Sinclair Justice (21 page)

Emm smiled and rummaged in her purse. She offered him two cards, one his own, which she’d saved in her card case, and her own as historical preservation consultant—the title she’d used before landing her most recent job—with a Maryland address. She knew better than to offer anything with even a whiff of association with the US government.

She tapped the cards, her voice lowering to be sure no one heard her. “I’ve been doing my own research. And the last Mexican high lord of crime, El Chapo, who was apprehended several years ago, actually gave interviews on occasion. We live in a digital world, and the latest cocaine czars like Arturo Cervantes need notoriety to oil their international connections and spread fear. I believe he’ll happily let us inside if we present ourselves properly and promise to keep certain incriminating details vague. What do you think it would do to your book sales to have such inside . . . well, forgive the pun, dope on your story?”

Finally, Curt looked intrigued.

 

Not far from the compound under discussion, but in a much seedier area of Mexico City, Yancy yanked yet again at the handcuffs that held her securely to the iron bedstead by one arm. She was nude, had been for the last couple of days. The two Chechens had taken turns with her. At first she’d fought and bit, which had only led to her being cuffed and brutalized. She pretended to be comatose when she could, and that had helped some because they hadn’t pestered her now in over twenty-four hours. They’d even sent a girl in, apparently of Chechen descent, because she spoke neither Spanish nor English, to bathe and feed her.

Like cattle, Yancy thought bitterly, being prepared for market. But she knew she needed all the strength she could muster, so she forced herself to eat whatever they brought. And with every bite, her rage at Arturo grew. She didn’t know how, she didn’t know when, but she would help bring him to justice if she died trying . . . He was the poisonous head of the snake. While there would always be other bosses ready to take over, none of them were as resourceful and ruthless. Just disrupting the flow of funds and drugs Los Lobos funneled around the world would give the authorities time to rescue some of his human trafficking victims before another head of the hydra grew powerful enough to take over.

But as she ate with one hand while the frightened girl cleaned her with a rough washcloth and a bowl of soothing warm water, Yancy had to gag down the last of the stale tacos with a filling that was indistinguishable, but didn’t taste or feel like meat. While on one level of her brain she knew the poor quarters and supplies were a frightening indicator of her value to the Chechens, at the moment there was only one human trafficking victim she was concerned about. When they’d arrived, Yancy had heard Jennifer’s screams down the hall, but in the last twenty-four hours the deadly quiet had been even more terrifying than her daughter’s pain.

Yancy swallowed the bile of her own fear. She pointed down the hall, lifted a hank of her own dirty but still fair hair, and used a word even those not fluent in Spanish sometimes understood.
“Niña? Muy bonita?”
Yancy mimed sleeping by folding her hands and resting her cheek. She nodded down the hallway.

The girl’s eyes flickered but she only shrugged and collected the water and the rag.

Yancy pulled viciously at the cuffs, which the girl had never undone. Her wrist was raw and she knew if she kept pulling she’d begin to bleed, so she forced herself to desist. When the girl turned to the door, Yancy begged, “Please, help us.”

The girl’s shoulders sagged a bit, but she exited without a response.

Yancy was alone in the dark, left to her own initiative. She should be used to that, she thought vaguely. But this time, she was fresh out of ideas.

This time, when the tears came, she couldn’t stop them.

B
ack in Amarillo, Curt still waffled. “Emm, we can’t do this without help. Neither of us even knows how to shoot.”

Emm leaned across the booth to spear Curt with her eyes. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, even if we were both Marine snipers, we’d be idiots to try to shoot our way into a compound that’s probably stocked with every machine gun known to man and plenty of drug dealers willing to use them. This situation requires negotiation and finesse, something we’re both good at.” When he stared at the napkin in his lap, she softened her tone. “Okay, you say you still love Yancy. You say you have no other interest in the cartels except as fodder for your stories and your next book. I need your help in Mexico City to find them, and eventually you’d have to go there anyway, wouldn’t you, to collect information for your book? Why not now? Help me save Yancy and Jennifer. I have nowhere else to turn, at least not to anyone who can move in time.”

Curt finally looked at her. “What, are you going to hold me at gunpoint and force me to order the jet?”

Emm said simply, “No. I’ll sell my car if I have to, but one way or the other, I intend to be in Mexico City by tomorrow night.”

“I can’t talk you out of it, whether I go or not?”

“No.” One word, but rife with determination.

Curt sighed and picked up his cell phone. “I don’t know if they’ll pick us up in Amarillo. We may have to go to Dallas first. We have to deal with our cars, but let’s go get your luggage first.”

Emm leaped to her feet to kiss his cheek. “Lay on.” She almost added,
Macduff
, but given the outcome of that particular tragedy, she held her tongue.

Ross paced his hallway that night, aware of his mother’s concerned gaze but uncaring. He’d been trying Emm’s cell all day, and she hadn’t returned his calls. He understood her well enough to know that she felt used and discarded after seeing Elaine in his home. And if he’d come across her old lover being included in intimate family events, he’d likely have concluded exactly the same thing. Every instinct in his body demanded that he go to her hotel to explain in person, but he was host of this damn jamboree.

