Beyond Limits (10 page)

“Didn’t know you were a runner,” he said.

“I’m not.”

“Looked pretty good to me.”

“I nearly keeled over on mile two.” She glanced up. “
Don’t
laugh. Running’s never been my thing.”

But he was grinning at her as the waitress stopped by and flashed him a smile.

“What can I get y’all?”

He nodded at Elizabeth.

“I’ll have the short stack with sausage links. And coffee.”

“And you?” She looked at Derek.

“Coffee.”

“That’s it?” The waitress’s overplucked eyebrows tipped up.

“That’s it.”

When she was gone, Elizabeth looked at him. “I thought you wanted breakfast?”

“That’s for you. I already ate.”

“It’s seven thirty.”

“SEALs are early risers.” He leaned forward on his elbows. “We get up and hit it.”

Her cheeks heated as she thought of Lauren’s booty call comment. She looked away.

“Okay, now what?” she asked. “You’ve stalked me across four states. I assume there’s a reason.”

He smiled. “I’m not stalking you.”

“No?”

“I’m trying to keep tabs on your case.”

She shifted in her seat.

“Hey.” His smile disappeared. “You know that, right? If I’m honestly making you uncomfortable, say the word.”

She looked him over. He was serious. He didn’t want her to think he was some pervert.

And he made her a lot of things but not uncomfortable. Nervous, maybe. Lustful, yes. Sometimes even a little stupid. But not uncomfortable.

“No, it’s fine.” She sighed. “I get it. You’re interested in the investigation.”

“That’s right. And hey, if you decide to take me back to your hotel room to rock my world, that works, too.”

She folded her arms over her chest as the waitress dropped off mugs.

“Relax, I’m kidding.” He sipped his coffee. “I just wanted to check in, touch base. See how things are going.”

“Things are going fine, but I can’t discuss details with you.”

“
Fine
, as in you located Rasheed? Identified his target? What?”

“You know, you have this exasperating way of not listening to what I say. I can’t talk about it. It’s like you with your missions.”

“You know all about my mission,” he countered. “You were in the meeting, back at Coronado.”

“Sure,
one
mission. It’s part of my case.”

“Exactly. My team’s part of this case. I’m just trying to get an update.”

He made it sound logical, although she knew it wasn’t. But she was tired of arguing with him. She glanced at her watch. She only had fifteen minutes left before she had to get back, so she couldn’t give him more than an overview, anyway.

“We have not located Rasheed,” she admitted. “We also have not identified the target.”

“Have you narrowed it down?”

She paused. “Somewhat.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means we have some possible leads we’re investigating but nothing that’s been substantiated.”

“So basically, you have nothing.”

She didn’t answer, which she figured was answer enough.

Derek shook his head.

“We’re working on it.”

More head shaking.

“We’ve got some of our best people down here—”

“Straight answer, Liz. Have you even narrowed it down to Houston?”

The waitress was back with a heaping plate of food, and Elizabeth suddenly felt self-conscious. But then hunger overpowered her vanity, and she dug in.

He watched her intently as she swallowed a bite of sausage. “No.”

His jaw twitched. He glanced out the window and then looked at her. “I’m here to make you an offer.”

Her guard went up.

“You deliver me some intel, I deliver you your terrorist.”

She stared at him. “Have you listened to a word I’ve said? You’re not part of this investigation.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Derek—”

“I became part of it the second my boots hit that rooftop in Asadabad.”

No, the second his teammate got killed. This was about payback for Sean Harper, but he didn’t want to admit it.

“Listen, I understand you want to help, but—”

“Hear me out, okay? And then you can lecture.” He gave her a long look. “I graduated from BUD/S not long after 9/11. You know what I spent my first four tours of duty doing?”

She waited. But it became clear he wanted an answer. “I don’t know,” she said. “Looking for Osama bin Laden?”

“Every guy over there was looking for bin Laden. But do you know what I actually spent my time doing?”

