"Take it easy, Dave," she said with a smile. "Everything's under control."

He breathed deeply, gritting his teeth as the plane descended. Seconds later, she set it down on the runway so lightly that he barely felt the b.u.mp. He let out the breath he'd been holding.

"You're pretty good at that."

"Practice makes perfect."

Lisa slowed the plane, then turned it ninety degrees, and they taxied toward the terminal. Once there, she brought it to a halt. The moment she turned off the engine, Dave saw three men striding purposefully toward the plane.

"Customs agents?" he asked.

"Yeah," Lisa said, suddenly coming to attention.

"Three of them?" Dave said. "Is that normal?"

"Nope," Lisa said, her eyes wide with suspicion as they approached. "And usually they don't just hop right out here. You've got to wait a bit on them. Something's up."

One of the agents headed around the plane to Lisa's door. The other two came to Dave's.

The drugs. d.a.m.n. d.a.m.n. He had to get those drugs in hand before he met the agents. He quickly reached to the backseat. He had to get those drugs in hand before he met the agents. He quickly reached to the backseat.

"Freeze!"

Dave swung back around and looked out the pa.s.senger window, shocked as h.e.l.l to be staring down the barrel of a gun.

"Step out of the plane!" the agent shouted. "Both of you!"

Holy s.h.i.t. What the h.e.l.l was going on here?

"Dave?" Lisa said, panic lacing her voice. "What do we do?"

"We've got no choice. Just do as they say."

"The drugs-"

"I can't get to them. They'll think I'm reaching for a weapon."

"But if they find them before we give them up-"

"Say nothing. Do you hear me? Let me handle this."

"Out of the plane now now!" the agent shouted.

Dave unlocked his door and stepped out. The moment his feet hit the ground, the agent spun him around. "Hands on the plane!"

Dave started to pull his wallet from his hip pocket, then reminded himself that a move like that would be interpreted as a threat. He'd be facedown on the ground before he knew what hit him. Instead he held up his palms and tried to speak calmly.

"I'm a police officer. My ID is in my wallet."

"I told you to put your hands on the plane!"

He turned and rested his palms against the plane. The agent frisked him, extracted his wallet, then pulled his hands behind his back and clipped cuffs on. Looking through the windows of the plane to the other side, he could see Lisa undergoing the same treatment.

Dave turned back around. The agent flipped open Dave's wallet and stared at his badge with surprise. "You really are a cop?"

"Yes. Tolosa PD. Listen to me. There's something you need to-"

"Hey, Stevens!"

The agent turned his baffled gaze to the door of the plane, and for the first time Dave saw that while he was being frisked and cuffed the third agent had climbed inside. He'd pulled their bags from the backseat, and he was unzipping Lisa's backpack.

No. No! No!

Dave was stunned. There wasn't a way on earth that man could possibly know what it contained. No way. But any second now he was going to find out.

The magnitude of what was getting ready to happen struck Dave like a hammer blow, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. He started to shout, to say something, anything to keep the man from pulling those drugs out of the bag. But he was standing there in handcuffs. At this point, would they ever believe the truth?

A second later, the agent extracted the bag of tiny blue pills, holding them up with a small but triumphant smile.

"Bingo."

chapter fourteen.

Dave spent the next few hours separated from Lisa, stuck inside a tiny interrogation room. He'd been inside plenty of rooms just like this one, but he'd had no idea what the view was like from the other side of the table. It gave him a smothering sensation, as if the room were closing in on him, growing smaller with every breath he took.

Right now he felt angry, frustrated, and humiliated. Already he'd been questioned repeatedly, and he was slowly coming to the conclusion that only a miracle was going to get them out of this one. He closed his hands into fists, then opened them again and ran his palms over his thighs, wishing he could hit something.

The customs agent didn't believe the story Dave was telling. Not one word of it. And still he didn't know how they'd known he and Lisa were carrying the drugs. It had been no random search. Those agents had come to their plane with information in hand, knowing what they were looking for. And they'd found it.

He wondered how Lisa was faring. Probably not very well. Patience and tolerance weren't her strongest characteristics. He only hoped that she was keeping her voice down and her emotions to herself and that she was telling the truth, because right now the truth was all they had.

A moment later, the customs agent came back into the room. He was an older man, balding, wearing a cheap suit that said customs agents didn't make much. But still he had a burn in his eyes, as if money was the least of what drove him to do his job.

