Free Suicide Mission by William W. Johnstone

somebody can bring you anything you need.”
    She nodded. She seemed to be calming down. It probably helped that they were putting some distance between them and the border.
    They couldn’t go far enough to get completely out of reach of the cartel, though. Those evil bastards had connections all across the country.
    Catalina probably hadn’t thought about it yet, but she might have to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder for cartel gunmen, depending on the importance of the information she possessed.
    â€œYou have any idea how those fellas found you?”
    She shook her head as she kept the pickup at a steady pace now, three or four miles above the speed limit.
    â€œNo. I thought I’d be safe in a church. Someone must have spotted me and called in a tip. I’m not sure how they knew it was me, though. I didn’t think they have any pictures of me to spread around, just my name and description.”
    â€œIt doesn’t really matter,” Bill said. “Those fellas were after you, that’s for sure.”
    â€œYes, I recognized two of them. They worked for the same men Marty worked for.”
    â€œMarty . . . ?”
    â€œI told you, Martin Chavez. My friend. The one they killed while he was trying to get me safely across the border.”
    â€œI’m sorry for your loss,” Bill said. “Chavez was the computer guy for the cartel?”
    â€œOne of them. He worked for the local branch, for a man named Pablo Estancia.” Catalina’s lip curled with disdain. “An animal, I should say. A pig.”
    â€œYeah, I’ll bet he’s not a very nice fella. All this trouble, it’s about your friend Marty’s computer work?”
    â€œAnd something called El Nuevo Sol.”
    â€œBut you don’t know what that is?”
    â€œI don’t have any idea,” she said. She seemed to hesitate, then took one hand off the wheel and slid it into one of the pockets of the tight jeans she wore. When she brought it out she was holding something. She held it out toward Bill and went on, “But the explanation might be on this.”
    The thing she held was a flash drive, not even as big as one of Bill’s fingers. But his instincts told him that whatever data was stored on it, there was a good chance the information was worth killing for.
    His instincts warned him of something else, or maybe he just heard an engine being gunned somewhere behind them. Whatever prompted him to do it, he turned his head and looked back along the divided highway.
    A black SUV was coming up fast behind them, and everything about it screamed trouble.

C HAPTER 11
    Bill would have taken the flash drive from her for safekeeping, but before he could, she stuck it back in her pocket. As tight as those jeans were, he didn’t figure he could dig it out without quite a bit of trouble, not to mention embarrassment. She might fight him for it, too, and he couldn’t risk that while they were speeding along the highway with her at the wheel, weaving in and out of traffic.
    â€œSomebody else is after us, aren’t they?” she asked as she glanced at the rearview mirror.
    â€œLooks like it,” Bill admitted.
    He pulled the Browning from its holster, dropped the double-stack magazine, and topped it off with shells he took from his pocket. There was still one in the chamber, so when he slid the magazine home, the gun contained fourteen rounds in all.
    The Browning was a classic. As a rule the trigger pull was a little stiff, but he had worked his over until it was smooth as silk. And its high capacity in 9mm was the main reason he had carried it for years.
    There were no rules in a gunfight. You never knew how many people you’d have trying to kill you or how many rounds you’d need to deal with them. So more, generally, was better. A simple but true concept.
    â€œThere’s a crossover comin’ up,” Bill said, pointing it out to