White Hot: A Patrick & Steeves Suspense (5 page)

E
m pressed
her fingers against the tender skin behind her ear.

“Don’t touch that,” Dal said, swiping her hand away from her head.

“It tingles. I keep imagining the little Martian from Bugs Bunny scuttling around under my skin.” She lifted her hand again to the bump where they’d inserted the microchip, but he grabbed her fingers and held her hand. “Keep your eyes on the road,” she joked. They were sitting in the Nexus line at the border, moving steadily forward but not as quickly as usual.

“Try not to think about it,” he said.

“Easier said than done,” she replied. Flipping the visor down, she looked at the spot again in the mirror. “It looks like a mosquito bite.”

“I do have one, too,” he reminded her with a grin, stretching back against the seat of the tan SUV they’d been issued. “Did you believe that they’re not going to track us all the time? I mean, even when we’re not on assignment?”

Emily shrugged. “I’m sure they’ll consider us ‘assets’, but not infringe on our privacy more than necessary.”

“The NSA not infringe on our privacy?” Dal barked out a laugh. “I meant what I said this morning when they implanted the damn thing. The minute I get back, I want this thing removed.”

Last night, they’d decided there wasn’t anything to do about the break-in at her apartment until morning and had gone to Dal’s. Fortunately, they’d been so exhausted that after a few minutes of passionate kissing, they’d drifted into sleep in a jumble of limbs until the alarm went off a few short hours later.

This morning, they’d driven past her apartment on the way to be chipped to find the door closed but the black SUV still in the lot with two men in the front seats.

“How are you feeling about your house?”

“Jill said they’d keep surveillance on it. I have to trust that they do.”

“Do you think they found anything?”

“There was nothing to find,” she said. For the life of her, she couldn’t imagine what they were looking for. They’d been through every detail of this already with Bob, their new handler. Although Bob seemed to have the personality of a sapling, it was better than having to report to her dad.

A shadow flickered across Dal’s face and she could almost guess what he was thinking - she was thinking it, too. They weren’t necessarily looking for any one thing. They’d been looking for her. In her gut, she was sure Jack was behind all of it.

Pulling up alongside the card reader, Dal held out the Nexus pass and pulled away when the machine beeped. The day was heating up, but there was still a fresh breeze coming in from the ocean as they sped down the highway through Tijuana.

Her phone rang, she checked the screen before answering. “Hi Bob,” she said. Dal raised a brow.

“Where are you Patrick?” Bob asked.

“Just cleared the border,” she said.

“Really? Even with a pass?” She rolled her eyes at Dal. Apparently Bob intended to micromanage them and ignore the fact that he knew precisely where they were because of their microchips. She refrained from making a comment.

“Yeah, backed up today. We’re five minutes south now.”

“Good,” he said. “We found the truck. I’ll text the coordinates and you can drive by and investigate. And Patrick?”

“Yes?”

“Be careful. All we need is an idea of what’s there in case we need to go back later. Under no condition should they see you. Understand?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “I’ll let you know what we find.” She ended the call. “He wants us to go see the truck.”

“Where is it?”

“He’s sending the coordinates now,” she said, as her phone chirped. She opened the text and fed the numbers into the GPS. Peering at the screen, she said, “Ten miles ahead.”

They rode in silence for several minutes watching the city unfold around them. Tijuana was a huge, sprawling, dirty town from their vantage point. Not unlike most cities seen from the expressway.

Peeling an orange, she passed half to Dal. He winked in appreciation. She’d thought sleeping beside him last night would be impossible. Being wrapped around him made her blood boil and her toes curl, but she’d been so exhausted she’d slipped into sleep, despite the smoldering good night kisses, her head nestled in his shoulder. There was no denying how well they fit, physically at least.

He’d been mad as hell last night when she’d refused to repeat the conversation she’d had with her father but after finding the thugs in her apartment, his concern for her safety won out over his frustration.

The highway mirrored a service road that ran parallel to the east, lined with weathered cement warehouses, many crumbling into the dust. “It should be this next turn to the east,” she said. He slowed the truck and took the turn into the ancient industrial park.

