Flirting with Disaster (10 page)

“We knew we didn’t want to deal with any Mexican officials, so we decided to take the drugs back across the border and hand them over to the customs officers at the commuter airport in San Antonio and tell them what we suspected. Since Robert was trying to smuggle them into the U.S., his network clearly extends there, so U.S. authorities would definitely get involved. But in the meantime, the storm hit, and we had to wait it out. Then right as it was clearing off, somebody showed up at the clinic. A man whose wife was in labor. Adam’s an obstetrician. There’s a midwife in town, but the patient was supposedly high-risk and in premature labor. Adam insisted she needed him, so he took me to the airstrip, told me to go on without him, then went to deliver the baby.”

“How long did you have to wait for him?” Dave asked.

“I didn’t wait. Adam said the woman lived at least an hour away and that he had no idea how long he’d be. He insisted that I take off for San Antonio without him.”

Dave blinked with surprise. “But he was on that plane with you when it went down.”

“No. He wasn’t.”

“Douglas reported him dead right along with you.”

For several moments Lisa just stared at Dave, dumbfounded. “But he’s not dead. He was never even on the plane.”

“I imagine Robert knows that by now.”

Lisa knew what that meant, and she felt a shot of apprehension. “I didn’t know the name of the woman he went to help. I had no way to warn him.”

“This is Sunday morning. He left for that woman’s house on Friday afternoon. The chances of him still being there are slim. One way or another, something has already happened.”

“What do you mean?

“Maybe he came back, heard about your plane going down, speculated that it wasn’t an accident, and got out of town. That’s the best possible scenario.”

“And the worst?”

“He had no idea what was going on. And if Robert saw him and realized he was still alive, he was in big trouble.” Dave sighed. “Robert missed him the first time. You can bet he won’t make the same mistake twice.”

Oh, God.

Lisa felt a rush of total despair as the enormity of the situation crashed down on her.
No.
This couldn’t be happening. Not to Adam. Tears gathered behind her eyes, making them feel hot and tight.

“Do you know this was his last trip down here?” she said. “In two weeks he was taking a chief of staff position at a hospital in Chicago.” She paused, feeling a choking tightness in her throat. “And now this.”

Adam’s wife had died a few years ago under circumstances that would crush any man, but time had passed. He’d picked up the pieces and moved on. Why he’d chosen to give up the thing he did best and move to Chicago to take an administrative job she didn’t know. She only knew that she was going to miss him. These past two years, he’d been almost like an older brother to her, a person she could talk to, laugh with, confide in. Throughout her life, those kinds of people had always been in very short supply.

And now she might be missing him forever.

“Are you all right?” Dave asked.

“Yes,” she said, fighting to hold her voice steady. “Of course.”

“Lisa?” he said gently. “Was he somebody special to you?”

“He was a friend.”

“A good friend?”

“I guess we’d gotten to know each other pretty well.”

That was all she could say. If she told Dave just how much Adam meant to her, she was going to lose it. She turned away, gritting her teeth.
Damn it.
What force in the universe was it that dangled people in front of her like some kind of emotional bait and, as soon as she started to care about them, yanked them back and watched her crumble? Well, whatever it was could get its kicks somewhere else, because she wasn’t going to fall apart. She
wasn’t
.

“It’s still possible he got out of here,” Dave said. “If so, then maybe he’s still alive.”

Lisa nodded, knowing Dave didn’t really believe that. No matter how unlikely it was, though, she was going to be praying for it, on the off chance that there really was a God out there and he really did give a damn.

“Where exactly did you crash-land?” Dave asked. “They said your plane went into a river.”

“It got caught up on the side of a ravine. I made it out of the plane to a ledge beside it. That’s when the guys with machine guns showed up to obliterate what was left of my plane. It went into the river. Unfortunately, I ended up falling right along with it.”

“But you hung on to your backpack.”

“Yes. But not the parts of the defibrillator. I really wish I had those, too, but there was only so much I could grab on my way out of that cockpit.”

“Then you found your way back to town to call me.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think anyone saw you?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

Dave sat back. “Okay. The best thing we can do is get out of here and get back across the border. You’re going to show customs agents these drugs and tell them your story. I’m going to flash my badge and back you up. After that, I guarantee you they’ll be all over Robert the minute he steps foot back in the U.S.”

“But as soon as I show myself, I’ll be a target. Robert still wants me dead.”

“Once the story is out, he’ll be forced to leave you alone. If you end up dead, he’ll be suspect number one. He doesn’t dare risk that.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s the best news I’ve had since this whole mess came down.”

“But we do have a problem. We can’t take a commercial flight, because we’d have to smuggle the pills through security at the Monterrey airport. That’s too risky.”

“So what do you suggest we do? Cross the border by car?”

“I’d rather hand the drugs over to San Antonio customs agents, just as you’d planned to. That would put us well within the U.S. border, and we’ll be talking to agents you’re familiar with.”

“But that means we need to fly back,” Lisa said. “Unfortunately, my plane is at the bottom of the Mercado River.”

“Can you rent a plane in Monterrey?”

“There’s a commuter airport there. A couple of aviation companies. Rentals should be available.”

“Then that’s our plan.” Dave checked his watch. “It’s nearly noon. We can be in Monterrey by three or three-thirty. With luck, somebody will have a plane available and we can head out right away.” He stood up, tossing his bag over his shoulder. “One quick stop in Santa Rios, and we’ll be on the road.”

