With file in hand, she headed for the motel room Joe LaClaire had given her over the phone. She’d spoken to him from the plane. Once they landed, her team drove straight to the motel and had already checked into their rooms. She’d done the same and planned to meet with them after connecting with Kinkaid and LaClaire.
A dim light shone around the closed curtains of room 15. The motel was nothing more than cinder block painted in a depressing green. The doors were metal, with rust around the edges caused by humidity off the ocean. Muggy air carried the smell of the sea and the faint stench of manure, a deterrent to taking a full breath of good old Mother Nature. The listless backdrop of windblown palm trees with ragged fronds and spindly banana trees surrounded the motel. Weeds shoved through cracks in the parking lot and worn, dented vehicles lined the narrow dirt streets. With most windows down, the cars weren’t locked. Why bother? Who would steal crap on wheels?
What was Jackson Kinkaid doing here? He always had a sense of style, yet this place seemed out of character from the man she remembered. Associating with drug cartels must have left its mark.
Out of habit, she reached beneath her windbreaker and released the retention strap of her holster, making her weapon easy to grab. With the sweltering heat, a jacket was the last thing she wanted to wear over her jeans and tank top. But it covered her .45-caliber H&K MK23, her travel companion.
Standing outside motel room 15, she knocked, and someone doused the light inside. The door opened with a creak.
“Alexa?” When he had seen her blond silhouette, a man spoke from the dark room. “You made good time.”
Only a streetlamp shed light on someone standing inside the room. She recognized LaClaire’s voice.
“Yeah.” She stepped inside the room and closed the door behind her. And with a hand on her weapon, she added, “You want the secret handshake? I’ll do you one better.”
When they flipped the light on, she held up a gesture both Kinkaid and LaClaire would recognize—the one finger salute.
Joe LaClaire grinned and nodded. “Yeah, you and me are gonna get along just fine.”
Jackson Kinkaid stood to her left. Unlike his buddy, he wasn’t smiling. She fought hard not to react to seeing him again, but the beat of her heart ramped up a notch. She felt it.
He wore faded jeans with a black T-shirt worn tail out. And he stood taller and looked more defiant than she had expected. Hypnotic green eyes glared at her with a smoldering hostility that Garrett had warned her about. And he smelled of soap, with his dark hair still wet from the shower. He wore his hair longer than she remembered, and it curled at his neck. And although he hadn’t bothered to shave, the rugged macho thing suited her fine.
When he saw her middle finger, he raised an eyebrow and said, “
She ignored his abuse.
“Haiti, Kinkaid? Is this your idea of a good time?” She crossed her arms and returned his stare. “I prefer the smell of coconut oil and cute cabana boys serving me umbrella drinks.”
“Sorry,” he said. “The best we can do is bottled water. With any luck, you can avoid a good case of dysentery.”
“There’s a good kind?” she asked.
Joe took Kinkaid’s cue and lifted the lid to a cooler where they had bottled water. She waved him off.
“No, I’m good,” she told him. “But you gotta tell me. How did you end up at a school fund-raiser…an event in your honor, no less? And who is this mystery woman, Kate?”
Kinkaid looked unsettled, and he shot a glance at his friend, who shrugged. Guess Joe had told her too much.
“That’s not important,” he said. “By now Garrett has done his homework and confirmed the assault was legit and the hostages real. I’m not in the mood to have my chain yanked or take a trip down memory lane. Are you gonna help or play twenty questions?”
“Attitude? You’re giving me attitude here?” She shrugged. “Look, I don’t see anyone else lined up outside. So cut the crap. You asked for help, and I brought a team. Whatever beef you have with Garrett, I don’t care. It’s not gonna interfere with this mission.
His jaw tightened and he narrowed his eyes. Eventually he took a deep breath and gave her an almost imperceptible nod. That was all the concession she’d get from him.
Kinkaid crossed his muscled arms over his chest, and his broad shoulders and narrow hips got her attention again. The man carved out his own corner, leaving little elbow room in the cramped space for her to feel comfortable in. Thankfully, he kept his distance and leaned against a wall. His man Joe backed off and took the corner of a mattress.
She still had one more point to make.
“And while we’re setting ground rules, there’s another thing we’re gonna get straight. I’m in charge of this mission. I make the call on pulling the plug. If I see you or your friend endangering my team, I won’t hesitate to take you both out of the equation. Is that clear?”
“Crystal. What else?” His somber expression gave her nothing. Only his gruff tone sent her a warning that he wasn’t in the mood for playing nice.
“Garrett said you had intel. What happened after the bastards left the clinic? Are they still in Haiti, or did they get out?”
“They left by boat,” he said. “I saw them leave, heading north.”
“But you didn’t tell the cops,” she guessed.
“No.”
By the look on his face, he challenged her to ask why. She didn’t.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
Kinkaid gave her what he’d seen, from specs on the boat to bad-guy head counts, weapons details, and the number and condition of the hostages—a thorough account that not even the Haitian police had. His intel might keep them one step ahead of anyone else.
“These guys had a SAT phone, handheld GPS units, and a damned laptop,” he told her. “And they were in and out like they’d run the scenario before and knew where to go. They had to be connected to a handler. Why else would they come with all that high-tech gear?”
He shook his head and continued, “The Haitian cops didn’t stand a chance. They were outgunned, and all they had were dated walkie-talkies. Hell, the terrorists were willing to die, Alexa.”
“Maybe we can help them with that.” She narrowed her eyes. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, I got a good look at their tracks after they left the medical clinic. If we cross their path, I’ll know what to look for.”
The man had given her plenty of detail. Alexa knew how outraged she would have been if this attack had happened to her, but Kinkaid was taking this harder than she would have believed for a guy who was on the payroll of drug cartels. Something else was at play that she didn’t understand, and instinct told her to have patience. A guy like Kinkaid wouldn’t be pushed into talking if he didn’t feel like sharing.
“This is good stuff, Jackson. I’ll feed your account back to Garrett. See if he can ID the terrorist cell. And someone might have claimed responsibility on Arab news. Al Jazeera might have something by now. I’ll let you know.”
After he nodded, she held up her file and stepped toward a small table near the door. “I’ve got satellite digitals. If we can narrow down the time, we might figure out where they went.”
“That’s great. Let’s do it.” He looked surprised to have satellite surveillance and sat down next to her at the table. He was slow to move and looked beat-up, with bruises on his jaw under the shadow of his day-old beard.
“What’s wrong with you, hotshot? You look a little rough.”
“It’s nothing.”
She opened her file and put a series of satellite images on the table. Narrowing the time, they were able to locate the time stamp that worked. Using what Kinkaid had witnessed and her high-tech surveillance, they tracked the boat he’d seen leave Haiti.
The news wasn’t good.
“Damn it!” he cursed.
