by Cindy Gerard
He peered around the open driver’s-side door, turned off the ignition, then smiled when he spotted the shotgun on the floor. “Cute gun,” he said, like he was complimenting her wardrobe—which felt mighty damn inadequate when his dark gaze raked her body up and down before he shouldered past her and plucked up the shotgun.
With hardly a backward glance, he tossed the gun to one of his men, then leaned in close and started patting her down. She gritted her teeth, readying herself to suffer pain, humiliation, and rough hands. But he surprised her again when he tugged her Glock out of her waistband then made quick and painless work of searching her.
“I do like a woman who knows her weapons.” He glanced from the pistol to her face and smiled again as he pulled the earpiece out of her ear and tossed it away. “You have any other surprises, mi chica bonita?”
Smooth. Smooth and smug. While she was both surprised and grateful that he hadn’t manhandled her, she could have done without the condescending attitude.
“I’m not your pretty girl.”
His smile faded. “But you are my pretty problem. And you’re a complication I don’t have time for. Come on, let’s go.”
“Go where?” She put on the skids when he urged her forward.
He grunted out something that might have passed for a laugh as his men bound Maynard’s, Hogan’s, Collins’s, and Eduardo’s hands behind their backs with flex cuffs. “You don’t get to ask questions. You get to do as you’re told.”
When he started hauling her down the alley toward his men, she dug in her heels and latched on to the Jeep’s roll bar in a death grip. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He expelled a weary breath. “You don’t get to call the shots, either. Now I said, let’s go.” He didn’t mess around this time. He jerked her hard, breaking her hold.
“Look,” she reasoned, fighting him at every step. “You need to let us go. You’ve got to know we’re all American citizens.”
He stopped, leaned in close, and growled in her ear, “That’s not something you want to broadcast in this part of the city. But since you’re so proud of the fact, why don’t you tell me what four Americans are doing here this time of night?”
When their eyes met this time, a shocking heat arced between them that transcended the hottest South American night.
Holy God, she thought. Where had that come from? Shaken, she forced herself to hold his gaze, told herself it was only anger and adrenaline that had her heartbeat revving and every self-preservation instinct she possessed warning her to look away.
“We’re with the USDA. On an agricultural exchange program.” She lied like the good DIA officer she was, launching into the cover story they’d developed in the event something like this happened. She knew the cover was lame but it was all she had. Three veteran DIA officers with assault rifles and high-tech commo equipment were supposed to have ensured she wouldn’t need to use it.
He looked at her like she’d grown two heads, then barked out a laugh. “USDA officials with American military-issue M-4s? I don’t think so. Wanna try again?”
“Check my pocket.” Anything to buy time, stall, minimize their profile until they could figure out how to either get away or stay alive until the intelligence officer at the embassy realized they were in trouble and sent a team to find them. “My credentials are in there.”
“I’m sure they are. But fake IDs are a dime a dozen.” His warm breath fanned her nape as he tugged her hands behind her back and secured her wrists with the flex cuffs one of his men had tossed him. “I’ve got a hundred of ’em. Who would you like me to be? The Welcome Wagon? Scooby-Doo? Or maybe you’d like me to be Batman. You choose. It’ll be fun.”
Oh, yeah. He’d definitely spent time in the States. The way he carried himself might be all sexy Latino swagger, and sure, he spoke with a Spanish accent, but this guy’s attitude and jargon were definitely a product of American culture.
His grip tightened on her arm and he forced her down the alley and away from the Jeep.
“Where are you taking us?”
“Someplace where I can minimize the problem you’re making for me.”
His fingers still in a vise-like grip around her upper arm, he guided her a couple of blocks, then around a corner where two black vans sat under the pale beam of an ancient streetlight. One of the men pulled a hood over Eduardo’s head then shoved him into the rear vehicle. Then they roughly tugged black hoods over Maynard, Hogan, and Collins and guided them none too gently into the other van.
Oh, God. She was next. Her captor pushed her in the same direction; the gaping darkness inside the open door had her heart slamming. She put on the brakes again. She wasn’t going to give up that easily. She was losing her mole and the information she’d worked for months to uncover. She had no idea what they planned to do with them—beatings, rape, torture—
She blocked the images from her mind. This was not going to end here. She wasn’t going to let it. She’d worked too hard; Eduardo mattered too much.
“You really need to let us go,” she tried one last time.
“Be a good girl and that might happen.”
Then he pulled a hood down over her head.
2
“You’re making me very tired, cara,” Raphael Mendoza grumbled as the wriggling blonde American pulled against his hold. He so did not have the patience for this.
“So much for a quick in and out,” Luke Colter—aka Doc Holliday—said as he headed for the driver’s-side door.
