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Rojas’s men waited for the order, each of them all too willing to add two high-priced deaths to their belts. She could feel it in the shift of energy bouncing off the cement walls, a frenzy of battle-ready tension ripping the enthusiasm she’d tried to keep as a shield around her free.
“I’ll take that detonator now.” Rojas positioned himself in front of Baker, hand extended.
Baker twisted his gaze to her. Waiting.
The device in that Kevlar vest was the only thing guaranteed to get them out of this mess, but she couldn’t risk starting a war between Socorro and the cartel. They’d come here to stop it. She nodded, and after a long moment, he handed it off.
“Great. I’ll have one of my men bring your police cruiser around. Though you should know tips are not included in today’s pardon.” Rojos clutched onto the detonator as though his life depended on it. Which it did. All of their lives depended on it. “Oh, and please tell your friend Jones not to shoot me on the way out. I’d hate for our friendly rivalry to turn bloody.”
Jones was here? Jocelyn sucked in a breath with the realization Baker had turned to a Socorro operative to come for her. A private smile hitched at one side of her mouth. Seemed he was warming up to the idea of teaming up with mercenaries.
Jocelyn shoved to her feet. “We’re not leaving without him.” She nodded to Trevino.
“He’s not part of the deal, Carville.” Rojas folded his hands in front of him, looking for a reason to withdraw his pardon. “He killed one of us. You know as well as I do—we can’t let that slide.”
And the bomber deserved that fate for what he’d done, but no amount of torture or blood was going to change the past or the pain he’d caused. Ponderosa’s chief would see the inside of a jail cell. Not the inside of a flaming tire. “What if I trade for something you want?”
“You don’t have anything I want,” Rojas said.
That wasn’t true. “Not even my chocolate chip cookie dough recipe?”
There was a slight melting of Rojas’s expression. Bingo. He shifted his weight between both feet before moving out of their path. “Take him and leave before I change my mind.”
Dragging Trevino to his feet with Baker’s help, she called into the corridor just beyond the door. “Jones, we’re coming out. Hold your fire.”
The group of soldiers parted down the middle again, letting her, the bomber and Baker through. Socorro’s combat controller met them on the other side, his rifle pressed against his chest, as he took in the situation. Most likely counting how many gunmen he’d have to take out personally if things went sideways. “You good?”
“We’re good.” Her attention shifted to Baker. Though she wasn’t entirely sure what she’d said was true. At least, not for them.
They moved as a unit to keep up with Rojas’s men leading them through the building’s remains.
Baker hauled the bomber’s arm over his shoulders. “Someday, you’re going to have to tell me how the hell we just walked out of there alive.”
HEATEDDESERTANDblinding sunlight worked to hijack his determination.
Baker pounded his fist against the front door of Socorro’s headquarters. The past few days had taken everything he had to stay upright. Witness statements, arresting Trevino under charges, running operations at the cleanup site. And there was still a possibility Sangre por Sangrewould change their mind about striking back for the death of one of their lieutenants.
He’d run through those miserable minutes in that basement room a thousand times. There was no explanation for the cartel letting them go. Both he and Jocelyn shouldn’t have made it out of there alive. His brain kicked up a new memory as he stood there in the heat. Of Jocelyn in the rearview mirror, pulling Maverick into her lap as they’d driven back to Alpine Valley. She’d set her head back against the headrest and stared out the window, not uttering a single word to him.
She’d disappeared after that. Wouldn’t respond to his messages or calls.
The door swung inward, and Baker took a step forward before he lost his nerve. “I love you.”
The words he hadn’t spoken to anyone—not his father after his mom had passed, not his sister before she’d died, not even his favorite chocolate glazed doughnut—rushed out beyond his control.
Jones Driscoll stared back at him, one hand ready to slam the door in his face. “Oh, thanks, man, but I just figured our relationship could be more of a casual thing. Not really ready for anything serious.”
Baker’s confidence collapsed in on itself. Great. Now the first person he’d ever said those three little words to was a smart-ass operator who’d most likely hold it against him for the rest of his life. “Is she here?”
The combat controller leaned his weight into the doorjamb, folding his arms across his massive chest. A roadblock from Baker getting inside. The humor between them was gone. Big brother—whatever that meant for a team like Socorro—was on duty, and Jones wasn’t the kind of guy who could be convinced of Baker’s sincerity. “She’s here, but unless she gives the word, you’re not coming in. We protect our own, Halsey. No matter what. There is one thing she wanted me to give you in case you showed up, though.”
Anticipation undermined the guilt and shame of what he’d thrown in her face before his whole world had blown up.
Jones dipped to one side and collected an oversized paper bag from near the door. “She said she wrote the heating instructions on each of the containers and that she’ll have someone run out another batch next week.”
He took the offering, staring down into the perfectly packaged homemade meals. The aroma of marinara and garlic drifted from inside one of the top containers. Lasagna and bread. She’d made what looked like a week’s worth of dinners, breakfasts and lunches in the space of a couple days. And despite the way things had ended between them, Jocelyn had come through with making sure he didn’t have to live off of microwaved ramen.
“I get it. I screwed up.” Baker stared past Jones’s shoulder. Not at anything in particular, but he saw the future he’d never thought he deserved. One filled with love instead of revenge, of inside jokes and home-cooked meals, of late nights cuddled on the couch and beneath the bed sheets. He saw him and Jocelyn. Her teaching him how to bake the lemon-cranberry cookies, of them handing out gifts to the rest of the team at Christmas, of movie nights and responding to calls together. Waking to that smile in the morning and kissing her senseless at night.
