by Kylie Brant
“And you saw it for yourself? How many stationed there?”
“Hard to say,” Reynolds responded laconically. “I counted over a hundred. But there’s no way to be sure how many were inside the buildings.” He leaned forward to point to a map he’d drawn of the place. “It’s well guarded and well equipped. Some real money has been funneled into their hands. I saw enough rifles to outfit half the country.”
“So if Ramirez is the source of the money, the rebels report to him now. He uses them to destabilize the country and undermine de la Reyes’s government.”
Coming to a realization, he straightened and looked at the other man. “We’re not going to find Ramirez there, though. He’s too smart to be caught with the rebels.” He wasn’t sure how he could use this information yet, but he’d file it away. It was the sort of intel DHS or CIA might be interested in. So he’d make damn sure Ava never got close to it.
Just the thought of the woman left a burning sensation in his chest. He’d left her standing at Gonzalez’s quarters earlier this evening without a word, too troubled by the thought that had occurred to him. Every moment he spent alone with her, even professionally, was dangerous on some level. It weakened his resolve. Made him soften toward her, and he couldn’t afford even that small weakness.
His special ops background had left him with a black-and-white view of the world. And the number-one lesson he’d learned from his time in the military was that you didn’t go into danger with people at your side you couldn’t trust.
You damn sure didn’t go to bed with them.
He hadn’t taken Ava to bed, but he’d wanted to. And if he were honest, the thought lingered in the back of his brain at every second of every day. Memories of the moments spent pressed up against her in that damn take-me bed learning for himself the softness of her skin and the scent of her hair.
A soldier didn’t lower his defenses when under attack, and his entire relationship with Samuelson had been just that. Ava was one more tool in the man’s arsenal. Cael had to remember that, because she represented his best opportunity to destroy the man.
And, he thought grimly, he’d shed this conscience that seemed to be working overtime whenever he thought of using her. She’d displayed no such sensitivities about undermining him.
But as quickly as the thought occurred, he was forced to temper it. She’d come here all too willing to spy for Samuelson. But he was betting she’d been duped about the man’s purposes. Hell, he knew from personal experience just how convincing the agent could be. His jaw tightened as he recalled just how far the man would go to get what he wanted.
He also knew how easily the facade would drop when he was crossed. And Cael couldn’t waste time worrying about the fallout for Ava once Samuelson realized she’d misled him, at Cael’s direction. She deserved whatever twists came her way for going along with the man in the first place.
He told himself that. Tried to believe it.
“We can’t do anything with the information right now,” Reynolds was saying regretfully. It took a moment for Cael to follow the line of conversation back to the rebel camp. “We don’t have the manpower. Could be close to two hundred in the camp…we’d need at least six guys.”
Cael gave a quick grin of appreciation at the man’s confidence. But it was close to the truth. He’d teamed with Reynolds in the military. The man had been at his side in more than one deadly situation. “That’s not our mission here. At least not right now. When we get the whole team together…then we’ll see where we’re at on the investigation for de la Reyes. Who knows? Maybe he’ll want to turn this information over to his military at some point.”
Reynolds shrugged, but Cael could read the regret in his expression. “Camp probably won’t be there much longer. You know as well as I do how mobile they are.”
“We’ll have to take that chance. Keeping de la Reyes safe is our priority. If we can find whoever is working for Ramirez, get to the man through them, the rebels will be no threat. Their enemy is whoever they are being paid to battle. And we may have gotten a valuable lead.”
Carefully, he folded up the maps and the directions Reynolds had written to the camp. “Perez checked in earlier tonight. The Jeep driven by the men who fired on us on the way to the palace was reported stolen a week ago. Dental records have been matched on both of the victims. One is a brother of one of the air traffic controllers working at the airport the day our flight came in.”
“We figured something like that,” Reynolds commented.
“Perez is with the police right now for the interrogation.” And he doubted it was going easily on the controller. South American countries’ police weren’t bound by the same protocol American police were. The interview could get brutal, given what the man was suspected of.
Shrewdly, he studied the man who was as close to him as a brother. “Get some sleep. We can use some help covering the shifts on de la Reyes and Gonzalez.”
“I wouldn’t mind taking a shot at Gonzalez.”
“Let’s wait until we have the security cameras at the bank. Maybe we’ll have something to hit him with later.” Cael’s cell phone rang, and he reached into his pocket to draw it out, read the number on the screen.
It was the information broker he’d called this morning. The one he’d charged with digging up Ava Carter’s secrets.
“I have to get this. Have Sibbits show you where your room is.” As Reynolds retreated, Cael answered the phone, anticipation swirling in his gut. Not even to himself would he admit that the thought of learning more about the woman was appealing in itself. She’d been maddenly closemouthed about anything remotely personal.
But fifteen minutes later Cael finished the conversation, a much different emotion careening inside him. It was, he thought bleakly, like getting an inadvertent peek at someone’s dirty laundry. Except in this case not so inadvertent.
But he understood her now far better than he had ever thought he would. Understood why she hid her past. The impact the secrets could have on her career.
The only questions that remained were whether he could follow through and blackmail her with the information, in an attempt to gain her cooperation with Samuelson.
