Stranger Mine: a Base Branch novel (11 page)

“You lie,” the loyalist screamed. His cheeks flushed as dark as the pools of blood on the floor. His finger wrung the trigger. The impotent
clack
of the hammer hitting an empty chamber resonated. He yanked the trigger again and again with the same result.

One half of the weight of worry lifted from her chest. Like she told Ryan on the HELO, she’d removed the drug lord’s holstered pistols, along with the bullets from his back-up piece. She’d stuffed it back in his ankle holster to give him hope, and watched now as it was dashed before his eyes. Yet, knowing all this hadn’t made her any more comfortable with having a Saturday night special jammed in Ryan’s face or her own.

Gabrone laid the gun on the brick next to him. His nostrils flared with each breath, but his chin jutted in defiance.

“You can’t torture anything out of me.”

Years of interrogations and never once had the urge to beat information out of a suspect toyed with her resolve. But this guy wasn’t
suspected
of a crime. He committed them. With her own two eyes she’d seen him trade people like cattle, send them to their deaths for a profit. Piper drove her foot so hard into his ribs she felt the give of bone beneath her boot. Her fist connected with his cheek in a sweeping left hook. An uppercut followed with her right. Red misted her vision and she didn’t know if it was rage or blood. And she didn’t much care.

Atop him, she cocked to execute another series of blows, but found her hands pinned behind her back. Piper lifted her foot to strike back and met with a wall of solid muscle. The itch to escape had her bucking.

“Stop, Piper.” Ryan’s voice was quiet but firm in her ear.

The fight fled her in a second and she sagged against his chest, sucking wind like a wild animal after a death match.

“He didn’t have the laptop on him and it’s not in the office. It has to be in his Escalade. Go to the car, rip it to shreds, and find the damn thing. If you want anything out of him, you have to let me deal with this bastard.” His body pressed her against the wall harder still. “Do you understand?”

“He’s mine. This is my job,” she growled.

“He’s the means to an end. One we won’t reach, if you don’t start trusting me, Goddammit.”

No. She didn’t want to let go of Gabrone. He was hers. This was her job. She had sacrificed her career, her cute condo in Playa Vista, and quite possibly her life. Piper turned and stared at the bloody Latino. The man squared his shoulders like she’d given him playful love taps.

“At the rate you’re going, you’ll kill him before he talks,” Ryan reasoned.

“And you won’t?”

“For better or worse, this is part of what I do. What I’ve been trained to do. I’ll get you what you need.”

R
yan scrubbed his hands
. Suds foamed a thick lather, uprooting the stench of gasoline embedded in his skin. Through the window sunlight flirted with the foothills and threatened to inch the night away. The chase, an endless cycle. He heaved a sigh. Too bad corruption didn’t stop its endless cycle of amazing him, in the worst possible ways.

If it weren’t for the innocence and promise of youth…
Alma and Alisa.
For the possibility of good he gleaned in people and the lives he saved…he’d have given up hope. Given up this job long ago.

Only psychopaths would get kicks, turning a starched-backed criminal into a pants-pissing, blubbering fool, begging for death.

The pilot who’d dropped him into this mess alluded to the Sinaloa tradition of making soup. Probably from tales he’d heard hauling military types in and around Mexico. Cartels made examples out of those who crossed them. Decapitation turned heads. No pun intended. Making soup referred to stuffing a person into a metal barrel, filling it with gasoline, closing the lid, and lighting it on fire did too.

As it turned out, a man who oversaw the process time and again wasn’t keen on having the tables turned. He gave more than Ryan asked for, in return for a swift death.

What Ryan had done should have been the hardest thing he’d have to do all day. But it wasn’t.

Not wanting to see the horror he’d created, he left out the front door and walked to the back. Bodies littered the ground and it seemed he couldn’t escape himself. He shook his head, careful not to strain his neck too much. After all the activity, the damn graze on his shoulder had finally settled to a dull roar. He didn’t want to excite it.

Piper eased the pistol from its bead on his chest, but her gaze followed his advance from where she sat, legs dangling, inside the back of the only unharmed vehicle in sight. A frown and sagging shoulders weighted her appearance.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Piper hung her head, but maintained eye contact. “I can see it wasn’t easy for you.”

“It shouldn’t be. The minute it is, I’m done. But it’s not the first time.”

“Doesn’t make it any easier.”

“No. It doesn’t,” he agreed.

