Wind River Undercover

Book 9: Wind River Valley

by Lindsay McKenna

Genres: Western Romance

Synopsis

Hide in plain sight. For native Guatemalan Ana Navarro, nothing is more satisfying than capturing drug traffickers for the U.S. DEA. Her career has always been her focus, but just as she’s beginning to yearn for something more, she’s given a brandnew assignment with DEA agent Gabe Whitcomb. In his well-worn Stetson and boots, he’s part cowboy and part law enforcement, a combination Ana finds irresistibly sexy. But desire has no place on a job as dangerous as this one, because the drug lord they’re after is the violent fugitive who killed her father … Gabe’s worked some treacherous assignments in the past, but this one raises every alarm—and not just because his partner is a gorgeous woman with the grace of a cat and a sniper’s deadly aim. He and Ana are being sent to the Wind River Valley where he grew up—and where his adoptive parents still own a ranch just eighty miles from the Elson family, who have been recruited into the ruthless Gonzalez cartel. Posing as new ranch-owners and ingratiating themselves with the Elsons to uncover evidence, Ana and Gabe can only fight the heat flaring between them until they realize that building a life together, here in Wind River, is worth risking everything for …

Release date: March 31, 2020

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

April 1

Anna Navaro lay on her belly, covered overhead by pungent-smelling juniper boughs. Sharp little Southern California desert stones bit into her thighs and knees, below the Kevlar vest she wore, and were like needles bruising her skin through the tough military camouflage duck fabric. Darkness surrounded her. Her mission for the Drug Enforcement Agency, the DEA, had taken her to an area south of Descanso, California. It was quiet except for some yips from coyotes on the prowl around the rocky hills surrounding her. She pushed a strand of her dark black hair away from her eyes.

Through the infrared scope on her rifle, she followed three gray pickups down a dirt road toward a nearby dirt airstrip located below her position. The Mexican border wasn’t far away, and a plane flying across it was expected to drop drugs. Six drug soldiers would be waiting to haul off the goods when they landed on the US side of the border. The tiny radio in her left ear quietly broke the silence and she heard Border Patrol taking five vehicles—three following out of sight behind the enemy and two in front of them on that road, also unseen—to box them in and capture them.

It was a thin, narrow valley, the slopes steep, boulders the size of cars, filled with thousands of spidery-armed ocotillos. There was no way for the druggies to escape this time. The corners of her mouth pulled grimly upward, watching the whole scene play out below her hide. With her rifle resting on a tripod, all she had to do was lie on the ground, remain hidden, communicate what was going on, and continually survey the surrounding area to make sure no other drug soldiers were in the hills waiting to jump her Border Patrol agents. The night air chilled her even though she wore a Kevlar vest and a heavy dark green Guatemalan Marine military jacket. It was not that warm in the dead of night, especially for someone from a hot, humid jungle country who was dropped into the dry Southwest of the US to work in the chilly mountains above San Diego. Still, her country’s jacket was better than nothing.

Her mind drifted for a moment, although her gaze hovered near the scope, watching the Border Patrol close in on the unsuspecting pickups that had just loaded a tremendous amount of bales and smaller packages into the beds of the vehicles. The drug plane, a single fixed wing, took off, swiftly gaining altitude and banking toward the border. There was satisfaction in her that whatever was in those trucks wouldn’t find its way onto this country’s streets. She spoke into the mic and reported the trucks moving onto the dirt road and away from the airstrip, heading east at twenty-five miles an hour. She knew the druggies wanted to get onto a highway ten miles from that point and then scatter east and west.

At twenty-seven years old, with years of experience in Guatemala busting drug runners and taking down major players as a sniper, she found this type of work in the US boring in comparison. The DEA had invited her up to the US based on reports from the Guatemala military that she was their best “force multiplier,” someone who could take this type of assignment and carry it out with success. She didn’t mind taking out higher-ups or a drug lord himself in her country, either, if she got the chance.

After all, her beloved father, Marine General Marcos Navaro, had been shot and killed by a drug lord sniper when she was fifteen years old. His murder had changed the course of her life as well that of her mother, Maria, a prosecuting attorney. It was on that horrible day that Anna swore to destroy the cancer of drug lords killing her people in Guatemala. Later, she went to Marine sniper school in the United States, learned her trade and craft, and came back to her country and applied that knowledge with deadly precision.

