Chapter Five
He was going to be her source.
Maggie shuffled into a galley-style kitchen that’d been upgraded with chef-level appliances, beautiful countertops, sleek cabinets and expensive tile. It seemed everything about this place followed the same theme: the best of the best. Including the men and women operating out of this building.
“Our logistics coordinator takes her job very seriously.” Jones ducked into the refrigerator ahead of her, pulling a stack of what looked like prepackaged food from one of the shelves. In her limited vision around his muscular frame, she caught at least four rows deep of those containers. “She tries to make sure we’re not living off protein bars and shakes by putting together meals throughout the week. You want a Mediterranean bowl or peppercorn beef tenderloin?”
Her mouth watered at the possibility of having both. Right before her stomach knotted with hunger. Her body was working overtime, trying to repair the damage sustained over the past week. That took extra calories, but she wasn’t exactly sure what her role here as guest entailed. Taking more than her share broke social conventions. At the same time, she could’ve probably eaten that entire refrigerator full of food. “I didn’t think deciding what to eat would be such a tough choice.”
“Then you can have both.” Jones set the dinners—though was it dinner at four in the afternoon?—on the countertop and hunted for another meal. “I’ll heat these up and bring them to the table.”
“I can help.” Her left leg thought otherwise, but she wasn’t going to let Sosimo Toledano get the best of her. Not after she’d come this far. Maggie pried the lid of the Mediterranean bowl free, instantly craving the seasoned couscous beneath the fragrant chicken and tomato mixture. She made quick work of shoving the package into the microwave and hitting start as Jones withdrew from the refrigerator with his own serving in hand. She wasn’t really sure what to do, what to say, as the countdown ticked off on the digital screen. She dug her fingernails into her palms—right where the pierced skin had started healing—and forced herself to release before she hurt herself all over again. “I’m sorry about your brother. About what happened to him. You said the military couldn’t do anything to recover him without starting a war.”
“Kincaide had been caught over enemy lines.” Jones set his lower back against the counter, taking up so much space in the undersized kitchen, she felt small in comparison. Though not intimidated. Thick muscle banded beneath his T-shirt as he crossed his arms over his chest. He stood there, every ounce the operative she’d read up on when coming on board for American Military News .
“From what I’d been able to put together, he and his unit were assigned to pull a confidential informant out. It was all under the table. No official reports. Nothing on paper. The US wasn’t supposed to be there, but this source was too valuable to let him get caught by his own people.”
Maggie rested her weight against the opposite counter, facing him head on. His boots nearly touched her socked feet in the limited distance between them. And wasn’t that the perfect comparison between them? He was solid, reliable, the kind of man who stayed on the defense while she’d rather curl up in bed and hide until the hard things went away. “But his unit was ambushed?”
“It was a setup. The informant turned on Kincaide and the others. Led them straight to their capture. In most cases, their deaths.” Jones seemed to lose himself for a series of breaths. “Sending a unit to retrieve them would’ve been seen as an act of war. The US wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. Couldn’t just ask for our hostages back without admitting we’d crossed the line.”
The microwave shrieked, letting her know her first meal was hot and ready, but despite the invasive hunger carving through her, Maggie didn’t move. “So you went after him?”
“Took some time.” Two divots deepened between his eyebrows. Jones shifted his weight from one leg to the other. She could practically see his agitation at reliving those terrorizing memories, and Maggie wanted nothing but to close the distance between them. To offer some kind of comfort as he’d offered her the past four days. “I couldn’t just up and leave my assignment when I heard. Nobody would tell me where he was. I had to call in a few favors to get the intel, and even then, I didn’t have any support. No team. Superiors telling me it was all out of my purview.”
“How did you manage to get him out of there?” The answer was already there, at the front of her mind. In the way he’d fought to get her out of Sangre por Sangre ’s grasp. How he’d risked his life and Socorro’s reputation protecting her. Jones Driscoll wasn’t just doing a job. He was the kind of man willing to go down with the ship to save a relationship. The kind of man who put off his own needs in the face of his team’s well-being. Who would disregard direct orders for the chance to save a life and didn’t want anyone else making decisions for him and the people he cared about. The kind of man she only believed existed in fairy tales.
