L.A.P.D. Special Investigations Series, Boxed Set: The Deceived, The Taken & The Silent (16 page)

“Good powers of deduction. You’re thinking like a cop.”

Her cheeks grew warm. “I could never be a cop. And I doubt that I think like one. I’m not that calculating, or that cold.”

“Ouch.” He gave her a pained expression. “Is that how you think of me? Cold and calculating?”

She pulled her gaze away and back to the road, her body rigid.

“Of course not. I don’t think of you at all.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“OUCH. THAT HURTS,” Adam said. “And from my perspective, that’s a very cold comment to make about someone who’s only looking out for your best interests.”

She rolled her eyes. “If I believed that, I’d be sitting back in San José waiting for you to come back.”

“And if you had waited, I’d have been there and back by now. And you would have had a few days of R and R.”

“I don’t need R and R.”

“Everyone needs R and R.”

“Not me. I like being with people I care about—that and my work.”

“You like being stubborn, impulsive and unpredictable.”

“And you have tunnel vision and get an adrenaline rush from chasing down the bad guys.”

“Hmm. You’re fifty percent right. I want to see every crook and scumbag drug dealer behind bars.”

“The jails couldn’t hold them all.”

“There are other alternatives. As long as they’re off the streets, that’s all I care about.”

He didn’t feel the need to explain his reasons for doing what he did. He’d seen too many lives shattered by people who thought the law didn’t apply to them, too many kids destroyed by drugs, some he’d personally tried to help but had lost the battle.

His best friend and former partner was dead because of drug runners. Getting the dealers off the streets meant more to him than just doing his job. Getting the big guys who sat back and made it happen gave him a cause, a purpose. It gave Bryce’s death some meaning.

“Off the streets, dead or alive?”

“If that’s how it has to be.”

She drew back, her expression incredulous. A response he wouldn’t have predicted.

“What? You’re a mother, I’d think you’d champion that cause.”

“The cause, yes. Not your solution.”

He thought about Bryce and what kind of solution there should be for the person who took his friend’s life. But that was a discussion for another time. Like never. Because she would never see the evil he saw every day. She would never see things as he did.

He glanced over. “Tomato, tomahto. It’s all cool.”

Yeah, he got a rush when he caught the bad guys. But massaging her neck, feeling her relax under his hands had given him a bigger rush than a half-dozen two-bit collars. That was like comparing Viagra to a one-a-day vitamin.  And it sure as hell had him thinking twice about touching her again.

So she thought of him as a cold calculating SOB. Good. It was better that way. He had only one objective on this trip—nailing Sullivan.

“Look.” She pointed ahead. “A clearing. Maybe it’s the village.”

“It can’t be. According to this map, we’re still an hour away.”

“Well, at least it’s civilization of some kind. A pit stop, if we’re lucky.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. We haven’t been particularly lucky so far.”

She turned to look at him, her expression perplexed. “Well, I think we’ve been lucky. We may not have found what we wanted, but we’ve found out more than we knew in the beginning. And while we didn’t stay in plush hotels, we didn’t have to sleep with the animals and insects and creepy-crawly things. I call that lucky. Maybe you should try a little positive thinking once in a while.”

“I’m a realist, not a Pollyanna.”

She sat back. “Call me whatever you want, at least I’m happy, which is more than I can say for you.”

Now it was his turn to give her an incredulous look. “Excuse me? How do you presume to know whether I’m happy or unhappy?” The implication annoyed him. How the hell would she know anything about his state of mind? If she did, she’d know he’d rather pull over and do her right here in the car than listen to her yak at him.

Her eyes narrowed. “The outside of a person is a pretty good reflection of what goes on inside, except we usually tone it down for other people or try to mask it in some way. We don’t want the world to see what we really feel.”

“We?” His annoyance kicked up a notch. He didn’t need her self-appointed psychoanalysis. He didn’t need her to tell him whether he was happy or unhappy. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “I’ve found that when one is busy mucking around in another person’s guts and doling out platitudes about what one thinks the other is all about, one is usually avoiding looking into oneself. And that’s probably because it’s so much easier to point out other people’s flaws than it is to look at one’s own.”

When she didn’t respond, he glanced at her from the corner of his eye. He could almost see the steam rising from her skin.

He knew all about avoidance. He was an expert on the subject. It had been easier to screw up his life than to face what was going on inside. And he didn’t need her or anyone else to bring it to his attention as if he didn’t have a clue.

Just then a little girl appeared in the middle of the road directly in front of the car. He stomped on the brake. Jillian lurched ahead, but stuck out her hands and caught the dash in time to stop her forward momentum. The engine died.

“Fuck. Where the hell did that kid come from?”

Jillian, still leaning forward, said, “Where did who come from?”

Reaching out, he lifted the hair away from her face and neck and touched her cheek with his fingertips. “You okay?”

He felt her tense up at his touch, then slowly she raised her head to look at him. Moistening her lips, she said, “I’m fine.”

His heart had stopped when he thought she’d been hurt. But she was okay. He looked out the window, scanned the area. “There was a girl in the middle of the road.”

“I didn’t see anyone.”

Twisting the key in the ignition, he said, “And if you did, it probably would’ve been a fairy godmother ready to lead the way.” The engine made only a grinding sound. He tried again.

“Maybe you need to wait a minute,” she said. “It could be flooded and all it needs is a rest.”

“And we could be sitting in a café on the Left Bank in Paris, but we’re not. And it’s not flooded.”

She smiled, as if she knew he was needling her because he was irritated with himself.

“The child in the road had to come from somewhere nearby,” she said. “And where there are people, help might be available. That’s a good thing.”

He turned. “Don’t you ever get discouraged?”

Her smile widened. “Rarely. I took control of my own destiny a long time ago.”

