She grabbed him at the root and pulled. He groaned and shoved into her hand. His wild energy intoxicated her, but it also frightened her.
“Me estás matando,” he said. You’re killing me.
She bent over to lick the tip. He shuddered just from that. He was Kabakas. She was driving Kabakas crazy. She took him all the way in, coaxing him into a rhythm that would get him senseless, needing to get back some order, some control. She took him in deeper and deeper, but he grabbed her hair and stopped her.
“What?”
He rolled away and went to a cabinet. He unzipped something and came back with a condom.
She rid herself of the last of her clothes.
He tipped his head down to face her as he stood over her, rolling it onto himself, eyes wild. It scared her a little, how present he was, how raw everything was.
“Fuck me,” she said, feeling frightened, feeling too much.
He pushed her down onto the bed and buried his head in her belly. She touched his hair, senses ablaze. She felt as though he could see all her secrets when he pressed his face to her like that. It felt unbearably intimate.
He touched her breast, fingered her clit, but it was his soft, wet kiss on her belly that destroyed her.
And suddenly it was too much. She grabbed his hair in two fists and yanked his head to hers. He grabbed her wrists. “Corazón,” he said with a dark, warning look.
She let go of his hair and he pressed her hands above her head, intense eyes on hers.
She could feel it even more now, that barely restrained thunder under the surface of his skin. His thunder, his passion, his desire to be gentle with her, those treasures he’d collected, this windswept place of his, his love for Paolo, all of these belonged to the same class of things—true things, important things, human things, raw things. The raw things that could break through her walls.
“Guide me,” he whispered.
She took his cock and pressed the fat head to her entrance. He pushed in little by little, stretching her, filling her, letting her see the naked desire in his eyes. She felt like she might drown in the truth of his eyes as he entered her.
He pushed all the way in, stretching her.
She gasped; he was so huge inside her, moving and filling her.
“Okay?”
“Please, yes. Please,” she said, though she hardly knew what she was asking for. Just please. His gentleness scared her. The thundering passion below the surface scared her. But she didn’t want a coldfuck.
She didn’t want to be alone anymore.
The legendary and semi-mythical Kabakas was the only real thing to her now, and everything else seemed unreal.
Rabbit hole was a term they used a lot in spycraft, mostly for distraction. But she felt like she was coming up against the original meaning, the true Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, a new world just as vital as her own.
He pumped into her slowly, breathing her secrets with his cock. “I’m here,” he whispered as he shoved into her, devouring her. She squeezed her pussy as he thrust, trying to make herself feel extra tight, trying to take over. But he wouldn’t go on autopilot. He wouldn’t get lost. He would stay with her. Keep her there, present and gasping.
“Corazón,” he groaned. He kissed her all over her face and neck as he fucked her.
He fucked her like he cared. Like he was fucking her instead of just fucking. Like a waterfall of dangerous feeling crashing right through her.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Dr. Ruiz’s phone rang late that afternoon. El Gorrion’s connections in the CIA hadn’t even needed to run facial recognition: they knew this woman. The name wasn’t Liza. It was Zelda Pierce, a forensic botanist and former field agent.
“Has she said anything to you about the blight?” El Gorrion asked.
“She doesn’t speak Spanish,” Ruiz said.
“Oh, yes, she does,” El Gorrion said. “She was an agent during the war. She was part of the Peru network. And she helped take down the Lopez ring. She was in Ecuador the year after…”
El Gorrion went on, but Ruiz had stopped listening at botanist. “A botanist? She could ruin me.”
“Stop whining. She is a Kabakas hunter—that is her interest. This woman—she is retired now, but she was one of the leading hunters. Every single one of my contacts mentions this,” El Gorrion said. “She is still active, but with her own organization—so that she can hunt Kabakas full time, perhaps. They do not know. This interest in the crop—it is extra. She is using the American farmer to get close to the villagers. She wants them to open up about Kabakas.”
