Body Heat

“You’re saying the CBP killed them.”

“No, the…the sensors give them away.”

He was talking about the Virtual Presence and Extended Defense System, technology that could detect pedestrians and vehicles, even differentiate between them.

“Sensors go off, but no one knows, eh? Only agents at the command. They call other agents.” He pretended to be driving, closing in on a target. “Mexicans run.” Making an explosion with his hands, he tried to clarify, and Sophia knew exactly what he meant. She’d heard border patrol agents use the term going quail. The CBP had shown up and everyone had scattered.

But the illegals didn’t always run. Sometimes they were too exhausted. Apparently, this group had been found early enough that they still had the energy to make a break for it.

“And this couple?” she asked. “Did they return to Mexico?”

“No.”

“Did Juan or Miguel see them leave with anyone else?”

He shook his head but checked with his companions to be sure. “He was running himself.”

“What about everyone else? What happened to them?”

Enrique told her that some of the same people who’d been “VPed,” or caught by the new security system and repatriated to Mexico, had crossed the border the very next night without a problem. But he had no idea what’d happened to the others.

“Is there any talk of this on the street? About a particular border patrol agent, for example?”

“Not a particular agent. They’d all like to shoot us.”

“That’s not true.”

“You don’t know what goes on out there,” he said grimly.

She was beginning to learn. And she didn’t like what she heard. Becoming familiar with the unvarnished truth made her uncomfortable because there didn’t seem to be any way to solve the problem and still be sensitive to the needs of Americans and Mexicans alike. “So no one has any idea who’s doing this.”

“None. But it sounds as if you do. It sounds as if you think it’s the CBP.”

“That’s not what I think. I’m just being cautious enough to look at every possibility. If it is a Federal agent, it’s one random officer gone bad, which you can find in any organization.” She certainly didn’t mean to villainize the whole force. She knew too many of the officers, saw how hard they worked to maintain their humanity while fulfilling the requirements of the job.

“You ask me? They’re all bad,” he said. “At least half are the children of Mexicans who snuck across the border a generation ago. How does that make them any better than us?”

“You consider them disloyal.”

“Sí.”

“What about your part in all this?” she asked.

Confusion lined his forehead. “Señorita?”

“You don’t feel guilty—bad—about the people who get hurt because of what you do?”

“I no shoot them,” he said, pressing a hand to his chest.

“You’re encouraging others to break the law. You’re helping them do it, which is putting them in a very dangerous situation. If it wasn’t for Juan and Miguel, José and Benita might not have been killed.”

“Maybe. Or someone else might have taken them across,” he said indifferently. “Maybe me. Es sólo un trabajo.”

If she understood him right, he’d said it was just a job. “Maybe that’s how the Mexican-American border agents feel, too.”

Unconvinced, he smacked the table. “They cannot blame us for helping people do what their parents did twenty, thirty years ago.”

Except that twelve people had been murdered in the past six weeks and these men were still encouraging illegal immigration. But there was no point in arguing. She wasn’t going to change his mind, so she withdrew the money from her pocket and handed it over. “I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.”

“Gracias.” Enrique eagerly accepted the worn bills and the three of them hurried outside.

Sophia was putting away her pad and pen and digging out the key to her Harley when she realized the cantina owner was waving to get her attention. Speaking in Spanish, he made shooing motions toward the saloon-style door. He was trying to close.

Her eyes gravitated to the front table. It was empty. The man who’d called her a puta and his friend had already been asked to leave.

But they weren’t gone. She could see them standing outside, waiting for her.

6

Sophia considered asking the cantina owner to walk her to her bike, but she doubted she could string together enough Spanish to make herself understood. Not only that, she couldn’t think of any reason he might be willing to put his life on the line for some gringo he’d never met before. Maybe she was being ungenerous and her nationality wouldn’t enter into his decision, but she knew it could. Racism cut both ways.

She thought about heading down the dimly lit hallway where a sign promised Los Baños. But even if the restrooms had a window through which she could crawl into a back alley, what good would it do? As soon as the man who’d called her a whore figured out that she’d given him the slip, he’d simply cross over to her bike. He’d seen her drive up, knew where she’d parked. It was only a stone’s throw from where he and his friend were standing.

She couldn’t use her cell phone to call for help. And she didn’t know a soul here in Mexico that she could depend on. She’d already let Enrique and his friends leave without asking them to escort her safely to her Harley. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad decision. As far as she could tell, they were friends with the loser who seemed so bent on harassing her and could just as easily come to his aid if forced to choose sides. No, she preferred to keep the numbers small and manageable. There’d be fewer variables.

Taking her gun from under her pant leg, she held it against and slightly behind her body as she strolled out of the bar. She had no idea whether these guys were armed, but she had to assume the worst. It was too dangerous to do otherwise. Their behavior was aggressive enough to suggest it.

The breath she held burned in her chest as she reached the man who’d been doing his best to make her uncomfortable. He’d stationed himself so that she couldn’t avoid walking past him.

She was prepared when his hand whipped out to grab her left arm. Letting him jerk her around to face him, she brought up her gun, using the momentum of his own action to shove the barrel between his ribs. “Let go or I’ll kill you,” she ground out, teeth clenched.

Fear replaced the menace in his eyes. She’d gotten the drop on him. He hadn’t expected her to be armed.

But, wary as he’d become, he didn’t release her.

Adrenaline poured through her body, which made her feel a little shaky, but she had to sell her “hard chick” performance. His life, and possibly her own, depended on whether or not he bought it. “You have three seconds. I’ll even count en español, comprendes?”

At first, he couldn’t seem to decide how to react. But his friend scrambled away so fast he fell in his hurry to put some distance between them.

“Uno…dos…” She knew she couldn’t pull the trigger, not at this range. Although she’d had to use her firearm twice in the line of duty, she’d never actually killed a man. Unless he did something more than grab her arm, something to prove his intentions were what she feared, her threat was only a bluff. But she had the image she’d created with her bike, her tattoos and the swagger she’d learned from the Hells Angels working to convince him otherwise.

She prayed it would be enough.

Before she could get to three, he muttered what sounded like “fucking loca” and stepped away with his hands up. By this time, his friend had darted around the corner and was no longer in sight.

“That’s it,” she murmured. “Nice and easy. No need to make me nervous.”

“Puta!”