She listened intently, hearing something light-footed scuttling near the tree she was hiding beneath. Her gold-brown eyes were well adjusted to the half-moon light that reminded her of a watercolor, a thin wash across the dark, shadowy desert hill landscape. Sensing movement, she lifted her chin, twisting her head slowly to the left. It was a mother raccoon with six kits in tow, heading off the hill and down to a nearby creek below. They were all in a line, like a gaggle of geese. Probably to hunt for freshwater mussels, crawdads, fish, or other unnamed denizens that lived beneath the surface as well. The babies were probably four or five weeks old, cute, fuzzy, curious with black, shiny eyes, but religiously following their big, ten-pound mother who waddled and wove between the bushes, ocotillos, and junipers toward her objective.

Anna returned her attention to the drama playing out less than half a mile away and didn’t see any other human activity. Her heart, however, was elsewhere. Of late, she’d wake up feeling lonely. There was a gnawing sensation in her chest, and it would come and go at times when she wasn’t focused on her job. Lonely? Her? She was well respected by the Marines in her own country, and here in the US by the DEA agency. They were glad to have her on assignment with them. She’d been here a year, mostly tramping through the Southern California desert, finding drug-drop off points and then patiently waiting to discover where the drug soldiers would pick them up for distribution. Then, she would coordinate with the DEA, ATF, and Border Patrol with her information. With a sniper scope she could hone in miles away on a target and give them vital, real-time information as well as location and movement directions of the quarry. Then, another group would be netted along with the drugs they were carrying on them.

Pushing her sense of loneliness away, she grudgingly admitted it had started stalking her even while she was on the job in the dark of the night. That bothered her a lot. She had to devote a hundred percent of her focus on her mission, not on some errant emotion that would steal upon her in quieter moments. Lonely for what? Her nostrils flared, drinking in the dry scent of the surrounding vegetation as she kept her gloved hand near the trigger mechanism. She carried a pistol on her right thigh in case she got jumped in her hide.

The Border Patrol vehicle boxed in the three drug pickups from both ends after they emerged from around a long curve. She saw the drug soldiers braking, leaping out of their trucks, running away, not fighting. The Border Patrol officers had more men and women, and very quickly, without a shot being fired, they captured all those who had fled. They cuffed them with plastic ties tightened around their wrists, hands behind their backs, and made them sit down after searching them for weapons. A bright light carried by one Border Patrol truck flashed on from its position on its rooftop. That was to give the agents the light they needed to frisk the soldiers thoroughly, take information from each of them, and then march them into the awaiting trucks and take them back to their station for processing.

Her job was done. She signed off with the Border Patrol and they released her. Rolling slowly to her left side, she pushed a thick juniper limb gently behind her shoulders. In moments, she had shut down her special sniper scope, and then waited, listening intently to the surrounding area. Anna knew these hills were alive with possible enemies and she could become a target herself. Her vehicle, a black, dusty pickup with no markings, was a quarter of a mile away, hidden behind a very old juniper tree.

Pulling the thin leather flap off her watch, she saw it was 0300. Time to close up shop for the night. She would drive back to the DEA headquarters in La Mesa, a suburb east of sprawling San Diego, and write up her report. After that, she could go home and sleep for the rest of the day. Depending upon the time of year, she would set her alarm for dusk, shower, eat dinner, and head to HQ. There, she’d receive her nightly orders, pick up her weapons and gear from the underground basement armory, and find her dusty black truck parked within the cyclone-fenced area. Then she would drive out to her hide to set up surveillance once more. Drug runners usually liked working at night, hiding like the vermin they were from daylight hours.

Slowly easing to her black-booted feet, she pulled her black baseball cap from her pocket and settled it on her head. Her desert-colored camouflage clothes faded into the surrounding night. Never relaxing, Anna surveyed the area for several minutes, listening, inhaling scents, noting the direction of the breeze, her hearing honed like a wolf ’s ears, trying to pick up, sense, or see anything that was minutely out of place. Because what was out of place she regarded instantly as a potential enemy waiting to take her out. She leaned slowly over to pick out dried plant material that stuck on her thigh and had rubbed into her skin for hours on end, dropping them back into the dry, hard, rocky soil. Easing upward, satisfied that everything was in order around her, she walked soundlessly, like the jaguars that lived in her country, pistol locked and loaded, safety off, and ready to fire at a moment’s notice, if need be. She had half a mile to walk to get her ride home.

