Her Cowboy Protector (11 page)

She'd identified all of the SWIFT codes. All of the transfers originated with Mexican banks and were sent to various European and Caribbean banks. Cruz figured the Mexican bank accounts were owned by the De La Garza brothers or their cronies but the other accounts? Those were still impossible to pin down.

Extra digits at the end of each IBAN had slowed her down. At first, she'd considered Niall had been wrong in identifying them as international bank accounts but then it occurred to her someone might have tacked on the extra digits as an identifier. On a whim, she'd opened all the files on the drive and uncovered a text file filled with some kind of a code. The key was missing, of course, but Cruz had no doubts she'd be able to break it.

The code corresponded to the identifier digits added to the bank accounts. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to gather all this information. At least one person had died for it. Poor Daniela Mendoza.

Cruz put down her half-eaten apple. Her appetite had vanished at the thought of the young woman she'd only briefly known. Such a waste of human life! She had to figure this out and get the info to Carlos and the Feds.

One thing still troubled her. Where had Daniela gotten this information? She'd been a finance grad student but Cruz had checked around online and couldn't find any evidence that Daniela had ever worked at a bank. Her Facebook page had been turned into a memorial of sorts but all of her old information was there. She'd worked in the same department store for five years and hadn't ever mentioned any kind of job that would have put her into contact with that kind of sensitive information.

So where had it come from? Cruz didn't need that piece of information to break the code and make sense of the data but she wanted it. She worried someone else out there was at risk. If Daniela's source was discovered, what was to stop El Alacrán from coming after him or her?

A thought occurred to Cruz. Daniela's Facebook page had so many messages from grieving friends. What if the source had visited her page and left a note? It was a long shot but anything was possible.

Cruz clicked over to the page she'd bookmarked and started checking out every friend who had left a message. It was boring work and incredibly tedious but Cruz felt sure she'd find something. Click. Scan. Click. Scan. Each time she came up empty.

As she scrolled through the messages, Cruz noticed something odd.
Poor John! What a tragedy!
A lot of the messages contained similar sentiments. John? Her boyfriend maybe? It seemed likely friends would feel badly for the boyfriend after such a horrific crime.

What struck her, though, was the way this John guy never commented. That didn't feel right. Social networking was all about bringing people together. If her boyfriend had been slaughtered, Cruz would have spent a lot of time on his Facebook page talking to mutual friends. It was a natural part of the grieving process in the twenty-first century.

Yet there was nothing from John. Not a peep.

Cruz scrolled back up to the top of the page and clicked the button that led her to Daniela's info page. She looked for the tiny red heart that indicated Daniela was in a relationship. There, in blue letters, was the name John Stafford. Cruz clicked and was whisked away to a new Facebook page.

A Facebook page that had also been turned into a memorial.

"Oh. My. God." Cruz whispered, her lips numb as shock rippled through her core. "He's dead."

Cruz gulped back the dread rising in her throat and scanned the page. She spotted a link to a news story embedded in one commenter's post and clicked. It took her to an article about the death of John. He'd been killed in his kitchen, two gunshots to the back of the head, one day before Daniela's house had "accidentally" burned down around her.

The article gave her the chills. This was just getting worse and worse. Every time she delved deeper into the mystery of the flash drive, Cruz discovered more horror. She had a sickening feeling she was only scratching the surface. What other twists and turns would she uncover?

Cruz checked John's Facebook page to see if he had any information about his employment situation or educational background. He listed a San Antonio branch of an international bank as one of his employers but he'd stopped working there almost nineteen months before his death. Cruz doubted the information he'd gleaned had come from that job.

At the time he'd been killed, John had been working as a freelance videographer and photographer. There wasn't a link to a blog or portfolio but she read the tweets posted on his Facebook wall. She opened another browser tab and visited Twitter. She found his profile and a link to a blog there. It hadn't been updated in months, obviously, but it might offer some clues.

