Betrayal on the Border

TWO

Chris Mason stared past the gun barrel and into the tawny eyes of Madeleine Jerrard. His insides melted. She could put a bullet in him right now, and he’d die a happy man. What kind of a fool did that make him?

God, this has got to be Your best joke on me yet.

He knew better than to fall for the subject of an investigation. Years back, as an eager-eyed neophyte in the reporting business, he’d paid too high a price for that mistake and vowed never again. He gritted his teeth as if a tense jaw could steel him against the unwanted stirrings in his heart for this woman who could kill him in a heartbeat—and had good reason to do it. Or thought she did. A year of stretching every investigative skill and resource, and he’d found her. But at what cost? They were both on enemy radar now.

“What are you doing in my car?”

Her demand reached him through the driver’s-side window he’d opened in order to call her name.

He shrugged. “Trying not to run you over, but this thing’s got more power in the tap of a toe than my toasted rental had if I floored it.”

Maddie grinned and slid off the hood of the Oldsmobile. She stood a few feet from the open window, gun lowered, but not all the way. “Ginger looks like granny wheels but drives like a Ferrari.” The gun lifted. “How did you find this car?”

“It wasn’t easy, and it looked hopeless, but then I found something in my notes from those weeks I spent with the team during preparation for the mission.”

“What was that?” Interest sparked in Maddie’s gaze though her tone wielded a sharp edge.

“If you recall, I asked everyone a trivia question for a human-interest angle I was hoping to develop. You said the two people you admired most in history were Harriet Tubman, because she risked her life to free others, and Joan of Arc, because she took up the sword for what she believed was a divine cause. When that piece of information clicked in my brain, and I ran a DMV search, guess what I found in San Antonio?”

“A vehicle registered to Joan Tubman.”

“Bingo! A little more digging uncovered a long-term parking space rental for the same vehicle. But don’t worry. I handled the searches personally. Our mutual friends don’t know about this car.”

“So you admit they’re your friends.”

Chris snorted. “Don’t you recognize sarcasm when you hear it? Friends don’t blow up friends.”

Maddie frowned, and her gaze scanned his face. “Unless there’s a deeper game.”

“What might that be?”

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out. Answer me this—how did you get inside? I always lock my vehicles.”

Chris smirked. “Hanging out with your unit taught me skills for functioning in enemy territory, like reaching the locking mechanism of an older model car with a wedge and a coat hanger. All I needed to do was let you start the car. I never did get a lesson on hot-wiring.”

She sniffed and her eyes narrowed. “Why weren’t you French fried in that sedan at the hotel? I thought you were dead.”

“No such luck, sweetheart.”

She scowled.

“You saved my life,” he continued.

“Me!”

“Ever since Mexico, I use the remote start before I get behind the wheel. A tip you shared.”

“Hurray for me. Now, get out.” She motioned with the gun.

Chris shook his head. “You’ll have to pull that trigger and dump my dead body. You’re stuck with me. Apparently, my search for you picked up a tail, and they’re trying to kill me, too.”

“Thanks for leading them to my hidey-hole.” Her lips thinned. “How do I know you’re not still working for them?”

“Still?” Irritation spiked in Chris’s breast. “Did you forget that I was investigated and exonerated?”

“Not by me.”

“Obviously.” Chris scowled. “Maddie, they tried to kill me! Doesn’t that prove my innocence?”

“I know I’m not the one who betrayed the coalition. Everyone else is dead, except the investigative reporter the big shots saddled us with during the touchiest mission of our lives. Do the math.” She raised her chin. “Attempting to blow you to kingdom come proves you’ve made them nervous that you may be a liability—nothing more.”

Chris’s molars ground together. “Since I’ve clearly made their hit list, we might as well go on the lam together until we can figure out a way to put a stop to this evil.”

“Stop it? That’s what we were doing in Nuevo Laredo until someone tipped off the cartel to our location.”

“That someone was not me.” Chris glared at Maddie. “Believe it or not, I may be the only person who can and will help you expose the cartel’s state-side allies. Our survival depends on delivering them, gift-wrapped, to the Senate subcommittee.”

