There were the pistols to be taken care of—he didn’t destroy them, as Milla and Brian always did; instead they were put away for future use. His own vehicle was there; he had flown into Chihuahua and taken care of some detail he didn’t explain, then driven to Juarez. It wasn’t one of the pickups Milla had seen before; he seemed to have an inexhaustible supply. He arranged for it to be picked up at the border crossing as before; he called Benito and told him where he could pick up the car Milla and Rip had used; then he got them back across the border.
Rip and Milla were totally silent, in shock at the events of the night. It was only when Rip was unlocking his car that he looked up with agony in his eyes. “I can’t go home,” he said. “I can’t look at her again. What happens now? Will she be arrested?”
“We have no proof,” Diaz said. “If we were in Mexico—” He broke off and shrugged. If they were in Mexico, True and Susanna would already be in jail, and charges didn’t have to be filed for seventy-two hours . . . or as long as was necessary. But this was the States, and what a dead Mexican thug had supposedly told them wouldn’t get them the time of day in a police station. “But we know where to look now, and there are people here who are much better at this than I am; I’ll turn it over to them.”
Rip looked startled. “Whaddaya mean? You’re some kind of—I mean, you’re official?”
Diaz ignored that. “Stay in a hotel. Don’t speak to your wife; you’re too emotional. Don’t spook her into running. If she runs, I’ll have to go after her.”
Rip had seen what happened to someone Diaz went after, and he shuddered.
Diaz ignored him after that, putting Milla in the passenger seat of her SUV and then driving off without speaking again. Rip stared after them for a moment, then shuddered again. He got behind the wheel of his car and sat there for a minute, different scenarios running through his mind and none of them pleasant. He thought of Susanna. Then he bowed his head against the steering wheel and cried.
There was such a storm of emotions roiling through Milla that she couldn’t pin one down long enough to examine it. There were both relief and regret, triumph and sorrow, shame and grim satisfaction. She leaned her head back and watched the streetlights loom and then recede in a dizzying parade. The dash clock said the time was only eleven P.M.; she had thought surely it was almost dawn.
Tonight she had seen in action what she’d always sensed about Diaz, from the very first moment he’d knocked her down and threatened to snap her neck. The destruction he was capable of was truly frightening—and yet she wasn’t frightened. He had taken those aspects of his own character and molded them into a weapon to be used against the enemy, the dregs of society who ignored its laws and wreaked their own destruction. He won by being even more brutal, even more ruthless. What he didn’t do was turn that force against those he perceived as innocent. Ever. She felt safer with him than she’d have felt sitting in the middle of a police station.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“Helping me.” She didn’t know if she could have finished it without him. When Pavón started spewing his poison, Diaz had simply put his hand over Milla’s and together they’d pulled the trigger; his hand had steadied hers, his finger had added its strength to hers. She was ashamed that she hadn’t been able to do it herself, and yet so relieved that she hadn’t had to.
“You’d have done it,” he said with cool confidence. “I just didn’t want you to hear any more of what the bastard had to say.”
“Do you think he was lying?” She squeezed her eyes together, because his filthy words had spread cold horror through her heart.
“He didn’t know what happened to any of the babies; he just wanted to say something to hurt you.”
And he’d succeeded, all too well.
They reached her home and a touch of a button raised the garage door; he slotted the Toyota inside before the door had finished lifting, and had it lowered again almost before Milla could get out of her seat belt and open the door. She dug out her keys and unlocked the door from the garage into the kitchen, stepping inside and turning on the lights.
He whirled her against the refrigerator, his hands hard on her waist. Startled, she dropped her purse and keys to the floor and looked up at his set face and narrowed savage eyes. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” he said with clenched teeth.
She didn’t have to ask what he meant. Those moments when Pavón’s pistol had been trained directly at her head had been long and terrifying.
“I stayed in the—” she began, but he cut her off with a kiss that was wild and hungry and deep. He lifted her onto her toes and pressed in hard against her, grinding his erection into the softness of her mound. She yielded immediately to that outraged male aggression, wrapping her arms around him and transforming it into sheer lust. He moved one hand to the waistband of her jeans and unsnapped them, dragged down the zipper, then thrust his hand inside her panties and curled his fingers up into her while his palm rode her clitoris. She bucked under the lash of abrupt desire, growing wet around his fingers, hugging them with her body.
He took her there, shucking her out of her jeans and dropping his own, then bending her over the kitchen table. Milla clutched the edge of the table to brace herself against his hard thrusts, pushing back to take all of him. He reached around and under to fondle her, his talented fingers wringing a fast orgasm from her. Then he simply gripped her hips and pumped into her until he began coming, slumping over her as he jerked and thrust. He shuddered with completion, his mouth hot on the back of her neck. “God,” he muttered indistinctly, “when I saw him with that pistol in your face—”