The Mercenary

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  She smiled softly and finished the task. She murmured over the cut on his shoulder. She sifted her fingers through the hair on his chest. She stepped up to him, fitting her lush curves against him, catching her breath audibly when he ran his hands down her back, finally stopping to settle on the seductive flare of her hips.

  Her hair streamed over his arm as he bent her back, tasting that spot on her throat where the cross carefully nestled, always guarding, always protecting. And lower. Exploring the taut, golden skin curving over her shoulders. Adoring the tight crests of her breasts, the warmth of the valley between.

  A soft sound escaped her lips as he spread his shirt on the thick grass and lowered her onto it. Her arms lifted, silently beckoning when he stopped, nearly undone by the sight of her beneath him.

  Wanton. Soft. Innocent. Strong. She was all those things, and so many more. Whether he liked it or not, she’d gotten lodged under his skin.

  Then she curled her hands around his neck, pulling his head down to hers. She pressed her lips to his. Murmured his name. Twined one leg around his, and wordlessly offered all that she had to give.

  Tyler took. And, heaven help him, as he sank deep into her body and heard her cry of pleasure, he knew that with her everything was just as it was supposed to be.

  Ten

  He’d left without her.

  The old Jeep that he’d bought in the village was no longer parked outside the house when Marisa awakened, alone, the next morning. She’d immediately gone to the window, only to confirm what her heart already knew.

  He’d gone to Fortaleza de la Fortuna without her.

  Only a few days ago and she would have taken it as the ultimate proof of his distrust. Now Marisa knew better. He believed it was the only way to protect her from harm.

  Clutching the thin sheet to her body, she turned and looked at the bed. They’d walked back several hours before dawn only to fall into that bed there and make love again.

  Even now her cheeks warmed at the things they’d done. The time and the care with which they’d silently explored each other. Seeking out and finding every delicious spot, tarrying in the most decadent of ways…

  She yanked back her hair from her eyes and forced the memory back. It wouldn’t go far. Her nerve endings still hummed, and her body ached in ways that made her skin heat to think about.

  But she had to think about practical matters now. The most important of which was Tyler and the likelihood of him gaining access to la Fortuna without her.

  He wasn’t the only one who had business there.

  She hurriedly cleaned up and dressed in clothes she pinched from Inez. Then she went and found her grandmother, and hugged the old woman goodbye.

  “You are a good girl,” her grandmother said, patting Marisa’s cheek just as she’d done when Marisa was a young girl, leaving a smudge of flour from the bread she’d been kneading. “Your man, he is a fine one. Not like that other.” Her lip curled in disgust. “Belicia was always taken too much with fanciness, with the glossy stuff she would read in the magazines. She wanted you to have what she did not. And her pride kept her from seeing that you were right to be rid of that man.”

  “Abuela, the only reason she welcomed me back is because of Tyler. She thinks he is a rich American because he owned the plane we flew down here. And a rich American, in her mind, is even better than a rich Brit.”

  Her grandmother waved that away with a floury hand. “It is good you concern yourself with your parents’ wishes for you. But not good if it blinds you to your own happiness.”

  “Abuela—”

  “I see the way you look at him, niña. And the way he looks at you. Yet he drives away this morning before the sun.”

  Marisa paused. How did Tyler look at her? “I’m going after him.”

  “On your vacation,” her grandmother said the word disbelievingly.

  Marisa chewed her lip, nodded.

  The old woman clucked and shook her grayed head. “You never were good at untruths, Marisa. But go. Go after your man.”

  “Abuela, he’s not— I mean, Tyler and I—”

  “Shush. You love him, yes?”

  Her lips parted, a denial forming. But the words wouldn’t emerge.

  Her grandmother smiled slightly. “You tell Franco when you see him that his daughter needs her father.”

  Shock coursed through her. “Abuela, why would you think—”

  “This old woman’s eyes still see plenty, niña. You learned about Franco’s fool’s chase and thought to make amends through him. Yes?”