Maddie sniffed. “The same committee that publicly blamed my unit in order to save their pitiful reputations over the failed mission they authorized? In case you haven’t noticed, my career in the army is blown to the winds like dandelion fluff. And apparently someone thinks I might remember something from the night of the attack that is worth hunting me down.”

Chris leveled a long look at Maddie. Her high cheekbones stood out above tensed muscles, and her nostrils flared beneath a molten amber gaze. She looked wild and beautiful...and off-limits to this hard-nosed reporter. And don’t you forget it, he told his heart. This was about a story, maybe the biggest of his career, but one wrong move and he’d see nothing of Maddie but dust. Patience, Mason, patience.

“Whatever you think of me,” he said, “both our lives are in danger from the same people. I won’t last ten minutes without you.”

“You said a mouthful, buckaroo.”

“And you will never be able to lead a normal life until we gather enough solid evidence about what really happened at the Rio Grande for me to go public with it. If anyone knows how to go about getting that evidence, I do, but I need your help to stay alive that long.”

Maddie’s generous lower lip disappeared between her teeth and her gaze darted away, then returned. The chill in her eyes skewered his hopes. He’d taken his best shot and lost.

“Shove over.” She motioned with the gun, then trotted toward the spot where she’d tossed her pack.

Chris complied in haste, twisting his long body into crazy contortions to surmount the center console and settle into the bucket seat on the passenger side. He wasn’t about to step out of the vehicle and have her change her mind, then leave him sucking exhaust. Her reasons for letting him ride along, given what she thought of him, were likely as layered as her personality, but he wouldn’t find them out until she chose to share them.

Maddie climbed in, maneuvered the stick shift, and they drove, smooth as glass, out of the parking garage. “Where to, Mr. Investigative Reporter?”

“Grab I-35 south toward Laredo.”

Maddie frowned, but headed the vehicle in the proper direction to catch the Interstate. “Back to the scene of the crime?”

“It’s a good place to start.”

“And the last place our enemies would think to look for us.” She grinned wolfishly. “I may not trust you, but I like the way you think.”

“You used to like a lot more about me than that.”

Chris could have slapped himself. Why did he shoot off his mouth about the mutual attraction they’d danced around since the day they were first introduced? So what if they’d flirted with their eyes and sometimes their banter during the training days before the mission? Romance between them was strictly off-limits.

“Don’t remind me of my bad judgment.” She shot him a glare that could have sizzled bacon.

“Is there some reason you don’t think someone on the Mexican side of the equation could have betrayed our location?”

She snorted. “They’re as dead as the rest of the U.S. forces. Only a member of the coalition team on the ground with us would have known which of half a dozen designated safe zones we chose to bivouac that final night before the assault on the cartel was to begin. We operated under close cover for a reason. Even the Mexicans know plenty of their officials are on the cartel’s payroll. What our good U.S. citizens don’t like to face is that drug money talks as loudly on our side of the border. Government pension isn’t that good.”

“I hear you.” Chris nodded. “That’s why I want to start by talking to the DEA agents in the Laredo field office. I ferreted out their home addresses before I took my flight to San Antonio.”

“Good thought.” She ghosted a grim smile. “They lost comrades. Some of them were in on the planning phase. Some may even be dirty. If anyone can dig out a nugget that the FBI investigation missed, it’s The Man with the Golden Tongue from World News.”

She laughed but Chris frowned. He slumped against his seat, closed his eyes and pretended to fall asleep. The real thing eluded him, as usual. For the past year, exhaustion and a latent sense of desperation had dogged his every step. Maddie had no idea how many sleepless nights he’d spent since that horror in the desert.

When he slept the dreams came. The scream of incoming mortar rounds. Visions of smoke and fire and the scent of burning flesh. Worse, he saw her broken and bloodied body sprawled on the ground in the middle of the encampment. He’d carried her in his arms away from the war zone to save her life, but in the end she’d saved his. Someone had followed them away from the camp and started taking potshots at them. Maddie revived long enough to draw her sidearm and return fire. Did she remember any of that? Clearly not. And he couldn’t explain right now. Anything he said or did was suspect.

