The Spy Wore Spurs

“Doesn’t make any sense, if you ask me,” Ray said in English. “The Cordero ranch isn’t a known smuggling corridor. The terrain is too rough. There are easier points for crossing.”

Yet the man who’d shot him had been out there. Ryder smoothed his black cargo pants over the bandages on his thigh. He’d been to the emergency room and back, the wound had been disinfected again, his stitches inspected and pronounced exemplary.

He’d been forced to lie down while they’d dripped a full bag of IV fluids into him, and had plenty of time to think. Maybe the spot had been chosen specifically because the smugglers thought nobody would be looking there.

He listened as Ray asked Esperanza some of the same questions she’d already answered, wording them differently this time to see if he could trip her. But she stayed consistent. Nothing indicated that she was lying.

They had alerted border patrol to her presence, but not to the shooting. Their operation was top secret, dealing with a terror threat. His small team had come to the area on the pretense that they were surveying border traffic for a new proposal for increased funding for CBP, Customs and Border Protection.

They were more than a match for their enemies, the special team consisting of trained and experienced commandos who did this for a living. As much as they respected the work CBP did, several recent busts had proven that not all the border agents could be trusted. Some were on the take from the traffickers.

And this was one mission where Ryder’s team couldn’t take any chances.

“I was cold because I had to swim,” Esperanza was saying.

“Rio Grande.” Ray looked at Ryder. “Can’t believe she made it. The current can be a killer in places. Add the darkness and that storm.” He shook his head.

“I was scared that the water would rise to the ceiling and I would drown,” she said, not having understood the two men’s exchange in English.

Ceiling? Then it all made sense suddenly.

“Tunnel,” Ray and he said at the same time. Now at least they knew what they had to be looking for when they were out there scouring the land day after day. All that water from the rain had been running down and filling a tunnel.

“Do you remember anything about where you came out? In brush? Trees? Open fields?”

“In a ditch. I couldn’t see much in the dark and the rain.”

And no matter how hard they pressed her after that, she couldn’t give them any further information. So Ryder escorted the woman to the crossing point, talked to the guards and walked her across. They had her contact information, the village she lived in and the phone number of her priest, since her house didn’t have a phone line.

“Don’t come back,” he told her. “It’s not safe. Your children need a mother. You stay here, and I’ll go and look for them, all right?” he said in Spanish, and handed her enough money to get her to her village.

Tears streamed down her face. “Paco loves me. He wouldn’t leave me. He wouldn’t take my babies. He would die for me. I would die for him.”

“I believe you.” He spoke the truth. He believed in that kind of love between a man and a woman, even if he’d never experienced it himself. His parents had that.

He left her and walked back across to his car, feeling somehow guilty and inadequate, even if he was doing the right thing.

A text message with photo pinged onto his phone as he started the engine—a blue-eyed newborn with a pink ribbon in her hair. A birth announcement from Mitch Mendoza. Ryder grinned, happy for his friend, but he also felt a sense of longing. He wanted what Mitch had—his true mate, the one that could make him happy.

He wanted a partner like Mitch had found, someone who would fight by his side and go with him on missions, someone to have his back during the day and fill his arms at night. Mitch had been over-the-moon happy since he’d met Megan. The couple was assigned to the SDDU’s Texas office, but were on leave at the moment for the birth of their baby.

They had something Ryder had never had before. And he couldn’t help but want a taste of it.

He’d been thinking about a wife lately. Kids.

A call interrupted that warm little fantasy.

“Shep and Mo are heading back,” Ray said. “I’m about to leave for the Cordero ranch to look for the tunnel with the others. Jamie says last night’s rain washed away all the tracks. I don’t see how we can find the damned thing unless we stumble on it by accident. The report on Grace Cordero came in after you left, by the way. Squeaky clean. She has a hell of a service record. She did two tours of duty in Iraq. Are you coming out here?”

“I’m heading into Hullett to talk with the sheriff. Want to see if he has any information on Paco Molinero and those kids.”

“They came through with visas. I don’t think Paco could give us much on the human trafficking.”

A good point, but Ryder wanted Grace Cordero packed up and gone, and the quickest way to achieve that was to close the Molinero case as expediently as possible by finding Esperanza’s family for her.

Then Grace would go back to where she’d come from and his team would have free rein over her ranch. He didn’t like the idea of her out there alone, with criminal activity going on around her. She’d be unsafe and underfoot, a double negative.

He reached the next intersection and took the turn toward her ranch on impulse. But he found the driveway empty when he reached the house. His knock on the door went unanswered.

She’d better not be out there riding around the fields. He would have to warn her about that when he caught up with her. She needed to stay off the land until they figured out what was going on and found the damned tunnel.

He considered looking for her, but then he glanced at his watch and got back into his car. If he wanted to catch the sheriff at the office, he had to get going.

An hour later, he caught the man at his desk.

“So you’re not with CBP?” Sheriff Denholtz ran his thumb over his considerable mustache. His large belly fairly stretched his uniform. His cowboy hat sat on the desk in front of him. He was in his mid-thirties, pretty young to make sheriff. But he acted as if he’d had the job for decades.

“I’m affiliated with CBP.” Ryder gave his cover. Since his team had no idea who they could trust around here, the rule of thumb was to trust no one. “I’m working on a special project.”

“I thought the U.S. Customs and Borders Special Response Team handled those.”

“You’re right about that.” People liked to hear that they were right. When you were trying to build rapport, it didn’t hurt to say it. “This is different,” he added. “My team is here to survey the border situation and make recommendations for policy makers.”

“Strangers coming in, telling our local boys how to do their business.” Denholtz pulled a toothpick from his shirt pocket and started chewing on it.

“I just need to have a list of Mexican nationals that ran into any kind of trouble here over the past two months.”

The man drew his spine straight. “We don’t have a smuggling problem in Hullett. I run a tight ship.”

“No doubt, Sheriff. Still, if I could get that list.”

The man sucked on the toothpick. “I’ll tell one of my boys to get right on it. I’ll have it faxed to CBP when it’s ready.”

“If you could fax it straight to me, it would be very helpful.” He scribbled the office’s fax number on the back of his fake card and slid it across the desk.

From the look the sheriff was giving him, he wouldn’t hold his breath.

He resisted the urge to take a tougher tone. He needed to gain the local law’s cooperation. If he pushed too hard, the sheriff might wonder if he had a special agenda, and his special agenda was top secret.

A deputy stuck his head in the door. “Gracie Cordero is here to see you, Sheriff.”

Surprise flashed across the man’s face, then a smile spread his mustache. He spit the toothpick into the garbage can and pushed to his feet.

Ryder gritted his teeth as the man passed by him without a word of apology for the interruption.

“Gracie, sweetheart. Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes?” The words filtered through the door the sheriff had left open behind him.

“Good to see you, Shane. How is Mattie?”