“The van!”
Zander was herding them all back up the alley, only now they were all flat-out sprinting, and suddenly Erin realized what they were running toward: the large, white government van, with the word CONAFOR on its side, along with more words she couldn’t understand.
And there was Rey running from the other direction, pounding up to the van’s driver’s side. Her gaze focused on their cabbie and she took him in as if for the first time: his long, loose body, his gray-green uniform, his hair slicked back…and the sleek, government-grade rifle gripped in his right hand as he wrenched open the driver’s-side door.
“Hola!” he shouted, just as Erin’s mother and Mike reached the vehicle. Then Zander was there, hustling them all forward, shoving them into the confines of the vehicle like kindergartners forced onto a bus. He tossed a shocked Erin the backpack full of money, then hauled the door shut.
“Any trouble?” Zander barked to Rey as he half stumbled, half fell into the front seat. Erin’s mother was rocking on the floor now, tears streaming down her face. Clutching both backpacks now, Erin made an impulsive move toward her, then jerked back, startled, as Mike pulled her mom into his embrace, pushing her hair out of her face and crooning to her in a soft, low baritone that barely resonated above the crash and rumble of the van but still stole Erin’s breath away.
He was singing to her mother.
She was so not dealing with this right now.
She turned around resolutely and lurched her way to the front of the van, catching Rey’s glance in the rearview mirror as she sat, dumping the packs at her feet. “Hola,” he said again, grinning broadly as she settled in behind him. “Your boyfriend, he’s not so bad for a pretty boy.”
“Just drive, Taco Bell,” Zander snapped, and Erin glanced at him now, really seeing him for the first time since she’d started running. He looked sharp, tough, once again not the man she’d known for all these years, but a harder, smarter version of that man. A warrior. Zander half-turned in his seat as Rey bounced over the curb and onto the main road, and pinned Erin with worried eyes. “You okay?” he asked.
“Me? You’re the one who just shot…who got us all out…I can’t believe you even got the backpack…,” Erin stuttered, not able to form words any more coherently.
“Speaking of what I got.” Zander reached down and picked up the kidnapper’s gun, wiping it with his T-shirt. He did something to the base of it and a slender rectangle fell out of the handle into his hand. “Turn down the next alley.”
“Piece of shit anyway,” Rey agreed, looking over at the weapon. He turned into a side street thirty seconds later, and Zander tossed the now-unloaded gun through the passenger window, into a pile of trash bags. It’d be found, certainly. But not by the kidnappers.
Erin’s heart was still pounding, and she wrapped her arms around herself tightly, chills rolling up and down her skin. “You could have gotten killed,” she finally managed to say, but Zander shook his head, his gaze swinging back to her.
“These guys were not experts, Erin,” he said. “Just like we suspected. He didn’t check me for a weapon, or you either. Yes, he had his gun on your mom, but he was sloppy and stupid.” His gaze shifted to Rey. “Looks like you handled his buddy pretty easily.”
“Well, only because I am so good at my work.” Rey grinned, expertly weaving the van through traffic. “The friend was a skilled martial artist, a trained ninja, I am thinking. It is only through my highly advanced abilities that you are all still alive.”
Zander snorted a laugh. “Right.”
“Hey, you don’t want to brag, I respect that, that is you,” Rey protested. “Me, I am happy to take credit where credit is due.” He sobered then as he looked into the rearview mirror. “But we are not quite finished yet, yes? Now we drive back over the border, as fast as we possibly can, and we hope that no one asks questions. But with this van, see?” He patted the dashboard. “It is most likely that no one will ask questions. So nothing should go wrong.”
Erin nodded. They weren’t out of this yet. Rey was right. They still had to get across the river into the United States, hidden in a Mexican-government van. “Of course not,” she said, watching the city streets fly by. “How could anything go wrong?”
