On the Loose

by Tara Janzen

  “Yeah, baby. I think it’s broken. Do you hurt anywhere else?”

  “No...no, I—” She reached up for him, and he pulled her into his arms.

  In the distance, he could hear Campos on the radio, calling for transportation.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Campos’s home was in an uproar: Jake outside directing traffic, rebels, and the fallout of their early morning fracas; Rydell in Campos’s largest guest suite, hovering over Honey; Sister Julia in the guest suite, hovering over Honey; Sofia in the guest suite, hovering over and working on Honey; three of Isidora’s littlest ones in the guest suite, making nuisances of themselves; and Campos only there as a concerned host.

  The woman’s ankle was broken. Campos had once been shot and received less attention. Hell, he’d been shot yesterday and received less attention.

  “Conchetta, Paco, Rosella, váyanse.” He shooed the children out and wondered if there would be lunch today. He supposed he could go to the kitchen and find out. As he recalled, Lily Robbins was in the kitchen with Isidora. Possibly, they were making lunch.

  He hoped quite a lot of it.

  A few officers from the Salvadoran army had flown in by helicopter to verify Garcia’s death, with Campos’s men holding the rebel soldiers until Salvadoran troops arrived to take them into custody.

  He wasn’t planning on feeding the rebel soldiers, but the officers should have a table.

  He wasn’t planning on delivering Rydell’s fax, either, the one telling the man his partner in Lima had been killed. Plenty of other people had that piece of bad news. Rydell would hear it soon enough.

  The sound of crying coming from the next suite down the hall had him stopping to take a look. Ah, yes. Sister Teresa.

  He’d have to take her in, create a place for her on his staff. Isidora would figure it all out for him. The church certainly wasn’t going to allow her to stay at St. Joseph, not even with Sister Rose as her advocate. No, the woman was an outcast, with two dead lovers and a heap of broken vows.

  When he reached the kitchen, he stopped just outside the door and looked in. Ms. Robbins was, indeed, helping Isidora, the two of them making a good team, even with Lily’s less-than-fluent Spanish. Food preparation, he decided, was probably one of the universal languages, like math. Everyone who’d ever been in a kitchen knew how one worked.

  Jewel had never cooked a meal in her life.

  He hadn’t minded.

  Miguel Carranza had rather miraculously contracted a nearly instantaneous hit on Diego Garcia in response to his phone call this morning, going above and beyond the request, and he minded that very much. Payback was going to be hell. His only hope lay in the assassin. Possibly, there was something in the conversation between Irena Polchenko and Rydell that he could use to his advantage with Miguel Carranza.

  He’d have to think that one through very carefully.

  Lunch smelled divine, with soup pots steaming, and meat roasting, and Lily wrapped in a white chef’s apron. He liked lanky women, and Lily Robbins was lanky with cleavage, a fantasy come true. Another time, another place, maybe he could have indulged. But with the state of his life, it would take twenty years and another country before he could involve himself with someone like Lily Robbins, a schoolteacher, for crying out loud.

  Schoolteachers frowned on drug dealers, and for all intents and purposes, he was a drug dealer, and he meant all intents and purposes. There was no hedging those bets, not as long as he was in El Salvador. His cover was deep and hard-won, and his life depended on it. So no, there would be no Lily Robbins in his future.

  But he could take her home. By anyone’s standards, he had pulled off the coup of the week, if not the whole damn month. The mission was an unqualified success. They had the documents, the flash drive, and three fourths of the money, the mil and a half he’d put in his safe in the AC-130 building.

  For that, between the CIA and State, there shouldn’t be any problem fulfilling his request for a private jet to meet them in San Salvador this afternoon. After lunch, with Sofia’s approval for Honey to travel, he was planning on flying Rydell, Honey, Sister Julia, and Lily in his Beech to Ilopango. From there, they’d board the jet to Albuquerque, and from Albuquerque, he’d take the York-Lytton sisters to Washington, D.C., and probably Rydell as well. The man didn’t look inclined to leave Honey’s side. A couple of days out of Morazán wasn’t such a bad idea for him, either. Too bad he couldn’t spend them in Albuquerque.

