Betrayal on the Border

“Could you stand a snack break?” His question came out a little husky.

“Sure.” The answer echoed his tight-throated tone.

They stopped at an all-night convenience store to use the facilities, put on gas and grab a bite to eat. Then they headed toward their next destination—the home of Edgar Jackson, the other DEA agent who participated in the planning but not the performance of the ill-fated Rio Grande operation.

“He’s divorced. Lives alone,” Chris informed Maddie as they parked in front of a dinky rambler wedged between a colonial and a Southwestern-style stucco home.

He walked up to the front door while Maddie disappeared into the darkness.

Standing on the stoop, Chris’s insides clenched. “Maddie?”

“Yo,” she answered out of the shadows.

“Something’s not right here. The front door is ajar.”

“Don’t touch anything.” She appeared beside him. “Step to the side of the door like you’ve seen in all the cop shows and call the guy’s name.”

He did as he was told while she stood with her back pressed to the wall on the other side of the door. Silence answered Chris’s call. The heavy stillness stole his breath. What was that faint metallic smell?

Maddie sniffed. “Blood,” she murmured, answering his question. “Stay back.” She moved in front of the door, gun at ready angle, then shoved the door wide with her shoulder and clicked on her flashlight.

A man’s body sprawled, faceup, in the foyer. Beside one wide-flung arm lay a paperback novel with a thin scrap of colorful cardstock paper on the floor nearby. The other hand clutched what looked like a matching scrap in its fist. Gunpowder speckled the man’s slack face around a black hole in his forehead. The blood they’d smelled spread in a crimson pool beneath the body’s head.

Bile burned the back of Chris’s throat. Agent Edgar Jackson wouldn’t be answering any questions.

THREE

Death. Maddie’d had her fill of it, but here it lay again, staring with sightless eyes. She suppressed an internal shiver.

A distant sound brought her head up. Sirens.

She grabbed Chris’s arm. He stood mesmerized by the body. She shook him.

“We’ve got to go. Someone has called the cops. Maybe a neighbor heard the shot. That blood’s fresh. The killing couldn’t have happened more than a few minutes ago.”

Chris turned a fierce blue gaze on her. “He was silenced because we were coming for answers.”

“Maybe. Or else he stepped on some dealer’s toes because of his job. We don’t have time for debate right now. And I sure don’t want to discuss the issue with the police if they arrive to find us standing over a dead DEA agent.”

“What’s that in his hand?” He pointed at the scrap Edgar Jackson clutched in his fist.

“What difference does it make?” Chris’s reporter curiosity was going to land them in a cell at the local jail, sitting ducks for their enemies.

He broke free of her grip on his arm and bent over the body.

“Come on!” Those sirens were getting scary close.

“All right. All right.” He waved at her but didn’t move or look up.

She clicked off the flashlight. “Enough sleuthing, Sherlock. We’re out of time.”

He let out a disgusted snort, rose, and charged out the door ahead of her.

“Finally!” she muttered and followed him toward the car. “I’m driving.”

He piled into the passenger seat. She slid on her rear across Ginger’s hood, then took her place at the wheel. Lights off, she skimmed the Cutlass away from the curb. Within seconds the units would be in view of the house. She took the first available turn. No! A cul-de-sac. Wait! What was that? A dirt drive angled off through a vacant lot between a pair of the houses. Maddie turned onto it.

The drive petered out behind the neighborhood at the edge of an open field. Maddie applied the brakes and studied the situation. The full moon revealed a couple of large pieces of machinery hunkered to their left, and directly ahead, a swath of excavation possibly several feet deep and a few car-lengths wide. A new subdivision was about to be born. Multiple sirens chorused not more than a stone’s throw distant.

She looked toward her passenger and sensed more than saw his return gaze.

“I’m game for the next move. Your call,” he said.

Maddie’s heart expanded. Chris was bold as any ranger, smart enough to know he wasn’t one, and too comfortable in his manhood to be threatened by ranger skills in a female package. A rare combination, as she’d had cause to learn from a few dating fiascos. Not that she had the least interest in romance with a reporter who was playing her for the sake of a story, especially when he might have had a pivotal hand in the deaths of her brothers-in-arms.

Maybe he was tricked into betraying their location.

She batted away the feeble excuse. Either Chris Mason was a full-on traitor or he had phenomenal luck, surviving both the attack at the Rio Grande and the attempt on his life at the hotel.

“Have you ever watched any reruns of that old show Dukes of Hazzard?” she asked.

“One of my dad’s favorites.”

“The General Lee’s got nothing on Ginger.”

“Which am I? Bo or Luke Duke?”

“Take your pick. I’m Daisy. Tighten your seat belt.”

She threw Ginger in Reverse, took her back a few yards and then opened her up. The engine’s purr rose to a growl. The landscape rushed toward them to be gobbled beneath the Oldsmobile’s tires. The rough terrain chattered her teeth together. Then they went airborne, and the bottom fell out of Maddie’s stomach.

“Yeee-haaa!” Her passenger’s rebel yell brought a grin to her face. He looked more like Luke, but evidently he’d decided to be Bo.

The wheels met terra firma, and Maddie’s head grazed the roof. Pressure steady on the accelerator, they zipped across the remainder of the field, bumped over a curb and hit pavement. Maddie cramped the wheel to the right and fishtailed them onto a residential street.

“We made it!” Chris’s grin came through in his voice. “If there’s anything fun about this situation, that was it.”

“That was nothing. You should try flying over a hill on a dirt bike.”

“Anytime.”

“It’s a date.”

The breath stalled in Maddie’s throat. Why had such intimate terminology escaped her mouth? Maybe because this was the way they had bantered in the days of excitement leading up to what should have been a resounding victory in the war on drugs. Before her world got blown up and everyone became a suspect. She stole a glance toward the shadowed figure of her passenger. His gaze faced straight ahead, and he had the good sense not to respond to her quip.

The first time she’d seen Chris her team had been debarking from their air transport at the secret training facility in the Arizona desert. Their orders were simple and straightforward, just the way the army liked it. Her team was to meet with a handpicked task force of DEA agents and Mexican federales, forge a plan, then go after the Ortiz Cartel, capture whoever would surrender, and those who wouldn’t—well, they had the sanction of two governments to wipe them out like the nest of vipers they were. But then this reporter was thrust into their midst.

The day preparation began, Maddie had leaped from the chopper, full pack on her back, and trotted behind her commanding officer toward the underground bunkers that would house them for the duration of their planning and training. Chris had been standing in his shirtsleeves next to his stocky cameraman, watching her unit pass, coffee-colored hair whipping every which way in the airstream from the whirling helicopter blades. His deep blue stare had collided with hers, sending sparks to her toenails.