“But she is suspicious of me,” Ruiz said. “What if she uses her knowledge of the crop to gain the trust of the villagers? If I go down, our work together…it could be harmed.” He wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that if the blight was linked to him, it could then be traced to El Gorrion. You never threatened El Gorrion.
“She has been there longer than you, no?” El Gorrion said.
“Yes,” Ruiz said. “She arrived the day before I dropped the pellets.”
“We use her, then,” he said. “We will say that she caused the blight. A CIA botanist. It’s perfect. Unmask her, and see what happens.”
“Why not kill her?” Ruiz said.
“Because I want to see what happens.”
“You think she will get a lead on Kabakas? You will follow her?”
“Perhaps. But if the scourge is traced to her, we may get something better—she may get the wrath of Kabakas turned onto her. He killed for that village once. We keep watch on her, and Kabakas may reveal himself.”
“The farmer is in love with her,” Ruiz said. “That’s what the villagers say. He may try to hide her. Protect her.”
“An American hobbyist farmer will never protect her from Kabakas,” El Gorrion growled. “More likely, she’ll kill him and leave. We follow. She’ll lead us to Kabakas.”
“Could the farmer himself be Kabakas?” Ruiz asked. “There’s something about him…”
El Gorrion frowned. “With a Kabakas hunter as a maid?” He seemed to ponder this. “Well, then, he’ll kill her—and we’ll have him. One way or another, we’ll find Kabakas and attack him where he lives. He won’t be so formidable without his mask and his swords.”
El Gorrion instructed him to wait until night to unmask her to the village. He would have men in place, watching the road to see who went up to the American’s home after that. Only one way in or out. It was the perfect bait for the trap.
When Dr. Ruiz next opened his computer, his mailbox was full of images: a CIA ID badge, commendations, and photos of an awards ceremony. He drove back to the village, ready to call a meeting.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hugo furrowed his brow at the knock. It was unusual to get visitors at all at the house, but particularly after dark.
It was Julian, wet from the rain. “Dr. Ruiz has called a meeting. He has found the cause of the blight.”
Hugo felt a great weight release from his heart. “And a cure?”
“No sé. He’s gathering the farmers at the cantina. That is all I know.”
Hugo’s heart lifted. Liza had been about to serve dinner; he’d been looking forward to it, thinking they could repeat the night in front of the fire, but this was excellent news, and he was touched that Julian had made the trek up the mountainside in the dark.
“Un momento.” He went in and grabbed his jacket and informed Liza, who seemed more surprised than happy. Well, he was happy enough for both of them. All three of them. He drew her to him and kissed her.
“I’ll be interested to hear,” she said.
Julian played “Color Esperanza” by Diego Torres on the trek down, the perfect music for the cautious hope they both felt. They pulled up in front of the cinder block building that had served as a supply store of sorts. The night air was cool, but the room was lit warmly on the inside, as if it glowed with happiness. The racks and shelves had been pushed to the side and two dozen villagers were gathered
around a table; mostly men. People were drinking sodas; a few had beers. A pack of Marlboros got passed around.
Dr. Ruiz looked up, eyes eerie, thanks to the angle of the light. Hugo had never liked him—he’d always seemed condescending toward the villagers—but he might have the cure. He’d seemed to be waiting for them.
There were chairs for maybe half of the people. Julian and Hugo stood.
“It is not good news,” Dr. Ruiz said, opening the lid of his laptop. Hugo’s heart fell. He could feel Julian deflate beside him. “I will try to do all that I can, but this disease is not natural. It is man-made. A poison that moves rapidly through the soil to attack the root.”
The botanist stabbed a few buttons.
Hugo glanced around at the faces. Few looked surprised. They had all suspected there would be no cure. But none had suspected what came next: that this blight was the CIA’s new weapon in the war on drugs.
The men protested. They weren’t growing drugs. They weren’t near the coca fields. Did the CIA believe the Savinca verde to be a cover crop? Could they not be made to see?
Dr. Ruiz raised his hands, insisting he didn’t know.
