Tres Leches Cupcakes (2 page)

“Two males,” Caro continued, “mid-twenties, eating Cheetos and . . . wait . . . not Cheetos. Stand by, Churrochomper.”

“Ten-four, Dunebuster.” Sadie could see Caro from her vantage point on an obliging rock beside a cypress tree, but just barely—Caro’s black hoodie and yoga pants blended well with the darkened landscape.

It hadn’t taken long for Sadie to settle into New Mexico. She had needed to stay under the radar due to an unresolved threat that had been haunting her after a near-deadly trip to Boston almost a year ago, and Santa Fe was turning out to be the perfect place to hide. What made it even better was that Pete had lined up an opportunity for Sadie to act as an undercover informant for the Bureau of Land Management. Caro was helping her with the paperwork portion of the job tonight.

“Cheese doodles,” Caro said over the walkie-talkie. “I repeat, the subjects are eating cheese doodles.”

That wasn’t really the type of information Sadie needed to collect, but she could remember her own naïve overexcitement on her first few cases so she didn’t bother saying anything to Caro about observing insignificant details.

“Can you confirm subject sixteen?” Sadie asked while looking at the clipboard in her hand and finding number sixteen on the list. She tapped the point of her pen over the name Kyle Langley. His address was apartment number 28 at the Colonial Hills complex.

“Affirmative,” Caro replied. “Definitely sixteen. Lizard tattoo on right forearm is in view.”

Sadie smiled to herself and wrote a big, fat check mark next to Kyle’s name. “And the other subject?”

“Might be subject nineteen. Can’t confirm . . . wait . . . what’s his hat preference?”

“Braves,” Sadie said, scanning down to number nineteen on the list. “Atlanta Braves.”

“Confirmed. Yes, I do believe it’s subject nineteen. I’ve taken photos for further verification.”

“Perfect,” Sadie said into the speaker before checking Cesar Montoya off the list as well. Seventeen of the twenty-six names on the list were checked off now, meaning she was closer than ever to completing her assignment.

“I’m moving away from the lookout point,” Caro said. “Repeat, I’m moving
away
from the lookout point and will rendezvous at predetermined location in oh-three minutes. Dunebuster over and out.”

“Churrochomper over and out,” Sadie said. She got up from where she’d been sitting, but remained in a crouch as she headed back down the embankment that acted as a natural barrier between the elementary school parking lot where they’d left Caro’s car and the apartment complex they were staking out.

It really should have been Sadie who made the visual verifications—she was the official informant after all—but Caro liked the trench work so much that Sadie couldn’t tell her no. It was fun to share the experience with someone else and, seeing as how this was Sadie’s first foray back into the world of private investigating, having Caro at her side made all the difference in keeping Sadie’s anxiety at bay. Sadie wasn’t the woman she used to be before Boston, but she was making progress. Caro was helping more than she knew. She made Sadie feel safe, and needed—two things that were very important to Sadie right now.

Sadie reached Caro’s royal blue Neon—a
terrible
car for investigative work; it was so conspicuous—several seconds before Caro appeared over the berm and used the button on the key fob to unlock the doors. Once Caro reached the driver’s side door, they both entered the vehicle on their respective sides, pulled the doors closed in tandem, and buckled their seat belts as though following a well-rehearsed choreography.

Caro pushed back the hood of her sweatshirt, then started the engine and smoothly reversed out of the space before exiting the parking lot altogether. She sat up straight with both hands on the steering wheel, pulled her shoulders up to her ears, and squealed. “That was so fun! Where to next?”

“We’re done for the night,” Sadie said with a laugh at Caro’s enthusiasm.

Caro’s shoulders slumped, and she leaned back against the seat with a frown. “Really? Already?”

“I’ll have more work tomorrow night,” Sadie said. “Can I see the camera?”

