CLAY ARCHER SWATTED at the fly buzzing around his face and gritted his teeth as the sound of the young Border Patrol agent’s retching finally subsided. He’d been there, done that. No shame.
The agent, Rob Valdez, straightened up, wiping his arm across his nose and mouth. “D-do you think the head’s in the tunnel?”
Clay spit onto the desert floor. “We’ll find out soon enough. You wanna go back to the truck and get some water?”
“No.” Valdez squared his shoulders. “I gotta see what’s in the tunnel.”
“You might not like what you see.” Clay squinted through his sunglasses at the mound of sand and dirt that marked the end of an underground tunnel between Arizona and Mexico.
“I gotta get used to it. You’re used to it.” Valdez rubbed his eyes and replaced his sunglasses and hat, flicking the stiff brim with his finger.
Clay took a step closer to the headless woman at his feet, one arm flung to her side, the other crossed over her body, the fingers of her hand curled. His nostrils flared as he crouched beside her, avoiding the blood-soaked dirt with the tips of his boots.
He reached for the woman’s hand, cold and stiff across her lifeless body, and pried open her fingers. Between his own thumb and forefinger, he pinched the object clutched in her hand and pulled it free.
“What is it?” Valdez hovered over him, the smell of vomit, sweat and fear coming off his body in waves.
“Do not upchuck on the body.”
“I’m done with that.” Valdez took a few steps back, as if not sure of his own statement.
“It’s a calling card.” Clay held up the housefly carved from wood, almost as realistic as the ones swarming the dead body. He waved it in the air.
“Las Moscas.” Valdez glanced over his shoulder as if expecting members of one of the most murderous drug cartels in Mexico to come riding up on ATVs. “Why would they do this to one of their own mules? And a woman?”
The pile of dirt at the tunnel’s exit shifted and one hand clawed its way out of earth like a scene from a horror movie. They didn’t need movies—they had their own, real-life horror.
Clay stepped around the young woman with care as if she were sunbathing in the desert instead of missing her head. By the time he reached the tunnel, it had already spit out half of Nash Dillon’s body.
Dillon scrabbled out the rest of the way, empty-handed. He yanked the mask from his face and coughed. “Nothing. No head. No drugs.”
Valdez let out a noisy sigh. “Agent Archer found something in the dead woman’s hand.”
Dillon raised his brows as he brushed the dirt and debris from his green uniform.
Clay cupped the wooden carving in his palm and held it out to Dillon. “This is the work of Las Moscas.”
“Not surprised.” Dillon tipped his head toward the woman. “Only a few reasons why I can think of that the cartel would kill one of its own mules—she double-crossed them, screwed up somehow or started working for us.”
“She’s not one of ours.” Clay held up his hands, the wooden token held between two of his fingers. “As far as I know, we’ve never used a woman.”
“Don’t lie, Clay.” Dillon clapped his hat back on his head and wiped his designer sunglasses on the hem of his shirt. “The DEA uses wives and girlfriends when they can get them on board—or when they’ve been wronged by their drug-dealing spouses or tire of the lifestyle.”
“That’s DEA, not Border Patrol.” Clay squinted into the harsh desert light. “We’ve got company.”
The two other agents swiveled their heads in unison toward a caravan of trucks and SUVs accompanied by a cloud of sand and dust.
“Hope there’s a coroner’s van among those trucks.” Dillon stamped the dust from his boots, jerking his thumb toward the body. “They need to get this young woman out of here. Give her a little dignity, regardless of the mess she made of her life.”
The trucks and law enforcement personnel brought a flurry of activity with them. The local PD in Paradiso wouldn’t conduct the homicide investigation, as it was too small to have a homicide division—not that the department didn’t see its share of murders along this stretch of the border.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department would take over the thankless job of investigating the murder, but as usual with drug crimes, there would be no evidence, no witnesses and a bunch of nameless, faceless suspects.
Clay studied the men and women going about the business of investigating a headless corpse in the desert, and he took a swig of water from his bottle.
“Crazy business.”
“What’s that, Archer?” Espinoza, a homicide detective for the sheriff’s department, looked up from his phone and squinted at Clay.
“Nothing. Just thinking about the insanity that goes on in this town.”
Espinoza spread his arms wide. “Paradise, right?”
“Yeah, some clueless gringo even got that wrong, didn’t he? Paradiso doesn’t even mean Paradise in Spanish.”
“Wrong name—” Espinoza kicked at a pile of sand “—and wrong description.”
Clay and the other Border Patrol agents packed it in, and left the scene to the coroner and the homicide detective. On the way back to his truck, Clay poked Dillon in the back. “You taking some time off?”
“Heading to a rodeo in Wyoming. Can you hold down the fort?” Dillon swept his hat from his head and tossed it onto the passenger seat of his truck.
Jerking his thumb over his shoulder, Clay said, “Unless we find the head or the drugs, especially the drugs, there’s not much for me to do on this one.”
“The drugs will be on the street by the time I come back.” Dillon nodded toward the new agent, hanging back, the green around his gills matching his uniform. “You think he’ll work out?”
“He’ll be okay.” Clay leveled a finger at Dillon. “I remember your first dead body.
