Hunted (8 page)

Carlos took the file and started scanning the contents, but there was really only one thing he was interested in. He flipped to the last page and read the final bit of the log. One series of texts and an incoming call jumped out at him immediately. He didn’t recognize the number but the communication had taken place around four, two hours before her phone was deactivated. And it was also the last number she’d contacted. “Start with this one,” he told him. “Find out who it is, get an address or place of work if you can.”

Carlos immediately began searching through the rest of the pages for the number. Her mother’s number came up a few times, as did her work and two of her friends’ numbers. The unfamiliar one was there too. It showed up from time to time over the past month. Nothing too overt, but clearly Leticia knew the person well enough. If he found out it was another man who’d been trying to lure her away, Carlos would kill him.

He exhaled to ease the pressure in his chest cavity. “She’s still in the city.” He was sure of it. There was no way she’d go back to Tennessee to stay with her mother. It was too obvious a move and she knew he’d check there. Besides, Leticia’s mother was a drunk and she wanted nothing to do with her. It was the reason she’d left home with her son and moved down here in the first place. “Call me when you find out.”

Gill nodded and opened his car door. “I’ll be in touch shortly.”

“I want this by the time the sun comes up.”

Gill’s eyes flashed up to Carlos, his trepidation clear. “I’ll do what I can.”

Carlos wasn’t worried about the man slacking on the job. He was in too deep, owed Carlos too much, and knew if he disappointed or crossed him, he’d either wind up dead in an “accident” or turned over to the Feds for fraud and cyber crimes. He knew none of that needed to be reiterated now.

Carlos started around the back of his truck, paused when Gill didn’t move. Facing him, he arched a brow. “Problem?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “You said there was a boy.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well I just… You’re not going to do anything to him, are you?”

“Not your problem.” A wealth of warning filled the words.

Gill shifted, swallowed. “No. It’s just…” He searched Carlos’s face for a moment, as if looking for reassurance that nothing would happen to the kid.

Carlos couldn’t give him anything of the sort. Leticia loved that kid more than anything and if using Xander for leverage was his only way of getting her back, he’d do it. Whatever it took to make her stay.

If he let her live after the way she’d betrayed and humiliated him.

Giving Gill a cold look, Carlos stalked around to the driver’s side of his truck. He waited with the engine running, the burst of cool from the air-conditioning drying the perspiration on his face. He watched the car pull out of the rest stop and drive west on the highway until its red taillights disappeared in the distance. Only then did he start his engine and drive east, back toward downtown. With that amount of cash in hand, Leticia could have caught a bus or bought a plane ticket.

His gut said otherwise. That would make her too easy to track. No, he was sure she hadn’t left town yet. But his window of opportunity was getting smaller and smaller with each passing hour.

He kept the radio off as he drove, the rhythmic sound of the tires on the asphalt soothing him. Was she lying in a bed somewhere, too afraid to go to sleep for fear of him finding her? Just the thought of her being in another man’s bed was enough to have his hands clenching around the steering wheel.

Ahead of him down the dark ribbon of highway, the city of New Orleans glimmered. Somewhere in the glow of those lights, Leticia was hiding.

But she wouldn’t stay hidden for long.

****

Even though Clay was next to her in the backseat of the cab, Zoe was nervous enough that she kept darting glances in the rearview and side mirrors. Not that Leticia’s psycho boyfriend knew about her or this meeting, but the woman had made the man sound so scary that the mere thought of getting more deeply involved in all of this put Zoe on edge.

Clay noticed her looking but didn’t say anything, instead shooting her a subtle frown. Even with the added risk of Leticia bolting if she caught sight of him, Zoe was glad he’d come.

At the meeting location the driver pulled up at the curb in front of a narrow, two-story Victorian-style house in a quiet, residential neighborhood. “You’ll wait here?” Zoe asked him.

“You’ve got my cell number programmed into your phone, right?” he said instead, dodging her question.

She nodded. “I’ll be as quick as I can. Clay, she can’t see you. It’s important.”

“She won’t see me. But there’s no way I’m waiting in this cab.” He reached across her and popped her door open. “Text or call me once you make contact. If I don’t hear from you in five minutes, I’m coming after you.” A warning and a promise, and even if it was domineering of him, she knew he was only insisting on this for her own safety.

