Shattered Lies (Web of Lies #3)(40)

“Where are they now?” Birch asked.

“They’re still in Mexico. They leave day after tomorrow. If I hadn’t killed you by then, they die. When I heard you were coming back tonight . . . I don’t care if you kill me, just save my girls. Please!”

“Gene, I’ll get your girls. And you’ll live, for now. Where’s this phone you use to talk to them?”

“We’re not allowed to have personal phones on us, so it’s hidden in the locked cabinet in the staff room. I’m the only one with the key.” Humphrey moved and felt his pockets until he found the keys.

“I’ll give this to someone to look it over after I deliver Gene.” Birch nodded and knew he was talking about Alex.

“I won’t be safe. They’ll kill me as soon as my name pops up on the jail register,” Gene sighed, but sounded resigned.

“You’re not going to jail. You’re going to disappear. No one will know where you are or what happened to you until I want them to. Gene, a bit of advice. Tell the man you meet everything you know.” With a nod of his chin toward Humphrey, he put the gag back on Gene and tied a blindfold over his face before dragging him from the room.





17





Dalton set the helicopter down near the last location of Sebastian’s GPS. The half moon lit up the desert, but not nearly enough to see if someone was waiting to kill them. He looked around and saw nothing. No lights. No movement. Nothing.

“I don’t see anything,” Lizzy said as she scanned the area.

“Me either. Let’s get out and have a look around.” Something wasn’t adding up, but Dalton couldn’t figure it out. A helicopter full of people didn’t just disappear like that.

He and Lizzy fanned out, sweeping the area with his phone light and a small flashlight they found in the helicopter.

“Over here!” Lizzy called out. Dalton gave the small mountain one last glance before heading her direction. When he rounded an outcropping, he saw what she found. The helicopter. It was hidden under camouflage material and would blend perfectly into the desert landscape for any drone or helicopter patrolling the border.

Dalton looked over the helicopter. “This is the same one. But I don’t see the GPS tracker anywhere.”

“I couldn’t find it either,” Lizzy said as she slowly scanned the dirt ground around them. Her flashlight moved over the ground and then stopped as it went toward the small mountain. “Dalton, I think I know where they went.”

“Where?”

“Down.” Lizzy’s light had found a metal door in the base of the mountain painted to look like the desert surroundings. It looked identical to the mountain it sat in, except for the heavy-duty keypad lock on it.

“Do you know how to get through that lock?” Dalton asked. His skill with lock picking was minimal. Blowing stuff up, sure. But he didn’t have anything with him to be able to do that.

“I can try, but I don’t have my tools with me.”

“Now we know where they went, at least. We’re practically on the border. I bet it’s a tunnel into and out of one of Manuel’s warehouses in Mexico. Let’s look around more and see what we can find.”

Dalton took off in the night, slowly scanning the mountain and surrounding area. By the time he had covered a half-mile grid search, he’d found three cars, the helicopter, and close to twenty large drums of gas. However, what worried him was that there was an empty space that a fourth car normally occupied. The tarp that would have been covering the car was staked to the ground. Under the tarp was a small oil stain darkening the dirt and sand. Somewhere, there was someone from Manuel’s cartel out in the United States and who knows what they had planned.



* * *



“I’m going to steal it,” Valeria whispered as they watched an old man set his cell phone down on his outdoor table as he sipped his morning coffee.

“Just be patient, lass. Wait and watch. Or do what I thought we should do and let me walk up and ask to borrow it,” Grant calmly replied.

Valeria almost snarled. She didn’t like sitting back and waiting. Of course, that’s what got her in trouble the last time. They’d walked side by side through the night, not stopping once. They seemed to feed off of each other naturally. If she started to slow, he would smile at her and say, “You’re not getting tired, are you?” He knew it would spur her on because if there was one thing Val wasn’t, it was a quitter.

So they’d kept going. Grant never seemed to tire as they talked and walked through the night. It was strange to think the man standing next to her knew her better than Anthony ever did, and she’d dated him for years. Grant had asked about Brock, and so in the darkness, she found herself telling Grant about her best friend. Valeria shook her head and dislodged the feeling—a feeling that appeared to be more than lust when she looked at Grant. A feeling she shoved aside. He might have a physical reaction to her, but no matter how she flirted, he had kept his distance since Brock died.

She knew one way to kill two birds with one stone. She could satisfy her curiosity and get her way with the phone with one little kiss. She’d distract Grant as she distracted Sebastian, then she’d be able to see if there was anything between them. And she’d be able to get halfway across the yard to steal that phone before Grant could stop her.