by Paula Graves
Why? he thought. Why did it have to be Ava Trent who’d stumbled into the woods in search of him? Anyone else, he’d have ditched by now without a second thought.
Of course, anyone else might have already shot him.
He led the way back through the woods, swallowing an expletive when the heavens opened again overhead and rain started hammering through the canopy of trees. “This looks like a good spot,” he muttered, unzipping his backpack. Within a couple of minutes, he’d withdrawn the tightly packed tent and Ghillie cover and set it up between a couple of sheltering mountain laurel bushes. Coaxing Ava inside, he took one last look at the tent, decided it was camouflaged enough for the dark, rainy night and crawled inside.
She had already stretched out on the tent floor, her injured side up. Her breath came in soft, labored pants, but she tried to smile as he settled down beside her. “I don’t remember what it feels like to be dry.”
“Get out of those wet clothes,” he suggested, turning on the dim battery-powered camp lantern he’d pulled from his pack.
She arched an eyebrow in response.
“You’ll warm up faster if you’re not marinating in rain-soaked clothes.” He waved a hand at her rain-drenched jacket and blouse.
With a sigh, she sat up and shrugged off the jacket and blouse. Beneath, her bra was black lace and satin, militantly feminine, as if her inner woman had set up a quiet rebellion against her conservative, businesslike exterior.
And under the black lace, she was all creamy curves and tempting shadows. Her stomach was flat and toned, as if she took care to keep herself in shape, but there was a voluptuous roundness to her, over the layers of muscle, that set fire to Sin’s blood.
He dragged his gaze up to hers and found her staring back at him, her eyes fathomless.
“Eight years,” she said as if offering an explanation.
“They’ve been good to you,” he answered, trying to regain his equilibrium. He’d thought it impossible to think of anything but his sister’s plight now that he’d seen her in captivity. Indeed, the fact that he could feel his body quickening in response to Ava’s nakedness made him angry with his own weakness.
She wrapped her arms across her chest and pulled her knees up. “Do you have any extra clothes?”
He hadn’t had a chance to wash anything in days, but he supposed soiled was better than wet. He found a T-shirt that didn’t smell like days-old sweat and handed it to her. “I don’t have any pants that will fit you.”
She shrugged on the T-shirt. It was about two sizes too large for her, but her curves helped take up the extra room. Stretching gingerly, she unzipped her trousers and tried to slide them off her hips. Her face went white in the faint glow of the lantern.
He edged closer. “Let me help you.”
She looked up with a soft groan. “Easy, okay?”
He took care as he helped her pull the fabric of her trousers away from the wound, willing himself to ignore the feel of her warm, firm thighs beneath his palms or the faint, sweet scent of her bath gel still clinging to her skin. He concentrated instead on her injury, noting that blood seeped through the gauze, aided, no doubt, by the rain-soaked fabric of her pants.
He hoped her clothes were wash-and-wear, because anything prone to shrinking would never survive what they’d just gone through.
“Better?” he asked once he’d pulled her legs free of the pants.
With a nod, she bit her lip and tugged the hem of the borrowed T-shirt over her hips.
“Let’s change that bandage,” he suggested.
She nodded again, though her brow furrowed with dread. She rolled onto her side, pulling up the hem of the T-shirt to give him a better look at the bullet graze.
It still looked terrible, all ragged, torn skin. But the wound seemed clean enough, and while the skin around the margins was a reddish-purple color, the redness hadn’t yet spread much beyond the immediate area.
He talked her through the bandage change, warning her before he swabbed on stinging antiseptic and slathered the area with an antibiotic ointment. He finished off the cleaning with a fresh bandage and a new application of tape. “All done.”
She tugged her knees up to her chest, keeping her eyes closed.
“You okay?” he asked.
Her head bobbed in a slight nod.
Turning away, he dug in his supplies for a change of clothes, giving her time to recover. His traveling pack was designed to be able to carry a lot of supplies in a small space, but the tent and Ghillie net took up a lot of room, even folded to their most compact states. He had little more than the clothes on his back, a second pair of jeans and three spare T-shirts, one of which Ava was currently wearing. Other things were stashed in an abandoned building in the town of Purgatory, near Quinn’s new investigation agency, but it might be a long time before he’d get the chance to retrieve any of those things. If ever.
He peeled off his wet clothes and pulled out the dry jeans and one of the tees. As he was tugging on the jeans, he heard Ava suck in a sharp breath.
He turned to look at her. Her gaze was fixed on his rib cage.
On the scar.
Most days, he never gave any thought to the triptych of healed gashes that marred his rib cage. Shrapnel wounds from the explosion that had allegedly killed him. He’d cut things too close.
“Who did that to you?” Ava asked softly.
“I did it to myself,” he answered just as quietly.
“Blowing something up?”
“Yes.”
“You were integral to El Cambio for years. What changed? Why does Cabrera hate you so much now?”
He pulled the T-shirt over his head, hiding the scars. Giving himself time to figure out how much, if anything, to tell her about what he’d done to earn Cabrera’s thirst for revenge. “Allegiances change.”
Or they’re rediscovered, he added silently.
