Silence in the Dark (10 page)

White-faced, Bailey took the child and fumbled for the seat belt. Gunfire erupted as he scrambled into the pilot seat and started the engine. More gunshots and he jerked his head toward the road. One of the cars veered off the pavement and flipped over. One down, two to go. Wait. There were two more cars turning off the highway. But they were shooting at the Calatrava. Angel fired, then he turned and ran to the plane.

“Get this bird off the ground,” he yelled as he slammed the cockpit door.

Danny gave him a thumbs-up and taxied to the runway. “Your men?”

Angel nodded, but his gaze went beyond the cockpit.

Danny glanced back. The Calatrava had breached the SUV. They were still close enough that a bullet could hit the plane. A quick check of the wind sock indicated the wind was out of the south. Good. He was on the northern end of the runway and only had to taxi a short distance to take off into the wind.

Just as he turned the plane to the runway, gunshots popped like firecrackers, and a hole appeared in the wing on Danny’s left.
Not now.
They were so close to taking off. He checked his gauges. Fuel holding steady. Hydraulic system the same. Maybe they’d literally dodged a bullet.

“Will that affect the plane?”

Evidently Angel had seen the bullet hole. Danny shoved a headset into his hands. He didn’t want Bailey to know they’d been hit. As soon as they both donned the earphones, he said, “I don’t think it hit anything vital. The holes might make it a little harder to control. If that happens, once we get across the border in Texas, I’ll land and check it out.”

Danny taxied into position and ran the engine up to 75 percent of power, then seconds later he pushed the throttle against the fire wall to full power. As the plane raced down the runway, he checked his gauges again. Everything showed green. When he passed sixty-four knots, he pulled back on the yoke and felt the Cessna lift off the ground.

As the Cessna lifted higher, he glanced below. A man stood on the runway, a gun in his raised hand. They were sitting ducks. Three of Angel’s men ran toward the man, and he whirled, firing in their direction. Angel’s men returned fire, and the man crumpled to the ground. Danny wiped sweat from his face with the back of his hand. He never wanted to be that close to a man with a gun pointed at him again.

He swung the plane toward home. Didn’t seem as though the bullet hole would be a problem. Bailey punched his shoulder, and he looked back. Her mouth was moving, but he couldn’t hear her over the noise in the cabin. He handed her three headsets, and she put hers on after handing the other two off to Solana.

“The bullet hole—are we okay?”

Her anxiety transmitted through the microphone loud and clear. He checked his gauges again. “We’re fine.” He glanced at
the small girl with her face plastered against the window. “How’s Maria?”

“Better than I am. She seems to think we’re in a TV program.”

Danny laughed. “Someone needs to monitor what she watches.”

She gave him a tiny smile back, then her expression sobered. “The plane is really okay?”

He looked around again. More than anything, he wanted to erase the worry in her eyes. To be her hero again. “Yes. And there’s nothing standing in our way of landing at the Logan Point airfield in about six hours.”

The warmth in her eyes gave him hope that just maybe he’d redeemed himself a little in her books.

Angel’s voice cut into their conversation. “What do you plan to do about Maria?”

Danny figured he was talking to Bailey, so he waited for her to answer.

“I still want to take her to her grandparents—oh no!” She leaned forward. “They’ll be looking for us tonight. I was supposed to call them when we got off the plane in Memphis. When I don’t, they’ll be worried. I have to let them know where we are.”

“No!” Angel’s sharp retort startled him.

“Why not? They’re her grandparents.”

Even over the microphone, Danny heard the stubbornness in her voice. He glanced at Angel. For once, Bailey may have run up against someone as stubborn as she was.

Her eyes widened, and she shook her head. “How about if I tell them we won’t be there tonight.”

Angel nodded. “As long as you don’t try to take her to them. Her grandparents are old and won’t know how to protect her if the Calatrava show up.”