***

Act instead of react was Jillian’s motto, and fortunately, she and Adam had been of the same mind when it came to assessing the situation.

After waiting fifteen minutes and the engine still wouldn’t turn over, they agreed to set out on foot carrying their gear. They couldn’t just sit in the car on some godforsaken road waiting for help to come, because who knew when that might happen?

The girl had to live somewhere close by, Jillian reasoned, and if they kept to the road, they shouldn’t have any problems. Except that it was drizzling and her gear was getting heavy and now the mud sucked at their boots, like the tentacles of a giant octopus. With every step, the road got worse and their progress slower.

They hadn’t covered a whole lot of ground when Jillian noticed the usually raucous forest was eerily silent. She saw something large dart through the trees just off the road and a little in front of them. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

“Adam. Wait a minute, will you?” she called out as she switched her suitcase to the other hand, then hurried to catch up. Although Adam was loaded down with the rest of their supplies, he looked as if he was on an afternoon hike.

He stopped until she caught up to him. “We have to keep moving. It’s already eleven and if we’re going to reach Cabacera, get the car fixed and make it back to Mirador before dark, we’ve got to hustle. Otherwise, we might be spending the night out here—and I don’t think you’d like that very much.”

“And you would?”

He chuckled. “No. But I guarantee you’d be more uncomfortable than I would.”

“Oh, really?” She stopped abruptly.

“Yeah, really. So what’s up?” He gave her a nudge to keep moving while they talked.

She hitched up her gear and slogged on, walking faster to stay in step with him. She usually had no trouble keeping up with anyone, but with Adam, she felt like a little kid struggling to keep up with a big brother. She kept dropping back a step and then had to kick it up a notch to stay close. “Nothing really, except…well, listen.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s my point. It’s dead quiet.”

He kept on walking.

“What do you think it means? Isn’t that a sign of something?” she said to his back.

“I think it means you’ve seen too many old Rama of the Jungle reruns.”

“No…not true. I just…well, I have this eerie feeling.”

He stopped abruptly, causing her to nearly bump into him. He turned fully around, crossed his arms over his chest and gave her an impatient, skeptical look, the kind where one eyebrow shot up and she knew he was thinking she was overreacting. The rain stopped as quickly as it had started. A ray of sunshine poked through the trees above.

“You have an eerie feeling.”

She moved closer keeping her voice low. “I have keen senses. I know things sometimes, call it intuition or whatever, but most of the time it’s correct. And right now I have this feeling…like we’re being watched.”

A slow grin erupted.

Suddenly the forest was a cacophony of sound again; blue butterflies fluttered up in front of her, leaves rustled, branches snapped, monkeys chattered and squawked, while endless varieties of birds warbled and cawed and swooshed upward in unison, their wings thwapping noisily against the thick leaves.

She pivoted, pulses pounding as she searched the landscape for the cause of the disruption.

She glared at Adam, whose expression was suddenly serious. He put an arm around her shoulders and moved her along at his side. Leaning in, he said in a hushed voice, “We are being watched.”

“We are?” She kept her voice as low as his, her steps quickening with each furtive glance into the bushes. “You know that? Who’s watching? Hungry animals? Bandits? Kidnappers?”

A noise like clothes rustling sounded behind them….and then a crunching sound. She jumped and swung around…and stared into the faces of two men. Men carrying guns. Air gurgled in her throat. “A-Adam!”

She turned to run the other way, but saw more men emerge from the forest, all heavily armed with assault rifles and guns in holsters slung around their waists. Some wore bandanas or flat topped hats over long scraggly hair, and their clothes, mostly camouflage and army type fatigues, were dirty and torn and they looked like they wanted to eat her for dinner.

One of the men rattled off something in Spanish.

“Stay calm,” Adam said under his breath. “We don’t know what they want. It may be nothing.”

“Sus armas!” a tall, burly man said.

He wants our guns, Adam said under his breath. Her eyes darted from one man to the other. Bandits? Kidnappers?

Another man pointed his gun and said something else, pointed at Adam’s waist. Adam lifted his shirt to show he wasn’t carrying. The man indicated his legs, at which point Adam reached down, took a gun from an ankle holster and tossed it on the ground in front of them.

She’d barely had time to be surprised that Adam was carrying a gun when another man shoved his rifle barrel at her, lifting the front of her shirt. He pressed the barrel against her skin then slid the smooth, warm metal downward.

A few men laughed and nodded, then advanced on her, lecherous grins splitting their faces, showing yellowed and rotten teeth as they laughed and had a rapid conversation between them.

She didn’t know what they were saying, but she knew the intent.

Cold, white fear crawled up her spine. She clutched Adam’s arm.

Adam reached an arm around her and with fire in his eyes, spat out a string of words, the veins on his neck popping out as he spoke. She understood one word. Espousa. Wife.

She heard one man call the big burly guy, Elbanco. He had to be the leader since they all seemed to look to him for what to do.

Adam said something to the man called Elbanco and the man’s eyes bulged, he puffed up his chest, walked over and slammed the butt of his rifle into Adam’s stomach. Adam doubled over with a grunt…but stayed on his feet, one arm still clamped around her shoulders.

Jillian’s whole body trembled, but she kept glancing around, hoping she’d see some way out, something she could do to help.

As Adam began to rise up, the guy lifted his gun, ready to smash Adam’s head when Adam said something else in Spanish…and a name…Manolo.

Elbanco stopped mid-swing.  Adam straightened. Spoke again.

The other man spit on the ground next to Adam, then the two exchanged words in a rapid fire conversation that included some names she didn’t recognize and also the name Sullivan.

Then Elbanco barked something to the men next to him and they all began talking at once, arguing, arms waving, eyes darting between her and Adam. It was obvious they wanted to continue what they started.