LITMIR.BIZ

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the guide bring a whole group or you alone?” he asked in Spanish.

      “I sold my wedding ring so he would bring me. I came alone. I sold my bicycle and our furniture. Even the kitchen table Paco made me as a wedding gift. Where will my Paco eat when he comes home?”

      Ray exchanged a look with Ryder that said he didn’t expect that issue to come up. Something Ryder had considered, as well. The man should have called his wife by now, got word back to her. If he hadn’t, he was possibly dead, or in some other bad trouble.

      “Was your husband a drug mule? Did anyone give him any suspicious packages to take to the U.S. with him?” Ray asked, sliding lower in his chair, trying to look as small and nonthreatening as he could, a challenge for a big chunk of Viking like him. The blood of his marauding ancestors ran thick in his veins, there was no mistaking it. Mostly, it was an advantage, but not today. Esperanza eyed him warily.

      Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “My Paco was a good man. An honest man.”

      “The kids were given backpacks of school supplies from the so-called company representative,” Ryder put in, repeating what she’d told him at the ranch.

      Ray asked Esperanza about that; she insisted that the bags contained nothing but notebooks and pencils. She looked confused, probably not understanding why they were asking her about the bags instead of her kids.

      “Of course, she wouldn’t have checked the padding,” Ray said in English.

      Ryder nodded. Exactly.

      “You’re sure about his name?” He wanted to get back to the human trafficking. The same man who brought her over might be the guide for the terrorists, in the not-too-distant future.

      “Dave,” the woman said then struggled with the next word. “Snebl.”

      “Where did you cross?”

      “I couldn’t see in the dark. We walked for a long time together. When he saw the storm, he said he was leaving. I gave him everything I had, all the rest of my money, my bag. But he turned around. He told me to keep walking.”

      She was lucky he didn’t hurt her. Robbing people who came across the border was a common racket. If their guide didn’t do it, then one of the groups who made a living from robbing illegal immigrants did. The men and women usually brought their most valuable possessions with them to start a new life. The hits could be lucrative, and the victims couldn’t turn to the police, so the robbers nearly always got away with it.

      Ryder shifted in his seat. His job was to defend his country and if he saw anyone breaking the law, do something about it. Either you broke the law or you didn’t. He preferred to look at things in black-and-white. He hated shades of gray.

      He was a soldier. He got a command, he carried it out. There was no evaluation of the mission, no second-guessing his superior officer. That was how the army, where he’d started out, worked, as did his current team the SDDU, Special Designation Defense Unit, a top secret commando team.

      But nothing seemed clear-cut here. The land along the border was its own universe. Some of the people he’d met were clearly criminals, others victims, some both at the same time. Motivations were complicated.

      He thought of Grace Cordero—the definition of complicated. A smart man would leave that attractive bundle of trouble well alone. Like he was going to do. To get a good head start, he put Grace from his mind and focused on the woman in front of him.

      “Please,” she begged them. “Help me.”

      He did feel sorry for Esperanza. She didn’t cross the border with criminal intent, she didn’t want to stay and live off taxpayer’s money. She was looking for her husband and children because the authorities had failed her.

      Yet, what she’d done was illegal.

      He had no choice but to take her to border patrol and send her back home. No choice at all, even if a sharp-eyed beauty called Grace Cordero would hate him for it.

      She didn’t believe in the system.

      He did. He’d sworn to defend it.

      “Doesn’t make any sense, if you ask me,” Ray said in English. “The Cordero ranch isn’t a known smuggling corridor. The terrain is too rough. There are easier points for crossing.”

      Yet the man who’d shot him had been out there. Ryder smoothed his black cargo pants over the bandages on his thigh. He’d been to the emergency room and back, the wound had been disinfected again, his stitches inspected and pronounced exemplary.

      He’d been forced to lie down while they’d dripped a full bag of IV fluids into him, and had plenty of time to think. Maybe the spot had been chosen specifically because the smugglers thought nobody would be looking there.

      He listened as Ray asked Esperanza some of the same questions she’d already answered, wording them differently this time to see if he could trip her. But she stayed consistent. Nothing indicated that she was lying.

      They had alerted border patrol to her presence, but not to the shooting. Their operation was top secret, dealing with a terror threat. His small team had come to the area on the pretense that they were surveying border traffic for a new proposal for increased funding for CBP, Customs and Border Protection.

      They were more than a match for their enemies, the special team consisting of trained and experienced commandos who did this for a living. As much as they respected the work CBP did, several recent busts had proven that not all the border agents could be trusted. Some were on the take from the traffickers.

      And this was one mission where Ryder’s team couldn’t take any chances.

      “I was cold because I had to swim,” Esperanza was saying.

      “Rio Grande.” Ray looked at Ryder. “Can’t believe she made it. The current can be a killer in places. Add the darkness and that storm.” He shook his head.

      “I was scared that the water would rise to the ceiling and I would drown,” she said, not having understood the two men’s exchange in English.

      Ceiling? Then it all made sense suddenly.

      “Tunnel,” Ray and he said at the same time. Now at least they knew what they had to be looking for when they were out there scouring the land day after day. All that water from the rain had been running down and filling a tunnel.

      “Do you remember anything about where you came out? In brush? Trees? Open fields?”

      “In a ditch. I couldn’t see much in the dark and the rain.”

      And no matter how hard they pressed her after that, she couldn’t give them any further information. So Ryder escorted the woman to the crossing point, talked to the guards and walked her across. They had her contact information, the village she lived in and the phone number of her priest, since her house didn’t have a phone line.

      “Don’t come back,” he told her. “It’s not safe. Your children need a mother. You stay here, and I’ll go and look for them, all right?” he said in Spanish, and handed her enough money to get her to her village.

      Tears streamed down her face. “Paco loves me. He wouldn’t leave me. He wouldn’t take my babies. He would die for me. I would die for him.”

      “I believe you.” He spoke the truth. He believed in that kind of love between a man and a woman, even if he’d never experienced it himself. His parents had that.

      He left her and walked back across to his car, feeling somehow guilty and inadequate, even if he was doing the right thing.

      A text message with photo pinged onto his phone as he started the engine—a blue-eyed newborn with a pink ribbon in her hair. A birth announcement from Mitch Mendoza. Ryder grinned, happy for his friend, but he also felt a sense of longing. He wanted what Mitch had—his true mate, the one that could make him happy.

      He wanted a partner

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