More tears and now her throat hurt. “Thank you,” she managed. “I’ll be in touch.” She hung up before her voice gave way to all the pain and misery and loneliness that that sweet woman had somehow assuaged in the time she’d known her. What lucky kids to have a mother like that. Her mother had never touched her, not even when she was small. She was like a stranger. She never seemed to understand the strange child who lived with her. But Josie had loved her and when she became a teenager, they grew close. She’d still gone to the ranch in Wyoming on holidays until her mother’s death. She didn’t have many of those. But it was nice to catch up with her mother on all the things that she’d been doing, although she never talked about her job to her mother. For all the older woman knew, Josie sat at a desk all day. That was just as well. Her mother had grown fond of her after she was older. It would have devastated her to know what Josie’s job actually was. Even her father didn’t know. She was good at keeping secrets. Maybe too good.
Raines had been outside blowing the horn regardless of the hour after she got off the phone with Marlowe and then Heather.Now, as they continued toward the airport, she focused on her conversation with Raines and getting information.
“I still don’t know where we’re going,” she said.
“I told you,” he said curtly, “Mexico.”
“It’s a big country,” she replied.
“Yep,” he said, “and I’m following orders.” He glanced at her. “The big guy doesn’t trust you. I do, but he doesn’t. So you do exactly as I tell you when we get there. Got that?”
She drew in a quick breath. “Yeah,” she said. “I got that.”
“And you better be packing,” he added. “You may need that gun.”
Her heart raced. “I didn’t think,” she said. “How am I going to get it past customs? Should I pack it in my suitcase?”
He laughed. “The plane we’re going in has AKs, Uzis, rocket launchers and suitcases full of big bills. No customs. Private airplane.”
“Wow,” she said. “But don’t we have to go through customs in Mexico? Will I need my driver’s license or my passport?” She asked. She’d needed the passport last time and she was glad she kept it on her.
Raines really laughed now. “What do you think the suitcase full of money is for?” he asked in an exasperated tone. “Money opens doors anywhere. Any doors.”
“I get it,” she said.
“But we won’t need that,” he added. “I have forged documents for both of us. We won’t have trouble going across or coming back across the border. And I have a unique way to get our packages back to the States. Don’t ask,” he added, glancing at her with a smirk. “I’m going to prove to the boss that I can handle big assignments.” It was really true. Because he planned to sell out Velasquez to the enemy, Vega. He’d been offered a fortune. He wasn’t about to turn that down. So certainly he would prove his worth to Vega.
Meanwhile, he worried about his calves. He’d stuffed the little animals full of drugs in condoms, but Raines didn’t care about the bulls. But there was no way that Velasquez would tumble to it in time. Get the bulls as soon as they were out of quarantine before Velasquez took possession by saying he’d bring them to the ranch. Then he’d cut them open on the way and get his products out. No fuss, no bother, and Velasquez wouldn’t ever know it. He’d wreck the truck in some godforsaken desert area where they might never be found, and Velasquez would be none the wiser. By then, Raines would be in Vega’s back pocket.
And they didn’t say anything else until they got to the airport and were boarding the plane.
It was a big plane, sleek and fast with plenty of room inside. And like Raines said it was filled to the brim with everything a mercenary might need to overthrow a government. She looked up at him. “Are we going to war?” she asked.
“Every day’s a war in this business,” he replied. “Let’s go.”
Hours later, after many delays that pricked Raines’s temper and worried Josie—one at the border patrol station they had to cross, although their forged documents were accepted and Josie managed it beautifully—they drove down back roads in the borrowed SUV that had been waiting at the makeshift landing for the airplane, near the border crossing and on the way past the rural countryside. They drove through some of the most beautiful territory she’d ever seen. She knew they were in Mexico, but not where. If she had to get in touch with someone in the States to try to save her if she got in trouble, it would be almost impossible for them to trace her, even with the burner phone. That was when panic almost set in. She had to grit her teeth and get a grip.
Use the fear, she told herself, use the fear. She’d read a book, written by a military man, who explained how to do that. She hoped it was going to work. She loved her job but as she gotolder the risks multiplied because she only did undercover work. She had actually thought about changing professions so that she could sleep nights and stop the headaches and the stomachaches and the worry.
One supervisor had told her that she really wasn’t cut out for that kind of work. He said there were many jobs in the court system that she could do quite easily that would have less risk and pay better. On this trip she was really considering that. She hoped she would live to tell the tale.
Fifteen
John was uncomfortable. Especially when they got home and Josie had already gone. JJ couldn’t tell him much, just that she had some rich guy who was coming down to buy property that she had for sale, and she’d gone with that Raines and she’d taken her suitcase. The suitcase bothered JJ. It was his experience that people with suitcases sometimes didn’t come back.
It was worrying for John. He didn’t want to get involved with her, but he already was and he knew it. Well, it wasn’t as if nobody around him had ever been in jail. His father actually had, for brawling in his younger days. Cole had spent a couple of nights in the county jail at the detention center. But John didn’t even have a parking ticket to his credit. He was naive perhaps and drawn to Josie because of the novelty she presented in his life. Except that he burned for her, wanted her, worried about her. And now he was really worried.
Besides that, his mother was acting strangely. She was quiet and distant as if her mind was far away.
He joined her in the kitchen for a cup of coffee. She stared into it, looking anguished.
“Can you tell me what’s wrong, Mom?” he asked gently.
She looked up at him, her eyes brimming with tears. “You know these feelings I get,” she said, “these weird feelings, like I know something bad is going to happen, but I don’t know what or where or when?”
He felt suddenly uneasy. “Yes.”
“Well, I’ve got one. About Josie.” She looked up at him with soft blue eyes. “We don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t trust that Raines man she was talking to when the vet found the drugs in the stomachs of those young bulls we sold the Hispanic man.” She smiled. “I liked him,” she added.
