by Cherry Adair
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifthy-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Other Books by Cherry Adair
Copyright Page
To my dear friend Amber Kizer.
My right hand, and frequently my left brain.
I couldn’t do what I do without you.
With much love,
C
Special thanks to
The wonderful folks at the South African Tourism Board (SATOUR) and Big Five Tours, Daniela and Alessia, I couldn’t have done Zurich without you. To Gerry, Jane, and Susan, who understand the joys and challenges facing families affected by Down syndrome. Thank you for your commitment to education and willingness to share your experiences. Mary B at Circus to Circus, thank you for sharing your unique talents and expertise. “Mac,” thanks for your help. But I repeat, no thank you, I would not like to accompany you next time! A BIG thank-you to Kelsey Roberts and Bonnie C for saving my sanity. And to all our men and women serving far from home—our hearts salute you. Thank you.
One
AUGUST 10
SAN CRISTÓBAL
SOUTH AMERICA
Dressed in black, shrouded by the night, T-FLAC operative Huntington St. John melded with the darkness of the fetid alley behind the adobe jail. Night vision glasses made it possible to observe every inch of the inky interior of the cell through a narrow barred window high in the wall.
Empty.
Where in the hell was the prisoner?
It had taken six long, bloody months to discover this woman’s identity. Six months, and the considerable resources of the counterterrorist organization Hunt worked for. It hadn’t been easy, by God, and he was not leaving without her.
He needed a thief. Someone resourceful, cunning, and unscrupulous. Someone at the top of his game. Hunt wanted the best. Nothing less would do.
Determined to find the right thief, T-FLAC’s crack team had scrutinized past burglary victims for the last five years. Limiting their search to individuals, or companies, with collections of fine gems who had the most sophisticated, advanced security systems. They’d compiled lists comprising thousands upon thousands of names. They’d cross-matched friends of the victims, relatives, staff, and lifestyle to find a common denominator.
Three hundred names had cross-matched, and 118 people appeared on more than six lists. A deep background check on those suspects turned up an interesting anomaly. Seventeen of the women had identical, or nearly identical, backgrounds. Or, rather, one woman had seventeen identities.
No one, other than himself and a few select T-FLAC operatives, even knew the thief was a woman. They’d finally connected the dots.
Hunt had his thief.
But where the hell was she?
An hour after ascertaining who she was, and with an educated guess, where she might be, he was wheels up and headed for South America. It was highly suspect that she just happened to be in the very city he needed her to be in. San Cristóbal.
In flight he’d knew she’d robbed José Morales followed by a quick arrest minutes before he touched down in San Cristóbal.
So, it was a fait accompli.
A quick, thorough search of her hotel room revealed nothing. Not a hint, not a clue. No surprise there. She never left clues. Ever. Which is why it had been so fucking hard to discover who she was in the first place.
This woman wasn’t merely extraordinarily good at what she did, she was a phenomenon. And fearless.
She was the one he wanted. And by God, he’d have her. Even if, as he suspected, she’d been hired by someone else.
Despite intel to the contrary, her absence from the cell could be explained by one of three options: she’d been moved to another location, the other party had already extracted her, or she’d been killed.
Now that would be bloody inconvenient all around. He’d already invested enough time and energy. He wasn’t about to start looking for someone else now.
Suddenly, footsteps echoed down a hallway. Clear, loud, deliberate. Two pairs—heavy, booted. And the odd, incongruous sound of chains rattling, like something out of a bad horror film.
One of the guards kicked open the cell door. It slammed against the adobe wall and let in muted light from the hallway to illuminate the cramped cell. “This time, bruja,” the jailer threatened in Spanish, “you will not get free.”
Hunt’s mouth flattened into a thin line as he took in the tableau in the doorway.
Trussed up in chains, the woman couldn’t brace herself as the guards flung her through the open door and onto the floor with a thud. Her head bounced on the cement and she let out a startled grunt of pain.
Hunt bit back a curse. This was precisely why he disliked women involved in missions. They were vulnerable and easily broken. He hated like hell seeing someone soft and delicate hurt.
The chains wrapped around her sounded almost musical as she rolled across the floor, until, stopped by the opposite wall, she lay still.
The two guards observed their prisoner for a few minutes from the doorway, speculating in rapid-fire Spanish as to whether the woman was a witch. Or worse. So, she’d attempted an escape, had she? He shook his head. Nice try, but no cigar, sweetheart. This prison built on the outskirts of town housed political prisoners, as well as the dregs of humanity. No one, including apparently a pro like her, had ever escaped.
Hunt was about to change that.