“Okay.” She got out and hurried up the sidewalk, around the back of the house. Away from the soft illumination of the streetlights out front, the shadows seemed to close in on her. A dog barked from a yard a couple houses over. Rounding the corner of the sidewalk that led to the wooden privacy fence encircling the property, she looked around.

“Over here.”

She glanced toward the rear fence where the female voice had come from. Leticia stepped out of the shadows, hair and the upper part of her face hidden by a gray hoodie. “Thanks for coming.” She turned and spoke behind her. “It’s okay, Xander, you can come out.” The boy appeared behind her, a living shadow.

“You guys still okay?”

They both nodded. “Thanks for coming,” Leticia said, dropping her gaze to the ground as though she was too ashamed to meet Zoe’s eyes.

“No problem.” Zoe crossed her arms and looked around. “Do you have friends or relatives here?”

“No, but I used to work here when I cleaned houses and I knew it was a safe place to come.” Leticia blew out a breath and stuck her hands into the kangaroo pocket on the front of her hoodie.

Zoe stepped closer, lowered her voice so it wouldn’t carry. “What scared you so much tonight?”

She lifted a shoulder. “I was watching from the windows in the guesthouse out back. Thought I saw a car circle by a few times and I got nervous.”

More than nervous, if she’d decided to take off with Xander at that hour with no plan and no place to go. “I want to help,” Zoe said softly. “But I feel like we’re both in way over our heads with this already.”

A humorless laugh. “Yeah, I know.” She wrapped an arm around her son’s shoulders, brought him close and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “I’m so sorry, buddy. This is all my fault.”

“It’s okay, mom,” Xander said. “Don’t worry.”

Zoe wanted nothing more than to swoop in and rescue them both, but she couldn’t do that. “You didn’t get the restraining order, did you?”

Not meeting her eyes, Leticia shook her head.

Zoe pushed out a breath, disappointed but not all that surprised. “Why not?”

The woman lifted her head, stared back at Zoe with haunted eyes. “I already told you. He’s too dangerous. If I go to the cops, he’ll know. They’ll even help him find me. So I lied and told you I got it.”

It made Zoe’s skin crawl to think of cops so corrupt that they’d help a criminal hunt down a woman he’d battered. But this had to go way beyond the local police, and that in itself was a huge red flag. The way Leticia acted, this guy had connections to all the powerful and important people along the entire Gulf Coast, maybe farther. What the hell had Leticia gotten involved in?

“We need help,” she said simply, appealing to Leticia’s common sense. “There are people who can help you. Not the cops.” She had to be careful about her wording here. “I know a few people personally who can give you and Xander the help and protection you need.” Leticia started to shake her head, but Zoe kept on. “These are people I know well, Leticia. People I trust my life with.”

The woman hesitated, still staring at her. “Who? Are they law enforcement?”

“Federal agents.”

She gave a bitter laugh, looked away again and tightened her hold on her son. “He’ll know them.”

“Even if he does, these people aren’t corruptible.” Normally she wouldn’t reveal any of this to an outsider, let alone someone she didn’t know all that well, but this was important and Zoe was getting desperate. There was no way Leticia’s ex had ties to Tuck, Celida or Clay, yet she seemed so terrified that he might. Zoe wished she had a name, so she could find out exactly who they were dealing with here. “One of them’s my cousin, one is my best friend, and the other—” She took a deep breath, prayed she wasn’t about to lose Leticia over this. “—is waiting in a cab around the corner.”

Leticia’s head snapped up. Her eyes widened in horror, in betrayal, and she instantly took a step backward, dragging Xander with her as if she expected men to come racing at her at any moment.

Zoe held up a hand to stop her, her heart aching for the woman. “I told him to stay where he was. He doesn’t know who you are or why I’m here. He’s not even from the area, he lives on the East Coast and is only in town for a few days. But he’s a good man and I promise you he’s no threat to you or Xander. He’ll know how to help.”

Leticia shifted and the faint moonlight illuminated the right half of her face, showing the tears glimmering on her lashes. “I don’t know where to go.”

