Finally she made it back to the hotel, dashing up the front steps. Inside, the clerk at reception was welcoming, giving little credence to the seedier nightlife loitering outside.

  At the front desk, the nighttime manager looked up and smiled. “Buenas noches senorita, nice night out there?”

  “Maybe if you’re a male,” Elizabeth said bluntly, thankful he spoke English. “It’s definitely not the place a female should be walking at night. At least not alone and not if she’s not in the escort business.”

  He nodded sympathetically. “If you’re alone, that’s true enough. We haven’t had any problems with anybody on the street, but there’s definitely lots of interest if you’re looking for a quick hookup.”

  She winced at that. “No, I certainly am not looking for a quick hookup. Any messages waiting for me?”

  “Not since the last time you asked.” He looked at the take-out bag in her hand. “That’s the best taco place around here.”

  She smiled as she looked at the small bag in her hand. “That’s what I was hoping for. I left without realizing how dark it would be on the trip back.”

  “You made it,” he said cheerfully. “That’s what counts.”

  She walked past the desk and headed to the elevator. Her room was on the third floor. Once there, she sat down with her dinner. She hadn’t eaten earlier, preferring an empty stomach while she traveled, even by car. She didn’t want to waste any time looking for bathrooms along the way. It was much easier for her if she kept her food to a minimum.

  Since her father’s death and her brother’s disappearance, food hadn’t stayed down. Her dinner smelled divine.

  She sat on the chair at the desk and opened the first box, proceeding to have several bites, then opened the second box. She’d picked up a beef and broccoli dish with fried rice. That was about all she thought she could handle. But they had thrown in a couple egg rolls and something else. She opened the something else to see it looked like a piece of chicken. Surprised and delighted, she ate that too—delicious flavors that filled her stomach and eased her stress levels. The trip back to her hotel had unnerved her more than she’d realized. Still, it was easy to relax now that she was back and had a full tummy. Plus she had enough leftovers for breakfast.

  She knew she could be wasting her time by making this trip to Mexico, but, at the same time, she wouldn’t lose anything by being here for four days. She could still work on her laptop.

  Her commitments allowed for some time off, and she was really bad at not taking her holidays as it was. She definitely needed more breaks. But it was hard to do that when there were so many problems to fix. Work problems. Life problems. Emotional problems. Burying her father had been a difficult task. The last thing she wanted to do was bury her brother.

  Glumly she stared at the TV, and the never-ending list of Spanish speaking programs, flipping aimlessly through the channels, avoiding thinking about what a second funeral would cost her emotionally. If it had to happen, it had to happen—she didn’t have much choice. But she really hoped the men would find out something that would lead her to thinking Chris had run away, was truly AWOL. It was much preferable to finding his body, which she would be forced to deal with and to grieve over.

  She contemplated all the options Nelson had brought up as to why her brother might have run. She had to admit a couple possibilities were in there.

  Damn, should have checked on my rental. I bet it’s been stolen already. With a sigh, she decided to do that tomorrow. No way was she stepping outside her hotel, any hotel, at night in this area.

  It was still early as far as any kind of nightlife around town. The men wouldn’t leave the bar for yet another hour at least. They hadn’t confided their plans to her but waiting was hard. She wanted the evening to be over now. For them to call and report in.

  Moody, upset, out of sorts, she prepped for bed. She lay on top of the covers waiting, hating that sense of being dependent on somebody else to contact her. She had a terrible time with that at work too. You’d think people would have the decency to contact her to let her know what was going on. But instead, she lay here, completely frustrated and in the dark.

  Just then her phone rang beside her. It was Nelson. “What did you find out?”

  “Hi. How are you?” he asked in a dry tone. “We’re fine. Thanks for asking.”

  She sneered as she wrote down his Caller ID number. In case I lose this phone like Chris lost his. “I have no time or patience for small talk,” she said, “when I’m waiting for news about my brother. I highly doubt I’ll have any patience anytime soon.”

  He groaned. “Are you always so serious?”

  “Are you drunk?” she asked in response. “Because that question you just asked doesn’t make sense. Think about the subject matter regarding why I’m down here.”

  He sighed. “We found out your brother was here at the bar a week ago.”

  Shock wrapped around her heart. She sat upright. “Seriously?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Silence.

  “That’s why you chose that hotel, isn’t it?”

  She winced. “Okay, I wondered if this was the hotel he stayed at.”

  “Why would you wonder that?”

  “Because he sent me a text telling me that he was at the Wayward End.”

  “But that’s not the hotel you’re staying at,” he protested.

  “No, but it is the bar right beside it.”

  “But lots of hotels are up and down that street.”

  “I know that,” she said, “but this was the closest one. I figured it was a place to start.”

  “True enough,” he said. “He was at the bar a week ago. He was also at the bar every night for the previous six nights before that. And, before you ask, they haven’t seen him since. And no they didn’t see him with anyone either. Male or female.”

  “Oh,” she said in a small voice, her heart sinking. She sank back onto the bed. “So we have no idea where he went from there?”

