The Agent's Secret Child

But her face was different in ways he couldn’t quite define. She had the same wide, exotic dark eyes, the high cheekbones, the full, bow-shaped, sensuous mouth. The surgeons had done an incredible job, but they hadn’t been able to make her look like his Abby. Not entirely.

He shook his head and flashed her a bitter smile. “If I didn’t know better, I might think you really were Abby Diaz.”

“I am Isabella Montenegro.”

Her voice lacked Abby’s spirit and fire and yet he thought he heard Abby in it. Her gaze met his for only an instant, then the dark lashes quickly dropped, the movement submissive, yielding. Nothing like Abby.

He yearned to see Abby’s passion flare in those eyes. Anger. Defiance. Pride. Desire. All the things that were missing from this woman. Mostly he ached to see the passion that had smoldered in the depths of Abby’s dark eyes. Passion that could ignite in an instant and set his loins on fire with just a glare.

When the woman lifted her gaze again, it held no spark. Only surrender. He felt a wave of regret. Of guilt, all over again, for his loss.

“What do you want with us?” she asked in a small, meek voice.

He shifted his gaze to the child. A curtain of thick black hair hid her face as she ducked her head shyly into her mother’s shoulder. If this woman really was her mother.

“Come on,” he said, motioning with the rifle before taking the woman’s arm again. “I’m getting you out of here.” He’d expected her to at least ask where he was taking her, but she didn’t. She came without even a second’s resistance. Without even a word of argument or question. Nothing like Abby.

He smiled bitterly again. She might resemble Abby, but she damned sure didn’t act like her. Abby had always given him a run for his money. God, how he missed her. He felt sorry for this woman. She was out of her league.

He spotted Calderone’s men about to search a passing motor home and quickly ushered Isabella and Elena in the other direction, back toward the vehicle he had waiting. The little girl ran along side her mother, her hand in the woman’s. Neither turned to look back, to see if he was still there. They were obviously used to following orders. It made him wonder who they were and how their lives had reached this point.

He walked with the rifle in his hands but hidden under the serape, expecting an ambush, planning for it, almost welcoming it. A release for the anger building like a time bomb inside him. Who had cooked up this charade? Why? Not that it mattered. He swore to himself: he’d find out who was behind it and make them regret it.

The nondescript club-cab Ford pickup was parked on the far edge of town. It had a small camper shell on the back, a sliding window between the two, the opening large enough to crawl through, Mexican plates on the bumpers and a handmade sign on the side that read Umberto’s Produce with a Nuevo Laredo phone number. The kind of pickup that would get little notice in this part of Mexico.

He’d thrown a mattress in the back, a blanket and a cooler with food and water, along with several large boxes of produce that hid everything else.

The woman stopped only long enough to pick up the little girl and the worn rag doll she’d dropped. Behind them, Jake heard gunfire and voices raised in anger. He kept moving, the woman in front of him, the child in her arms.

When they finally reached the truck, he put down the tailgate, moved the produce and motioned for the two to get in. For the first time, he noticed how exhausted the woman looked. The child had fallen asleep in her arms and Isabella looked as if only determination kept her standing. He figured she hadn’t gotten much more sleep last night than he had.

Was it possible she was only a pawn in this?

He slipped the rifle into the built-in sling inside his serape and reached for the little girl.

The woman stepped back, hugging the napping child to her. Their gazes met and he saw her distrust, her fear. She didn’t want to hand over the girl.

But she would. He saw that in her eyes as well. Because she knew she had no other choice. And she was a woman who accepted that.

He took Elena from her, keeping his eye on the woman. But he didn’t have to worry about her making a run for it. Or trying anything. Even if it had been her nature to do something daring, he had the feeling that she wouldn’t have done anything that jeopardized the girl’s life. Nor would she leave the child behind, even to save herself.

Maybe Elena really was her daughter.

He laid the sleeping little girl on the mattress, her arm locked around her doll. Her hair fell away from her face. He’d been struck by the adorable innocence of her face in the fax photo, but in person, she was even more striking. She had a face like an angel. He’d never seen a more beautiful child.

The dark lashes fluttered against skin lighter than her mother’s. Suddenly the eyes flashed open. He jerked back in shock. They were green. A deep, dark, emerald green. So like his own.