“I had a contact in the country. He got me over the border with an alias. Provided weapons, a satellite phone and an extraction.” Jones seemed to come back to himself then, hiking himself away from the counter as he collected her heated food from the microwave. He somehow managed to make his movements look graceful despite his size. Something she’d never been good at, even though she was a hundred pounds lighter. “Took two days of surveillance to determine the hostiles were keeping Kincaide and another soldier from his unit in these underground tunnels. I had to go in hard. Take out as many combatants as I could in the first two minutes, but when I got to the end... I didn’t even recognize him.”
The bruising and cuts around Maggie’s face seemed to come alive then, reminding her that thirty-six hours ago, she hadn’t been recognizable either. The swelling had contorted her face into something alien. “But you got him home. You saved your brother. Him and his teammate, right?”
“I got them home, but I didn’t realize until later I’d only saved a part of him.” Jones pulled a drawer free and handed off a fork along with her meal.
She nearly dissolved into the warmth coming from the container. It was little things like this she’d missed the most while being Toledano’s captive. Warmth. Light. Someone else to talk to rather than be talked at. “What do you mean?”
“The man I pulled out of there looked like my brother, talked like him even, but that was where the recognition ended.” He didn’t bother heating up his own meal, just stabbed a fork into the center, and her heart threatened to squeeze her to death. “He’d suffered several brain injuries in the weeks he’d been captive, to the point he’d forgotten big stretches of his life. He couldn’t remember certain words. Sometimes he’d start talking, then lose track of what he was saying.”
Maggie didn’t have the stomach for couscous anymore. Her mouth dried up with the realization of why Jones had gone to such lengths to pull her out of Sangre por Sangre ’s headquarters the way he did. Why he’d put so much time and energy into ensuring she recovered from her injuries. Why he paid attention to every word out of her mouth. “He didn’t know you anymore?”
“No. He didn’t.” A reservoir of despair flooded into his expression. “Within a few months, the scar tissue building in his brain got so bad he lost fine motor control. He had to be put on a ventilator and a feeding tube. And I knew he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life like that. I knew if he’d had the choice, he would’ve wanted to die in that ambush with his team rather than live the rest of his life in a hospital bed. He wouldn’t have wanted me to sit by him hoping he’d snap out of it. So I did what I had to do.”
She set her meal aside on the counter and, no longer able to keep her distance, reached out. Hesitant, careful. Her fingers skimmed along his arm, giving him the chance to pull away if he needed. Only he didn’t. He didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe at her touch. She threaded her hand between his arm and rib cage, securing him in a hug. “I’m so sorry, Jones.”
His hand found her shoulder blade, and within seconds the past few days diminished to a distant memory. Something she’d witnessed but hadn’t lived through. Because of him. His resiliency, his concern, his drive to support the people in his life. And she needed that. More than she wanted to admit.
“How’s the leg?” he asked.
“Stronger, I think.” The lie left her mouth easier than she expected. In truth, her toes had gone numb since leaving her hospital bed, but she didn’t want to give him another reason not to see this through. Without her to interrogate, Toledano would have started looking for that SD card, if he hadn’t already. There were only so many places she could’ve hidden it in the short seconds between him and his men killing those soldiers and her racing to escape. He’d find it, sooner or later.
Unless she and Jones got to it first.
Jones unwound his arm from around her, and Maggie instantly missed the steady beat of his heart in her ear. Which was ridiculous. She wasn’t in a position or in the right mindset to want anything more than a source at this point in her life. She’d spent years disconnecting herself from everyone around her. Her ex, her parents, her siblings—anyone who’d abandoned her in the divorce. She didn’t need or want attachments that would get in the way of this new life she’d built for herself. But she couldn’t ignore that deep loneliness either. Or that Jones seemed to ease that ache.
“You should eat up.” Jones nodded toward her discarded food on the countertop. “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”
“Right.” She grabbed the container and forked a heaping pile of couscous into her mouth. But Maggie had a feeling eating enough wasn’t going to be the biggest hurdle they went up against.
J ONES SCANNED THROUGH the satellite images for the tenth—or was it the eleventh?—time. Six nights ago. That was when Maggie had said she’d followed the cartel into the desert, that Sosimo Toledano had ambushed and murdered ten American soldiers to prevent his own capture.
Only that wasn’t what the satellite had recorded.
