Breaking Point

  “How was she killed?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Did you and Agent Sanchez work together to steal cocaine from the Zetas?”

  “No.”

  “Was it your idea to steal the drugs?”

  “I didn’t steal the coke.”

  “Did you have sexual relations with journalist Natalie Benoit?”

  “Yes.” Zach felt his pulse spike. “Are you going to ask me if it was good?”

  So, somehow Pearce knew about him and Natalie. Chiago’s report must have been very thorough. They would use questions like this—questions to which they already knew the answer—to monitor his responses. It gave them a better idea of how his body responded when he told the truth and when he lied.

  But, of course, he was telling only the truth.

  “Did you have sexual relations with Agent Sanchez?”

  “Good God, no.”

  On it went for two long hours. They asked him variations on the same questions again and again, Pearce no doubt watching from the other side of the one-way mirror. Zach was about ready to tell them that he was finished with this bullshit, when the examiner finally turned off the machines and removed the blood pressure cuff.

  “How long till we have the analysis?” Zach pulled off the galvanometers himself.

  “Just a few days.” Thin fingers unfastened the pnueumographs. “Be careful. That’s delicate equipment.”

  Done being probed for the day, Zach left the building, headed to his small apartment, and dressed for a run, hoping to burn off the tension, frustration, and anger that had been building inside him since he arrived in D.C. First, the investigation. Then the old man’s surprise visit.

  You sure know how to have a good time, McBride.

  It was early evening, but still warm and humid. Tucking his cell phone into his shorts pocket, Zach set out for the National Mall, running down Independence Avenue past the U.S. Botanic Garden to Third Street and left on Madison Drive. He set a fast pace, focused on his breathing, threading his way through pedestrians, bicycles, people without noticing them, his mind filled with random images.

  Gisella smiling and handing him a Coke. Endless darkness and pain. Natalie looking pleadingly up at him while that Zeta bastard groped her. Carlos and his gold chains. His father’s angry face and flying fist.

  Then his thoughts began to change.

  Natalie removing his blindfold, setting him free. Natalie asleep beside him in the shade, her face flushed from the heat. Natalie naked and beautiful beneath him. Natalie reading a statement on national television, looking into his eyes.

  You are my hero.

  Ribs aching, he slowed to a walk. There was no point in running himself to death. He wasn’t going to get her out of his mind any time soon.

  He’d read her first-person account of her ordeal this morning, catching it online just before he’d left home. He couldn’t imagine that it had been easy to write, her compassion for the Mexican journalists and the terror she’d felt evident in every word. He’d gotten a chuckle out of her alias for him, as, no doubt, she’d intended. But what had struck him as he’d read the article was her writing. She wasn’t just a good reporter. She was a talented writer, her words describing her experience in a way that put the reader there beside her.

  Of course, Zach had been beside her for most of it, and reading the article had brought him to the rather amazing realization that their trek through the desert had been the most fun he’d had in a very long time.

  You are sick in the head, frogman.

  He was about a block from his apartment when his cell buzzed. He drew it out and saw that the number was restricted. “McBride.”

  “It’s Farrell calling from EPIC.”

  Farrell was a DUSM who spent his time tracking down fugitives from the United States who’d crossed into Mexico. What would make him call?

  “Go ahead.”

  “Word on the street is that men working for Cárdenas have crossed the line and are on their way to Denver to take out that pretty reporter of yours. I thought you’d want to know.”

  Cárdenas had never sent his men more than a few miles across the border, and he’d never killed anyone who wasn’t involved with the narco trade. For him to kill a U.S. national deep inside the United States . . .

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “Heard it myself from a Juarense cop today. Watch your back.”

  The line went dead.

  “Son of a bitch!” Zach didn’t have Natalie’s cell phone number programmed into his phone or tucked away in his jock. He dialed information. “I need the cell number for Natalie Benoit in Denver, Colorado. It’s an emergency.”

  He headed back toward his apartment at a jog.

