7. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
G o after her .
Chase after her and apologize .
Steve ignored that urge to follow and stayed rooted to the spot. Part of that reluctance to follow was borne of shame. He never should have made that crass attempt at seduction while her baby nephew was right there. Mostly, it was because he sensed she needed space.
As much as he wanted to try to win her heart, Steve understood this wasn’t the time. She was a single mother trying to keep her wild daughter from trouble, her family protected and a billion-dollar business running. Romance was probably the last thing on her list of priorities.
And it should be last on mine, too .
He was already skating on thin ice with his superiors. He’d been sent down here to do jobs—setup a liaison agreement with the Mexican government and interrogate the kid. He’d done both, and he should have been back in Dallas, ready to follow up on his open cases.
Instead, he was here, using PTO for an illness he didn’t have and trying to lay low and stay off the radar. Not that he was succeeding at that...
“Do you need a ride back to the hotel?” Beto asked when Steve emerged from the library shortly after Dina disappeared. He looked tired, same as everyone else in the house, and had on the rattiest t-shirt and stained jeans Steve had ever seen. The scent of the sea clung to him along with a hint of cigarettes and some kind of paint.
“If you don’t mind?” Steve replied, not really keen on the idea of getting an Uber this far out from the city.
“I don’t mind.” Beto had a gleam in his eye, the kind that warned Steve there was an ulterior motive to his offer. Had he overheard that conversation? Had he been lurking outside, listening to Steve proposition his sister in that awful way?
“Thanks.” Steve had never been one to shy away from trouble so he fell into step with Beto.
“You’re staying in town a while longer?” Beto asked as they traversed the impressive mansion.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“How so?”
“I think we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
“You can hire all the help you need,” Steve pointed out.
“And we will,” Beto assured him.
“But?”
“But paying for help doesn’t always inspire loyalty.”
“It can if you pay more than anyone else.”
Beto laughed. “Yes, well, that’s not a problem for us.”
“I didn’t think it would be.”
“This way.” Beto gestured to a side door off the long hallway connected to the massive kitchen where the family’s cook had plied him with food and drink. “Jovita likes you.”
“She’s a sweet old lady.”
“She’s like a second mother to us. Sometimes, I think she understood us better than our actual mother.”
Steve wasn’t sure what to say to that. He’d only interacted with Soila Farias twice now, but she seemed a loving mother. Of course, he’d only gotten a glimpse into the family dynamics.
Beto led him through the door and out into the cool night. A gravel pathway meandered away from the house toward a hidden parking area and the ugliest truck Steve had ever seen. It was an old Ford, probably late 80’s and very boxy. The red and white paint job was faded and peeling, and the body was dented along both sides of the cab.
“I know,” Beto said, as if reading his mind. “But it runs well, and it doesn’t mind getting beat up by all the salt and wind when I leave it at the docks.”
“Where did you even get this thing?” Steve figured it was older than Beto by at least ten years.
“I won it in a bet when I was sixteen,” Beto explained before wrenching open the heavy driver’s side door. The metal squealed and clanged, and Steve carefully opened his door, worried the whole thing might come off and smash his foot. “I think I did the guy a favor taking it.”
“Probably cheaper giving it away to you than paying to have it hauled off for scrap,” Steve supposed. When he climbed into the cab, he expected a lungful of stink, but it smelled like old leather and Marlboros. The interior was surprisingly nice with only a few small tears in the cloth seats and a couple of scratches on the dashboard.
“I have to park out here because the oil leaks.” Beto turned the key in the ancient ignition, and the truck roared to life. “The last time Rafa found a puddle in the family garage he nearly blew a pupil over it.”
“He strikes me as the type to be particular about things.”
“A little less these days,” Beto said before shifting the truck into drive. “Jasper has really changed him.”
“And his wife?”
“She’s too good for him, but she loves him so...” Beto shrugged and smiled. “He’s crazy for her. She’s made him a better man.”
“I hear a good woman has that effect.”
“Like my sister maybe?” Beto didn’t glance away from the windshield, as if giving Steve a chance to deny it. “I saw the way you looked at her when she walked into Rafa’s office the other day and again today. You recognized her, and she definitely recognized you. How long have you two known each other?”
There was no way to answer that without revealing facts that Dina clearly wanted to keep hidden. “It’s complicated.”
“Uh-huh,” Beto dryly replied. “More so for her than you, I think.”
“Why do you say that?” He braced his hand against the door as Beto turned onto the two-lane road connecting the estate to a highway. The rickety old truck still had some life in it as Beto floored the gas pedal and ripped down the road at breakneck speed.
“Dina has always been complicated, even when we were kids. After the murders...,” his voice trailed off. “Well, things became much more complicated for her.”
“Those murders weren’t her fault.” Steve defended her because she wasn’t here to defend herself. “Do you blame her for them?”
“Me?” Beto shot him a surprised look. “No. Never.”
“The rest of your family?”
Beto hesitated. “Lola did, at first, but she was so young when it happened. She didn’t know any better. She and Dina patched things up years ago.”
“And your mother?”
Beto sighed. “She says she doesn’t, and I do believe she’s forgiven Dina for bringing Diego into our lives.”
