Harlequin Intrigue June 2015 - Box Set 2 of 2: Navy SEAL Newlywed\The Guardian\Security Breach (30 page)

* * *

M
ICHAEL
WOKE
WITH
a start and stared out at the sun, which was sliding toward the horizon, the intense heat of midday fading toward the cool of dusk. He didn't think he'd dozed long; beside him, Abby and Angelique still slept. But every nerve vibrated with awareness. In the short time he'd lost his fight against sleep, something in the environment around them had changed.

All around them was silent—too silent. No birds sang. No lizards skittered on the rocks. No flies buzzed. The hair on the back of his neck rose, and he sat up straighter and started to turn around.

Hard metal pressed against the back of his head. “Don't move or I will blow your head off,” a man said, in slightly accented English. “Give me the baby and I will think about letting you live.”

Chapter Eleven

Abby gasped and clutched Angelique to her shoulder. The infant mewled and burrowed closer to her. An unfamiliar hand tightened on Abby's shoulder and she wrenched away and whirled to face an older Hispanic man. He held a gun to Michael's head. “Give the baby to me or I will kill your friend,” he said. He held out his free hand for the baby.

“Who are you?” she demanded, clutching Angelique even more tightly to her. “What do you want with this baby?”

“You can call me El Jefe. Now give her to me or your friend will die.”

“Don't give her to him.” Michael spoke through gritted teeth. He still sat with his back to the man, his head wrenched to one side by the pressure of the gun barrel against his skull. But his eyes remained fixed on her, calm and determined.

Abby struggled to her feet and took a step back to put more distance between her and the man with the gun. She looked from him to Michael. Michael's face was pale, but nothing else about him betrayed agitation or fear. He'd gathered his legs under him, as if preparing to pounce. “Don't do it,” he said again.

“Give her to me!” El Jefe insisted, and jabbed his weapon into Michael, who winced.

“What do you want with her?” Abby asked. She wrapped both arms around the baby. “She's an infant. She cries and wets her diaper. You don't look like a man who has time to change diapers.”

“I will return her to her mother. She can take care of her.”

Abby stared. Mariposa would certainly know how to take care of her own baby, but would this man really return the child to her? He was one of her jailers—the man who had ordered her to fetch water. Mariposa had wanted the child to be away from him.

“Her mother gave her to me to care for,” Abby said. “I can't just hand her over to a stranger.”

“You will give her to me!” He shoved the gun again, but this time Michael jerked his head to the side and swung his fist up and back, jamming it into the gunman's nose. El Jefe screamed, a wild, almost girlish sound, and blood poured from his broken nose. Michael shoved him back and grabbed for the weapon.

For an agonizingly long minute the two men struggled for the gun, rolling on the ground while Abby watched, heart in her throat, tensing herself for the explosion of the gun firing. She could have pulled her own weapon, but she didn't trust herself to get off a clear shot. El Jefe swore and struggled to grasp the weapon, but Michael was bigger and stronger, and he wasn't also fighting the pain and bleeding from a broken nose. At last, the older man gave up the fight, covering his face with his hands and shouting in Spanish.

Michael stood over him, breathing hard. “Who are you?” he demanded.

The man didn't look up, though he was no longer shouting, only muttering nonstop.

“Shut up and tell me who you are,” Michael said.

The baby began to wail, and Abby rocked her in her arms, trying to comfort her. “Is she all right?” Michael asked.

“She's just hungry.” And she was going to get a lot hungrier if they didn't get away from here soon.

Michael turned his attention back to the gunman, changing his line of questioning. “How did you get here?” he asked. “Where is your truck?”

Abby's spirits lifted. Of course. The man must have a vehicle somewhere nearby. A vehicle that could return them to safety—if they could find a road. But even the dirt tracks that crisscrossed the area must eventually lead somewhere. They could cover more ground searching in a vehicle than on foot.

“Why should I tell you anything?” the man asked.

“Answer my questions or I'll kill you.” Michael's voice was hard; Abby shivered. She believed him.

“Kill me and you'll still be stuck out here with no way to leave,” the man sneered. The bleeding had slowed. He patted gingerly at his nose, wincing.