Caro, pouting slightly, reached into the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie and handed over Sadie’s compact design DSLR camera with 12x stabilized zoom, 1/2000 shutter speed, and face-recognition technology. Sadie compared the pictures on the camera to the pictures she’d taken with her cell phone on the sly at the dig site. The men were, in fact, subjects sixteen and nineteen.

“Why can’t we just track down the whole list right now?” Caro asked. She used her fingers to smooth her chin-length bob. Caro’s mother was a Mexican immigrant who came to the US in the 1950s with her family to work and fell in love with a gringo—Pete’s uncle, Wynn. Caro had inherited her mother’s features: light brown skin, dark eyes, envious curves. She took pride in both cultures, never having chosen one above the other in order to define who she was. “I’m not tired,” Caro assured her. “And we’re on a roll. This was the quickest verification we’ve done yet.”

“That’s because Mr. Langley owns his own apartment.” A lot of the other crew members were somewhat nomadic, living with friends and family while they moved around to different job sites. That was likely why subject nineteen was there; he was probably sleeping on the couch. “Regardless of that, I don’t have photos of the rest of the people on the list yet.” Sadie lifted her phone as a visual reminder of her process. “I have to talk to the subjects first,
then
get their photo,
then
confirm their address, and
then
get additional photos, if possible.”

Caro continued pouting, and Sadie couldn’t help but laugh again. “What did you ever do for fun before I got here?”

“I can’t even remember,” Caro said, looking thoughtful. “Watched TV mostly, I guess, and nagged my husband to take me places. But playing private investigator is so much better.”

“You’re not playing at anything,” Sadie said with a shake of her head. “You’re doing it, for real.”

“It’s so exciting,” Caro said with a contented sigh. “Have I convinced you yet to stay in Santa Fe forever so we can open up a PI business together?”

“You know I can’t do that,” Sadie said, ignoring the pang of envy she felt for Caro’s normal life. “But you ought to look into it for yourself. You’re a natural.”

Sadie was a natural too, but living underground like she was meant she couldn’t own a business. The car she’d been driving since coming to New Mexico was even in Caro’s name, though Sadie paid the lease payment. Officially, Sadie lived . . . nowhere, and it would stay that way until Pete felt certain it was safe for Sadie to return to Garrison, Colorado. He was tracking the person who made the threat on Sadie’s life, but he had yet to uncover an actual lead that led to an actual arrest. Until he did, he wanted Sadie far away from anywhere that could put her in danger of being attacked again—which meant anywhere she’d be expected to go.

After nearly a year of hiding, and a debilitating battle with anxiety and depression, however, Sadie was beginning to feel that it wasn’t worth the toll it took on her and her family and friends. She missed her hometown and her friends and the purpose she’d once had. But Pete didn’t feel she was safe and, although the situation was far from ideal, Sadie trusted his judgment more than her own. And Caro was wonderful. That helped immensely.

“Maybe I
will
start my own company,” Caro said with a jaunty shake of her shoulders. “It’s got to be more interesting than working in a dental office, I’m sure. Then I’ll hire you under your other name,
Sarah.
” She gave Sadie a sidelong look, and Sadie rolled her eyes at Caro’s reference to the name Pete had chosen for her: Sarah Worthlin. Sarah
was
Sadie’s legal first name—Sadie was short for Sarah Diane—and Pete felt it would make it more natural for Sadie to answer to a name already familiar to her. Caro and her husband, Rex, called her Sadie though, which Sadie preferred.

Caro’s phone rang, and she fumbled for her earpiece on the dashboard. “Hello,” she said brightly. Her voice was flatter when she spoke again. “Hey, Rex, yeah, we’re on our way home.”

Sadie squirmed; she hadn’t ever come right out and asked, but she suspected Rex didn’t know what they were really doing on their evenings “out.” Not that Sadie would accuse Caro of lying to her husband, but Sadie couldn’t imagine that Rex would be okay with his wife sneaking around Santa Fe and Los Alamos, confirming addresses of the people Sadie worked with.

