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  Her mouth went dry.

  His jungle-green eyes were entirely too bright, too devilish, but there was nowhere else to look. She didn’t dare drop her gaze to his half-naked body.

  “Why don’t you have a partner with you?” he asked. “How can you come to a place like this without backup? Don’t cops and FBI agents and whatnot always work with a partner?”

  “I’m not a cop or an FBI agent.”

  “Do the DOD investigators in your department always work alone, or are you alone because it’s an off-the-books mission?”

  She’d never specifically told him that this was an off-the-books mission, but since he’d figured it out, she didn’t waste energy on protesting.

  “No partners,” she said. “We find disappeared US citizens abroad that local law enforcement couldn’t locate. We have no jurisdiction. One person coming in unobtrusively and asking questions works better than a whole team showing up, rubbing the local’s incompetence in their faces. You don’t want to cause resentment that would stand in the way of cooperation.”

  She paused, then explained a little further. “Mostly our job is combing through paperwork and reinterviewing witnesses. In some third-world countries, the police get little or no training. There might be one policeman who covers a dozen villages, and he’ll prioritize his neighbor’s disappeared cow on which nine or ten people might depend for survival, over some foreign tourist.”

  “So you bring expertise,” Walker said.

  “Right. And if we locate the retrieval target in dangerous circumstances, at that point, local law takes over. We work together. Mostly, our work is pretty tame.”

  Although, there had been a recent case when a US businessman had disappeared in Venezuela, and the investigator in the case, Miranda Soto, had to face off with the Venezuelan army to get him back. Glenn Danning—super geek turned super tycoon with a body hotter than a sun plasma eruption—had liked the rescue so much, he’d married her. Miranda was currently on maternity leave. So really, the adventure ended well.

  “But in this case,” Walker said, “the Furino cops don’t even know you’re here investigating.”

  Clara nodded. “I can handle it.”

  She liked being an investigator. Like her father, she was serving her country and protecting its citizens. Ever since she’d been a little kid, she wanted to be just like her dad. Her dad had been her shining hero.

  And now…

  A tight feeling settled into her chest.

  She was so mad at him and disappointed in him. And she couldn’t be. They had a few more months left. Wasting that little time on being angry was stupider than stupid.

  She had to work through her feelings before she went home.

  But before she could go home, she had to track down Rosita.

  “I’m going to find the girl. It’s my job. I don’t leave a mission unfinished. I’ve been trained for this.”

  Walker didn’t look impressed. “Training is good, but it doesn’t make up for experience. You shouldn’t be here alone.”

  “I’m not. I have a local facilitator.” Maybe reminding him that he was supposed to be helping her would start him down on that path.

  He considered her for a long moment, then another, as if thinking hard about something. “I need to go somewhere this morning,” he said at last. “I want you to stay here until I get back.”

  “I’m done waiting for you. I have an investigation to conduct.”

  He shook his head. “You wait until I get back, and you get my full cooperation for the rest of the day.” He held out his hand. “Deal?”

  Why was she feeling as if she was about to make a deal with the devil? She ignored the hand. Too much naked chest, way too close. No way was she touching him.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she blurted, and made a run for it.

  “Hey, Detective Cupcake,” he called after her.

  Half-in, half-out of the window, she turned.

  He tossed her the T-shirt he was holding. “Take a shower. And give your clothes to one of the girls. They’ll run them through the laundry.”

  She grabbed the shirt and ducked out, ran down the steps. Since the room below was empty, she went through the window. And wondered how long she would have to live to forget the sight of Walker’s naked body.

  She guesstimated a hundred years past never.

  * * *

  The Xibalba cartel compound was on the other side of town. Walker left Clara at Brunhilda’s while he went to meet Santiago, working out on the way how he’d handle it if he ran into the noseless man at the compound. More than anything, he wanted that.

  He caught a ride from a guy he knew, the sixty-something owner of a taco stand Walker frequented. His own old Jeep he’d driven into Furino the day before was still back there. He could pick it up later today.

