Running Wild

Sure enough, even as Finn watched, Joaquin’s hand reached for the small of his back. The other male stood in profile to him, so he saw the butt of a gun as Joaquin fumbled beneath the hem of his shirt.

Finn was on the move before the weapon cleared the little shit’s waistband. With no time to consciously think the matter through, he simply yanked off his backpack and took the final Mother-may-I-worthy giant step that brought him within range. Then, gripping his pack by its straps, he swung it at the young man’s head.

It connected with a solid thwack and knocked the punk to his knees. The gun dropped from Joaquin’s hand and skittered a few feet away. Finn lunged for it, his only thought to keep it out of the other guy’s hands. But before he could get his own hand around the pistol grip, the blade of a monstrous knife slashed down, aiming for his fingers.

Swearing a blue streak, Finn jerked them out of range. Jesus. The kid must have a head made of ironwood if he’d recovered that fast. And Joaquin clearly had no intention of letting Finn get his hands on the weapon. Not without drawing blood, anyhow.

With no other real option in sight, Finn kicked the gun as far away from both of them as he could.

“Go, go, go!” The blonde’s voice was insistent as she grabbed him by his free hand and they took off at a dead run in the direction of the Metrocable.

The woman could move and they covered the distance to the station in no time. She danced in place like a toddler in need of a bathroom as she dug a fistful of El-TIPs—the country’s official pesos—out of her pocket, taking quick glances over her shoulder the whole while.

Then she abruptly stilled. “Shit! He’s coming after us.” She looked around wildly. “Where the hell is help when you really need it?” she demanded, turning back and shoveling pesos into the ticket machine. “I was told these stations are lousy with security.” She punched buttons at a dizzying rate.

The machine spit out two tickets and she grabbed his hand again. “C’mon, let’s go!”

They went through the turnstiles and onto the platform as a gondola swung around the turnabout and slowed to a crawl a few feet away. It disgorged its passengers in front of them, and since they were the only ones currently waiting they climbed aboard. As one, they turned to watch Joaquin as the young man raced up to a ticket machine, shoving a woman about to use it out of his way.

“Nice guy,” Finn muttered. “I’m surprised he didn’t just jump the turnstile.” It wasn’t like the asshole was your basic law-and-order type.

“Security might not’ve been around for us to report Joaquin’s gun, but according to my mother they’re on jumpers like white on rice.”

The door to the gondola doors hissed closed and, with the slightest of jerks, the car picked up its pace once again. Finn took his first deep breath since this business began and slowly expelled it. Finally having a second that didn’t feel fraught with danger, he shrugged on his pack and adjusted its straps.

Then he turned his attention on the blonde. The girl had soft, seriously pretty lips, great skin and a slight dent in her chin, but right at this moment he couldn’t summon up a good goddamn about any of that. Instead he looked her dead in her pretty blue eyes.

And snapped, “Who are you, lady? And what the fuck is going on here?”

CHAPTER TWO

MAGS’S ADRENALINE SPIKE hit the skids and she sagged against the wall of the gondola, small tremors quaking every muscle in her body. She stared at the man who had come to her rescue.

“I’m Mags Deluca,” she said in response to his question. “Thanks for the intervention.” She didn’t know anyone else who would have stepped in to help her the way he had and that fact had her chin lifting in pure reflex. “Not that I couldn’t have taken care of the matter myself.” Maybe.

“Yeah, I could see how well that was working for you.”

Tempted as she was to dig in and keep defending her not particularly defensible position, honesty compelled her to admit, “Not many people would’ve involved themselves in a stranger’s problems, especially when it meant going up against a guy bristling with guns and knives.”

He hitched a broad shoulder. “I have three sisters, a mom, two grandmothers and a boatload of aunts and girl cousins,” he said. “It’s been drilled into me from birth to involve myself if I see a chick in trouble.” His voice hardened. “But I’d like to know what the hell I just got myself into.”

“Ohmigawd,” she breathed in awe, totally diverted. “You have three sisters?”

