in,” he ordered the woman, his mood explosive. It was all he could do not to grab her and shake the truth out of her. But the frightened look in her eyes stopped him.
She hurriedly climbed into the back of the pickup with the child, keeping her head down, her eyes averted from his.
He slid the boxes of produce over to hide the two of them from view through the narrow camper-shell window, then slammed the tailgate, closed the top, and stood for a moment, fighting for control. But his body shook like an oak in a gale, trembling from the inside out.
As he walked around to the driver’s door of the truck, he slammed a fist into the side of the camper, making the pickup rock and denting the metal. No sound came within. But then, he hadn’t expected one.
His hand ached, funneling some of his energy into physical pain rather than anger as he climbed into the pickup, slid in the key and started the engine. Prudence forced him to drive calmly, carefully, not to draw attention or suspicion by peeling out in the gravel or driving as fast and erratically as he’d have liked.
He felt as if he might explode if he didn’t let off some of the pressure. But still he drove slowly. Out past the last adobe building. Out to the paved two-lane blacktop. He turned onto it and headed toward the Texas border. The road would fork fifteen miles ahead, the fork to the right going to the closest border crossing at Piedras Negras, the left continuing on north to Cuidad Acuna.
In his rearview mirror he watched a beater of an old car approaching fast. He slid down a little, keeping his face shaded by the hat and his itchy foot from flattening the gas pedal. The speedometer wavered at forty-five when the car swept up beside him. He could feel the gazes of whoever was inside, just as he could feel the trigger of the double-barreled shotgun he’d pulled onto his lap.
He pretended to pay no attention to the car beside him. He pretended to sing loudly with the radio, turning up the Texas station, blasting redneck noise.
After a moment, the car sped on past. Four men inside. Ramon and three of his goons. Jake wondered about the other men he’d seen guarding the motel. Where were they? Or had he taken them out in the van crash?
He watched the car disappear into the flat, tan desert horizon and kept the pickup at forty-five, letting it lumber along as he turned down the radio and listened to the soft murmur of voices behind him in the camper.
His Spanish was rusty. Abby had been fluent because of her Spanish grandmother, who’d raised her. She’d often reverted to Spanish when she was angry. He’d learned from her. But it had been a long time. He’d forgotten a lot.
“There’s food and water in the cooler for you,” he said over his shoulder.
After a moment’s silence, the woman said, “Thank you.”
The little girl said something in Spanish he didn’t catch.
He turned up the radio and tried not to think about them. Or what they might have been discussing. Unfortunately, he couldn’t forget the trusting, fearless look on the little girl’s face as she’d opened her big green eyes to meet his.
ISABELLA HAD HOPED Elena would fall back to sleep and let her alone so she could think. Her head ached from exhaustion and fear and confusion.
“I told you he would come to save us,” Elena whispered in Spanish next to her.
She didn’t have the heart to tell her daughter that Jake Cantrell hadn’t necessarily saved them. More than likely they were just prisoners of a different man now. But still prisoners. Possibly worse. If what she’d read from the information in the envelope about the man was true, she and Elena could be in worse trouble than they had been before.
“I told you he was my daddy,” Elena said, daring Isabella to disagree.
She didn’t have the energy. Nor the conviction. There had been so little she’d understood about her marriage to Julio. Or her past, the one he’d filled in for her after the fire.
But the moment she’d looked into Jake Cantrell’s eyes she’d known one clear truth.
Jake Cantrell was Elena’s father.
She’d seen her daughter in the deep green of his eyes. But also in the familiar way his brow furrowed in a narrowed frown. In the intense intelligence she’d glimpsed behind all that green. In the small telltale mannerisms that genetics passed from one generation to the next.
Jake Cantrell was Elena’s father.
But if she accepted that as truth, didn’t she have to accept the rest as well? That she was Abby Diaz. Former FBI agent. Former partner and lover of Jake Cantrell.
That was where her mind balked. She had given birth to Elena, hadn’t she? Wouldn’t she have known if Elena wasn’t her child? Felt something…wrong if the babies had somehow been switched at the hospital?
Her head ached and she knew she was trying to come up with an explanation other than the one staring her in the face.
She closed her eyes. Was it possible? Was she Abby Diaz?
She had to admit, she’d never believed brown-eyed Julio was Elena’s father, any more than Elena had. It wasn’t just Elena’s green eyes, though they certainly did make Isabella suspicious. But Julio had told her that his brother, who’d died at birth, had had the same green eyes, that they ran in the family.
She’d suspected it was a lie and the reason her husband wanted nothing to do with her or their beautiful baby was because Elena was the result of an affair Isabella had had before the fire. It would have explained a lot. Especially Julio’s coldness and her baby’s green eyes.
But now she could no longer cling to that explanation any more than she could keep telling Elena that she was wrong, that the man in the front of the pickup wasn’t her father.
“Go to sleep for a little while, chica suena,” she told Elena, and closed her eyes. Beside her, Elena began to sing the songs Isabella had taught her. Songs Isabella believed she remembered from her grandmother. But now she wasn’t even sure that was true.
If she was this FBI agent Abby Diaz, then why didn’t she feel it? She knew nothing about being an FBI agent. Why hadn’t she remembered her training? Was it possible she’d been burned from an explosion during an FBI investigation in Texas instead of a house fire in Mexico?
And if there’d been any chance that she’d survived, why hadn’t the FBI come looking for her years ago? Why hadn’t they rescued her from Julio? Why hadn’t Jake?
Her head ached and her stomach roiled. She didn’t want to be Abby Diaz. Not a woman—if it was true—whom someone had tried to kill six years ago. Especially if that someone had been her partner, her lover, Jake Cantrell.
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