One Wrong Step (24 page)

“It was amazing,” she murmured against his mouth. “
You’re
amazing.”

Shit, he should have shoved her out of an airplane months ago. He dropped all his gear and wrapped his arms around her.

She backed him clumsily against the building. Her skin still felt cold from the jump, but her mouth was hot and eager, and her hands were all over him.

“You’re killing me,” he said against her neck.

“I know. Can we—”

He jerked his head up as something in his peripheral vision caught his eye.

“What?” She looked dazed, breathless.

“Someone’s watching. Over there by the parking lot.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Who?”

“I don’t know. He’s not there anymore.”

“Probably my surveillance guy.” She turned back to him and started kissing him some more, her hands wandering everywhere. He gripped her hips and pulled her snugly against him. They shouldn’t do this here. They definitely needed to stop.

But she was into it. She wanted him
now,
he could tell. He was so overwhelmed, he thought his knees would buckle.

“Fuck.” He caught her wrists in his hands.

“What?”

He looked down at her. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t screw her against the side of a building. He needed to take her home.

“Go get changed,” he told her. “I’ll turn in all my gear, and we’ll go back to your place.”

She smiled up at him. “Yours is closer.”

He kissed her mouth. “I love the way you think.”

Celie shoved the jumpsuit down her legs, and only then remembered her sneakers. She toed them off, stripped away the nylon suit, and wiggled back into the pair of jeans she’d worn that morning. Her body was still shaking, and she wasn’t sure whether it was the jump or McAllister or an intoxicating combination of both. Whatever it was, she felt gleeful. Alive. Happier than she’d been in months. Years.

She pulled on her T-shirt and jammed her feet into shoes. Then she turned to look in the mirror on the back of the dressing room door.

The door opened. Celie jumped back, startled, as a man stepped into the room.

“My apologies, Ms. Wells. I didn’t mean to alarm you.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Special Agent Dominguez, with the FBI. I work with Agent Rowe.”

“What—”

“I will explain later, but first I must get you to a safe location. You were followed here by a man working for Manuel Saledo, and I’m afraid your safety is in jeopardy.”

Celie took a step back. Her gaze veered to the closed door, and she tried to remember if she had a tube of Mace in her purse.

The man held up his hands, palms out, trying to calm her. He wore an immaculate beige suit and a white, open-collared shirt. “Again, I don’t mean to frighten you, but we really must leave now.”

Celie took another step back and bumped against the wall of lockers. The man’s dark eyes softened. He reached into the front of his jacket and produced a leather billfold, which he flipped open to reveal a shiny gold badge. Celie recognized the eagle-topped FBI shield and released the breath she’d been holding.

“We must hurry,” he said, tucking the billfold away. “I’m not sure if the operative who followed you here is alone or with others.”

She remembered the man McAllister had seen lurking in the parking lot. How many of Saledo’s men were here?

“I need to get my friend,” she said. “John McAllister?”

The agent nodded. “He’s being briefed right now by one of my colleagues. We’ll transport both of you to a safe location.”

Celie grabbed her purse off the bench and stepped toward the door, but the agent gestured to the rear of the dressing room. Celie looked around and saw a back exit she hadn’t previously noticed.

“We don’t want Saledo’s man to see you,” he said.

Celie went through the back door and squinted in the bright sunlight. The partial cloud cover had dissipated since their jump. She glanced around, looking for McAllister.

“This way,” the agent said, leading her toward the airplane hangar. A gray Taurus was parked on the pavement just outside the hangar’s open doors.

She looked around as she walked, searching for McAllister or any sign of someone suspicious. “Where are we going?”

“Just this way.” He led her past the car, and her steps slowed.

“I don’t understand. Where’s Agent Rowe?”

“Please, Ms. Wells.” He looked back at her imploringly. “We don’t have much time.”

She glanced over his shoulder at the small white plane sitting beside the hangar.

Her mouth went dry.

“We must hurry. Please.”

The man stepped toward her, and temper flashed in his eyes. She tried to lunge away from him, but he caught her arm. He leaned close, clenching her arm in a vice, and she felt like the earth was falling out from under her feet.

