Flirting with Disaster Read online

  “Lisa,” he said. “Listen to me. You need help.”

  “Yes,” she said on a breath of relief. “Yes. I need help.”

  “Tell me exactly where you are.”

  “There’s an abandoned silver-mining camp on the road leading southeast out of Santa Rios. It’s about two miles out of town. I’m going to hide out there.”

  Hide out? Jesus. She was delusional. He scribbled down the information.

  “Listen carefully,” he said. “I’m going to send somebody. Somebody to help you. A doctor. You’ve been injured, and you need—”

  “No! Aren’t you listening? The only doctor within a hundred miles wants me dead!”

  How was he ever going to get through to her? “Lisa, you’ve been through a real trauma, so I understand how you might think you’re in danger, but—”

  “You think I’m crazy? Is that it? I got a bump on the head and went right off the deep end?”

  “No, of course not. But sometimes head injuries—”

  “Damn it, I’m not crazy! Robert Douglas is out to kill me!”

  “Take it easy,” he told her. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “No, I’m not. I have no way out of here. I need help. I need . . .” She paused, her voice with a heavy, hushed quality. “I need you.”

  Dave felt a jolt of surprise. “Me? What do you mean?”

  “I need you to come here.”

  “What?”

  “Please.”

  He paced to the extent of the phone cord, then paced back. He couldn’t believe this. Lisa Merrick was calling him with a story about smuggling and sabotage and attempted murder, and now she wanted him to come hundreds of miles to the backwoods of Mexico to foil a conspiracy to kill her?

  “You told me once that if I ever needed you, I should call you.” Lisa’s voice slipped almost to a whisper. “I need you now.”

  Suddenly Dave remembered. Those were the last words he’d ever spoken to her, because after what had happened between them he’d wanted to do something for her. Anything. But all he could do was make a promise for the future, tell her that if something in her life ever became insurmountable, he’d try to help her.

  How was he to know it would be something like this?

  He should call the local authorities. After all, if she really was badly injured and somebody didn’t get to her soon, she could die. Then again, if somebody really was out to kill her and he told them where to find her . . .

  “Oh, no,” Lisa whispered.

  “What?”

  “People are coming. Somebody might see me. I have to go.”

  “Lisa—”

  “Help me, Dave. Please, please help me. . . .”

  “Lisa!”

  He heard the line click. Then a dial tone. Slowly he hung up the phone. As much as he tried to tell himself that she was injured and therefore deluded, he had no way to verify that.

  You told me once that if I ever needed you . . .

  He went to his computer and pulled up a map of Mexico. He located Santa Rios, a faint dot about two hundred miles southeast of Monterrey. He went to the Web site of Aero-Mexico and found a flight to Monterrey out of DFW in three hours. He could call the airline right now, make a reservation. Within the hour, he could be on the road to Dallas.

  Tomorrow was Sunday, but he’d probably still need a few days off work. Since he rarely took time off, he was due. He could get his brothers to take care of Ashley, letting them know where he was going and when he planned to be back, just in case he encountered more trouble than he bargained for. Once in Monterrey, he could grab a rental car and drive to Santa Rios, where he could find Lisa and get to the bottom of this.

  As he ticked off the plan in his mind, he kept telling himself that it was rational and logical to travel seven hundred miles to a town in the middle of nowhere, get Lisa wherever she needed to go, then get back home. Nothing crazy about that.

  Who was he kidding? It sounded crazy as hell.

  “Daddy?”

  He jerked his gaze to the door. Ashley stood there in her fuzzy house slippers, her stuffed rabbit dangling from her hand.

  “Come back. I didn’t finish reading.”

  “Be there in a minute, honey.”

  She waited a moment more with one of those “your minutes are longer than my minutes” looks on her face, before turning and shuffling back to her room.

  Damn. How could he even think of flying out of here only hours from now? He should just call the station and find somebody who could get him a phone number for the sheriff’s office in that little Mexican town, then call them and let them handle it. It could take a while to make a connection and get somebody out there, but nobody in his right mind would blame him for doing the rational thing, no matter what the outcome.

  Even if Lisa was telling the truth and somebody really was out to kill her.

  Dave dropped his head to his hands and rubbed his temples, knowing he had no business leaving his daughter and running off into the Mexican wilderness not really knowing what he was going to face when he got there. And he wasn’t sure he was up to helping anyone with anything anymore. He’d gone to that well too many times in recent years, until barely a drop of water was left in it. The sick feeling he got every time he thought about what had happened on that bridge today made him wonder just how worthwhile he could be to anyone right about now.

  But the very idea that Lisa might be alone and delirious, terrified, needing his help, sent a surge of adrenaline racing through him. He’d made her a promise once that he’d be there for her if she ever needed him, and it was a promise he had every intention of keeping. One phone call from her, and suddenly nothing else mattered.

  He was going to Mexico.

  In the woods adjoining the bunkhouse of the abandoned mining camp, Lisa sat against a tree on a bed of dead leaves still damp from the heavy rainstorm a few days before, surrounded by darkness so complete she could barely make out the road in the distance. In the scraggly woods around her she heard the occasional call of a bird or the scurry of various wildlife, but she didn’t bother worrying about the snakes and wildcats and gargantuan spiders who undoubtedly called this place home. The enemy she was facing now made those look tame by comparison.