“Why do we have to stop?”

“The car’s nearly out of gas, and there’s next to nothing between here and Monterrey.”

“What if the wrong person spots me in town? Not likely, but Santa Rios isn’t all that big.”

“No problem. You can ride in the trunk.”

Lisa felt a surge of dread. “No. No way. Not the trunk.”

“Just until we get out of town.”

“Nope. I don’t do small, closed-in spaces.”

“It’s the safest place for you.”

“I’m serious, Dave. I’m not getting in that trunk.”

Finally he sighed with resignation. “Okay. The floorboard of the backseat, then. Covered up with this.” He picked up an old moth-eaten blanket off one of the bunks and gave it a shake.

Lisa didn’t really like the sound of that, either, but riding under a blanket in the backseat beat feeling as if she were sealed inside a moving coffin.

She stood up and grabbed her backpack. When she wobbled a little, Dave took it from her, lowered it back to the ground, then placed his hands against her shoulders.

“Hey, take it easy, okay?”

“I’m fine.”

But for a moment she wasn’t. As the events of the past few days overwhelmed her, she bowed her head and took a deep, steadying breath.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Lisa. I’m going to get you out of here. And then I’m going to do everything I can to make sure Robert pays for what he did to you.”

“He attempted murder in Mexico. How can he be prosecuted for that in the U.S.?”

“If a crime is committed by one U.S. citizen against another in connection with a conspiracy that began in the U.S., the law allows for prosecution even if the crime was committed on Mexican soil.”

“So all we have to do is tie him to the counterfeiting conspiracy and they can go after him for attempted murder?”

“Yes. We’ll get him, Lisa. I promise you.”

The expression of determination on his face amazed her. That he was making her problem his problem amazed her even more. Suddenly she was swept away by the same force that had drawn her to him all those years ago, that steady, anchored feeling she had whenever she was around him, as if he was the foundation that could calm all the turbulence in her life.

She remembered lying on the bank of that river after her plane went down, wet and exhausted, staring up at the starry sky and feeling more alone than she ever had in her life. Sure, she had friends, but they were people she wouldn’t even impose upon to help her move from one apartment to another, much less get her out of a situation like this. And her family. She would rather die a slow death in the Mexican wilderness than speak to any of them ever again.

Then she’d thought about Dave.

Just call me if you need me.

His words had stayed in the back of her mind for years, like a promissory note in a dusty file just waiting to be uncovered. They were what had moved her to stand up on the bank of that river, exhausted, her head throbbing, and begin the long walk back toward Santa Rios, driven to put one foot in front of the other because she knew that if only she could talk to him somehow everything would be all right. Now that she felt more lucid, she realized what a slender thread that had been to hold on to. How could she have thought that he’d come seven hundred miles into the middle of nowhere to help her?

And yet he had.

Still, she knew why. Dave DeMarco was the kind of man who would sooner lose a limb than go back on a promise, no matter how ill-advised that promise might have been. And as he stood here with her now, dead tired and undoubtedly counting the miles they were going to have to travel before he could get back home again, she had to believe he had a few regrets about that.

“Maybe now you wish you hadn’t made that promise to me back then,” she said. “It was a pretty unfortunate thing to say at the last moment, wasn’t it?”

“Unfortunate?”

“Look, I know you’re here only because you felt obligated. You made me a promise, and you feel as if you have to fulfill it. It’s just the way you are.” She paused. “The way you’ve always been.”

“Yes. Which is why I’m careful about the promises I make.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Did I mention anything about an expiration date?”

“No. But we were kids, Dave. Kids don’t always do smart things.”

“I knew exactly what I was doing then.” He slung her backpack over his shoulder, his gaze never leaving hers. “And I know exactly what I’m doing now.”

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and guided her toward the door, and she resisted the urge to slip her arm around his waist and lean into him. No matter how much Dave was helping her now, she’d discovered that at the end of the day there was only one person she could depend on, and she had only to go to the nearest mirror to find her. He was here now because of a promise he’d made, and soon he’d be out of her life again just as quickly as he’d arrived.

The sooner she could rely on herself again, the safer and more secure she was going to feel.

As Dave drove into the outskirts of Santa Rios, he was struck once again by just what a crappy little town it was. Aged storefronts lined the main drag, and the windows of every one of them could have benefited from an economy-sized bottle of Windex and a supersize roll of paper towels. A couple of kids raced down the sidewalk on skateboards, while shiftless men hovered around the street corners, smoking, scratching, and spitting. Hell, no wonder nobody wanted to set up an actual medical practice here. There wasn’t a country club, a golf course, or a five-star restaurant in sight.

He saw the gas station in the distance, a tired cinder-block building that might have last been painted sometime around the turn of the century. The nineteenth century.

“Lisa, we’re getting close to the gas station. Get under that blanket.”

“I will.”

“And don’t move an eyelash.”

“I hear you.”

“I still say the trunk would be better than the backseat.”

“Yeah, and all the screaming just might tip somebody off that I was in there.”

“Just how claustrophobic are you?”

“You mean, how closed in do I have to be before I start sobbing uncontrollably?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not doing too great with this blanket over my face. Does that tell you anything?”

“And you fly private planes? Aren’t the cockpits a little small?”

“Yeah, but there’s all that sky out there beyond it. Not a problem.”

Dave swung the car into the gas station lot, then pulled up next to one of two pumps.