The DEA HQ was busy, but it always was. They handled so many drug-related missions out of the cinder-block, single-story building painted a Southwest tan color that it had surprised Anna at first. It was like a squat beehive, busy 24/7/365. It was now near dawn, the horizon a dull reddish-brown polluted-looking color, indicating that soon enough, there might be a pretty eastern dawn. Anna looked forward to that quiet time of day. She loved the silence, as if the world were holding her breath before putting on a spectacular sunrise provided there were some clouds to frame the horizon.

On her way to the women’s locker room, she stopped first at the armory and placed her weapons, vest, and ammo into the hands of the armorer on duty. Her rifle would be cleaned and ready to go when she picked it up the next evening.

Leaving the basement area, she climbed the stairs to the first-floor locker room. The military clothes she wore were dusty and dirty. In no time, she was stepping into a hot, delicious shower, washing her long black hair that gleamed with reddish highlights among the strands. She always carried a special lemony-scented bar of Herbaria soap her mother sent her every three months, to wash her hair. It left the strands luxuriously fed with natural oils that were contained within it. The other bar was orange citrus and oatmeal, and Anna loved that it not only gently removed the sweat and dust, but also the dead scales off her skin. She later stepped out of the shower, a dual fragrance of lemon and orange surrounding her. Opening her locker, she began to dry off.

“Hey, Anna.”

Looking up, naked, her wet foot resting on the bench in front of her locker as she dried it, she saw it was Vicky Brown, part of the office staff, peeking her head inside the door. “Hey yourself. Come on in. What are you doing in here at this time?”

The woman was in her late twenties like herself, dressed in a light gray two-piece suit, a cream silk tee beneath it. Her short blond hair was cut in a pixie style. Vicky grinned mischievously as she stepped aside to allow the women’s locker room door to automatically close and lock behind her.

“Have you heard the whispers?” she asked in a low voice, looking around the quiet area.

“No one’s here,” Anna promised, continuing to towel dry off her other foot. “And no, there’s no bugs in here, either. What rumors?” Usually, Vicky was at her desk promptly at 0900, five days a week. She was married to Tom, part of the planning staff at the HQ, and they had two children, a girl and boy who were five and three.

“Got called in early. I hear you participated in a major drug bust this morning. Congrats.” She came and sat down primly on the end of the wooden bench anchored to the gray concrete floor.

Anna opened her locker and pulled out a dark navy blue tee, socks of the same color, her Levi’s, and a pair of brown leather loafers. After shimmying quickly into her jeans, she straightened and threaded her fingers through her damp hair, pushing it across her shoulders and down her back. Anna settled the blue tee in place.

“It’s that bust you called in this morning. I’m hearing from the night crew that it’s a whopper.”

Giving her friend an evil look, Anna said, “Wow. Think I’ll get a raise from it?” That was a common joke. They were federal employees. They got cost-of-living raises if the president okayed it. Raises weren’t normal except when an agent evolved upwardly from fieldwork and was assigned to management. She was a field agent, with no wish to evolve anywhere near pushing papers around on a desk eight hours a day. Besides, she was “on loan” to the DEA in a three-year contract agreement with the Guatemalan government. They wanted her back, pronto, but the USA had a lot of behind-the-scenes clout and wanted her to stay put on their soil instead.

Vicky chortled. “No. But they’re saying they found over a hundred and fifty pounds of packages of cocaine in those pickup trucks.”

Whistling, Anna straightened and walked over to the dressing room area, picking up a hair dryer. “That is a lot.”

“There’s more,” Vicky said. “They’ve found fifty pounds of fentanyl. That’s a huge amount!”

She turned on the hair dryer, lifting her thick, damp strands. “Fifty? Seriously?”

“Yes. A scary, phenomenal amount. Unheard of, until now, sadly. China was the one making it and sending it through the U.S. Postal Service. Now, it looks like the drug lords in Central and South America are making it, too. Do you realize how many people could die if that fentanyl is laced in other drugs they’re taking?”

