Breaking Point

  NATALIE AWOKE WHEN Zach unbuckled her from the gurney. “Have we landed?”

  “Yeah. Right on time.” He helped her sit up. “Easy now.”

  Then he turned the thick handle on the door and opened it. Hot air rolled in, the tarmac heated by the summer sun. The mountains had disappeared, which meant they must have brought her to the far eastern part of the state. Other than that, she had no idea where she was.

  It was a good four feet to the ground, but before Natalie could move, Marc and Gabe were there, both armed and wearing Kevlar beneath ordinary street clothes. They reached for her and lifted her to the ground.

  “Can you walk?” Marc looked like he was about to pick her up.

  Natalie held up a hand to stop him. “I’m fine.”

  The two hurried her across the tarmac to an unmarked police car that was idling nearby, holding her between them. She glanced over her shoulder, and caught a glimpse of Zach removing the flight nurse jumpsuit.

  “Don’t worry. He’s coming.” Marc gave her a wink.

  Then Marc opened the back door of the car, put a hand on top of her head, and guided her inside, Gabe sliding in beside her.

  “Buckle up.” Gabe gave her a warm smile, his seat belt fastening with a click.

  A second later, the doors were all shut and locked, Marc in the driver’s seat and Zach in the passenger seat.

  And Natalie’s sense of dread returned.

  For the first time since she’d known them, the guys weren’t bickering. They weren’t joking. They weren’t insulting one another. Other than the occasional reassuring word to her, they were absolutely silent.

  You’re in trouble deep, girl.

  “WE’RE BACK IN Denver.”

  Zach glanced over his shoulder, saw the confusion on Natalie’s face as she realized where she was. She’d fallen asleep again, proof that she was suffering the effects of the concussion perhaps more than he’d realized. “We’re not trying to sneak you off to Timbuktu, but to get you someplace secret and secure.”

  They had worked around the clock since Rowan’s visit to the hospital yesterday to arrange things—transportation, housing, security. Zach had been pleasantly surprised by the skill of his new special deputies. The three of them were pros, and they worked like a team, united by friendship, their concern for Natalie, and perhaps even their loathing for him. But that was okay with Zach.

  They didn’t have to like him to do their jobs.

  Though he had no military training, Darcangelo had more years in federal law enforcement than Zach and was every bit his equal when it came to organizing security. Of the three of them, he seemed to dislike Zach the least.

  Probably because he didn’t catch you having sex with his wife’s friend when you were supposed to be watching over her.

  Hunter’s Special Forces and SWAT experience had proved valuable. The man had gone so far as to scope out from a sniper’s perspective the possible lofts where Natalie might stay, making sure that no one would be able to take a shot at her from anywhere in the city. That’s how they’d ended up in the penthouse and not at the first two lofts Zach had considered.

  And Rossiter’s . . . unique talents had come in handy, too. He was a solid law enforcement officer, but he had a special skill for defying gravity. When Zach had wanted to check the roof of the penthouse for possible places to install a private satellite dish, Rossiter had simply climbed the flagstone wall as if he were Spider-Man, eliminating the need to find a ladder. Zach had been astonished when he’d seen that the man had a prosthetic leg.

  “Don’t be impressed,” Hunter had muttered. “It’ll give him a big head.”

  With the help of some of Rowan’s men and resources, the four of them had pulled things together in record time. Because Natalie wasn’t eligible for enrollment in WITSEC, there were a lot of steps they’d been able to skip. No need to establish an identity, find her a new town, or launch her into a new career. She wasn’t leaving her life behind for good. Once Cárdenas was in custody or dead—and Zach now had a strong preference for the latter—she would be able to go home again.

  He glanced over his shoulder once more, his gaze drawn inexorably to her face. Then he saw Rossiter watching him over the top of his sunglasses, a knowing look in his eyes.

  Caught in the act. Eyes front, McBride.

  Zach turned his gaze back to the road ahead.