Zander tried to ratchet his adrenaline down a few notches, grateful for Rey’s incessant chatter as he shucked himself out of the makeshift gun holster he’d rigged across his bare back in the hotel bathroom. Erin, her mother, and the boyfriend were now stone silent in the back of the van, facing each other. They hadn’t talked. They’d barely looked at each other. Her mom had finally laid off of the crying, but she hadn’t dared to begin a conversation. How do you talk to the child you just led into danger, the child you were willing to bankrupt, the child you could have just gotten killed?
His lips twitched as he slid his shirt back over his head. He didn’t envy Erin and her mother that conversation, and yet…he did. It was still a conversation, something out of reach between him and his father.
What would he have said to his old man now, if given the chance? What would he have asked him? Those questions were bothering him more than they should. Hell, everything was bothering him more than it should, it seemed, and it had since he’d gotten word his dad had passed. He felt like a man lost to himself, wandering alone in a desert he wasn’t sure had an end.
“So, I had some time on my hands waiting for you finally to close this deal today,” Rey began conversationally, and for the moment any trace of his fake Mexican accent was gone, or any of his authentic one for that matter. “Before you two hauled your asses over to the bar, I checked in with my buddies, sent some texts.”
“Some texts,” Zander repeated dryly. “Please tell me you didn’t tag us on Facebook.”
“No, but as it turns out, you’ve got some people worried about you.”
That did catch his attention. Rey had the grace to keep his voice low, and Zander shot him a look. “Some people like who?”
“Some people like a friend of a friend, I’m told, sort of like how you found me. This friend is pretty resourceful, it seems. Started looking for you right after you disappeared from home sweet home, found you this morning.”
Zander shook his head. “Impossible. Nobody knew where I was going.”
“Well, someone did, and he decided to send you and your señorita a ticket home.”
Zander considered Rey’s words. He’d kept everything pretty locked down, but he’d had to make a lot of calls in a very short time. He’d needed to dig up a pile of intel on the local drug scene before he’d found Rey. But he hadn’t sworn all the guys to secrecy or any of that shit. He hadn’t needed to. He wasn’t planning on doing anything illegal. He flashed a weary smile into hot sun. He hadn’t done anything illegal, either. The gun wasn’t registered to him, the kidnapper’s injuries were minor. Or minor enough. “I have no clue who it could be,” Zander said. “And what do you mean, ticket?”
“I mean, ticket as in ticket.” Rey fished inside his shirt pocket and pulled out a slip of paper, handing it to Zander as he shifted his glance to the rearview mirror. He called to the back of the van. “Here we are, everyone, and a few words from your captain now. We should not get stopped. If we do get stopped, look super-American, okay? You were mugged while hiking at the Rio Grande, pulled across the river, all your identification stolen, and you were too freaked out to cross back, thinking you’d be arrested without your ID. You dried out and wandered around until you were half-starving, and lucky for you, I found you.” He grinned into whatever image he saw in the mirror. “You’ll do great. Americans freak out all the time down here, and the fact that you don’t want to press charges or file a complaint or really do anything other than get the hell back home will resonate with the border guards. But my friend at CONAFOR assured me that he makes this crossing a dozen times a week. We shouldn’t be stopped.”
There was a nervous murmur of assent in the back, and it was Zander’s turn to glance into the rearview mirror. Erin’s voice wasn’t among those speaking. She sat perfectly straight, her face composed, her slender shoulders not even trembling. By contrast, her mom and the boyfriend gripped each other like they were about to go up against a firing squad. It probably had never occurred to them until the bitter end just what they had gotten themselves into. Sometimes ignorance really was bliss. And sometimes it just took the right moment for you to see your actions for what they truly were: selfish, stupid, and deadly.
The traffic moved in fits and starts, but finally they got onto the bridge, Rey gradually picking up speed until, at last, they reached the crossing and the light switched green as soon as they approached. The electric eye scanned the CONAFOR truck’s pass sticker dispassionately, as the guard inside the glassed-in cage yelled on the phone over some other problem, barely sparing them a look. They drove through just like any other car full of commercial workers, but no one inside the van spoke until they were off the bridge completely.
Then Rey flashed another big grin into the rearview mirror. “And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen,” he said with a flourish. “Welcome to the United States.”