Breaking Point (2 page)

Thanks to Jefferson Dodge, managing editor at
Boulder Weekly
, for supporting my fiction career by being the world’s best managing editor. What did I ever do without you?

And last but not least, thanks to my family for their love, encouragement, and understanding when I do things like ignore the phone and miss Thanksgiving dinner so that I can write. I love you.

CHAPTER 1

NATALIE BENOIT WATCHED the streets of Ciudad Juárez roll by outside the bus window, wishing the driver would turn up the air-conditioning. It wasn’t yet noon and already the city was an oven. Even the palm trees seemed to wither in the July heat.

“With three other seasons in the year, why did SPJ have to choose summer for this conference?” She fanned herself with her copy of the day’s program, perspiration trickling between her breasts.

“Don’t tell me you think it’s hot,
chula
.” Joaquin Ramirez, the newspaper’s best shooter, grinned at her from across the aisle, his camera still aimed out the window. “This can’t be any worse than New Orleans in the summer.”

“Is that where you are from, Miss Benoit—New Orleans?” Enrique Marquez, a journalist from Culiacán, glanced back from the seat in front of her, his Spanish accent making both her name and the name of her hometown sound exotic. In his fifties, he was still a handsome man, with salt-and-pepper hair, a well-trimmed mustache, and brown eyes that twinkled whenever he spoke of his grandchildren.

“Can’t you tell by her accent?” Joaquin gave Natalie a wink.

Natalie ignored Joaquin, refusing to take the bait. “Yes, sir. I was born there and grew up in the Garden District.” Which was why she did
not
have an accent, no matter what her colleagues might think. “I left Louisiana many years ago and live in Denver now.”

She hoped Sr. Marquez would let it go, but was almost certain he wouldn’t. Mention New Orleans, and people just had to ask about the storm. Given that journalists were far more curious than most people, Natalie supposed his next question was inevitable.

“Did you live there during Hurricane Katrina?”

She looked out the window, letting the words come with no thought and no emotion, as if what they represented meant nothing to her. “Yes, sir. It was a terrible time for so many of us. I moved to Denver after that.”

She said nothing about where she’d been during the storm or what she’d endured or what had happened to her fiancé, Beau, and her parents in the aftermath.

“
Lo siento
. I am sorry, Miss Benoit.”

“
No le gusta hablar de eso
,” Joaquin said softly.

Natalie didn’t speak Spanish well, but she understood that much. And Joaquin was right. She didn’t like to talk about it. She’d left New Orleans in part so she wouldn’t have to talk about it. Even six years later, it still hurt too much.

People told her she should move on, get over it, get on with her life. Oh, how she hated those words! They were easy to say, but no one had yet been able to explain to her exactly
how
she was supposed to “move on.” Losing her parents had been hard enough, but losing Beau . . . How could she “get over” him?

How could she forget the man who’d died out of love for her?

It wasn’t that she hadn’t
tried
to move on. Selling her parents’ home—the house at First and Chestnut where she’d grown up—had been a big step, as had moving to Denver. After a year, she’d stopped wearing her engagement ring. She’d even joined an online dating service and gone on several dates. But none of the men she’d met, no matter how intelligent, kind, or attractive, had sparked anything inside her.

It was as if some part of her had forgotten how to feel.

Banamex. Telcel. McDonald’s. Lucerna. Pemex.

The names of banks, businesses, restaurants, and gas stations drifted before her, barely registering with her mind. What she
did
notice were the vibrant colors of the buildings. Bright oranges. Vivid blues. Lush greens. Lemony yellows. And blazing blood reds. Everywhere reds. It was as if the residents of Juárez had decided to strike a blow on behalf of color in defiance of the drab brown landscape that surrounded them.

Natalie had signed up for the trip because she’d wanted to get away from the newsroom for a few days. She’d been working at the
Denver Independent
for almost three years now, and she felt stuck in some kind of professional ennui. Not that she didn’t love her job. She did. Having a spot on the paper’s award-winning investigative team—the I-Team—was every investigative journalist’s dream. But journalism wasn’t a low-stress profession even on the best of days. Burnout was a very real hazard of the job. Or maybe the lethargy that had taken over the rest of her life was affecting her job now, too.