As far as he could tell, there was nothing out there. How the hell was that possible? Or was there something Maggie wasn’t telling him? Maybe she’d gotten the days mixed up. It was impossible to keep track of time in survival mode, when every second of every day threatened to pulverize you. But going back another couple days didn’t produce anything either. Jones double-checked the dates as low voices registered from the news report on the TV across the room.
Maggie had turned it on and promptly fallen asleep on his bed after they’d finished dinner. Gotham curled up next to her, despite knowing the bed was off-limits to fur balls like him, and Jones couldn’t help but feed into the jealousy as he watched the two of them asleep now. Seemed he wasn’t the only one breaking the rules.
Jones took in the latest news report. No one was reporting on this. No one had noticed a war correspondent had even gone missing. Or knew that Maggie Caddel was alive. This didn’t make sense. Someone would’ve noticed. While he knew the full effect of the military’s need for confidentiality, Maggie’s abduction would’ve at least made local news. So why hadn’t it? Surely her boss would have reported it. Someone who knew her.
He unpocketed his phone from his cargo pants and scrolled through the contacts. Hitting the name and number for Alpine Valley’s chief of police, he darted for the door and closed it softly behind him, watching to ensure Maggie didn’t wake up in the process. The line rang once then connected. He kept his voice low. “Halsey, it’s Jones. I need a favor.”
“And here I thought you were checking in on me.” Baker Halsey had become one of the only outsiders Jones trusted to get to the truth. Halsey headed the massive cleanup of the landslide that had buried a quarter of Alpine Valley after a bombing meant to kill him and Socorro’s logistics coordinator. He would do anything to protect his town. Something Jones wanted him to do now. “What do you need?”
“Maggie Caddel. You know the name?” Jones checked to make sure the door was still secure behind him. He moved farther down the hall. As much as he believed every word out of Maggie’s mouth, trauma altered so many facets of truth and perception. He had to cover all his bases.
“Sounds familiar. I think she left me a message once. You know, before my phone and the whole police station got blown to hell a few weeks ago,” Halsey said. “She’s a reporter or something like that, right?”
“Yeah. American Military News . Has there been a missing person report filed on her? Anyone coming to the police asking about her or her whereabouts?” Because a woman didn’t just up and disappear without anyone noticing. She had family, friends, coworkers, neighbors. Someone had to know something was wrong when she didn’t come home.
“Not that I know of, but I’m not really handling the day-to-day while we try to clean up this mess. That mostly goes to my deputies.” There was a deafening silence before Halsey’s next question. “Why? Is this Caddel lady in some kind of trouble?”
“Something like that.” Jones was missing something. He could feel it. “Listen. Can you get in touch with your guys? See if her name comes up? Check with Albuquerque PD, too. Nothing official. Try to keep it off the books.”
“Sure.” Halsey’s voice lost the lightness the chief had taken on since partnering up with Jones’s teammate, Jocelyn. “But do you want to tell me what’s going on first?”
“I’m not sure yet.” The muscles in his spine tightened disk by disk as his bedroom door cracked open, putting Maggie in his sights. Jones held up his index finger to buy him another minute. “Find out what you can.”
He ended the call before Halsey could ask too many questions Jones didn’t know how to answer. He trusted the chief to come through. The ambush Maggie described couldn’t just be swept under the rug. Not without leaving some kind of evidence behind.
Maggie left the safety of his bedroom, her foot still slightly dragging behind her right. “Everything okay? I woke up and you were gone.”
“Yeah. Everything’s fine.” He tucked his phone back into his pocket. “Just checking in with the local chief of police. How are you feeling?”
“Better. Thanks. It’s amazing what a nap and a shower can do for the soul.” She set the side of her head against the wall as she leaned into it for support. How the woman was still standing after everything she’d been through, Jones didn’t know. He couldn’t even imagine how much strength it took.
“I thought that was chicken soup,” he said.
“I’ll take that if you have it, too. Even after both of those meals you gave me, I still feel like I could eat.” Her smile tugged at one side of her mouth and washed the heaviness from her expression in an instant, but Jones had the distinct impression it didn’t come as easy as it looked. As though she’d reserved it just for him. “Did the police have anything to say about what happened?”
“No. Nothing yet.” His phone vibrated from his pocket, but his smartwatch said he’d regret answering. Ivy Bardot wanted answers, and as one of her operatives, he was required to give them. And he couldn’t hold her off anymore. “My boss is calling. I’ll need to meet with her, give her a rundown of what’s going on.”