While Sadie had hit it off with Caro as though they were lifelong friends, Rex hadn’t been nearly as personable. In fact, Sadie sometimes worried that he resented her being there at all. She hoped it wasn’t true and that Rex’s quiet demeanor and tendency to leave the room when Sadie entered was a type of chivalry. Pete thought a great deal of Rex, and so Sadie tried to keep her opinion of the man who owned the home where she was staying more in line with Pete’s opinions. She found Caro and Rex to be a rather odd couple. Caro was vivacious, outgoing, and engaged in multiple pursuits. Rex did little other than watch sports on TV, fish on the weekends, and go to work every day.

Work.

Sadie stifled a groan and glanced at the dashboard clock as her thoughts shifted. It was 8:52 p.m. which meant that in just over seven hours she would be parking her car in the vacant lot on Airport Road, loading up into the D&E Salvage vans, and heading out to the desert again. She knew it was important to start early in the day, when the ground was still cold and moist, and it was sort of nice to end before the day got too hot and dry, but it would be day nine of this horrible job.

When Pete had presented her with the opportunity to do a little undercover work for the Bureau of Land Management in New Mexico, she could not have been more excited. She’d been in Santa Fe for about a month by then, and growing increasingly bored. She’d been flattered to be offered the job, and she’d stepped out of the van on day one brimming with enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, working as an amateur digger at an ancient burial site hadn’t lived up to her Indiana Jones expectations. It was hot, it was dirty, it was tedious, her back was killing her, and no one working at the dig looked like Harrison Ford. Thank goodness there were only two workdays left in this week; at least she’d have the weekend to recover before going back out again.

The other part of the job—the undercover informant part—was fairly straightforward. She was supposed to get to know the crew members and develop profiles for each one of them. She hadn’t been told why she was developing these profiles, which drove her a little crazy. Pete felt the secrecy was necessary so that she wouldn’t have any biases. Even so, she had a theory that her job had something to do with artifacts being sold on the black market.

The BLM was the agency charged with enforcing the laws regarding antiquities, and there just didn’t seem to be many other reasons for the BLM to want information about a crew working an archeological site. Regardless, she was determined to prove to the faceless BLM people that she was the right person for the job. Who knew what it could lead to in the future?

The actual archeological work, though, was awful. Day after day she chipped pieces of broken pottery out of the ground for hours on end, stopping only now and then to sneak a picture of her fellow crew members. The days seemed to last forever, and by the time she left the site each afternoon, she was coated with dust, her fingers were raw, and she was completely exhausted. The only relief was coming home to a hot shower.

“Okay,” Caro said, sounding irritated as she spoke to the invisible voice in her ear. “We’ll be home in less than ten minutes. Bye.”

Caro took off the earpiece and tossed it back on the dashboard before glancing at Sadie. Her face brightened immediately. “Want to stop at Keva and get a smoothie or something?”

“I’d love to,” Sadie said sincerely, “but I’ve got to get up in seven hours.” She didn’t point out that Caro had told Rex they’d be home in ten minutes.

Caro frowned. “I don’t know how you stand that job.”

“Me neither,” Sadie said with a shake of her head. Caro had been the sounding board for all of Sadie’s complaints, which were plentiful.

“How many more days?”

“I should be done by Monday,” Sadie said, scanning her paperwork, and making a note of the nine people she hadn’t talked to yet. Three people a day for the next three workdays should finish it off.

She hoped that once she’d turned in the profiles, she could stop working at the site; unfortunately, no one had told her as much. She needed to believe it for her own emotional stability, but deep down she feared she’d have to stay on the crew throughout the duration of the job in order to maintain her cover. If it came to that, she might have to break her own leg to get herself out of the work.

She took a breath and tried not to fantasize about broken bones.
One day at a time,
she reminded herself.
One hot, dirty, dry, miserable day at a time.
Then, with a little luck, she’d wow the people who’d hired her and be extended better opportunities in the future. They couldn’t get much worse . . . at least she hoped not.

Chapter 2