“What?”

“Assaulting cave complexes. Afghanistan has more than a hundred fifty thousand square miles of mountains. That’s miles of cave complexes and some of the most treacherous terrain in the world. We’d get a name and a scrap of intel, and it was like
go
.” He snapped his fingers. “Over and over again, our mission was to find a needle in a haystack. And we did it.”

He leaned closer. “I can find this guy in Houston. Hell, I can find him in Texas.”

She didn’t respond.

“Just give me what you have. A license plate, a phone number, an address. Give me some scrap of something about this tango or someone you even
think
might be helping him, and I’ll turn it into a lead and track him down.”

His confidence was mind-boggling. She would have laughed if he hadn’t looked so stone-faced.

“You’re serious.”

He nodded.

“We’ve got an entire task force looking for this guy. What makes you think
you
can find him?”

“I’m better.”

She shook her head. “Even if I wanted to involve you, which I don’t, for about a dozen reasons, including that I could get fired—”

“What’s more important? The lives of innocent people or your job?”

“Hey.” She pointed her fork at him. “That’s a cheap shot. Of course I care about innocent people, but I can’t very well help them if I lose my job, can I?” She picked at her pancakes and tamped down her annoyance. “Even if I wanted to give you some magic bit of intel, the fact is, we don’t have any.”

“Not true.”

“You’re trying to tell me about my case?”

“You have more than you realize,” he said. “Come on, think about it. Think about Del Rio.”

“What about Del Rio?”

“Buck’s Truck Stop.”

She frowned. “How did you know that?”

“Common sense. It’s the busiest place in the town. Best candidate as a hub of human trafficking. And ICE knows that, too. Am I right?”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying
look
at the place. Get out a Google map and study it. Better yet, go visit. The town has got to be wall-to-wall with security cams, a lot of them privately owned, some of them not. You’ve got fast-food restaurants, gas stations—”

“What’s your point?”

He looked impatient. “Someone somewhere got a shot of this guy meeting his contact. He didn’t vanish into thin air. He caught a ride. There’s a scrap of information out there. It just needs to be found.”

They had dozens of agents, in both Del Rio and Houston, searching for that very scrap.

“You want me to wave a wand and produce a lead? And then what?”

“I spent the better part of the last decade finding terrorists hiding in the Hindu Kush. I can do this, Liz. I promise you. You give me a lead on this guy, and I’ll run him down.”

Buck’s Truck Stop occupied Del Rio’s busiest juncture and did a brisk business twenty-four seven. Besides offering food, lodging, and a deluxe car wash, the place boasted no fewer than thirty-six gas pumps.
Thirty-six
. Elizabeth glanced at them now as she motored past the sprawling complex and followed her GPS instructions down a narrow side street. A few more turns, and she pulled into a parking lot, where she spotted a dusty blue Subaru that was doing a passable imitation of a civilian vehicle. The sparkling-clean Taurus she’d rented at the airport stood out, so she drove around back.

“Nice ride,” Torres quipped as she pulled up alongside a banana-yellow Honda with gold rims. “How come we never get the pimp-mobiles?”

A garage door lifted, and a heavy man with long sideburns waved them in. Evidently, their rental car was too conspicuous, even in back.

Elizabeth slid into the service bay and looked around. Several cars were up on lifts, and the place actually resembled a brake repair shop. In reality, it was the headquarters for a multiagency surveillance operation.

They got out. The place smelled like old motor oil and new tires. They introduced themselves to the undercover ICE agent who was their liaison for the morning, and he looked less than delighted to meet them.

“I’m Brad Parker.” He gave a brief nod. “Follow me.”

Elizabeth followed, wondering about the name. It sounded like an alias, like a throwaway name you’d give people from a rival agency you didn’t really trust. He led them down a dingy hallway and into an even dingier room filled with computers. Agents sat at all of the monitors, tapping away or staring at surveillance footage.

