Flash Fire Read online

  On the one hand, he seemed easygoing to the extreme—way too laid-back for her taste. But on the other hand, he’d taken down Pedro with lightning speed and precision, in a sudden burst of stone-cold, professionally executed violence.

  She didn’t know how to reconcile those two facets of him.

  Something teased at the back of her mind. Something about his behavior that was familiar. Which made no sense. She was pretty sure she’d never met anyone quite like Walker.

  Then it came to her in a flash. Large predators.

  She’d been on an African safari once, while in high school. Her father’s first deployment had been to Africa, and, years later, he took the family back there on vacation.

  Clara remembered the lions the most. They were idle ninety-nine percent of the time. A pride of lions spent most of their day lying in the shade. They conserved their energy for the hunt. And when they hunted, they were lethal killing machines.

  Like Walker.

  He was a dangerous man. She’d be ill-advised to forget that even for a second.

  “What I need from you is—” she began, but a loud creaking coming from below interrupted her.

  Rhythmic creaking. Like a bed when people were…

  A woman moaned.

  Clara’s gaze flew to Walker.

  He flashed her an amused look. “You have something against sex?”

  She clamped her mouth shut. Just hearing him say the word “sex” caused tingles in unmentionable places.

  The corner of his mouth twitched as he waited for her answer.

  She was so not discussing sex with a murderous mercenary. She drew a deep breath. “I take it Brunhilda lives above her restaurant.”

  “That’s not Brunhilda.”

  How would he know that? “How many women live here?”

  “A couple.” He cleared his throat. “A dozen, last I came around.”

  “Why do a dozen women live at a restaurant?” She’d never heard of live-in waitresses.

  “It’s not so much a restaurant as a…different kind of establishment.”

  A man’s lusty laugh sounded from below.

  “How can this narrow little house hold a dozen women and their husbands?” A terrible suspicion formed in the back of her mind.

  Walker’s lips twitched again. “The men come and go.”

  She clenched her teeth so tight, the enamel was probably cracking. He’d brought her to a brothel.

  “I can’t find the words.” She stared daggers at him.

  “Don’t hurt yourself trying.”

  He lay down on the mattress and folded his arms behind his head, which made his biceps bulge all over the place in distracting ways. With his arms up, the hem of his T-shirt rode up his abdomen, revealing a three-inch band of tanned skin and rippling muscles, a smattering of hair above his waistband.

  Clara drew her gaze up to his face. A drop of sweat rolled down between her breasts. The heat was insane up here.

  As if on second thought, he shifted to one side of the mattress to make room for her. “Since we can’t go back to Furino today, we might as well take a nap.”

  A lion at rest.

  She blinked. “I’m not sleeping with you in a brothel.”

  The way he raised his eyebrow was more suggestive than the average Vegas lap dance. “I didn’t think you approved of the…other thing. But if you’re game, I’m game, Detective Cupcake.”

  “Go to hell,” she said through clenched teeth.

  He flashed her a resigned look. “Probably sooner than later. But there’s no harm in trying to have a little fun on the way.”

  The heat inside the room was a corporeal thing. And it all seemed to emanate from his body. She felt breathless. And burning. Like she needed to take her clothes off.

  She reached to the hem of her shirt and tucked it firmly into her shorts, even if that made her feel even hotter.

  She glared at him with full resentment. Since he didn’t look the slightest bit abashed, she gave that up, scooted back the folded-up tarp she was sitting on as far as it went, and leaned against the wall behind her.

  As a man, Light Walker was… She was clearly out of her depth with him. The very fact that he’d managed to get her to see him as a man made her want to growl with aggravation. She was extremely professional under normal circumstances. She needed to get back to thinking of him as just her facilitator.

  She knew how to deal with men professionally. In the personal arena, not so much.

  The first serious boyfriend she’d had was in college, a popular basketball player. Josh was a jock, and she couldn’t believe he was interested in her. He was her entry to a social life, friends, parties, to feeling normal and not like a nerdy outcast.

  She’d pretty much worshipped the ground he walked on. She’d given him her virginity without a second thought. She’d done most of his math homework. She’d been thinking love and forever. Until she’d overheard him talking to his buddies in the hallway.

  One of the guys on the team was complaining that the head cheerleader was playing hard to get, making him jump through hoops.

  Josh laughed at him. “That’s your problem right there, going after the head cheerleader. You want tail, you go after the ugly duckling, my man. They all look the same in the dark. You don’t need to do the dates and the flowers and the gifts. But you get to fuck whenever you want. And they’ll thank you for it. Why take the hard way when there’s an easy way?”

  Clara had stood there on the other side of the spring art display, feeling eviscerated, diminished, used. Not two feet from her, half the basketball team was laughing at her behind her back. Because she was ugly and pitiful, and too stupid to know that someone like Josh could never be interested in her for real.

  On the plus side, she was a quick learner. She hadn’t trusted the advances of a man since. Not that there’d been that many who tried to advance. She’d had two semiserious relationships since college, both deeply unsatisfying.

  She didn’t have time to date. She was a general’s daughter. There were a lot of eyes on her. She focused on her career. She barely had time to breathe. She wanted to make her father proud.

