Her headlights illuminated the mile marker on the side of the highway, and she glanced at her odometer to track the miles. At two miles past the marker, she eased off her gas pedal and peered over the steering wheel.
She spotted the break in the highway and turned onto an access road. Her truck bounced and lurched as it ate up the rough ground beneath its wheels.
If you didn’t know the fencing was there, you could drive right into it, but she caught the gleam from the metal posts and the heavy-duty wire strung between those posts.
She pulled up next to the fence and cut her lights. Her flashlight would have do. She didn’t want to advertise her presence on this land, just in case another driver saw her lights out here from the highway. She hopped from the truck, opened the back door and snagged her backpack first.
Flicking on the flashlight, she ran its beam along the length of the fence. It hadn’t been designed to keep people out so much as to stake a claim.
She ground her teeth together and ducked between the two wires that stretched from post to post. At least nobody had thought to electrify this fence, but again they didn’t have anything to protect—not yet.
She stumbled across the desert floor for about twenty feet, and then dropped to her knees at a slight dip. Her flashlight illuminated the area—no rocks, no cactus, no distinguishing features.
She wedged her pack in the dirt to mark the spot and jogged back to her truck. She grabbed the shovel and wrestled the duffel bag from the back seat. The items slowed her progress back to the perfect spot, but she still had enough energy to do what she came here to do.
She dragged the backpack out of the way and plunged her shovel into the sand. In and out, she dipped the shovel into the sand and flicked it out to the side.
Sweating, she pinched her damp T-shirt from her body and surveyed her work. How deep did it have to be? Enough to conceal but not hide forever.
She unzipped the duffel bag at her feet, positioned it at the edge of the hole...and dumped the contents into the shallow grave.
SAM PUSHED HIS laptop away and with it, the faces of the missing people. Gone without a trace. How did that happen? And all of them last seen near the Arizona border towns.
He didn’t believe in coincidences.
He’d thought at one point that the bones of the missing might be found in the myriad tunnels that ran between the US and Mexican border, but Border Patrol had gotten a line on most of those tunnels and no bodies had turned up inside them.
Still, the Sonoran Desert provided a vast graveyard. He pulled his laptop toward him again and switched from the faces of the mostly young people to a map of the desert running between Paradiso and the border.
One area on the map jumped out at him, and he traced his fingertip around the red line that marked the location where the new casino was planned. That land, which belonged to the Yaqui tribe, had always been somewhat reachable due to the access road.
He stood up, stretching his arms over his head. He wandered to the window of his motel room and gazed at the drops of water glistening on the glass. The rain had stopped, nothing preventing him from his expedition now.
He grabbed his weapon and his wallet and marched out to his rental car. When did Border Patrol ever stop working? Especially when an agent didn’t have anything better to do.
He pulled out of the motel parking lot and headed toward the highway. His headlights glimmered on the wet asphalt, but on either side of him, the dark desert lurked, keeping its secrets—just like a woman.
Grunting, he hit the steering wheel with the heel of his hand and cranked up the radio. Two days back and the desert had already weaved its spell on him. He’d come to appreciate its mystical, magical aura when he lived here, but the memory had receded when he moved to San Diego. When he left Paradiso, he’d tried to put all those feelings aside—and failed.
When he saw the mile marker winking at him from the side of the road, he grabbed his cell phone and squinted at the directions. He should be seeing the entrance to an access road in about two miles. A few minutes later, he spotted the gap and turned into it, his tires kicking up sand and gravel.
His rental protested by shaking and jerking on the unpaved stretch of road. He gripped the wheel to steady it. “Hold on, baby.”
A pair of headlights appeared in the distance, and he blinked his eyes. Did mirages show up at night? Who the hell would be out here?
His heart thumped against his chest. Someone up to no good.
As his car approached the vehicle—a truck by the look of it—he slowed to a crawl. The road couldn’t accommodate the two of them passing each other. One of them would have to back into the sand, and a truck, probably with four-wheel drive, could do that a lot better than he could in this midsize with its four cylinders.
The truck jerked to a stop and started backing up at an angle. The driver recognized what Sam had already deduced. The truck would have to be the one to make way but if this dude thought he’d be heading out of here free, clear and anonymous, he didn’t realize he’d run headlong into a Border Patrol agent—uniformed or not.
Sam threw his car into Park and left the engine running as he scrambled from the front seat. The driver of the truck revved his engine. Did the guy think he was going to run him over? Take him out in the dead