  Going home would be a nice surprise to Ms. Robbins, and he was grateful he could offer her at least that.

  Thirty thousand feet over the Gulf of Mexico had never looked so good to Honey, in no small part because of the man sleeping at her side, and Julia.

  Julia was coming home.

  “I still can’t believe Father Bartolo implied I was the one who was pregnant,” Julia said, shaking her head.

  “Well, remember, I said he only implied it. He didn’t state it as a fact.”

  “But it’s why you came, Honey, and look what happened. Good Lord, you’ve been in danger the whole time, and you got hurt.” Julia reached over from her seat and took Honey’s hand. “I’m so sorry, Honey.”

  “You’re not the reason I got hurt,” she said for the hundredth time. “That had to do with crumbling tunnels and raging rivers.”

  “Which you wouldn’t have been anywhere near, if not for—”

  “Shhh,” Honey interrupted her sister. “The only thing I can possibly blame you for is not writing enough for at least a few letters to get through.”

  The state of the mail system in Morazán was exemplary. But there was a bit of a hitch between St. Joseph School and Orphanage and the post in Cristobal, where the mail was processed. The hitch, they’d decided, being the cook’s helper whose job it was to gather the mail from the school’s drop box and make sure it all safely arrived in Cristobal. Julia had promised to check the pack bags the boy used on his burro when she returned. They were both guessing there would be old letters stuffed here and there in the bags, or crumpled up in the corners.

  And there it was, despite everything, the hard truth. Julia was going to Washington, D.C., with Honey, yes, and was happy to be visiting her family, but then she was going home, and home was St. Joseph.

  It wasn’t just the lack of letters that made keeping in touch so difficult. It was the work, Julia had said. Between the children, and teaching, and her devotions, there was little time left to dwell on the outside world, and therein lay her peace and her hope.

  The work was a comfort to her.

  Honey would never deny Julia her comfort. They’d been through too much together, and if ever Julia was in need, Honey would always be there, the young woman was so very precious to her. But perhaps it was time to try to at least begin to let go. Or maybe not. Even the thought hurt.

  El Salvador wasn’t the only country in the world with orphans, but it was the country with Julia’s orphans, and Honey had a feeling Alejandro Campos would be a more reliable connection than Garcia. Though Julia had assured her that whatever the man’s faults, and they had been legion, Diego Garcia had been a great help to St. Joseph.

  And if Campos fell through for her, she had Brett Jenkins III in Panama City who would always take her calls, and the elusive Mr. Cassle who knew everything and everybody. But mostly she had Smith, at least for now, and at thirty thousand feet and heading home, for now was enough.

  Lily had never flown in a private jet before. Neither had she ever seen a grenade explode, or a truck explode, or seen a cold-blooded murder, or watched a man die. The experiences had marked her for life. She would never forget the pilot’s death, or the young soldier’s final plea.

  “Would you like another soda, Ms. Robbins? Or wine?” the man across from her asked.

  She wouldn’t forget him, either, Alejandro Campos. She hadn’t expected to witness violence in El Salvador, but its existence there did not surprise her.

  He surprised her, in every way.

  From
the moment she’d walked into his kitchen, soaking wet and frightened, he had treated her with kindness. The biggest drug dealer in Morazán Province was the most gracious man she’d ever met, and she didn’t know if that said something about American men, or the men in Albuquerque, or if it simply said something about Alejandro Campos.

  “Wine would be nice. Chardonnay.”

  He lifted his hand, and his servant, Max, brought the Chardonnay out of the galley and poured her a glass.

  “Now, where were we?” Mr. Campos said. “With Diane, right? One of the girls in your tenth grade Advanced Placement human geography class? You were saying her essay on Native Americans had proven to be exceptionally insightful.”

