Seduction Under Fire (11 page)

Rattled by his intensity, Camille whispered, “I promise.”

“If something happens to you...if you’re not back here tonight, I’ll find you.” He closed his eyes and screwed up his mouth. “Just be here. That’s an order.”

“I will. You, too, okay?” She pulled away from his grip. “At least you know I’m not leaving this neighborhood. I don’t know where you’re going to end up today.”

“I don’t know either. How about I call you at noon to check in?”

“All right. I’ll be waiting.” She gave him her best reassuring smile.

After donning a blue crocheted hat, she slipped a 9 mm into her waistband, then shoveled a few stacks of money into one pocket of her borrowed jacket and a backup handgun into another. She slipped on a pair of dark glasses and followed Aaron out the door.

Chapter 8

B
y eleven-thirty, Camille was half done with her errands. While the clothes she’d chosen for herself and Aaron weren’t the most expensive or fashionable, they were good enough. She threw in some hats, socks and—despite her mortification at the idea—underwear for them both. Around the corner from the shoe store, she’d chucked the nasty cartel sneakers in a Dumpster with so much exuberance that a few heads turned to stare at her. She was feeling so good about her new footwear that, on a whim, she popped into a pharmacy for a new box of hair dye.

Brunette, just to tick Aaron off.

Back at the apartment, she scribbled a grocery list before heading out once more. Gigante Market, the local grocery chain, was as sprawling as an American supermarket, and she practically worked up a limp walking from the car to the main entrance.

Starting at the produce section, she methodically walked each aisle, adding to her cart. Inspired by the aroma of baking bread wafting from behind the bakery counter, she waited her turn for a loaf of fresh sweet bread. With an appreciative sigh, she popped a chunk of the still-warm loaf in her mouth, then got back to business. Rounding the corner to the rice aisle, she saw three men loitering at the opposite end, closest to the exit.

The pock-cheeked man who’d tied Aaron’s and Camille’s legs to those rusty patio chairs stood next to the man with helmet-hard hair who’d skydived with her and a third man Camille didn’t recognize. He looked to be in his late thirties, with the muscular build of a bulldog. If any of the three could claim to be a full-time hit man for the cartel, it would be this guy.

Not sure if she was spotted, Camille flipped a U-turn and walked around the corner. She abandoned the shopping cart on the next aisle, slipped her firearm from her waist and flipped off the safety. She peeked between the shelves, through the bottles of juice on her side and the bags of rice on the other, at where the three men had been but were no longer.

They appeared quietly, with smirking, destructive smiles, at the head of the juice aisle.

Adrenaline and panic flamed to life within her, making her breath shallow, her vision narrow. Her gun hand shook violently.

The men advanced.

She swept an arm across a shelf of bottles, and they crashed to the ground, embedding little bits of glass into her ankles. She sprinted three aisles over, praying the glass and liquid impeded her pursuers long enough for her to make it out the front entrance.

Three against one in an aisle-by-aisle chase were terrible odds, though. Halfway through the snack aisle, Helmet Hair appeared before her. She squeezed a round off that went wide and then she turned back the way she came, but Hit Man and Pocked Face blocked her in. Their movement changing from running to stalking, they crowded in on her, drawing their guns.

She aimed her gun as best she could as it quaked in her hand and concentrated hard on her trigger finger, but it wouldn’t move. Damn it.

On the edge of panic, she threw herself into a shelf, punching through the chips to the other side, and raced to the back of the store, scanning for a rear exit. What she came to first was the Mexican equivalent of an American deli section. She crashed into a refrigerated display case, then darted behind the counter and shoved past a shocked employee.

Dizzy with adrenaline and shock, she ducked behind a meat slicer and took in great gulps of air as blood surged with fiery purpose through her veins. Two sets of prowling feet appeared nearby. She tightened her grip on her gun as awareness dawned within her. She was going to have to kill them all if she wanted to make it out of the supermarket alive.

She rose into a squat beneath the table, waiting for the opportunity to strike.

Her cell phone rang.

