by Tarah Scott
Emilio was a genius at falsifying documents. When the Colombians needed advice on forged documents, they came to Emilio. He operated a costume shop storefront, and an illegal forgery shop in the back. The government knew about Emilio’s back door business, but they looked the other way because they needed him.
When Jesse brought Ernesta to him, Ernesta displayed a knack for costuming that delighted Emilio. He was thirty years her senior, but Ernesta worshiped him. He died eight years later. Now, three years after his death, Jesse recognized the sadness that hung in the background of Ernesta’s life.
Jesse often wondered how Ambassador Sanchez had known to match Ernesta with Emilio. She also wondered what would have happened had she not spoken to him that day. Six months after returning to the States, Blue Team leader contacted her. It took a while, but she finally figured out Sanchez had brought her to OIA’s attention. It seemed the Ambassador was a compulsive matchmaker.
Jesse shifted in her seat. The foam of the oversized buttocks behaved like a form fitting cushion, but she had been sitting at the airport for two hours, and even the soft foam had become uncomfortable in the hard airport seat. Customs was taking longer than usual, and passengers from Cole’s plane were only beginning to trickle out.
Cole Smith. The man had become a monkey wrench she couldn’t ignore. Juanita’s dossier confirmed he had been Green Team Leader for the Colombian mission. Jesse took a slow breath. Why hadn’t she gone into the village? If she had, neither of them would probably be alive. Somehow, the argument didn’t quite reach her heart. Cole had been there, had made it out—no thanks to her.
A corner of her mouth twitched into an involuntary smile at memory of reading about the darling childhood he had enjoyed on his parent’s horse ranch. He had been voted high school prom king and attended Texas A&M, where he majored in veterinary medicine with a minor in political science. He was a member of Kappa-Xi fraternity, All-American lacrosse and track, ROTC, then had attended officer training school after graduation. Officer training was a family tradition. His father, grandfather, and other male ancestors as far back as records went had all served in the military.
Michael’s information confirmed Cole had led the Colombian mission. The admiration that had first washed over her upon reading the file resurfaced. Not many men could survive eighteen days of beatings and torture by cartel drug runners. The courage it had taken to survive, then chase after her with unwavering determination made her heart ache, but she hadn’t been surprised.
She also hadn’t been surprised to learn Cole was neither an ivy leaguer, nor a private school brat, but an Aggie through and through. She could imagine all the pretty sorority girls seeking a MRS degree and just dying to land a husband with Cole’s pedigree. She had known such gold diggers at Berkley. His file didn’t mention a woman, but he had to have someone waiting for him back home. Men like him always did. A tremor rippled through her belly. She had no right to care who burned the midnight oil for him.
A tall, broad shouldered man emerged from the flight gate and Jesse’s heart fluttered before she realized he wasn’t Cole. She was acting like a fool. Whether three thousand miles or three feet away, she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Had she erred in contacting him? He had nearly died because of her mistake. His teammates had paid the ultimate price. She might not be doing him any favors by involving him.
Jesse had found to trace of anything dirty in Cole's file. Teaming up with someone she didn’t know was risky, but he’d been right, he was the one who had lost the team. She grieved for the men, wanted justice for them, but they were his friends. He had a right to be a part of the operation, and to ensure its success.
Michael had given her a name, Menendez, a judge on Perez’s payroll. This was the closest anyone had come to Perez and more than she had hoped for. Juanita’s intel had been zero, which Jesse half expected. Juanita’s career would be made if she tracked down such a high profile criminal. Any information she found would likely go into her personal work file. What a world they lived in. The good guys withheld information in order to further their careers, while the bad guys handed over information to former lovers.
At least Juanita had gotten Jesse the sniffer. Though Jesse hadn’t had any luck in obtaining a line on the other high tech equipment she needed. The recon for Maria’s rescue mission had been her first in Colombia, and she didn’t have a single contact, except for Michael, and he’d given all he could. It looked like she’d be going into Menendez’s place nearly naked.