“Ross, please come and eat some of this delicious barbecue,” his mother pleaded from the doorway that led to the outside tables and festivities. LED lanterns manufactured to look like old kerosene ones lit the scene, more gaiety added by strings of colored lights and the country-western band Ross had hired for the evening.

Ross was still angry with her, but he managed stiffly, “In a minute.”

Helplessly, she turned back to the merrymaking.

Ross pulled out his cell phone yet again, but this time he dialed Abigail Doyle.

 

By the time she was able to get away from an intelligence-gathering meeting led by Chad Foster, Abby was bleary-eyed with tiredness, but she’d promised Ross she’d check on Emm. Ross hadn’t been specific, but if the presentation on the buildings hadn’t gone well, that was reason enough, along with Emm’s fears for her sister and niece, for her to refuse Ross’s calls.

When she arrived at the hotel, Abby went straight to the elevator, not bothering with calling Emm’s cell phone, which Ross had told her Emm had turned off. When she arrived at Emm’s door, it was almost eight o’clock. She knocked firmly. She heard someone stirring inside, and then the door was flung open. A handsome young man in a suit blinked at her. She blinked back, noting two still latched suitcases near the door. “Excuse me, is Emm Rothschild available?”

He looked mystified. “I just checked in. Did you ask at the desk?”

Her heart sinking, Abby apologized and hurried back to the elevator. When she reached the desk, she had a hard time getting the clerk to tell her much until she flashed her business card and said she was there at the behest of Ross Sinclair, and that Ms. Rothschild was a material witness in a case.

The clerk pulled a stapled packet from the checked-out box on her counter and appraised it. “She checked out this morning and fetched her bags, which we’d held for her, several hours ago,” the pretty young brunette clerk said crisply. “She didn’t mention where she was going, and I didn’t ask.” She moved to turn away, shoving the packet back into the box. She didn’t see a small pink memo fall from the packet and curl beneath the desk, nor did Abby.

Abby slapped her hand down on the desktop to forestall her. “Please make a note of my phone number. If you hear from her again or get any messages, please be sure you call me with that information. It’s possible she may be the victim of foul play. And one more question—was she with anyone when she took out her bags?”

The brunette hesitated, then nodded. “Some tall blond guy. I’ve seen him before. I think he’s a reporter. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .” She turned back to her work. Abby had already turned away, almost running. In the meeting she’d just conducted with the heads of the various agencies involved, she’d shared her latest data, painstakingly assembled by various informants and intelligence sources. The evidence was not in Curt Tupperman’s favor. In fact, it had been so glaringly incriminating—including many calls between his cell phone and Brett Umarov’s, a man Curt claimed not to know, and many more deposits going back over two years, totaling over a million dollars—that Chad had convinced the Texas attorney general to issue a warrant to bring Curt in for questioning. Given the way Curt traveled the state, they needed statewide jurisdiction. The authorities were looking for him now.

If Emm was jetting to Mexico with a man she thought was her friend, she’d find out too late that Curt Tupperman didn’t love Yancy. Despite what he said, he had zero motivation to help find her.

Curt Tupperman was probably the man who’d had her kidnapped.

 

Emm tipped the transport agent generously. “Your driver will be careful with my car?”

The agent looked offended. “Of course. And we are well insured.”

“Okay. My dad will be your contact in Baltimore. Please text me when it’s safely delivered.”

The agent nodded wearily. “Yes, ma’am, I assured you we would. Mr. Tupperman as well.”

Curt, hovering over her, winked at the agent. “Hers still has the new car smell. But mine is pretty damn special, too.” Emm was so busy reviewing the papers a final time that she didn’t notice Curt reaching for the outside pocket of her bag as he chatted amiably. Or that he dropped something into the trash can next to the desk.

With the assurances that both vehicles would be driven to their destinations by hired drivers who were trained to take extreme care, Emm and Curt got into the waiting taxi outside. Emm didn’t know how he’d done it so quickly, but Curt had convinced his charter service to send a jet from Dallas to pick them up at the private strip of a wealthy local rancher he knew. In an hour, they’d be on their way to Mexico City, on a flight too hard for the agencies to track. At least not in time to stop them. The jet service still had to file a flight plan, but they were going direct to Mexico City.

Curt had to sit in the front because half of the backseat was loaded with bags. Emm’s fit in the baggage compartment, and she was surprised to find Curt had brought so much stuff with him to Amarillo. For a moment she wondered if she was making a mistake going with him to Mexico City, but even if he was somehow involved with the cartel, surely he’d never really hurt her. He wasn’t the type.

Besides, in the war between caution and concern, concern for Yancy and Jennifer won hands down. If she hesitated, all she had to do was think about that photo and the two torn fragments of their evening gowns.

