Beyond Limits (Tracers #8)(4)
“Go, go, go!”
Derek grabbed the outstretched hands of his teammates as they seized his pack and yanked him aboard. His boots were barely inside when the Black Hawk lurched off the ground and lifted into the sky.
* * *
Texas Hill Country
Three weeks later
Elizabeth LeBlanc pulled over beside a sheriff’s cruiser and surveyed the scene. Based on the number of emergency vehicles, it was worse than she’d thought, and she’d known it was bad the moment she picked up her cell. Nothing good ever came from a phone call at 4:11 A.M.
Humidity enveloped her as she stepped from her car. The air smelled like wet cedar, and the road was slick from a recent rain. An arc of yellow traffic flares marked off the right lane, where deputies and troopers milled around. Elizabeth studied the faces, looking for anyone familiar. Some of them were pulling the graveyard shift, while others looked as though they’d just rolled out of bed.
Elizabeth crossed the road and made her way past the crime-scene van to a young trooper manning a barricade. She held up her badge. He glanced at it, then gave her a nervous look before letting her through.
She made her way deeper into the whir of activity. The skeptical gazes of the uniforms followed her, but she ignored them as she analyzed the setup. They were on an isolated stretch of road between Del Rio and San Antonio. The landscape was hilly. Because of the speed limit and the narrow turns, most truckers opted for the highway, which meant traffic here was light during the daytime and practically nonexistent in the dead of night.
A bulky sheriff’s deputy was eyeing her from across the crime-scene tape, and Elizabeth pegged him for her guy. He waved her over to the inner perimeter.
“Special Agent LeBlanc?”
“That’s me.” She held up her creds, but he didn’t even look.
“Jim Perkins. Thanks for coming out.” He gave her charcoal pantsuit a quick once-over and lifted the yellow tape so she could duck under. “Watch your step there.”
She followed him down a steep slope. The ground was muddy, and she chose her footing carefully, wishing she’d gone with boots instead of flats.
“Still no ID?”
“Only the cell,” Perkins said. “He’s got you on speed dial, so we figured he’s one of yours.”
He’d said the same thing over the phone, but Elizabeth had been too groggy to do more than jot down GPS coordinates. Did he mean one of her fellow agents? One of her confidential informants? As she’d rushed out the door, she’d thought about notifying her SAC. But her boss didn’t like her, and she doubted he’d appreciate being called out of bed in the middle of the night over a CI.
“When you say ‘speed dial,’ you’re talking about his call history?”
“Contact list,” Perkins corrected. “Only two numbers listed, and yours was on top.”
Elizabeth’s chest tightened. “What about physical description?”
“Hispanic male, medium build, mid-to late thirties.”
He’d just described half the men in her office. Her anxiety continued to build as they neared a white van nose-down in a ditch. The vehicle was illuminated by klieg lights and swarming with crime-scene techs.
Elizabeth halted in her tracks. A line of golf-ball-size holes perforated the van’s side. What on earth kind of gun would it take to do that?
She knew a man who could tell her. Derek Vaughn would know the make, caliber, and capacity of whatever heavy-duty weapon it was and no doubt how to use it, too. But Derek wasn’t on hand to talk to her about guns or anything else, because he was across the world fighting terrorists. Her heart gave a little lurch at the thought.
They drew closer to the van, where the cargo doors stood open as a pair of CSIs dusted them for prints. Elizabeth recognized the forensic photographer crouched beside the driver’s door snapping a picture of a body hunched over the steering wheel.
Perkins tromped past the van and led her into some scrub brush. Another set of klieg lights had been erected in the middle of the woods, casting eerie shadows over the rocky ground.
“Near as we can tell,” Perkins said over his shoulder, “someone ran ’em off the road back at the S-curve. They Swiss-cheesed the vehicle, killed the driver, then went after the passenger when he tried to make a run for it.”
They picked their way through oak and mesquite trees, staying away from the path designated by crime-scene tape. With every step, her sense of foreboding grew. This was no quickie drive-by. Someone had stalked this victim deep into the brush.
“?’Bout a hundred yards, give or take,” Perkins said. “Looks like they wanted to make sure he got dead.”
The victim was sprawled facedown in a clearing. Bullet holes riddled his body, and his left arm was twisted behind him at an odd angle. An ME’s assistant in white coveralls knelt nearby, jotting notes on a clipboard.
Perkins exchanged words with the sheriff as Elizabeth eased closer, trying to see the face. She dropped into a crouch.
The victim’s eyelids were half-shut. Flies buzzed around his nose, and a line of ants had already established a trail up his neck and into his mouth.
She closed her eyes. Bile welled up in her throat.
“You know him?” Perkins asked her.
“Manuel Amato,” she said.