“I know.” Zoe reached out a hand for her. “Come with us. We’ll drop you off at the shelter for the night. I won’t let my friend see which house we go into. We’ll make sure we’re not followed by anyone, my friend will keep watch on the way there and once I get you settled, you and Xander can get a good night’s sleep for once. In the morning you can let me know whether you want me to ask my cousin and friends for help.”

If this Carl guy was as bad as Leticia seemed to think he was, he likely had a lengthy criminal record. The FBI might be willing to help out with protective custody or even WITSEC in exchange for her testimony to put Carl away. That would depend on how bad the agency wanted him, though. “You can think about where you want to go tomorrow, but please don’t try to run now. It’s the middle of the night and you just said yourself that you don’t have a plan. For Xander’s sake, come back to the shelter and think things over. It’s not safe for him out here either, especially at this time of night.”

Leticia drew in a shaky breath, released it slowly, and Zoe knew the mention of her son’s safety had just clinched the deal. “I can’t go back to the shelter even if I wanted to. They explained the curfew thing when we got there and told me how strict it is to protect the other women and children already staying there. They won’t let me back in now.”

“I’ve already talked to the woman who runs it, and cleared it with her. She’s waiting for my call to let her know whether you’re coming back.”

Leticia swallowed. “The guy waiting in the cab. You really trust him that much?”

“I do.” Gruff and antisocial as he was, she knew Clay was a good man. And crap, she hadn’t texted him yet. She pulled out her phone. “I promised I’d text him to let him know I’m okay. I’m not telling him anything about you still.” She typed in a quick message, held it out to Leticia in case she wanted to check it herself but she shook her head.

His response came back a second later.
OK

The curt, no-frills response made her smile a little. So Clay.

Putting her phone back into her purse, she looked at Leticia. “Well? What do you want to do?”

The woman glanced down at her son, seemed to exchange some kind of unspoken message with him, then met Zoe’s gaze and nodded. “Okay. We’ll come with you to the shelter. But only for tonight.”

Relieved, Zoe relaxed and gave them both a smile. “Sure.” She held out an arm, beckoned them both closer. “Come on. Right this way.”

Clay didn’t like it, but he reluctantly stayed put in the cab while Zoe took the woman and kid to wherever she was taking them. The urge to get out and follow to make sure she was safe was strong, but the neighborhood here in the Garden District was quiet. And since most properties here probably cost more than ten times what he’d make in this lifetime, he was pretty sure Zoe could walk to and from the shelter alone without getting assaulted.

At the twenty minute mark he started to get antsy, but he’d seen how reluctant the mother had been to get into the cab with him in the first place, so he figured Zoe was likely still talking to her and getting them set up for the night. How the hell had he not known that Zoe volunteered at a place like that? Tuck had never mentioned it, and neither had she in any of their e-mail exchanges over the past couple months.

It didn’t surprise him that she’d work at a women’s shelter though. Her background in family law made her interest in the cause understandable. For all her quirks and sharp tongue she had a huge heart, and seeing her go out of her way to help the woman and child tonight touched something deep inside him. That cynical, cold part of him that had taken over more and more, partly because of what he did at his job, and partly because of what he’d experienced in his personal life.

“How much longer?” the cabbie groused, shifting restlessly in the front seat.

“Dunno, but she already paid you to wait, so she’ll be out when she’s ready,” Clay told him, not taking his eyes off the sidewalk where Zoe had disappeared around the corner. He’d give her another half an hour before he got concerned enough to send a text. If she didn’t answer that, he’d go find her, instructions to stay put or not.

Fifteen minutes later, she appeared at the opposite end of the block and headed for the cab, her silhouette unmistakable. He inwardly smiled at the change in her route, approving of her awareness. Both she and the shelter seemed to take their secret location and confidentiality policy seriously. A good thing if they wanted to guarantee the safety of the women and children inside.

He popped the door open for her and Zoe slid into the backseat with a sigh. “Sorry about that. Back to the Quarter, please,” she said to the cabbie, and rattled off her address as she settled back against the seat. Her light, exotic scent rose up to tease him, intensified by her body heat.