In between the weddings and quinceañeras and newborn shoots were snapshots of political campaigns. Cruz didn't recognize most of the politicians involved and assumed they were bigwigs in the San Antonio political scene but a couple of them were very well known to her.

A senator, the state's attorney general, some popular congressmen and women—she didn't like where this was going at all. These folks had built their campaigns and public personas around tough drug laws. What if they were taking bribes? What if all that political posturing was just bluster? Were they really hypocrites?

Cruz's stomach clenched. This was the kind of stuff that could tank a career. Politicians were known for their ruthlessness. She'd seen enough of the ugly mudslinging that happened every election year to know these people would be more than willing to bury anyone who threatened their careers.

But to kill? Would they go that far? Maybe not but the cartels paying them sure would. Spreading around money to ease the transport of drugs within Texas made sense. They wouldn't want to see that kind of arrangement come to an end. With a man like El Alacrán on their payroll, the DLG outfit wouldn't have to worry about a threat like John and Daniela. One phone call and their bloodhound would be out on the streets.

How had John stumbled onto this financial data? As a videographer and photographer, he was in a unique position of being always in the background of those political campaigns. He'd probably seen something suspicious and started digging. With his knowledge of banking, he wouldn't have found it too difficult to snoop around in the candidates' or campaigns' financial reports.

Cruz checked the tag cloud on John's blog and found a label for personal photos. She gave it a click and scrolled down a page of related posts. He really was a great photographer. There were quite a few shots of Daniela. They looked so happy. It filled Cruz with such sadness to know their lives had been snuffed out so cruelly.

She found what she was looking for in a series of photos from his parents' thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. She popped open another tab and Googled his parents' names for some contact info. Sure enough, a San Antonio landline number showed up in the results. So much for privacy. Anyone could find a number or address, even a drug cartel assassin or a nosy grad student languishing in a dusty corner of West Texas.

Cruz jotted down the number on an envelope. She wanted to call his parents to ask them some questions. Hopefully they'd kept some of his things. The Scorpion hadn't burned down his home after killing him so his notes would have survived.

But that brought up another troubling though. Why had the assassin burned down Daniela's home but not John's? Had something gone wrong? Was he trying to cover up something?

Desperate for answers, Cruz stood up slowly, careful to avoid a dizzy spell, and stretched her back. She slipped the folded up envelope into the front pocket of her maternity jeans. The baby had quieted after her unsatisfying snack of an apple and tea but he gave a little kick as she straightened up and gave him more room to move. A particularly strong kick had Cruz rushing toward the nearest bathroom.

When she emerged a few minutes later, she headed into the kitchen and scribbled a note for Niall. As her pen moved across the notepad, she knew she was breaking one of his rules but couldn't let this go. She'd seen a pay phone outside the grocery store in town when they'd driven by on their way to the hospital. She'd use that to make her phone call.

Niall's stern voice sounded in her head but she ignored it. The desire to get out of the house was so strong, it overruled her better sense. She reminded herself that she was existing under an alias in town and that no one could possibly know she was here.

Besides, she though somewhat dourly, if The Scorpion wanted her, he'd have grabbed her by now. It was a half hour trip into town, five minutes on the phone, ten minutes in the grocery store to grab those bell peppers she craved and then half an hour back home. She'd only be out in public for a quarter of an hour tops.
I’ll be fine.

As she grabbed her purse and headed out of the house, Felix rolled and punched at her abdomen. It was as if he was warning her, telling her to go back inside and wait for Niall. "Not now, Felix. Mommy has some snooping to do."

Cruz hauled her big belly into the front seat of Joe's old truck and took a second to familiarize herself with everything. Even at seven in the evening, the interior was hot, although not quite the face-melting-hot of midday. She cranked the engine and switched on the air conditioner. It was nice and cool after a minute or so. The radio worked too. Of course the only thing it picked up was a scratchy station that played only country classics. Still, Kenny Rogers and Conway Twitty were better than nothing.