Yeah, Rafe thought. That wasn’t happening. This whole Eduardo sting was making him weary. Wait until Nate Black, his boss at Black Ops, Inc., found out that Uncle Sam had a tag-team match going on with the Venezuelan gangster. And wait until little Miss Sunshine here went home empty-handed. The fur was gonna fly on Capitol Hill because he had no doubt that she and her boys had been sent by some lower-level spy master bent on making a name for himself through his agency staff.
“You’re making a big mistake,” she advised him again, her words muffled beneath the hood as she shoved against his chest.
“Won’t be the first one,” he grumbled, and without another word, hauled her up against him and lifted her off her feet.
She was stronger than she looked. Softer, too, not that he had the time to appreciate either discovery.
“In you go.” He shoved her inside with her three amigos. Christ. With those three guarding her back, it was a wonder she wasn’t dead already. “Now behave.”
“Not likely,” she sputtered, which made him smile. Lord knew why. He was hot. He was tired. He was pissed. But she was a fighter and he just had to like that.
Doc was already settled behind the wheel when Rafe slid into the van’s shotgun seat. “We good to go yet?”
“Tell me one thing about this that’s good,” Rafe muttered as Doc stepped on the gas. What a goatfuck.
He glanced in the rearview mirror to see the four of them packed into the back of the van like sardines, their heads down, the black hoods covering their faces and blocking their vision. Goldilocks had scooted around until she sat with her back against a sidewall. USDA. That was their cover? He let out a deep breath, shook his head, and wondered what mastermind had dreamed that up.
“So,” he said, because he couldn’t contain his curiosity, “since we’re all friends now, why don’t you tell me what you’re really doing here?”
“Already did,” she insisted, sticking with the ridiculous cover story.
Doc grinned at him as they barreled down a series of back streets. “Whaddaya think, Choirboy? Thumbscrews or straight to beheading?”
“Both tempting,” Rafe said with a weary grunt. “I really don’t care—as long as we start with the woman.”
Doc chuckled. “You always want to start with a woman.”
Rafe caught her quick intake of breath. Aw, hell. He’d gone and scared her again.
“Relax, querida. Your pretty neck isn’t in any danger. Neither are your thumbs. We’ll drop you off safe
and sound at the U.S. embassy. You can lick your wounds, report to whatever alphabet agency sent you down here that you were ambushed by big, bad bandito types, and everyone goes home happy.”
Happy. Right. He was so damn happy he could spit nails.
“If you’re not going to kill us,” her voice came out of the back of the van, “then why the guns?”
“Guns don’t kill people. People kill people,” Doc, with his usual droll sense of humor, pointed out with mock gravity. “And your guys were a little too triggerhappy for comfort. We like it better when we’re the ones saying stick ’em up. Works out better for us that way.”
“Okay, who the hell are you?” she demanded. “And what do you want with Eduardo?”
Spitfire. Under other circumstances Rafe might have appreciated her grit, and the sweet little body and all that wild, curly blond hair. The other circumstances being she wasn’t mucking up an op that had taken him and the BOIs nine months to set up.
He twisted around, scowled, and decided what the hell. He’d succeeded in scaring her. That’s what he’d wanted to do. No point overplaying his hand. He reached over the seat back and tugged off her hood.
She blinked like a little bird, trying to get her pupils to adjust to the dim interior of the van.
“So it’s Eduardo, is it? You’re on a first-name basis with that lowlife? Makes a man wonder where your interest in the local agriculture really lies. Not a lot of pig farms in Caracas last I looked. Lotta coca farms nearby, though. That what your agricultural exchange program’s about? You swapping cash for cocaine, cara?”
At least baiting her was marginally entertaining. So was watching her tug on the flex cuffs as if she actually thought she could wriggle free.
“Are you going to tell me who you’re working for?” she shot back. Snapping blue eyes, full of challenge, met his.
“I believe I asked you first.”
She glared at him.
He smiled as he turned face forward in the seat again. Yeah, she was definitely entertaining. “Just be glad it was us who found you and not Chavez’s hit squad,” he said finally. “Best to leave it at that.”
“What do you want with Eduardo?”
He glanced in the rearview mirror, met her eyes. “Do you know the meaning of the term ‘broken record’?”
“There’s a simple fix for that. Answer my questions.”
That wasn’t going to happen. “Eduardo is a very bad man. A lot of people want him—dead or alive. So I’ll repeat: You should be very glad it was us who intervened tonight.”
“We’re taking him in,” she announced with a conviction generally reserved for someone holding the upper hand.
Doc chuckled. “Woman’s got spunk. Distorted sense of reality, but spunk just the same.”
“Sorry, cara.” Like hell he was. “Eduardo is ours.”
“You have no idea what your interference disrupted,” she informed him, getting steamed all over again.
“I have no idea? I have no idea?” Fun and games were over. He twisted in the seat again so he could look her in the eye. “You and your three stooges here have managed to throw a wrench the size of a tank into an operation that took us months to set up. So don’t tell me what my interference disrupted. You stumbled into a hornet’s nest, querida. Now sit back and button it or you could still get stung.”