  Marisa leaned back against the table. “I…yes.”

  The old woman shook her head, disgusted. “It is my stubborn Belicia who needs to make amends. First she blames you for saving yourself from that idiot, then she not keep Franco from his own course of idiocy. But Belicia too old to change. But you, niña, you are young. It is easier for you to forgive. Maybe next time you won’t let so many months go before you do.”

  Then she flopped the bread around on the board and attacked it with relish, looking as if she could easily be kneading bread even twenty years from now. But Marisa knew better. Her grandmother wouldn’t be around forever. And Marisa didn’t know what would transpire in the next few days. She believed Tyler would succeed. Of that she had no doubts.

  She only prayed that it wasn’t too late for Franco. And once Tyler knew that she did have an ulterior motive for getting into la Fortuna, he’d probably never trust her again.

  It was an unbearable thought. She leaned down and kissed her grandmother, then quickly left before the old woman could divine even more of Marisa’s thoughts.

  She “borrowed” Diego’s truck as he’d gone out already with their father, salving her conscience with the promise that somehow she’d make sure it was returned to him. And then she drove, as fast as the rough roads and the old truck would allow, after Tyler while her grandmother’s words rang in her ears.

  You love him, yes?

  Tyler didn’t think he’d ever been the focus of quite so many suspicious people at one time. And he’d been in plenty of close fixes before.

  The background information they’d gathered had said most of the people who worked at la Fortuna passed through this cantina at one time or another. But he hadn’t even been able to mention the compound before the closemouthed locals sitting around the tables in the open-air cantina were giving him the evil eye.

  So he ordered a tequila, found a chair at an unoccupied table and sat down. He ignored the stares, the curiosity and the hostility, and after a long moment, he ceased being the center of attention as conversations picked up again.

  Thanks to the tutoring that Marisa had given him while he’d been recuperating, he even managed to recognize some of the words he overhead. But mostly, he knew, they could be plotting fifty ways to skin him alive and he wouldn’t have known it.

  He tossed back the shot, and ordered another, which he didn’t really intend to drink. But slouching over it gave him an opportunity to get a lay of the land.

  There was a gray-haired woman across the cantina talking agitatedly to the bartender. Her voice kept rising despite the shushing the man gave her.

  A trio of young men climbed out of a fire-engine-red pickup that could just as easily have been right back home in Mission Creek. In the truck bed, Tyler could see landscaping equipment. Lots of it. There was a possibility, he thought.

  The woman was yelling now, making it impossible for him to hear anything at all from the trio who’d joined another group at a long table. The bartender waved his hand at her as he placed pitchers of beer on the table for the new arrivals.

  And then the cantina went silent again.

  His neck prickled, even before he looked over and saw who’d done the silencing this time. Marisa. Wearing cutoff jeans and a red shirt tied at her midriff.

  She spotted him. He barely had time to put his chair back on all fours before she dashed over to him and launched herself into his arms, noisily chattering
away in Mezcayan as she pressed kisses to his cheeks.

  He started to push her away, but she wound her arms tighter around his neck. “I’ll forgive you later for this,” she murmured in his ear, then hopped off his lap and headed over to the bar, managing to look sexy and dejected, all at once.

  Tyler reached for his drink and watched as Marisa somehow managed to engage half the place in conversation without earning herself one single look of suspicion. Wearing a pout the size of Texas, she returned to his table and sat down on his lap, bold as you please.

  “What the hell are you doing?” His voice was a whisper in her ear.

  She tossed back her hair and toyed with her bottle of beer. “We’re arguing, husband-mine,” she murmured. “And that woman over there, she’s sympathetic, because she’s arguing with her husband, too.”

  Tyler watched the bartender deliver another round to the long table. “She’s not sitting on her husband’s lap.”

  Marisa looked at him, her eyes full of sharp humor. “Is it bothering you?”

  He clamped his hands over her wriggling hips. “Dammit, Marisa, this isn’t a joke.”