Ryan set everything he’d shed to deal with Gabrone in the back of the Cadillac. Gun. Ruck. Vest. A sleek silver briefcase lay behind Piper’s fine rump. He sat next to her, biting back a groan as he did.

“Will you let me look at your shoulder now?”

“In a hurry to play doctor, are you?” he teased.

“You’re the one who was adamant about staving off infection.”

“When we get to Hermosillo you can do anything you want to me.”

“That goes against your tendencies, doesn’t it?”

“Being shot goes against my tendencies,” he countered.

“What’s in Hermosillo?”

“Hotels and lots of people.”

“Yeah, just what we need, more people shooting at us.”

“It’s enough people to hide us for a while. Most citizens don’t like the cartels in their streets. They’ve done a good job at cleaning up the place over the last decade. But it’s always a possibility,” he said with a flick of his wrist. “Are you ready?” If he could, he’d put off the inevitable. He expected her to smother him for answers, but it seemed she wasn’t comfortable with the length he had to go to get them. Not that she had any idea. But she’d heard the screams and pleas. No doubt.

“Matthew Reece is my brother-in-law. Sparrow’s husband.” Piper canted her head toward him, but it hurt too much to reciprocate.

Ryan scooted his left leg into the back and turned his entire body to face her. Damn. So much for a reprieve. Her eyes lightened with hope at the possibility of finding her sister’s husband. A sweet half-smile replaced her frown.

“I know,” he said.

A little wave formed at the center of her brow. Her smile faltered. “How did you know? Your people, whoever they are?”

“No. Gabrone.” A storm gathered on the dim horizon, much like the one brewing in his chest.

Piper’s eyes darted this way and that, ciphering facts in her mind.

“Why don’t you tell me how you wound up in Mexico in the first place?” Ryan suggested.

“Because the last time I started telling it you got shot.”

“You have keys for this ride?”

She dangled them in front of her face.

“Tell me on the road. You drive. I’ll shoot, but hopefully, I won’t have to.”

It took twenty-five teeth-rattling minutes of driving for them to reach the blacktop. Nether spoke during the tense, jostling ride. Ryan cursed the fresh blood trickling from the half moon the bullet had carved and every pulse of brain-jarring pain. The torment rippled out through his entire torso. He popped a couple of antibiotic capsules from his first aid kit, pulled one of the packs of iodine solution and a large pad from the bag, and stowed the ruck in the back seat.

“All right, Piper, start talking,” he ordered.

“Don’t you want me to pull over? To help?”

“You driving and talking will help.” He growled the last bit as he yanked the T-shirt over his head. Dried blood adhered the fabric to the edge of the wound. He breathed deeply, braced for the onslaught, and pulled. Braced or not, nausea flipped his gut. “Piper!” he begged.

“Sorry! Sorry! Sparrow met Matthew at some party at the beginning of senior year. He was a good boy from a good family, and my sister set her sights on him. I’d say she was obsessed, but apparently most girls that age spend the majority of their day pining over some guy or another.”

“Not you?” Ryan asked before squirting the iodine onto the wound and clamping his jaw shut so tightly it might never open again.

“No.” She winced as though it were her he worked on, shook her head, and then continued. “I was too busy with volleyball and making sure Ivy focused on her grades, not boys.”

Ryan sagged in the seat, holding the gauze to his shoulder. Visions of Piper in a bathing suit, stretched out and leaping to spike the ball, eased the sting. “Please, tell me you wore a string bikini.”

“Perv.” She slid him a sideways glance and smiled. “Only when I played on the beach.”

“You’re doing it on purpose, aren't you?”

“What?”

“Making me tent my pants. I mean, it is an effective form of pain control.”

“You’re kidding, right?” she scoffed. “How in the hell could you get wood with a bullet in you?”

“It’s not in me. It’s only a graze. But, Piper, so long as a bullet doesn’t kill me, you could get me hard with a smile or a scowl. The memory of your sweet body does things to mine.”

“Anyway.” Piper cleared her throat. “Sparrow flipped a switch and became little miss prim and proper in hopes of impressing Matthew. It worked, of course. She’s curvaceous and fun loving. Easy to love, when she was with Matt. He dulled her jagged edges. Calmed her restless spirit. By freshman year they were official. They married straight off the graduation line. Bought a house just off the beach near my mom’s shop in Venice.”