Listening to the conversation between the guards, Hunt shook his head. She’d given it her best shot five times. 5-0 wasn’t a great track record, but it sure took guts. No wonder the men were pissed. No wonder they had a mile of bicycle chain wrapped around her body, and God only knew how many gleaming new padlocks fastened down her back. She’d be lucky to draw in an unrestricted breath, let alone stand.
The metal door clanged shut and the key ground harshly in the lock. Sorry to disappoint, hombres, but she’s mine. He listened to
the guards’ footsteps retreat down the hallway toward the front of the jail.
The crunch of tires on gravel drifted between the buildings down the narrow alley where he waited. Headlights strobed over the single-story structures as cars and trucks pulled into the unseen parking lot of the seedy nightclub across the alley behind the jail.
Vehicle doors slammed. Glass clinked. Laughing voices rose. A band tuned up their instruments. The door of the dive opened and slammed. Opened and slammed. Opened, letting out the raucous sounds of the crowd warming up for the evening. All music to Hunt’s ears.
He knew the bar would soon be packed to the rafters. The band would be loud enough to deafen anyone within a hundred yards, and the secondhand smoke would make a five-pack-a-day smoker look like a piker. This was almost too easy.
The night air felt thick and oppressive. Not even a glimmer of a star broke the blackness of the sky overhead. San Cristóbal in midsummer was not for the fainthearted. He’d been here several years ago on another op. The sprawling city on the edge of the rain forest was too damn crowded for his liking. Known for its topless beaches and raunchy night life, it wasn’t one of Hunt’s favorite places.
The atmosphere was a South American version of spring break—noise, people, skin, and excessive drinking. The combination usually turned things ugly before midnight. It was a quarter till.
In the distance, a dog’s barks turned to mournful howls. A car backfired. Lights continued strafing the roofline as more vehicles turned into the parking lot of the club. A steel guitar riffed in a jangle of bad chords, followed by the thump of sticks on the drum as the band continued its warm-up.
The chains wrapped around the woman chinked. Good. If she could move, she wasn’t too badly hurt. As far as Hunt was concerned, as long as she could talk and think long enough to tell him what he wanted to know, that was sufficient.
In theory, he had no problem with her captivity.
She was where thieves belonged.
But not where he needed her to be for the moment.
Oblivious to the muggy heat causing his dark shirt to stick to his back, he gave a quick tug to the clamps he’d hooked to the bars earlier, making sure they were secure. A clever T-FLAC invention, the device, small enough to fit in his pocket, it consisted of a complex series of pulleys and thin metal cable, and needed very little pressure to act as a fulcrum.
The band segued into their first number. What the group lacked in talent they made up for in volume. The ruckus from the club would drown out all but an atomic bomb.
“Thanks,” Hunt muttered dryly as he exerted the small hand movement necessary to activate the tool. Inside the cell the chinking of the chains abruptly stopped.
He stepped aside as window frame, bars, and chunks of plaster came out of the old adobe wall with a grinding thunk.
Two
SAN CRISTÓBAL
“What,” the icy voice in Theresa Smallwood’s ear dripped fury, “do you mean there was nothing there? You arranged for the arrest immediately when she got back to her hotel, like I told you, didn’t you?”
Sweat pooled in the small of Theresa’s back as she pressed the receiver against her ear. The sound of the long-distance-distorted voice crawled over her skin like the tiny feet of a dozen spiders. The cramped phone booth stunk of pee, sweat, and fear. Theresa was responsible for two out of the three.
She shuddered, knuckles white as she clenched the receiver, and forced herself to respond. Forced her voice to remain steady. Competent.
“No more than three seconds,” she assured her boss. She prayed she didn’t sound as scared as she felt. They both knew how important this assignment was.
How dare that fucking thief put her life in danger? Theresa thought, still shaken with anger. She’d asked the girl to work for her. She’d offered to pay her, and pay her well, to retrieve the contents of Morales’s safe. Which, for Christ’s sake, she was going to do anyway. The girl refused Theresa flat out.
“Smallwood?”
Theresa swallowed fear-thick spit. “She’d barely closed the door when the Federales grabbed her.” She hadn’t had a chance to hide anything. And Christ knew, she was too damn slick to have gone to all that trouble to hand it over to the police.
Theresa had waited a few minutes to make sure no one saw her, then tossed the hotel room. Politely. Professionally. No-one-would-suspect carefully. Nothing. Not a fucking thing. Nada. Zip.
“Then you have what I want,” the voice said smoothly in her ear. Not a question. Never a question.
Theresa’s armpits prickled with dread and her mouth went bone dry. She needed a drink, she needed one bad. “I’ll meet with our Rio contact as planned. Tomorrow,” she said with utmost conviction, the answer implicit.