She cursed and leaped from her hiding place. Helmet Hair, with his back to her, was the closest. Cringing with the effort of squeezing the trigger, she got a round off, hitting him in the shoulder. She kicked out at his midsection, knocking him face-first into the revolving vertical meat broiler. He shrieked in pain.

She twisted left and shot Pocked Face in the gut. He staggered and leveled his pistol at her.

Dodging right, she fired again, the bullet slicing a chunk from his neck. Blood gushed uncontrollably from both wounds. With a guttural cry, he shot at her at the same time Hit Man caught her left cheek with an upper jab.

The impact of the punch knocked her down. She rolled under the nearest stainless-steel table. Pocked Face fired in her direction and the table rocked on its legs as the bullet ricocheted and hit a display case, shattering glass in all directions. She braced for a second shot but none came. The only sound besides Helmet Hair’s low moans of agony from the meat broiler was the soft clunk of Pocked Face’s head hitting the floor.

Hit Man’s booted feet moved toward her.

Gripping her gun hand hard with her left to minimize the quaking, she squeezed the trigger and got a shot off. It went wide.

She squeezed again.

The gun clicked benignly. Out of ammo.

She unzipped her jacket’s inside pocket and reached for her backup weapon, but it snagged on the pocket liner.

Another spray of bullets rocked the table. Her time was running out. She fumbled with the jacket pocket but couldn’t control her fingers enough to untangle the gun. Adrenaline and fear were making her clumsier with every passing second. With her pulse whooshing in her ears, she scrambled out the other end of the table.

Keeping low, she slipped back into the public area of the now-deserted store. The gunfire had done an effective job of clearing out shoppers. She dashed past the milk refrigerators toward the bakery, fumbling in her jacket pocket as she moved.

She veered behind the bakery display counter and hurled herself to the ground. Her hand shook so hard she couldn’t close her fingers over the gun, much less unsnag it from the pocket lining and bring it out. She ground her teeth with rage against her stupid limitations that were about to get her killed. Taking a second deep breath, she focused on steadying her hand, but it was too late.

Hit Man dragged her up and punched her square in the cheek he’d already pummeled. This time, Camille hit back. She put all her weight behind a right uppercut to his chin and when she retracted her fist, she backhanded the other side of his face.

He grabbed hold of her left wrist and torqued it until she screamed. She was millimeters away from having her arm broken and so she pivoted, desperate to straighten her arm. As soon as her back was to him, he released her wrist and locked his arm around her neck in a stranglehold.

She gasped for air that would not come. He tightened his grip and the edges of her vision went black. Struggling against an onslaught of shock, she shoved her quaking hand inside the pocket of her jacket, threaded the gun under her armpit and clamped down with her arm to steady her grip.

She fired twice.

Hit Man slumped over her. The unnatural warmth of spilled blood pooled across her back. Shouldering him off, she left the gun in her now-ragged jacket and ran out the screen door at the rear of the bakery, into an alley.

She paused and did a quick assessment of herself. Her side ached, probably from bullet shrapnel, she had a mean shiner on her cheek and she was covered in blood. It saturated her jacket, splattered into her hair and ran down her arms and legs.

Her cell phone rang again, a confusingly normal sound that blended with the wailing of multiple police sirens closing in. She wouldn’t answer Aaron’s call because no matter what she said, the fear and adrenaline in her voice would come through and she couldn’t take the chance that he’d come for her. She’d rather die before dragging him into this new danger. Until she could guarantee Aaron’s safety, she’d have to make due on her own.

She fished out the phone, turned the ringer off and ran.

She ran as fast and as long as her leg and its debilitating pain allowed. Then she kept going anyway, more slowly, but still making progress. Keeping to alleyways, trash heaps and abandoned buildings, she shrank into the shadows of the city and disappeared.

* * *

A tingling of dread niggled at Aaron when Camille didn’t answer her phone. He called her at noon like he’d promised and again a few minutes later, but it rang and rang. After that, the phone was answered by a computerized message. Either her phone had been switched off or destroyed. Any way he looked at it, something was wrong.