  NATALIE ORGANIZED THE stacks of paper she’d printed out, put them in paper clips, and tucked them into a file folder. Inspired, she’d decided to download everything she could about the Whitcomb Academy that had to do with money—its major donors, its major corporate sponsors, its board of directors, its board of trustees. Then she’d printed a list of everyone who’d contributed to the sheriff’s and DA’s last reelection campaigns.

  She would spend tonight reading through what she had. If she found nothing suspicious and if the forensic accountant found nothing amiss, she would drop the story tomorrow and pick up something else.

  Natalie made her way down to the front entrance. Gil Cormack, the paper’s security guard, had gone for the day. She’d thought about asking him to walk her to her car, but she’d stayed a bit too late. She stopped and scanned the parking lot, but didn’t see anyone. Then she opened the door and stepped outside.

  The wind nearly blew the files she was carrying out of her grasp. Overhead the sky was gray, thunder coming from the west. From the looks of it, they were about to get a downpour.

  She had almost reached her car when she heard the faint ring of her cell phone. She fished it out of her purse, struggling to hold on to her files. “Natalie Benoit.”

  “Natalie, it’s Zach. I need . . . call . . . Hunter and wait . . .”

  “Zach?” She hadn’t been expecting a call from him, and all at once hopes that she’d hidden away came rushing back. “Can you speak a bit louder? I’m in the parking lot on the way to my car, and it’s really windy here.”

  “I said . . . back . . . them there. Listen . . . it now.”

  “Hold on a minute. I’m at my car now. Let me just get inside. Then I’ll be able to hear you.” She stuck her key in the lock, just as a gust came and tossed the manila folder with its carefully organized pages into the wind. “Oh, damn it. Hang on, Zach.”

  She bent down, picked up paper as fast as she could, gusts and eddies swirling some pages under the car next to hers, tossing others across the row. She ran, bending down, purse in one hand, cell phone tucked between her jaw and ear, Zach still shouting something to her.

  “Marc and . . . wait inside!”

  Wait inside?

  “Wait inside? Inside my car?” She’d just gone around to the other side of the car next to hers, when a big gust of wind blew the door of her car shut.

  Her car exploded.

  She saw the fireball, felt the heat, felt herself falling backward.

  And then she felt nothing.

  ZACH HAD JUST stepped inside his own front door when he heard the blast and then . . . nothing. Natalie’s phone was dead.

  A car bomb.

  Christ, no!

  Fear hit him with the force of a body blow, making his heart burst, driving the breath from his lungs, turning his knees to rubber.

  He dialed 911, told the person on the phone that a car had just exploded in a parking lot in front of the Denver Independent in Denver, Colorado. Answering the dispatcher’s inane questions, he packed a bag, careful to remember his passport, his badge, and his two service weapons. Leaving D.C. now would end his career, but he didn’t give a damn.

  “Look, I’m in Washington, D.C. I was on the phone with a friend when I hear
d an explosion, and now her phone is dead. I’m a deputy U.S. marshal, and I’m telling you a car bomb just went off. Get someone—”

  “Denver emergency dispatch reports they’ve gotten several calls about it. Fire, police, and ambulance are already en route.”

  Zach hung up, finished packing, changed his clothes, and was out the door, hailing a cab the moment his feet hit the sidewalk.

  “Get me to the airport as fast as you can.”

  But Zach knew that no matter how fast he went, it wouldn’t be fast enough. It was a three-and-a-half-hour flight to Denver, and he didn’t even have a ticket. By the time he made it to Denver . . .

  Please let her be alive. Please let her be safe.

  “Wait inside? Inside my car?” she’d asked.

  That’s not what he’d said, but that’s what she’d heard. He’d told her to go back inside the paper, to call Hunter or Rossiter, and to wait there until they arrived. He hadn’t even had a chance to warn her about the Zetas.

  Wait inside? Inside my car?

  And then her car had exploded.

  Let her be alive! God, please let her be safe!

  He never should have left her.