“Straight on, down this road for a bit,” she said. She marked off the distance on the GPS, measuring how far out they were. “Bob said we shouldn’t be seen.” She chuckled.

“Nice to know we have his full confidence,” responded Dal. “There doesn’t seem to be much out here.” Passing the last of the warehouses, the road continued into barren fields. Garbage lined the side of the road, where people had dumped off bags, broken chairs, and even a couple of mattresses. After several minutes, the asphalt ended and they bumped along over an uneven dirt road. “How much farther?”

“According to this, we’re already here,” she said, peering at the screen. She looked around - nothing but field. “I guess we don’t need to worry about being seen.”

Dal took his foot off the gas and they rolled to a stop. “Sure you got those coordinates right?”

She flipped back to the text message and nodded. “Yep. Should be right here.” She looked out the window. Empty fields stretched as far as her eye could see. There wasn’t a single building or even a tree on the horizon. “They dumped the tracking device.”

“You think?” Dal cocked his head.

“What other explanation could there be? I think they found the device and dumped it out in this field.”

“So basically, the shipment we’re following is lost.”

“Not lost exactly.”

“They know they’re being tracked now, so we’ll have to be even more careful.” He shook his head. “So much for the element of surprise.”

“We’ll catch up with it at the ranch,” she said.

“Doesn’t leave me with a lot of confidence that they know what they’re doing. So much for having our backs.”

She nodded, glanced out the window then down at the time on her phone.

“Now what?” he asked.

“I’ll call Bob. Then we keep heading south.”

“Speaking of having our backs,” Dal said. “Have you reconsidered what we talked about last night?”

“About?”

“About what you and your father talked about,” he said.

“There’s nothing that impacts us immediately,” she said. “Can you let it go for now?”

His eyes narrowed. He pulled a u-turn and raced back toward the highway.

L
ooking
into the deli case in the pharmacy, Dal picked out some ham and cheese for sandwiches and threw a couple of packages of flour tortillas in the small metal basket. They’d decided to stop for food before hitting Las Flores to avoid any chance of being recognized. Even though this town merited a dot on the map, they’d found nothing except the pharmacy. Not a taco stand, not a roasted chicken, nothing.

Emily appeared beside him, arms laden with chips, peanuts and other salty snacks. She released them into the basket.

“We’re in the desert, Em. We need water more than salt.”

“Actually, we need both,” she said, grinning. “In Afghanistan, you’d sweat out most of your body fluid. The extra salt will help with dehydration. That’s why Gatorade is so popular.”

“Hmmm. Maybe we should grab some Gatorade? And lots of water.” Turning into an aisle, he walked past packages of rice, tinned chilies, boxed milk, and picked up two four-liter bottles of water. “This should do us.”

“I’ll grab some Gatorade from the cooler. You want anything else? Something cold?”

He shook his head and headed toward the cashier, throwing a couple of tins of tuna into the basket at the last minute as he remembered Emily’s appetite could easily match his own.

Em met him at the counter, set down several bottles of garishly colored liquid and tossed a couple of chocolate bars in with their haul. “For energy,” she said, winking. He reached over and squeezed her hand. Surveying the rack, she picked up a couple of packets of gum and added them to their pile.

The young girl at the cash looked up from her phone. “
Lista
?” Dal nodded and she began ringing in their purchases.

* * *

“
I
don’t know
about you, but I’m hungry now,” Dal said, opening a large bag of chips. He held it out in Emily’s direction.

She shook her head. “I’m good. I’ll just enjoy driving for now.”

Stretching his legs out in the passenger seat, he cracked open a cold bottle of water and crunched on chips as the countryside whipped past them. The fields here were barren and dry. Any vegetation had long been burnt to a golden brown or dried up and blew away. It reminded him of the landscape in an old western movie. And for good reason. Many westerns had been filmed down here. He remembered his friend Kris telling him that further south, near Ensenada, there was a satellite studio where Titanic and other movies had been shot.