Danny glanced at the backseat. Bailey leaned back and at least seemed to be considering what Angel said. “He’s right,” Danny said. “None of us know how far these men will go to get Maria.”

“Do you really think they’ll follow us to Mississippi?”

He shrugged, but Angel didn’t respond. It was evident he knew more than he was sharing, and when they landed to refuel, Danny intended to find out just what he knew. But first he had to alert the Border Protection Agency that they were crossing from Mexico into the States.

He frowned as Angel nodded toward Bailey and handed him a note that said to turn off her headphones.

8

J
oel paced his boss’s den. What if it was Angel he saw? He stopped when Edward Montoya asked him the same question for the second time. “If I knew why those men kidnapped me, I’d tell you. I don’t have a clue about that or why they want Maria other than a ransom demand. What did you find out about my passport?”

“I contacted the correct authorities. You will need to go to the American Embassy when you leave here and pick up a temporary one. Now, sit down, you’re making me nervous.” Edward Montoya selected a cigar from the humidor and cut the tip off.

Joel sank into the leather wingback chair farthest from the fireplace. The ever-present fire in the den had made him shed his jacket five minutes after he arrived. At least he’d have his passport for flying commercially to the States in the morning.

“Do you owe the cartel money?”

“No. I don’t deal with the cartel for anything. Besides, if I needed money, I would have come to you.” He could never let Edward know about the money he’d lost at the casinos. At the time, he hadn’t realized the person he was getting in debt to was connected to the cartel.

“You have no gambling debts?”

“Nothing I can’t pay.” Except last night, he’d added to his debt
instead of reducing it. As soon as he could access the offshore account, he’d pay it off. But when he did, he had to be prepared to disappear for good, unless . . . he was brazen enough to steal the money and sit tight. It was something to consider, and if he could pull it off, at least he wouldn’t be looking over his shoulder the rest of his life.

“And these men said nothing? Gave you no indication of what they wanted?”

“No. They just kept hammering away about where Bailey and Maria were.” Montoya’s interest in Maria puzzled him. While she was his great-niece, he’d never been sentimental about family.

Joel studied his boss. Edward Montoya had the Spanish name but not much else that marked him as Mexican. His father had immigrated to Mexico from Spain by way of Sweden before the Second World War, where he met and married a beautiful blonde. The marriage produced two sons who bore little resemblance to each other. Jorge, who died with his wife when a bomb blew up his car, resembled his father, receiving the Hispanic coloring and dark hair and eyes that he had passed on to his son, Angel, while Edward’s lighter hair and coloring and eyes came from his Swedish mother, along with her height. Both Edward and Angel’s six-foot statures stood out in a country where the average male stood five eight.

“Cigar?”

Joel shook his head. He’d never acquired a taste for the Cuban cigars Edward had shipped from Havana.

Montoya used a double-flamed lighter to fire up his cigar. “Where is Maria?”

“I don’t know. Last I saw, she was in the lobby of the Casa Grande. Men were after her and Bailey, and I couldn’t get in the door—it was locked, and I didn’t have a key. By the time I got inside, she was gone.”

Edward drew deeply on the cigar, and after a minute he took it
out of his mouth and stared at the glowing red tip. “I still find it difficult to understand why you were sending Maria to the States.”

Joel rubbed the back of his neck. He’d explained this to his boss once before. “Because my parents wanted to see her before either of them passed on. They’re not young or well. And Maria has been asking why she couldn’t see her grandparents like the other kids at school. Besides, she was only supposed to be there two weeks.”

“What if your parents want her to stay? They no longer have a daughter.”

“They won’t do that. Besides, Bailey has full authorization to legally take charge of Maria if that happens.”

“You trust this Bailey Adams?”

“I have no reason not to.” He did more than trust her. The beautiful teacher intrigued him, and at some point, he intended for her to be more than a friend. But that was not something Edward needed to know.

Edward puffed on the cigar. “So by the time you got inside the hotel, Bailey and Maria were gone. Do you think the men took them, or did they magically evade them?”