In her mind, the fact that he was the only one to escape that night without harm equated complicity with the attack. The logic made sense on the surface...only that wasn’t what happened, and he had no idea how to convince her otherwise.

Lord, you’ve got to help me here. I have no idea how to regain this woman’s trust.

* * *

Maddie glanced at her passenger. He was pretending to sleep. The twitch of a muscle under his jaw betrayed him. He was frustrated, probably angry with her for not buying into his innocence the minute he gazed at her with those baby blues and exercised his honeyed voice. She’d been tempted. Mightily. But too many of her friends had lost their lives for her to trust anyone involved who was still breathing. Not until she knew for sure what really happened.

Chris said he wanted to help with that. Well, all right. He had the skills. She didn’t. She’d give him some rope and see where it led. Letting him into her car, inviting him back into her life, had to number among the gutsiest things she’d ever done, because now she couldn’t trust herself any more than she trusted him. The attraction was too strong. She’d have to make sure her head stayed in charge.

Right! Like hugging a viper ever turned out well.

Her foot itched to press on the brakes. She should pull over and toss him out. One fact stopped her. Death dogged her trail, with or without him by her side. What was that old saying? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. The frenemy in her passenger seat would betray himself one way or another soon enough.

“Did you soup up this car yourself?”

His question jolted Maddie. He suddenly wanted conversation? She glanced toward the passenger seat and found him sitting up straight and alert, subterfuge laid aside for the moment. If that was the way he wanted to play it, she could be cool and cordial, too.

Maddie shook her head. “Ginger was my big brother’s pride and joy. He restored her chassis to near original, but supercharged her insides. Then he was deployed to Afghanistan, and a roadside bomb ended his life before he got to enjoy the fruits of his labor. I inherited her, and she’s one possession I’m not about to give up, even when I’m on the run for my life.”

“I don’t blame you. Pretty smart, though, selling Ginger to yourself under an assumed name and changing the license plate numbers.”

“You figured that out from your Department of Motor Vehicles search?” A shiver slithered down her back. Could someone else follow the same trail? Sure, if they dug too deeply into the background of the buyer of record, Joan Tubman, and discovered her to be a phantom. Keeping Ginger might rank among the top stupid choices of her life. So be it. Her hands clenched the steering wheel.

Chris patted the dashboard like a man caresses a beloved pet. “As long as you have Ginger, you have a tangible connection to your brother.”

Maddie awarded him a wide-eyed stare. “Do you have a degree in psychology, too?”

“Comes with the reporter territory.” He smiled with one side of his mouth. “You get to know a thing or two about how the human soul ticks. Your attachment to the vehicle is natural. I respect that.”

The backs of Maddie’s eyes stung, and she glued her gaze to the road. “I suppose your research told you Jason was the last living member of my immediate family. The news of his death reached me while I was in the hospital, recovering from the Rio Grande. My parents and only sibling are gone, my nearest relatives are a few scattered cousins and an aunt who lives on the other side of the country, and the army has divorced me. I’m a free agent. Works well for someone on the run.”

She finished in a glib tone but made the mistake of glancing at him. The compassion in his eyes nearly gave birth to the tears that lurked behind hers. Every once in a while, like now, it was daunting to think there was no one in the world who would miss her if she was gone, but she couldn’t reveal her vulnerability to this man. He’d take full advantage of it to get his story.

Her gaze narrowed. So that was the motive behind his dogged search for her. An Emmy wasn’t enough? She was his one-way ticket to another sensational story. He probably hadn’t figured on joining her in her enemies’ crosshairs.

“You’re slick as a weasel in the weeds. Do you know that?” She sent him a sidelong look. “You thought I’d buy into the idea that you’ve stepped back into this mess for truth, justice, and the American way. But it’s all about the story, isn’t it? Expose the mastermind behind the Rio Grande Massacre, and win another award. A scoop like this ought to be worth at least a Peabody.”

