Breaking Point (36 page)

The floors, walls, and countertops were made of a gray-veined marble, the tub deep and elliptical.
Big enough for two.
The shower was one of those with multiple showerheads, one overhead, three on each side, all adjustable. Twin sinks sat before twin oval mirrors. Small recessed lights shined down from the ceiling like stars, fluffy white towels hung from silver towel racks.

She walked through the room, ran her fingertips over the cool marble, then looked out the single square window onto the city below. “This is unbelievable, Zach. Thank you.”

“We’re not done with the tour yet.”

He led her back out in the hallway to a small room that was her office, her laptop and files sitting on a wide oak desk. “We’re using VPN to allow you to connect with the newspaper, but I’ll explain that later. Let me show you the gym.”

He started back down the stairs, but Natalie had noticed another room upstairs. She walked over to it, saw a double bed with a duffel bag full of weapons on top of it, some shaving things set on the dresser. So he planned to sleep in here, away from her.

She hadn’t expected that. Nothing in how he’d acted toward her had given her any reason to expect that. And her spirits, which hadn’t been high to begin with, sank.

She turned to find him watching her.

“Nothing has changed between us, Natalie. We can’t be together. It will just make things harder for both of us if we sleep together. I’ve been assigned to protect you and help get the Zetas out of Colorado, and I need to stay focused. What happened in the desert—”

“Let me guess—it stays in the desert.” She walked past him and down the stairs, trying not to let him see that what was left of her world had just crumbled.

 

ARTURO WANTED TO laugh. He wanted to gloat. He wanted to rub it in their faces. Instead, he sent a prayer of thanks to La Santa Muerte, fighting to keep the joy out of his voice. “She is not so easy to kill, this Natalie Benoit.”

The bastard sons of whores had planted explosives in her car, but the wind had detonated the bomb, leaving her alive and almost uninjured. Even worse, she had disappeared, evading their best attempts to track her and finish the job.

“She told the cops she saw one of your men outside the newspaper. From her description, it must be your nephew, José-Luis.”

Arturo stopped, shifted the phone to his other ear, the laughter dying inside him. “José-Luis? Perhaps . . . I don’t know where he is.
Sí
. Yes, he is there, I think.”

A low chuckle. “We know he’s there, Arturo. If his presence were to blame for our failure, we’d have sent him back to you in pieces. Instead, it’s convinced every cop and agent in Denver that the Zetas are there on the streets hunting for her. Nice work.”

Arturo could hear the mocking tone in his voice. The stupid
cabrón
.

“The good news is that we may have use for your nephew. And for you. How soon can you meet us in Denver?”

CHAPTER 26

ZACH FINISHED READING the forensics report on Natalie’s car, rage on slow boil in his gut. “It wasn’t a VBIED. The trace amounts of C4 are too low for that, and the blast didn’t crater the pavement. They wanted to kill her. They weren’t interested in destroying anything else.”

He’d decided to take advantage of the fact that Natalie was asleep to hold a briefing with the men. Now that they’d gotten her safely here, it was time to start the next phase of the operation—finding and eliminating the Zetas. He looked up from the page to find the others still reading.

“Agreed.” Darcangelo met his gaze, nodding. “The blast was carefully channeled upward—the work of a pro.”

“You think it was a tilt fuse?” Rossiter asked, still reading.

“That’s what the Zetas typically use,” Zach answered.

“The victim gets in the car, starts driving, and the car’s motion rocks the fuse, sending the mercury to the other end to close the circuit and set off the explosion. It’s a way to make sure the victim is in the vehicle before detonation.”

“And she would have been right where they wanted her, if not for the wind.” Hunter shook his head, set his copy of the report down on the coffee table. “This fucker Cárdenas—what’s his obsession with her?”

“She’s the one who got away.” That was Zach’s best theory at the moment. “He has what I guess you’d call a death fetish. His men kidnap young women and bring them to him. He rapes them, brutalizes them. Then, when they’re almost dead, he sacrifices them to La Santa Muerte, getting his ultimate thrill as that last breath leaves their bodies. We know this because one of his victims wasn’t as dead as he thought she was. Tourists found her in the desert. She was sixteen.”

Rossiter looked up from the page, his gaze hard. “And that’s what this sick son of a bitch had planned for Natalie?”

“Yeah.” It turned Zach’s stomach even to think about it. “One of the Zetas told her that Cárdenas planned to enjoy her and then sacrifice her.”

“I really want to get my hands on this
chingadero
, show him a few things about pain he might have forgotten.” The tight set of Darcangelo’s jaw told Zach that he wasn’t kidding.

“I doubt he’ll set foot north of the line, especially now. He has people do his dirty work for him, like his nephew José-Luis Quintana.” Zach handed out color printouts of Quintana’s face, having gotten an ID on him late this afternoon from Interpol. “This is the man Natalie saw in the newspaper parking lot—the man who assaulted her.”

Darcangelo looked up. “And who tortured you.”

Zach nodded, shoving those memories aside.

“So what is this La Santa Muerte?” Hunter pronounced the name with uncertainty. “Is this a real Catholic saint?”

“No.” Zach and Darcangelo answered at the same time.

“It’s a narco-saint,” Darcangelo added.

Zach deferred to Darcangelo, let him explain it, his own thoughts drifting back to Cárdenas and his motives. By planting those explosives in Natalie’s car, the Zetas had done something they’d never done before. They’d tried to kill someone who wasn’t mixed up in drug trafficking—and they’d come deep into the U.S. to do it.

What had driven them to act?

