we had told them?”
“It didn’t last long enough. The guy knows what he’s doing. Unfortunately.”
She swallowed, brushed away tears as he led her into the living room and eased her down on the sofa. He walked over to the wet bar. She heard the sound of a bottle cap turning, then liquid being poured into a glass. Linc returned and pressed a heavy crystal tumbler into her hand.
Carly took a drink of the amber liquid, felt the burn of the whiskey as it trickled into her stomach and spread out through her limbs. With a sigh, she leaned back on the sofa.
“Better?”
“No. Well, a little, I guess. Thanks.”
Linc sat down beside her. “You know we’ve been expecting this call. And picking up a load of whatever Zapata’s smuggling is exactly what we need to happen.”
“I know.”
“Your truck is ready to go. All we have to do is make sure the equipment is working. Tomorrow you go into the office as usual and wait for the call. Who knows, maybe Zapata will be arrogant enough to be waiting at the pickup site himself and we’ll nail him on the first try.”
“I guess so.... Maybe.”
He took the glass from her hand, set it on the coffee table, and to her surprise, drew her up from the sofa. “In the meantime, you’re dressed to go fishing so let’s go.”
She looked up at him. “Really?”
“Yeah, baby, really.”
God, he was the most amazing man. She gazed up at him and felt the soft, almost painful beating of her heart. It was the moment she knew she had committed a terrible error. Somehow she had let down her guard.
Somehow she had let herself fall in love with him.
* * *
At least the weather was good that Monday morning. Sunshine, low humidity, just a few drifting clouds in an otherwise clear blue sky. Linc needed to go into Dallas. He had a million things to do, appointments too important to cancel, discussions he’d planned to have with Beau, briefings with his staff, but it was too risky to leave Carly at the mercy of El Jefe.
Zapata expected a Drake truck to make a run tonight. Linc planned to do exactly that and he planned to be the man behind the wheel. It was dangerous. Hernandez had wound up dead.
But Zapata knew he was involved with Carly, might even expect him to be driving. If he followed El Jefe’s instructions, he figured he’d be okay.
Unless he was willing to cooperate with the FBI and risk another failure, unless he was willing to chance El Jefe’s wrath descending on Carly—neither of which were options—he didn’t have any other choice.
He spoke to Frank Marino, had the bodyguard accompany Carly to her office that morning. Linc wanted to go with her, but he wasn’t a man who went unnoticed, and since they didn’t know for sure who to trust, he planned to go down after Carly got El Jefe’s call or as soon as the office closed.
In the meantime, he was home, impatiently waiting, trying to work, which was impossible to do.
At four o’clock, his cell phone rang. Ross Townsend’s name appeared on the screen and from that moment, his worries only got worse.
“I need to see you,” Ross said. “It’s important.”
“I plan to be at the Drake yard a little after five. We can meet there.”
“That’ll work. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Which left Linc a little over an hour to worry about what Ross wanted. Apparently something the investigator wasn’t willing to discuss on the phone. By the tone of Ross’s voice, something definitely not good.
At ten to five, Linc left the ranch and drove to the truck yard. By the time he arrived, the office was closed, most of the employees were gone when he walked through the door.
“Hey, Linc!” Rowena smiled and walked over, unaware of the latest drama.
“Hey, Row, nice to see you.”
“Carly’s in her office. I’ll tell her you’re here.” While Rowena went in to get Carly, Linc went outside to speak to Frank.
The bodyguard knew nothing about El Jefe’s expected call or the modifications they had made to the truck. The fewer people who knew, the less chance for a leak. As soon as Carly got a text or phone call with instructions where to pick up the load, Linc would take the truck out and Frank could take Carly back to the ranch, where she would be safe.
“Carly may be working late,” Linc said to him. “Why don’t you take a break?”
“Sounds good. I could use a soft drink.” Frank headed for the truckers’ lounge, and Linc walked back inside just as Carly came out of her office.
“We’re done for the day,” she said. “Everything okay?”
“Ross Townsend’s on his way here from Dallas. I’ll give you the answer to that after I talk to him. Anything happening on your end?”
Carly glanced over at Rowena, who was busy talking to one of the drivers. “Nothing yet.”
“As soon as everyone’s gone, I’ll take a look at the truck.” He held up the sheaf of papers he’d brought with him. “I’ve got detailed instructions on how all that surveillance gear operates. Let’s just hope I can make sense of it.”
“I hope so, too, and I hope it’s hidden well enough that it can’t be spotted.”
For the price he had paid, it had damned well better be.
As soon as the employees were gone for the day, including Rowena, Linc went outside and located the truck they would be using that night. By the time he’d satisfied himself the surveillance equipment would work the way it was supposed to, Ross Townsend was pulling into the yard.
Linc followed him inside the office. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not exactly sure, which is the reason I’m here. I’ve got something I need to show you.”
“We can use my office.” Carly led them in that direction.
Walking over to the table in the corner, Ross opened the manila folder he’d brought with him. “Remember that DNA sample we got off the manifest at the crime scene?”
“What about it?” Linc asked.
“If you recall I had it run through CODIS and came up with zip.”
“So?”
“Well, I got to thinking . . . if the guy’s smuggling drugs, they would probably be coming in from Mexico or South America. Maybe he’s an international criminal. I called in a favor, had it run through Interpol’s DNA database, and bingo, we got a hit.”
“So Zapata is wanted . . . where? In Mexico?”
