CHAPTER 23 #2
He’d read her first-person account of her ordeal this morning, catching it online just before he’d left home.
He couldn’t imagine that it had been easy to write, her compassion for the Mexican journalists and the terror she’d felt evident in every word.
He’d gotten a chuckle out of her alias for him, as, no doubt, she’d intended.
But what had struck him as he’d read the article was her writing.
She wasn’t just a good reporter. She was a talented writer, her words describing her experience in a way that put the reader there beside her.
Of course, Zach had been beside her for most of it, and reading the article had brought him to the rather amazing realization that their trek through the desert had been the most fun he’d had in a very long time.
You are sick in the head, frogman.
He was about a block from his apartment when his cell buzzed. He drew it out and saw that the number was restricted. “McBride.”
“It’s Farrell calling from EPIC.”
Farrell was a DUSM who spent his time tracking down fugitives from the United States who’d crossed into Mexico. What would make him call?
“Go ahead.”
“Word on the street is that men working for Cárdenas have crossed the line and are on their way to Denver to take out that pretty reporter of yours. I thought you’d want to know.”
Cárdenas had never sent his men more than a few miles across the border, and he’d never killed anyone who wasn’t involved with the narco trade. For him to kill a U.S. national deep inside the United States . . .
“Are you sure about this?”
“Heard it myself from a Juarense cop today. Watch your back.”
The line went dead.
“Son of a bitch!” Zach didn’t have Natalie’s cell phone number programmed into his phone or tucked away in his jock. He dialed information. “I need the cell number for Natalie Benoit in Denver, Colorado. It’s an emergency.”
He headed back toward his apartment at a jog.
NATALIE ORGANIZED THE stacks of paper she’d printed out, put them in paper clips, and tucked them into a file folder.
Inspired, she’d decided to download everything she could about the Whitcomb Academy that had to do with money—its major donors, its major corporate sponsors, its board of directors, its board of trustees.
Then she’d printed a list of everyone who’d contributed to the sheriff’s and DA’s last reelection campaigns.
She would spend tonight reading through what she had. If she found nothing suspicious and if the forensic accountant found nothing amiss, she would drop the story tomorrow and pick up something else.
Natalie made her way down to the front entrance.
Gil Cormack, the paper’s security guard, had gone for the day.
She’d thought about asking him to walk her to her car, but she’d stayed a bit too late.
She stopped and scanned the parking lot, but didn’t see anyone.
Then she opened the door and stepped outside.
The wind nearly blew the files she was carrying out of her grasp. Overhead the sky was gray, thunder coming from the west. From the looks of it, they were about to get a downpour.
She had almost reached her car when she heard the faint ring of her cell phone. She fished it out of her purse, struggling to hold on to her files. “Natalie Benoit.”
“Natalie, it’s Zach. I need . . . call . . . Hunter and wait . . .”
“Zach?” She hadn’t been expecting a call from him, and all at once hopes that she’d hidden away came rushing back. “Can you speak a bit louder? I’m in the parking lot on the way to my car, and it’s really windy here.”
“I said . . . back . . . them there. Listen . . . it now.”
“Hold on a minute. I’m at my car now. Let me just get inside. Then I’ll be able to hear you.” She stuck her key in the lock, just as a gust came and tossed the manila folder with its carefully organized pages into the wind. “Oh, damn it. Hang on, Zach.”
She bent down, picked up paper as fast as she could, gusts and eddies swirling some pages under the car next to hers, tossing others across the row. She ran, bending down, purse in one hand, cell phone tucked between her jaw and ear, Zach still shouting something to her.
“Marc and . . . wait inside!”
Wait inside?
“Wait inside? Inside my car?” She’d just gone around to the other side of the car next to hers, when a big gust of wind blew the door of her car shut.
Her car exploded.
She saw the fireball, felt the heat, felt herself falling backward.
And then she felt nothing.
ZACH HAD JUST stepped inside his own front door when he heard the blast and then . . . nothing. Natalie’s phone was dead.
A car bomb.
Christ, no!
Fear hit him with the force of a body blow, making his heart burst, driving the breath from his lungs, turning his knees to rubber.
He dialed 911, told the person on the phone that a car had just exploded in a parking lot in front of the Denver Independent in Denver, Colorado.
Answering the dispatcher’s inane questions, he packed a bag, careful to remember his passport, his badge, and his two service weapons.
Leaving D.C. now would end his career, but he didn’t give a damn.
“Look, I’m in Washington, D.C. I was on the phone with a friend when I heard an explosion, and now her phone is dead. I’m a deputy U.S. marshal, and I’m telling you a car bomb just went off. Get someone—”
“Denver emergency dispatch reports they’ve gotten several calls about it. Fire, police, and ambulance are already en route.”
Zach hung up, finished packing, changed his clothes, and was out the door, hailing a cab the moment his feet hit the sidewalk.
“Get me to the airport as fast as you can.”
But Zach knew that no matter how fast he went, it wouldn’t be fast enough. It was a three-and-a-half-hour flight to Denver, and he didn’t even have a ticket. By the time he made it to Denver . . .
Please let her be alive. Please let her be safe.
“Wait inside? Inside my car?” she’d asked.
That’s not what he’d said, but that’s what she’d heard. He’d told her to go back inside the paper, to call Hunter or Rossiter, and to wait there until they arrived. He hadn’t even had a chance to warn her about the Zetas.
Wait inside? Inside my car?
And then her car had exploded.
Let her be alive! God, please let her be safe!
He never should have left her.
Blackness seeped into Zach’s chest, eating at him like acid, leaving a gaping hole where his stomach had been, cold sweat beading on his forehead.
His prayers meant nothing.
He’d had lots of training in demolition as a SEAL. He knew the kind of explosives the Zetas typically used—high-tech, sophisticated, military grade. If they had rigged her car to explode when she sat in the driver’s seat, then Natalie was already dead.