“That’s so frightening, Vicky. You could kill a million people with that much.”

“Opioid-addicted people often get drugs laced with that deadly substance. You’re right.”

She leaned down, swishing her hair once more, the dryer whistling loudly, drying the straight strands. “I’m sure someone will figure out just how many people’s lives were saved tonight. Part of the stats they keep.”

“But it all was hinging on you.”

Shrugging, Anna said, “It’s my job.”

“You’re good at it.” She gave her a proud look. “You’re our Wonder Woman here at the DEA.”

Snorting, she continued moving thick strands. “We had five Border Patrol trucks with us to take those druggies down. I was just the spotter. The force multiplier,” Anna said, and she flashed Vicky a savage grin laden with black humor, wanting to give credit to the others, as well as the Border Patrol.

“Well, everyone’s talking about it. They’re excited and stunned.” She rubbed her hands across her thighs and stood up. “Director Hardiman sent me down here to tell you to come to his office at 1500 today. I know that’s cutting your sleep short, but he wants to meet with you.”

Arched brows rising, Anna turned off the noisy machine. “Probably wants to give me an attaboy clap on the shoulder and a double handshake.” Anna tried to keep the derision out of her voice. She appreciated the management pat on the head, but she knew how good she was at her job. No need for outside praise.

“Maybe,” Vicky said, heading for the door. “Hope it’s a raise instead of a handshake, though.”

Laughter erupted from her as she tucked in her tee and slid a brown leather belt around her waist. “Sure. Don’t hold your breath, Vicky.”

She slipped through the opened door, laughing with her. “I won’t. But you DESERVE it! Maybe it’s a promotion?”

An even louder and noisy snort came from Anna as she slipped on her shoes, grabbed her leather purse, and slung it across her left shoulder. “In your dreams. Have a good day, okay? Stay out of trouble, unlike me.”

“Yeah, after seeing the director, you get to have an early dinner and off to the desert in your black gear to hunt more druggies.”

“Roger that,” she said, shutting the locker door. What she wished for right now was a change from the boring missions she’d been assigned to since arriving here a year earlier. Anna knew the DEA wasn’t about to move her into any other position. Being a sniper wasn’t for everyone and it took a lot of stealth, an understanding of one’s environment, knowledge of how to track, and being one hell of an operator, not to mention a 4.0 shooter. She knew the present Guatemalan general in charge of the Marines had not wanted to release her to the States, but given the US’s largesse, a Central or South American country couldn’t say no to a humanitarian package deal they were receiving in trade for her services.

Anna didn’t blame the general. Her country was very poor, and every US dollar that flowed into it was a good thing. She hated the idea of being the modus operandi of currency, however. Feeling tiredness pull at her, she was happy to be going home and hitting the sack. Who knew what lay ahead of her when she met her boss at 1500 today? She cringed, not wanting an attaboy.

April 2

Gabe Whitcomb forced himself to sit quietly, looking relaxed even though he wasn’t. His boss, Randy Hardiman, fifty-five years old and his San Diego DEA supervisor, was at his desk, focused on a stack of papers that begged his attention. The midafternoon sun shed bright southern light into the man’s corner office, showing his importance to the HQ.

While Ace, Gabe’s eight-year-old Belgian Malinois, played in the DEA dog pen in an air-conditioned area of HQ, Gabe scrolled through his iPhone for text messages from his old haunt, an undercover mission that had lasted two years. He grimaced inwardly while keeping his expression neutral. A lot of his old friends from the past were glad to hear he was done with that assignment, which had taken him into the snake pit of Tijuana and other towns along the border with the US.

There was a text message from his adoptive mother, Maud: When are you coming home? We want to celebrate! Don’t you feel like Persephone coming out of Hades and standing on the Earth during springtime?

Gabe smiled inwardly. In his business, no one knew more about body and facial language than a survivor of a long-term undercover, covert mission. He was a master of it. And while it had served him well, saved his life innumerable times, he was free of it—finally. He texted back: I’m a male Persephone? I’m with my boss right now. I hope to find out what my next assignment will be. He’s already promised me some “away” time with all of you. As soon as I find out, I’ll call you.

