by Kylie Brant
The smile that curled one corner of his mouth then was derisive. “Is that what he told you? That he was concerned about the political climate in San Baltes? Either you’re unbelievably gullible or you think I am. The U.S. has ignored San Baltes for decades. And now all of a sudden they’re so concerned they require a covert spy operation consisting of one lone police officer from no-name, California?”
His words had the unease that had lingered in her belly since Samuelson’s visit congealing into a hard knot of dread. Stubbornly, she refused to concede his point. “We’re talking about DHS here. It’s not beyond plausibility that they’d want to grab every opportunity to extract information, especially in a way that costs them nothing and doesn’t lead back to them.”
“It’s not DHS, it’s Samuelson,” he corrected. “You remember him. Tall, humorless prick with a bad comb-over? Where he’s concerned nothing is plausible, least of all his word. Face it, you were duped, Ava. He didn’t urge you down here to get information on San Baltes, de la Reyes or the political climate. He sent you to get information on me.”
Shocked, she regarded him with wide eyes, her mind racing furiously. But the more frantically it reached for answers, the less any of them made sense. “You’re paranoid,” she said finally.
“You know what they say.” His voice had gone lower. Raspier. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you.”
What the hell had she gotten herself entangled in? she wondered wildly. Some vendetta between a DHS agent and McCabe? Or was this man a raving lunatic?
She eyed him carefully. His face was all harsh angles in the early morning shadows, but his expression was determined. Whatever he was saying, he believed implicitly, even if he’d left out as much from his story as Samuelson had.
Silence stretched between them. He studied her from beneath lowered lids, and she became supremely conscious of the weight of him, the heat as she lay stretched out beneath him. Her lungs felt strangled. Last night she’d grappled with fragmented dreams, too similar to this moment for comfort.
But in the dreams their struggle on this bed ended much differently. And the memory of those unconscious snippets had her face burning.
“Get off me.” She arched beneath him, the vulnerability of her position stinging. “I’m not having this conversation with a two-ton ex-military ape crushing me.”
His fingers clasped her face and he sent a thumb skating across her lips. “Ava. Do you really think you’re in the position to be giving orders here?”
“Perhaps not.” She aimed a lethal stare at him. “But if I were you I’d start worrying about what I’ll do when I’m no longer in this position.”
“Threats.” A thread of admiration entered his tone. “I was right about your guts at least, if nothing else.”
She didn’t respond. Because it was appearing all too clear that she’d been right about very little ever since meeting the man.
His heart thudded against hers, as if in an answering tattoo. He shifted infinitesimally and she went still. His shoulders blocked out the early morning light spilling into the room through the double doors he’d left open. His chest was broad and his biceps bulged with muscles. But it was the change in his expression that had the breath catching in her throat. That instant when temper and resolve were replaced by something much more primitive. Something that had flickers of heat igniting in her veins.
Their gazes melded and for one second all thought vanished. And that was perhaps the most dangerous moment of all.
In the next instant he rolled off her, with a suddenness that was disconcerting. “Get dressed,” he rasped, rapidly crossing to the door. “We’ll finish this in my office in ten minutes.”
* * *
It was closer to a half hour before Ava stepped inside the boardroom turned command center. Cael felt her presence before he heard her enter. And that sensitivity, that awareness of her left him edgy.
“This is the president’s final schedule for the day?” It took more effort than it should have to return his focus to Benton. It was his operative who had brought him the device found in Ava’s bag. The device that had removed all doubt about the woman’s reason for coming here.
Recalling it now had his stomach burning. Because even with the bitter sense of betrayal blooming fresh and raw inside him, he’d still reacted to her. His body had responded to the woman rather than the employee set to betray him. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d given the benefit of the doubt to the wrong person.
But it would be the last time he made that mistake with Ava Carter.
He flicked a glance at Benton. “Thanks for bringing me this. As long as you’ve got Sibbits covering for you now, it’s your turn to sleep.”
The man looked at Ava, back again. “I can pull a double shift, Cael. Maybe between Sibbits and me—”
“That won’t be necessary.” He aimed a chilly smile at the woman in the doorway. “Ava is capable of pulling her weight here. As a matter of fact, she was quite convincing earlier today when she assured me of just that.”
There was pleasure in watching her creamy skin flush, twin patches of color coming, then going in her cheeks. But her voice as she strolled into the room was maddenly nonchalant. “What happened to your face? Looks like someone slipped under your famed guard and clipped you a good one.”
He touched his nose, which was more sore than he’d admit. He owed her for that. Owed her for far more, apparently. But her bravado sparked a sense of exhilaration. Damned if he didn’t find it stimulating to spar with her. Unfortunately he found her stimulating in more ways than one.
He’d chosen the location of their prior skirmish poorly. He could acknowledge that now, with the memory of her long, lean curves branded on his skin. Her scent emblazoned on his senses. But his body’s reaction to her would have no bearing on the end result of their relationship. He’d make certain of that.