A point for the bad guy. Abby looked around, hoping she'd spot the glint of sunlight off a truck hood or windshield, or maybe even see the vehicle, sitting in plain sight. Maybe it was too much to hope that the vehicle would come equipped with a GPS and a phone, but a woman could dream, couldn't she?

But instead of a lone truck sitting on the otherwise deserted plain, she saw something even better. “Michael, I think your friends finally found us,” she said.

He kept the gun leveled on his prisoner, but glanced over his shoulder at the line of Cruisers snaking across the desert. Then he pointed the weapon up and fired three shots. The baby wailed and Abby's own ears rang, but the signal had worked; the line of vehicles sped up, headed straight toward them.

“Now we'll deal— Stop!”

At Michael's shout, Abby turned. The gunman was running away, speeding over the rough ground like a jackrabbit, out of reach within seconds. Michael started across the rocks after him.

“Michael, no!” Abby said. “He's got too much of a head start. You can deal with him later.”

“We may not have another chance.” But he stopped and came to stand beside her. Together, they watched the Cruisers stop and park by the creek, then they walked down to meet them.

Graham greeted them as they picked their way across the creek. “What are you two doing out here?” he asked.

“Never mind that.” Michael passed his boss, headed toward the trucks. “We need to try to catch up with the man who just ran away from here.”

“What man?” Graham asked.

“He calls himself El Jefe. I'm pretty sure he's the guy who was in charge of this camp. If we can get him to talk, we may be able to break this case wide-open.”

Graham and Michael left in Graham's Cruiser, leaving Abby with Carmen and Marco.

“Is that a baby?” Carmen stared at the bundle in Abby's arms.

“Her name is Angelique.” Abby arranged the shawl to shade the infant's face. “And we really need to find some formula and feed her.”

“Where did you get her?” Carmen smiled and stroked one of Angelique's tiny hands.

“Her mother was one of the workers camped here,” Abby said. “How did you two ever find us?”

“We've been following the tracks of the trucks,” Marco said. “We found Dance's Cruiser, wrecked and burning in a wash almost ten miles from here. We've been searching ever since.”

“There was a camp of workers here,” Abby said. “Four trailers—about two dozen people. Some men with trucks came and moved them this morning.”

“Those must have been the trucks we were following.” Marco joined them. “The tracks led right to here.”

“Did the tracks lead from the destroyed Cruiser?” Abby asked.

“We found the tracks while we were trying to figure out how the Cruiser ended up in that wash,” Marco said.

“But how did you two end up here without the Cruiser, and with a baby?” Carmen asked.

“It's a long story.” Abby sighed. She was hot, tired, hungry and thirsty. “Right now, we need to get this child to a safe place.”

She followed them to Marco's vehicle and climbed into the backseat. Angelique fussed and squirmed. “Somebody's not happy,” Carmen said.

“She's hungry and her diaper needs changing,” Abby said. “And she probably misses her mother.” Mariposa probably missed her baby, too. Where was she now—and why had that man wanted her?

“Who's the guy Graham and Michael took off after?” Marco asked.

“He was in charge of the workers in the camp. He supervised the move. We hid and watched them hook up the trailers and drive off. I fell asleep and when I woke up, he was there, and had a gun on Michael. He demanded we give him the baby. When I refused, he threatened to kill Michael, but Michael broke his nose and took his gun. Your arrival distracted us enough he ran off.”

When they reached the road and phone service, Carmen called headquarters. “Lance, I need you to run into town and buy a couple cans of baby formula, bottles and nipples, some baby wipes and a box of diapers.” She looked over her shoulder at Angelique. “Size two.” She grinned. “Yes, they're for a baby. Now, don't waste time arguing. We need these right away.” She hung up the phone. “That's probably the oddest thing anyone's ever asked him to do. I wish I could see his face when he gets to the store and finds out how many different kinds of diapers there are. Let's hope he gets something that will work.”

“You seem to know a lot about them,” Marco said.

“I've got six younger brothers and sisters and half a dozen nieces and nephews,” she said. “I've changed plenty of diapers in my day.”

Abby cuddled the fussy baby closer. “We're going to make you more comfortable soon, little one,” she said. She only hoped they'd be able to find Mariposa and reunite mother and child before it was too late.