“So, when you said from a good family, you meant from a rich family?”

“His parents are some of the best people I know. So, they’re good and rich. Not a combo you find everyday. They welcomed Sparrow, all of us really, with open arms.”

“All right.” He eased the gauze from his trap. With only the dashboard dials for light he couldn’t see much. The iodine soaked the back of the gauze. Or was that blood? Hard to tell in the low light. But he didn’t dare turn on the interior lamps. He recovered the hole, taped it, and set about easing his shirt back on.

“After a year, or at least that’s what I gathered after the fact, they started trying to have kids. For whatever reason they weren’t successful after another year of trying. According to Matthew, Sparrow went wild, started picking fights, going out until the morning, staying gone for days at a time. Reverted to her old ways. Only this time, she had the means to do it up right.”

The steering wheel leather beneath Piper’s grip squealed in submission. Ryan reached for her, but the pain bared its teeth, sinking to the marrow. His good hand gripped the edge of the seat. Sheer will to touch her, comfort her, powered his ability to close the distance between them with a hand to her shoulder. But he couldn’t hold it there for long. Every muscle in his outstretched arm shook.

Piper loosened her chokehold on the wheel. The white of her fresh bandage showed beneath the sleeve of Khani’s spare BDU. She slipped her silky fingers between his and curled them around his hand. With a flash of copper from under her lashes and the softening of her taut mouth, she lowered their intertwined fingers to his thigh.

“I’ve never held a guy’s hand before. Not like this anyway,” she whispered after a mile of silence.

That tidbit did devilish things to his pride and cock. Her hand was so close to his crotch. “Keep talking, sweet, before I get any more ideas about what I’d like to do with this pretty hand of yours.”

“Nobody has ever pinned
me
with the endearment ‘sweet’.”

“I like it. Under all those muscles and all that attitude…you’re deliciously caring.”

Her laugh eased his breathing.

“It would have been easy for Matt to walk away, but he stuck by her. When that alone didn’t work he hunkered down, cut off her money supply, and got them into counseling. Even bought her a puppy.” She sighed. “Things were better for a while, but Sparrow is Sparrow. All it took was the mention of adoption and she skid, only this time, there was no easing off the brakes. She got hooked on cocaine. He sent her to rehab. When she got out, Matt only allowed her enough money for necessities.

“That’s when the Sinaloa came onto the scene. After she sold every valuable not screwed into the foundation, she started trading them information for drugs.”

“How’d you know about the cartel?”

“I’m a cop, Ryan. Was a cop,” she corrected. “I followed her on occasion. We were working with the local F.B.I. to eliminate the ring. Don’t know why I bothered.”

“Because you care about her.”

Her eyes watered in the muted light and she cleared her throat. “Six months ago, Matthew went missing. We used to talk two or three times a week, and then nothing for several days. I went to the house and neither of them were there. All his clothes were accounted for, car, wallet, and keys.”

“Struggle?” Ryan asked.

“At first glance, everything was in its place. But the glass in a frame on an entryway table had been removed. When I opened the back I found two slivers. I finally found Sparrow powdered out of her skull at some hooker’s house. She just kept saying, over and over, ‘Matt’s gone and he’s never coming back.’ She didn’t file a missing person’s report. I didn’t either because I knew nothing would come of it. So I started my own investigation, used F.B.I. intel and informants. Really screwed myself professionally. But…”

She sniffled and swung her head back and forth. “He wouldn’t have left without telling me. Without saying goodbye.”

“You have a thing for him?” Ryan asked, keeping his voice quiet.

“No,” she snapped. Her fingers unlaced from his and returned to the wheel.

He could have held her there. It’d have hurt like hell, but what was the use. She had to want to be there with him. She wiped her eyes and straightened in the seat. Morning light seeped into the cab through the heavily tinted windows.

“It looks that way. And maybe it is. But not for the reason you think. And not that I would have been willing to admit it, until you went all philosophical on me. ‘The absence of something doesn’t mean it can’t hurt you.’ That’s what you said. As hard as Sparrow fought for a dad or some male figure in her life, I fought to keep one out. Then Matt came into our lives. For Sparrow he was the anchor she always wanted. For me he was the stability and brace I never knew I needed.

“He took some of the weight off my back. When I needed to vent and didn’t know it, he listened. I set out on this misbegotten journey telling myself it was to save my sister’s husband. But I need to bring home the brother I miss desperately.”