“And three brothers.” He gave her a level look. “Which doesn’t answer my question.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” she said and, with the wave of her hand, knocked away the envy that surged at the thought of having not just one sibling you could call your own, which would be awesome enough, but six of them. Just the idea had made her forget for a moment how shaky her grasp on her courage was, but meeting his hard-eyed will-you-get-to-the-point stare, she shoved the distraction aside and wrestled herself back on track.

“My parents are missionaries,” she said and brought him up-to-date on the noise her mother had been making about the Munoz cartel’s recruitment of teens and the abrupt silence following Nancy’s letters.

When she fell silent, Finn said, “People still write letters? It’s the twenty-first century—I thought everyone and their brother emailed.”

“That’s your big takeaway from what I just told you? That my mother doesn’t email?” You would’ve thought she’d said Nancy sent telegraphs, and she gave her shoulder an infinitesimal hitch. “My folks have spent their entire adult lives ministering to the poor. And while there likely are computers and internet available even in the most poverty-stricken barrios, my mother would consider the time it took to learn to use them a frivolous waste when she can just as easily grab a sheet of paper and slap a stamp on an envelope.” Then she waved the interruption away and explained how, when she’d arrived at her parents’ apartment this afternoon, she’d been told they’d returned to the States.

“But when Joaquin had me against the wall, he said Victor Munoz wanted to talk to me. He’s the cartel leader.” Was that right? Suddenly it seemed supremely important that she have the correct terminology. “Or don or whatever you call the head guy who runs a cartel.”

Unlike her, he stuck to the point. “Try to stay on track here. Why did he want to talk to you?”

Another stray thought popped into her head and she blurted, “I don’t know your name.”

“What?” But he blinked dense, inky lashes over those dark eyes and shook his head as if to negate the question. “It’s Finn. Finn Kavanagh.”

Good name. But this time she knew better than to get sidetracked. “Unfortunately, Finn Kavanagh, he refused to answer that very question. He just kept saying I’d find out from Senor Munoz himself. But Joaquin’s clearly not the brightest bulb in the tanning bed because even as he was detailing all the dire things that could happen to me if I didn’t come quietly, he let slip that my parents are being held on the Munoz grow farm.”

“And your first reaction was to let him know you’d caught that?” He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe anyone could have such a blonde moment.

“Hey!” Indignant, she shoved away from the gondola wall. “Excuse the heck out of me if I was rattled. I was already reeling from learning my parents had gone back to the States without saying word one to me about it. And then he tells me they’re being held prisoner by a drug lord? Hah!” She pointed at him. “That’s the job description I was looking for.” She promptly shook her head, however, because that was hardly the point and, in truth letting on that she’d caught Joaquin’s slipup hadn’t been her smartest move. “An-n-nd that’s so not important.” Looking Finn up and down, she had to admit that, unlike her, he practically oozed competency. “I’m sure you could have handled it much better.”

To her surprise, he flashed her a wry smile and said, “Probably not. I would’ve been rattled, too, if it involved my family. So what’s the plan? You want me to go with you when you take it to the cops?”

“I can’t go to the police.”

He jerked upright. “Are you shitting me? You have to report this!”

“It’s not that I don’t want to, Finn—I literally can’t. My mother devoted an entire letter to the way Munoz bragged about his favorite cousin, who’s in the Policía Nacional de El Tigre.” She could have added that 99 percent of her mother’s correspondence had to do with her and Brian’s ministry and their impatience and frustration with anything that interfered with it. But she didn’t, of course, because, truly, why should Finn Kavanagh care about her dysfunctional family relationships?

Still, it cheered her up to a surprising degree when he strung an impressive number of truly obscene words together, even though she knew it was in response to her comment, not her situation.

“My thoughts precisely,” she agreed. Looking past him, she tried to see into the gondolas behind them to determine which one Joaquin had caught. It was a fruitless endeavor, however; she could see nothing more than shadows. So she pulled a big, brilliantly colored scarf out of her voluminous tote and turned her attention back to Finn.

