and the panic leveled off. She took a deep breath, then another. Then she opened her eyes.
And froze, heart hammering anew.
It wasn’t the sight of a generically furnished three-room apartment that caught her by the throat and ramped the panic back up . . . it was the view outside the window nearest her: a few buildings, a few trees . . . and a red-rock canyonscape that didn’t look anything like the Cancún hotel district.
Where the hell was she?
Letting out a low moan of terror, she wrenched off the blanket and bolted for the door. It was locked from the outside, the intercom keypad beside it nonresponsive. Damn, damn, damn. Survival instincts clawed at her as she tried the windows, found them locked too.
Breath sobbing between her teeth, she grabbed a desk chair and swung it as hard as she could at the glass.
The chair bounced off with a reverb that sang up her arms and made her hands go numb. But she was only peripherally aware of the pain as she let the chair drop and stared, horrified, through the window, to where a pair of Jeeps and a dune buggy were parked near the steel building.
Holy shit. Oh, holy, holy shit. They were all wearing New Mexico plates.
And she was in serious trouble.
She hadn’t told anyone where she was going or who she was meeting, had left only a breezy “Got a new case; call you when I get a chance” voice mail and turned off her phone. Now, her latest move in the “don’t stifle me” argument had come back to bite her in the ass, because nobody would know where to start looking for her. They would have to track the GPS in her phone, and— Her phone!
She gave herself a hasty pat-down. She was still wearing all her clothes—wrinkled now and damp with fear. The .38 was gone, and her carryall was . . . no, her bag was sitting on a low coffee table beside a blue binder with some papers on top.
Ignoring the paperwork—though the pile sent a clear “read me” message—she grabbed the carryall and pawed through it. She wasn’t really expecting to find her phone, but adrenaline jolted when her fingers glanced off its familiar shape. She yanked it out, flipped it open, started to dial, and then stopped.
There wasn’t any signal. Not even a fraction of a bar.
“Shit.” She started to flip the phone shut, but then froze, eyes locked on the upper corner of the display, where the little digital clock was trying to tell her that less than an hour had passed since she had walked into that tacky-assed Cancún hotel. Which didn’t make any sense. There was no way they could have gotten her from the Yucatan to New Mexico in less than an hour. It just wasn’t possible.
Yet there she was.
It had to be a trick. Someone had changed the time on her phone to mess with her head. She looked around, searching for a clock, for something that would verify that she wasn’t crazy, that it was her phone that was wrong, not her perceptions.
Next to the sitting area, a breakfast bar separated out a small kitchen nook, with a bathroom beside it. On the other side, open doors led to bedrooms—one was furnished, the other looked empty. The decor was relentlessly neutral, all muted beiges and bare walls, the only stab at playfulness a small entertainment center on the wall opposite the couch.
The digital display showed the same time as her phone.
“Bullshit,” she whispered.
Was she still drugged? She didn’t feel woozy, but hallucinations were a better explanation than believing she had somehow been whisked from a Cancún alley to the New Mexican desert in the blink of an eye, like Strike had— oh, shit .
Her stomach knotted as the pieces started coming together in a pattern that was impossible. Abso-freaking-lutely impossible.
“No,” she whispered, stomach knotting. But the denial didn’t prevent her from remembering that New Mexico was where Dez’s family had supposedly lived—and died—in a big-assed training compound hidden in a box canyon. Kind of like the one outside the
And froze, heart hammering anew.
It wasn’t the sight of a generically furnished three-room apartment that caught her by the throat and ramped the panic back up . . . it was the view outside the window nearest her: a few buildings, a few trees . . . and a red-rock canyonscape that didn’t look anything like the Cancún hotel district.
Where the hell was she?
Letting out a low moan of terror, she wrenched off the blanket and bolted for the door. It was locked from the outside, the intercom keypad beside it nonresponsive. Damn, damn, damn. Survival instincts clawed at her as she tried the windows, found them locked too.
Breath sobbing between her teeth, she grabbed a desk chair and swung it as hard as she could at the glass.
The chair bounced off with a reverb that sang up her arms and made her hands go numb. But she was only peripherally aware of the pain as she let the chair drop and stared, horrified, through the window, to where a pair of Jeeps and a dune buggy were parked near the steel building.
Holy shit. Oh, holy, holy shit. They were all wearing New Mexico plates.
And she was in serious trouble.
She hadn’t told anyone where she was going or who she was meeting, had left only a breezy “Got a new case; call you when I get a chance” voice mail and turned off her phone. Now, her latest move in the “don’t stifle me” argument had come back to bite her in the ass, because nobody would know where to start looking for her. They would have to track the GPS in her phone, and— Her phone!
She gave herself a hasty pat-down. She was still wearing all her clothes—wrinkled now and damp with fear. The .38 was gone, and her carryall was . . . no, her bag was sitting on a low coffee table beside a blue binder with some papers on top.
Ignoring the paperwork—though the pile sent a clear “read me” message—she grabbed the carryall and pawed through it. She wasn’t really expecting to find her phone, but adrenaline jolted when her fingers glanced off its familiar shape. She yanked it out, flipped it open, started to dial, and then stopped.
There wasn’t any signal. Not even a fraction of a bar.
“Shit.” She started to flip the phone shut, but then froze, eyes locked on the upper corner of the display, where the little digital clock was trying to tell her that less than an hour had passed since she had walked into that tacky-assed Cancún hotel. Which didn’t make any sense. There was no way they could have gotten her from the Yucatan to New Mexico in less than an hour. It just wasn’t possible.
Yet there she was.
It had to be a trick. Someone had changed the time on her phone to mess with her head. She looked around, searching for a clock, for something that would verify that she wasn’t crazy, that it was her phone that was wrong, not her perceptions.
Next to the sitting area, a breakfast bar separated out a small kitchen nook, with a bathroom beside it. On the other side, open doors led to bedrooms—one was furnished, the other looked empty. The decor was relentlessly neutral, all muted beiges and bare walls, the only stab at playfulness a small entertainment center on the wall opposite the couch.
The digital display showed the same time as her phone.
“Bullshit,” she whispered.
Was she still drugged? She didn’t feel woozy, but hallucinations were a better explanation than believing she had somehow been whisked from a Cancún alley to the New Mexican desert in the blink of an eye, like Strike had— oh, shit .
Her stomach knotted as the pieces started coming together in a pattern that was impossible. Abso-freaking-lutely impossible.
“No,” she whispered, stomach knotting. But the denial didn’t prevent her from remembering that New Mexico was where Dez’s family had supposedly lived—and died—in a big-assed training compound hidden in a box canyon. Kind of like the one outside the
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