The Stranger and I

Fumbling in her purse, she withdrew the slip of paper and handed it to him.

He opened it and scanned the contents.

“Chad asked me not to go to the Federales, told me to come straight to you.” She added, “Y-you are Justin Vidal, aren’t you?”

He snorted. “Little late to be asking that question, isn’t it? Yeah, I’m Vidal. This still doesn’t explain why you didn’t call the police when you got across the border. You took a big chance coming here. For all you know, Chad and I could be drug dealers.”

Wrinkling her nose, she said, “Yeah, I thought of that, but Chad didn’t strike me as the drug-dealer type. And, well, I liked him. I wanted to carry out his last wishes. They were his last wishes.”

Her nose stung with tears, and she rubbed it. She did not want to cry in front of this man again. Useless to cry anyway. He seemed immune to her feelings, immune to all feelings, including his own.

He glanced up from the letter, his eyes traveling over her body, as if seeing her for the first time. His gaze left pinpricks of excitement in its wake. Great, she had an insane attraction to a robot.

His lips tightened into a grim smile. “I see.”

Lila folded her arms across her chest. She wasn’t sure what he saw, hopefully it didn’t include her peaked nipples, but she had more of her story to tell. “There’s something else.”

Waving the letter at her, he said, “Go on.”

She cleared her throat. “There’s a dead body in the trunk of Chad’s car. I think it might be that friend he planned to meet.”

The letter fluttered to the floor, as Justin Vidal took a step back, one eyebrow lifted in patent disbelief. He whispered, “What?”

Feeling more than a little satisfied that she’d elicited some solid emotion from the man, she enunciated, “A dead body.”

He growled, “I heard you the first time. I can’t believe you drove across the border with a dead body in the trunk of your car.”

She corrected, “Chad’s car.”

His hand sliced through the air, and she ducked.

“Whatever. What’s it doing there?”

She launched into an explanation of how she’d stopped for gas, checked the trunk to make sure Chad wasn’t concealing anything illegal and discovered the body of a man curled up inside the trunk.

She stood up as she finished. “You see, that’s another reason why I didn’t want to call the authorities. I didn’t want to come under any suspicion.”

“And your actions up to now haven’t been suspicious in the least.”

She shook her head. “I thought you’d be happy I came straight to you.”

She expected a better reception from Justin Vidal than this. She’d just been through hell, and he was treating her like the enemy.

Planting herself in front of him, she wedged her hands on her hips. “I want some answers now. Who are you anyway and who’s Chad and what was he really doing in Mexico?”

“That—” he gripped her arm “—is not important right now. All you have to know is that we’re the good guys. Let’s go see this dead body, if he’s really dead.”

His touch seared her skin. How could such a cold man cause a wave of heat to rush through her body? “Yeah, you’re the good guys. Chad brought me into this mess, and you’ve done nothing but manhandle me since I got here.” She shook off his hand before his scorching touch caused her to melt in a puddle at his feet. “Will you please get off me?”

Those tawny eyes darkened as he dropped her arm. He limped to the front door and, hanging back, gestured her through first.

What was he worried about? He had the gun.

She glanced down at his bare feet. “Why are you limping?”

His lips twisted. “You stomped on my foot.”

Was that supposed to be a smile?

“Sorry.” As she brushed by him out the front door, he recoiled. She rolled her eyes. Man, did he have issues.

They hobbled into the street, empty except for a few cars parked along the side. She led him to Chad’s battered little car and flipped up the trunk. Her mouth fell open as first she stared into the trunk and then turned to Justin Vidal, studying her through narrowed eyes.

Frantically, she plunged into the trunk, clawing at her bags, her diving gear and a tire iron, to no avail.

The dead man was gone.

Chapter Two

“He’s gone.” The woman’s arms flailed in the air as she looked up and down the street, as if expecting her “dead man” to suddenly materialize.

Justin crossed his arms and watched her dive into the trunk again. Chad must’ve been out of his mind picking up this woman. Chad was dead. His throat tightened. Why’d the impulsive fool go it alone? And why did Molina choose that moment to go to Costa Rica?

Chad must’ve discovered something after he placed that call from Mexico City, but the note held no clues unless Chad left him something in the car. Did the woman know more than she’d revealed? Who were the Mexicans who came onto the scene? Were they working with Chad? Chad’s killers would’ve pursued her and killed her—unless they died at the scene themselves.

Trust Chad to involve a woman. He probably slept with her. Chad could just about get any woman to do anything for him after he took her to bed. In their line of work that talent definitely had its uses.

Justin eyed her slender form half buried in the trunk as she clawed through its contents, probably searching for the dead man. Chad always did have good taste in women.

Her head popped up, a tangled mass of blond curls framing her flushed face. “He was in here. I swear.”

He said, “Maybe he wasn’t dead. Maybe he just walked away. Did you see any wounds on the body, any blood? You check his pulse?”

Her deep blue eyes mirrored her confusion. “No, I didn’t want to touch him.”

He shot back, “Then how’d you know he was dead?”

She raked her hand through her hair. “I—I…He was in the trunk,” she finished lamely.

“So?” The woman had about as much sense as a kitten in the rain. He squelched an urge to brush a lock of hair from her eye. The sooner he sent her on her way, the better.

Glancing back down at the gaping trunk now disgorging its contents, she asked, “Why would he be in the trunk otherwise?”

He surveyed the fins, oxygen tank and mask spilling out of the car. Chad didn’t dive. “A man in the trunk of a car close to the U.S.–Mexican border isn’t all that unusual. Maybe he climbed into the trunk when you stopped for food.”

Her brow cleared as she nodded. “I get it. You and Chad aren’t drug smugglers, you’re people smugglers.”

“We are not,” he snapped. Actually, he had a sinking suspicion that the man in the trunk was Chad’s informant. If so, they walked right into a trap. Did the informant somehow escape from the trunk? He had to find him, get information from him.