“Give me something,” Jase pressed. “I need a place to start looking.”
“What about your woman? You are willing to risk her life?”
Jason’s jaw clenched. He shot Kate a look, as if he could will her to make the right choice.
“Those men killed my sister,” Kate said. “I want them stopped.”
Jase slid the bills closer. Hector eyed the money. “These people...they pick up women off the street, young, not so young. Some they take from homeless shelters. They smuggle women across the border. These are powerful men, senor. The whores are only a small part of their business.”
Jase moved his hand away from the cash. “There’s more money in drugs.”
“Sí.”Hector picked up the bills, folded them and stuffed them into the pocket of his shirt.
“How do I find them?” When Hector didn’t answer, Jase laid down another hundred, then another.
Hector swallowed. He wet his lips as if his mouth actually watered, eyeing the money, weighing the risk. “The women...they move them around. Their customers know the schedule, what day they will be in the area.”
“How do they move them?”
Hector glanced around and Jase’s gaze followed. The bar was full now, boisterous, the customers getting bolder with every drink. From the frown on Jason’s face, he didn’t like the looks of the crowd.
“Trucks,” Hector said.
“Like vans or pickup trucks?”
“That is all I know.” Hector reached out and picked up the money. “Do not trust the police.” Rising to his feet, he slipped silently into the throng and disappeared out the front door.
Jase rose and so did Kate. She felt his warm hand at her waist, easing her closer to his side as they moved through the unruly crowd. Two men were arguing in Spanish, both lean-muscled and wiry, one with black hair shaved on the sides and combed into a peak, the other with a thin mustache and lip whiskers. They were both heavily tattooed, arms, necks, everywhere skin was exposed.
Jase kept moving. They had almost made it past the skirmish when the guy with the mustache pulled a gun and pointed it at the guy with the pointed hair. In a blink, the other guy had his weapon in hand. More guns appeared.
Jase seemed to have a sixth sense. He pushed Kate to the floor a second before the first shot rang out, and rolled on top of her. Kate bit back a scream at the barrage of gunfire that followed, shattering the mirror behind the bar, knocking chunks out of tables, drilling holes in the wooden floor.
Men yelled obscenities and bolted for the door, a stampede that would have run right over them if Jason hadn’t managed to pull her behind an overturned table. His .380 was out of his jeans pocket, in his hand, but he didn’t fire.
At the first break in the violence, he grabbed her arm and hauled her up, and they both raced for the door. Just outside, gunfire erupted again, loud blasts back and forth from both factions. Dirt kicked up around their feet as Jase gripped her arm and dragged her off the porch, and they ran together, trying to reach some kind of cover.
More shots blasted through the air. Jase grabbed the side of his neck as they ran, and fear slammed into Kate so hard for an instant, she froze. “Oh, my God, you’re hit!” Jase tugged her forward, blood running between his fingers, soaking into his T-shirt.
“Get down!” He pushed her behind a battered pickup, and they ducked beside the front wheel.
“How...how bad is it?” She was shaking, her head spinning. Fear for him made her heart hurt as if someone had hit her in the chest with a fist.
Jason reached up and carefully probed the wound. Fresh blood covered his fingers. “It’s only a graze. I’ll be okay.”
Okay?she thought. Jase had been shot and it was all her fault. It was notokay.
He checked their surroundings, then urged her toward the Rover, which thankfully was parked away from most of the gunfire.
They crouched next to a faded blue Toyota with the body lowered just inches from ground. The lot was almost empty, car engines firing, tires screeching as vehicles shot out of the parking lot and took off in different directions.
They made it to the Rover, which Jase had left unlocked, and now Kate understood why. Clicking the locks and flashing the lights could have been deadly. He opened her door, but no light went on—another precaution—and shoved her inside. Kate kept expecting to hear the scream of sirens, thought maybe she did, but they were a long way away.
Then Jason was behind the wheel and the engine roared to life. The Rover shot backward, jerked forward and screeched out into the street. Neither of them said a word all the way back to the apartment.
But something had changed for Kate tonight. Her sister was dead. Nothing Kate did was going to bring her back. It had never occurred to her that in trying to find Chrissy’s killer she could lose someone else she cared about.
Someone else she loved.