Heat waves shimmered off the pavement in front of them as the truck ate up the miles southbound. North of Las Flores, traffic jammed the highway and Emily slowed, then stopped the truck.

“Looks like an accident ahead,” she said, reaching for the air-conditioning and bumping the temperature down another degree.

“Or a roadblock,” Dal said. “They could be looking for something.”

They crept along in traffic, grateful for the air conditioning, until finally, as their exit came into view, he could see it was blocked off by a
Policia Federales
patrol car.

“Damn,” Emily said. “Now what?”

“Maybe it’s nothing,” Dal said, opening the window a notch. Warm air blasted in and he closed it again. “He may let us through, I think the problem is farther ahead.”

Emily tried to pull over but the officer circled his arm in the air, indicating they were to continue on the highway. She waved to him, he shook his head slightly and focused on the car behind them.

Dal opened the window and called him over. The officer sidled up to the window. “All traffic to continue south to Las Flores,” he said.

“This is our exit,” Dal said. “Are they letting residents through?”

The officer’s brows shot up over his mirrored sunglasses. “You’re a resident?” he asked, skeptically.

Em leaned over, flashing her best smile. Bravo, thought Dal. “Our friends are,” she said. “They’re expecting us.”

“The road is closed,” he said, impervious to her charms. “Nobody goes through.”

“Is there an alternate route?” Dal asked, flipping his sunglasses to his forehead so the officer could see his eyes.

The
Federale
jammed his hand in his pockets and shook his head. “Be open later tonight. Go have a beer on a beach somewhere.” With that he laughed and turned away.

“We’ll have to go into Las Flores after all,” Dal said, checking the GPS. “Maybe we can get through at the back of town.”

“I don’t remember that being an option, but we can try,” Em said, letting her foot off the brake and rolling forward.

After idling through the overpass, they found another
Federale
patrol car blocked the exit northbound and above them, at the end of the road stood a black SUV completely tricked out.

“They love their chrome in this country,” Dal said, reaching for the high-powered binoculars their team had packed into their gear bag that morning. He put the lenses to his eyes, adjusted the focus and drew in a breath. “Fuck, Em, I’d swear that’s the same SUV that Jack’s men were driving.”

“At my apartment?”

“No, at the ranch.”

“Really? Want me to pull over so you can get a better look?”

He shook his head. “No, they might see us. Can you put the back window down?” He leaned over the back seat keeping the SUV in his sight. He was about to give up when a large man stepped around the side of the vehicle. He carried a rifle in his right hand and held a phone to his ear.

“It’s Miguel,” he said.

“Jack’s Miguel?” asked Emily, shooting him a look.

“None other,” he said. “The same bastard that tried to kill us at the ranch and later left Jack to die.”

“Hmph,” Em said. “Looks like they’ve made up.”

“Yup. It also looks like them finding that tracker on the truck is already biting us in the ass.”

E
mily jumped
out of the truck at the end of the small street, shielded her eyes with her hands and peered into the distance. “I think the highway is over there. We can follow it if we head in a straight line to the east.”

“On foot?” Dal asked, joining her. “It’s hellish hot, Em. And the ranch is not exactly in the next pasture.”

“The next pasture?” She snickered, but he had a point. She looked behind her to the small concrete cubes. Most doors were closed against the searing afternoon heat. “What do you propose we do?”

“We could wait,” he said. “Find somewhere cool to hole up and go in tonight after dark.”

“And if we can’t get through?”

“The road, you mean? They’ll have it cleared up by then.”

She shook her head. “There’s no guarantee of that. We have to proceed as if the road will still be blocked.”

“But—”

“Tell me this. If we wait for evening and show up at the exit after dark and the road is still blocked… What would we do then?”

He shrugged and slid down the side of the cab to take advantage of a small rectangle of shade. Looking around the street, he said, “Let’s talk to the neighbors. See what we can find out.” He strode away from her and tapped at a black metal door. A small child poked her head out.

“Can I talk to your mother,” he asked, in his broken Spanglish. The little girl was pulled back inside and a husky man with several days stubble on his chin opened the door wider.