  She hopped up again and burst into tears.

  He blinked. “Marisa—”

  But she’d already thrown herself into the gray-haired woman’s arms, sobbing dramatically. The woman gave him a censorious glare that transcended language.

  He decided maybe he should drink his tequila, after all. The woman clucked and murmured to Marisa as they huddled together. If nothing else, Tyler thought with disbelief, the bartender had gotten a reprieve from the woman’s haranguing.

  He had begun to think he’d have to do something, anything, to get Marisa out of there and come up with an alternate plan to get into la Fortuna, when she suddenly returned to his table, all smiles. She held out her hand, beckoning him. Wondering what rabbit hole he’d fallen down, he went with her.

  Ten minutes later, they were following the gray-haired woman from the cantina through an iron gate situated in an enormous stone wall.

  They were in. Fortaleza de la Fortuna. Slick as you please.

  It was too damn easy, Tyler thought suspiciously. He half expected to hear a gun being cocked on them at any moment. But nobody shouted at them. Nobody pointed. No alarms rang and no dogs charged after them.

  The only sign of Marisa’s nervousness, however, was in the tight clasp of her hand on his as they followed the woman up to an imposing house.

  Hell, Tyler thought as he looked up at the pillared thing, it was a damn mansion. They went in through the back, into a kitchen that was positively crawling with activity. Marisa chattered with the woman as if they were long-lost friends, and Tyler found himself relegated to a chair in a corner of the busy room.

  It looked to him as if they were cooking to feed an army.

  But then, considering the breadth of El Jefe’s terrorism, maybe it was an army.

  Then Marisa came back to him and led him outside, where there was nearly as much activity going on as in the kitchen.

  “Graciela says you can work in the gardens today.” Her words were low, hurried. “There is some sort of big dinner tomorrow night with all the generals. Key people, I guess. It was last minute, and that’s why she was so upset at the cantina. She’s in charge of the kitchen staff and they’re not at all prepared.”

  “And just like that she lets us in here? Even though I’m not Mezcayan.”

  Marisa’s eyes didn’t meet his. “She thinks I’m a chef, but you want us to go back to the States ’cause you can’t seem to find work here, and I don’t want to leave Mezcaya. What can I say? She probably thinks she’s saving a marriage or something, plus she’s got more help for tomorrow night. She said there are quarters for the staff here. She’ll make arrangements. She also said for you to go see Henry and tell him her name. He’s working in the rose gardens right now. He’s in charge of the gardeners.”

  Tyler didn’t care what excuse Marisa used. They were in. And nobody had given them a second glance.

  It seemed that she was more than capable of fending for herself. For now. “Can you cook?”

  “Can you garden?” She leaned up to him, pressed a kiss to his cheek and darted back into the kitchen.

  Tyler slowly turned in a circle. Inside the stone walls, the roads were paved, the grounds immaculately kept. The buildings, aside from the mansion, were all blinding white stucco, with red-tiled roofs. Statuary dotted the lush green lawns. It had a hideous, arrogant beauty to it, he thought, knowing the sordid truth behind the resources that supported such lavishness.

  And somewhere amongst the perfect buildings, the perfect hedges, the perfect garden paths, Lieutenant Colonel Phillip Westin was being held prisoner.

  But not for much longer, Tyler promised silently.

  “How an Americano like you get yourself a girl like that?”

  The voice came from behind him, and Tyler turned to see a young man leaning against the wall, arms folded atop a shovel.

  “I thought nobody here spoke English.”

  The man’s lip curled in disgust. “Maybe some don’t speak it, but most understand it. What you doing with the girl?”

  Tyler’s hands stayed at his side. “She’s mine.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Anybody makes the mistake of trespassing, they’ll find out,” he said flatly. “I don’t share.”

  The other man nodded thoughtfully, but his eyes were narrowed. “Watch yourself here. Watch her.” Then he swung the shovel, propping the long handle on his shoulder as he wandered off.