  Time was running out for that. Six more months, the doctor had said.

  Her heart clenched. She closed her eyes.

  She’d planned on taking time off, spending as much of those six months with her father as she could, going to games, and on walks, making happy memories for later. Instead, she was here, and one of her last memories of him would be her standing stupidly in the embassy’s bubble room while he admitted to adultery.

  She shifted on the hard floorboards and opened her eyes that were suddenly burning. She needed to find Rosita and get back home.

  Walker seemed asleep. His toned body was completely relaxed, at ease. And beautiful.

  Made one wonder why there weren’t more statutes of sleeping men. A definite oversight on the part of the artistic community.

  She could hate his guts but appreciate his shape. She was good at compartmentalizing. And she needed to compartmentalize him right now. She had no time to waste on ogling the lion at rest.

  She pushed away from the wall and sat up straight. Her rental car, her clothes, passport, wallet, and laptop were at the guesthouse in Furino. She only had the clothes on her back with her, and her Glock.

  On second thought, Walker was right. Mercita was probably safer for her than Furino. Probably most everyone in Furino knew that she was staying at the guesthouse. If the banditos blamed her for Walker’s actions, they could easily find her. She had to give them a few days to calm down. But she needed her things.

  She glanced toward the window, at the nearly dark sky.

  Mercita was a decent-size town. She should be able to get a cab somewhere around here.

  She could get in and out of Furino under the cover of darkness without being seen, be back here before her insufferable facilitator woke up. She wasn’t going to take a nap in the middle of an investigation, for heaven’
s sake.

  But Walker had told her that he wasn’t going to let her go back.

  Maybe he’d forgotten that she had a gun. Except, the situation wasn’t so dire yet that she’d shoot him.

  Since she had nothing else to do, she entertained a few idle thoughts about how to escape the man.

  She only needed an hour, but she couldn’t lock him in the attic to keep him from coming after her and dragging her back before she reached the bottom of the fire stairs. Technically, the louvers over the window could be locked from the outside, but they were just made of wood. He could kick his way out easily.

  She couldn’t handcuff him to something, because she had no handcuffs and nothing to handcuff him to up here.

  She didn’t have any sleeping pills either. Not that she felt good about the thought of drugging someone.

  Same with trying to knock him out. It seemed almost as overboard as shooting him. More his style than something a conscientious investigator would contemplate. Yet as a last measure…

  “Quit watching me,” he said without opening his eyes, startling her. “I can’t sleep like that. If you’re plotting how to seduce me to get your way—”

  “I was plotting how best to hit you over the head.”

  His eyes popped open, and zeroed in on her. “You were thinking about killing me?”

  She sighed. “Killing people is not everybody’s first response to every problem. But I do wish I could tie you up for an hour.”

  The second the words were out, she knew she’d made a mistake.

  Heat bloomed in his eyes. He raised a dark eyebrow. “The feeling is mutual.”

  What was it with the damn heat in this attic? She found it difficult to draw breath. She turned away from him and closed her eyes, pretending to go to sleep.

  Minute after minute ticked by. His breathing evened again. Having no other option, she tried to catch some rest but couldn’t nod off. She looked at Walker. He seemed to be out completely. Maybe she could sneak out and be back before he woke up. How would she know unless she tried?

  She eased to her feet and stole to the window, proud that she didn’t make a single floorboard creak. She swung one leg out.

  “No,” came the command from behind her, the voice managing to sound firm even while rusty with sleep.

  One leg in, one leg out, she turned toward the bane of her existence. “I don’t even have a change of clothes here.” Or a toothbrush.

  “We’ll replace your stuff tomorrow.”

  “I have my laptop at the guesthouse.”

  He shot her a look of disapproval, his eyes too sharp for a man who’d just woken up. “You shouldn’t have brought a laptop. Any sensitive information on it?”

  She stared at him. Who went anywhere without a laptop? Never mind. People who ran around in the jungle, getting shot at and being bit by snakes in the ass.

  “I sign into my work files through the Internet.” She wasn’t an idiot. “The only files on the laptop are about the travel book I’m supposedly writing here.”

  She hesitated for a moment. She didn’t need his permission to go. She was perfectly capable of making her own decisions.

  Walker said, “You never asked me earlier why I told you that Pedro didn’t talk to women.”

  She swung her leg back in, then turned fully toward him and leaned against the window frame. “Okay. Why?”

  He held her gaze. “The women in Pedro’s company were usually gagged.”

  Oh.

  “El Capitán liked it rough—chains and gags,” he added. “The more unwilling the woman, the better. He could drag out the torture for days. When he got tired, he had one of his men take over while Pedro watched until he got his second wind.”

  The blood ran out of Clara’s head. “Do you think Rosita—”

  But Walker shook his head. “I would have heard. Pedro liked bragging.”

  “But if he didn’t take her, then who?”

  Walker looked up at the ceiling, which was just the underside of the roof tiles. “It’s not the right time for you to be here.”

  She used her best acerbic tone to respond. “I’m sorry if my investigation is an inconvenience.”

