Rider on Fire. Sharon Sala

      Adam dropped to his knees, then passed out.

      Chapter 2

      DEA agent Sonora Jordan was running after a drug dealer when she fell into the twilight zone. One moment she was inches away from grabbing her perp, Enrique Garcia, and the next her gun went flying as she fell flat on her face. The shot that would have hit her square in the back went flying over her head. Instead of the heat and dust of Mexico, she was in the shade of a forest and hearing the sound of moving water from somewhere up ahead.

      She lifted her head, and as she did, she saw a tall, older man standing on the porch of a single-story dwelling that was surrounded by trees. His skin was brown, and his hair was long and peppered with gray. There was a wind chime hanging by his head that looked like a Native American dream catcher. The chimes were different shapes of feathers. It was so foreign to anything she knew, she couldn’t imagine why she would be hallucinating about it and wondered if she was dead.

      The man lifted his hand, and as he did, she had the strongest urge to wave back, but she couldn’t seem to move. She couldn’t see his face clearly, yet she knew that he was crying. A sad, empty feeling hit her belly and then swallowed her whole.

      By the time she realized she wasn’t dead, only face down in the dirt, the vision was gone. If that wasn’t enough humiliation, her perp was nowhere in sight.

      “Oh crap,” she muttered, then breathed easier when she saw Agent Dave Wills coming back with the perp she’d been chasing. Garcia was handcuffed and cursing at the top of his voice.

      “Can it, Garcia,” Wills snapped, then saw Sonora on the ground. “Jordan! Are you all right? Are you hit?”

      “No…no, I’m okay,” Sonora said, as she got up, picked up her gun, then began brushing at the dust on her face and clothes.

      “What happened?” he asked, as he shoved Garcia into the back of his car and slammed the door.

      She didn’t know what to say. “I guess I tripped.” It was lame, but it was better than the truth.

      He frowned. Sonora Jordan wasn’t the tripping kind. He reached for her shoulder, intent on brushing a streak of dirt from her face when movement caught the corner of his eye. He turned just as the other Garcia brother appeared.

      “Look out!” he yelled, shoving Sonora aside as he reached for his gun.

      Sonora reacted without thinking. Her gun was still in her hand and she was falling again. Only this time, she got off four shots. Two of them connected.

      Juanito Garcia died before he hit the ground.

      Enrique saw the whole thing from Wills’s car, and began to scream, cursing Sonora and Wills and the DEA in general.

      Wills waved his arm at another agent and yelled, “Get him out of here!”

      As he was being driven away, Enrique looked back at Sonora, mouthing the words, “You’re dead.”

      It wasn’t anything she hadn’t heard before, but it never failed to give her the creeps.

      Wills eyed the muscle jerking in her jaw but shrugged it off. She was tough, no need getting bent out of shape on her behalf. Still, this bust hadn’t gone as they’d planned.

      “They made you too early,” he said. “What happened?”

      She spun, eyeing him angrily. “Oh hell, Wills, I hate to venture a guess, but it might have been your ugly mug showing up a good ten minutes too soon. I wasn’t through making my play when you came flying around the corner.”

      Wills shrugged. “But we got ’em.”

      “No, we got two. Miguel Garcia is the boss man and he wasn’t here…yet.”

      This time Wills frowned. “So, it’s not my fault he didn’t show. You said he would.”

      “Yeah…at three-fifteen.”

      “So, what time is it now?” Wills asked.

      “Three-fifteen,” Sonora snapped, then strode to her car and got in, slamming the door behind her. When Wills still hadn’t moved, she leaned out the window and yelled. “You plan on buying a house down here?”

      Wills glanced down at what was left of Juanito Garcia and then at the faces peering out at them from windows above the street.

      “Hell no,” he said.

      Within minutes, they were gone, leaving the aftermath and cleanup to others. There was a border to cross and reports to be written before anyone slept tonight.

      Sonora typed the last word in her report and then hit print. She gathered up the pages with one eye on the clock and the other on the scowl her boss was wearing.

      Gerald Mynton wasn’t any happier than she’d been about letting Miguel Garcia get away. Capturing two out of three wasn’t the kind of odds Mynton operated on. He was an all or nothing kind of man. Added to that, Sonora Jordan was no longer a viable agent in this case. He knew Wills was partly responsible for missing the last Garcia brother, but there was nothing they could do about it now except pick up where they left off—minus Jordan.

      When he saw Sonora get up from her desk, he motioned for her to come in. She gathered up what was obviously her report, and strode across the floor.

      Even though he was a happily married man and totally insulted by the thought of sexual harassment among his agents, he couldn’t ignore what a beautiful woman Sonora was. She was over five-feet-nine inches tall and could bench press double her weight. Her hair was long and dark and her features exotically beautiful. In all the years he’d known her, he’d only seen her smile a few times.

      But it wasn’t her looks that made her a valuable agent. Besides her skill, there was an asset Sonora had that made her a perfect agent. She had no relatives and no boyfriends. She was as alone in this world as a person could be, which meant that her loyalties were one hundred percent with the job.

      Unfortunately, killing Juanito Garcia had temporarily put an end to her usefulness, and until Miguel Garcia was brought to justice, she needed to lay low. Miguel was the kind of man who dealt in revenge.

      Gerald Mynton hated to be in corners, but he was in one now. If he put Sonora back to work on anything new, Garcia could dog her until he got a chance to kill her. Mynton’s only option was for her to drop out of sight until Garcia was brought in and she could live to solve another case.

      He squinted thoughtfully as Sonora entered his office. Now he had to convince her that it was in her best interest to hide, when he knew her instincts would be to confront and overcome.

      “My report,” Sonora said, as she laid the file on his desk.

      He nodded. “Close the door, then please sit down.”

      Sonora stood her ground with the door wide open. “I’m not hiding.”

      Mynton sighed. “Did I say you should?”

      “Not yet, but you’re going to, aren’t you?”

      “There’s a contract out on your life.”

      Sonora’s chin jutted. “I heard.”

      “So…do you have a death wish?”

      “No, but—”

      “Garcia won’t take what happened without payback. No matter what case I put you on, your presence could put everyone else in danger, not to mention yourself.”

      Sonora’s shoulders slumped. “I hate this.”

      “I’m not all that excited about it myself,” Mynton said.

      Sonora nodded. She wasn’t the kind of person who let herself be down for long. If this was the way it was going to play out, then so be it.

      “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll do as you