  Mercita was a typical Mexican border town, overgrown, crowded, multicultural. Half a dozen languages could be heard on the streets, some of them ancient Mayan dialects.

  While some states barely had a few hundred indigenous people left, Chiapas’s tribes were still healthy, Mayan faces smiling on every corner. Indigenous people made up about a third of the state’s population. Most lived off farming, but there were more and more of them in town now, those who’d been forced off their lands by the oil or logging companies.

  Walker scanned the familiar landscape as he finished his bottle of water, then he dropped his head against the headrest and closed his eyes to catch a catnap. He’d been up, tossing and turning from nightmares half the night.

  Of course, as soon as he nodded off again, the nightmares returned.

  In the dream, he entered the room with the burnished Mexican tile floor in that checkerboard pattern. The stench of death filled the air, the only sound the flies’ buzzing. Two chairs flanked a scarred wooden table in the corner. Frayed, flower-patterned curtains covered the open windows, billowing in the breeze that failed to penetrate the putrid air.

  His gaze was riveted to the floor. A dozen severed heads had been placed on the tiles in a haphazard pattern, as if someone had been playing a board game. No bodies in sight. Blood splatters all over, as if the heads had been kicked as well as dragged.

  Then he recognized sun-streaked blond hair, the cleft chin, the green eyes of his brother. Ben. Nausea washed over Walker along with dark desperation as he lurched forward. He didn’t remember falling, but he was suddenly on his knees.

  Then Ben’s eyes livened, sharpened, and he looked at Walker. “Help me, brother,” he begged.

  Walker startled awake, feeling as if a black hole had opened up in his chest. He swore under his breath, and shivered despite the heat.

  A few seconds passed before he registered the pickup, the driver, the houses they were passing. He dragged air into his lungs, then blew it out audibly, as if that could blow away the remnants of his dream.

  Little by little, the bloody images did recede.

  He watched the street. They were nearing the convent.

  “Could you stop at St. Lupe’s?” he asked the guy behind the wheel. “I need to step in for a second.”

  St. Lupe’s provided health care and education free of charge for the most unfortunate, the largest and sturdiest building in sight, all solid brick laid by early missionaries.

  When the pickup stopped, Walker jumped out and hurried up the steps, then pushed the heavy door open.

  The region had seen an uptick in malaria lately. Inside the sick ward, people lay on mats on the floor, crammed in, dry-lipped with fever. Nobody had bothered to separate the men from the women. Kids lay mixed in with the adults. A month-old baby wailed in her dying mother’s arms.

  A familiar scent of smoke caught Walker’s nose. The place had started out as a chapel, before a much larger church had been built. A dozen candles, and possibly some incense, burned in front of a fresco of solemn saints in the back.

  A harried, middle-aged nun was washing faces with a wet cloth and handing out medicine, mumbling praye
rs as she went from patient to patient. The sick called out for her from every direction, “Sister Sak Ch’up! Sister Sak Ch’up!”

  Not her real name. Sak Ch’up literally meant white woman in Mayan.

  As Walker reached her, she glanced up, and a smile relaxed the worry lines on her forehead.

  “It’s you. Thank God. I thought they were bringing in more sick. I wouldn’t know where to put them.” She wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her sleeve.

  The people of the tribes preferred St. Lupe’s to the hospital. The hospital wouldn’t let the shaman add his medicine to whatever the doctors ordered. Most of the missions didn’t either, but Sister Sak Ch’up was an exception, overlooking the loincloth and feather necklace. She’d been known to sneak the old man in behind the mother superior’s back so he could do his dances and his chants. The good sister was of the opinion that it helped if the patients believed in the cure.

  Come to think of it… Walker looked around. The smoke he’d smelled when he’d come in was slightly pungent, different from candle smoke. And then he saw the source, brown toes peeking from behind a curtain.

  “Baku,” he called toward the hiding spot. “How have you been, my friend?”