  He looked back at her. “Rosita is most likely dead. Go home in the morning, before you end up in a shallow grave next to her.”

  “I don’t run away from my investigations.”

  “Listen, Detective Cupcake.” His tone turned cutting. “You’re out of your depth here. This is not some DEFCON video game.”

  “And you’re misogynistic. You can’t deal with the fact that I’m a strong woman.”

  “You can’t poke around down here on your own.” He shook his head. “And you wouldn’t like working with me.”

  “That’s not exactly a newsflash. I’ve hated every move you’ve made so far, and pretty much every word you’ve said.” She was fresh out of polite, and she didn’t care.

  His green eyes, like the jungle, threatened to swallow her. Then his gaze sharpened. Hardened. “I could scare you into leaving.”

  She held her ground. “You could try.”

  Little by little, the attic filled with tension. That the bed in the room below them began its rhythmic creaking once again didn’t help matters.

  She did her best to ignore the sound and the throaty moans that followed. “The fastest way to get me out of your hair is to help me find Rosita. Give me a starting point. One lead. And then you can be done with me.”

  If Walker disliked her as much as she disliked him, that should be enough motivation.

  He watched her for a while, then seemed to come to a decision. He sat up in one sinuous move, muscles shifting all over the place. He pulled on his socks, then his boots. He stood and lifted the mattress, eased up a floor board, and pulled out a Beretta.

  He held out the gun to her. “For backup.”

  She accepted the weapon.

  “Do you have a knife?”

  She shook her head.

  He grunted, obviously thoroughly disgusted, and handed her one.

  “You have an extra magazine for your Glock?” He passed her one without waiting for her answer. Then he put a hand grenade into his own pocket.

  At her questioning look, he simply said, “M67 fragmentation grenade. Lethal within a fifteen-foot radius.”

  He covered up his secret compartment, grabbed his SIG and an extra magazine, and headed for the window.

  She moved to follow him, a little stunned at the sudden arms acceleration. “Are we attacking the bandits at the cantina?”

  “We’re going down the road,” he said without looking back at her, “to see a friend.”

  Chapter Seven

  Walker shook off the remains of his dream as he walked down the street with Clara. He’d slept maybe five minutes before the noise of her trying to sneak out woke him, but he’d dreamt. He and Ben, as kids, running around like the troublemakers they’d been, playing in the empty industrial lot behind their parents’ house back in Maryland.

  The abandoned factory had been their childhood playground. They’d played fort, had their treasure hunts, literally climbed the walls. And all through that, his little brother, always following, trusting. “Wait.” “Help.” “I want to do that to.” “Pull me up.” Always wanting to do whatever Walker was doing.

  But then the bright images of the dream morphed into something much darker, as always lately: a giant chessboard with severed human heads scattered across the board. Thankfully, he’d woken before he reached the dream’s end—the part he hoped to hell he’d never dream again.

  Maybe Jorge knew the noseless man. Walker had been looking for the guy quietly, but time was running out. He had to ask around, up his game, even if asking too many questions could expose him.

  “Who is your friend?” Clara wanted to know, nothing but bright and optimistic as she walked next to him on the sidewalk that was radiating back the day’s heat. The street was busy, people going about their business. “Why are we visiting him?”
r />   “To look for Rosita,” Walker said. To scare you straight, he thought. To scare you out of Chiapas.

  He wanted her gone before his meeting with Santiago in the morning. He had no time to babysit her, and to leave her to her own devices was the same as leaving her for dead.

  Jorge’s Garage stood four blocks over, the parking lot backing to railroad tracks. He ran a busy chop shop disguised as an auto repair store. Sometimes he sent car parts down south by train.

  On northbound trips, the human traffickers packed every available nook and cranny with immigrants, but southbound, the railcars had plenty of empty space to smuggle other things. The chop shop wasn’t a major operation, but Jorge’s guys could feed their families.

  The auto shop was a plain, cement-block building, three bays with steel rollup doors, currently all closed. Walker watched the roof, putting himself slightly ahead of Clara as they approached. As soon as it was clear that they were heading for the shop, the top of a head and the barrel of a rifle popped up at the roof’s edge, outlined against the moonlight.

  Walker squinted at the distinct shape of the AR-15. The rifle was a good, lightweight semiautomatic—the same rifle as the Mexican border patrol used. Jorge had probably bought the gun straight off them. The sad truth was, corruption was rampant all around. Almost everything and everyone could be had for money.

  Walker stopped, and when Clara stepped up next to him, he put a hand on her elbow to make sure she stayed with him. “Don’t draw unless you see me draw. In fact, don’t even look like you’re thinking about drawing.”

  She gave a tight nod, tension radiating from her pores. But she stood her ground. He hoped to hell she’d behave. She didn’t look stupid. On the other hand, she had gone into the cantina.

  He flashed her a stern look, then called up to the roof in Spanish. “Is Jorge around?”

  “Who wants to know?” came the answer, a voice he didn’t recognize. Then again, Mexican border gangs had a pretty high turnover.

  “Tell him it’s the guy who cut off his ear,” Walker called back.

  Next to him, Clara’s back stiffened.