“Why is it up to me?” She yelled it at his back. But he didn’t slow, instead going out the side door and up onto the foredeck. The problem was, that for reasons she didn’t understand, somehow it really was up to her.
Melissa was circling the boat back to pick them up, but she too was watching Kyle’s retreating back with wide eyes.
Just perfect! Looked like Melissa had never seen him that way either. That was so not a good sign.
Sofia stepped out of the cabin and went to stand beside Carla as Melissa eased the stern close enough for the two men to grab the swim ladder on the deck below.
“Any suggestions?”
Carla just shook her head. “Like you said, make something up.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
Carla looked at her for a long moment. “Then try the truth.” She squeezed a hand on Sofia’s arm before turning to follow her husband.
Whatever that was. She certainly had no idea as she stood at the aft rail and watched them climb aboard, a deck below her.
“I can’t believe you call that a right cross, bro. When did you become such a pansy?” Chad was checking on the flow of blood from his lip that a dip in the ocean had done nothing to staunch.
Duane was gingerly testing his ribs. “One of these days I’m going to have to teach your sorry ass how to throw a proper tackle.”
“Excuse me for never being Mister College Football.”
“I was track and field, asshole.”
They gave each other the finger then began ascending the stairs like two old frat buddies.
Chad looked up at her. “Uh-oh. Got some music waiting for you, bro. My advice: dive back in. The sharks looked less dangerous that she does.” He walked by her with a lopsided smile, favoring the bleeding side. “Hey Richie! Where the hell’s the first aid kit on this junkheap?”
Melissa was returning them to their original course and cranking the engines back to running speed.
Duane still stood on the lowest step of the staircase looking at her.
She finally descended to meet him.
He backed up. There was a low bench built onto the outside of the closed garage door for storing the Zodiac and jet skis under the lip of the upper deck. He eased down onto the bench with great care.
She sat beside him, though not too close, and watched the wake racing away behind them.
“I was ordered to fix this. Any suggestions?”
Duane just shook his head, leaned back against the door with closed eyes, and groaned as he continued to probe his ribs.
“If you are looking for sympathy points, you are asking the wrong girl.”
His half-hearted smile turned into a wince and had him probing his jaw. “Then what should I be asking you, ma’am?”
“You could try asking me what I think is wrong with you, but I have no ideas.”
“You don’t?” He opened one eye to look at her.
“Do you?”
“Actually, yes. But I thought you were the great analyst.”
Sofia considered adding her own blow to all of Chad’s. “Well, I don’t. Does that make you ever so happy?”
“Yes, ma’am. Nice to be half a step ahead of you for once.”
“Duane!”
“Okay. Okay,” he held up his hands in surrender. “Just, well, try not to hate me for this one. Please?”
“I’ll try, but I am making no promises.” She folded her arms tightly to brace herself for whatever was coming.
He stared off the back of the speeding boat for a long moment. “I was right about there,” he pointed off the stern just above the water, “when I figured a few things out.”
“Such as?”
“Such as both of our families suck at relationships. Loyalty is right down the toilet, too.”
Sofia looked down to inspect her toes. They did.
“But then I look at my teammates. Kyle and Carla. Melissa and Richie. These are good people. Ones that couldn’t be closer.”
“You and Chad.”
“Nobody better.”
“Even though you just beat the daylights out of one another.”
“Even though,” Duane agreed. “He’s had my back through every horror show since the beginning and I’ve had his.”
“Why am I suddenly in the way of your perfect bromance?”
“You aren’t. You’re just proving that I’m a total asshole.”
Sofia finally looked at him. “There are many things that you are, Duane Jenkins. That is not one of them.”
“Thanks. Too bad you’re wrong on that, but thanks.” He looked away then, after a long pause, thumped the back of his head against the door, hard enough to make them both flinch. “The thing is…”
“What is the thing?” She asked when he didn’t continue.
“The thing is,” he took a deep breath, then spoke fast. “I’ve been trying to treat you like just another good fuck.”
Sofia felt her entire body go cold.
“That’s all women have ever really been for me. But, goddamn it, Sofia, you aren’t staying in that nice neat slot in my head. Shit, woman! You’ve changed everything. But the truth is all that’ll be left standing when the world’s afire, so what the hell. The day you walk away is gonna kill me—and that’s not some thousand percent likelihood; it’s goddamn fact. But looking at my past, at who I am, I meant the other part, too. You’d be better off with the goddamn sharks,” he waved a hand toward the stern, “than you would with me. That’s what’s been ripping me up all morning.” Then he folded his arms over his chest hard enough to make the muscles bulge, closed his eyes, and banged his head back against the door one more time. Hard. He was clearly done.
Sofia looked out at the realm of “the goddamn sharks” and tried to find some way to fit Duane’s words into what she was feeling. Her family had tried to kill her, which wasn’t exactly the most shining recommendation. His family had essentially disowned him, not that it sounded as if they’d particularly ever owned him in the first place. If she was to face the truth, she hadn’t been the one to take Duane home to the estate in Oregon—her body had. She’d wanted him physically just as much as he’d wanted her.