Her attention snagged on a man two gates over. He sat down in a chair, shook open a newspaper, and began reading. The tiny hairs on her neck prickled. Two tourists ambled by. She detected no covert acknowledgment between the tourists and the man reading the newspaper, but they knew each other…and they were looking for her.
A dozen people abruptly poured through Cole’s flight gate. Jesse spotted him and his Stetson over the heads of the crowd. Well, damn, if he wasn’t the All American cowboy. She shifted attention to the next gate over and, with drooping eyelids, watched him in her peripheral vision. The people ahead of him dispersed, and he paused, casually scanning the terminal. Cole’s gaze caught on the man with the newspaper and his mouth tightened. Jesse detected an almost imperceptible shake of the head from the man. Cole whirled and started toward the stairs leading to the ground floor rental counter.
Jesse swiveled away from the man with the newspaper, bent over her foam belly and boobs, and reached into the canvass tote bag between her legs. She rooted around, pulled out a cell phone, and picked up the bag. Ignoring the furious beat of her heart, she stood, legs apart and bowlegged in her oversized, one-piece dress, grabbed her pantyhose by the crotch and yanked like she had seen other peasant women do. Satisfied the man with the newspaper hadn’t given her a second glance, she ambled down the concourse.
Seconds later, lost in the crowd moving in the opposite direction Cole had taken, she punched out his number on the phone.
He answered on the first ring. “Yeah.”
“Senior, you were supposed to come alone,” she whispered in Spanish.
“Who did you spot?" he asked.
“Who did you tell?” she demanded.
“If I had taken off for Colombia without a word, Green Leader would have agents all over the place,” Cole replied. “Telling him I was coming here was the only way to keep him in our sites.”
Fear tightened her chest. She’d wanted to give Cole the chance to put his teammates to rest, but he was making the same mistake she had.
“I’ve underestimated him for the last time,” she said.
“This is the smart way,” Cole said.
“I said alone,” she replied. “You should have trusted me, Cole.”
“Jess—”
She hit the end button on the phone and dropped it into the bag.
Two minutes later, Jesse stepped onto the escalator leading to the main exit. Her heart slowed as the last line in Juanita’s report on Cole floated across her mental vision: Amadeo Perez visited me while I was held captive in the village.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jesse leaned against a rubber tree in the Colombian jungle a kilometer from the village where Green Team had been slaughtered and twenty feet from the spot she was looking for. She pulled the canteen from the leg pocket of her fatigues, unscrewed the lid and brought the canteen to her lips. The water went down cool against her dry throat and she allowed a few drops to dribble down her chin and onto the front of her sweat soaked shirt. She screwed the lid back on, slipped the canteen into its pocket, and swiped at her sweaty forehead with the back of her sleeve. Oppressive heat hung in the air so thick even the soft croaking of the tree frogs sounded labored.
Going to the village where Martinez had lived was a personal mission she had intended to carry out with Cole. After discovering he’d brought a team with him yesterday she tried talking herself into aborting the plan. In the end, however, she had been unable to give up this one chance to give Martine
z’s family some closure…and to bring Green Team home.
Despite threats from crime lords like Amadeo Perez, people talked. Martinez’s brother hadn’t wanted to talk to her. He blamed her for his brother’s death. But he had taken her to where his sister-in-law and her daughter were hiding, and it was she who told Jesse what she wanted to know. It broke Jesse's heart to listen to the woman’s quiet words when she asked that Jesse make sure her husband’s death wasn’t in vain. Jesse’s eyes stung, but no tears followed. She had cried herself dry on the trek between their village and this spot where Green Team was rumored to be buried.
She released a breath. The first half of her mission had been a success. Before visiting Martinez’s family, she had retrieved his body from where the mercenaries left him and buried him in the village cemetery. She couldn’t let his wife see him the way Jesse had found him, decaying body ravaged by wild animals. Giving Martinez a proper burial didn’t make up for failing to save his life, but at least now his family didn’t have to imagine him alone in the jungle, forgotten. Green Team's family would have the same closure, if she could help it.
