The Territory (Josie Gray Mysteries #1)(52)

“It’s good.”

“How come he’s been gone so long, then?”

She sipped at her beer to consider the question and settled on the short version. “Something about my heart being in a box. I think I’m missing some key relationship gene. Things that everyone else understands make no sense to me.”

“Well, I got a whole list of things wrong with me, but by god, I’m a good judge of character. And I know for a fact that you got a heart of gold, and if that accountant so much as thinks of breaking that heart of yours, he’ll have to answer to me.”





TEN


At 11:30 P.M. Friday night, Marta Cruz sat on the hood of her car swatting at mosquitoes. The air was damp by the river, full of life, teeming with bugs and bats, and she could smell the rank odor of decay. She preferred the dry, scorched smell of sand and rock and wind that surrounded her small adobe house in town. When Marta was a child, her mother had forbidden her and her siblings from playing in the dirty water of the river, and as she had gotten older, her mother’s superstitions took root. The river was not a place for clean, decent people. Her mother said loose girls and boys who were up to no good hung out there, away from the lights of respectable homes. Down by the river was where the no-gooders partied in shanties, stayed up all hours, and earned their money through vice. Marta had never seen the sights her mother described, but the stories instilled in her a strange paranoia about the Rio. She wasn’t happy about spending the night along its banks.

She had arrived two hours prior and backed her car into a thicket of scrub, then pulled additional cover around the front of her car. Border Patrol had scouted out her position and agreed it would work. She was watching the intersection where Josie had seen the lookout car the night before from the watchtower, and waiting for any activity across the river on the Mexican side. Jimmy Dare and Tim Sanchez, another Border Patrol agent, had ATVs camouflaged and parked along the banks closer to the area where Josie had seen the exchange. Like Jimmy, Sanchez was a well-built agent who obviously took pride in his physical condition. Both agents were average height with short dark hair and muscular builds. Sanchez was bulkier, though, and obviously worked out heavily at the gym, almost to the point where Marta wondered if he supplemented with steroids. His biceps stretched the fabric on his uniform sleeves, and his chest was like a rock.

Marta slid off her hood, unclipped her flashlight from her gun belt, and began walking down to the river to wipe mud on her neck and arms to help shield her skin from the swarm of mosquitoes. As she approached the river, she saw headlights coming down the access road to the river on the Mexican side. She immediately turned the flashlight off and ran back toward her car, calling Jimmy on his cell phone as she ran.

“Looks like one car and a pickup with some kind of trailer attached,” she said. She watched the headlights approach through the thick brush and struggled to see what they were driving. “They’ve slowed way down,” she whispered.

The vehicles drove past her on the other side of the river, creeping along, apparently looking for the access point.

“They passed the turnoff we identified yesterday.”

“What are they driving?” Jimmy asked. “We’re down by the river, and I can’t see anything.”

Marta watched the lights for a moment. “It’s a full-size pickup pulling a double horse trailer. The car is a lowrider. Maybe an old Mercury or Buick. They’ve passed you guys up. It looks like they’re turning onto the Flat Rock crossing. The Rio is low enough right now, they could probably drive across it. It spreads out there and gets pretty shallow.”

“As soon as they put a wheel in the river, Sanchez and I will approach on the four-wheelers,” Jimmy said. “I got the driver of the truck. Sanchez will block a rear exit. You block from the front with lights and siren, exit your car, and move to the rear for cover. You let us approach the truck from the rear. Clear?”

“We’re on,” Marta said. “The lead car just nosed into the water, and the pickup is on his bumper.” She started to pull the clumps of scrub bushes from the front of her car and got inside.

“I see them. They’ll try the car first to make sure there aren’t problems before they risk losing the load,” Jimmy said.

Marta kept the cell phone to her ear and started her engine. She drove toward the car, leaving her headlights, flashers, and sirens off. She drove with her head out the window, listening for noise. Timing was key. If they arrived too soon, the drivers would leave on foot and run back into Mexico. They needed the car out of the river on the U.S. side without giving it time to take off. However, they hoped to keep the truck in the river, where the four-wheelers maneuvered easier and they would have the upper hand.

Marta inched her car up, now a hundred feet from where the vehicles had entered the river. They, too, had turned their lights off. The half moon and stars still provided enough light that she could see the truck approaching the water.

The car nosed out of the water onto the U.S. side and up the low bank. Its tires spun for several seconds before grabbing hold and lurching onto land. The truck was halfway into the river when both four-wheelers appeared out of nowhere and doused the area in spotlights. Water splashed, and the ATV’s large tires slung mud and rock as they plunged into the river. Marta took advantage of the noise from the revving engines and disorienting lights. She threw on her own lights and sirens and pulled her car directly in front of what she could see now was a Buick, which was sandwiched between the pickup truck and her own car.