Zach hardly seemed to notice. He’d gone from body to body, taking their money and weapons. She knew he’d been angry to discover that Sr. Scar Face—the Zeta who’d tortured him and molested her—was the one who’d gotten away. Zach hadn’t said anything to her, but his jaw had gone rigid when he’d checked the last body, and she’d heard him swear.
As for the money, he’d stuffed most of it in his pocket and had given the rest to the terrified prostitutes. The gesture had touched Natalie—until he’d told the girls to get out of the car and head back to whatever town they’d come from on foot.
“It’s must be a hundred and ten degrees out here. They’ll roast!”
He’d met her gaze, not the least bit of sympathy in his eyes. “Either we walk, or they walk. Which would you prefer?”
That had simplified things.
Feeling more than a little guilty, Natalie had given the two girls bottled water and then watched them hurry down the highway in high heels. She’d wanted to leave, too, but that’s when Zach had come back into the church and started searching the place. She’d followed him. “Shouldn’t we get out of here?”
His voice was cold when he answered. “If we leave now, are you prepared for whatever might happen out there? If the Zetas catch up with us or show up in a helicopter, are you ready to fight back? If the car breaks down and we need to cross the desert on foot, are you prepared to handle it? I made you a promise, and I’m trying to keep it.”
Realizing he knew what he was doing and she didn’t, she’d gotten out of his way, the adrenaline from earlier wearing away, leaving her feeling numb, images of what had happened skulking in her mind. A man appearing out of nowhere at the church door. The barrel of his pistol pointing at her. His body jerking when she’d pulled the trigger.
Then Zach was there beside her. “Here.”
She gasped, jumped.
In his hand was a bottle of water. “So, you’re afraid of me now?”
“No.” She unscrewed the cap and drank, unable to meet his gaze. She wasn’t afraid of him, exactly—but she didn’t necessarily trust him. “It’s just that . . . Before yesterday, I’d never seen anyone get shot and killed, and now . . .”
She’d beaten one man unconscious and shot another.
“Don’t dwell on it.” Zach turned, grabbed an empty military duffel bag and dropped it on the cot beside her. “On your feet. Let’s load up and get the hell out of here.”
Natalie helped him pack everything he’d set aside into a couple of duffel bags, then followed him out the church’s door, ignoring bodies and flies that buzzed at pools of drying blood, and looking up into the bright blue sky instead.
“You drive.” Zach tossed her the keys, then opened the back door and shoved the duffel bags onto the backseat, pulling out a big gun and several spare magazines. “I’ll ride shotgun.”
Natalie climbed into the car in which she’d once been a prisoner, started the engine, and cranked the AC. She waited for Zach to climb in beside her, then hit the gas, a lump forming in her throat as she watched the ghost town, and the hell that lay within its crumbling walls, disappear in the rearview mirror.
She was going home.
JOAQUIN COULDN’T LOOK up from his beer, unable to stand the pity he knew he’d see on his friends’ faces. “I let her down. Natalie saved my life, and I let her down. Whatever she’s going through right now is my fault.Christ!”
He took a drink, swallowed beer together with the rock that seemed to be lodged in his throat, a glass full of stout not nearly strong enough to make him forget the sound of her voice crying out to him as they’d dragged her from the bus—or to keep him from thinking about what might be happening to her now.
He’d been home for four hours. He and the other American journalists—every single Mexican reporter had been killed—had been taken under escort to the U.S. consulate, where they’d been questioned by Mexican and U.S. authorities, before being packed into a couple of choppers and flown across the border to El Paso. This morning, he’d caught his flight home from Texas, the empty seat next to him a constant, unbearable reminder of the friend who should have been there beside him.
The airport had been a madhouse, reporters and TV cameras waiting for him. But for the first time in his life, Joaquin had found himself trying to avoid the media, his emotions too ragged to share with strangers. And yet every journalist there had wanted to interview and photograph him becausehiscolleague had been the only American taken from the bus. When he’d refused to comment, they’d assumed he was saving the details for his own newspaper. But everything he had to say had already run in today’s paper, in an article written by Tom, the editor in chief, together with his photographs of the massacre, which Joaquin had e-mailed to the paper from El Paso. The only people he could talk to about this were hisabuelitaand his brothers—and the people sitting around him right now.
He hadn’t asked the I-Team staff, past and present, to come over. In fact, part of him had dreaded seeing them, knowing he’d have to tell them what had happened and that he’d see the same contempt in their eyes that he’d seen in the eyes of the federal agents who’d questioned him—a look that told him Natalie would be back home now if only he’d been more of a man.
But they loved Natalie, too. He owed it to them to face them.
Matt Harker, the only other man on the I-Team and one of Joaquin’s best buddies, had shown up first, carrying a case of Yeti Imperial Stout, their favorite Colorado microbrew. Kara McMillan, an old friend and former I-Team reporter, had arrived next, her arms full of groceries, her three kids at swimming lessons with her schoolteacher husband, Reece Sheridan. Tessa Darcangelo, another former I-Team reporter and her husband, Julian, a vice cop and former FBI special agent, had followed. Then Kara and Tessa had taken over Joaquin’s little kitchen making lunch, while Julian had grabbed a beer and joined him and Matt on the back deck.
Sophie Alton-Hunter, the I-Team’s criminal justice reporter, and her husband Marc Hunter, a SWAT sniper, had brought soft drinks and paper plates, ringing the bell only minutes ahead of Holly Bradshaw, an entertainment writer, and Kat James, the paper’s environmental reporter, who came with her husband Gabe Rossiter and their baby girl, Alissa. Tom had come last, his arrival a surprise, as he almost never left the newsroom in the middle of the day.
Only after everyone had gotten their fill of tacos and salad had Joaquin found the will to tell them the entire story. Sophie and Kat, who’d known Natalie best, were now in tears, the men silent. And still Joaquin couldn’t take his gaze off his beer.
“This isn’t your fault, Joaquin.” Kara broke the silence. “Don’t even go there.”
“If I had stopped her from trying to protect me, she might not have caught their attention. They might have walked right past her—”
“And shot you in the head.” Matt’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Yeah, that would’ve made everything better.”