His simmering dread devolved into full-fledged panic when, at three o’clock, he stopped by Ana’s apartment and Camille was not there. Bags of new clothes had been piled on the sofa, but no Camille. He jogged to the supermarket where she’d planned to shop.

At the edge of the supermarket parking lot, he dropped to his knees at the sight of three covered bodies being loaded into ambulances. The parking lot was nearly empty of civilian vehicles and it didn’t take any time at all to locate Ana’s car.

Crazy with fear, he raced back to Ana’s apartment to wait for her to come home from work so he could enlist her help. The market was crawling with cops and no way could Aaron take the chance of being recognized. If Camille was alive, what good would he be to her if he were taken into custody? Ana was already home when he arrived and agreed to go to the market to ask witnesses about the identities of the dead. Or, at least, if any of the bodies were an American female.

Dear God, let her be alive.

Aaron kept vigil at the apartment, holding on to hope Camille would show up at five o’clock as they’d agreed. He cleaned and reloaded his guns twice, checked the strength of his phone service every minute or two and paced in circles around the kitchen table. He put in a call to Nicholas Wells, his task-force buddy, but word of the market shoot-out hadn’t trickled Stateside.

Five o’clock came and went.

Ana returned at five-thirty, frustrated by the lack of information she’d been able to elicit from onlookers. All she learned was that the market was a wreck, with blood and knives and bullets everywhere.

Together they waited thirty minutes more, until Aaron could no longer bear the idleness. After scribbling his cell phone number, he grabbed the bags of clothing and their stash of weapons, slung them around his body and loped to the dirt bike he’d purchased that morning. The heavy load was awkward and took a lot of concentration to balance, but he was grateful for the distraction to keep his mind from hurtling off the deep end.

After dropping the clothes and guns off at their new hideout, he sat on the bike on the side of the road, fingering his phone. If he didn’t hear from her by midnight, he’d call Dreyer and enlist Santero’s help. His terror at Camille’s fate was palpable—like a second person standing too close, whispering,
I told you it was a bad idea to split up
over and over into his ear. Every five minutes, he redialed her number.

He decided not to search for her. It was a strange city, so large that the futility of a search was bound to destroy whatever hope he had left. And he might not hear her call over the high-pitched whine of the bike’s engine.

At nine o’clock, after nine full hours of experiencing a level of panic he hadn’t known was possible to survive from, his phone rang.

“Aaron?” Camille’s voice was weak and breathy.

Aaron gritted his teeth against the emotion welling in his throat. She was alive.

“You scared me.” His choked whisper sounded oddly similar to hers. “What took you so long to call?”

“I think I passed out.”

Aaron closed his eyes. Now was not the time to lose the careful control he’d clung to all day. “Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you.”

She directed him to a partially constructed cinder-block structure in an alley off a major thoroughfare and asked him to bring her a change of clothes. She swore to him she’d keep her phone close at hand while she waited. Still, he hated the uncertainty that came with hanging up the call.

He flew through the streets in a daze and stopped next to a darkened cinder-block shell of a house, disbelieving that his Camille was inside such a cruel, filthy place. He’d never let a woman he knew walk through this alley, let alone linger after dark with only rats, roaches and stray dogs as company.

Camille sat in the far corner of the structure, propped against the wall. The bright lights of the thoroughfare streamed in through the empty spaces that would have been windows if the house had been finished. It was enough light to see Camille’s swollen face and the dried brown blood that coated her like paint.

He ran to her and dropped to the ground.

“Where are you hurt?” He ripped the blood-drenched jacket and shirt over her head. “Where are you hurt, goddamn it?”

“It’s not my blood.”

He smoothed his fingers over her back, inspecting her skin, slick with blood and sweat, for the wound that was most certainly there. The jacket bore the irrefutable evidence of a bullet hole and a life-threatening wound.

“Where were you hit, Cam? Talk to me.” His voice was frantic as his hands finished with her back and started on her front, roving over her stomach and sides and arms.

“It’s not my blood.”

“Like hell it’s not. There’s too much of it.”

With a violent yank of material, her bloody, tattered pants were off. His hands grazed the lengths of her legs. Bits of glass were embedded in her calves, but that wasn’t what he was looking for.