And whether he could live with himself if he did.
* * *
Because her shift came early the next morning, Ava turned in right after she’d eaten and showered. She came awake before dawn, fully alert.
Eyes getting used to the darkness, she saw what had awakened her. Each of them had been given a wrist communicator. It would vibrate and light up when there had been a breach in the security at the palace.
It was glowing and vibrating now.
Ava rolled out of bed and shrugged into her vest, fastening it with one hand as she grabbed her weapon with the other. Racing to the door of her room, she unlocked it and was speeding down the hall in less than ten seconds.
The perimeter of presidential guard was three deep inside the palace, she recalled, forgoing the elevator for the stairs. But it was impossible to tell from the wrist unit whether the inner or outer perimeter had been breached. And for some reason, the radio element didn’t seem to be working.
On the main level she saw Reynolds, looking grim and dangerous with his Luger ready. Shouts sounded in the distance, and she could hear the rush of the presidential guardsmen.
“Inner or outer perimeter?” she called to Reynolds.
“Outer. Coming up through the front gate.” He headed toward the front door, which already was crowded with guards.
The drive from the gate to the palace was at least a mile. When it got closer to the structure it swung in a wide semicircle. She let Reynolds cover the front and veered off to sprint toward the side entrance. If she could get to it in time, she could stop the driver before he ever made it to the palace entrance.
Elbowing her way through the guards, she had a moment to recognize they were holding their position, three deep inside each door, twelve feet apart, just as Cael had told them.
“Black limo, unidentified occupants.”
“Open the door.”
The door was unlocked and swung open as Ava hit it, taking the stairs at a leap and racing across the lawn. The lawn was soft as velvet beneath her bare feet. She could see the headlights first, spearing through the darkness. Recognized the shape of the vehicle slowly rolling up the drive before her.
She came to a sudden halt, raised her weapon. Took one deep breath and then fired two shots, one each into the front and back tire.
The limo came to a shuddering halt.
Ava was aware of the guards running up toward her, but it was to Reynolds she called, “Order a check of the undercarriage.” The man snapped out an order in Spanish and several guards ran to fetch the equipment to carry out the search.
In a louder voice she shouted to the driver, “Camine del coche con sus brazos levantados.”
But the driver and his passenger—she could see at least one in the backseat through the tinted windows—remained inside the car.
“Usted tiene treinta segundos para vaciar el coche antes de ques comencemos a tirar.”
Ten seconds ticked by. Adrenaline spiked higher with each passing instant. Twenty seconds. Ava bit out an order to the nearby guards in Spanish. “Weapons loose.” The surrounding guardsmen sighted their rifles.
Then slowly, the driver door inched open to frame a Hispanic man who looked to be in his mid-thirties, wearing a chauffeur’s uniform in the same midnight black as the car.
“Don lanzamiento de t! Don lanzamiento de t!”
“Get out of the car with your hands in the air,” Ava instructed in Spanish. When he did so, she gestured for two of the guards to search him, as a team of others, under Reynold’s supervision, began inspecting the undercarriage of the vehicle for explosives.
She took position at the open door to point her rifle toward the lone occupant in the backseat. But before she could utter another order, the back passenger seat swung open and a petite whirlwind of fury exited, along with a spate of rapid-fire Spanish.
“How dare you! Who are you and what have you done with Tonio? I demand to be taken to him at once.” The enraged woman slapped at a rifle barrel held by a nearby guard and spun to advance on Ava.
“If you have harmed my Tonio, I promise you will pay. I will kill you myself!”
Coolly, Ava stood her ground, not lowering her weapon even as the guard’s voices sounded behind her.
“Marissa Mejido y Fuente. Es el presidente novia de s.”
The president’s girlfriend? Ava exchanged a look with Reynolds, who also had turned at the words. His expression looked as blank as she felt. McCabe hadn’t mentioned a girlfriend to contend with. For that matter neither had de la Reyes.
But the guards all seemed to recognize her.
Ava lowered her weapon. “Search the interior of the vehicle,” she directed two of the men in Spanish. She switched her attention to the woman, continuing in the same tongue. “We are here to protect the president. He hasn’t told us to expect you. He will be alerted of your presence here, but before you go inside I will have to search you.”
Fuente’s reaction was immediate and vitriolic. “You will not touch me! I demand to be taken at once to Tonio.”
Ava engaged the safety and handed her rifle to a nearby guardsmen before approaching the woman. Fuente flexed her fingers and leaped at her. Ava jerked her head back, but felt the woman’s nails rake down the side of her throat. Irritated, she grabbed Fuente’s arm and yanked her off balance, using the woman’s own weight against her as she took her down, keeping her there with one knee to her back.
With Fuente screeching, Ava swiftly and professionally frisked her for weapons. The short black cocktail dress had a plunging neckline and not much fabric to hide a weapon. Ava got up, took the woman by the arm and pulled her upright, giving her a little shake. “Behave yourself and we’ll take you inside,” she said grimly in Spanish. “Touch me again and I’ll dump you in the fountain. Understand?”