She put the truck in reverse and backed up enough to make a turn and head back out toward the main road. Cruz settled in for the half hour drive into Eldorado. As she barreled down the dirt road and then later the highway, she considered what she was going to say to John's mother or father. She had to play this very carefully. There were so many ways a phone call like this one could go south.

Before she was ready, she hit the city limits. The population sign came into view. Less than two thousand people in the whole town. She'd never lived in such a tiny place. She wondered what it must be like to walk into a store and recognize every face.

The town made her smile. It was so cozy and quiet. The pharmacy looked frozen in time with its early twentieth century architecture and a sign advertising ice on sale for a dollar a bag. The Dollar General was the extent of modernization in the town.

She pulled into one of the empty parking spots lining the front of the grocery store and killed the engine. She fished around in her purse for some loose change and carefully slid out of the truck. Thankfully it wasn't as high off the ground as Niall's monstrosity.

There was already someone at the phone booth so Cruz decided to do her shopping first. It wasn't very busy inside the store so she felt comfortable taking her time and browsing all six aisles. Choices were thin and the prices a bit steep but she figured most people made the hour drive north to San Angelo, a moderately sized city that boasted two Wal-Marts and a Target as well as a movie theater and plenty of restaurants.

Although she'd hoped to duck in and out, Cruz found herself cornered by trio of older women who would give CIA interrogators a run for their money. She suddenly wished she'd changed out of the purple Fanta t-shirt that had once been a size too big but now hugged her pregnant belly without forgiveness and back into the nice maternity top from earlier. They were decked out in typical Texas fashions—big hair, bright clothes and loud jewelry—and Cruz felt underdressed. They didn't seem to mind though. They were sweet as pie and invited her to come play Bunco at the Baptist church on Thursday night. Not that she had any idea how to play but, for the chance to get out of Niall's house once in a while, she'd do a crash course on the internet.

Cruz paid for her small basket of groceries and headed back out to try the payphone again. This time the booth was empty so she inserted her coins and pulled the envelope from her jeans. She dialed and waited for an answer, her heart rate increasing with her nervousness.

"Hello?" A woman's voice filtered through the receiver.

"Hi, Mrs. Stafford?"

"Yes," the woman replied. "This is Margaret Stafford."

"Great," Cruz said, relieved she'd reached the right number. "My name is Cruz Mo—Campbell and I was a friend of your son, John." She made a face as she told a white lie. "I wondered if I could ask you a couple of questions."

The other end of the line remained silent. Cruz worried she'd overstepped the line and really hurt the woman by bringing up her dead son. Guilt stabbed her chest. "Mrs. Stafford?"

"Did you know my son's girlfriend, Daniela? Did you share a hotel room with her at a conference in Houston last October?"

The tables turned, Cruz swayed on her feet. She clutched the receiver and tightened her grip on the plastic handles of the grocery sack dangling from her fingers. "Yes."

"Hang on a minute, please."

"All right." Cruz's heart beat so fast she felt like a hummingbird. When she heard noise on the other end, she tensed with anxiety.

"I've been expecting you to call for some time," Mrs. Stafford admitted. "A few days after John was killed, we got a letter in the mail from him. He made me promise I wouldn't give it to anyone but a woman named Cruz Montes. You said your name was Campbell though."

"I'm recently married." The lies came easier after the first one. Cruz didn't know whether to find that disturbing or helpful.

"I see. Can you tell me where you attended college, please? John gave me a checklist to make sure you're legitimate."

"Oh. Sure. I did my bachelor's degree at Texas A&M University. I'm doing my doctorate at The University of Texas."

"And when you were a student at A&M you co-authored a research paper with…"

Cruz realized she was supposed to fill in the blank. "Wei Yin," she supplied the name of the post-doc she'd worked with at the time. "We were working on a way to use compressive sensing measurements and edge detection to clear up and reconstruct images."

"Thank you." The woman paused. "I'm supposed to give you a web address. Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?"