“But?”
“My mother isn’t one to forget so easily.” Whatever Beto what was going to say next was forgotten. He looked in the rear-view mirror and frowned. “That’s strange.”
“What?” Steve turned in his seat and immediately spotted the headlights behind them. “One of your workers? Someone leaving your fields late?”
“Not in a Land Rover,” Beto replied stiffly.
“You’ve got good eyes,” Steve remarked, unable to identify the make from that distance in the dark. He brushed his hand over the hidden holster under his lightweight jacket. “You carrying?”
“Glove box.” Beto briefly glanced his way. “I hope you’re not planning on a gun fight out here. I’m a terrible shot.”
“Good to know,” Steve muttered as he dug his phone out of the pocket of his jeans. He glanced at the screen and cursed. “Shit. I’ve got no signal.”
“Try mine.” Beto handed over the unlocked phone.
“No. Nothing.” A dark pit twisted in his gut. Was this a coordinated attack? Was someone using a signal jammer?
“Hold on!” Beto’s warning came a split-second before the Land Rover slammed into the back of the truck. Steve lurched forward, barely escaping a terrible blow of his forehead against the dash, and remembered why lap belts had been replaced with three-point belts.
Gunshots cracked, and bullets clanged and ricocheted off the truck’s bed and roof. As Beto cursed like, well, a sailor, Steve twisted in his seat and retrieved his weapon. He didn’t want to fire it in a closed cab, especially not that close to Beto’s ears. The last thing either needed was to be rendered momentarily deaf when being chased.
Luckily, the old truck had a sliding window along the back of the single cab. He pushed it aside, frankly shocked it actually moved considering all the rust and salt accumulated on the track, and stuck his pistol through it. Giving Beto a quick warning, he said, “Keep it steady.”
Steve fired twice, striking the windshield directly in front of the driver. He must have hit his mark because the Land Rover swerved wildly from side-to-side before flying off the road and into the low ditch on the right. “Slow it down and whip a U-turn.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Beto showed tremendous control as he eased his foot off the accelerator and brough the truck around so they were facing back toward the estate and the wrecked Land Rover. He didn’t panic or raise his voice. “What now?”
“Wait here.” Steve grabbed Beto’s gun from the glove box and handed it to him. “If they come at me, you drive straight back to the estate. Empty that clip into the Land Rover as you drive by.”
“I’m not leaving you here!”
“Your family is back at the house, and they’re in danger. You leave me here, and you save them.” Steve hopped out of the truck, gun drawn, and advanced on the crash scene. He approached cautiously, keenly aware that he was unprotected and likely to die if hit with a bullet at this close range.
Gingerly, he stepped off the road and walked down into the ditch. The driver of the Land Rover was obviously dead. He was hanging out the busted window, one arm flung high and clearly broken. A cheap handgun gleamed in the moonlight, and Steve kicked it aside.
With his gun trained on the cab, he realized the passenger door was open. Smears of wet blood discolored the dash and stained the seat. Whoever had been sitting there, probably firing a gun, was hurt and badly.
Certain the passenger couldn’t have gotten far, Steve cautiously walked around the front of the truck. He reached the passenger side and glass crunched under his boots. The light from the interior of the vehicle helped him find and follow a blood trail to a fence.
He hesitated only a moment before vaulting over the fence. Wishing he had a flashlight, he picked his way across the open ground, trying not to fall in any holes or step on anything dangerous. He wasn’t very informed on all the wildlife out here, but he suspected the same things that could kill him in Texas were lurking here, too.
A pained groan echoed in the night. Steve froze and lifted his weapon, training it left and right as he searched for the source of the sound.
There. Another groan. This one weaker.
Steve stepped closer to a brushy heap and found a bloody sneaker. He followed the line of the leg to the battered body of a young man curled on his side, hyperventilating and clutching his stomach.
“Are you armed?” Steve asked in Spanish, not giving the guy a chance to kill him. “Do you have a gun?”
“No. No. No gun.” The guy moaned pitifully. “My stomach! It hurts! I need a doctor!”
Not trusting that the man wasn’t armed, Steve approached as carefully as possible. He assessed the situation as best he could in the shadows. No jacket or hoodie or anything else to hide a weapon. Steve quickly patted down the man’s legs and ankles before checking his T-shirt.
As he finished his weapon search, Steve ran his hand along the man’s belly. The guy screamed in pain, and Steve decided there was some serious internal trauma happening. “You’re probably bleeding inside. Did you hit your belly on the dash?”
“I need a doctor! Please! Help me! I don’t want to die!”
“You didn’t seem to care if we died,” Steve growled, feeling no sympathy for this asshole.
“I didn’t have a choice! They made me!”
“Hey! Steve!” Beto called from the ditch, exactly where Steve had told him explicitly not to go. “I got a signal! Police are on their way!”
“We need an ambulance!” Steve called back, not taking his eyes off the injured man. If there was any hope of finding out who had sent these two would-be assassins and why, they had to keep him alive.
“Okay. I’ll tell them!”
“You have any first aid in your truck?”
“No.”
Steve hoped that ambulance was driving fast.