  There would be consequences as a result of his coming here, and not just in Washington, D.C. He was finding it damned hard to treat this like a job. This morning in the hospital, he hadn’t been able to keep himself from touching her, holding her hand, drawing her into his arms. Now he could barely keep his eyes off her, the idea of being alone with her for the foreseeable future far too satisfying.

  But he was on assignment, and that meant putting some professional distance between them. Would she understand that? Would she understand that they couldn’t pick up where they’d left off in Arizona?

  Do you understand that, McBride?

  Of course, he did. He was officially assigned to protect her and get the Zetas out of Denver, and he couldn’t focus on either of those things if he was busy getting her naked and doing the horizontal tango.

  Then why did you buy a new box of condoms?

  Well, the ones he’d bought in Mexico had been too small, and he wanted to be safe rather than sorry.

  Wrong answer.

  If he were smart, he wouldn’t have to worry about being safe or sorry. But then where Natalie was concerned, he’d been anything but smart or safe. And, strangely, he wasn’t one bit sorry either.

  And that’s really the problem, isn’t it?

  Yeah, it was.

  He’d never felt this way about a woman—out of control, shaken up in body, mind, and soul. She was as necessary for him as the breath in his own lungs. He’d gladly rip out his beating heart to keep her safe. But he wouldn’t be able to do his best for her if he couldn’t keep his mind and his hands off her. And afterward, when this was over . . .

  He’d had the courage to say good-bye and walk away from her once. He wasn’t sure he could do it again. But if he cared for her . . .

  If he cared for her, if he truly cared for her, that’s exactly what he’d have to do.

  Hunter turned right at the next light, heading west toward Riverfront Park, prompting Zach to pull out his encrypted cell phone and call Darcangelo. “ETA five minutes.”

  NATALIE STARED UP in disbelief as the car turned toward the underground parking garage at the most exclusive address in Denver—the Glass Tower. “I’m staying here?”

  Newly built, it rose twenty-three stories high, all shining, silvery glass. They’d run an article on it in the paper’s Lifestyle section. Even the smallest lofts sold for a million dollars.

  “It’s got unparalleled security.” Gabe pointed. “Watch this.”

  The car drew up to what looked like an automated ticket dispenser, like the ones at city-owned parking lots. In the front seat ahead of her, Marc rolled down his window, reached out, and pressed the pad of his left thumb to what looked like a square plastic button. The moment he touched it, the plastic button glowed red.

  Zach turned to look back at her. “Biometric technology. The pad is keyed for our fingerprints. No one who’s not in the system can enter. If anyone tries to hack it, the thing shuts down and sets off a security alarm.”

  In front of them, the steel garage door rose. Julian walked out, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, the gray sports jacket he wore over his black T-shirt almost certainly concealing weapons. He walked toward the street, passing them as if they weren’t there, not even acknowledging them.

  “He’s making sure we weren’t followed,” Gabe explained.

  The car rolled into the well-lighted garage, the door coming down behind them, leaving Julian outside.

  Natalie looked around at the expensive vehicles parked here, each parking spot marked with a number, probably an apartment number. But Marc didn’t park the car. Instead
, he drove around to the back to what looked like a large freight elevator. Then he stepped out and pushed his thumb against the button—another biometric scanner. The doors opened just as he climbed back inside the car, and he nudged it forward.

  “We’re driving the car into the elevator?” Natalie had never imagined such a thing. But the elevator was more than big enough.

  Zach nodded. “We’re keeping you off security cameras so that not even building security knows you’re here.”

  “Wow.” That’s all she could really think to say.

  The elevator doors closed behind them, and Natalie felt them moving quickly upward, the motion leaving her dizzy. In less than a minute, the elevator car stopped and the doors opened.

  Zach climbed out and pushed the round red HOLD button.

  Beside her, Gabe unbuckled his seat belt. “We’re here.”

  While Marc and Gabe took the elevator back down to the garage to park the car, Natalie followed Zach along a tiled hallway, passing an ordinary elevator meant for people. At the end of the hallway was a wide double door with the brass number 2400 on it. They must be on the top floor.

  Zach pressed his thumb against a biometric pad beside the door, and it opened with a quiet click. “Welcome home.”