Jesse surveyed the ground beneath the canopy ahead. She wouldn’t have noticed the difference in the eight-by-eight plot of ground if she hadn’t known what to look for, but the lack of living ground cover and fallen leaves and twigs indicated she’d found the graveyard she sought. She pushed from the tree, grabbing the small backpack sitting beside her as she started toward the spot.
The small folding shovel she’d brought made digging slow, but Jesse dug for no more than ten minutes when she uncovered a man’s fingers. She forced back bile. No turning back. She had to be certain this was Green Team and not a graveyard where other victims of Perez were buried. Half an hour later, Jesse stared down at the upper half of a man who wore U.S. fatigues. Her hands shook as she gently pulled back the collar until his dog tags were visible against a bullet riddled chest. Robert Mills. The man she’d seen shot to death.
Jesse gently laid the tags back on his chest, closed the shirt collar, then stood and began covering the bodies again. She wasn’t going to let the animals get to the men before a team made it back to recover their bodies.
When she finally spread a last armful of foliage onto the unmarked graves, silent tears streamed down her cheeks. If Cole wanted to do one good thing, he would get his men home.
Chapter Twenty-Three
That evening, Jesse pushed open the flimsy louver doors of the cantina across the street from the seedy hotel where she was staying. The odors of tobacco smoke and stale booze rolled over her. She cut short a grimace when half a dozen grimy men seated at the bar and tables glanced at her. Until now, she hadn’t thought much of Ernesta’s choice of a peasant girl disguise: baggy cargo pants, white t-shirt, no bra, thick, brown wig, and dark makeup. Jesse had a feeling the girl meant to stir up some action.
Jesse let the louver doors swing shut behind her. Just before the room plunged back into shadow, she spotted Cole hunched over a bottle of Tres-Xs and a shot glass in a corner booth near the rear exit, just as she had instructed in her email. She had made him wait an hour and a half while she watched from the hotel to be sure none of his associates had followed him.
She maintained the posture of an indentured peasant; slumped shoulders, downcast eyes, face shielded by stringy hair, and none of the men paid any attention as she shuffled past the tables to Cole’s booth. She’d staked out the place well before choosing it as a meeting site, but still marveled how much it looked like a saloon straight from an old western movie, complete with bar mirror, rickety round tables, wooden chairs, and a brass spittoon at each end of the scuffed oak bar.
Jesse slid into the seat beside Cole, which gave her full view of the room, and spoke low in Portuguese, “I found Green Team.”
Shock flickered across his features, then disappeared. He slipped an arm around her shoulders. Jesse frowned, then realized his intent when he looked over the top of her head and called to the bartender, “Dos cervezas, por favor.”
Cole looked at her and said in a quiet tone, “What did you do, Jess?”
Before she could halt the memory, Robert Mills’ fingers sticking up through fresh dirt flashed across her mental vision.
“Jess.”
Her mind jumbled.
“Jess.”
She jarred back to the cantina and Cole’s arm, warm around her shoulders.
“What is it?” he demanded, and Jesse realized a tear was slipping down her cheek.
She exhaled a slow breath. “I gave Martinez’s family closure. You can do the same for Green Team’s loved ones.” And yourself, she silently added. “Use the team you brought.”
Cole’s gaze sharpened and she tensed with the realization that his mind was working at lightning speed and he was just smart enough to ask questions she didn’t want to answer.
He nodded. “We’ll get Green Team home.”
Relief threatened to bring a bona fide rush of tears.
“About that team,” he said, and Jesse froze. “They’re not the men you spotted at the airport.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you haven’t spotted my team.”
She stared. “You’re telling me you brought not one, but two teams?”
