Running Wild. Susan Andersen

taken a leave of absence from her life in California to come running down here. The last two letters from her mother had detailed Nancy Deluca’s distress with the way the Munoz cartel, over her frequent, clearly stated objections, kept trying to recruit some of the barely teenaged boys and girls the Delucas mentored. It wasn’t the letters alone that had brought Mags to El Tigre, however, although those had certainly set up a niggling in the pit of her stomach. It was the way all communication from her mom suddenly ceased after she’d received them. That had really made her get her butt in gear.

      The abrupt lack of communication had given her a very bad feeling. Because while both the United States and the relatively newer, kinder El Tigre regime had worked to clean up the proliferation of drug cartels down here, plenty of crime syndicates still existed. So did the violence that accompanied them. And despite a bombardment of government-sponsored aerial herbicide spraying, illegal coca crops hadn’t been wiped out. Some of the minor grow farms had disappeared, but the larger cartels had merely scaled down their operations and redistributed them to a few smaller, harder-to-reach plots.

      Mags hadn’t seen her parents in years. But she didn’t think for a minute that her very vocal mother had changed during their time apart. Nancy had never been shy about stating her disapproval over anything she considered wrong.

      Mags worried that very fact might have put her parents in danger.

      Well, fool me once, right? Because, it turned out she was a chump. No, hell, why be so modest?

      She was the freakin’ queen of chumps.

      She had dropped everything and wiped out her meager savings. Worse, she’d given up a prime makeup-artist position on a space epic that would have rocked and for which she had campaigned for over a year. All in order to run to the rescue.

      God, wasn’t that rich? Considering she’d been informed by her parents’ landlord when she arrived at their place that the missionaries had gone back to the States on a sabbatical.

      They’d just up and left. Without mentioning a word to her about it.

      She knew it shouldn’t come as a shock, or feel like such a betrayal. Heck, she’d learned five months, two weeks and three days after her thirteenth birthday that not only wasn’t she a priority in her parents’ lives, but she was an obstruction to their accomplishing everything they’d come to El Tigre to get done. So if they didn’t feel the need to let her know that they’d be in the States for a while, well...fine, then. It was nothing new. And she frankly didn’t give a rat’s ass.

      Or not much of one, anyhow.

      Mags straightened in her seat. Why was she even thinking about this anyway? Families were what they were; whining about it was pointless. Looking around for something to distract her from her thoughts, she caught a guy checking her out.

      Great. That was what she needed—some local lounge lizard looking to score. And yet...

      Locking eyes when his lazy gaze reached her face, she found herself unable to look away. For one thing, she was wrong. His coloring might fit with the locals, but he was definitely American. It was clear in the clothing and excellent dentistry.

      Brown hair flopped in deep-set bittersweet chocolate-colored eyes and it took some effort to tear her gaze away. But given the way the rest of her day had gone, gawking instead at the wide shoulders that topped what she could see of a lean, muscular frame probably wasn’t an improvement, so she went back to admiring that face.

      Its flesh was close to the bone and, coupled with his long bony nose, gave him the austere look of a Trappist monk. Yet when she met his dark-eyed gaze again, she encountered a world of heat.

      And for a single tempting instant she considered going over to his table and starting something up. She had a boatload of aggression she’d just love to work off.

      But...no. She was going to collect the beater car she’d left down in the valley, where the economically depressed barrio that had been her folks’ most recent stomping grounds gave way to a neighborhood a bit more affluent. Or where she’d at least had less fear that she’d come back to find the car sitting on its axles, stripped of its few amenities. With a final regretful look at the hot monk guy, she picked up her huge purse and headed for the door, pulling the tote’s long strap over her head and settling the bag cross body as she walked.

      The cantina had hardly been what anyone would call a bastion of silence, but the wall of sound that came off the streets the moment Mags pushed through the doors rocked her back on her heels. The engine of a high-end SUV roared as it started up and equally noisy motorcycles wove in and out of the ubiquitous old Volkswagens clogging the narrow avenue. Young men and women laughed and talked and called to each other as they made their way between bars and restaurants. A little girl on a big bicycle pedaled within an inch of Mags’s toes.

      After dancing out of the kid’s way, she stopped at a donkey-drawn cart full of mangoes to escape the crush long enough to reset her mental compass. She bought two of the green-and-blush-colored fruits and dropped them into her purse, then made a beeline toward the street that would take her back to the route she’d used earlier to come up from the valley.

      After learning her folks had bailed without so much as a forwarding address, she’d had a potent urge to burn off the overload of furious energy that made her nerves jump and her heart pound so furiously. But had she collected her rental car like a smart person would have and gotten her butt to the airport to catch the first plane out of here? Oh, no. She’d thought climbing the steep hills to this neighborhood was a good idea.

      It didn’t make sense to her right now, but at the time it had struck her as a good way to work off her agitation.

      And to some extent it had been.

      Except now she was in no mood to navigate her way back down to the valley. Still, the sooner she got herself down the cliff-like hill, the sooner she could get her ass back to California. Clearly she wasn’t needed in El Tigre. And since it had only been late yesterday that she’d had to say thanks, but no thanks to the position on the film, maybe there was a slim chance she could still get in on the production.

      Here’s hoping. Because she knew exactly what an enormous boost the gig would give her career. At the very least it would allow her to give up her other job.

      And creating aliens with paints and putties would be a fabulous stress-buster. She could use that about now.

      She walked several blocks before it occurred to her that she’d seen a cable station earlier when she’d been searching for a place to park the car. She couldn’t remember precisely where, and she had zero familiarity with Santa Rosa. In her golden pre-boarding-school days, she and her folks had lived first in rough-and-tumble Tacna, further south, then in a small township in the northern Amazon region.

      But the Metrocable ran north and south, so even if it was a long walk between the station and her car, it would be on level ground. And that beat picking her way down the near-vertical hills.

      Content to have a plan, she about-faced and started back the way she’d come.

      She’d reached the main street and had just come to the opposite end of the block from the cantina where she’d had her drink when a man suddenly materialized out of nowhere and shoved her up against the brick building. Heart slamming up against the wall of her chest, she sucked in a deep breath, prepared to scream her head off.

      Before she could, however, a rough, dry-skinned hand covered her mouth. The man, who wasn’t much taller than she—and was a good ten years younger—shoved his face close to hers. “I’ll take my hand away if you agree not to scream,” he said in colloquial Spanish. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you make a fuss. Comprende?”

      Not really, but she nodded her head.

      “Good,” he said, dropping his hand and taking a short step back. “You’re coming with me. Victor Munoz wants to talk to you.”

      * * *

      YAWNING,