“Look, I’m sorry I dragged you into my mess,” she said, taking her hair out of the tight French twist she’d worn, with its fanned tail ratted and brushed forward to give her a short-haired punk/goth look. Finger-combing it until she could gather it all in one hand, she then tied it into a loose knot atop her head. “I’ve got a car down in the valley, so when we get to the station after next I’m going to do my best to bail without Joaquin seeing me. I honestly don’t believe he’ll be expecting me to get off this soon, since a smart person would choose the main station, where help is more readily available and where you can disappear into any one of a half-dozen regular Metro lines.” She wrapped, twisted and tied the scarf around her hair to disguise its color.

Finn cocked an eyebrow at her. “The crapshoot here being that Joaquin’s not all that smart.”

“Yeah. There is that. Still, I’m hoping someone drummed the idea into his head, because I think it’s my best chance to shake him.” She blew out an impatient breath. “But this is just a long-winded way around saying thank you for saving my butt. And that I hope you enjoy the rest of your time in El Tigre. It’s a great country.” Studying him, she tried to imagine him as a big nightclub kind of guy or wine enthusiast, both of which Santa Rosa offered. Somehow, though, he struck her as a bit too earthy to be either. “What brought you down here, anyhow?”

“The prospect of hiking this part of the Andes and maybe seeing a little of the Amazon.”

“Hiking, huh? That’s your idea of a vacation? Busting your butt, breathing thin air and sweating like a pony?”

His teeth flashed white. “Darlin’, that’s my idea of pure heaven. And one of the biggest perks? Not once in the wild have I gotten tangled up in a female’s problems.”

“Wow. You’re just an all-around silver-tongued devil, aren’tcha?” She sank to sit cross-legged on the floor and fished the pared-down version of her professional makeup kit out of her tote, then looked up to raise an eyebrow at him. “I bet people tell you that all the time.” Still, as they slowed to enter the first station she had to admit that if she was any example, he might have a point. Considering the only thing she’d contributed to his day so far was the prospect of getting shot or stabbed. Not to mention, until they were free and clear, the target she’d painted on his back.

“You should change your shirt,” she said. “And if you have a hat, it wouldn’t hurt to put that on, either.”

She half expected him to thump his chest in a me-big-man macho display, but he merely reached over his shoulders and grabbed two fistfuls of his Rat City Rollergirls T-shirt and hauled it off over his head.

Whoa! All the moisture in Mags’s mouth dried up as she stared up at his very nice, very buff upper torso. Honestly, a woman could light candles to that body.

The door swished open to display a couple of locals standing ready to board. When they saw her and Finn, however, they moved to the next car and a moment later, the door closed again. The gondola glided out of the station.

She was peering into a mirror, sponging foundation that was several shades deeper than her natural coloring onto her face, neck and hands, when the gondola jerked slightly as it approached her station. Nerves jittered through Mags’s stomach but she feigned calm while applying a coral lipstick that went with the scarf.

Fake it till you make it, that was her motto.

She threaded big silver hoops through her ears and returned the kit to her bag. After pulling out and donning her long-sleeved SPF shirt, she climbed to her feet.

As their car swung around the turnabout toward the debarkation point, she followed an impulse she knew she’d be smarter to suppress. She turned and crossed the short distance between her and Finn. Reaching up, she wrapped her palms around the back of his warm-skinned neck, curling her fingers to hold him in place. For one suspended moment, she looked into his eyes, which were now shaded by the bill of a faded Mariners cap. Then, rising onto her toes, she kissed him.

She’d intended something swift and sweet—a thank-you of sorts. But the instant their mouths touched, electric shock–like impulses hurtled through her veins and all she could think was gimme. And before she knew what was what, her lips had parted and she was kissing the bejeebers out of a man whose name she hadn’t even known a half hour ago.

Not that Finn was exactly a slouch when it came to getting with the program. Big-palmed hands slid down her back to grip her rear as he slanted his mouth over hers.

It took every drop of willpower she had to lower her heels back onto the floor, but she did so, breaking their connection. Stepping back, she touched a knuckle to her still-tingling lips. Then she slung the strap of her bag back over her head and, in an attempt to minimize anything that might set off recognition from Joaquin, positioned its bulk on the opposite side from where she usually wore it and slid on a pair of shades.