“You’ll find that once my guard is breached I’m less trusting the next time.” He was only half aware of Benton slipping out the door unnoticed, closing the door behind him.
She halted across the table from him, her hands resting lightly on the chair back. “It’s encouraging to hear you tell Benton I’ll be going on duty. We both know you can ill-afford to lose an operative right now. You need my skills and you need the extra manpower I provide. I’m not a threat to de le Reyes or to you. And whatever is going on between Agent Samuelson and you, I want no part of it.”
Just the mention of the man’s name shot Cael with a familiar bitter resolve. “Unfortunately, you’ve become central to what’s between Samuelson and me.” He gave a careless shrug. “Hard to work up much sympathy for you, in light of the circumstances. You came down here to gather information for the bastard, and you’ll do just that. But I’ll be the one to determine what information you deliver to him.”
She gave a slight shake to her head. “What’s your story? I can believe he left out a lot—a helluva lot—from the tale he wove for me, but he’s a fed.” Information was shared on a need-to-know basis, and according to most feds, there was damn little local law enforcement needed to know. “But if you believe he wanted me here because of you there must be a lot of history between the two of you. I deserve to know what that entails.”
He tossed de la Reyes’s schedule carelessly on the table. “Sure you want to get into what you deserve, Ava?” A moment passed and when she didn’t rise to the bait, he lifted a shoulder. “We have a history, yeah. He hates my guts. I return the emotion, in spades. He’d like to see me dead. I’ll settle for seeing him ruined.” Flattening his palms on the table, he leaned forward, a measure of the satisfaction curling through him sounding in his voice.
“And you, Ava, are going to be the tool I use to make that happen.”
CHAPTER 5
Their gazes clashed. Not a flicker of emotion crossed Ava’s face, and Cael felt an unwilling tug of admiration. Sheer guts and skill wrapped up in a stunning package. It was too bad
she’d had the damned poor judgment to throw in with Samuelson.
“I’m no one’s tool,” she said with heavy emphasis. “I don’t know what’s going on between the two of you, but I’m taking myself out of the equation.”
He wondered if she realized the defiance in her tone was a dare. One that he was tempted, very tempted, to take her up on. “Oh, you’re very much in the equation,” he murmured. “Too much so for my peace of mind. You placed yourself right in the center of things.” Fury looked good on her, he observed. Brought color to her cheeks and dangerous lights to those dark eyes.
“I’m not a pawn to be moved at will by you or your personal nemesis. So whatever game you’re engaged in with Samuelson, you’ll play it alone.” Shoving away from the table, she walked to the door, spine straight.
And he let her go. There was nothing more to be discussed, at any rate. Ava Carter wasn’t a woman who’d bend easily to a man’s will. If she was telling the truth about her involvement with Samuelson, a big if, he reminded himself grimly, maybe she’d agreed out of a sense of duty to her country.
He considered that, his hands gripping and releasing the chair back as he regarded the door she’d closed behind her. He doubted the agent had offered her money. He was a shady son of a bitch, but he wouldn’t dare leave a paper trail like that for his superiors to follow. No, he’d tried something else. Manipulative prick that he was, he’d try appealing to her patriotism or blackmail. He’d used similar methods with Cael over the years.
Moodily, he mulled over the possibilities. But the truth was staring him right in the face.
He’d never seen a woman more difficult to manipulate than Ava Carter. That left blackmail, or something like it. A woman like her would have few weaknesses, other than her son, of course.
Cael pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and pressed the number for the information broker he used on a regular basis. Something had to exist in Ava’s life that he could use as leverage.
And whatever it was, he was going to discover it.
Then he was going to use it to acquire her cooperation to bring down Samuelson, once and for all.
* * *
Two things became very clear throughout the day Ava spent at de la Reyes’s side. One was that he was an extremely busy man. He went from meeting to meeting, briefing to briefing, phone call to phone call with barely a moment to himself.
The second was that her presence, and that of the rest of McCabe’s team, was fiercely resented by the palace guard. She imagined imprisoning their leader, Gonzalez, had been the first indignity. The next had been disarming some of them.
Ten national guardsmen were part of the president’s protection contingent. And for the first time in her life, Ava wished she weren’t bilingual. Because her language skills meant she could easily interpret the whispered grumbles of the men surrounding her. The asides that grew increasingly personal. Especially when she, on more than one occasion, inserted herself before a guardsman to maintain her position by the president’s side at all times. Or when they were closed out of a private meeting with the president and one of his cabinet members, while she remained in the room.
She wondered why the nationals really expected that she’d be unable to understand their remarks. The term puta was, after all, pretty universally understood. So perhaps they didn’t much care whether she spoke their language or not.
Because it would do no good to let on otherwise, she stood stoically through all the undertone conversations. Ignored the snippets of disparaging comments that drifted her way. And seethed silently when a couple of the guards discussed her physical attributes at length. And what they were better suited for.
The only positive note was that the frustration she felt was an admirable distraction from the earlier conversations with McCabe.