“See that plane?” he growled.

She nodded, staring past him at the sleek little jet.

“Your boyfriend is sitting inside it with a gun pointed at his head. Join him now, or you will see his brains splattered all over that window.”

John exited the men’s dressing room and plunked his diving gear on the counter near the front door. The woman who’d rung up their bill earlier checked in his equipment.

“You two have fun?” she asked John.

“You bet. We’ll probably be back next weekend.”

A bell jingled, and John turned to see the pilot coming in the door. He peeled off his leather bomber jacket.

“Your friend going home?”

John saw his puzzled expression reflected in Vincent’s mirrored shades. “My friend?”

“That girl you were with? The one who just left?”

“
What?
” John rushed to the door and peered through the glass. His Jeep was right there in the parking lot.

“She just took off.” Vincent removed his sunglasses and frowned at him. “What, you didn’t know she was leaving?”

“
Where?
” John shoved open the door and ran into the parking lot. He didn’t see any cars on the long gravel road to the main highway.

“No, man.” Vincent was right behind him. “She took
off.
In the Cessna.”

John’s stomach dropped. “She left in a
plane
?”

“Yeah, not five minutes ago. Some guy was with her.”

“T
ell me you’re kidding.”

But he wasn’t kidding. John could tell by the perplexed look on Vincent’s face that he was completely serious.

John grabbed his arm. “Who was she with? Was she hurt? How long ago did she leave?”

“Damn, man…” Vincent glanced at his watch. “I dunno. Three minutes? Four? She looked fine to me—”

John looked over Vincent’s shoulder and saw the man from the parking lot standing near the airplane hangar. He was gesturing at the runway and talking to someone.

John charged toward him. He must have sensed John coming because his head whipped around and his eyes widened.

“Where’d she go?” John demanded.

“I don’t know, I—”

“
Bullshit!
” John shoved him with both hands, and he tripped backward and landed on his ass.

“Hey!”

John straddled his chest and jerked his head up by the collar of his golf shirt. “Where the fuck did she go?”

“I don’t—”

John socked him in the jaw, hard enough that his knuckles stung. Someone grabbed John’s arms and yanked him to his feet.

“Hey, take it easy.” It was Vincent and the man who had been standing nearby.

John tried to shake them off. “I saw you watching us! Who do you work for? Who’d you tell we were here?”

The guy scrambled up and glared at John. He held his lip, which was bleeding now, as he reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a billfold. He flipped it open, revealing a gold badge.

“Trent Abrams, FBI.” He spat blood on the pavement and scowled at John.

John stared at him. “What the hell—”

“I work with Rowe and Stevenski. I was assigned to keep tabs on Cecelia Wells, which I was doing fine until she went into the women’s dressing room. Now she’s not there. A plane just took off, and I think she might have been on it.”

“She was,” said the man holding John’s right arm. He and Vincent loosened their grip. “I saw her get in.”

John shook off the restraints and stomped toward the empty runway. He turned to Vincent. “Can you follow it? The Cessna?”

He looked him up and down, his expression wary. “If I knew where it was going, I could.”

“How do we find out?” John heard the desperation in his voice. He looked at the agent. “Do you know?”

“No.” He jerked a phone out of his pocket and started dialing. “Rowe? It’s Abrams. I’ve got a problem….”

John turned to Vincent. “Can we track them somehow?”

“It’s not easy,” he answered. “This is a public airstrip. We might be able to find a pilot around here who had his radio on, might have overheard the Cessna pilot relay what he was doing right after take-off, but that won’t tell us his final destination.”

“Doesn’t he have to file a flight plan? Something?”

“Nah, man,” Vincent said. “Doesn’t work that way. This is an uncontrolled airstrip. People announce their intentions on the radio, follow certain right-of-way rules, and that’s pretty much it.”

“
Fuck!
” John’s heart was racing. Every minute that ticked by was one more minute of Celie in the presence of some drug trafficking dirtbag who probably planned to kill her.

John had to choke down the bile in his throat. He looked up at Vincent. “I’ll pay you five thousand dollars if you’ll just get me in the air.”