  Natalie stepped inside—and found herself in the pages of a magazine.

  Sunlight streamed through floor-to-ceiling windows on the west side, French doors open to a patio with a breathtaking view of the mountains. And she realized this wasn’t just a loft, but the penthouse. She was in the penthouse of the Glass Tower.

  “This belongs to the U.S. Marshal Service?” No wonder there was a deficit.

  Zach laughed. “No. I’m renting it under an alias. I want you to be safe, but also comfortable. You might be stuck here for a while.”

  Being stuck here didn’t seem so bad—especially not if Zach was with her.

  To her left was the living room, with wood floors and furniture in earth tones of cream, sage green, and a soft sky blue, a large painting of golden aspens in snow drawing the colors together, a gas fireplace beneath it. To her right stood an open kitchen with stainless-steel appliances, the refrigerator flush with the wall, the countertops made of white granite. Beyond that was a dining room graced by a long oak table and matching chairs, a modern take on the chandelier hanging above the table’s center.

  Between the kitchen and the living room was a flight of stairs, the banister of polished oak. She took the stairs, but was hit by another wave of dizziness halfway up, her headache worse. She leaned against the rail, drew in deep breaths.

  A hand rested against her back. “You okay?”

  “Just a little dizzy.”

  “Better take it slowly then.”

  With him beside her, she took the remaining few stairs and found herself in a hallway. To her left, above the living room, was the master bedroom, a king-sized bed set on a platform against one wall and covered with a fluffy white down comforter. The bed was flanked by nightstands and surrounded by matching chairs near the windows and a chest of drawers against the far wall. In the corner was a second gas fireplace, its mantel made of polished oak. And on the mantel sat her framed photograph of Beau.

  Natalie walked over to it, picked it up, turned back to look at Zach. “How . . . ?”

  “We moved some of your things here last night. I thought you’d want that.”

  “Thank you. That was very thoughtful of you.” She held the photo against her chest for a moment, something familiar in the chaos that had become her life.

  She set the photo down, walked to the closet, found her clothes hanging neatly inside. Then she turned and saw it—the bathroom. “Oh, my stars!”

  The floors, walls, and countertops were made of a gray-veined marble, the tub deep and elliptical. Big enough for two. The shower was one of those with multiple showerheads, one overhead, three on each side, all adjustable. Twin sinks sat before twin oval mirrors. Small recessed lights shined down from the ceiling like stars, fluffy white towels hung from silver towel racks.

  She walked through the room, ran her fingertips over the cool marble, then looked out the single square window onto the city below. “This is unbelievable, Zach. Thank you.”

  “We’re not done with the tour yet.”

  He led her back out in the hallway to a small room that was her office, her laptop and files sitting on a wide oak desk. “We’re using VPN to allow you to connect with the newspaper, but I’ll explain that later. Let me show you the gym.”

  He started back down the stairs, but Natalie had noticed another room upstairs. She walked over to it, saw a double bed with a duffel bag full of weapons on top of it, some shaving things set on the dresser. So he planned to sleep in here, away from her.

  She hadn’t expected that. Nothing in how he’d acted toward her had given her any reason to expect that. And her spirits, which hadn’t been high to begin with, sank.

  She turned to find him watching her.

  “Nothing has changed between us, Natalie. We can’t be together. It will just make things harder for both of us if we sleep together. I’ve been assigned to protect you and help get the Zetas out of Colorado, and I need to stay focused. What happened in the desert—”

  “Let me guess—it stays in the desert.” She walked past him and down the stairs, trying not to let him see that what was left of her world had just crumbled.

  ARTURO WANTED TO laugh. He wanted to gloat. He wanted to rub it in their faces. Instead, he sent a prayer of thanks to La Santa Muerte, fighting to keep the joy out of his voice. “She is not so easy to kill, this Natalie Benoit.”

  The bastard sons of whores had planted explosives in her car, but the wind had detonated the bomb, leaving her alive and almost uninjured. Even worse, she had disappeared, evading their best attempts to track her and finish the job.