He flinched at the sarcasm. “Danny Maxwell was with them. I saw them speeding away in a dark-blue SUV.”

“Why did you not say this in the first place? Instead you raise my blood pressure.” Edward nodded. “Danny is a good man, but could he evade Calatrava men by himself?”

Now, he hesitated. It was not good to be the bearer of bad news to Edward Montoya.

His boss stared at him, his pale blue eyes cold. “Spit it out, Joel—whatever it is that you do not wish to tell me.”

Joel averted his gaze. “There was another man with him.”

“Must I drag it out of you? Who?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe your nephew, Angel.”

Edward rocked back in the chair. “Impossible. Angel is dead.”

“I’m just telling you what I saw. I certainly don’t want it to be Angel.”

“You saw wrong. I would know if he was alive.” Montoya flicked the ash on his cigar in the crystal ashtray. His cell phone rang, and he glanced at it before answering in Spanish. After a few minutes, he disconnected and leveled his gaze at Joel. “It seems you may not have seen wrong. That was Sergeant Chavez of the Federal Police. There was a shootout at a small airfield, and two men were killed. The survivors swear the man who did one of the killings was my nephew.”

Angel. Alive. Joel’s blood turned to ice. “Where has he been for the past two years?”

Montoya leveled his gaze at him, not looking any happier about the news than Joel. “That’s a good question. Just hope you don’t get close enough to him to ask.”

“What happened was not my fault.” Joel paced the room.

“I doubt my nephew feels the same way. One other thing. You were right that the men were Calatrava.”

If Edward intended to make him feel better, his news did just the opposite. It was looking more and more like the man he’d borrowed money from was Calatrava. If Edward found out . . . He licked his parched lips.

“They probably want Maria so they can extort money from me.” Edward ground the cigar in the ashtray. “Back to my nephew. Evidently Angel has learned patience, but he is not the only one who knows how to wait. Chavez indicated Danny Maxwell’s plane was at that particular airport this morning, and now it’s gone. If Miss Adams and Maria were with Maxwell at the hotel, it’s safe to assume Maria left on that plane. Where would he take her?”

Focused on his own problems, Joel barely caught the last of his boss’s question. “Probably to his hometown—Logan Point. That’s where Bailey is from as well, and my parents live within a hundred miles.”

“And Angel is with them.” Edward steepled his fingers. “He is sadly mistaken if he thinks he can whisk Maria away from us. He lives too dangerously to be a part of her life. We must go after her. Do you have an address for Miss Adams’s home in Mississippi? We will go and get my niece and bring her back to Mexico.”

“No, but I can get one. We’ve been in contact by phone. Maybe she’ll answer my call.” He dialed her number, wishing he’d known Angel was with them. He could have warned her that the man was dangerous. The call went straight to voicemail. “Something must be wrong with her phone.”

“They’re in the air—she has no service.” Edward waved his hand. “Never mind. Logan Point is small, and Bailey Adams shouldn’t be too hard to find.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “I’d like to leave right now, but I have a few things I need to tidy up this afternoon. I’ll contact Phillip Maxwell to move our meeting scheduled for later this month to the present. We’ll leave first thing in the morning for Mississippi.”

That would give Joel time to visit the jeweler and get a duplicate necklace . . . and also to get a temporary passport. “Thank you for everything you’re doing.”

“We must get Maria back.”

The intensity in Edward’s voice took him aback. He’d known Edward had grown fond of Maria, just not to the extent of disrupting his schedule to go after her. He just hoped they didn’t encounter Angel Montoya.

The man hated his guts. With reason.

“We’re approaching McKinney Airport just north of Dallas and will be landing in a few minutes.”

Danny’s voice startled Bailey, and she glanced out the window, impressed that he was putting the plane down in darkness. He’d impressed her a lot today, the last time being when she listened
through the earphones as he persuaded the Customs and Border Protection Agency to let them reenter the States.