  “No,” Nelson said. “We’re still here at the bar. I just came out to the back alley to let you know. We’ve had a couple drinks, just mingling with the locals. They won’t take too kindly if we ask too many questions.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “So what’s next then?”

  “We’ll probably try every place on the strip, see if anybody else has seen him. What we need is to have a sighting between now and the last time he was here.”

  “And yet, if he left because of trouble,” she said, “he won’t be hanging around, will he?”

  “No, he won’t. But we need to know what hotel he stayed at and when he checked out or was he staying somewhere other than a hotel? Either way we need to know. Then we’ll take a look at how he could have left town. Either rented a car, hopped a bus, hitchhiked, something,” Nelson said. “Somebody never disappears completely.”

  “At least you hope not, and, the last I heard, he was at the Wayward End,” she said. “As far as I know, my brother didn’t have the skills to disappear completely. So, if he is gone, I would suspect foul play.”

  “But we aren’t going there,” he said. “At least not yet.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I could call the local rental companies and see if they have any record of him.”

  “You could,” he said. “Good luck with that. It’s late Friday night.”

  “Right, of course.”

  “Get some sleep,” he said. “We’ll see you in the morning.”

  At that, she brightened. “Bright and early?”

  “Not too bright and early,” he said. “Depends how late we stay out drinking.”

  “Yeah. It’s a tough job.” A sour note entered her voice.

  “You could have stayed home,” he said, “but, with your wandering around, asking questions with that photo, it was definitely getting some attention.”

  “Isn’t that what we want?” she asked.

  “Not if it’s the wrong kind of attention,” he said. “Think about it. If there is foul play involved, what are the chances that same person who might have made your brother disappear permanently is still around, and now he may have to get rid of his sister, who’s sticking her nose in where it doesn’t belong?”

  She sucked in her breath. “I never thought I would be in danger from something like that.”

  “No.” His voice softened. “Of course you didn’t. You’re focused on finding your brother. But we don’t always like the answers we do find. And sometimes, when we stir the pot, it’s a hornet’s nest instead. And there are consequences to that. Now, please, get some sleep tonight. I’ll call you in the morning.” And with that he hung up.

  She didn’t like this one bit. Nothing about that call helped. It just made her feel even more useless. Well, enough of that. She pulled out a pad of paper and jotted down notes of things they could do to find out if her brother had left town. He had to have gone someplace. And he had to get there somehow. Buses, taxis, planes, and honestly, he could have left by boat. She frowned as she thought about that. He could have gone with a friend who rented a boat. He could have hitchhiked, like Nelson said. The options were too vast for her comfort.

  And maybe Chris had booked it from Ensenada. It was only ninety miles south of the base in Coronado, which was just a hop, skip and jump away from San Diego, where Elizabeth bought her new home. They’d both spent a lot of time down in Mexico with their father. They had family down here too. Distant relatives but family nonetheless. Why hadn’t she considered that in the first place?

  She pulled out her phone and checked the family contacts and sent off a couple messages, asking if anybody had seen Chris. Most of them should be asleep by now, but several texted her back and said they hadn’t seen him in months. Of course, they wanted the inevitable questions answered.

  She worked up a quick, short answer and she copied her message to them all, telling them nobody had seen or heard from Chris in seven days. The responses that came back afterward were anything from Oh, my God to Ha! He’s probably off with a girl for some R&R. And of course, that was very much who her brother was.

  Skunk had a female following which Elizabeth had never understood. But he’d been happy, so she hadn’t worried too much. She’d like to think he wasn’t leaving a whole lot of little Skunks behind, but she couldn’t guarantee it. And it wasn’t her job to police him or his love life. She’d only wanted to be a loving sister.

  Finally with everything done that she could possibly think to do, she curled up in bed and crashed.

  *

  With Taylor beside Nelson, they moved from bar to bar, casually asking the waitresses the same questions they’d been asking everyone. Nelson knew that some of them would have taken particular notice, but, at the same time, that was what he and Taylor were here for. They read body language as well as listened to people when speaking. If Nelson had to stir the pot a little bit, then stir it he would. Somebody had answers; somebody had seen Chris; somebody knew more than they were saying.

  At the last stop, the waitress took one look at the photo Nelson still carried, the printed copy Elizabeth had left behind, and the waitress tapped it. “Are you looking for him?”

  “Yeah, we are,” Taylor said with a smile. It always amazed him when he was in Mexico how many people spoke English here. Sure there was enough Spanish flying around him to remind him of where he was but it was easier to question people if they spoke the same language. “Have you seen him?”

  “He was a regular here for a few nights,” she said. “Haven’t seen him in a while though.”

  “Can you tell me what a while means?”

  She thought about it. “Six nights ago, maybe five nights.”

  Nelson straightened slowly. “That soon, huh? I figured maybe you hadn’t seen him for at least a week.”

  She shook her head. “No. He came in a disguise the last night I saw him, but I still recognized him. I kind of laughed at him, told him that he should have done a better job dying his hair. He got serious and said he’d fix it. I don’t know if anything was really wrong, but he looked pretty serious.”

  “That’s interesting. Not too handy with hair dye, I guess,” Taylor said with a grin.