  Tyler watched the man head over a small, lush hill. He wasn’t sure what kind of warning he’d just received.

  He looked back at the open door of the kitchen and caught sight of Marisa carrying a burlap sack of potatoes. She glanced up and saw him. She smiled faintly before she walked out of sight.

  Yeah, he thought. He’d be watching out for her, all right.

  And for once, he actually believed that someone other than his buddies back in Mission Creek would be watching out for him.

  Just after noon Tyler learned that nearly the entire population of la Fortuna shut down for siesta. It was such a traditional thing, he was surprised by it. Nevertheless, when Marisa found him, and they followed a teenaged boy to the quarters they’d been assigned, he was glad for the break.

  The daypack that he’d brought with him had been thoroughly searched by a guard when he’d found Henry in the rose garden. The “pager” had earned him a superior laugh from the guard who’d done the search and for a minute, Tyler had thought it might be confiscated. He’d hoped not, but he’d been prepared for that eventuality. He was closer to Westin than anybody had been able to get so far. Whether he had the disguised transmitter to fall back on or not didn’t matter to him, though it would make things considerably easier in the end if he could use it.

  But the guard had dismissed the device as useless down here in la Fortuna and tossed it into the pack. The switchblade that Tyler had, however, was taken. As was the wallet containing Tyler’s fake ID and five hundred American dollars.

  The guard had stared at him, challenge in his hard eyes, as he’d returned the pack to him. Tyler had waited until the guard went on his way and he was arm deep in rose bushes to permit a brief, satisfied smile.

  Now, in the small cell of a room, Tyler held his fingers to Marisa’s lips before he checked the room for surveillance devices. He took his time and made sure he was thorough. But there was none. Not a single one.

  Which didn’t mean that he relaxed, exactly. He pulled Marisa into his arms and pressed his mouth close to her ear. “Watch what you say,” he murmured. “The powers that be probably figure the grunts around here don’t need to be surveilled, but you never know. I might have missed something.”

  Marisa was practically vibrating with excitement. “I don’t think any of the servants’ quarters are watched. You wouldn’t believe the things they talked about in the kitchen. If they were worried about b
eing overheard, I’m sure they wouldn’t have been so free with their comments.”

  “What kind of things?” He still didn’t let Marisa out of his arms.

  Not that she seemed in any hurry to go, either. “Graciela is the head chef, right? She’s a sister of one of the generals. That’s how she got such a position of authority. But even she doesn’t let that keep her from gossiping.”

  “About what?”

  “Oh, how much money it takes to run this place. The power struggle between the top generals. Who is sleeping with whom.”

  He blew out an impatient breath. “I don’t give a damn about that stuff.”

  Marisa caught his earlobe gently between her teeth and he felt her smile against him. “Are you sure?”

  His hands slid over her waist. “Witch. Stop distracting me. Anything else they talk about?”

  “No. Some guy they called Mendez came in and that was pretty much the end of the gossip. He took a liking to me, though, I could tell.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged. “Just the look he gave me. Considering the way everyone went quiet, he must have some measure of authority.”

  “Stay away from him.”

  “Tyler, I can’t learn anything if I don’t take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves. That’s one of the reasons why I’m here, for heaven’s sake.”

  “You got me into this place. That’s all I needed you to do. Don’t put yourself in more danger, Marisa. I mean it.”

  She fingered his collar. “Don’t you want to know about the dinner tomorrow night?”

  He sighed and grabbed her fingers. “You’re gonna be the death of me. What about it?”

  “It’s something big. All the key people of El Jefe will be there. Something that hasn’t occurred, I guess, in a year or so. It’s got all the staff in a tizzy.”

  “Any talk about prisoners?”

  She shook her head, her eyes serious. “No. I’m sorry, Tyler.”

  “He’s gotta be here somewhere. Luke said something about a cave. El Jefe’s been holding Westin over our heads for too long for them to have just disposed of him.”