Fields' Guide to Abduction, - [famous ebook reader TXT] 📗

“It was for your own good.” His whisper hid a world of lies.

I wanted to hit him again. Harder. Lower. Instead I reached for the phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling security.”

“You can’t.”

“Watch me.”

He was across the bed with his hand locked over mine in the time it took me to blink.

His touch turned the anger burning inside me incandescent.

“Let go of me.” Why was I whispering? All I needed to do was scream and the security guard Silva had posted outside would be inside. André would come running. Assuming Mike was upstairs in Mia’s bedroom, he’d come running too. “Let go,” I whispered. A furious whisper, but a whisper nonetheless.

He released my hand. “Did Marta Vargas give you anything?”

“No.” Not a whisper. But I was supremely tired of that question.

“This is important.”

“No, nothing.”

“Damn.”

“What’s going on?” I whispered. Again. Dammit. “Why are you here? How are you here?”

“I work for an agency tasked with ending the flow of drugs from Mexico to the U.S.”

“The DEA?”

“Close enough.”

“You could have told me.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Too many reasons to tell.”

“Why did you let me think you were dead?” I turned my head away from him. He didn’t get to see my tears. “I grieved.” Now my voice was barely a whisper.

“I’m sorry.”

I waited for more.

And waited.

That was it? No explanation? “You’re sorry?” His betrayal gutted me. I crossed my arms over my midriff and clenched my jaw.

“I am sorry. Sorrier than you’ll ever know.” He glanced over his shoulder at the door to the patio. “I have to go.” He closed his hands around the outside of my shoulders and looked down at me, his face cast in shadows. “Please. Don’t tell anyone you saw me.”

He was leaving. He’d risen from the dead, snuck into my room, turned my world upside and down, and he was leaving? Didn’t he care what he’d put me through? Didn’t he care that I’d spend the night polishing unanswered questions into shiny arrows? “You’re leaving?”

“I have to go.” He looked down at me with troubled eyes. “Don’t trust anyone.”

“Like you.”

Even in the darkness I could see his wince.

“I wish things could have been different.” He pulled me to him and his lips closed on mine. Warm. Firm. Expert.

Like hell he could just return from the dead, breeze into my bedroom, and kiss me like he hadn’t put me through the torments of the damned. He wanted different? I’d give him different.

This time I fisted with my left hand.

My knuckles connected with his jaw. Nothing could have been sweeter. “Get out.”

He rubbed his jaw, the expression on his face more surprised than pained. That was a shame. I was going for pain.

“I mean it.” My voice rose. “Get out. And don’t come back.”

“Poppy—”

“Out!” I pointed toward the patio door. Having Jake see me cry wasn’t something I wanted to contemplate.

He was halfway through the door when I said, “Wait!” My voice bumped up against the lump in my throat. “Those texts. Did you send them?”

He nodded. Once. “I wanted to keep you safe. I care about—”

“Don’t.” I held up my hand. I’d heard enough of his lies. And right now, my heart hurt worse than it did when I thought he was dead. Maybe because I’d been such a complete fool. “Just go.”

The L.A. Law song on my phone played early. Billable-hours early.

“Hello.” More of a mumble than an actual word.

“It’s Ruth. What have you got yourself mixed up with?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve never seen such an alphabet soup of agencies. This whole Mérida Initiative is a mess.”

That woke me up. “Mérida? What is that?”

“Think U.S., Mexican, and Central American government agencies working together to combat drug trafficking, organized crime, and money laundering.”

Oh. “Which letters of the alphabet are in the soup?”

“The usual ones. DEA. CIA. FBI. And a few I’ve never heard of before. But, that’s not our only problem.”

Of course it wasn’t. “What else?”

“Do you want the bad news or the worse news?”

“Start with bad, I haven’t had any coffee yet.”

“Detective Gonzales is really Agent Gonzales. You’re mixed up with a drug sting.”

“The worse news?”

“There’s no such person as Jake Smith. You were dating a ghost.”

The hole in my stomach grew. Exponentially. Not even his name had been real. I was such an idiot.

“Since he’s a ghost. He’s probably not dead.”

He definitely wasn’t dead.

I swallowed. “I have my own bad news.”

“Oh?”

“Someone tried to kill me last night.”

“What!” Ruth’s nine-hundred-dollars-an-hour voice actually cracked. “What happened?”

“A man with a knife attacked me on the path to my villa.”

“Random?”

“No. I was the target. You’ve got to get me out of here.”

“I’m trying. This multi-jurisdictional situation is a problem.”

“But I haven’t done anything.”

“I know that, Poppy. Be patient.”

Patient? Seriously? “Yesterday I woke up to a dead woman in my villa. Then I went to the hospital and held Irene Vargas’s hand while she died. Last night someone held a knife to my throat then chased me back to my villa where he was shot in the head. I don’t have time to be patient.”

“Can you leave the resort? Go someplace else?”

“I have no passport.”

“Go someplace else in Mexico.”

That wasn’t the worst idea ever. “James is in La Paz.”

“Hold on. I’ll Google La Paz.” The tap of her nails on her keyboard reached me loud and clear. “Okay. La Paz is a hundred miles from Cabo. Can you get there? The movie set is sure to have security out the wazoo.”

Wazoo. That was a technical legal term.

“I don’t know.” Me taking off across the Baja desert didn’t seem like the safest idea.

“You could charter a plane or a helicopter.”

That sounded safer. Sort of.

“I’ll keep working on the return of your passport. If there’s anything this Gonzales wants that you can give him, do it.”

“He wants something I don’t have.”

“Well, see if you can find it.”

I didn’t hold out much hope.

Twelve

I stumbled into the kitchen for coffee. There it was. The Keurig. Surrounded by bottled water, a variety of pods, and a golden halo. I’d never seen anything so beautiful.

Mia sat at the counter with her hands wrapped around a mug.

Zombies the morning after the apocalypse probably looked better than she did.

I tiptoed past her, afraid she might eat my brains or bite my head off (more likely). Under the best of circumstances, Mia’s not a morning person. When I safely reached the Keurig, I ventured, “You’re up early.”

She grunted and stared at me with bleary eyes. “Mike snores. I always forget that.”

Now that she mentioned it, I heard a low rumble. “That’s not the air conditioner?”

“Air conditioners are much quieter.”

“So you got no sleep?”

“Not a single wink.”

“Why didn’t you just send him back to his room?”

“He doesn’t believe he