His adoptive parents, Steve and Maud Whitcomb, had raised him from when he was three years old and a foster family didn’t want him anymore. He had very few memories of that time, but one thing that had always stuck in his chest like a warm embrace was the love that spilled from Maud and Steve as they adopted him immediately. He became part of a noisy, affectionate family. He was the fourth child to be adopted by them, his whole life changing as he moved from San Diego, California, to Wind River, Wyoming, to grow up on a huge, sprawling cattle lease ranch on the western border of the state. All he knew was love as a child in that incredible family. They didn’t care if he was Hispanic.

Maud had spent a lot of time with private detectives, trying to ferret out the mothers of the four children they called their sons and daughters. She and Steve had wanted them to know their family roots, understanding how important it was to have them. Gabe’s mother, whoever she was, had placed him in a cardboard box on the steps of a firehouse—that was his beginning in life. A firefighter had opened the back door that led to the trash bin area and nearly stepped on the box, not expecting it to be there. Gabe had no memory of that awful time. He’d seen enough orphans in Mexico, lost to the world, parentless, their safety net gone, their loveless lives, making them horribly vulnerable in the world of the drug trade. It sickened him.

Looking up, he saw it was 1455, or 2:55 P.M. Hardiman said his new partner would show up at 1500. He glanced toward the open door and saw people walking quietly up and down the pale blue tile floor. There wasn’t much noise, just people with their heads down, focused and intent.

What would his next assignment be? He’d spent the last year in Tijuana; before that, he’d been in Guatemala. He wanted to know because he’d told Hardiman months earlier in a clandestine meeting that this was his last undercover job. He missed his family. He missed home. And only when he’d gone undercover did that become abundantly clear to him.

He tried to shrug off and ignore that his biological mother abandoned him, for whatever reason. That was an open wound in him whether he wanted it to be or not. Living in the scum of Tijuana slums as a middle-level drug buyer and seller, he saw families torn apart, orphans by the handful, and the dregs of society surrounding him, all struggling just to survive to the next morning.

God, how he wanted to go home, wanted to smell that clean, unpolluted Wyoming air, inhale the sweet scent of grass growing a foot a day in the spring, hear the lowing of cattle that was like a song to him, and the snort of a good horse between his legs. He wanted Ace to enjoy the last half of his life in safety and just be a dog, not an IED specialist. He really missed his family, his siblings, Andy who was thirty, Skylar, now twenty-eight, Luke, who was twenty-nine. Sky was like him, of Hispanic blood, although Maud and Steve and he suspected that each of them had had one unknown parent who was Caucasian. They both had golden skin, not the darker, reddish skin of a Hispanic who was a pureblood. Luke and Andy were Caucasian. They’d all had their genetic map from Ances-tory. com. And yes, it showed Gabe was Hispanic on one side and British and Irish on the other. He supposed it was his father who was Irish. Gabe had brown-reddish hair and gray eyes. Neither were hallmarks of his Hispanic heritage. When undercover, that part of him was key. He spoke Spanish like he was born to it, which he was. He had the color of skin that drug lords preferred. They wanted mules and lower-status males of Hispanic blood who tended never to question anyone. They just bent their backs and carried the loads they’d been assigned for hundreds of years in Central and South America, without rebelling. Without getting out of that prison. And it was a prison, Gabe thought, pushing all thoughts of his unknown parentage away. With his lighter skin, he could pass without notice. Border Patrol definitely profiled, no question.

It was 1500. He looked expectantly at the open door and the hall. After placing his iPhone on OFF, he slipped it into the pocket of his plaid shirt. To this day, he wore cowboy shirts with pearl snaps and mostly plaids and leather boots. His straw hat sat on a chair next to him. His belt buckle was the only thing he allowed of his “real” life to follow him into undercover. He’d been on the teen rodeo circuit in Wyoming, riding bareback broncs, winning a state championship at seventeen. That well-worn gold buckle was a part of him, of who he was, of what he loved to do. He liked being around cattle and horses. And he was looking forward to thirty days of leave to do just that. There was no way Hardiman was going to drop him into another assignment without a good rest from the last harrowing one. That wasn’t DEA policy.

Gabe caught movement and switched his glance to the doorway. There was a Hispanic woman with long black hair coming toward them. She. . .