* * *

M
ICHAEL
STARED
ACROSS
the empty prairie. They hadn't found so much as a tire track that they could link to the man who had held him at gunpoint and tried to take the baby. “He couldn't have just vanished,” he said.

“If he is the man in charge of the workers, he probably knows this country a lot better than we do,” Graham said. He put his hand on Michael's shoulder. “Come on. Let's go back to headquarters.”

“We need to go back to the campsite first. There's a bucket there that may have this guy's fingerprints on it. Maybe we'll come up with a match.”

They returned to the camp and Michael retrieved the bucket from under the bush. “I'll get a team out to go over this place,” Graham said.

“It's pretty clean, but maybe they'll find something,” Michael said. He didn't like giving up the search for El Jefe so soon, but he doubted more time wandering around out here would bring them any closer to the man. He followed Graham back to the Cruiser.

“What happened to your face?” Graham asked.

Michael put a hand to the gash on his cheek. “I fell into a drainage. That's when I lost the phone and radio.”

“Was that before or after you acquired the baby?”

“After.”

“Where did the baby come from?”

“One of the workers gave it to Abby, when the bosses showed up to move them. Then we were spotted and had to make a run for it.”

“But the guy in charge caught up with you?”

Michael shook his head. “That was later. Without the GPS or a phone or maps, we were lost. We needed water, so staying near the creek made sense. I knew you'd send someone to look for us when I didn't report in this evening. In the meantime, I figured the boss man might come back to look for us. I knew he'd stolen my truck, so he probably guessed we couldn't go far. I planned to get the jump on him when he returned, but it didn't work out that way.” He fought down anger at himself for making such a hash of the whole day. Had his attraction to Abby distracted him so much he'd been less diligent?

“We'll find him,” Graham said. “What did he want with the baby?”

“No idea. He said he would return her to her mother, but Abby got the impression the mom thought the baby would be safer with her.”

“The two of you can fill us in on the details when we get back to headquarters.”

At ranger headquarters, they found Carmen feeding the baby a bottle while Abby, dressed in a black task-force polo and hiking shorts she must have borrowed from Carmen, ate a deli sandwich from a tray in the middle of the conference table. She set aside the sandwich when he walked in. “Did you find him?” she asked.

Michael shook his head and sagged into the chair across from her. He glanced toward the baby. “How's Angelique?”

“She is living up to her name and being a little angel,” Carmen said. She positioned the baby over her shoulder and patted her back.

“She's happier now that's she's eaten and had a fresh diaper,” Abby said. “Though I don't think you're going to want your bandanna back.”

“I have more where that came from.” He helped himself to a sandwich. Abby's leaves and roots hadn't tasted as bad as he'd feared, but they hadn't been very filling.

Graham pulled out the chair at the head of the table. “Tell me about this man,” he said.

“I'm pretty sure he's the one who was ordering everyone else around,” Michael said. “I didn't have binoculars, but he was tall and thin, and was the only one wearing a white shirt.”

“And he didn't say why he wanted the baby?”

“He said he would return her to her mother,” Abby said.

“Maybe he's the father,” Carmen said. When the others stared at her, she shrugged. “Even criminals can love their children. Or maybe he loves the mother and she changed her mind about giving up her child, and she sent him to retrieve the baby.”

“Or maybe he sees the child as a tie to him and his operation and he wants to get rid of her,” Marco said.

Abby shuddered at the idea. “What harm is an infant going to do?” she asked. “She can't testify against him.”

“She might share his DNA, and that might tie him to a crime we don't even know about yet,” Marco said.

Abby tried to push away the thought that the man might have wanted to harm Angelique. But a man who made slaves of other people might not balk at killing a baby.

“You said you were following tracks,” Michael said. “Where did they lead?”

“Nowhere,” Marco said. “Once they reached the highway, we lost them.”

“But now that we know what we're looking for, it won't be so easy to hide that many people and trailers,” Michael said.

“Unless they dismantled everything and took everyone straight to Denver or another big city,” Carmen said. “Your guy could be long gone.”

Michael shook his head. “I don't think so. He wanted Angelique badly enough to come back by himself to retrieve her.”

“That part doesn't make sense to me,” Marco said. “He had to have others helping him when he moved the camp.”