Julian and Hugo exchanged helpless glances.
He typed on his laptop. “This woman is a CIA scientist. A CIA botanist. She is the one responsible.” He turned the laptop to the group.
Hugo’s brain froze, unable to make sense of what he was seeing: A young, dark-haired Liza, wearing a white lab coat, holding a clipboard. She wore glasses and stood grinning next to an impossibly high stalk of corn. She looked like a scientist. His heart slammed inside his chest. “What is this?” he demanded.
Ruiz flipped to the next image: Liza in camo, still with that dark hair, holding a rifle like she knew how to hold a rifle. Mountains in the background. Afghanistan? Another: Liza kneeling on the ground next to a half-buried skeleton, baggie and tweezers clutched in her latex-gloved hands, sidearm visible. A grainy hotel surveillance shot of Liza in a skirt suit, gun down at her thigh, followed. The images didn’t make sense to his mind, but they made sense to his heart. This was her true nature—a hunter, a warrior. She’d fooled him.
Betrayed him.
The photos continued. He felt the men’s gazes on him, but he could not look away. Her name was Zelda, not Liza, Ruiz said. CIA.
Hugo gripped the back of the chair in front of him. “I didn’t know.”
“She’s highly trained,” Ruiz said.
So was he. Supposedly.
There was a shot of Liza—no, Zelda—in a ceremony with a medal on her suit jacket, dark hair pulled into a ponytail, telltale bulge of a holstered gun right there for the world to see. Lastly, an elementary school picture with two dark-haired little girls. Twins.
The room felt too warm. Too smoky.
Her question about his burns: How long? The recognition with which she’d first looked at him. Her strange attitude toward the cabinet. The way she’d picked out the Moro wand. He thought he was revealing his heart to the woman he was falling for.
Instead, he was providing clues to an enemy.
She knew who he was. It was only a matter of time before his enemies moved on him…and Paolo. That was the worst part of it—the threat to Paolo.
He gripped the wooden chair back, rage coursing through his fingertips.
Ruiz went on about how she was there to kill the savinca. Sent by the CIA or a rogue, perhaps. Experimenting. The men asked angry questions.
Ruiz knew very little. “She is here to conduct experiments on the plants. There may be something special about the savinca that has attracted them. If I can isolate that element, that reason…” He went on. Hugo was no longer listening.
Killing the plants was…what? A taunt? It made no sense. But too many other things did. The fading track marks. The way her story never felt real. Her eyes, her hair.
Rage clouded the edges of his vision as he thought of Paolo, there alone with her. His enemies would hurt Paolo as a way to hurt him—she would know that, of course.
He turned to Julian. “I have to get back. I have to get Paolo away from her.”
“Shall I take him for the night?”
“Please,” Hugo said, pulling on his jacket. He would kill her. He would not be merciful.
One of the men spoke up: he’d seen a light bobbing down the side of the mountain six days back, heading downward from the direction of Hugo’s home. Another chimed in: he, too, had seen it.
“Perhaps she released an airborne agent,” Ruiz said smugly. “Or she seeded the ground. She’s here to study, to perform tests at different altitudes, or perhaps studying the half-life of her poison.”
The light bobbing down the mountainside—that was the first night. The night she’d come to him in his opium stupor.
The villagers asked Ruiz about a cure, an antidote. Would the spy know it? Could she be forced to reveal it?
“No, the CIA is not in the business of plant rehabilitation,” Ruiz said. “That’s my job.” Ruiz seemed to be setting up teams. They were to monitor things. He would return to his lab and work on a solution with the help of the data the men collected.
“I will make this right,” Hugo grated out. “I’ll pay for the ruined crops. Any expense to save them, I will pay it.”
The men couldn’t even look at him. It wouldn’t be enough: the savinca plants were dying, and centuries of tradition along with them. Some of the men wanted to go to confront Liza—Zelda—but Hugo shook his head. “I will deal with her,” he said, grimly. “I will make this right.”