  “She told the cops she saw one of your men outside the newspaper. From her description, it must be your nephew, José-Luis.”

  Arturo stopped, shifted the phone to his other ear, the laughter dying inside him. “José-Luis? Perhaps . . . I don’t know where he is. Sí. Yes, he is there, I think.”

  A low chuckle. “We know he’s there, Arturo. If his presence were to blame for our failure, we’d have sent him back to you in pieces. Instead, it’s convinced every cop and agent in Denver that the Zetas are there on the streets hunting for her. Nice work.”

  Arturo could hear the mocking tone in his voice. The stupid cabrón.

  “The good news is that we may have use for your nephew. And for you. How soon can you meet us in Denver?”

  CHAPTER 26

  ZACH FINISHED READING the forensics report on Natalie’s car, rage on slow boil in his gut. “It wasn’t a VBIED. The trace amounts of C4 are too low for that, and the blast didn’t crater the pavement. They wanted to kill her. They weren’t interested in destroying anything else.”

  He’d decided to take advantage of the fact that Natalie was asleep to hold a briefing with the men. Now that they’d gotten her safely here, it was time to start the next phase of the operation—finding and eliminating the Zetas. He looked up from the page to find the others still reading.

  “Agreed.” Darcangelo met his gaze, nodding. “The blast was carefully channeled upward—the work of a pro.”

  “You think it was a tilt fuse?” Rossiter asked, still reading.

  “That’s what the Zetas typically use,” Zach answered.

  “The victim gets in the car, starts driving, and the car’s motion rocks the fuse, sending the mercury to the other end to close the circuit and set off the explosion. It’s a way to make sure the victim is in the vehicle before detonation.”

  “And she would have been right where they wanted her, if not for the wind.” Hunter shook his head, set his copy of the report down on the coffee table. “This fucker Cárdenas—what’s his obsession with her?”

  “She’s the one who got away.” That was Zach’s best theory at the moment. “He has what I guess you?
??d call a death fetish. His men kidnap young women and bring them to him. He rapes them, brutalizes them. Then, when they’re almost dead, he sacrifices them to La Santa Muerte, getting his ultimate thrill as that last breath leaves their bodies. We know this because one of his victims wasn’t as dead as he thought she was. Tourists found her in the desert. She was sixteen.”

  Rossiter looked up from the page, his gaze hard. “And that’s what this sick son of a bitch had planned for Natalie?”

  “Yeah.” It turned Zach’s stomach even to think about it. “One of the Zetas told her that Cárdenas planned to enjoy her and then sacrifice her.”

  “I really want to get my hands on this chingadero, show him a few things about pain he might have forgotten.” The tight set of Darcangelo’s jaw told Zach that he wasn’t kidding.

  “I doubt he’ll set foot north of the line, especially now. He has people do his dirty work for him, like his nephew José-Luis Quintana.” Zach handed out color printouts of Quintana’s face, having gotten an ID on him late this afternoon from Interpol. “This is the man Natalie saw in the newspaper parking lot—the man who assaulted her.”

  Darcangelo looked up. “And who tortured you.”

  Zach nodded, shoving those memories aside.

  “So what is this La Santa Muerte?” Hunter pronounced the name with uncertainty. “Is this a real Catholic saint?”

  “No.” Zach and Darcangelo answered at the same time.

  “It’s a narco-saint,” Darcangelo added.

  Zach deferred to Darcangelo, let him explain it, his own thoughts drifting back to Cárdenas and his motives. By planting those explosives in Natalie’s car, the Zetas had done something they’d never done before. They’d tried to kill someone who wasn’t mixed up in drug trafficking—and they’d come deep into the U.S. to do it.

  What had driven them to act?

  Maybe this was revenge for the humiliation Cárdenas had suffered when she and Zach escaped. Perhaps she was the first woman to escape him in quite that way. Maybe this was about the cocaine Zach hadn’t stolen. God only knew what Gisella had told them before they’d killed her. Or maybe Cárdenas was trying to keep a vow to his favorite sick icon. But if that were true, why not try to reacquire Natalie and carry out his original plan?