“It’s not that simple. I can’t—”

“Ten thousand. I know they’re going to Mexico. We can at least head south. As soon as we’re airborne, I’ll get on my cell phone and figure out where they’re landing.” He had no idea how he’d do this, or if his phone would even work at that altitude, but he had to get up there.

The pilot turned and looked glumly down the airstrip. “I don’t know, man.”

John was going to be sick. If Vincent refused to help him, he’d have no way to get to Celie. The Mexican border was at least five hours away by car, even speeding, and then who knew where they were going?

“Fifteen thousand.”

“That’s not the problem. I—”

“You’ve got to help me!” John turned to the guy standing next to the FBI agent. He had no fucking clue who he was. “You know how to fly a plane? Can you get me to Mexico?”

“If I might say something—”

“Shit, I’ll
take
you,” Vincent said, interrupting Abrams. “We just have to find out where the hell we’re
going.
”

“I might be able to find out,” Abrams offered.

“How?” John fixed his attention on the young agent. He had light brown hair and doe eyes. He barely looked old enough to drive, but if he could help find Celie, John would bow down and kiss his feet.

Abrams cleared his throat. “Homeland Security’s got a Customs and Border Protection division that has drones and surveillance planes patrolling the border. I can contact my SAC in San Antonio and have him ask CBP to get a fix on any low-flying aircraft that go across, find out where they’re heading.”

“You can do that?” John raked a hand through his hair.

“I can try.”

“Try. Right now.” The agent’s eyes narrowed, and John hurried to add some diplomacy. “Please? It’s a good idea. Please get on the phone and call whoever in San Antonio.”

John turned to Vincent. “Can you get me in the air?”

Celie sat in the airplane, her fear like a snake coiled in her stomach. She looked across the aisle at the man who’d abducted her. Despite his neatly tailored clothes and manicured fingernails, he somehow managed to look even more threatening than the armed thugs who had carjacked her.

He glanced at Celie. It was the eyes, definitely. Cold. Calculating. Like someone who had seen or done terrible things and wasn’t easily moved to sympathy. Celie’s palms started to sweat.

“Where are we going?” she asked, trying to keep her voice level.

He watched her for a moment, and she decided he wasn’t going to answer the question. She’d already asked this and many other questions several times since they’d boarded the plane, but he hadn’t responded. He hadn’t said anything, in fact, except to address the pilot in rapid Spanish.

“We are going to see someone,” he answered unexpectedly. “Someone who’s eager to meet you.”

“Who?”

He smiled. “My uncle. Manuel Saledo. You may have heard of him?”

Celie tried not to react. She turned and looked out the window, down at the flat Texas farmland gliding below them. At least she thought it was Texas. For all she knew, they could be over Mexico by now. She’d lost all sense of time.

“Why does your uncle want to meet me?” she asked, still facing the window. If he’d just wanted her dead, he could have accomplished that back in Texas.

The man didn’t answer, and Celie stole a glance at him. He was tearing the cellophane off a pack of Marlboro Reds as he seemed to consider the question. He offered her a cigarette, and she shook her head.

“You never know with him.” He took out a gold lighter and held the flame to the end of his cigarette. He shifted in his seat, as if settling in for a conversation with a friend, and blew out a stream of smoke. “Maybe he wants to meet one of the few women who’s ever crossed him.”

“How did I cross him?”

“You stole his money.”

“My ex-husband stole his money.”

He grinned, displaying a mouth full of perfectly straight white teeth. Between the flawless English and the orthodontics, Celie guessed Manny Saledo’s nephew had had a privileged upbringing.

“I, for one, appreciate what you did. I have a sense of humor about these things, and the money is negligible.” He took another drag. “My uncle, however, is not amused. He is a proud man. Many would say arrogant. Some people believe his arrogance will be his undoing.”

Celie watched him, wondering why he was telling her all this.

He leaned toward her, and she felt a spasm between her shoulder blades. “A word of advice. Do not lie to my uncle. He becomes angry when people do that. Not a nice thing to watch.”