He sat down in the chair opposite Dave, feigning a weary sigh. "Well, DeMarco, you'll be pleased to know she's letting you off the hook in there. She says you didn't know she was bringing the drugs back across the border. Of course, you've already told me otherwise."

So Lisa was trying to take the fall for him. Dave exhaled, rubbing his hand over his mouth.

"Am I confused, or is Ms. Merrick lying?" the agent asked.

"She's just trying to protect me. That's all. But neither of us is a drug counterfeiter. Robert Douglas is."

"Now, that's one point you do agree on. That Robert Douglas is the real villain here."

"Yes."

The agent sat back in his chair, tapping a pencil against his fingertips. "Yesterday an informant told border authorities to be on the lookout for you and Ms. Merrick. He suspected you would be transporting counterfeit drugs across the border."

"An informant?"

"Yes. His name is Robert Douglas."

Dave was so dumbfounded that for a moment he couldn't speak. But as he thought back over the last two days, slowly the chain of events became clear, and fury welled up inside him. Robert clearly understood a very basic principle of fingerpointing: He who accuses first wins.

That son of a b.i.t.c.h.

"Don't you understand what's going on here?" Dave said. "Douglas couldn't stop us from leaving town. He got worried that we'd make it across the border and tell our story, so he turned the tables on us."

"I don't know. That seems like a pretty b.a.l.l.sy move to me. How did he know for sure you were carrying the drugs?"

"He didn't have to know for sure. If we weren't, he was in the clear, because that meant we had no evidence that there was a counterfeiting ring at all. If we were carrying them, he could frame us. Either way, he wins."

The agent nodded thoughtfully. "That's an interesting scenario. Here's another one." He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table. "Lisa Merrick gets herself caught up in a Mexican drug war. She wants a bigger cut, so she decides to double-cross the ringleaders of the operation and walk off with a hundred thousand dollars' worth of the stuff herself. Easy to do, since she's a pilot. She's going to fly the drugs right out of there. Unfortunately for her, they find out what she's up to and sabotage her plane."

"With a huge shipment of their drugs aboard?"

"Maybe they didn't know she had it with her at the time. Or maybe that shipment was a drop in the bucket to them and they were merely out for revenge. Those people don't take kindly to disloyalty." He sat back in his chair and folded his arms. "Somehow she manages to survive her plane going nose-first into that river. But now she's trapped. She can't show her face because the minute she does, she's a dead woman. So who does she call? You. With some big sob story about drug counterfeiting, sabotage, and attempted murder. You bite, go to Mexico, get her out, but Robert Douglas finds out she wasn't really killed in that plane crash and suspects she's up to something. He finds out that she might be going back across the border with counterfeit drugs, so he tips us off."

"That's c.r.a.p. He tipped you off because he was afraid of going down himself. Can't you see that?"

The agent gave Dave yet another weary sigh, one of those that said, I'm being very patient here, but my patience is wearing thin. I'm being very patient here, but my patience is wearing thin. "The only person you say can back up your story is Adam Decker. Unfortunately, our information says that he was killed in the plane crash." "The only person you say can back up your story is Adam Decker. Unfortunately, our information says that he was killed in the plane crash."

"I told you he was never on that plane," Dave said, his own patience wearing thin. "But by now, it's possible that Douglas has killed him, too."

"Ms. Merrick makes the same a.s.sertion. But you have absolutely no evidence of Douglas's involvement. She says she had the defibrillator that contained the drugs in the plane with her, yet she escaped the c.o.c.kpit with only her backpack. No defibrillator. On the other hand, we have all the evidence in the world that you're involved. You're holding the merchandise."

"We were shot at as we left Santa Rios," Dave told the agent. "The local cops are on Douglas's payroll."

"So you said. But do you know that for sure? Or did the local cops merely spot Ms. Merrick on her way out of town and go after a member of a local drug-counterfeiting operation?"

Dave knew he was fighting a losing battle. If only they'd been able to hand over the drugs voluntarily and tell their story as they'd planned, the agents would have a.s.sumed they were telling the truth. But once the agents approached the plane, guns drawn, their theory already in place, he and Lisa hadn't stood a chance. And now, no matter what story they told, the customs agents could twist it around to fit any scenario they wanted.