  The waitress rolled her eyes. “I don’t imagine too many men are, at least straight men,” she said with a laugh. “He didn’t look happy that I had recognized him. He paid for his drink and walked out.”

  “You haven’t seen him since then?”

  She shook her head. “Nah, but that’s the way this part of town is. People come and people go.” She dropped off their mugs of beer, waited for their money, and then she took off with a hefty tip in her pocket.

  Nelson and Taylor looked at each other, but neither spoke. They both knew what the other was thinking. The disguise meant Chris had remained here in Ensenada, testing the waters to see if he could fit in without being noticed. When that had failed, he’d obviously gone to a different tack.

  It also gave credence to NCIS’s position that he had disappeared willingly. Not good. The last thing they wanted was something like that to happen. If Chris had a good reason, it was all to the good, but it would still require an investigation by the NCIS.

  As they drank their beers slowly, just looking around at the patrons, Nelson realized just what a hard lot they were. He thought this was one of the better bars on the strip, but it had seen better days—much better days. The clientele had dropped the later the hour. The Spanish became thicker, more guttural as more beer was drunk.

  As they got up to leave, two men stepped in front of them. “Strangers?”

  Nelson nodded, his hands casually resting in his pocket. “Yep.”

  “You should buy the house a drink.”

  Taylor snorted. “There’s got to be forty people in here. Another time perhaps.” He brushed past the men; Nelson followed. The two stopped outside and looked around. There was a seediness to the shadows, and muted music from the multiple bars could be heard. A reek of alcohol permeated the air.

  “Nothing more here for us to do tonight,” Taylor muttered, and they walked back toward their hotel, still about ten blocks down the road. As it happened, they were in the hotel beside Elizabeth’s, but then there were four of them here with a couple of bars in between. “You going to update her?”

  Nelson nodded. “In the morning. That’ll be soon enough.” He heard an odd sound just as the streetlight beside him went out. The men looked up at it, looked at each other, both their faces turning grim. They separated slightly and continued to walk. They knew the light hadn’t gone out on its own. Those weird splintering sounds happened when somebody throws a rock at a streetlight. Nelson could feel the hair on the back of his neck rising, waiting for the attack. But, when it came, it was from in front of them. That was new and different.

  A woman, looking like a motorcycle gang mama in full-leather, stepped in front of them. She held up a hand, stopping their progress. “Why are you asking about him?” she asked, her voice hard.

  “He’s gone missing,” Nelson said quietly. “He has family who’s worried about him.”

  The woman shook her head. “That’s not what he said. He said he had no one.”

  Nelson frowned. “Maybe he didn’t think his sister was worth mentioning. He’s still grieving for a father he lost recently.”

  But the woman wasn’t having anything to do with it. “He’s gone, and you two need to disappear and to stay gone too.”

  “And if we don’t,” Taylor asked, “then what?”

  She brought out a switchblade so fast it was easy to see she was comfortable using it and probably had threatened more than a few people with it. “People who piss me off,” she said, “end up dead.”

  “We have no intention of ending up dead.” Nelson’s tone was cool and hard. “We’re after our friend, so, if you know something, I highly suggest you tell us.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you suggest,” she snapped. “We don’t like anybody asking questions around here.”

  Nelson heard her backup coming behind them. He exchanged a hard glance with Taylor. “It’s worth money if you do know something,” he said with a casual shrug as if he didn’t give a crap about her or her people behind them. “And often it’s much easier to cooperate than it is to take a beating.”

  “I won’t be the one taking the beating,” she said with a sneer. “And we got money. We don’t need your bribery money.”

  “Paying for information is hardly bribery,” Taylor said mildly. He shifted his stance to the balls of his feet even as he stepped sideways so he faced the new threat coming up behind them.

  She laughed at him. “Do you really think that fancy footwork will help? Only two are here right now, but I can get another half-dozen to come in less than five seconds.”

  “And why would you do that?” Nelson asked. “What are you so afraid of? Just to talk to us? You can’t even handle the streets alone? You have to bring in your little bodyguards?”

  Her back stiffened, and she glared at him in outrage.

  But he already had her number. “You’re just the queen in the streets, but you’re nobody without all this backup.”

  She jumped forward and tried to poke him with her switchblade.

  He grabbed her wrist, flipped it around and slammed her arm behind her back, popping the switchblade from her hand into his, holding it up against her throat as he turned to show her bodyguards who had the upper hand. Both men stopped in their places.

  “Like I said, you’re nothing without your bodyguards,” he sneered. “And here we were being nice. We’re looking for one of our own, and we won’t stop until we find him.” He shoved her forward so she was moving toward her two henchmen.

  She swung around and glared at him.

  He held up the switchblade and said, “You forgot this.” He flipped it toward her.

  She caught it midair by the handle her glare glacial now.

  “Now the offer still stands,” he said with a carelessness to show her that he didn’t give a crap if she wanted to come at him again or not. “We’ll pay for information. He’s wanted and loved. And we want to know what happened to him. And, if something bad happened to him, we want to know that too so we can mete out our own punishment.” And then, in a daring move, he turned his back on her and walked up the hotel stairs.

 

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