“No. It wasn’t Zapata’s blood.” Ross moved one of the sheets of paper aside and pointed to a photo. “The DNA belongs to this man—Hassan Mohammed Al-Razi.”
“What the hell?”
“Exactly. Al-Razi was born in Saudi Arabia. His father was an assistant to the Saudi ambassador to Mexico. Hassan moved to Mexico with his family when he was a teenager, lived there for several years before his dad moved back to Saudi Arabia. Five years ago, Al-Razi disappeared. No one knew where he went until you found that drop of blood. How he got to Texas, I have no idea, but he’s a known terrorist, Linc. He’s wanted in connection with everything from a truck bombing that killed twenty people in a Pakistani market to explosions at a bus station in Baghdad that killed sixty-five. He’s on the Interpol terrorist list and he’s wanted big time.”
“I can’t believe this.” Carly sank down in one of the chairs.
Linc fought to stay calm. “What the hell is Raul Zapata doing with a terrorist?”
“That’s what we need to find out,” Ross said.
“We have to call the FBI, Linc,” Carly said. “We don’t have any choice. Zapata might be smuggling terrorists into the country. That might be what he wants Drake to haul. He has to be stopped before that happens. We can’t afford to risk other people’s lives.”
Linc clenched his jaw to keep from swearing because it was true. Along with the September eleventh attacks and the Boston Marathon, there had been major terror attacks in London, Madrid, Paris, and Brussels. Hell, all over the world.
Now the DNA evidence said a known suspect was in the area, his sights set perhaps on the people in Dallas or another Texas city—or anywhere in the country.
“I’ll call Taggart,” he said. He turned to Carly. “You’re right, baby. We no longer have any choice.” Linc pulled out his cell, but Carly’s phone rang first.
Christ, not El Jefe, he thought. Not yet. Linc gritted his teeth to keep from snatching the phone out of Carly’s hand and let her answer the call.
* * *
Looking down at the blocked number on her iPhone, Carly felt a crushing weight settle on her chest. “It’s Zapata or one of his men.”
“Take the call, honey,” Linc said, looking as if he wished he could grab her up and carry her out of danger.
She took a deep breath, pressed the phone against her ear. “This is Carly.”
“Good evening, Ms. Drake.” The familiar voice rolled over her, rough, guttural, tinged with Spanish, unmistakable. A chill slipped down her spine.
“This is your business partner,” Zapata said. “Are you ready to take delivery of our first load?”
Her fingers trembled as they tightened around the phone, which she held so that Linc could hear. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me. Why are you so determined to get Drake Trucking involved? If the money’s as good as you say, there must be other companies that would gladly do your bidding, no questions asked.”
“I do not want other companies! I want Drake!” His voice steadied. “You wish to know why that is?”
She could hear the effort it was taking him to control his temper. “Tell me.”
“Joe Drake is the reason! Your grandfather humiliated me. When I came to him with a simple business proposal, he laughed in my face. No one laughs at El Jefe! Do you understand me? No one!”
Carly started shaking. She felt Linc’s big hand settle on her shoulder and took a steadying breath. “I understand.”
“I am not sure you do. That is why I have taken out a small insurance policy.” There was a shuffling sound and a new voice came over the line, one that sliced into her heart and threatened to shred it to pieces.
“Carly? It’s me . . . Zach.”
“Zach!”
“Men came to Grandma’s house. They beat up Tom and made me go with them. I’m scared, Carly.”
She tried to sound calm. Linc’s face was flushed with fury, every muscle in his body taut. “Ever ything’s going to be okay, Zach. I’m going to do exactly what El Jefe wants me to and he’s going to let you go.” Please God.
“But—”
El Jefe’s voice came back on the line. “So you have finally come to your senses. This is good. The boy’s grandparents have been warned to say nothing. They are waiting for your call, your assurance that the boy will be all right.”
“I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t hurt him.”
“Listen carefully. At six-thirty P.M. you will drive your truck out of the yard. You personally, no one else. You will take Route 19 south, make your way to Waco, then drive south on 77, all the way to Victoria. Be at Big Vic’s Truck Stop no later than one A.M. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“At the truck stop, a man will join you. He will direct you to the pickup site. Once the cargo is loaded, other instructions will follow.”
“What . . . what about Zach?”
“The boy will be waiting at your final destination. Alive if you do what I say.”
Carly gasped as Linc jerked the phone out of her hand.
“She isn’t driving,” he said. “The truck can make the pickup and delivery, but Carly isn’t driving—I am.”
Terrified Linc was going to get Zach killed, Carly leaned up so she could hear Zapata’s reply.
“You think, Señor Cain, because you are rich, you make the rules? The woman drives the truck—Joe Drake’s granddaughter. Or the boy comes home in pieces.”
Her stomach twisted. She grabbed Linc’s arm, dug her nails into a powerful bicep to get his attention, and started furiously nodding, warning him to agree.
When Zach shrieked in the background, Carly forgot to breathe.
“All right,” Linc said. “Carly drives the rig. But I go with her. That’s not negotiable. I go with her to run your errand and bring the boy home.”
A long pause, then Zapata chuckled, the grating sound sliding over her nerves like barbed wire. Carly thought he was enjoying having a powerful man like Lincoln Cain at his mercy.
“As you wish, Señor Cain. It is a long journey. Perhaps it is best to have another driver along. You and Ms. Drake will make the pickup, then deliver the load as instructed and pick up the boy. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Deviate from the plan in any way and the boy is dead.” Zapata hung up the phone.