Maybe this was revenge for the humiliation Cárdenas had suffered when she and Zach escaped. Perhaps she was the first woman to escape him in quite that way. Maybe this was about the cocaine Zach hadn’t stolen. God only knew what Gisella had told them before they’d killed her. Or maybe Cárdenas was trying to keep a vow to his favorite sick icon. But if that were true, why not try to reacquire Natalie and carry out his original plan?

Zach shook his head in frustration and tossed the report onto the coffee table. He wouldn’t find the answers he needed in its pages.

Hunter watched him. “What is it?”

Zach leaned back, stretched his arms out along the back of the leather sofa. “Something feels off about this. I can’t quite explain it, but it’s not like the Zetas to strike this deep into the U.S. or to try to kill someone who isn’t into the drug trade. Zebras don’t change their stripes.”

“Zebras don’t, but maybe Zetas do.” Hunter shrugged and met Zach’s gaze head on. “Just because you couldn’t predict it and were therefore unable to prevent it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

Zach ignored Hunter’s gibe. “I can’t shake the feeling that Cárdenas’s interest in her has to do with something she’s working on at the paper. I looked through her files when we moved them—”

“You looked through my files?” Natalie’s voice came from behind them.

Zach looked over his shoulder to find her standing at the base of the stairs, wearing purple plaid pajamas, looking both sexy and unmistakably pissed off, her hair tousled, her gaze boring through him, her lips a grim line.

“
Shit.”
That was Rossiter.

Hunter gave a low whistle. “Dude—you looked through her files?”

Darcangelo stood. “I think it’s time for us to go.”

 

“YOU CAN’T JUST look through a reporter’s files no matter who you are.” Natalie poured hot water into a mug, set the kettle back on the stove, and pushed past him to reach for a bag of Darjeeling.

“In case you’ve forgotten, there are men out there who are trying very hard to kill you. I’m trying to figure out why so I can keep you safe.”

Turning her back on him, she dropped the tea bag into the water, picked up the mug, and walked to the table, so angry she could spit. “Even if we were investigating the same thing—which we are
not
—you’d have to get a court order before I’d be compelled to share the files with you.”

“A court order? You really expect me to waste time getting a court order when I’m trying save your life?”

“No.” Of course, she didn’t. “But I
do
expect you to ask.” If he’d been her lover, she wouldn’t have been as angry. But he’d made it clear he wasn’t, that he needed a degree of professional distance from her now. If professional distance was what he needed, she would give it to him.

“I wasn’t trying to sneak behind your back or violate your space. You were in the hospital at the time.”

“Then you should’ve waited. You wouldn’t want me snooping through your files, would you?” She looked down at her tea, realized she’d forgotten sugar and milk. She stood and walked back into the kitchen, avoiding his gaze.

“That’s different. I’m a federal operative. I have access to classified information, secrets that could get people killed, stuff no one is allowed to see.”

She whirled about to face him. “And I’m a journalist. My job is—”

Dizziness swamped her. She reached for the counter, granite cool beneath her palm as she fought to not faint.

Strong hands caught her shoulders, held her steady. “You need to calm down and take it easy.”

“Don’t touch me.” She drew away from him, hugged her way along the counter, then sank into a chair, her head still spinning.

“What did you want?”

“What do you mean?” She didn’t understand.

“When you came back this way—what did you come for?”

It took her a moment. “Milk and sugar.”

He brought both, together with something else she’d forgotten—a spoon. He set all three in front of her.

“Thank you.” No matter how angry she was, she couldn’t forfeit her manners.

“You’re welcome.” He sat down across from her. “This isn’t about me looking through your files. It’s about what I said this afternoon. It’s about the two of us.”

His words cut through her anger, left her perilously close to tears. Fighting to hold herself together, she stirred milk and sugar into her tea, then set the spoon aside and held the warm mug between her palms.

“When I woke up in the hospital and saw you there, I thought . . . I thought you’d come back for me, that you’d changed your mind.” She’d thought that maybe her brush with death had made him realize he cared about her enough to stop running and to face his PTSD. But the explosion hadn’t changed a thing. He was still running. “But you’re just here to do a job. You didn’t come back for me. You came for the Zetas.”

“You know that’s not true.” There was a defensive edge to his voice, and she could tell she’d hurt him.

“Since you’re on assignment now, maybe you should be out on the streets instead of babysitting me.” She sipped, burned her tongue. “Maybe someone else with less experience dealing with the Zetas—another DUSM or maybe one of your new special deputies—should stay here with me, while you hunt down this Quintana.”

“I’m here and not on the streets because I don’t trust anyone else to keep you safe. I
am
here for you, Natalie. I care about you more than you know. But I’ve already told you—it won’t work.”

This admission only made her more upset. He said he cared about her, but he wasn’t willing to give the two of them a chance.

“Why won’t it work? Because you saw some terrible things in combat and have nightmares? I have nightmares, too, Zach. I lost everyone I loved in a single day. We all have our demons.”

He shook his head, his gray eyes going hard. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Forgetting her tea, she stood. “I thought you were the bravest man I ever met, but I guess I was wrong. You’re a big chicken, Zach McBride. You can face the scary stuff like torture, killers, and bullets, but when it comes to things that can’t really hurt you, like memories, like the past, you can’t stand your ground.”

Fighting another spell of dizziness, she hurried upstairs to her bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

ZACH WALKED UPSTAIRS toward Natalie’s room to check on her. It had been a good three hours since she’d dropped that bomb in his lap and disappeared. At first he’d been mad as hell and glad for the space. Then suppertime had come and gone without a sound from her, and he’d begun to worry that perhaps she wasn’t sulking.

Head injuries had a bad way of surprising people.

He rapped with a knuckle on her door. “Natalie?”