The doors whooshed open and she met Finn’s eyes. “Thanks again, Finn Kavanagh,” she said in a voice that sounded rusty. “You did your mama, three sisters, two grandmothers and boatload of aunts and girl cousins proud.”

Stepping out onto the platform, she slid on her iPod earphones. Then, pretending to move in time to music she hadn’t turned on, she carved a path for herself through the thankfully crowded station.

* * *

FINN STEPPED INTO the car’s open doorway to watch Mags salsa her way through the throng waiting to board. He ignored the people clumped up in front of the gondola even as they surged forward the second Mags cleared it. He was bumped and jostled but refused to budge. Instead, he did his best to keep Mags’s brightly patterned head-cover thing in view as his gondola inched along in one direction while she moved in and out of view in the opposite.

He was happy as a monkey with a peanut machine to have his vacation back, but he had to admit that while the past he-didn’t-know-how-many minutes had been far from relaxing, which, face it, was his chief goal for the next two weeks, they had sure as hell gotten his blood pumping. And as he’d watched her sit on the floor and transform herself with the help of only a few items, he’d found himself downright mesmerized.

And then there was the three-hundred-pound gorilla in the car. Her kiss.

Man. He hadn’t been expecting that and it had knocked his socks off.

Licking his bottom lip as if a ghost taste might have survived, he felt the cabin door trying to close against his side and stepped out onto the platform. He could always catch another car. But before he went whistling on his merry way, he intended to make sure Mags made a clean getaway.

His gondola glided away, then out through the turnabout and he crossed to one of the center pillars to get out of the flow of still fairly heavy foot traffic. With coloring closer to the El Tigrians, he didn’t stand out in the crowd the way Mags had before she’d worked her magic with the scarf and her face paints. Yet even so, he was an obvious gringo. So he found a spot in the shadow of a column that at least partially concealed him as he kept an eye on the two remaining cars that had entered the terminal behind his. Best-case scenario, Joaquin had caught the car still approaching. If that were the case Mags would be in the wind before the guy cleared his gondola.

But, of course, that would’ve been too easy, and even as Finn watched, Joaquin pushed past an elderly couple who were exiting the furthermost gondola, then stopped dead to survey the crowd. The cabin’s remaining few occupants split to flow around him like a stream circling a boulder.

The cartel enforcer, or whatever the hell he was, stood silently as seconds stretched into eternity. His gaze intent, he appeared to be sectioning the area into quadrants and scrutinizing each closely. After several moments that felt like hours to Finn, Joaquin turned back as if he planned to catch the next group of gondolas already entering the station.

Finn breathed a silent sigh of relief.

Prematurely, as it turned out, because Joaquin suddenly spun around, then leaped up onto a bench against the inside wall and stood on his toes, obviously craning to see something. Seconds later, he leaped down from the bench and sprinted for the down escalator.

“Son of a bitch!” Clipping together his backpack’s belt to keep it from bouncing, Finn took off after him. Chasing an armed-to-the-teeth maniac was not how he’d intended to spend his vacation.

Yet how would he live with himself if he walked away and Baby Psycho hurt Mags?

Or worse. Because hurt was probably putting a pretty face on things. God knew Joaquin hadn’t seemed the least bit averse to shooting her or stabbing him.

Mags had done a good job of disguising herself, so how the hell had the kid recognized her? He understood Joaquin exiting the car at the station. Subjecting each station to at least a cursory check was just good business sense, and the way the cars crept through the station with a new gondola always less than a minute behind, it wasn’t as if the guy would have missed his ride if he failed to spot her. But that was the logic of a mature mind and the boy had struck Finn as a whole lot more reactionary than a logical thinker.

So maybe someone coached him. But how had he recognized Mags?

The streets around the station were busy when he burst through the exit a few minutes later and he moved to the side of the door to get his bearings.

At first all he could see was the kaleidoscope of people moving up and down a long narrow avenue made of multicolored pavers. But taking a page from Joaquin’s playbook, he climbed onto a bulkhead that separated a restaurant’s outdoor tables from the sidewalk traffic and sectioned the area into quadrants. He started with the one dead ahead of him.

