Breaking Point (10 page)

Natalie didn’t feel a bit sorry for the Zetas either. But that didn’t mean she could sit here surrounded by blood and dead bodies and not want to run away screaming.

Zach hardly seemed to notice. He’d gone from body to body, taking their money and weapons. She knew he’d been angry to discover that Sr. Scar Face—the Zeta who’d tortured him and molested her—was the one who’d gotten away. Zach hadn’t said anything to her, but his jaw had gone rigid when he’d checked the last body, and she’d heard him swear.

As for the money, he’d stuffed most of it in his pocket and had given the rest to the terrified prostitutes. The gesture had touched Natalie—until he’d told the girls to get out of the car and head back to whatever town they’d come from on foot.

“It’s must be a hundred and ten degrees out here. They’ll roast!”

He’d met her gaze, not the least bit of sympathy in his eyes. “Either we walk, or they walk. Which would you prefer?”

That had simplified things.

Feeling more than a little guilty, Natalie had given the two girls bottled water and then watched them hurry down the highway in high heels. She’d wanted to leave, too, but that’s when Zach had come back into the church and started searching the place. She’d followed him. “Shouldn’t we get out of here?”

His voice was cold when he answered. “If we leave now, are you prepared for whatever might happen out there? If the Zetas catch up with us or show up in a helicopter, are you ready to fight back? If the car breaks down and we need to cross the desert on foot, are you prepared to handle it? I made you a promise, and I’m trying to keep it.”

Realizing he knew what he was doing and she didn’t, she’d gotten out of his way, the adrenaline from earlier wearing away, leaving her feeling numb, images of what had happened skulking in her mind. A man appearing out of nowhere at the church door. The barrel of his pistol pointing at her. His body jerking when she’d pulled the trigger.

Then Zach was there beside her. “Here.”

She gasped, jumped.

In his hand was a bottle of water. “So, you’re afraid of me now?”

“No.” She unscrewed the cap and drank, unable to meet his gaze. She wasn’t afraid of him, exactly—but she didn’t necessarily trust him. “It’s just that . . . Before yesterday, I’d never seen anyone get shot and killed, and now . . .”

She’d beaten one man unconscious and shot another.

“Don’t dwell on it.” Zach turned, grabbed an empty military duffel bag and dropped it on the cot beside her. “On your feet. Let’s load up and get the hell out of here.”

Natalie helped him pack everything he’d set aside into a couple of duffel bags, then followed him out the church’s door, ignoring bodies and flies that buzzed at pools of drying blood, and looking up into the bright blue sky instead.

“You drive.” Zach tossed her the keys, then opened the back door and shoved the duffel bags onto the backseat, pulling out a big gun and several spare magazines. “I’ll ride shotgun.”

Natalie climbed into the car in which she’d once been a prisoner, started the engine, and cranked the AC. She waited for Zach to climb in beside her, then hit the gas, a lump forming in her throat as she watched the ghost town, and the hell that lay within its crumbling walls, disappear in the rearview mirror.

She was going home.

 

JOAQUIN COULDN’T LOOK up from his beer, unable to stand the pity he knew he’d see on his friends’ faces. “I let her down. Natalie saved my life, and I let her down. Whatever she’s going through right now is my fault.
Christ!
”

He took a drink, swallowed beer together with the rock that seemed to be lodged in his throat, a glass full of stout not nearly strong enough to make him forget the sound of her voice crying out to him as they’d dragged her from the bus—or to keep him from thinking about what might be happening to her now.

He’d been home for four hours. He and the other American journalists—every single Mexican reporter had been killed—had been taken under escort to the U.S. consulate, where they’d been questioned by Mexican and U.S. authorities, before being packed into a couple of choppers and flown across the border to El Paso. This morning, he’d caught his flight home from Texas, the empty seat next to him a constant, unbearable reminder of the friend who should have been there beside him.