  Yes, that’s exactly what she’d been saying, and Mr. Campos had been listening, and so it had been going for the last four hours. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d held a man’s attention quite so thoroughly, at least with her clothes on. Her ex-husband, Tom, had always noticed her naked, but even sex had started to wear thin for them by the end.

  “Yes,” she said. “Diane managed to fairly successfully integrate a theory on tribal identity with a position on genetic memory put forth by James Waddel in his book on the Celts.” And so it had gone, and so it went, topic after topic, with Mr. Campos sometimes resting his chin in his hand and watching her with rapt attention as she rambled on about high school whatnot and geographical flotsam.

  By the next change in subject, he had pulled a pen out of his coat pocket and requested a piece of paper from Max.

  “I’m going to give you a phone number,” he said, jotting it down on the paper. “For obvious reasons, I don’t carry business cards, and this number I’m giving you will not connect you directly with me.” He looked up and smiled, and the warmth of the expression went straight through her. “I don’t suppose that sounds very commendable, does it?”

  “I’m fine with that,” she said, for some reason knowing she did not want to lose touch with him, if it was at all possible.

  “Good,” he said, and continued writing. “If, for whatever reason, you ever need to contact me, this number will suffice. I pick up my messages every day, and am usually able to return calls within a day or two.”

  He folded the paper in half and handed it over.

  “If you need me, Ms. Robbins, or if I can be of service, don’t hesitate to call. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe we’re ready to begin our descent into Albuquerque. It has been a pleasure.” He rose from his seat and gave her a short bow, before heading into the cockpit.

  She looked over at the other passengers. Sister Julia liked Campos, and so did the man named Rydell. Lily hadn’t really had a chance to talk with Sister Julia’s sister, but none of these people seemed to either notice or care what the enigmatic Mr. Campos did for a living.

  Glancing down, she opened the paper and looked at the number. She would never use it, of course. What possible need could a school-teacher from New Mexico ever have for a drug dealer from El Salvador?

  None, she hoped.

  She hoped it with all her heart—and yet she was glad to have the number.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Denver, Colorado

  Of all the strange twists of the day, this was by far the most interesting, Campos thought. Absolutely fascinating, and probably, considering his real line of work, after this many years, inevitable.

  In Albuquerque, Rydell had made a request for a change in destination from Washington, D.C., to Denver. From there, he’d promised Campos, he would see the women home.

  Granting the request had been a matter of course. Campos liked Denver for a lot of reasons, some of them very personal. He knew the city, but he hadn’t been there in years, for a lot of reasons, some of them very personal, like the one driving across the tarmac, heading for the jet.

  The sun was just beginning to set on a long summer day in the Mile High City, but he would have recognized Corinna anywhere. The 1967 Pontiac GTO was pure classic, a navy blue beast with a Ram Air 400 under the hood and a four-speed on deck.

  The young man getting out from behind the steering wheel, Kid Chaos, was also easily recognizable, but only because he was the spitting image of his brother, J. T. Chronopolous.

  Yeah, he’d heard the news about J.T. a few years ago and cried himself to sleep with a bottle of Scotch for a week, and then done it again a month later, and a month later after that. J.T. had been the best of them, always.

  His loss still hurt.

  Campos watched Kid walk across the tarmac to greet Rydell and the two women, and he saw the curious glance the younger man tossed in his direction—but that was as far as it would go. Kid would not recognize him, especially from a distance, not in sunglasses, with long hair, and a Hugo Boss suit.

  He’d stayed by the jet specifically to keep that distance. He always kept his distance.

  But a few yards of distance and a pair of sunglasses weren’t enough to hide him from the man getting out of the passenger side of the Goat.

  Christ. Dylan Hart.

  Campos almost grinned. Yeah, there had been a few years when he’d thought they were one and the same.

  Dylan was talking into a cell phone, until the boss of SDF Steele Street locked his gaze on a man he must have thought he’d never see again.

  Campos couldn’t have called; that wasn’t the way the deal worked. And yet he knew Dylan must have wondered about him. They all must have wondered, Hawkins, and Creed, and Quinn, and J.T.