Regardless, she’d needed a change of pace, and this trip had offered that.

She and thirty-nine other journalists—most American, some Mexican—had crossed the border from El Paso into Juárez early this morning, part of a three-day convention and tour put together by the Society of Professional Journalists and the U.S. State Department as a way of bringing Mexican and American journalists together to learn about the intermingled issues of immigration, the drug trade, and human trafficking. They’d started the day with breakfast at the U.S. consulate. Then, under the protection of two dozen armed
federales
, they’d toured a police station and the offices of
El Diario
, the local newspaper, where bullet holes in the walls reminded them just how dangerous it was to be a journalist in Mexico.

“And I thought
my
job sucked,” one of the other American reporters had said, running his fingers over the scarred wall.

The sight of those bullet holes—and the empty desk of the journalist who’d been killed—had put a few things in perspective for Natalie, too. The worst thing she had to put up with during the course of the average workday was her editor’s temper. But no amount of yelling from Tom Trent could compare to flying bullets.

Now they were on their way to the Museo de Historia—the beautiful Museum of History—where President Taft had once dined. After that, they’d visit a new five-star hotel in the downtown area for lunch. It was clear that Mexican officials were proud of their town and were making certain that the tour included a look at the beauty and culture of Juárez, and not just the violence for which the city was unfortunately known.

Natalie couldn’t blame them for that. There were at least two sides to every story, and although the drug cartels made headlines, most people who lived here were decent men and women just trying to raise families and live their lives. Despite the poverty and the unremitting violence, Ciudad Juárez was a city that still dared to hope.

In the streets below, a young mother, her dark hair pulled back in a bouncy ponytail, pushed a baby in a stroller. A shopkeeper in a royal blue apron swept the stone steps of his store. Two teenage boys in bright white T-shirts and jeans walked past a gaggle of pretty girls, their heads craning for a better look as the girls passed them. The girls, well aware of this attention, covered their mouths with their hands and broke into giggles. Nearby, two elderly gentlemen sat on a bench, lost in conversation, straw fedoras on their heads, cigars in their hands.

Natalie felt the bus lurch to a stop but was so caught up in the tableau outside her window that she didn’t realize something was wrong until the scene changed. The teenage boys stopped, then turned and ran up an alley. The shopkeeper dropped his broom and disappeared indoors. The woman with the stroller grabbed her baby and backed into a doorway, a look of fear on her face as she left the empty stroller to roll down the sidewalk. The two old men dropped to their knees and crouched behind the bench.

And then Natalie heard it—the grinding fire of automatic weapons.

Shattered glass. Screams. Staccato bursts of gunfire.

“
¡Madre de Dios!
”

“What the hell?”

“Natalie! Natalie, get down!”

Joaquin’s shout of warning pierced Natalie’s shock and disbelief. She ducked into the small space between her seat and the seat back in front of her, crouching against the floor, shards of glass falling around her like rain. Pulse pounding in her ears, she looked across the aisle, her gaze locking with Joaquin’s as he reached out and closed his hand over hers.

 

IT WAS PAIN and thirst that woke him.

For a moment Zach McBride thought he was back in Afghanistan, lying on the rim of that canyon in the Hindu Kush mountains, an AK-47 round in his back. He opened his eyes to see pitch-black and then remembered. He wasn’t in Afghanistan. He was in Mexico. And he was a captive—blindfolded and chained to a brick wall.

He raised his head and realized he was lying shirtless on his right side, his hands shackled behind his back, his bare skin resting against the filthy stone floor. His mouth was dry as sand. His wrists were blistered and bloody where the manacles had rubbed them raw. His cracked ribs cut into his left side like a blade.

He tried to sit, but couldn’t.

Damn!

He was weaker than he’d realized.