It would be more comfortable to regard the man as an oversuspicious zealot. But she shared his dim opinion of Samuelson. Had distrusted the man from the first. And could admit now how effortlessly the man had manipulated her. He’d discovered just enough about her to know what button to push; then he’d played her like a master.
And the bitterness accompanying that realization burned as much as McCabe’s opinion of her did.
The problems with secrets was that they left one vulnerable. She shifted position and pretended not to hear the comments about the shape of her ass. She may well have decided to join McCabe’s operatives anyway, given her sudden need of cash. But it had been her hunger to keep her past from crashing into her present that had cemented her decision, and it was easy to see what a mistake in judgment that had been.
One thing she was determined of—she wasn’t going to let McCabe use her to deceive DHS Agent Samuelson. Whatever was going on between the two men would unfold without her. She’d failed to convince him of that earlier today, so she’d gone on duty with their argument unresolved. But she wasn’t going to be the match that lit the fuse between them.
She shoved the troublesome thoughts away to concentrate on the three cabinet members currently meeting with de la Reyes. All had been searched, of course. But it was also her job to weigh and evaluate them for personal threat. Each had expressed horror at the president’s near death in the States. Apparently the attempt on the man’s life yesterday had been kept quiet. Probably McCabe’s doing. None of the president’s visitors today had mentioned it.
The conversation had turned to efforts to curb criminal elements in the country, and a familiar name was mentioned.
“We’ve intercepted and jailed a dozen more couriers we suspect work for Ramirez,” Emanuel Ortega, head of Justicia, was reporting in Spanish. “We continue to strangle his ability to conduct his business.”
“And what of his assets?” Antonio de la Reyes looked at a second man, his director of International Finance. “I want him stopped. To do so we must cripple him where it hurts him the most.”
Ramon Jorge inclined his head. He was a wizened little man, the wrinkles in his face giving him a raisinlike appearance. “We’ve located the blind trusts he’s using and put a stop to the offshore banking he was engaged in. His assets have been frozen.”
De la Reyes slapped his palm on the polished teak table. “Excellent.” Satisfaction laced his tone. “We can expect that to draw him out, if nothing else. Without ready cash, he’ll become increasingly desperate.”
The men exchanged glances, and Ava knew intuitively what they were thinking. A desperate man was increasingly dangerous. If Ramirez had anything to do with the attempts on the president’s life, his survival had just gotten more precarious.
And their job here had become even more difficult.
* * *
It was later in the afternoon, during de la Reyes’s meeting with the archbishop of his church, that the guardsmen on duty with her changed tactics, grew bolder.
The first brush of a body against hers had Ava shifting slightly. The second time it happened was harder to ignore. Especially when she turned to catch the smirk on the guardsman’s face closest to her. She waited, teeth gritted, for his palm to move over her backside once more, then, eyes still straight ahead, snaked a hand behind to catch the marauding palm. With a quick practiced move she wrenched it up and back, surprising a muffled yelp from the guardsman.
The meeting room went silent. The archbishop sent an inquiring look their way and de la Reyes aimed a glare that encompassed the entire team. The man in back of Ava shuffled his feet and muttered an apology for the interruption. A moment later the president resumed the meeting. And the men surrounding her gave her plenty of room without crowding her for the duration.
The meetings lasted until well after five o’clock that evening, when the last visitor left and de la Reyes headed to his quarters to change prior to the evening meal. Sibbits was waiting outside the conference room with a new team of guardsmen. With a cursory nod toward Ava, he fell into step behind de la Reyes and strode out the door.
The National Guardsmen on her detail headed toward the door until her
voice stopped them. “Para a la derecha allí. Quiero una palabra con usted.”
Under any other circumstances, the men’s reaction to her command, uttered in flawless Spanish, would have been comical. Ava’s sense of humor, however, had vanished somewhere between puta and that hand on her ass.
She waited until she had their attention and continued on in their native tongue. “If today was an example of the way you do your job, I can guarantee that you will not remain employed much longer. I could round up a gang of ten-year-olds more professional than the bunch of you.” Some of the men shot looks at each other, but all remained silent. Her voice grew more contemptuous. “Your antics were juvenile and distracting at a time where your caution should be at its highest point. You’d better report for shift tomorrow and impress me with your expertise or you’ll all be looking for new jobs. Understand?”
Surprise had turned to sullenness on the men’s faces after her spate of scathing Spanish. But there were enough muttered “entendido” s to satisfy her. She waited for the first of them to reach the door before adding, “Oh, and the next one who touches me? I’ rotura del ll su brazo maldito.”
Her threat, delivered in as sunny a tone as she could manage, had a few of the guards exchanging glances, but all were silent as they trooped out.
Ava released a long hissed breath and worked her shoulders to release the tension of the day. Then felt that tension ratchet up again when Cael came striding into the room.
The long hours since their argument this morning vanished. Trepidation mingled with resolve. If he were here to start up where they left off this morning, he’d find her unswerved. Regardless of what he had in mind, there was no way he could force her into this unhealthy contention between him and the DHS agent.