“You will be sorry for this!” Fuente shook her hair back out of her extraordinarily beautiful face and balled her fists. “Tonio will see that you pay for your mistreatment of me!”
Ava felt the trickle of blood on her neck. Retrieving her weapon without relinquishing her grip on the woman’s arm, she nudged her forward toward the side entrance of the palace. “Your mistreatment? And yet I’m the one bleeding. Go figure.”
* * *
“This is an outrage, Tonio!” Marissa Mejido y Fuente paced the president’s opulent personal living room and pointed her finger at a silent Ava, standing just inside the door. “That…that she-devil attacked me! She threatened me and pushed me down. Held a gun on me. I demand that she be imprisoned!”
“English, please, Marissa.” De la Reyes crossed to hand her a glass of red wine, patting her hand. “Not all of our guests speak Spanish.”
“Guests!”
Even Cael could feel the venom in the look she tossed at Ava, but she’d switched to English as requested, and sipped at the wine de la Reyes had supplied. “What is she doing here, dressed like a rifle-carrying puta and terrorizing your visitors?” Fuente shot him a distrustful look, as well. “What are any of them doing here? Why do you have so much security? You assured me the danger was over. Why are these foreigners here?”
But rather than answer her question, de la Reyes asked one of his own. “I didn’t expect you back in the country for another two weeks. What of the modeling competition in Buenos Aires?”
The woman studied the man shrewdly before unexpectedly striding up to Cael and demanding, “Tell me what is going on. Tonio will try to hide things, or tell some but not all. You, I think, can give me the answers I seek.”
Cael flicked a glance over at his operatives. Perez hadn’t reported back yet, but besides Ava, Sibbits, Reynolds and Benton were all there. Next his gaze moved to de la Reyes, who gave him a little shrug.
“The president’s would-be assassin in the States was killed before he could injure Antonio. The person who saved him, you might be interested to know, was Ava Carter.” He nodded in her direction, noted that while the woman glanced at Ava, her focus was on the president.
“A lieutenant in the presidential guard was killed in the act,” Cael continued. “Pedro Cabrerra. My company was hired by the president for added security in the States. When it became apparent that his presidential guard had been compromised, our contract was extended to accompany him back here until his safety has been secured. A second attempt was made on the president’s life when he returned to San Baltes.”
The woman gave a great shuddering breath before launching herself into de la Reyes’s arms. The man managed, barely, to catch her wineglass before it drenched them both.
Cael looked away as the man held Marissa close, murmuring in her ear. He caught sight of Ava then and observed welts on her throat, red and raw with dried blood congealed on them. Relatively minor wounds. So it was ridiculous to feel this edge of worry for her.
Fuente’s earlier description of her had been scathing, but Ava’s appearance would have caught the attention of anyone new on the scene. At first glance it appeared as though she wasn’t wearing anything beneath the armored vest, but he recognized the stretchy camisole and loose-fitting shorts below. She’d been wearing something similar the morning he’d accosted her in her bed.
He pushed that thought away before it could heat and distract him. But the scene Fuente had described was all too easy to visualize. He could picture a scantily clad armed Ava taking down the ultrafeminine model. And he didn’t possess near enough determination to wipe that image from his mind.
Gently, de la Reyes set Marissa away from him, presenting her with a handkerchief taken from the pocket of his robe. He’d retired to his quarters with Benton on guard outside his door when the alarm had sounded. Cael had gone imme
diately to the president’s side, handling communications from within the quarters.
“You still haven’t answered my questions, Marissa,” de la Reyes was saying. “Why are you back so soon? And why did you not call first before arriving so late this evening?”
The woman wiped daintily at her tear-streaked face. “My agent is quite displeased with me, but I insisted he cancel my appearance in Rio de Janiero. I’ve been so worried, I could not bear to be away from you any longer. I felt an urgency here.” She touched a fist to her stomach as she gazed up at him. “I could think of nothing but seeing you as soon as possible.”
“What I want to know is how she bypassed the security system on the gate,” Cael said bluntly, his gaze drilling into the president. “We were led to believe you had retained the only remote access that would open the entrance.”
A slight frown marring his brow, de la Reyes took a step away from Fuente. “I did. And Marissa has never been given a remote.”
Her eyes flashing, she retorted, “No, Tonio has never offered one to me.” And it was clear to everyone in the room that she smarted from the slight. “It was Captain Gonzalez who gave me the remote before I left the country last time. At least he recognized that a woman in love should not be kept waiting outside the gates like a servant, begging for entrance.”
The room had gone deadly quiet. Cael felt his operatives’ eyes on him, but his mind was racing furiously. Why would Gonzalez want an extra remote access to go to Fuente? How would that help him? If he wanted to double-cross the president, he was inside the grounds himself.
But security could be locked down by the president, he reminded himself grimly. And if de la Reyes had used the master security passkey, no one would get in or out of the palace grounds without a remote, the only one of which de la Reyes retained.
Until a spare had shown up in his girlfriend’s possession.
Marissa was looking from one person to another, uneasiness in her expression. “Tonio, are you angry with me? I know I should have spoken to you about it first. I thought only to surprise you when I came back, not to cause this alboroto.”