And she wanted to get her mind off Kinkaid’s suicide mission.
“Was it you who followed me from the Guadalajara airport? At first, I thought it was Hank, but later he told me it hadn’t been him.”
She hated admitting she didn’t know who had tailed her, but if it had been Garrett, that would explain why she only felt him and never saw him. Garrett was an experienced agent who could make himself a ghost if he wanted to.
“No, wasn’t me.” He shook his head and furrowed his brow. “Someone followed you? Did you see ’em?”
“No, only felt them. If it wasn’t you, I have a pretty good idea who ordered it.”
“Who? What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Donovan Cross.” She fixed her gaze on him, waiting to see if the name meant anything. “So what’s up with that guy? What’s his part in all this?”
“Donovan Cross? I know who he is, but what’s he got to do with it?”
She stared at him for a long minute, trying to read if he was lying again. Since he’d clued her in and made her part of his team, now he had no motive for keeping her in the dark when it came to the mission with Kinkaid, but she had no idea if that extended to his past with Donovan Cross.
“He took over your job and told me you were dead, killed in a classified mission. He made up a story about how you got caught in an explosion, and your body would never be recovered. Ring any bells?” When he didn’t say anything, she stared at him in disbelief. “You mean he wasn’t part of your disappearing act?”
“No, he wasn’t.” Garrett narrowed his eyes and got strangely quiet.
When he finally glanced at her, he must have seen the worried look on her face, because he said, “I’ll put out some feelers, figure out what’s going on. It’s probably nothing.”
He tried for nonchalance, but she wasn’t buying it.
“Yeah, right. It’s probably just a coincidence. And you know how I feel about those.” She sighed. “You better watch your back with Cross. He’s got to have support within the Sentinels if he stepped into your job so quickly. Who would do that?”
“I’ll take care of it.”
The way Garrett said it—as if he had made a promise to himself—it left her cold inside. In a covert agency like the Sentinels, it paid to have solid support within the organization, from the top down. But if Donovan Cross had slipped easily into Garrett’s job, she had to wonder. Who had undermined Garrett’s authority? Doing something like that wasn’t a one-man show. Who was backing Cross as the new head of the Sentinels?
And how far would they go to keep him there?
“Cross doesn’t strike me as someone’s puppet.” She couldn’t let it go. “And he’s got to be working with people who have the balls to seize an opportunity when they see it, with you missing. I’m just . . . worried, Garrett.”
“I know you are,” he began as he stared into her eyes, “but I’ve got to handle this my way. I don’t want you getting stuck in any cross fire. That would . . . kill me.”
For the first time in a long while, Garrett looked into her eyes like he used to. She’d ended their relationship and moved on after she’d caught him with someone else, but the intimacy between them had never truly been severed. And that had never been more apparent. Alexa blinked and cleared her throat, breaking his connection with her.
“Just remember that you’ve got friends, too. Don’t go it alone, tough guy.”
Garrett smiled, a quick fleeting curve of his lips.
“Good to know. Thanks.”
“What was that? That sound, did you hear it?” Estella’s voice cracked.
She turned her head toward the only window in the cell and squinted into a piercing light that vanished as quickly as it had come. A powerful engine roared across the night sky as the sudden brightness stabbed the dark and left its phantom image in her mind.
Something was happening outside.
And after the engine noise faded, she heard the distant voices of Ramon’s men and hoisted herself high enough to see out. But her sudden moves started the aching pain again. Her shoulders were on fire, caused by the weight of her body. And her wrists were raw from the ropes.
When her question about the noise went unanswered, she looked over to the dark part of the cell, where only a thin stream of moonlight doused the stone walls. Estella saw the silhouette of the American. He had not moved in over two hours. And she barely heard his breathing.
“Please . . . don’t be dead,” she whispered.
Saying the words aloud didn’t make her feel so alone, even if the wounded man couldn’t hear her.
“No such luck,” he mumbled.
“Oh, I’m . . . sorry. I did not mean . . .”
“Helicopter.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard a h-helicopter. That was . . . the n-noise.”
It took all her concentration to hear him. Yet even though the man sounded weak, there was something in his voice that calmed her. And since he had answered her first question, she ventured another.
“What are they doing? Ramon’s men. I hear them outside.”
Her whisper hissed across the cell and echoed off stone, sounding garbled. When he didn’t answer right away, she almost repeated her question, thinking he had not understood her.
“This is almost over. I’m sorry for how it turned out.” Even though he choked out words plainly enough, she didn’t understand what he meant.
“This isn’t your fault, señor.”
“I wish you were right about that.” When he spoke, she saw the glint in his eyes, a reflection of the moonlight . . . and something else.
Estella didn’t understand the strange man, but for the first time, she was afraid of what she saw in his eyes.
La Pointe, Wisconsin
After Jessie lost her footrace with the guy who had taken an interest in her, she had given up on her appetite. She’d stopped in at the motel office and scored enough snacks to satisfy her if she changed her mind. Byron McGivens wasn’t behind the desk when she stopped in, even though his nameplate was still hanging on the wall as if he were on duty.
“Does Byron have the night off?” she asked. The minute she’d instigated the conversation, Jessie knew it had been a mistake. It only gave the guy behind the counter a reason to chat her up.
“Yeah, he had something to do. I fill in sometimes.” The older man grinned back at her. “So . . . you new in town?”
Jessie fought the urge to roll her eyes. The clerk rang up the sale, between his attempts at making one-way small talk, and forced Jessie to smile as she headed out the door. When she got to her room, she set the brown bag with her snacks on the sidewalk near her door—and as a precaution—she reached for her Colt Python. After she unlocked her door, she flipped on the lights and aimed her gun from corner to corner.
Her room was empty. And her things were as she’d left them, except where the maid had touched. Jessie smelled the scent of pine cleaner, saw that the bed had been made, and noticed the maid had left her fresh towels. After she saw the room was clear, she went back for her bag of goodies and locked the door behind her, tossing her new stash of Fritos, Twinkies, and Red Bull onto the extra double bed.
She pulled out the newspaper articles from the waistband of her jeans and tried to straighten them, without much luck. Since the pages had gotten squashed and manhandled in her chase with the local yokel, she slipped them under her mattress to flatten them out while she got cleaned up.
Jessie took a quick shower and changed into the gym shorts and tank top she normally slept in if she wasn’t spending the night with Seth. After she got in bed, she propped herself up on her pillows and spread out the articles she wanted to read as she ate a Twinkie.