* * *
SHE MUST HAVE SLEPT, for when she opened her eyes, it was with a start, with the jangling nerves of a person roused from slumber to an alien darkness that set her heart racing and her limbs trembling. She sat up quickly, hissing with pain as the movement sent fire racing down one side of her leg.
The ground was hard beneath her, though something with a little padding lay under her legs. Stretching her arm out to one side, she felt a flexible canvas wall. A tent, she remembered. She was in a tent.
With a dead man.
She could hear his breathing, slow and even. Damn it. She’d taken the first watch and promptly fallen asleep.
Way to go, Special Agent Trent.
Gritting her teeth against the ache in her hip, she tugged on her boots, crawled forward to the tent opening and dared a peek outside. The view through the Ghillie net was worthless, so she went a little farther, out from beneath the netting, and emerged into the cool, damp woods.
The rain had finally stopped for the night, she saw, leaving a clearing sky overhead, full of endless stars and a waxing moon dipping toward the western horizon. According to her watch, it was a little after 3:00 a.m.
She scanned the woods for any sign of movement, seeing nothing but shadows and gloom. All she heard were the normal sounds of nocturnal creatures going about their nightly activities.
It was so quiet here in the mountains. Peaceful and still. The sky above seemed endless, the stars so thick they looked like streamers of mist streaking across the midnight backdrop. The sight reminded her of a night she’d spent in Mariposa with Sinclair, lying on their backs on the roof of his rented villa watching a meteor show. A smile teased her lips, but the pleasure faded quickly as the reality of her current dilemma forced its way past the memory.
What was she going to do about Sinclair Solano? The world believed him dead, so he wasn’t on anyone’s radar anymore. No one’s but Cabrera’s, at least. Legally speaking, there was no longer a warrant out for his arrest. His face no longer graced any Wanted posters.
If she didn’t tell a soul about seeing him, who wou
ld know? Or care, for that matter? For the past three years, Solano hadn’t been involved in any terrorist attacks, had he?
Or had he?
A shiver wriggled down her spine, raising goose bumps on her arms and bare legs. The night was mild, typical for August in the mountains, but despite the hem of the borrowed T-shirt dipping to midthigh, she felt suddenly naked and vulnerable.
She slipped back inside the tent and ran headlong into Sinclair’s chest.
His hands caught her upper arms, keeping her from toppling over. “Shh,” he whispered when she opened her mouth and drew in a sharp breath.
She swallowed her cry of surprise, her body rattled by another shiver. But this reaction wasn’t about the cold night air or her lingering fears.
This was all about the raspy sensation of his callused palms sliding over her bare arms, the heat of his body pressed intimately close to hers. His breath danced over her cheek, making her feel reckless and needy.
“Everything okay?” he whispered.
“Seems to be,” she managed to push between her trembling lips.
He wasn’t letting her go, she realized. And worse, she wasn’t making any move to get away from his gentle caresses.
“You should get some sleep.” His face brushed close enough to hers that she felt the light bristle of his beard against her jawline. She clenched her hands into fists, fighting the dizzying urge to rub her cheek to his, to feel the full friction of his stubble against her flesh.
He’d just said something to her, she thought numbly, trying to breathe. What had he said?
He slid his hands up her arms, over her shoulders. They came to rest on either side of her face, cradling her jaw. “Do you remember that night in Mariposa? On the roof of the villa?”
It was too dark in the tent to see much besides the inky impression of his lean, masculine features. She closed her eyes, unable to process anything more than the sensations jittering along her flesh where he touched her. “I remember.”
His voice softened to a flutter of breath against her skin. “I was going to meet you the next day. I meant to, right up to the last moment.”
Ice spread through her at his soft confession, and she pulled away, remembering what had happened not long after their last meeting. “But you went to Sanselmo instead.” She crawled deeper into the tent, curling into a ball with her back to him.
He didn’t move for a long moment, his continuing silence posing a temptation to roll over and look at him again. But she fought the urge, burying herself under eight years of anger and disappointment.
She hadn’t been naive, even at the age of twenty. She’d known a man like Sinclair Solano, the idealistic son of radicals, might find freedom-fighting in a totalitarian country too tempting to resist. But even while they were soaking up the Caribbean sun, Sanselmo had been holding democratic elections for the first time in decades. They’d voted in a reformer the very day Sin had stood her up to catch a flight out of Sebastian for South America.
Why had he gone there, when what he’d claimed to be fighting for was already starting to happen? Why had he joined a band of terrorists who, even now, continued to fight against a burgeoning civil society that had already rejected their radical aims?
Maybe he’d just been looking for a noble reason to justify his urge to kill people and blow things up. For too many people in the world, wielding destruction was motive enough for any choice they made.
His clothes rustled as he moved deeper into the tent, settling close to her. At least he didn’t touch her. Her body’s humiliating inability to resist his touch was something she was going to have to work through sooner or later, hopefully in the privacy of her own little apartment back in Johnson City.
“There was a man in Sebastian,” he said. “My father arranged an introduction.”
“Grijalva,” she said quietly.