Whatever his intentions, Curt was her fastest way out of the country. And since the morning’s little chitchat with Elaine Gottlieb, Emm refused to dwell on Ross Sinclair’s reaction when he found her gone. Whether he reacted as a lover or a Texas Ranger, when he got her last-minute SOS, he’d take appropriate action.

 

The next morning, Ross ignored his family’s protests and drove into town to meet Abigail. She’d called him early to tell him she had bad news about Emm but they needed to discuss tactics in person. When he arrived at the DPS headquarters, he wasn’t surprised to see Chad’s car, even this early on a Sunday. But his twinge of unease about Emm became a kick to the gut.

Bracing himself, because he already had an idea of the news, he knocked on the large office they used as a conference room. When he entered, he saw it was full of high-level task force leads: the DEA, Border Patrol, Homeland Security, the FBI Agent in Charge he’d worked with before, a woman by the name of Rosemary. And, of course, the Texas Ranger head of the task force, Chad Foster.

After a brusque hello all around, Ross pulled up a chair and fell into it. “She’s gone, isn’t she?” he said.

Abby explained her exchange with the desk clerk at Emm’s hotel. “I didn’t call you yesterday because it was very late after I followed up on the logical leads. When I left, I immediately checked all the flights to Mexico City. She wasn’t on the manifest of any of them. However, I traced her car to a local transport agency when her license plate popped up as recent activity. She apparently hired them late yesterday to drive her car back to Baltimore.”

Now Ross’s unruly heart was a tom-tom in his ears. “So when she left, she didn’t intend to come back . . . How the hell is she getting to Mexico City? I can’t believe she’d go any way but by air. Do you think she used a false ID?”

Abby shook her head. “When I didn’t get any hits on her name, I went to the airport and surveilled the security backups. She wasn’t on the only two flights that could connect with Mexico City.”

“And Curt Tupperman? Have you brought him in yet?”

Abby looked at Chad.

Chad shook his head grimly. “He’s checked out of his hotel, and his car came up on the same database as Emm’s.”

Ross paled. “So you’re pretty sure she’s with him? Did you track her phone?”

Everyone else looked away, but Abby stared at him unwaveringly, nodding. “Yes, but unfortunately it was static. This morning we found it in the trash at the auto transport agency.” Abby nodded at the evidence bag on the table.

Clearing her throat at his expression, she offered Ross a short list of two names and two private airfields. “However, when we couldn’t find Ms. Rothschild on any of the commercial flights, I alerted the FAA to watch for any private flights heading to Mexico City, and late yesterday there were two originating in the Amarillo area. Do you know these men?” She recited the names on the list, glancing up at Ross. Both extremely wealthy oil and gas ranchers had private airstrips long enough for large private jets. He knew both men slightly. Amarillo’s moneyed interests were a small, intimate group in which he’d always been included, if sometimes reluctantly.

Ross dismissed the first one. “Raoul has many interests in Mexico and travels on a weekly basis between here and there. He’s as forthright and honest as they come. But Jimmy Patton . . . he was on one of my golf outings with Curt, and they were buddy-buddy.” He scowled blackly. “The sneaky bastard has Emm. . . .”

Ross leaped to his feet to pace. “How could she be that fucking stupid? He’s part of the money-laundering end of Los Lobos, I’m sure of it!”

Abby said gently, “In my brief acquaintanceship with Ms. Rothschild, I’d say there’s very little she won’t dare when someone she loves is in danger. I would also be extremely surprised if she didn’t have serious suspicions about her supposed ally and prepare accordingly. She is the one who identified him first as a suspect. . . .”

Ross rubbed his aching forehead, opening his mouth to say he needed access to a jet, immediately, but a knock at the door forestalled him. A junior FBI agent hurried in, carrying a printed e-mail marked “secure server” at the top. He went straight to the FBI Agent in Charge, Rosemary Reed, a svelte blonde who looked more like a model than a dedicated G-man. “Ma’am, the Mexican authorities just notified us that Ms. Rothschild and Mr. Tupperman’s passports were stamped at a private executive airport outside Mexico City.”

“When?” asked Rosemary sharply.

The agent checked the e-mail. “Two hours ago.”

Ross looked pleadingly at Chad, who nodded. “Confirm that the registration number of the jet is the same one that left the Patton airstrip and see if Mexican customs will hold it until we arrive.” The young agent hurried back out.

Ross looked at his friend. “I realize it’s a bit irregular, given I resigned from the task force, but I need to be on this operation. I . . . know her better than anyone else.”

Chad looked at each task force member one by one. Rosemary eyed Ross’s drawn and pale features, opened her mouth, then closed it and nodded reluctantly. It was apparent to all the lead agents that Ross Sinclair was definitely not objective in the matter of Emm Rothschild’s possible alliance with a man now wanted by at least five federal agencies, but they kept their reservations to themselves. In over twenty years of brilliant and unblemished service to the State of Texas, Sinclair had always been a stickler for details. The fact that he’d resigned from the task force because he knew his feelings were compromised convinced all of the men in the room that he was still a professional law enforcement officer, not just a man in love.