The air seemed to vibrate menacingly around Theresa as the silence on the other end of the phone lengthened. When she heard a click instead of the ass-reaming she expected, she let the phone drop and slumped back against the bullet-riddled glass of the phone booth as though she were a puppet with her strings cut.
She’d find the bitch if it was the last thing she did.
She exited the phone booth, then strode across the gravel lot of the abandoned gas station to the rental car.
Oh, she’d find the girl all right. She’d find the girl, retrieve what she’d stolen, and then slice her skin from her skinny body in one long ribbon like peeling a fucking apple. Theresa hadn’t gotten where she was by letting emotions get in the way of business. Business was brutal.
If she had to screw the brains out of every cop in this godforsaken city to find out where the woman was being held, she vowed she’d do it.
Theresa was proud of the small elegant black rose tattooed on the small of her back. One day soon she would have more petals added, and she’d be the Black Rose. Until then she’d do her job, and do it well. And when the time came, she’d carve that full-blown rose tattoo off the current Black Rose’s skin.
She opened the car door, slid behind the wheel, and buckled up for safety as she pulled out of the dark lot. For more immediate gratification, she thought of the thief’s big black eyes, that smooth, dusky skin, and decided she’d leave the girl’s face for last.
Three
“Hear me now, do you, sweetheart?” a man said softly in the darkness.
Well, yeah. He’d just knocked down the wall and his shoes crunched in the grit on the floor as he walked toward her. Hard to miss. Taylor stayed where she was, the chains loosely covering her body, wondering if he could see she’d managed to free herself already? Nah. Too dark.
She twisted her body in the direction of his voice. Rancid air wafted through what she presumed was a hole in the wall. Stink had never smelled so good. “The cavalry, I presume?” she whispered.
“Something like that.” His deep voice was rich and gravelly, his tone dry, and vaguely British.
She had no clue who he could be. Had the woman who’d approached her this morning sent him? It was the only logical explanation. She didn’t know anyone in San Cristóbal. Or rather, she didn’t know anyone who should know she was in jail. She didn’t need or want a partner, and she’d repeat what she’d told Theresa Smallwood this morning, as soon as he got her the hell out of here.
He crouched down beside her before she realized he was that close. Wow. Impressive. He moved like a cat. A big, strong, powerful cat.
“Are you badly hurt?” he asked, hands moving over the chains. “Where’s the start of this thing?”
“I’ll live. They didn’t have me quite as secure as they thought.” Taylor shrugged the chains off her shoulders and staggered to her feet. He grabbed her upper arm as she swayed. The pounding in her head made her teeth ache, and she was grateful for the steadiness of the large hand holding her upright.
The cell was as dark as the black hole of Calcutta, but even though she couldn’t see him, she could feel the heat of his large body beside her. She had an irrational urge to let her head drop to his chest. Only for a moment. The novelty
of someone rescuing her shouldn’t be wasted. Instead of succumbing, Taylor locked her knees. Air fanned across her face. He had, she guessed, waved a hand in front of her nose.
“Can you see me?” he whispered.
Lord he smelled good, she thought absently. For an instant her pulse accelerated with a purely female response. Then her survival instincts kicked back in. “Of course not,” she whispered back. “It’s pitch—” she tilted her head. “Can you see me?”
“Yeah. Even without the nvg’s.”
Night vision glass. Excellent. He was a regular Boy Scout. She stuck out her hand. “Let me try the glasses.” He dropped the nvg’s into her palm.
“It’s possible your jailers won’t have heard the wall of Jericho tumbling,” he whispered sarcastically as Taylor fumbled to bring the glasses to her eyes. He reached out and turned them right side up in her hands without pausing. “It’s possible they won’t turn around and come right back and check on you again. It’s also possible that someone won’t come back into the alley to take a leak. All of that’s possible. Like to stick around and tempt fate?”
She blinked a couple of times to clear her vision. Blinked again. No amount of blinking helped. She heard him through the thick buzz in her ears, vaguely computed what he was saying as her mouth went dry. She curled her fingers around the hard plastic of the nvg’s, squeezed her eyes shut. Opened them.
And sucked in a horrified breath.
Black. Unrelieved black.
She couldn’t see.
God help her. She. Could. Not. See.
They’d hit her, several times, and hard, the last time she’d managed to get away. Hit her with something heavy. The butt of a gun most likely. She’d lost consciousness for a few seconds and had a blinding headache as a memento. Taylor fingered the knob on the back of her head. Was the damage permanent? God. She couldn’t go there. The ramifications terrified her.
“Well?” Despite the cacophony of noise from nearby, Taylor heard his soft words clearly.
She licked dry lips. “H-Houston, I think we have a problem. I can’t see—anything.”
There was a slight pause before he said quietly, “At all?”
“At all.”