this.”
Her hands flew back, palms out, in repudiation. “I’m not going to shoot the guy!”
“Then use it like a hammer if you need to,” he said in a hard whisper. “Because, baby, if it comes down to you or him, better that you’re the one who walks away.”
True. But still—
“I’ve never handled a gun in my life, Finn. He’s more likely to take it away and use it against me.”
“Then, here.” He held out the knife. “Take this back.”
“No. It’s too big and the same thing applies. Plus, you might need it to disable the car.”
He studied her for a nanosecond, then nodded. “Okay. You have anything small and sharp in that behemoth purse?”
“Yes!” She dug out a pair of pointy little manicure scissors and immediately felt better to have some kind of weapon she could easily hide.
Finn looked less than impressed with her choice, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he bent down and pressed the same kind of kiss to her forehead that he’d given Senora Guerrero. She felt surprisingly strengthened by it.
Then he stepped back. “Good luck, Magdalene.”
“Mags,” she insisted.
“Mags,” he agreed and repeated, “Good luck. And be careful.”
“You, too.” She turned and went to the back of the yard before crossing to the one next door, then slipped through that and a couple more fenceless adjoining yards. As she crept along the side of a little house several down from Senora Guerrero’s, she pulled out a richly pigmented lipstick and dabbed some on her mouth, rubbed her lips to give her what she hoped was a just-been-thoroughly-kissed look, then massaged the color that had transferred to her fingertips into the apples of her cheeks.
She waited until the man standing guard over their rental car turned his back, then stepped out onto the narrow concrete sidewalk bordering the packed-dirt road that ran through the village. She was only two buildings away from the cantina and as she began walking back toward the boardinghouse, she drew in a calming breath, then slowly eased it out.
She could do this. She’d spent practically every Saturday since she was nineteen years old performing on the streets. Of course it was more posing than true acting.
She swallowed a snort. Because she’d been acting, one way or another, since five months, two weeks and three days after her thirteenth birthday. This was simply more of the same, only with more physical risk at stake. So she shook out her hands.
And called out in friendly, faintly slurred Spanish, “See you tomorrow, Rosita!”
AT THE SOUND of Mags’s voice, the man guarding their rental car whirled to face her. He had the excessively developed muscularity of a weight lifter lacking an enough-is-enough gene. He also looked like a guy who could turn mean as a snake with very little provocation, and that had her second-and third-guessing herself in the suspended seconds he stared at her through narrowed eyes.
Then it apparently sank in that she was a lone woman with weapon-free hands and the tension in his burly shoulders eased. He slipped the gun held close to his side into the back of his waistband.
Flashing him a loose, friendly smile, Mags pretended not to notice. But she thought, Gotcha, when she saw his chest puff out.
“Hola.” Adding a swing to her hips and the occasional faint stagger to her stride, she made her way toward him with the exaggerated care of a drunk. “I know every one in town,” she said as she reached the trunk of the rental and eased her tote down her arm and onto the packed dirt road, “And have since birth, so I know you’re not from around here. I’m Benita.” She pulled back her shoulders a bit. “Who are you?”
“Frederico.” He seemed to be speaking directly to her breasts, and even though her aim had been precisely that—to utilize whatever assets she had to distract him—she couldn’t help but wish she hadn’t showcased her boobs quite so effectively.
Not that she could do anything about it now. She tilted her head toward the boardinghouse. “Are you staying at Senora Guerrero’s?”
“No. We’re just here to see if someone we know stopped for the night.”
She made a derisive sound deep in her throat and doodled a design in the dirt that covered the rental’s trunk. Its hood was only feet behind the cargo hatch of Frederico’s sleek black SUV and he stood next to the rental’s passenger-side door. He stared at her, not even pretending he wasn’t checking her out. It was creepy, but luring him down here so Finn could work whatever magic he planned on the SUV shouldn’t be too difficult.
Despite the thug’s definite awareness, however, her near snort had his brows drawing together. “Are you mocking me?”
“What? No.” She managed not to sigh, but she’d forgotten about the Latino machismo. “It’s just that, other than you, no one of interest has stopped in this town for a very long time.” She waved a hand, staggered as if the action had thrown her off balance, then slapped her hand down on the trunk to catch herself. “Well, I did hear in the cantina that a couple of americanos are spending the night here, but I didn’t actually meet them.” She shrugged. “Not that I would’ve been able to talk to them anyway—americanos never bother to learn our language, you know?”
His expression said he agreed wholeheartedly, but he merely nodded.
She licked her lips. “You’re very handsome. Where are you from?”
He left his post next to the passenger door and swaggered down to her end. “Santa Rosa.”
“Ay! You are so lucky! I would love to see Santa Rosa someday!”
“You have never been?”
“No. It is far away and I have no car.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Finn slide out of the shadows. “But hopefully someday.” She turned to lean her rear against the back of the vehicle and patted the fender next to her hip.
“Still,” she said, tilting her head to look up as if she didn’t care one way or the other if he joined her, “I bet you don’t have a view in the city that can rival our sky.”
It was certainly like nothing she had seen for far too many years. Yet as if her first thirteen years in El Tigre had imprinted it in her DNA, it was a sight she’d carried with her wherever she went. Even in the dead of night—or in this case, earliest morning—the sky was a deep midnight blue strewn with a million stars. Many shimmered dimly and looked every bit the hundreds of light-years away that they were. Others burned brightly and seemed close enough to reach up and gather by the fistful.
Frederico merely shrugged, however, unimpressed. “Give me the bright lights of the city any day,” he said, leaning against the trunk next to her. He turned to give her a smoldering once-over. “I like looking at you, though.”
She brought a hand up to brush back her hair and maybe buy herself a few moments’