So when had he become more than that?
From the first moment outside Aguado’s compound. The way he’d accepted her as a woman in a combat role. Then the way he’d taught her what she didn’t know and made her face the man she’d killed—which actually had cut down on the nightmares.
She slid a little closer to Duane and slipped her hand around his hard-clenched bicep just to see how it would feel. He didn’t react, didn’t look at her. He remained frozen like a coral statue.
Sofia liked the feel of Duane. Not just how his body made hers feel, but the surety of him as well. Actually, his surety of her. Since the first moment he had displayed an unwavering confidence in her capabilities. His belief that she was somehow better than she knew. His attitude was having the strange effect of making her believe it.
“Hey!”
She looked up to see Chad leaned out over the railing above them. His lip had stopped bleeding, but he held a bloody cloth that appeared to be wrapped around an ice cube.
“Are you and the asshole about done? Richie has an idea.”
She looked at Duane who was now facing her.
He wasn’t going to speak first, but she still didn’t know what to say.
Slowly, tentatively—an adjective that she’d never thought she’d use to describe him because Duane was always so sure of everything—he touched the fingers of his other hand to the backs of hers where they wrapped around his bicep.
She squeezed a little tighter. Then so did he.
“Jesus you two are glacial!” Chad groaned before disappearing from the railing.
“I think,” Sofia had to swallow hard before she could continue. “I think I would be better off risking you than the sharks. I have already spent too much of my life among them.”
He started to lean over to kiss her,
but gasped and groaned again as he held his side.
“But for now I see that I will have to be taking a raincheck,” she kissed him on the nose, rose to help him to his feet, and led him back up to the main cabin.
“I was messing with Sofia’s laptop and—”
“What? How? It is very secure.”
Duane could only grin at Sofia’s protest. She clearly didn’t know Richie’s skills.
“Well,” Richie actually blushed. “When Duane and Chad started fighting, you jumped to your feet without locking the screen. I ducked in and created myself as a second user. So when you remembered to lock it, I was already in.”
“Very underhanded, Richie,” Chad nodded. “Proud of you, amigo. You’re finally learning.”
Richie smiled, “Melissa is teaching me.”
Duane joined in the others’ laughter—only the still irritated Sofia holding back, though she eventually smiled. Even she had to understand that no one as wholesome as Melissa could be a corrupting influence on anyone except a man like Richie.
“Anyway, I looked at that marina outside Caracas that Sofia identified. It’s the best one in the nation and reasonably secure. I made a reservation for a boat slip. Not a problem because tourism to Venezuela sucks right now.” He pointed to the big-screen television as he’d also linked the laptop into the onboard systems.
It showed a satellite view of the marina, the surrounding park, and swimming pools.
“But we can’t stay there. For one, the marina is too well guarded,” Richie started listing watch rotations and the like until Kyle stopped him. Then he continued, “Heavy private security makes for a lousy launching point for operations. I did make a reservation at a nearby Marriott just in case. Security would still be a pain, but the hotel is just half a kilometer from the back corner of Simón Bolívar International Airport if we need access to a plane.”
The team started razzing Richie about the Analie Sala mission. He’d been itching to get back at a plane’s controls ever since—despite the fact that they’d almost all died from his piloting that time. If Duane was never again on a flight with Richie at the controls, that would be just fine, even if he had managed to save them in the end.
“What else did you learn?” Duane cut in to keep it moving. He’d certainly delayed the discussions long enough through his own rank idiocy. An idiocy that he still didn’t understand how Sofia had forgiven him. Could they really just “make it up?” Was that how people made relationships?
“That marina and hotel are still ten miles to downtown—about an hour in typical traffic. Remember, at under forty cents a gallon, this is a car-crazy country. Of course, it’s up from two cents a couple years ago, so the citizens are not happy. I made reservations at a rundown little cama y desayuno closer in. The beds are supposed to be sad and the breakfast worse.” Richie paused.
He loved to be coaxed, so Duane did. “But…”
“But the B&B is less than a block from where the barrio meets El Helicoide.” And he put a birds-eye view of the building up on the screen. “It’s the former headquarters and one of the two main buildings that SEBIN occupies in Caracas. It’s also where most of their political prisoners are incarcerated.”
They’d studied it back at the Yakima Research Station of course, but it was still an amazing thing to look at.
In the 1950s a visionary had designed El Helicoide—The Helix. A tall hill in the center of Caracas had been scalped into a helix-shaped architectural cone circling the hill nine times as it climbed to ever-smaller levels. At three-quarters of a million square feet laid out like a coiled serpent, it was to have been the largest and most modern shopping center in Venezuela’s history. By following the nearly three-mile long road as it looped upward, customers could park close in front of whatever store they chose. The ultimate in modern convenience.
Started but not finished, it ran out of capital in the ’60s. To try to enliven interest, a Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome was even added to the flat uppermost layer—an area originally intended for the wealthiest people to arrive by helicopter. It hadn’t worked.
The late ’70s were defined by twelve thousand squatters moving in after the fast-encroaching barrio was leveled in a massive earthquake—the new residents eventually adding primitive water and power systems. The sewage system had still predominantly been dumping a bucket out over the edge and onto the next lower level.