They assumed he was talking about money, programs. They assumed wrong.
She wanted Kabakas.
She would have Kabakas.
He turned to Julian. “Now.”
Ruiz waylaid them on the way out to the Jeep. “What will you do?” he asked. “She could be dangerous.”
“Yo me encargaré,” he said. I’ll handle it.
Ruiz regarded him with an intensity Hugo did not like. “What will you do?”
“I’ll handle it.”
Hugo and Julian got into the Jeep and sped back up the mountainside in the dark.
His mind raced. Why poison the crop? How had she obtained the poison? Or had she made it? Had she made a report to the CIA on him yet, or was she collecting evidence first? How much time did he and Paolo have until a team descended?
The CIA would turn him over to the vice president, the man who’d put the bounty on his head so many years ago. The Vice President blamed Hugo for the death of his son at the Yacon fields.
They would kill him, of course, but it wasn’t death he feared—it was the sound of Paolo suffering. They would force Hugo to listen. They would also hurt the village he’d tried to help. Could that be the motivation behind poisoning the crops?
His heart twisted as he imagined that night with Liza and Paolo in front of the fire. They’d felt like a family.
How thoroughly and deeply she had fooled him!
No more. She was at the door when he arrived. “What is it?” she asked.
“Hopeless.” He brushed past her to find the boy, hoping she hadn’t recognized the anger roaring through him.
“What did he say?” she called after him.
He pointed at the dining room table. “The food is not yet out.” An accurate observation, but none of them would eat tonight.
He found Paolo in his room with his books. Paolo looked up at him, trustingly. He picked Paolo up and held him tight. He needed to find out what kind of reports she’d made. If she’d circulated photos of him. And then he’d kill her. They would survive this; he and Paolo would survive together, just as they always had. “Rodolfo wants you to sleep over,” he whispered roughly. Rodolfo was Julian’s boy.
Paolo’s face brightened. More fake currency.
Hugo stuffed some of Paolo’s favorite things into bag and then, impulsively, he clapped his palms onto both sides of the boy’s head and kissed him on the forehead.
The boy looked stunned.
“Hurry,” Hugo said gruffly. He guided him out through the home and out to the dark drive. He stood there until Julian’s taillights disappeared. Then he turned toward the house.
And met her eyes through the kitchen window.
And he knew that she knew.
He burst in and stormed down the tile hall to the kitchen as though he were carried on a boiling tide of rage. He always visualized the kill before he did it, but he could not visualize this one, not even what he would use.
She’d be ready for him, of course. She might even attack him. He hoped that she would. He would tear her apart.
She stood in the middle of the kitchen as he entered, body erect, arms down at her sides, knives in each hand, no doubt, concealed in the folds of the white apron. Maybe something extra in her apron pocket.
He had underestimated her for the last time.
“What’s up?” She searched his face. “What did he say?” If she decided there was no danger, she’d likely turn and bustle at the counter, discreetly ridding herself of the knives.
He said nothing; he simply advanced on her as he had the night of the game, only he was coming in for the kill, fully who he was.
It was then that her face changed. It was nearly imperceptible—a minute relaxation—a shift from the bright, blank expression to what she was. Her true face. This was a woman who saw the world as it was. She was beautiful like this.
“Why?” he rasped, blood racing.
To her credit, she didn’t make excuses or try to talk her way out of things; she just raised her knives.
She knew all about him.
He was on her like a flash. He trapped and deflected, taking an unexpected knee to his thigh and an expected cut to his forearm in order to get in close enough to control her arms. She slammed a foot into his knee, wobbling him.
He swore and twisted the weapons from her, and then he spun her around, holding her back against his big body. He held her wrists in one hand, pressed to her breastbone. With the other hand he held her wooden-handled kitchen knife to her jugular.
He could feel her heart beating against his, even through her back. He pulled her in more tightly, and even now he wanted her, this woman who’d burrowed so deeply into his home, his heart.
Behind the Mask (Undercover Associates Book 4) Page 20