“No. They yelled variations of the threat and made it clear that they wanted to…take me. El Maya wants me intact and unharmed.” Tears welled from her eyes and silently streaked her face, shining trails in the streetlight. “It’s my fault. All that blood, Jase’s blood, my fault.”
“You weren’t holding the guns. The blood is all on the shooters’ ticket. Did you tell the PD?”
Silently she shook her head while the city’s petroleum-scented wind turned tears cold on her face. “No. Was that wrong? Should I have told them?”
For an instant Hunter’s fingertips slid down her cheek, bringing warmth to the cool flesh. “You did good. Right now I don’t trust anyone. Narcos have ears in every police department that is important to them. Houston is real important.” He put his hand on the wheel again. “You need to disappear.”
“Narcos? Is this about drugs, not the artifacts?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that anything we give the police will end up in places that it wasn’t meant to be.”
“Corruption?” she asked unhappily.
“Even if ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the Houston PD is on heaven’s short list, that still leaves plenty of people to pass information on down to hell.”
“God, we’re turning into Mexico.”
Hunter’s attention never left the traffic around them. “We’re as human as Mexicans are. Corruption happens. In some cultures it’s accepted, even admired, and certainly exploited just like any other business opportunity. Mexico…” He shook his head.
Lina watched Hunter’s stark profile while he told her what she didn’t want to hear.
“Mexico is circling the toilet,” he said bluntly. “Everybody knows it and nobody talks about it. The narcos are in open warfare with the
“I know. It’s just…” Her voice trailed off.
“Yeah. When that greasy corruption takes a slice out of your honest life, it’s a shock.”
More silence, night and time flowing by.
“Anyone following?” Lina asked, her voice catching.
“Not that I’ve caught,” Hunter said. “Ease down, sweetheart. It’s going to be a long night as it is. No need to waste energy worrying about things you can’t control. Deep breaths. Slow. Long.”
Silently Lina practiced breathing while Hunter wove through traffic, making unexpected turns, sometimes going around whole blocks and ending up in the same place. She let herself drift, sliding down and down, back to where her heart wasn’t beating double time and screams weren’t clawing at her throat.
“Is your passport at your apartment?” he asked.
She looked at his face, dark planes and angles slashed by city lights. He looked as forbidding as any stone statue carved in reverence to forgotten gods.
“No,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I always carry it with me. Same for Mexican travel documents.”
Hunter almost smiled. “Same here. Need anything from work?”
“My computer.”
“Can you access it through an outside portal?” he asked.
She closed her eyes. “Yes. I have all the passwords.”
“You know how to use a handgun?”
Her eyes snapped open. “Handgun, shotgun, and rifle. Sometimes I worked alone at remote sites.”
“Ever shoot anything but a target?”
“No. I don’t particularly like guns.”
“Neither do I,” Hunter said. “But at least you understand which end bites and how to keep it from biting you. That’s more than most know.”
More time slid by with the night, fragmented into darkness and light, seething with unknowns.
“Why would someone called El Maya want me enough to kill for me?” she asked finally.
“I don’t know. When I find out, I’ll know who gave the orders that ended up with blood all over Jase.”
Hunter didn’t say any more. He didn’t have to. Lina understood that someone now had the kind of enemy that made nightmares look cozy.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LINA WOKE UP WITH A START WHEN THE JEEP SLOWED AND took an off-ramp leading to a street. Houston’s flash and glitter was nowhere in sight. Nothing but an overcast night and car lights whizzing by on I-10. Her neck hurt from sleeping against the window and her skin was chapped from scrubbing blood off in a gas-station restroom on the outskirts of Houston.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“South Padre Island.”
She rubbed her eyes. “The beach. That explains the salt smell.” She must have slept for hours. “Any word on Jase?”
“He’s out of surgery.”
The tightness around Hunter’s mouth made her stomach sink.
“And?” she asked unhappily.
“Still critical. Ali’s parents are with her, taking care of the kids.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Not your fault, any of it.” He stopped for a light. “You warm enough?”
She shifted the jacket he had put over her. “Yes. What about you?”
His eyes checked the mirrors as regularly as breathing. “I run hot.”
The sound of air rushing and rippling over the canvas top was white noise, something she had stopped hearing after the first half hour on the road.
“Are we being followed?” she asked.
“I lost them after the gas station.”
Scattered lights told of houses and strip malls hacked out of scrubland and stilted above storm tides.
“If no one is following, why are we here?” she asked.
“Because we have to assume that whoever wants you has my Houston address by now. Ditto for Brownsville and my uncles’ homes. My cousins have kids. I don’t want them in the line of fire.”
She opened her mouth, closed it. There was really nothing to say. He was right. She should have thought of it herself.
“My uncles are working their contacts,” Hunter continued. “They hear something good, we’ll hear it.”
“You’re obviously more used to this kind of thing than I am,” she said. “What do you do when you disappear for days or weeks at a time?”
“I work for the family security company.”
“Doing what?”
“Securing whatever needs it,” he said.
She didn’t give up. “What does that mean?”
“Exactly what I said. My uncles’ company specializes in cross-border security issues for corporations and individuals.” Hunter’s glance flicked to the mirrors again. Still nothing that ruffled his instincts. It was late enough that traffic was light, which made checking for tails much easier.
“Where were you the past two weeks?” she asked bluntly.
“I missed you, too,” he said, smiling.
“Hunter—” she began impatiently.
“My most recent job was outside of Cozumel,” he said before she could rip a strip off him with her sharp tongue, “ransoming a rich debutante who thought that bad things only happened on TV, and that getting knee- walking drunk was safe in a Mexican dive.”
“Was it dangerous for you?”
