Spy in the Saddle - Dana Marton

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      “I can handle it.” He checked his weapon with practiced movements, as if he’d done this a million times before. He probably had. “You keep an eye on the kid. Make sure he stays where he is.”

      She watched the trailer’s windows. If anyone moved behind the closed blinds, she couldn’t see them. “Any guess who the big boss is? Any clues to the real identity of the Coyote?”

      Shep shrugged. “Our best leads have an unfortunate tendency to die before they can be questioned.”

      Which was one of the reasons why she had come.

      While the six-man team was made up of the best commando soldiers the country had to offer, they’d been trained to fight, and fight they did. The body count was going up. She’d been sent to tone that down a little.

      They weren’t in the mountains of Afghanistan. Running an op inside the U.S. was a more delicate business. Border security was a touchy issue. International relations were at stake. They needed to catch the terrorists without starting a war.

      Well, they weren’t going to lose any leads on her watch. She glanced at the boy still busy splashing in the water, then something else drew her attention. A souped-up Mustang roared down the street.

      The dog barked, then jumped out of the pool to chase the car. And the little boy chased after. “Jack! Come back!”

      Something about the car set off Lilly’s instincts, but there was no time to react, no time to stop what was happening.

      Brakes squealing, the car slowed in front of Jimmy’s trailer, and the next second the trailer’s windows exploded in a hail of bullets.

      “Get down!” Shep shouted over the gunfire and dived after the kid.

      She’d never seen a superspy lunge like that, straight through the air, covering an unlikely distance in a split second as she took cover behind the SUV. She was on the wrong side to help, but at the right angle to get a look at the license plate, at least.

      Shep went down, protecting the boy, rolling back into the cover of the shed with him as the dog ran off. The Mustang was pulling away already.

      Her heart raced as she jumped up. “Shep!”

      Was he hit?

      Chapter Two

      She couldn’t see him. “Shep!”

      Then he popped back into sight and shot at the Mustang, blew out a window as the car picked up speed, roaring away.

      Lilly rushed forward and aimed at one of the back tires, barely seeing anything from the dust cloud the car was kicking up. She missed.

      “You stay right here,” she heard Shep call out, probably to the kid, then he was next to her.

      “Call in the plate. Call the office.” He rushed forward, up the shot-up trailer’s steps. “Law enforcement,” he called out when he reached the top. “Don’t shoot. Are you okay in there, Jimmy?” He kicked in the already damaged door and disappeared inside.

      She moved after him, glancing back as the dog returned and ran into the gap between the shed and the trailer next to it, back to the boy. One step forward and she could see the kid, his arms tight around the dog’s neck as the animal licked his dirty face. Didn’t look as if either of them had gotten hurt.

      She pointed at him. “You stay there. Don’t move. Okay?”

      Neighbors peeped from their homes.

      She scanned them and evaluated them for possible trouble even as she held up her badge. “FBI. Please go back inside.”

      She clipped the badge onto her jacket so she could dial, gun in one hand, the phone in the other, her blood racing.

      The line was picked up and she summarized in a sentence what had happened, reported the license plate, listed the make and model of the car, and asked for assistance. Then she went up the stairs after Shep to help him.

      She found him in the back of the trailer, standing in a small bedroom that smelled heavily like pot. Clothes and garbage were thrown everywhere. Their brand-new lead, a scrawny twentysomething she assumed to be Jimmy, lay in the middle of the floor. Frustration tightened her muscles as she took in the bullet holes riddling his body.

      Shep crouched next to him, feeling for a pulse with one hand, still holding his gun with the other. He straightened suddenly, swearing under his breath, then speaking out loud what she pretty much knew already. “Dead.”

      He pushed by her, out of the trailer, and she ran behind him, noting the young mother who now had the little boy wrapped tightly in her arms.

      “You,” Shep called to a man in his late forties who’d also appeared, probably from a neighboring trailer, while they’d been inside. He wore denim overalls over bare skin and held a hunting rifle.

      “This is FBI Agent Lilly Tanner,” Shep told him as he hurried to his SUV. “She’s deputizing you.” He turned when he reached the car. “You sit in this chair—” he pointed to the recliner by the steps “—and don’t let anyone go inside until the authorities get here. Do you understand?”

      The man looked doubtful for a second, but then he nodded. “Yes, sir.”

      Shep jumped into his car, and she had to follow if she didn’t want to be left behind.

      She snapped on her seat belt, keeping the gun out. “What happened to standing still long enough to think and come up with a plan?”

      “No time.” He turned the key in the ignition.

      “I’m not a sheriff. I can’t deputize people,” she said through her teeth as he gunned the engine. “You just left a crime scene to a civilian. Is this the kind of Wild West law enforcement your team is running here?”

      “It’s called doing what it takes.” He stepped even harder on the gas pedal and shot down the lane at twice the speed she would have recommended, people scampering out of his way.

      A grim, focused expression sat on his face, his weapon ready on his lap, rules and regulations the farthest thing from his mind, obviously.

      He was a different man from what she remembered. He belonged on the battlefield, not among civilians. She pushed the thought back. She’d barely been here; the determination was too early to make. She’d give him a fair shake. He deserved that much from her.

      But she would have to make that determination at some point. Her mission here had an extra component his team wasn’t aware of. She was to make recommendations whether to keep the SDDU’s Texas headquarters in operation or have one of the domestic agencies take over their duties.

      The law forbade U.S. military from being deployed inside the borders of the United States. The Special Designation Defense Unit didn’t technically belong to the military—their top secret team reported straight to the Secretary of Homeland Defense—but they were a commando team, no matter how they sliced and diced it.

      The few FBI and CIA bigwigs who did have knowledge of the SDDU were more than uncomfortable with them being here. And then there was, of course, the rivalry. The very existence of the SDDU seemed to imply that the bureau and the agency weren’t enough to handle the job.

      She was supposed to write up an evaluation and recommendation based on her experience here. But her judgment of the small Texas headquarters would have implications for the entire SDDU team. There was some pressure on her to come up with recommendations that would restrict their operations to outside the borders, like the military.

      Pressure or not, however, she was determined to keep an open mind. Even if Shep wasn’t making that easy for her.

      He drove like a maniac. The Mustang was nowhere to be seen. It’d gotten too much of an advantage. Not knowing where it was headed, they would have little chance of catching up.

      She cleared her throat.

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