“I understand. Go. Gotham and I will be fine. Just bring me back something to eat if you can. I’m starving.” Before he had a chance to comprehend his next move, Maggie reached out, brushing her hand along his forearm. “Good luck.”
The feel of her skin against his triggered a subatomic reaction in his nervous system, putting him instantly at ease. History and training had convinced him he could only feel that kind of effect in the middle of the battlefield or an operation, but this was different. More intense. Warm, even. “Thanks.”
Jones watched as she retreated into his bedroom and closed the door behind her before he navigated two floors up to Socorro’s founder’s office. He knocked on the solid wood door but didn’t wait for an answer, shoving inside. “You rang.”
Ivy Bardot shuffled through the stack of paperwork in her hands. Low eyebrows matching fiery red hair refused to budge as she took in whatever information she was reviewing. “You’ve been busy over the past couple of days from what I can see. Made a friend, too. Tell me about her.”
Always to the point. Though, while Jones had been careful about how much information to give Alpine Valley’s chief of police, Ivy Bardot most likely already knew everything he was about to brief her on. Lying, even by omission, was pointless, but more than that, Jones had no reason to keep information from her. The former FBI investigator had been hailed as one of the best, racking up more closed cases than any other agent in history before she’d peeled off from the federal government and founded Socorro, a defense against the country’s most vile and violent organizations. One he was happy to be part of. Trusted. “Maggie Caddel, war correspondent for American Military News . I found her half-dead at the cartel’s hands three nights ago. I was going to come to you with this eventually. Just trying to sort out the details.”
Ivy flipped one of the pages in her hand toward him. “You accessed the satellite footage of a stretch of desert from around the time you recovered her.”
There was the investigator he’d always admired. The one who’d proven time and time again how to put the puzzle together long before anyone else. Jones dared a step forward, needing movement, something to distract his brain from the unease circling through him. “Maggie claims to have witnessed the slaughter of ten American soldiers the night she was abducted. She took photos. Hid the SD card out there in the desert right before the cartel found her.”
“Claims.” One word. That was all it took for Jones to reconsider everything he thought he knew about this investigation. Socorro’s founder didn’t believe in coincidence. She didn’t trust investigations lacking evidence. And she didn’t support assignments running off pure emotion. “These images you requested from our friends at the Pentagon don’t show any activity in the area. Cartel or otherwise. That kind of operation would be hard to miss, especially with the loss of American lives.”
“But not impossible.” His theory didn’t feel right, though. Like he’d missed something. That was the problem with satellite imagery—there were thousands of pixels invisible to the human eye. He needed more information. Something concrete. “She could be misremembering the time frame in which she was held. Or there’s something more going on here. Something that might even be above our pay grade.”
“Take a seat, Jones.” Ivy leaned back in her expensive leather chair, not a single wrinkle daring to crease her navy pantsuit. “I understand why you pulled her out of there, got her medical attention. She needed help, and you provided it. I commend that in my operatives. I encourage it. Why else are we here if not to protect the innocent against Sangre por Sangre ? I can even understand why you would want to see this through, despite the evidence contrary to her statement, but she is not your brother, Jones. If you take on this investigation, I need to know your regret isn’t leading the way. That you will look at the facts.”
Jones locked his grip around the ends of the chair arms. He forced himself not to let his ego respond. Because, yes, some part of him wished that he’d been able to save Kincaide, but the other... The other part suspected there was a lot more going on here than some journalist caught at the wrong place at the wrong time. “The cartel didn’t detain, question and torture her for days on end for no reason, Ivy. They wanted something from her, and she didn’t give it to them. You and I both know we can’t just send her back out there without protection. They’ll find her, and they’ll finish the job. Maggie has been following Sangre por Sangre soldiers for a year. I believe her when she says there was an ambush that resulted in the murder of American troops, that Sangre por Sangre is trying to cover it up and that she has proof. I trust her.”
“Then I suggest you and Ms. Caddel take a field trip back to the location she was abducted and find that proof.” She motioned toward the door, and Jones shoved himself to his feet. Dismissed. Ivy called from behind. “But if you come back with nothing, I trust that you’ll let this go. Before it’s too late.”