  In one hand she gripped the handle of an old shovel she’d found, because it vaguely resembled a weapon. The fingers of her other hand were looped around the strap of her backpack. Because the pills were in a plastic bag, they’d survived the trip through the river, and she was going to hold on to them no matter what. If she ever got out of here, she was going to make sure she had the evidence that could help take Robert Douglas down, along with every other person who had anything to do with the drug counterfeiting or the sabotage of her plane.

  Then she thought about Adam.

  At first she’d been so thankful he hadn’t been on her plane when it went down, because he might not have survived. But now she realized that he could be in even bigger trouble than she was.

  She didn’t know if Robert Douglas knew that Adam had gotten called away at the last minute and told her to fly on to San Antonio without him. But just the fact that Adam knew about the drugs was enough to put him in danger the moment Robert found out that he was still alive. She wanted desperately to warn him, but she had no way to do it. Adam had traveled to a farm an hour from Santa Rios, and she didn’t know the name of the woman whose baby he’d gone to deliver. She didn’t know when he was going to return. And she was terrified to show her own face for fear that Robert would find out that she’d survived the crash and come after her again.

  Adam, wherever you are, please be careful.

  After slipping into Santa Rios and making that phone call, Lisa had come back out here, and now she’d spent most of the night hugging this tree, drifting in and out of sleep, waiting for whoever came up that road. Since it was a strong possibility that Dave had called the authorities, she couldn’t go back inside the bunkhouse. She’d be a sitting duck. At least out here, if d
anger approached she could see it coming and have a fighting chance of getting away.

  Right. Just her and her trusty shovel. The perfect weapon against men with machine guns. If only she had a real weapon. Unfortunately, Mexican officials didn’t take kindly to anyone entering their country with firearms, so her Glock was currently sitting in her dresser drawer in her apartment in San Antonio.

  Of course, she should have been miles away from here already. She should have found a different place to rest and recuperate before she formulated some kind of plan to get out of Santa Rios and back across the border. Instead, she’d come back here because she just couldn’t shake the ridiculous fantasy that it wouldn’t be corrupt Santa Rios officials who came up that road. It would be Dave.

  How deluded had that been?

  This was the place where she’d told him she’d be, so this was where she’d stayed. But she’d been crazy to believe, even for a second, that he’d drop everything and leave his little slice of middle-class heaven to come rescue her. Logically, she’d known that the minute she hung up the phone. Emotionally, she’d continued to hold on to a fragile thread of hope that kept her glued to this tree, watching and waiting.

  Maybe he hadn’t been able to leave town right away. Maybe he hadn’t been able to get a flight out. Maybe he’d had car trouble.

  And maybe he just didn’t give a damn.

  She was starting to face facts. She’d thought that Dave had only two options: send the authorities or come himself. Instead, he’d chosen to do nothing at all. She should have been happy about that, since it meant she was probably safe for the moment from the people who were trying to kill her. Instead, his indifference cut her right to the quick.

  In the past eleven years, she’d adopted a string of policies that had served her well: Live for the moment. What you see is what you get. Don’t count those chickens, because hatching is the exception, not the rule. Essentially, all a person could do was take every day as it came, stay on top, stay in control.

  Right now, she had no control over anything.

  Lisa closed her eyes, exhaustion overtaking her. The cover of darkness offered her the best opportunity to return to town, where she could try to find some means of transportation to get her back across the border. But the longer she sat by this tree, the worse she felt. Every time she tried to stand, pain shot through her head. With every hour that passed, her mind grew fuzzier, her body weaker. She’d run out of what little food and water she had hours ago, so her disorientation was only going to get worse, eventually edging into delirium. And just how delirious would she have to be before she lost her sense of self-preservation, before she just lay down and didn’t get back up again?

  You have to get out of here. Get up. Now.

  Sluggish with fatigue, she forced herself to rise to her knees, but when she tried to stand, her legs wobbled dangerously. She fell to her knees again with a steadying hand against the tree trunk, telling herself that maybe she just needed to rest a little more, but in the back of her mind she had the most ominous feeling that if she didn’t stand up now, she was never going to. A terrible vulnerability crept in, the same feeling she’d had when she’d seen those men coming at her, heard the shots, knowing that somebody meant to kill her.

  Then she heard something.

  She turned toward the road, and what she saw sent a surge of adrenaline racing through her, followed by a rush of cold, clammy fear.

  Headlights.

  chapter three

  Lisa crawled sideways away from the tree where she’d been sitting, her palms and knees crunching against dead leaves, taking cover behind a large, prickly shrub. When she looked back at the road, it was so dark that she couldn’t make out anything about the car. All she saw was the bright glare of headlights slicing through the night.

  The car came to a halt. A man stepped out. He was nothing but a tall, dark silhouette, and she had a sudden flashback to the men who had stood at the top of that ravine and that moment of silence right before her plane had been blasted with machine-gun fire.