The fierce look in her eyes relayed more than anger. “A sanctioned U.S. government operation trumps whatever black op you’ve got going on. We are taking Eduardo in.”
He made a sound of disbelief. “Jesus, woman. What part of you’re tied up and we’ve got the guns don’t you understand?”
The U.S. embassy complex came into view just then. Thank God. He’d finally be rid of her and the rest of her motley crew, and he and the BOIs would be on their way with Eduardo in tow. Or they would have been, if she hadn’t fired a rocket that shot straight to the heart of the matter.
“What part of DIA officer under direct orders from the Department of Defense don’t you understand?”
He went utterly still. Tension ticked like a bomb, then blew sky-high.
Beside him Holliday muttered a low, weary “I don’t fricking believe this.”
Defense Intelligence Agency? Department of Defense? Sonofabitch.
He was fucked… and without so much as a kiss from a blonde bombshell with Goldilocks curls.
3
Three months later, B.J. stood in the middle of her mother’s small apartment in Hagerstown, her thoughts drifting back to Caracas. She still got angry when she thought about that night—the shock, the humiliation, and the bigger issue, the failure. It was past time to shake it off. In fact, she’d been ordered to shake it off.
Someday, maybe she would. Not today. Today was not a good day. She let out a weary breath and tried to ignore the fact that her mother’s small living room smelled of stale cigarette smoke and cheap wine. Newspapers lay in a sprawling pile on the floor; empty wineglasses left rings on the dusty end tables; a soap opera diva threw a drink in her lover’s face as the TV droned on in a corner of the room.
Her mother’s habits hadn’t changed. Neither had the scenery or her routine. B.J. hadn’t expected them to. And yet, foolishly, she still hoped. As always, those hopes were shattered when she heard her mother rummaging around in the refrigerator in the kitchen, looking for a bottle, no doubt.
Shutting it all out, wondering why she had bothered to come, B.J. lifted a tarnished picture frame from a bookcase overflowing with worn paperbacks. She touched a fingertip to her father’s image. Frank Chase had been a handsome man, a real hunk in uniform. His chest was heavy with medals. He had a strong jaw, a prominent nose, and piercing blue eyes. B.J. sometimes thought she caught a glimpse of herself in those eyes. Every other physical characteristic she’d inherited from her mother.
That was where the similarities between her and her mother ended. B.J. had made certain of it.
“I hated him, you know.”
B.J. tensed at the rancor in her mother’s statement, which was made all the more cutting by the deep smoker’s voice delivering it. She carefully set the photograph of her father back on the shelf, then turned as Janine Chase walked into the room, a full glass of wine in her hand. Dull brown eyes blinked drowsily as she sank down in a faded floral chair.
“So why do you keep his picture?” B.J. had always wondered about that.
A long silence passed before her mother blinked, then lifted her glass to her lips. “Because I loved him first.”
Yeah, she had loved him. That love had destroyed her. B.J. looked across the room at her mom, wondered why she’d let life break her. She’d been pretty once; B.J. had seen photographs. Curly, platinum-blonde hair; stunning brown eyes; strong, slim limbs; and pinup curves.
Her looks were gone now. It was like she had died, too, ten years ago when Frank Chase had been killed in action. In truth, her mother’s spirit had died long before she’d lost her husband.
“I still miss him,” B.J. admitted quietly, and because she couldn’t make herself stand still any longer, she started prowling around the room. The apartment was small, the rent was cheap. It was the best she could afford—she would never get rich as a DIA officer—and yet the guilt she felt because she couldn’t provide better for her mother hung over her head like the smoke drifting on the stuffy air.
“He was never here.” Her mother’s voice was filled with bitterness. “How can you miss a man who was never here?”
Weary. These visits made her so damn weary. She didn’t want to climb this hill today. “Look, Mom, I just drove down to see how you were doing, okay? See if you needed anything.”
Her mother made a sarcastic sound that sent her into a coughing fit. “I need a new life,” she choked out.
B.J. fought the tug on her heart that always tried to convince her that her mother should be pitied. Things didn’t have to be this way. Her mom didn’t have to be this way.
“Why didn’t you divorce him?” she blurte
d out, unable to hide her own irritation. “If you hated your life with him so much, why didn’t you just leave when you were…” She stopped herself from saying, “when you were young enough, alive enough to become something more than a tired drunk.”
Her mother drew deeply on her cigarette, squinted through the curling smoke. “And go where? Do what? I had a high school education. And I had you. You think I could have raised you on minimum wage and tips from a waitress job? You think he would have let me go?”
Anger transitioned to compassion. It always did where her mother was concerned. “He… must have loved you, too… once.”
Janine snorted. “What he loved was his almighty army. His team,” she added bitterly. “I was just a convenience. A body warming his bed. Someone waiting at home while he went off and played war. And you,” she continued, her eyes turning mean, “don’t kid yourself. To him you were just an inconvenient liability.”