Dead Man's Curve

“FBI.” Great. Of all the old acquaintances he could have run into in the middle of the woods, he had to run into the one who worked for the federal agency that had once had his face tacked prominently to every wall of every field office and resident agency in the country.

“We think you’re dead, you know. Well, everyone else does.”

“I’d love for it to stay that way.”

“Too bad. I’m not your friend, Solano. I can’t look the other way. So if you’re going to kill me to stop me from ratting on you, go for it now so one or the other of us can get on with trying to stay alive.”

“I’m not what you think I am.” He sighed as she gave him a look so skeptical he couldn’t miss it even in the near darkness. “I know you’ve probably heard that before.”

“You reckon?”

“There’s a lot you don’t know.”

“Let me guess. You were really a double agent working for the CIA to bring down El Cambio from the inside.” Her sarcasm had a sharp bite.

Well, he thought. There goes the truth as a viable explanation.

Awkward silence descended between them again. Strange, Sin thought, how hard it was to talk to her now, when back in Mariposa, all those years ago, talking to Ava Trent had seemed as easy as breathing.

She’d been nothing like any girl he’d ever known, growing up in San Francisco, and he supposed maybe the sheer novelty of her had been the initial attraction. That and her curvy little figure, displayed not in a skin-baring bikini, but a trim racer-back one-piece, standing out on the Mariposan beach amid all those skimpy thongs and barely-there tops. She’d swum the ocean as if it were a sport, tackling waves with ferocity of purpose, all flexing muscles and determination.

Somehow, her lack of self-consciousness about her appearance had only made her more attractive in Sinclair’s eyes. And when she’d opened her mouth and that Kentucky drawl had meandered out, he’d been leveled completely. There had been no other word for the way she’d made him feel, as if the earth beneath his feet had liquefied and he couldn’t hold a solid thought in his head.

She’d declared he’d like Kentucky, if he was looking for somewhere new to visit. And he’d almost talked himself into going back there with her.

“How sure are you that it’s Cabrera who has your sister?” Ava’s whisper broke the tense silence filling the tent.

“Pretty sure,” he answered. “Do you have evidence to the contrary?”

She was silent for a moment. “I just got here this afternoon. I didn’t have a lot of time to investigate before I went on a ghost hunt.”

Feeling her gaze on him in the gloom, he turned his head to find her watching him, eyes glittering. “I didn’t think anyone would see me.”

“How’d you find out about the kidnapping?”

“I heard the sirens.” Reliving that heart-sinking moment when he’d realized all those lights and sirens had been headed for the motel where his sister was staying, he struggled to breathe. “I’d seen a write-up in the local paper about a visit from a previous bass tournament champion. Her husband, Gabe. There was a picture of the two of them, right on the front page of the sports section.”

Alicia had looked so beautiful in that photo, he thought. So happy. The guy she’d married seemed solid, too. Quinn had told him a few things about the Coopers, whom Quinn knew through prior dealings with the family. Gabe Cooper had been among the family members who’d done battle with a South American drug lord seeking vengeance against one of the Coopers. Sinclair prayed he’d be just as strong in protecting Alicia.

Of course, Cabrera’s men might have executed him the first chance they got. They were nothing if not ruthless.

“They’re keeping her alive,” Ava murmured. “There’s no point in killing her if they want to use her to smoke you out.”

“I may have done the job for them.”

“Three dead and we’re still at large. That’s not nothing.” Her voice had grown progressively more strained. That wound she’d suffered was probably hurting like hell by now.

“I need to take a look at your wound.”

“It’s okay.”

“It needs to be cleaned out and disinfected. The longer we wait to do that, the more likely infection will set in.” It might not be possible to avoid infection even now, but it wouldn’t hurt to clean her up. “I have first aid supplies.”

“We can’t risk a light.”

“The Ghillie cover will block most of it, and the woods should take care of the rest, unless they stumble right on us. And if that happens, the light will be the least of our worries.”

She released a gusty sigh. “Okay. But be quick.”

He grabbed his bag from the back of the tent and pulled out the compact first-aid kit. Fortunately, he’d stocked up a few days ago when he’d made a run to Bentwood to charge his burner phone. Using a penlight to see what he was doing, he pulled out disinfectant, gauze, tape and a couple of ibuprofen tablets to help her with the pain. The kit also offered a bigger pair of tweezers. One look at the messy furrow ripped into the fleshy part of her hip suggested he was going to have to do some careful work to get all the singed fabric out of the wound.

“I’d offer you a bullet to bite,” he said, keeping his voice light, “but we may need to conserve them.”

“Just get it done.” She pushed down her trousers, wincing as the fabric stuck to the drying blood at the edges of her wound.

He handed her the penlight. “Can you hold this for me?”

She positioned the light over her hip, turning her head away and burying it in the elbow crook of her other arm.

He worked quickly, wincing at her soft grunts of pain. The wound was about five inches long and at least a half-inch deep, grooving a path right through the flesh of her hip. It had missed the bone, fortunately, and she had enough curves for the bullet to have also missed most of the muscle. “Looks like it mostly injured fatty tissue,” he commented as he dabbed antiseptic along the margins of the wound.

“I’m suddenly feeling less guilty about that chocolate-covered doughnut I had for breakfast,” she mumbled.

“We need to get you somewhere cleaner than these woods,” he said as he bandaged up the wound.

“I’m counting on that,” she answered. “You’ll be coming, too.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You don’t get a vote.”

He looked down at her bared hip, the utter vulnerability of her current pose. “You’re in no position to make demands at the moment.”

She moved as quickly as a cat, the grimace on her face as she whipped up to face him betraying the pain the move caused her. Still, she had her Glock in his face before he could put down the first aid kit. “Want to bet?”

He couldn’t stop a smile, even though he knew it would only make her angry. “You’ll have to shoot me, then.”

Her lips pressed to a thin line. “Why aren’t you dead, Solano?”

“Because I never walked into that warehouse in Tesoro with the rest of the crew.” He tamped down the memories—the thunderous bomb blast, the sickening knowledge that people he knew, people he’d lived with and sometimes even liked, were gone, martyrs to a cause he’d once embraced and now despised.

“The authorities in Sanselmo accounted for your body.”

“There were ten bodies. Mine just wasn’t one of them.”

“You killed someone to fake your own death?”

“He was already dead. John Doe from the local morgue.”