  The shaman stuck out his head first, then stepped out into the open with a toothless smile as he recognized Walker. He brought out the smoking roll of wild tobacco leaves from behind his back as he pranced over.

  He was around fifty, and probably the oldest man in his village. Leathery skin, wiry build, ancient eyes that were hypnotizing.

  He hesitated for a moment, then pulled a pouch from his belt. “Brunhilda,” he said softly as he handed the pouch to Walker.

  Walker looked inside. Nothing but a bunch of dried flowers. Maybe for tea, or to diffuse in oil and use on her skin. He shoved the gift into his pocket. “I’ll make sure she gets it.”

  Baku nodded. He didn’t ask if Walker had been well, just looked him over, looking all the way inside him, and nodded with resignation, silently acknowledging that while Walker wasn’t injured, the darkness in his soul they’d spoken about in the past hadn’t improved either.

  “I have to visit the jungle spirits,” the shaman said with a frown. “I am finished here.” But as he passed by Walker, he blew smoke over him and murmured something under his breath in an ancient language.

  The pungent cloud wrapped around Walker, while the guttural sounds of the incantation seemed to sneak down his throat as he took a breath. Something tickled inside his chest, leaving him uneasy. He’d never been superstitious, but on his trips to the tribal villages, he’d seen Baku work what could only be called magic.

  Walker had seen him call a storm, seen him turn a baby inside the laboring mother’s womb with a puff of smoke and a brief spell. Baku had talked to Walker about Ben, about things that had happened when they’d been children, things Walker had nearly forgotten, things Baku had no way of knowing.

  As the old man disappeared through the door, Walker turned back to the nun and caught a sheepish, apologetic expression on her face. He smiled to make sure she knew he wasn’t judging her. How could he? He’d gone to Baku for help himself.

  He lowered his voice. “I’m looking for a noseless man. Has anyone like that come in?”

  The sister shook his head. “You are not looking for him to harm him, are you?”

  “All I want from him is information,” Walker said truthfully. He didn’t add, however, that he was willing to use any method to get that information. He figured the guy’s fate was in his own hands. Tell Walker what he wanted to know, and nobody had to get hurt.

  Sister Sak Ch’up relaxed. “He hasn’t come through here. If I see him, I’ll send word.”

  A while back, when Walker had escorted a shipment of guns to Guatemala, he heard a story told of a mercenary who was hired for a job but messed it up, brought in the wrong kind of people. These wrong kind of people were all beheaded at an abandoned farmhouse. The mercenary lost his nose as a reminder to pay better attention in the future.

  The man who told the story was killed the same day at the gun exchange, so Walker couldn’t ask him for more information. He’d been hunting for the noseless man since.

  Sister Sak Ch’up moved on to her next patient.

  Walker noted the medicine bottle she held. A hundred pills at most. Roughly two days’ rations, considering the number of people in the ward. “Is that the last of the quinine?”

  She nodded, her gaze somber, but not without hope.

  Walker had never seen her dejected. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the roll of US hundred dollar bills he’d taken from the heroin convoy in the jungle for this purpose. He put it in the woman’s free hand and folded her fingers around it. “A small gift. Please use this to buy pills and more mosquito nets.”

  Tears flooded her clear blue eyes.

  He looked away, embarrassed. “I better get going.”

  Then he turned and strode away, hoping to head off the effusive gratitude the sister heaped on him whenever she got half a chance. She shouted her thanks after him anyway, and called on God to bless him.

  Walker ducked out the door. He wasn’t comfortable with attracting God’s attention.

  He got back into the pickup, and it moved on, past the shanty houses of the poor, then wood dwellings, then adobe homes as they passed into more affluent neighborhoods. After a few blocks of that, they started seeing boarded stores again, and empty, weed-choked lots. He had himself dropped off a block from the Xibalba cartel’s compound and walked the rest of the way.

  He stuck a cigar into his mouth and lit it. He carried only a single gun, his SIG, tucked into his waistband in the back. Coming armed to the teeth would say he was worried. Coming unarmed would say he was stupid. Neither was the impression he wanted to make.