Tenderness evaporated from his face. Maddie’s heart jolted, and she tasted the loss. What was the matter with her? She didn’t want warmth from him, did she? His kindness was dangerous to her peace of mind. When he looked at her like he’d welcome her into his arms, she yearned too badly to go there. Then why did it bother her that she’d hurt him?

His skin darkened. “I thought you considered me in the employ of the mastermind. Why would I dare expose the person or persons who could expose me as a traitor to my country?”

“Good question.” She lifted her chin. “Like you, I’m hoping for answers on this joy ride.”

“Like you said earlier, I know I didn’t betray the coalition team. But unlike you, I don’t assume the other survivor did.”

“Survivor? If you mean I’m alive, yes, but I did a tough stint in the hospital. You? Your hair didn’t even get ruffled in the cartel’s attack. How did that happen?”

An odd look passed across Chris’s face, half earnest, half eager, with a hint of baffled frustration thrown in. He opened his mouth, and Maddie waited for a revelation regarding his survival. Like where he was hiding while her team was being slaughtered.

But he turned his face away and stared out his passenger-side window. “I don’t know how the cartel got word of our location, but I intend to find out.”

Maddie suppressed her irritation. Evidently the information highway didn’t work two directions with a reporter.

She forced a grin and kept her eyes on the road. “At last, we agree on something, Mr. Mason.”

* * *

Rousing a DEA agent at midnight in the privacy of his home would send a tide of reaction up the chain of command. Possibly provoke a rash move by someone who would prefer to remain hidden.

At least, that was the theory, and Chris intended to test it. He gripped the door handle as Maddie pulled the Cutlass to the curb outside Agent Clyde Ramsey’s two-story house in a modest subdivision of Laredo, Texas. She killed the headlights but left the engine running and fixed a steady stare on Chris.

“Wait here,” he said.

“Not going to happen. I want to catch every word either of you speaks.”

“It might be a good idea if our enemies don’t yet realize we’ve joined forces.”

“Maybe.” She frowned. “Here’s the deal. I’ll lurk in the shadows while you knock on his door. Do your best to hold your chat right there. But if you move inside, I’m stepping out and coming in, too.”

Chris frowned. Not the best plan, but he wasn’t likely to get a better concession from someone who didn’t trust him. “Deal.” He held out his hand.

She brushed his palm with her fingertips. An intake of breath hissed between her lips, while a minor earthquake went through him. Did she feel the tremor, too? Or did the tentative touch—uncharacteristic of her usual forthrightness—mean that she found him loathsome? Impossible to tell with Maddie, and he had no time to ponder the answers. She was getting out of the car, her Glock in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

Chris hastily exited the Cutlass onto the sidewalk that led up to the house. Quiet draped the area, except for a soft shush of traffic noise from the Interstate only a mile distant. The scent of verbena drifted on the breeze, the only thing innocent and winsome about this moment.

He remembered Ramsey from the planning phase of the operation. The guy liked to talk tough and throw his weight around, but original thought was pretty negligible. If he was a participant in the tragedy on the Rio Grande, he was an order taker, not a mastermind. Chris’s research told him Ramsey was a family man with a wife and two half-grown kids. Not surprising that his house lay dark...or maybe not completely. As Chris moved up the sidewalk he discerned a faint bluish glow filtering around the edges of heavy blinds on a front right-side window. Was someone up watching television? Insomnia or a guilty conscience? Chris’s steps quickened.

They reached the front stoop, and true to her word, Maddie faded into the shadows against the house. Chris rapped on the door. No response. He hammered, waited and then his finger headed toward the doorbell, but a light flipped on in the foyer before his pointer hit the button. He stood quietly, staring at the peephole, while whoever was on the other side scoped him out.

A lock rattled, the door eased open several inches, and a pair of smoke-colored eyes set deep in a bulldog face peered out. Their gazes locked. The DEA agent wore a pair of lightweight pajamas, and the hand that wasn’t holding the door was hidden behind his back. Chris’s scalp prickled. Was he armed? Maddie’s close presence might be more necessary than he’d thought.