“I let Lanton send a team.” She started to interject, but he cut her off. “You want him to suspect I have doubts?” Cole shook his head. “Don’t worry. I carefully chose my own team; four men with ties to the men we lost in Colombia. They don’t know anything about our deal.” Jesse lifted a brow, and he added, “They want you, don’t mistake that, but they’re soldiers to the core and will follow my orders without question.”
Like you do Lanton’s, she wondered?
“Every one of them has a horse in this race.” Cole removed his arm from her shoulders. A draft swept across her neck as he ticked off his fingers one by one: “Caruthers, Fletcher, Young, and Roush. Caruthers was Quinn’s partner for seven years. Sal got Fletcher the job with Green Team. Young and Benton were roommates at Annapolis and got each other through Naval Aviator training. Young is engaged to Benton’s sister. Roush and Pete were a team in Green Team. When offered a spot in Blue Team, Pete refused because he’d have to leave Roush behind. Robby is the only one who didn’t have ties.”
Jesse’s heart twisted painfully.
Cole took a breath. “If you’re right about Lanton, they’ll rip him limb from limb.”
Unexpected rage rushed to the surface. The first thing Hwuang Kano taught her was that her physical prowess, her ability to kick ass, was a tool, nothing more. Anger had no place in getting the job done. She had always been able to maintain that belief—until now. Was it Cole that incited this cold rage? No. It was the same helpless feeling she experienced when her mother stuck Amanda in an institution.
“Don’t worry,” he said as if reading her mind. “Things aren’t as out of control as they seem.”
She gave hear head a slow shake. “Lanton murdered seven men and a little girl and is still Green Leader. How much more out of control does it need to get? Listen, Tex, this is my mission. If you can’t live with that—” She broke off at hearing someone approach, and snuggled close to Cole’s unyielding body.
He slipped his arm around her again and she grimaced at the realization that meeting in a public bar had been a bad idea. She remembered their private meeting in her hotel room and the warmth of his hands on her body. That hadn’t been any better.
The bartender set two bottles of beer on the table. Jesse started at realizing the man’s size, then caught the leer he gave her. She dropped her gaze. Dammit, the man could wrestle King Kong and win.
After the big man left, Jesse leaned closer to Cole and whispered, “First, you tell me to trust you, then you tell me to trust complete strangers—strangers who won’t hesitate to kill me the first chance they get.”
“No. These men are on our side.”
“You thought Lanton was on our side. You don’t know anythi
ng for sure. You don’t really know I’m innocent.”
He started to reply, but broke off, distracted by something behind her. Jesse started to turn, but Cole pulled her close. She froze when he nuzzled her ear.
“Our friend at the bar is watching,” he whispered. “We have to play nice.”
Cole brushed his nose against her ear. His warm breath tickled the tiny hairs on her neck. Heat rippled through her midsection.
“I admit I wanted revenge," he whispered. "After reading your service record, I had to know why someone like you would turn.”
Her stomach did a flip. Her entire life was in that file—growing up in North Dakota, losing her father at age eleven, Amanda, her military service. She remembered the investigation when she had gotten her Top Secret clearance. Federal agents had interviewed her high school teachers, neighbors, college friends, and family.
“I latched onto every bit of information that came within ten miles of me.” He squeezed her shoulder. “I got so good, I could smell when something was in the air. In the beginning, I thought I knew you better than your own mother, and was convinced I’d figured you out.”
He brushed his lips against her throat. She’d forgotten how soft a man’s lips could be. She grabbed her beer, glad for the cool bottle against her palm.
“I got my hands on your service record.” His voice caressed her senses the way his mouth caressed her body. “Then your psyche file, your exemplary record with Blue Team, your college days at Berkley.
Berkley. Had he learned about Michael Quesada?
Even your childhood,” he ended.
Good Lord. She had been so proud of herself for doing recon on him. For the first time in her life, her target knew more about her than she did about him.
“None of that says I’m innocent.” She wasn’t feeling innocent. The warmth of his fingers penetrated to the bone, and she wished mightily they weren’t in a tavern. She took a swig of beer and set the bottle on the table.