Then something hard and multi-legged brushed his chest as it skittered by, bringing him upright on a punch of adrenaline. Pain slashed through his side, breath hissing between his clenched teeth as he bit back a groan. He wasn’t afraid of the mice or the spiders, but they weren’t the only creatures in here with him. The one time the Zetas had removed his blindfold, he’d seen scorpions. And the last damned thing he needed was a scorpion sting.

Dizzy from hunger, his heart pounding from sleep deprivation and dehydration, he leaned his right shoulder against the brick wall and tried to catch his breath, the chain that held him lying cold and heavy along his spine.

How long had he been here? Five days? No, six.

And where exactly was
here
?

Somewhere between Juárez and hell.

They were giving him only enough food and water to keep him alive, his hunger and thirst incessant, mingling with pain, making it hard to sleep. Only once in his life had he been this physically helpless. Only then it had been even worse.

If he survived, if he made it out of here alive, he would track down Gisella and kill her—or at least hand her over to D.C. The little bitch of a Mexican Interpol agent had set him up, betrayed him to the Zetas. She’d known what would happen to him—the Zetas were infamous for their brutality—and still she’d handed him over to them with a smile on her lying lips.

At least you didn’t sleep with her, buddy.

Yeah, well, at least he could feel good about that. It would suck right now to have her taste in his mouth or her scent on his skin, knowing that she’d put him through this. Long ago he’d made it a rule never to get involved with women while on assignment, and despite Gisella’s persistent attempts to get him to break that rule, he’d kept his dick in his pants.

Hell, they should carve that on your headstone, McBride.

If he got a headstone.

Would they put up a grave marker for him if they didn’t have a body to bury? Barring one hell of a miracle, he’d soon be scattered across the desert in small pieces. A year or two from now, someone would spot a bit of bleached bone in the sand and wonder what it was. No one would ever know for sure what had happened to him.

Besides, who was there to buy a grave plot or erect a headstone? His fellow DUSMs? Uncle Sam? His closest friends were dead. His mother was gone, too. He hadn’t spoken to his father since his mother’s funeral four years ago. And there was no one else in his life—no girlfriend, no wife, no kids.

You’re a popular guy.

He’d always thought he’d get married one day and do the family thing. He’d imagined a pretty wife, a couple of kids, a house near the ocean. But life hadn’t turned out that way.

He’d met lots of girls in college, but none who’d held his interest. Then a confrontation with his father had sent him into the navy. He’d tackled Officer Candidate School and then two years of SEAL training. The only women who’d been available during his short periods of leave were either professionals or women who were so desperate to marry a Navy SEAL that they spread their legs for every frogman they met. Call him strange, but he’d never found the idea of paying for sex or being used appealing. He’d wanted a woman who loved him for himself and not his SEAL trident. But war had interfered, and he’d never found her.

Something tightened in his chest, a wave of regret passing through him.

Feeling sorry for yourself?

No. He’d made his choices. He’d done what he thought was right. And although his life hadn’t turned out the way he might once have hoped, it was better this way. He’d seen firsthand what happened to women and children when the men they loved and depended on were killed in action. At least he wouldn’t be leaving a grieving wife and children behind.

Okay, so no headstone.

Mike, Chris, Brian, and Jimmy were in Arlington resting beneath slabs of white marble, but for Zach it would be saguaro and open sky. That was okay. He liked the desert. And even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t make one damned bit of difference once he was dead.

Which will be soon if you can’t find a way out of this.

Not that he was afraid to die. He’d expected his job would catch up with him one day. In fact, some part of him had been counting on it.

But not yet. And not like this.

He’d been about to wrap up the biggest covert operation of his career when Gisella called him and asked him to meet her at a nightclub in downtown Juárez, claiming to have intel vital for catching Arturo César Cárdenas, the head of Los Zetas, who was wanted in the United States for the murder of Americans on U.S. soil. So Zach had grabbed his gun and fake ID—he never carried revealing documentation when he was working a black bag job like this—and headed straight to the club, where he’d found Gisella, dressed to kill, sitting at the bar. She’d bought him a Coke, walked with him to a table near the rear exit, and started telling him something about a shipment of stolen coke. And then . . .