“We’ve had two people on this since yesterday,” Parker informed them. “No sign of your guy.” He led them to the far side of the room. “This is Juan Garza, by the way. He just took over.”

Garza—if that was really
his
name—glanced up from his computer and traded nods with his colleague.

“Special Agents LeBlanc and Torres, out of Houston,” Parker said.

They weren’t actually out of Houston, but she didn’t bother to correct him.

“We’re here to take a look at the surveillance footage,” Elizabeth said. “Hoping you have some new leads for us.”

Garza lifted a brow. “Not since I got here. Still no sign of him.”

“We have him leaving the minivan, but that’s it,” Parker said. “No sign of him entering the store or of him walking off the premises. We’ve been through the truck stop footage twice already.”

“Yours or theirs?” Elizabeth asked.

“Both. This spot has become a way station for traffickers. We’ve had surveillance on the place for fifteen months.”

“We’ve expanded our search to surrounding businesses.” Garza nodded at his screen. “Restaurants, ATMs . . . This right here is from the bank across the street.”

Elizabeth watched the grainy black-and-white image for a few moments. Cars pulled in and out of the parking lot and the drive-through teller windows, business as usual, nothing sinister happening at the truck stop across the street. She glanced at the time stamp at the bottom of the screen. A full sixty-six minutes after Rasheed was filmed fleeing the coyote’s vehicle.

“You want my guess?”

She looked at Parker.

“He had a ride waiting,” he said. “Slipped around the corner of the building, hopped right in.”

“Why don’t we have that on camera, then?” Torres asked.

A shrug. “It’s not like we have every angle. There are blind spots.”

“Hey, hey.” Garza straightened in his chair. “Check this out.”

Everyone inched closer to look at the screen.

“What?” Parker asked.

Garza tapped the keyboard, rewinding the footage. “Upper left corner. Dark sedan.”

Elizabeth watched, holding her breath, as a dark-colored four-door car moved into view. It rolled to a stop, and a shadow moved toward it.

“That’s him! Pause it!” She leaned closer as he stopped the tape.

Torres looked at her. “Looks like we found his ride.”

Derek had been right. The lead they needed was right in front of them, caught on camera. She felt the sudden urge to call him, but of course, she couldn’t.

She studied the footage. Unfortunately, the car was angled, so no plates were visible. And the driver was nothing more than a dark silhouette. But still, they’d found a vehicle. Even without a plate, it could provide a wealth of information.

“Can you zoom in on that?” she asked.

“Not much.” Garza clicked on the corner of the screen and managed to zoom a little but not enough to see anything of the driver besides the outline of a baseball cap.

“Our technicians can enlarge it, clean it up,” Torres said.

“So can ours.”

Turf wars. Perfect.

“Why don’t you make us a copy, and we’ll both take a crack at it?” Elizabeth looked at Parker. “We’re going to need footage from every other security cam anywhere near this corner at”—she glanced at the time stamp—“five fifteen.”

She leaned closer and studied the car’s chassis. “That’s a Chevy Cavalier,” she said. “Cobalt blue, it looks like. Those tires aren’t standard. Should be fourteen-inch, not eighteen.”

Garza gave her a startled look. Men were always shocked that she knew anything about cars.

She glanced at the time stamp again. “That’s sixty-eight minutes after he slipped from the truck. What was he doing all that time?”

“Sure you don’t have him inside the truck stop?” Torres asked.

“We’ve been through it all,” Parker said. “Repeatedly. Nothing of him entering the convenience store or the bathrooms. No cams in the restaurant, unfortunately, but—”

“There’s a restaurant?” She looked at Torres. “We need to interview the wait staff.”

“
Two
restaurants,” Parker corrected. “This place has everything—a deli counter, showers, an Internet lounge, an arcade.”

“An Internet lounge?” Her heart lurched.

“Yeah, right by the car wash. There’re no cameras in there, though. We already checked.”

But she wasn’t thinking about cameras anymore. “Show me the Internet lounge.”