And spotted Mags by the color of her headgear a couple of blocks ahead of him. When he shortened his focus to the area between them, he located Joaquin as well. And the other man was a helluva lot closer to her than Finn was.

Determined to eliminate that distance, he set off at a dead run.

He was closing in on Joaquin when Mags stopped at an ancient car that looked as though it was held together by spit and rubber bands. He also saw Joaquin stop. The young man pulled that damn gun from the back of his pants and took a serious-looking shooting stance.

But then Joaquin seemed to hesitate. His heart crowding his throat, Finn put on an additional burst of speed just as the other man called, “Magdalene?”

With a whole lot less certainty in his voice than Finn had heard before.

So he wasn’t sure it was her. If Mags played her cards right, she’d ignore Joaquin, get in her car and take off as if his insistent shout had nothing to do with her. It wasn’t like the kid could follow her on foot.

She clearly wasn’t a card player, however, for she whipped around just as Finn came up behind Joaquin.

And as if sensing an impending threat, the cartel soldier started to turn, but Finn, who had several inches on him, drove his elbow into the vein he saw throbbing on the side of Joaquin’s neck, then snapped the back of his fist into the side of the thug’s face.

“Ow! Jesus!” He cupped his hand to his chest, feeling like he’d fractured his knuckles on the kid’s hard head. But at least Joaquin dropped like a stone. Once again his gun clattered away, but this time with a better outcome since Finn was able to snatch it up and shove it into the front of his own waistband. He didn’t have time to check that the safety was on. But he did cross himself and say a quick prayer that he didn’t shoot his dick off.

Because there was an outcome that didn’t bear thinking about.

Although, looking on the damn bright side, it at least would put an end to all this bullshit agonizing over should he or shouldn’t he be thinking about settling down.

He heard the whine of an overworked car engine reversing faster than sounded wise and looked up from using one hand to relieve Joaquin of his knife and feeling for a pulse with the other to see Mags’s junker. At the same time, he felt a thump beneath his fingertips—and had mixed feelings. He’d give a bundle not to have to spend the entire time he was down here looking over his shoulder. But neither did he want anyone’s blood on his hands.

Shelving the dilemma when the car screeched to a stop alongside him so abruptly its chassis rocked on its axles, he pushed back from where he was crouched over Joaquin’s unconscious body.

Mags leaned toward the passenger window. “Get in!”

He climbed to his feet and got in. She burned rubber the ancient tires couldn’t afford to lose getting out of there and Finn retrieved the gun from its precarious hiding place and leaned forward to slide it under his seat.

Without taking her gaze from the road, she reached across the seat and gripped his wrist. “Thank you,” she said fervently, her palm warm against his skin. “Again.” She gave him a quick glance before turning her attention back to the road. “I made that necessary twice in one day. It was dumb of me to answer when he called my name.”

“That’s how we learn.” He watched as her long, narrow fingers slipped away. Then he raised his eyes to study her face. “So. Magdalene, huh?”

She scowled. “Nobody calls me that but my parents.”

He didn’t understand why, since he thought it was a prettier name than Mags, if not as hipster cool. But he merely shrugged. “Where you heading?”

“As far away from here as I can. Then I need to get to a phone. I know my mother mentioned the Munoz grow farm in one of her letters but I kind of skimmed the part that said where it was. If it actually did say.” She took her gaze off the road long enough to give him a quick grimace. “It didn’t seem important at the time so I don’t really remember.”

She flapped a hand at him. “In any case, I’ll call my neighbor to see if she’ll go over to my place and try to find the reference in one of my letters. It wasn’t that many mailings ago.”

“Are you kidding me?” Not being hampered by anything so modern as a seat belt, he turned in his seat to stare at her. “Your big idea is to head right into the heart of a cartel?”

“I plan to get my folks away from one, yes.”

“Are you undercover DEA?”

She snorted. “Do I look like a drug enforcement agent?”

“Ah, the always popular answer-a-question-with-a-question ploy—I’ll take that as a no. You trained in special ops, then?”

She sighed. “I’m guessing you know I’m not that, either.”