  Water under the bridge, he thought. He’d made his choice, and the only regrets he’d had were recent.

  He saw Dylan say something brief into the phone, then close the cell and drop it in his pocket—and all the while, his gaze was steady across the tarmac, his expression unreadable.

  When the pilot poked his head out of the hatch to say they were good to go, Campos acknowledged him with a glance, then looked back to Dylan. Rydell, and the women, and Kid were busy getting into Corinna, and Campos doubted if any of them saw Dylan give him a short salute.

  But he saw it, and that’s what counted.

  He nodded, once, the barest movement, then turned and walked back up the ramp.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  738 Steele Street, Denver, Colorado

  “You’re staring at my ass.”

  “Yes, I am.” It’s what he did in the mornings, when she woke up and spent the first hour lying around in bed.

  “You’ve been staring at my ass for three weeks.”

  “And it’s looking good, babe.”

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

  “No, we don’t.” He liked meeting like this, over her bare ass, a hot-off-the-presses copy of the Rocky Mountain News, and a steaming cup of coffee. It was so perfect, he planned on doing it every day for the rest of his life. He just hadn’t told her yet.

  “You’ve got to stop reading that local rag and get some real news,” she said from her end of the bed, where she’d spread out the Sunday edition of The Washington Post.

  “And what does Darcy Delamere have to say today?”

  “Not much,” she admitted. “The girl hasn’t been getting around to many parties lately.”

  “Well, I heard she broke her ankle.” He took a sip of coffee.

  Green eyes slanted him a teasing look from over a shoulder so soft and creamy, he dreamed about it.

  “I heard she got a new lover and hasn’t been out of bed since May.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him.

  Normally, he would have laughed, but she’d just given him a really great idea.

  “You want to do it in the kitchen again?”

  “No,” she said, surprising him. They’d had a great time in the kitchen. “I think I still have meringue on my butt from last night.”

  “No, you don’t.” He’d gotten it all. With his tongue. How could she have forgotten?

  “Nope. I think there’s still a little bit back there.”

  He was looking right at her ass, and he could gua
rantee there wasn’t a—oh.

  “Oh, yeah. I think you’re right.” Of course she was right. She thrived on being right, especially about things like meringue on her butt, and how many Salvadoran orphans she could support through the Kardon Foundation, and what scuzzball politician she could take down next week in Washington, D.C.

  The girl was multifaceted.

  Kind of like the diamond burning a hole in his pants pocket. He glanced over and saw his slacks in a pile on the floor. They were lying right next to a little black dress, the classic little black dress he’d taken off her last night.

  Blondes looked good in black.

  Of course, they looked better naked, but right next to naked was black, as in lace, and after lace, he’d take spandex, and after spandex, he’d take above-the-knee, jersey knit, little black dresses.

  “I have a proposition for you,” he said, and that got her interest.

  “Is this anything like the proposition you gave me last week in Osaka?”

  “No.” That proposition had been very Oriental, with a bit of accompanying paraphernalia, and a little bit of this and that, and she’d loved it, and he’d loved her loving it.

  “Is it like the proposition you gave me two weeks ago in Key West?”

  “Ah, no.” He grinned. Key West had been fun. She was fun, and a good traveler. He could see why her brothers invited her on all their adventures.

  “Hmmmm,” she mused. “Not Osaka, not Key West. Is this like that Houston Hustle you showed me?”

  He shook his head, and her brows drew together.

  “So what, exactly, have you dreamed up...Cougar?”

  He did laugh at that, and reached down to pull her up next to him. “How’s the ankle feeling today?”

  “Good.” She snuggled in close, but wasn’t dissuaded. That was the reporter in her. “So tell me what you’ve got in mind.”

  “Collusion,” he said, going for broke. “And delusion.”

  She was a quick girl, with a damn good memory. She looked up at him, her expression serious. “That’s what you called the chapter you were going to write on marriage in San Luis.”