“
Manday?”

Emily stepped up beside Dal. “He’s asking how can he help us… what do we need.”

In her best Spanish, she explained they needed to get around the roadblock on the highway to visit their friends. From his look of consternation, she deduced he didn’t know about the roadblock, nor did he believe she had friends out that back road into the mountains.

She forged ahead anyway. Did he know anyone who could help them?

He looked over at their late-model SUV parked at the end of the street. “You planning to leave this here?”

Her heart skipped a beat. “You have somewhere we can park it? Where it will be safe?” she asked. “We can pay.”

“A hundred dollars,” he said, scratching his belly through the sparkling white threadbare undershirt that didn’t quite meet the waist of his pants. “How long you gonna leave it?”

“Only one day,” she said. “We’ll come back by tomorrow evening.”

He nodded his head and stepped out the door into the dust of the street. “Come.”

She followed, slanting a look at Dal as he fell in beside her. Two doors down, the man swung open two large black doors to reveal a lot that resembled a junk yard. Old washing machines and dryers stacked four and five deep lined the entrance. Beyond that, the area was filled with scrap metal, rusted stacks of rebar, towering piles of old tires, uneven groupings of wood scraps, and enough tin cans to line the highway back to San Diego.

Tucked to the left, a crude workbench fashioned from old lumber with all manner of tools hanging on the wall was shaded from the elements by a sheet of corrugated metal. Overturned wooden and plastic crates served as seating and the ground was littered with old cigarette butts and colonies of empty quart-size beer bottles.
Chavas.
The word jumped into her mind from her teen and college days drinking on nearby beaches.

“
Aqui,
” said the man, waving his hand proudly.

“
Muy bien
,” Emily said. “You’ll lock it at night?”

He lifted his chin in agreement.

She looked at Dal. “Let’s bring the truck in.” He nodded and started toward the door but veered off. Stepping to the far side, beyond the last of the washing machines, he lifted the edge of a weathered blue tarp to reveal the back tire of a motorcycle.

“My son’s bike,” said the man, smiling. “He’s in college in Hermosillo.”

“Does it work?” Dal lifted the tarp further to reveal a sturdy looking dirt bike.

“
Si, claro
.” The man crossed and whipped the tarp off the bike. “I can’t sell it to you.”

Dal’s face dropped and Emily moved forward. “We don’t want to buy it,” she said. “But … would you consider renting it to us until we come back for the truck tomorrow?”

Light glimmered in his eye but he lowered his gaze to the bike, shook his head no. “It’s my son’s treasure. He worked two years to buy this bike.”

“We’ll take good care of it,” Dal said, pulling out his wallet. “Look, we can pay you…”, he counted bills in his wallet, “a hundred dollars.”

“Two,” said the man, carefully considering Dal’s stack of bills.

Dal nodded and the man helped him back the bike out into the open. Both tires were flat. The proud father, now three hundred dollars richer than he was twenty minutes ago, lifted another tarp and hauled an air compressor closer to the bike. A few minutes later, they had both tires inflated. Dal opened the gas cap. “We’ll take some gas out of the truck,” he said. “Do you have a gas can we can use?”

While he went off to look for a gas can, Dal grinned at her. “Your chariot awaits,” he said, bending and waving his arm through the air with a flourish.

“Very clever, Vanna,” she teased. “I’ll bring the truck in while you sort out of the rest of this.”

The SUV filled the small space in the entrance. Emily pulled out their things while Dal siphoned gas into two two-liter plastic coke bottles. When they were done, they looked at the bike and back to the gear on the ground. They were going to have to lighten their load and leave some of it behind.

Once the bike was loaded and they’d paid the man and were outside the door, he extended his hand once more. “Keys.”

“For the truck?” Dal asked.

He nodded and Emily dug the keys out of her pocket and dropped them into the man’s palm. Dal turned the key and kicked the starter. The bike roared into life.

Emily waved as they pulled away, wondering how much more a muffler might have cost them.