Celie looked out the window again. Tears burned her eyes. The fear in her stomach seemed to be slithering through her entire body now. It traveled up her neck and sunk its fangs into her skull. Celie needed an Imitrex, but her purse was up near the cockpit. That was three rows ahead, beyond three oversize leather seats just like the one she was sitting in.

“How long until we land?” Celie asked, knowing that every minute they stayed in the air diminished her chances of being rescued. The chances were already low, she figured, unless she could determine where she was when they landed and find a phone.

“Don’t worry,” Saledo’s nephew said pleasantly. “We’re almost there.”

John was still on the ground.

Celie had been whisked away in an airplane fifty-two minutes ago and John was still on the fucking
ground.
Worse, he wasn’t anywhere
near
an airplane. He was stuck in the fucking office of the fucking skydiving school watching a fucking idiot talk on the phone.

“Can we go yet?” John asked Vincent. “Because if I have to stand here another minute, I’m gonna fucking kill someone.” John stared at Abrams as he said this, and he knew Vincent could tell he wasn’t joking.

“Dude, McAllister. This isn’t helping.” Vincent stepped between John and the agent, who had been yapping away on his phone for nearly an hour and
still
hadn’t managed to figure out where the hell Celie’s plane had gone.

During the wait, Vincent had spoken with the skydiving school’s owner, who had agreed to rent them his personal plane and his favorite pilot, which was good, John supposed. But Vincent had insisted that taking off without a destination would be a waste of time and fuel. So John was stuck on the ground with his pilot and the FBI agent, all of them pacing the office, a huge map of North America spread out before them on the desk—a map that had provided exactly zero leads as to Celie’s whereabouts.

John shot Vincent a glare. “It’s been almost an hour. A fucking
hour,
and he’s come up with nothing! You’ve got to get me airborne, or I swear I’m gonna lose it. Right this minute Celie could be—”

John’s cell phone vibrated, and he snapped it open.

“I’ve got something for you,” Marco Juarez said.

John nearly wept. “What is it?”

“I may have a location. Hang on a sec while I double-check my map, okay?”

“Sure,” John said, feeling numb all of a sudden. They had a lead. He’d called Marco in a desperate effort to learn something—anything—that might narrow down the list of possible destinations for the Cessna. John knew if anyone could come through for him, it would be Marco. Manny Saledo had played a role in the murder of Marco’s sister several years back, and the PI had spent a good chunk of time and energy since then investigating Saledo and his network.

“Okay,” Marco said, “this is a little thin, but I think it will help.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’ve got four known locations for homes owned by Saledo in Mexico. The first is in Michoacán. It’s the headquarters for the family business. The second—”

“Shit, hold on.” John glanced around the crowded office, searching frantically for a pen.

“—is an apartment in Mexico City.”

John snagged a dry-erase marker off the desk and started scribbling on a phone book. “Okay, keep going.”

“The third is new. It’s on the Pacific, a place called Costa Careyes. The resort is small, and I hear there’s not even an airstrip nearby, so I doubt that’s where they’re going. The last place is your best bet, I think. It’s a hacienda in Nuevo Leon, northeast of Monterrey.”

“So they’re landing in Monterrey?”

“Doubtful. The city’s about a forty-five-minute drive. Plus, I just talked to someone at the main airport there, and he says Saledo’s planes don’t go through there because he’s got a private airfield right on his property.”

“Okay,” John said, getting excited. “That sounds promising. But why not the first two? Why wouldn’t he take her to the headquarters?”

“He might. But it’s pretty far south. Plus, American and Mexican law enforcement typically keep an eye on the place, if not a full crew staked out there. Manny got wise to that, so he started moving around more, running things from lower-profile locations.”

“Nuevo Leon,” John said, racking his brain. “That’s just over the border, right?”

“Right. The state’s traversed by a couple major highways. A lot of product moves through there on its way north.”

“Hey,” Abrams cut in. “We’ve got a low-flying plane recently spotted, slipping over the border heading toward…”

John waited, his heart thundering in his chest, as the agent listened to his phone.

“Are you sure?” Abrams turned toward John. “It looks like they’re going to Monterrey.”