He went silent a moment, as if the word surprised him. When the silence continued, she rolled over to look at him. He sat cross-legged, his face turned toward her. In the darkness, his eyes were hidden in the shadows of his craggy forehead and aquiline nose. She could tell he was waiting for her to say more, so she added, “Luis Grijalva, the great reformer. I understand he was martyred a few months later.”
Sin’s lips flattened. “He was murdered. By Cabrera.”
“Terrorists do have a tendency to eat their own.” She knew that U.S. authorities had long suspected Grijalva’s death had been staged by El Cambio as an attempt to discredit the new reformist government. But she was surprised to hear Sinclair admit it.
“Cabrera was the one who reported Grijalva’s martyrdom. He accused Mendoza’s forces of murdering Grijalva during a peaceful demonstration.”
“When did you figure out he was the killer?” she asked.
“I saw it happen.”
She stared at him, shocked. “You saw it?”
“It was the anniversary of the San Martín massacre. I guess you’d call it a high holy day for El Cambio.” His brow furrowed. “Are you familiar with the San Martín massacre?”
She searched her memory. “It had something to do with Cardoso’s rise to power, didn’t it? A big protest that turned bloody?”
Sinclair nodded. “In the beginning, El Cambio was actually made up of democratic reformers trying to stop Cardoso’s crackdown on free speech. Instead of the thugs who fill its ranks today, El Cambio started as a student movement in Sanselmo’s universities. Cardoso was making even the most innocuous political speech illegal in order to maintain and expand his powers as president. The protests grew and expanded in response.”
She nodded. She’d done a lot of research into the origins of El Cambio after learning Sinclair had joined the movement. By the time he’d signed on, the face of the rebellion had darkened considerably from its pro-democracy origins, though he hadn’t seemed to realize it until too late.
“The students decided to hold a rally in San Martín, a little town in the mountains outside Tesoro. The opposition leader, Diego Montero, came to speak. They blocked the main road into the town with their protest, but the people of San Martín didn’t care. It was the most excitement that had come to their little village in forever. They turned it into a festival. Until the soldiers came.”
The bleak tone of Sinclair’s voice set off an echo of dread in Ava’s chest. She knew the gist of what had happened next.
“It was a bloodbath. Men, women, children mowed down by Cardoso’s special forces as if they were targets in a shooting gallery.” Sinclair closed his eyes, horror twisting his features. “The road into town was twisty, as mountain roads are, and they had set up on a hairpin curve because the mountains made such a picturesque backdrop for the press cameras.”
His words sparked a dark memory of something she’d read about the massacre. “La Curva de los Muertos,” she whispered, her stomach flipping.
“Dead Man’s Curve,” he said with a grimace. “There was nowhere to run for so many of the protestors trying to escape the gunfire. The road behind them had been blocked by the booths, and beyond the curve in the road was nothing but a rocky fifty-foot drop-off....” His voice faltered.
“And some people jumped off the cliff rather than be ripped apart by gunfire,” she finished for him.
“I should have known, when Cabrera asked Grijalva to meet him there, that he had something more than talk in mind.” Sinclair rubbed the furrow between his brows. “Cabrera is fond of symbolism and symmetry.”
“He shot Grijalva at Dead Man’s Curve?”
“He didn’t shoot him. He hacked him to death with a machete.”
She shuddered. “You saw it happen?”
He nodded.
“But you kept quiet?” Her voice hardened at the thought. “Your conscience its own martyr to the cause?”
There was only the tiniest of change in his expression, a flicker of movement in his lean jaw, before he answered. “I was the martyr.”
* * *
SINCLAIR HADN’T MEANT to tell her s
o much of the truth. He supposed he could leave it lie, go back outside and apply himself to the job of keeping watch for what was left of the night. Let her come up with whatever explanation she wanted for his choices.
He could tell, from the horror in her expression, that whatever explanation she settled on was unlikely to be kind to him.
Maybe it would be best for both of them if she continued to see him as a murderer, a terrorist and a coward.
But when he started to move toward the front of the tent, her hand snaked out and caught his wrist. She had small, feminine hands, soft to the touch, but her grip was surprisingly strong.
“How were you a martyr?” she asked.
He thought about that day in Mariposa, when his father’s urging had sent him to the beach shack where Luis Grijalva lived in exile from the nation of his birth. He had been a vigorous, fit man in his mid-fifties, old enough to present a wise face to a young man’s crusade but still young enough to sway the imagination and engender passion and allegiance.
He’d spoken with passion of Sanselmo’s civilized roots and the ravages two decades of totalitarian leadership had left on the land and her people. He’d talked about fairness, freedom, community and revolution, in terms so gentle it could take a while to realize he’d meant the overthrow of Sanselmo’s government.
Sinclair had been young. Aimless. Trying to figure out how to stand out in a family of brilliant, passionate overachievers. Even his little sister was starting to outpace him, breezing through her studies as if they were child’s play.
He’d wanted to matter.
“I went to Sanselmo because I wanted to make a difference.”
“I’d say you managed that,” she murmured, her voice as dry as dust.
Chapter Six
“You can imagine what life was like as the son of Martin and Lorraine Solano.” Sinclair’s gaze lowered to the ground in front of him. He didn’t want to look at her, she realized.