"The truth is that you really don't know where Adam Decker is, do you?" the agent asked. "For all you know, he could have died in that plane crash and Ms. Merrick is feeding you a line of bulls.h.i.t." He kept tapping that pencil against his fingertips until Dave wanted to rip it out of his hands. "Actually, when it gets right down to it, you don't know a d.a.m.ned thing about this situation outside of what she's told you. Isn't that true?"

Yes. It was. And in Dave's mind it didn't change a thing. "What did Lisa supposedly do to make Douglas suspect her of being in the middle of a counterfeiting operation?"

"We don't know the whole story yet. But when we get a tip from a credible source, we act on it. He's a doctor running a humanitarian organization. I'd call that credible."

"And I'm a cop, for G.o.d's sake! Doesn't that count for something?"

Another sigh, accompanied by a rub to the back of the neck. Then the agent leaned forward and dropped his voice.

"Just between you and me, DeMarco, I don't think you're a drug smuggler. I think you believed her story. I think you're just one h.e.l.l of a bad judge of character. In the future, you might want to think twice about the women you keep company with."

"You don't know what the h.e.l.l you're talking about."

"Really?" the agent said, feigning surprise. "Tell me. How well do you know Ms. Merrick?"

"She was a friend of mine in high school."

"Have you seen her in the interim?"

"No."

"Then you're not really sure what she's been up to since graduation."

"No. Not specifically."

"Can you say for sure what she actually planned on doing with those drugs when you landed in San Antonio?"

"Yes. Turning them in to you."

"You're speculating."

"Come on! Wouldn't it be pretty stupid of her just to walk off with those drugs instead of handing them over as she said she was going to? Wouldn't I have questioned that? I'm a cop, for G.o.d's sake!"

The agent smiled knowingly. "But you're a man first, aren't you?"

"What the h.e.l.l are you saying?"

"A hot little number like that could lead a man to believe just about anything, now couldn't she?"

Dave stared at him evenly, willing himself not to react, when what he really wanted to do was vault over the table and take this sarcastic a.s.shole by the throat.

"Tell me what's going to happen now," he said, barely able to grind out the words without adding a string of profanity.

The agent looked exasperated, but this time there was no faking it. "We did a field test of the drugs. As a police officer, you're probably aware that on cursory examination we can identify only about six of the usual suspects-amphetamines, Valium, that kind of thing. So we found what we expected to find. Nothing. It'll take further testing to determine whether they contain an illegal substance, but I fully expect that to be ruled out. I think they're simply Lasotrex knockoffs, just as you and Ms. Merrick have been saying, and there's a counterfeiting operation going on." He tossed his pencil down on the table, blowing out a long breath. "Unfortunately, it's not a crime to possess look-alike drugs. You can go to your bas.e.m.e.nt and make as many phony Lasotrex as you want to. It's only a crime if you choose to sell or distribute them, which is exactly what I believe Ms. Merrick intended to do. But since we have no evidence at this point to support that, we can't hold either of you."

Then the agent leaned toward Dave, a no-nonsense look on his face. "But make no mistake. There will be an investigation. And the moment that investigation implicates Ms. Merrick in a drug-counterfeiting conspiracy, which I fully expect it will, we'll be back to see her. And if it turns out that you really are part of it, we'll take you down right along with her."

The good news was that Robert apparently hadn't given the authorities any information to further implicate Dave and Lisa. But he had no doubt it was coming. Not only would Robert be covering his tracks, he'd undoubtedly be planting evidence to frame them. Once the heat was off, he could reopen business in another area and proceed as if nothing had ever happened, leaving them to take the fall.

Dave sat up straight. "I a.s.sume I'm free to go?"

"Yes. But I suggest you leave by the back door. Don't know how the press does it sometimes. They're already here asking questions about this one."

"What?"

"Hey, it's interesting news. A woman flying for a humanitarian organization supposedly dies in a plane crash, only to show up alive at a San Antonio airport with a stash of illegal drugs? Doesn't get much better than that."

Oh, that was just great great.

Dave knew every government agency had its informants who made a buck or two on the side by tipping off reporters to any big story that happened to come through. Only now, unbelievably, he was part of one of those big stories. It would be all over town in no time. h.e.l.l, what was he saying? With cable news, it could end up all over the freaking world.