The airport had been a madhouse, reporters and TV cameras waiting for him. But for the first time in his life, Joaquin had found himself trying to avoid the media, his emotions too ragged to share with strangers. And yet every journalist there had wanted to interview and photograph him because
his
colleague had been the only American taken from the bus. When he’d refused to comment, they’d assumed he was saving the details for his own newspaper. But everything he had to say had already run in today’s paper, in an article written by Tom, the editor in chief, together with his photographs of the massacre, which Joaquin had e-mailed to the paper from El Paso. The only people he could talk to about this were his
abuelita
and his brothers—and the people sitting around him right now.

He hadn’t asked the I-Team staff, past and present, to come over. In fact, part of him had dreaded seeing them, knowing he’d have to tell them what had happened and that he’d see the same contempt in their eyes that he’d seen in the eyes of the federal agents who’d questioned him—a look that told him Natalie would be back home now if only he’d been more of a man.

But they loved Natalie, too. He owed it to them to face them.

Matt Harker, the only other man on the I-Team and one of Joaquin’s best buddies, had shown up first, carrying a case of Yeti Imperial Stout, their favorite Colorado microbrew. Kara McMillan, an old friend and former I-Team reporter, had arrived next, her arms full of groceries, her three kids at swimming lessons with her schoolteacher husband, Reece Sheridan. Tessa Darcangelo, another former I-Team reporter and her husband, Julian, a vice cop and former FBI special agent, had followed. Then Kara and Tessa had taken over Joaquin’s little kitchen making lunch, while Julian had grabbed a beer and joined him and Matt on the back deck.

Sophie Alton-Hunter, the I-Team’s criminal justice reporter, and her husband Marc Hunter, a SWAT sniper, had brought soft drinks and paper plates, ringing the bell only minutes ahead of Holly Bradshaw, an entertainment writer, and Kat James, the paper’s environmental reporter, who came with her husband Gabe Rossiter and their baby girl, Alissa. Tom had come last, his arrival a surprise, as he almost never left the newsroom in the middle of the day.

Only after everyone had gotten their fill of tacos and salad had Joaquin found the will to tell them the entire story. Sophie and Kat, who’d known Natalie best, were now in tears, the men silent. And still Joaquin couldn’t take his gaze off his beer.

“This isn’t your fault, Joaquin.” Kara broke the silence. “Don’t even go there.”

“If I had stopped her from trying to protect me, she might not have caught their attention. They might have walked right past her—”

“And shot you in the head.” Matt’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Yeah, that would’ve made everything better.”

“Kara’s right, Joaquin.” Tessa took his hand. “We know you did everything you could.”

“Yeah.” Joaquin let out a bitter laugh. “I’m a fucking hero.”

Tessa leaned in closer. “The only ones to blame are the murdering bastards who kidnapped her.”

“You said it, Tess.” Sophie dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

“I still can’t believe they killed all those poor people in cold blood.”

Joaquin ignored his friends’ reassurances and willed himself to look up and meet the gazes of the three men in the room he most respected. How pitiful he must seem to them. “Would they have been able to take her from you, Darcangelo? Or from you, Hunter? And how about you, Rossiter? If you’d been on that bus with Natalie—”

“Knock it the hell off, Joaquin.” Julian stood in the back against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. “I might know a few more tricks than you do, but that doesn’t mean I’m invincible. I’ve gotten my ass kicked plenty of times.”

Gabe reached over and adjusted the blanket that Kat had draped over herself for modesty’s sake while nursing the baby. “If you’d fought them any harder, they probably would’ve shot you just like they shot the others. Then they’d have taken Natalie anyway.”

Heads nodded.

“If I thought you’d been a coward, I’d tell you to your face.” Marc’s gaze bored into Joaquin’s from across the kitchen table. “But without some kind of weapon, there’s really nothing more you could’ve done.”

Kat looked up from her baby, tears still on her cheeks. “It’s right to feel sick about Natalie. We all do. But you’re going to have to quit feeling guilty for being the one who came home. It’s not your fault, Joaquin.”

Joaquin squeezed his eyes shut, fighting the turmoil inside him. He
hated
feeling this helpless, this angry, this afraid for someone he cared about.

Then Tom spoke. “I’ve been in touch with the flack at the State Department. They say they’re doing all they can to help Mexican authorities find her.”