  The heavy-set, thick-necked guard at the compound’s entrance recognized him and opened the eight-foot-tall cast-iron gate.

  “Gracias.” Walker strode past the man, chomping on his cigar. “Santiago around?” he asked in Spanish. “He said he’d be here around this time if I stopped by.”

  The guard pointed toward the main house without a word, an oversized traditional Mexican villa with yellow masonry walls and red tile roof, archways supporting the tiled front porch that kept the sun from the windows.

  Six other buildings, a lot more simple and utilitarian, surrounded the front yard that was packed with vehicles, an elaborate blue-and-yellow-tiled fountain in the middle.

  Snipers were posted on the tallest roof. Another guard stood at the main house’s entrance, in front of the three-inch-thick oak doors that were reinforced with iron bands.

  Nobody was missing a nose that Walker could see. He passed two black Hummers on his left, the fountain on his right, then reached the stairs and hurried up. “I’m here to see Santiago.”

  The guard let him through the thick oak doors with a nod.

  The inside of the house was cool and cavernous, the floor covered in the same orange-hued tile as the porch, the furniture Mexican antiques, appropriate to the splendor of the villa.

  Santiago was pacing the room to the right, yelling at someone on his phone. He glanced at Walker, then turned away and kept on yelling. Then threatening. Then issuing orders.

  Something to do with a late shipment.

  Santiago was about five-eight, short black hair slicked back. He was a clean-cut type of guy, wearing a light linen suit and an expensive gold watch. He could have passed for a doctor or a lawyer. Or a successful businessman. Which he was, in the criminal world. Hundreds of millions of dollars moved through his hands every year.

  He threw an impressive fit. The power he held in Mercita and the surrounding area underlined his every word. The bandits and the gangs were no altar boys, but Santiago was several levels up from Pedro and Jorge. He was a cartel guy. At the top of the food chain. Nobody but Carlos Petranos, the cartel boss, was above him.

  Walker waited.

  Then Santiago finally fi
nished and shoved his phone into his pocket. He dropped his chin, as if refocusing on a different issue. His gaze filled with a new blast of fury. He seemed even more pissed now as he watched Walker than he’d been on the phone.

  “What the hell?” he spat the words at last, his tone incredulous. “Pedro? Over some fucking gringa?”

  Walker relaxed his posture, dropping his shoulders, shoving his hands into his pocket. “Ever seen me lose my head over a woman, amigo?” he asked around his cigar, in a tone bordering on bored.

  The man considered him for a moment. “Don’t fucking amigo me. Pedro’s crew is calling for your head.”

  Walker shrugged. “I came in of my own free will.”

  “Which is why you weren’t shot on sight.” Santiago slammed his palm on the doorframe as he walked out of the office, into the foyer. His tone turned machete sharp. “Why?”

  The hard look on his face made it clear that Walker only had one try to get his answer right.

  Walker didn’t so much as blink. “Pedro was a traitor.”

  Santiago watched him in silence as a muscle began to tick in his left cheek. “I would have known.”

  Walker kept his face impassive. “Let me show you something.”

  And just like that, another game piece moved forward on the chessboard.

  Chapter Nine

  They drove into the jungle using an old logging road, taking two four-wheel-drive pickups, seven goons in the back of the first, eight in the back of the second. Santiago sat in the cab of the first pickup next to Walker. Walker was driving. A basic safety measure on Santiago’s part.

  Walker’s hands were busy with the steering wheel, out in the open, while Santiago’s were free to reach for his weapon if needed.

  Humidity was nearly dripping in the air. Only the open windows made the cab bearable. And still they were all sweating.

  “You spent the night in Mercita?” Santiago asked, wiping his forehead with a rumpled handkerchief.

  Walker nodded, keeping an eye on the gaping potholes in the dirt road, a few deep enough to swallow a wheel.

  An annoyed grunt came from Santiago. “What do you know about the hit on Jorge’s garage? What’s this sudden new beef with Hernandez?”