“Shit rolls downhill,” Chad remarked as Richie continued the review of something they’d all heard back at Yakima. But a review was always a good thing prior to an operation. Who knew what factoid could spark a strategy or save their asses if the mission went sideways.
Then in the 1980s, DISIP, the secret police forerunner to SEBIN, had moved in, ousted the squatters, and finished The Helix. Since then it had become a mid-town icon of imprisonment and torture.
“The only thing worse than El Helicoide is La Tumba,” Richie moved the image over to The Tomb. SEBIN’s new headquarters lay just three miles away. “Sixteen stories above ground and five stories of prisons and torture chambers, that we know about, below ground. It was supposed to be a major station for their subway system at Plaza Venezuela, but that went away when the current administration seized power and needed somewhere to expand beyond El Helicoide.”
“We need eyes on La Tumba as well.” If Kyle was still pissed at them, he was doing a good job of hiding it. He was being as attentive as any of them.
“Which is exactly why I reserved a luxury suite in the Hotel King. It is directly across Olimpo Street from La Tumba. So, while you lot are languishing in your little B&B between El Helicoide and one of the city’s worst slums, we’ll be sipping a cerveza and watching the bad guys from our cushy armchairs.”
“Why the hell do you guys get off so easy?” Chad growled.
“Simple,” Richie was even more chipper than usual. “We thought it up.”
“Damn it! Melissa has been teaching you too well.” Chad raised his voice to Melissa’s back even though the helm was so nearby, “Take it down a notch, will ya?”
She shot back a thumbs up that Duane would bet had nothing to do with toning it down and everything to do with staying in a luxury hotel rather than a ratty B&B.
It was one of Kyle’s strange policies. Whoever had the idea, got the most benefits from the idea—if everything else about the tactical situation was equal. Richie had earned his cushy night out with his wife—even if the night out would be in full reconnaissance mode.
“How much longer to landfall?” Duane didn’t think he could take too much more of Richie’s gloating. Or of anything.
“Seven hours from here to Caracas,” Melissa reported from the helm.
“You’ve got six hours people,” Kyle shifted to his feet. “I want you fed and rested by then. Last hour is full weapons check. We’re finished here. Well done, Richie.”
Richie’s smile lit up. The look he traded with Melissa would melt steel.
Kyle must have caught it too. “I have the con. Get out of here you two,” he moved up to take Melissa’s position.
Duane figured that was a good idea before he got assigned some shitty task.
“Things I want to say to you,” he whispered to Sofia.
She nodded in response and led him downstairs.
There really were things he wanted to say to Sofia, but he wanted to say them in private. He wasn’t sure what they were, but the feeling was there that he definitely had something on his mind. Talking to her seemed the only likely way he’d figure out what it was.
But when Sofia opened the door to one of the suites, all he saw was the big bed with its pristine comforter the color of her eyes.
He fell face forward into it… them… it. And didn’t remember a thing for another six hours.
Duane had so obviously needed his sleep, that she’d let him have every minute of it and ten more.
Which had left her so frustrated at what he’d left unsaid that she hadn’t slept a wink.
Wh
en Kyle had come down to locate his missing crew member, he’d taken one look at her eyes and said kindly, “It’s time, Sofia. Roust him.” Then he’d gone away with no other comment.
He’d yelled at her earlier for missing that Duane was upset, now he was being understanding about her sleeplessness.
What was it with nice men all of a sudden? She wasn’t used to that and they were confusing the crap out of her. Not that the guys at the Activity were bad sorts, but there hadn’t been one she’d have gone out with even if she was dumb enough to date someone from work.
Now she wasn’t dating someone at work. She was…falling—
Tonto del culo!—Idiot of the ass! How was that even possible? But it was exactly what was going on. She was falling for Duane. And he wasn’t someone at work. He was someone she was going into battle with. How insane was that?
It was her own fault. The Activity hadn’t pushed her to get field experience, but all of the best agents had it and it showed. They didn’t typically embed with the teams for more than a single mission. She’d never heard of one who got into it this deep.
While Duane was inventorying, and checking the weapons and explosives he’d brought along, she’d spent some more time at her laptop. The first thing she did was find Richie’s account on her computer and burn it out. Or she tried to. It wouldn’t delete.
“Richie!”
He popped his head up out of a case of surveillance gear.
“Get your butt over here!”
He grinned at her, “Too busy.” And he ducked his head back down. He knew exactly what she was upset about.
Well, she was no slacker. She went in and burned down the hidden system password file—overwrote it with the Department of Defense 7-pass 5220.22-M(ECE) standard of secure erasure and set up, only her user exclusively, a new one. Let Richie get around that if he could. For good measure, she changed her user name to Duane so that he wouldn’t guess it.
She stared at the screen. Duane? She’d completely lost it.
She changed it to MariaAliciaForteza for Nana and then went about her research.
Sofia suspected that, with the gas prices at forty cents, it would be easier to buy a pair of used SUVs than rent anything.
Wild Justice (Delta Force Book 3) Page 21