  He stood behind the open car door for a moment, flipping on a flashlight. He directed the bright beam at the bunkhouse, then swept it toward the woods. Lisa ducked back behind the shrub just as the beam of light passed by her.

  The car door slammed shut, the sound reverberating through the stillness of the night and searing her already raw nerves. She couldn’t look around the bush again, just in case he was glancing her way. She just sat there, holding her breath, her whole body slick with sweat, praying she’d hear the bunkhouse door open and close behind him. If she did, she was going to run as far and as fast into the trees as her weary body would carry her.

  Then the flashlight beam came back around, stopping a few feet to her right. Glancing over, she saw it had landed dead center on the backpack and shovel she’d left beside the tree.

  Lisa put her hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp. She heard footsteps. Feet shuffling through dead leaves.

  He was coming.

  In a moment he would be right on top of her. He was undoubtedly armed, which meant she was a dead woman. Out here in the middle of nowhere, would anyone even hear the shot?

  As the footsteps drew closer, she couldn’t stand the tension any longer. She leapt to her feet. Fueled by adrenaline and driven by sheer terror, she started to run.

  “Stop!”

  His voice was deep and commanding, but still she ran. Behind her she heard the loud swish of his footsteps through the leaves as he ran to catch her, and he was closing in fast. A tree branch raked across her face. She slapped it aside, only to have her foot catch the edge of a sapling. She tripped, almost fell, then righted herself again and kept running.

  “Stop!”

  She braced herself for the bullet she knew was coming. She’d be dead before she hit the ground, but by God, she was going to die running.

  But no shot came. Instead, he caught her arm. She screamed and tried to pull away, only to stumble and fall. In the struggle, he lost his footing and fell beside her. She flipped over and came up swinging, but he’d already risen to his knees. He caught her wrists and dragged her close to him. She twisted left and right, struggling in his grasp, desperate to pull away.

  “Lisa! Stop it! Stop it!”

  She froze, breathing hard. English. It suddenly dawned on her that he was speaking English. She focused on his face, blinking with disbelief. It couldn’t be.

  She had to have been shot after all. That was the only explanation. She was lying on the forest floor, drawing her last breath, her weak and fevered mind throwing her a bone in her last moments of life, making her believe something that couldn’t possibly be. But she couldn’t mistake those warm dark eyes she remembered from so long ago, eyes full of kindness and compassion and quiet strength that could soothe over even the most desperate of situations.

  “You came,” she whispered.

  Dave’s grip on her wrists relaxed at the same time his brows drew together with intense concern. Suddenly her head felt light, and she started to weave.

  “Lisa? Are you all right?”

  All the tension and fear and pain of the past two days overtook her, and she lurched to one side, her muscles going limp. He caught her as she fell and swept her into his arms, and she was aware of nothing but the absolute assurance that because he was there, everything was going to be okay.

  He carried her out of the woods and into the bunkhouse, lowering her to one of the beds. The mattress was brittle and cracked with age, but it was far softer than the ground where she’d spent the past several hours, and she sank into it as if it were a featherbed in a five-star hotel. He sat down beside her, the mattress dipping with his weight, then brushed the hair away from her forehead with his fingertips.

  “Lisa? I need to know what’s going on here. Can you talk to me?”

  She blinked her eyes open. He’d rested the flashlight on the floor on its end, its beam reflecting off the ceiling, casting a dim glow around the room. She opened her
mouth to speak, but her throat felt dry as dust.

  “Do you have any water?” he asked.

  “Had some in my backpack,” she croaked. “When my plane went down. It’s gone.”

  “When’s the last time you ate something?”

  She slid her hand to her stomach. “I don’t remember.”

  “I’m going to go to the car. Get some food and water. Okay?”

  She nodded. He slipped out the door, returning a moment later carrying a large canvas bag. He sat down beside her again, unzipped the bag, and pulled out a bottle of water. He helped her sit up, then cradled her in his arms as he put the bottle to her lips. She took several swallows, then turned away.

  “More,” he said.

  He brought the bottle to her lips again, encouraging her to drink until her stomach felt sloshy. Then, with a steadying arm around her shoulders, he lowered her gently back down to the bed.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  She put her hand to her stomach. “Don’t . . . Don’t think I could eat.”

  “Does anything else hurt besides your head?”

  She felt so weak and sleepy she could barely speak. “Pretty much everything.”

  He wrapped his hands around her thigh, squeezing gently. She flinched with surprise at his touch.

  “Just checking to see if anything’s sprained or broken,” he said.

  He ran his hands all the way down to her ankle, squeezing softly as he went, then did the same to her other leg, bypassing a place at her calf where her jeans were ripped, with a cut beneath.

  “Any pain?” he asked.

  Pain? God, no. His touch felt like heaven, so warm and gentle and protective, relaxing her muscles when they’d been wound so tightly for the past two days that she’d barely been able to breathe. It was all so unbelievable. Never in her wildest dreams could she fathom a scenario like this, a situation that would bring Dave DeMarco seven hundred miles to the backwoods of Mexico to touch her one more time.

  “No. Nothing hurts. Not like anything’s broken.”