  Blackness seeped into Zach’s chest, eating at him like acid, leaving a gaping hole where his stomach had been, cold sweat beading on his forehead.

  His prayers meant nothing.

  He’d had lots of training in demolition as a SEAL. He knew the kind of explosives the Zetas typically used—high-tech, sophisticated, military grade. If they had rigged her car to explode when she sat in the driver’s seat, then Natalie was already dead.

  CHAPTER 24

  JOAQUIN WAS STANDING with the others in the ER waiting room sipping the last of his coffee when McBride walked in. He wanted to deck the bastard. “Well, look who’s here.”

  Heads turned.

  Hunter, still wearing his full SWAT uniform, glared. “Great timing, McBride.”

  “Marc!” Sophie chided softly.

  Rossiter got to his feet. “Glad you could make it.”

  McBride didn’t seem to notice their sarcasm—or maybe he just didn’t care. To be fair, the man looked like hell, his face gray, his eyes haunted. “How is she?”

  Darcangelo crossed the room and held out his hand. “Detective Julian Darcangelo, Denver PD. You must be McBride. I’m surprised to see you here with the media circus outside. I would think you’d want to keep a low profile now that every reporter in America is looking for Mr. Black, Natalie’s hero.”

  Some hero.

  Natalie had saved McBride’s ass, and he’d paid her back by taking advantage of her in the desert and then leaving her to face these Zeta bastards alone.

  McBride accepted Darcangelo’s hand, gave it a few wooden shakes. “How is she? The online news reports said she was alive but—”

  “You think you can just walk in and out of her life?” Hunter wasn’t letting it go.

  Good for him.

  McBride stepped up, looked Hunter right in the face, a muscle clenching in his jaw. “Not now, Hunter, for Christ’s sake!” Then he looked around at the rest of them. “Can someone please answer my goddamned question?”

  Joaquin tossed the empty coffee cup into the trash. “I was the first to reach her. She’s in one piece but unconscious. The blast knocked her backward, and it looks like she hit her head on the pavement. She’s got some cuts from flying glass.”

  McBride took two steps and sank into a chair, resting his face in his hands.

  Joaquin looked at Hunter, who glanced over at Gabe, the three of them sharing a guilty look. The guy was obviously shredded over this.

  Kat, who’d been quiet until now, stood and went to sit down beside him, slipping an arm around him. “All we’ve been told so far is that she’s stable but unconscious and that they’re doing another MRI to make sure she doesn’t have trauma to her brain.”

  “Thank you.” McBride drew a breath. “I was on the phone with her when it happened. I told her to go back inside and call Hunter because I’d gotten a tip that the Zetas had come to Denver after her. But it was too windy—”

  “Thank God for that wind.” Joaquin tried to keep the anger out of his voice. Kat was a better judge of people than he was, and if she trusted McBride . . . “It scattered some papers she was carrying, so she was on the other side of the car next to hers when the bomb went off.”

  “My team was investigating the scene until the feds showed up.” Hunter sat down next to Sophie. “It looked to us like the blast was directed upward into the driver’s seat. The roof of her car was blown about a hundred feet into the air and landed on the other side of the parking lot. If she’d been sitting inside the car . . .”

  McBride stood. “I need to see her.”

  Sophie shook her head. “Sorry, but they won’t let any of us back yet. I’ve tried.”

  McBride drew out what looked like a wallet. On the front was a silver five-point star with an eagle in the center. “They’ll let me back.”

  He stood and walked across the waiting room to the main ER entrance and the check-in desk. Then he showed the woman at the desk his badge and ID. “Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Zach McBride here to see Natalie Benoit.”

  She looked at his badge, then picked up the phone and called someone. Joaquin watched as a nurse in green scrubs appeared and ushered McBride back through the electronic double door. “Well, I’ll be damned. Gotta get me one of those shiny badges. Think they sell them on the Net?”

  “You three could try to be kinder to him.” Kat glared at them. “He risked his life to get Natalie safely home, remember? He obviously cares about her. Sometimes men are just bullheaded.”

