lined with fake palm fronds, the rank-and-file chairs were wearing parrot-hued slipcovers, and the roll-away screen behind the main stage was painted with an art student’s version of Chichen Itza in its heyday, with the city intact, the ruins unruined, and cartoonish pre-Columbian natives thronging in the foreground, staring at the papier-mache archway with creepy, goggle-eyed intensity.
Thank Christ the room was empty. It was bad enough she was semi-crashing. Be worse if she walked in and started laughing her ass off during the I-dos.
This so wasn’t what she had been expecting. But then again, the expectations were her own fault: The moment she opened the FedEx to find a plane ticket to Mexico and a request for her to come talk about a job, her brain had gone straight to a tropical fantasyland, complete with umbrellaed drinks and bare-chested bartenders, far from Denver?s drab gray winter.
Hell, it was probably just a run-of-the-mill deal for aging parents who had lost track of a kid and were feeling guilty in the middle of the sib’s wedding prep. Typical locator gig.
But those cases still paid better—and were way safer—than her old job.
Tracking a low drone of voices that said “the party’s over here,” she crunched across the fake palm fronds to where an open doorway led to the reception area. Looking for a little advance intel—run-of-the-mill job or not, it was pretty extreme to fly her across the border just for a meet-and-greet—she tucked herself into the shadows and peered through to where a couple of dozen bodies thronged an open-air dining area.
Then she exhaled in surprise and eased back further into the shadows. Because whatever these guys were, it wasn’t run-of-the-mill.
The twenty or so people, an even mix of men and women, were knotted together on one side of the room, the men in decent suits, the women in an eclectic mix of high-end, with no rent-a-tux’d groom or Barbie-doll bride in evidence. They were all wearing long sleeves, which was weird; it might be shitty with early December back home, but it was still pretty damn tropical down in the Yucatan.
Going into the figure-it-out-fast survival mode that used to be her only option, she scanned the room. Six of the wedding guests—three men, three women—were small and compact, their gestures quick, their eyes always on the move. Four of the six were in their sixties or so and hung together like family or old friends, while the remaining two were younger and new-coupleish: a military type in his early forties holding hands with a thirtyish cutie who had dark hair and laughing eyes. Overall, aside from a strange air of uniformity, those guys weren’t too far off ordinary.
The rest of them, though . . . Whoa. Way not ordinary. Most in their late twenties, early thirties, they were uniformly huge—in height and muscle, with zero flab—gorgeous, and somehow glossy, like the overhead lights bounced off them differently from the others. More, they all held themselves at the ready, their body language saying they knew how to fight and would do it at a split second’s notice.
There were a few exceptions: Two of the women, one blond, one dark, were closer to average size, while a third—coppery dark hair, maybe a few years older than the others—sat at a table, staring vacantly, with a funny half smile on her lips. Beside her sat one of the men; he was huge and muscled like the others, but had his left leg strapped into a high-tech brace and propped on a chair. A pair of crutches leaned on the wall behind him.
None of those details changed the overall impression of deadly competence, though. Not one iota.
Reese’s instincts checked in, making sure she was aware that she might, in fact, be an idiot. Suddenly, accepting the anonymous invite south of the border seemed less like a welcome getaway and more like a dumb idea.
Her new, more cautious self said she should do a vanishing act. But at the same time, another part of her —a trusted part—said that she should stay put. Because what if these guys were trying to locate someone worth saving? She’d seen it before. Hell, she’d been it before.
You can’t help everyone, she reminded herself. But instead of doing a Casper and ghosting it, she hitched her small black carryall a little higher on her shoulder and checked out the setup.
The reception area was an open-air stone patio surrounded by a high, vine-covered fence. An overhead latticework hung with a gazillion fairy lights failed to disguise the fact that the hotel was smack in the middle of a bunch of other high-rises. There was only one door, which didn’t compute, and not just because she was big on backup exits. In her experience, groups like this didn’t let themselves get boxed in. Which meant they had another way out . . . Unless she’d misread them? She didn’t think so. Even while doing the civilized wedding-brunch thing, they practically screamed “paramilitary.” Or maybe something official, with an acronym most people wouldn’t recognize.
She should walk away. Call Fallon. Let the pros handle things.
That common sense sounded awfully thin inside her, though, because the pattern didn’t make any sense. When that happened, she got real curious—and, according to some people, stupidly brave. But some people weren’t there right then, and they didn’t run her life; she did.
So, glad she had stopped at a pawnshop to buy a decent .38 a mile or so past the airport, she stepped out of the shadows and into the doorway, pasted a pleasant expression on her face, and said, “Excuse me?”
Within seconds, every one of them had marked her, eyes flicking to her and then to each other, and there was a subtle shift in the room as some jackets got twitched aside, other bodies got out of the line of fire. The smaller six faded into the background with the exception of the soldier-type, who stepped in front of his girlfriend with an expression of “you want a piece of her, you’re coming through me.” A couple of the others looked over at the table, then away when the guy with the bad leg got big and capable-looking all of a sudden, and a dark-haired woman coasted over to join him.
Nobody drew down, though. They just waited, staring at Reese with an intensity that gave her a funny little skin-quiver, as though she had walked too close to a transformer.
Pulse upshifting, she held out her empty hands. “I’m not looking for trouble. I was invited.” Sort of.
A pretty blue-eyed blonde off on one side glanced at the brown-haired man beside her. “We didn’t invite you.”
Okay. Bride and groom weren’t the prospective clients. Didn’t look like newlyweds, either; the rings weren’t new, and they came across like a solid team. Were they renewing their vows, maybe? Or was this whole thing a setup? Reese didn’t know, but she wasn’t moving away from the door until she did.
“I invited her,” said a big guy on the other side of the room, breaking the silence.
At that, the others gave way a little, telling her that he was the boss of this outfit. Wearing a charcoal suit with the slight awkwardness of someone who did better in jeans, maybe six six, two thirty, he was built like a bouncer and had killer blue eyes, dark, shoulder-length hair, and a jawline beard that made her think of a Renaissance fair. And he was vaguely familiar, but not from her present life.
Oh, shit. Again, her new self said to run. Again, she stayed put. “Do I know you?”
He gave her a once-over with those brilliant blues. “Where’s all the black leather?”
She was wearing low boots, trim pants, and a subtly studded blazer, all in muted earth tones. Professional, grown-up clothes. “Dog’s show turned it into a cliche.” Tipping her head, still not placing him, she said, “I could dig up the boots if you’re interested.”
“He’s not.” The smaller blue-eyed blonde moved up beside him and shot her a narrow-eyed glare.
Reese knew that look. Fallon hit her with it often enough. “You’re a cop.”
That intel eased her nerves a degree. Granted, there were cops who crossed the line, but fewer than the TV made it seem. More, she wasn’t getting the “bad guy” vibe off this crew, and her instincts might not be infallible, but they had a damn good track record. So who were these guys? A task force working the wrong side of the border? If that was the case, why did they need her? And why not go through channels?
Unless they had, and Fallon had told them to fuck off. That, she could believe.
The cop nodded. “And you’re the bounty hunter.”
Most of the others relaxed a smidge at that one. The bride’s mouth went round in surprise and, Reese thought, recognition.
Filing that, she stayed focused on the boss. “I used to be a bounty hunter. Now I’m strictly private.” She paused. “Where do I know you from?”
“Three years ago. A burned-out warehouse in Chicago.”
“Three—” She broke off as her stomach knotted. Keeping the poker face that had saved her life more times than she wanted to count, she nodded and made herself breathe past the stab of pain. “Right. Strike. I remember.”