“Surprised to see me?” he said.

“You’re that reporter who’s supposed to be dead. Why aren’t you?”

“I wasn’t in the car when it blew.”

“Yeah, I knew that much. The late news said they found no body in the vehicle. The cops have you listed as a missing person. What do you want here?”

“What does any reporter want? Answers. Only now, getting them is personal.”

“That leads you to me how?” The smoky eyes narrowed.

“The attempt on my life was related to the Rio Grande Massacre. I’ve been searching for Madeleine Jerrard, and I was getting close. Someone didn’t care to have me find her.”

“There you have your answer.” Ramsey let out a piglike grunt. “It was Jerrard. She wasn’t right in the head after the Rio, and she tried to take you out. Those rangers are more dangerous than a nest of rattlers. Better back off, newsman.”

“Not until I uncover the truth about how the cartel found the encampment.”

“Don’t you listen to your own network’s news? They reported months ago that the investigators concluded the ranger scout got careless and led the cartel forces back to the camp.”

“I don’t buy that story. Never have. I spent weeks observing and cataloguing the preparation phase. I’m not easy to impress, but that ranger team did it for me. As soon as the need for secrecy was past, I expected to share the story of their triumph with the world.” Chris leaned closer to the DEA agent. A faint scent of whiskey teased his nostrils. What kept this guy up nursing booze in the night? “I didn’t like being left with a story of posthumous heroism. My cameraman was killed in the first barrage, and I want to know who’s really responsible.”

Ramsey stiffened and drew back. “What? You think I had something to do with it?” A blue vein pulsed in the man’s forehead. “Don’t forget, my office lost several good agents.”

“Are you saying that no one in the Laredo DEA office could possibly be dirty?”

“I’m not saying they couldn’t. I’m saying they aren’t. Including me. Now get off my property, or I’m calling the cops. Right after I fill your pants with buckshot.” He pulled a shotgun from behind his back and cradled it in the crook of his elbow.

Chris lifted both hands and backed away a step. “I’ll go, but I’m not through digging.”

Ramsey’s gaze took on a mean glint. “You will be if you enjoy breathing.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Naw. A prediction.”

“Fine. Now here’s my prediction. Whatever’s eating you up inside is going to take you down with a stroke or an ulcer, or else it’s going to trash your career with a DUI.”

Ramsey growled and started to raise the shotgun. Chris turned on his heel and hustled down the sidewalk, shoulder blades tingling. He didn’t look back. His life was in Maddie’s hands if the DEA agent decided to try pulling the trigger. He reached the car, which was still running, climbed in the driver’s side and drove off. She was smart enough to slip away and meet him around the corner. He pulled over to the curb and waited. Sure enough, she slid into the passenger seat less than a minute later.

“Good job of rattling the bones in the closet.” She gave that throaty chuckle that turned him to molten putty, only he’d never let her know it. “Now we’ll see what falls out.” Her hand on his stopped him from putting the car into gear. “I had no idea you didn’t buy the official story about our team scout, Don Avery. That guy could sneak up on a mouse, tie a ribbon to its tail and slip away without the critter ever knowing he was close. There’s no way he led the cartel to our bivouac.”

She took her hand away, but the warmth of her touch lingered. He smiled as he headed the Cutlass out of the neighborhood.

“I’m impressed that you didn’t get in his face when he was spouting that stuff about your unit.”

“We do learn a little self-discipline in the army.” Her tone was dry. “It sticks, even when we’re not right in the head anymore.”

“Forget that stupid remark.” Chris chopped the air with his hand. “I think you’ve made a remarkable recovery.”

“Thanks.” The word dripped gratitude.

A lump formed beneath Chris’s breastbone. It had probably been a long time since someone who cared had offered her a vote of confidence. He’d give anything to chase away the shadows in those beautiful, tawny eyes. Maybe uncovering the real traitor would accomplish that, because he couldn’t offer her the comfort of a personal relationship. Last time he’d blurred the lines between his personal and professional lives the wrong person took a bullet.

“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.