Darcangelo gave a snort. “Yeah, trust the State Department diplomats to get the job done. I’ve been in touch with some of my old contacts down there. If what they say is true and Los Zetas is responsible for the attack on the bus, then the State Department isn’t going to be able to do a damned thing for her. The Zetas hate journalists—as you saw, Joaquin—and they’ve got as much firepower as the
federales
—probably more.”

And Joaquin felt an unexpected ray of hope. Darcangelo had worked for the FBI in Mexico and knew more about the country and its underworld than most. He met the big man’s gaze. “Is there any chance you can go down there and help them find her?”

Tessa glared at him. “I do
not
want to lose my friend
and
my husband, thank you very much. Julian is
not
going to Mexico.”

“I can’t go—not now anyway.” Darcangelo squeezed his wife’s hand. “I’m not going to leave Tessa alone.”

Joaquin had forgotten. Tessa was three months pregnant and having problems. “No, of course not.”

“Why do you think they took her? What will they do with her?” Holly asked the question that Joaquin hadn’t been able to bring himself to ask.

Julian seemed to hesitate. “Natalie represents two things that interest the Zetas. She’s a reporter, and she’s a pretty young female. It makes me sick to say it, but if the Mexican AFI—that’s their FBI—doesn’t get a lead soon, there’s a good chance we’ll never see her again.”

The beer in Joaquin’s stomach turned to acid.

CHAPTER 7

THE CAR’S AC didn’t work well, but it did use up gasoline, so Zach had turned it off. Now open windows offered the only relief from the scorching midday heat. It was like driving through a blast furnace.

It still beats being outside in eighty percent humidity.

Natalie wasn’t so sure she believed herself on that point. But then it had been a long time since she’d spent a summer in New Orleans.

Sweat trickled down the back of her neck and between her breasts, the discomfort making her cross. Or maybe that was lack of sleep. Or fear.

Somewhere out there, killers were hunting for them.

She drew up to a stop sign, the word “ALTO” spelled out in big white letters against a red background that had been bleached by the sun. She stopped, looked both ways, then pressed on the gas again, not another car in sight.

Beside her, Zach loaded bullets one by one into a magazine, his fingers moving with a speed that clearly came from experience, sweat beading on his temples. A gun he’d said was an AK-47 rested between his legs, its business end pointing toward the floor. As she watched him, she knew he’d been in situations like this before—up to his neck in trouble and ready to fight. With his thick stubble, dirty, torn jeans, skintight marijuana T-shirt, and hardened physique, he certainly
looked
like a man who lived his life armed and dangerous.

Yet no matter how dangerous he might be, she couldn’t help but worry about him. Given how tired
she
was, she knew he must be exhausted, not to mention in pain, the lines of strain on his face and the dark circles beneath his eyes more noticeable in naked daylight. She’d half expected him to fall asleep the moment the car started moving, but he hadn’t closed his eyes once. He was alert, his body radiating tension, his mind sharp. Still, no man could hold out forever, no matter how strong or hardened he was.

“Your driver’s ed teacher would be proud. Not another car as far as the eye can see, but still you come to a complete stop.” His gaze met hers over the top of mirrored sunglasses, the glint of humor in his gray eyes making her pulse skip.

Oh, no, girl! You are
not
attracted to him.

“You told me not to draw people’s attention.”

How could she find him attractive? He was a crook, a criminal, a man who stole cocaine and shot people and ate dirty grapes off the floor of an arachnid-infested cell—not a gentleman like Beau. The fact that he was also tall, strong, brave, and still had enough goodness left inside him to help her escape the Zetas didn’t matter.

“That was back on the highway. I didn’t want you to attract attention from the cops because some of them work for the Zetas.” He glanced around. “But I doubt you’ll find any cops lurking behind these old saguaros.”

And just like that, she felt like an idiot.

Her cheeks burned. “Sorry. I didn’t think . . . I’m not used to . . . I guess I’m just tired and not thinking clearly. I’m doing the best I can.”

“Do you know what happens if our best isn’t good enough?” His gaze met hers again, any hint of humor gone. “We die.”

Fear made her snap at him. “I know that!”

She hadn’t forgotten that they were running for their lives, but she hadn’t thought of it quite like that either, his stark words making her stomach knot.