If Abby had lived— If their child had been a little girl— If she’d gotten her father’s green eyes and her mother’s coloring— Then she might have looked exactly like Elena Montenegro.

The pain was unbearable. The doubts were worse. Isn’t this what the person behind this horrible deception had hoped for? That he’d be beguiled by this woman and her child? That he’d question whether she was Abby? Whether this beautiful little girl could be his? Or worse, wish it were so?

Anger swept over him. A grass fire of fury. Quick and deadly, all-encompassing.

“Get in,” he ordered the woman, his mood explosive. It was all he could do not to grab her and shake the truth out of her. But the frightened look in her eyes stopped him.

She hurriedly climbed into the back of the pickup with the child, keeping her head down, her eyes averted from his.

He slid the boxes of produce over to hide the two of them from view through the narrow camper-shell window, then slammed the tailgate, closed the top, and stood for a moment, fighting for control. But his body shook like an oak in a gale, trembling from the inside out.

As he walked around to the driver’s door of the truck, he slammed a fist into the side of the camper, making the pickup rock and denting the metal. No sound came within. But then, he hadn’t expected one.

His hand ached, funneling some of his energy into physical pain rather than anger as he climbed into the pickup, slid in the key and started the engine. Prudence forced him to drive calmly, carefully, not to draw attention or suspicion by peeling out in the gravel or driving as fast and erratically as he’d have liked.

He felt as if he might explode if he didn’t let off some of the pressure. But still he drove slowly. Out past the last adobe building. Out to the paved two-lane blacktop. He turned onto it and headed toward the Texas border. The road would fork fifteen miles ahead, the fork to the right going to the closest border crossing at Piedras Negras, the left continuing on north to Cuidad Acuna.

In his rearview mirror he watched a beater of an old car approaching fast. He slid down a little, keeping his face shaded by the hat and his itchy foot from flattening the gas pedal. The speedometer wavered at forty-five when the car swept up beside him. He could feel the gazes of whoever was inside, just as he could feel the trigger of the double-barreled shotgun he’d pulled onto his lap.

He pretended to pay no attention to the car beside him. He pretended to sing loudly with the radio, turning up the Texas station, blasting redneck noise.

After a moment, the car sped on past. Four men inside. Ramon and three of his goons. Jake wondered about the other men he’d seen guarding the motel. Where were they? Or had he taken them out in the van crash?

He watched the car disappear into the flat, tan desert horizon and kept the pickup at forty-five, letting it lumber along as he turned down the radio and listened to the soft murmur of voices behind him in the camper.

His Spanish was rusty. Abby had been fluent because of her Spanish grandmother, who’d raised her. She’d often reverted to Spanish when she was angry. He’d learned from her. But it had been a long time. He’d forgotten a lot.

“There’s food and water in the cooler for you,” he said over his shoulder.

After a moment’s silence, the woman said, “Thank you.”

The little girl said something in Spanish he didn’t catch.

He turned up the radio and tried not to think about them. Or what they might have been discussing. Unfortunately, he couldn’t forget the trusting, fearless look on the little girl’s face as she’d opened her big green eyes to meet his.

ISABELLA HAD HOPED Elena would fall back to sleep and let her alone so she could think. Her head ached from exhaustion and fear and confusion.

“I told you he would come to save us,” Elena whispered in Spanish next to her.

She didn’t have the heart to tell her daughter that Jake Cantrell hadn’t necessarily saved them. More than likely they were just prisoners of a different man now. But still prisoners. Possibly worse. If what she’d read from the information in the envelope about the man was true, she and Elena could be in worse trouble than they had been before.

“I told you he was my daddy,” Elena said, daring Isabella to disagree.

She didn’t have the energy. Nor the conviction. There had been so little she’d understood about her marriage to Julio. Or her past, the one he’d filled in for her after the fire.

But the moment she’d looked into Jake Cantrell’s eyes she’d known one clear truth.

Jake Cantrell was Elena’s father.

She’d seen her daughter in the deep green of his eyes. But also in the familiar way his brow furrowed in a narrowed frown. In the intense intelligence she’d glimpsed behind all that green. In the small telltale mannerisms that genetics passed from one generation to the next.