  The tone of her voice left no doubt that she was referring to them, not McBride.

  Darcangelo grinned. “Guys, I think you’ve just been told.”

  “NATALIE, CAN YOU hear me?”

  Warm lips pressed against her forehead.

  At the familiar sound of that voice, her pulse gave a kick. It was . . . “Zach?”

  She must be dreaming.

  “Yeah, angel, I’m right here.” Fingers gave her hand a squeeze.

  He’d come back. He’d come back to her.

  Relief, warm and sweet, flowed through her but got lost in forgetfulness. Time seemed to drift. A confusion of words and feelings. She heard a woman whimpering in pain and realized that she was the one making that sound. “My head . . . hurts.”

  “You’ve got a bad concussion.” Zach’s voice again. “They’re going to keep you in the hospital until they’re sure you’re okay.”

  A concussion? In the hospital?

  They’d been in the desert. There’d been a thunderstorm, and then the waterfall. But hadn’t they made it back to Sells? Yes, they had. Marc, Gabe, and Joaquin had been there with the Shadow Wolves—Agent Chiago and the others. So why was she in the hospital?

  Zach was talking to someone. “Can she have something for pain?”

  “The doctor is going to want her fully conscious first so he can evaluate her.”

  “Then you’d better get him in here. I don’t want her to suffer.”

  “I’ll page him.”

  Again, she tried to open her eyes, her head throbbing. “Zach?”

  “I’m here.” He stroked her hair. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  At this news, she felt a dark cloud lift off her. He’d come back to her.

  But how had she landed in the hospital? “What . . . happened?”

  “What do you remember?”

  It was so hard to think. “The hotel . . . You left. You left me.”

  “Yeah. I went back to D.C. Do you remember going home to Denver?”

  Going home?

  Yes, she’d gone home to Denver. She’d flown on a private airplane. Zach had done that for her. And he’d done something else, too.

  “Southern sweet tea. You did that. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Can you remember anything after you arrived in Denver?”

>   There’d been reporters outside her house. She’d given a statement, gone to work, written about what had happened in Mexico. Joaquin had brought beignets. But that was just the first day. She’d gone to work the second day, and no one had wanted to be interviewed. She’d gotten tax documents and faxed them to the forensic accountant, then gotten her stuff together to go home. And then . . .

  She opened her eyes, saw Zach’s face, his gray eyes clouded with concern. “I remember leaving the newsroom but . . . nothing else.”

  “You don’t remember anything after that? Leaving the building? My calling you on your cell phone? The wind?”

  She tried to think, tried to remember, pain making her confused. Zach calling her on her cell phone . . . the wind . . . Fear welled up inside her, nameless but overwhelming. “I can’t . . . remember. Please tell me. What happened?”

  “Your car exploded. Someone—likely the Zetas—rigged it with explosives.”

  Her car had exploded?

  She had no memory of that at all, and for a moment she thought he’d made it up. But the look on his face told her he wasn’t joking. “A car bomb? Am I . . .”

  And the fear was back.

  She wiggled her toes, raised a hand, saw it had all its fingers, then felt her face.

  “You’ve got a few cuts from flying glass, but you’re okay—thank God.” He ran a knuckle over her cheek. “The wind apparently blew some papers out of your hands, and while you were chasing them, a gust blew your car door shut, detonating the bomb.”

  Natalie listened, almost too stunned to speak, while Zach recounted the past several hours, from the moment he’d gotten the phone call tipping him off to the moment he’d arrived at the hospital. She’d almost been killed. If it hadn’t been for Colorado’s wind storms, she would be dead right now.

  She found herself holding tightly to Zach’s hand. “I-I thought I saw Señor Scar Face—that’s what I call the Zeta who tortured you. I thought I saw him out of the corner of my eye yesterday. But when I looked, he wasn’t there. I called Julian. He and Marc cleared my home and put a watch on my house last night. I thought I had imagined seeing him, but he must have truly been there.”