Flirting with Disaster Read Online Free PDF Page A

gripped the handle of an old shovel she’d found, because it vaguely resembled a weapon. The fingers of her other hand were looped around the strap of her backpack. Because the pills were in a plastic bag, they’d survived the trip through the river, and she was going to hold on to them no matter what. If she ever got out of here, she was going to make sure she had the evidence that could help take Robert Douglas down, along with every other person who had anything to do with the drug counterfeiting or the sabotage of her plane.
    Then she thought about Adam.
    At first she’d been so thankful he hadn’t been on her plane when it went down, because he might not have survived. But now she realized that he could be in even bigger trouble than she was.
    She didn’t know if Robert Douglas knew that Adam had gotten called away at the last minute and told her to fly on to San Antonio without him. But just the fact that Adam knew about the drugs was enough to put him in danger the moment Robert found out that he was still alive. She wanted desperately to warn him, but she had no way to do it. Adam had traveled to a farm an hour from Santa Rios, and she didn’t know the name of the woman whose baby he’d gone to deliver. She didn’t know when he was going to return. And she was terrified to show her own face for fear that Robert would find out that she’d survived the crash and come after her again.
    Adam, wherever you are, please be careful.
    After slipping into Santa Rios and making that phone call, Lisa had come back out here, and now she’d spent most of the night hugging this tree, drifting in and out of sleep, waiting for whoever came up that road. Since it was a strong possibility that Dave had called the authorities, she couldn’t go back inside the bunkhouse. She’d be a sitting duck. At least out here, if danger approached she could see it coming and have a fighting chance of getting away.
    Right. Just her and her trusty shovel. The perfect weapon against men with machine guns. If only she had a real weapon. Unfortunately, Mexican officials didn’t take kindly to anyone entering their country with firearms, so her Glock was currently sitting in her dresser drawer in her apartment in San Antonio.
    Of course, she should have been miles away from here already. She should have found a different place to rest and recuperate before she formulated some kind of plan to get out of Santa Rios and back across the border. Instead, she’d come back here because she just couldn’t shake the ridiculous fantasy that it wouldn’t be corrupt Santa Rios officials who came up that road. It would be Dave.
    How deluded had that been?
    This was the place where she’d told him she’d be, so this was where she’d stayed. But she’d been crazy to believe, even for a second, that he’d drop everything and leave his little slice of middle-class heaven to come rescue her. Logically, she’d known that the minute she hung up the phone. Emotionally, she’d continued to hold on to a fragile thread of hope that kept her glued to this tree, watching and waiting.
    Maybe he hadn’t been able to leave town right away. Maybe he hadn’t been able to get a flight out. Maybe he’d had car trouble.
    And maybe he just didn’t give a damn.
    She was starting to face facts. She’d thought that Dave had only two options: send the authorities or come himself. Instead, he’d chosen to do nothing at all. She should have been happy about that, since it meant she was probably safe for the moment from the people who were trying to kill her. Instead, his indifference cut her right to the quick.
    In the past eleven years, she’d adopted a string of policies that had served her well: Live for the moment. What you see is what you get. Don’t count those chickens, because hatching is the exception, not the rule. Essentially, all a person could do was take every day as it came, stay on top, stay in control.
    Right now, she had no control over