by Zoe Dawson
It was only two hours before the clinic was set to close.
She changed into a pair of jeans and a dark T-shirt, donning slip-on canvas sneakers that she’d kept stored in case of emergencies. She wanted to be ready to run for the chopper when the time came. An hour of waiting had passed, and the rain had gotten more intense. It was sheeting across the windshield when Kinley heard a number of vehicles turning into the clinic’s makeshift parking lot, three jeeps with four men in each of them, looking way too paramilitary for her comfort. One of them got out of the vehicle. Kinley ducked down, hoping the rain would obscure her inside. Luckily, he didn’t see her.
But she saw clearly the tattoo on his neck, right below his lobe.
Two crossed swords.
Holy crap. She hit Beau’s number and when he picked up, she said, “Las Espadas are going in the front door.”
As the men filed in, bristling with weapons, people started running out.
“How many?”
“Twelve. Too many.”
“I’m going for the doctor. I can see his window from here. We’ll be coming in hot.”
“All right. I’ll fire up the coupe and be ready.” She reached for the green bag. She thought she’d grabbed… Yes, here it was. A tracker. She slipped out of the vehicle and was soaked in seconds. Running to the lead jeep, she jammed her hand underneath the wheel well and stuck the device to the metal. The crack-crack of automatic gunfire mixed in with the sound of the pouring rain. The screams and sobbing of a woman filtered out to her. Backing up, she ran back to the car and started it up.
Before Kinley could put the Mercedes in gear, the front door opened, and the men came out. They were dragging a sobbing woman. The receptionist.
Even as she watched them drive away there was a weird stillness all around, an eerie calm. It seemed as if even the rain paused. It was a pulling sensation in the air around her.
Then the building blew apart, a great crashing, rending explosion that rocked the car and sent debris up into the air to rain down on the vehicle. Kinley was safely cocooned inside as the blast whooshed with such force it rocked the coupe, the diminished concussion rolling over her. Even with the downpour, fire erupted as the debris continued to fall in heavy, soggy clumps.
Oh, God, Beau.
He had gone inside to get Dr. Costa.
Chapter Fifteen
“Beau!”
He came to, sputtering, rain running in a small stream off some kind of siding on top of him. He was lying flat on his back in the dark, buried under debris, with Kinley’s frantic voice beating out even the rushing, roaring sound of the rain.
“Here,” he said hoarsely, weakly, his ears ringing and his head vibrating like a frigging bell. What the hell had happened?
He heard running feet, but he couldn’t move, still dazed, still reeling from getting mown over by hundreds of pounds of explosive pressure and a concussion that had cleaned his clock but good.
The sound of the stuff on top of him being pulled away was coupled with her harsh, out-of-control breathing. Finally, he could see the sky and her face leaning over him.
“Oh, God, Beau. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay. What happened?”
She reached in and helped him to sit up, her hands going over him, still pushing stuff out of the way. “They left and took the receptionist and then the whole building went up.”
His chest hurt a bit, but everything seemed to be in working order. The blast had just knocked him out.
“Dammit,” he swore. He should be glad he hadn’t already been inside when the building exploded.
“You were right. We shouldn’t have waited. It was the Las Espadas. They found out about Dr. Costa.”
He rolled to his side, curled up and pushed himself to his hands and knees. He put one hand to his forehead before she helped him get unsteadily to his feet. He felt gut-punched, and behind that, bearing down on him like a friggin’ freight train, was the anger. Beau did not like to lose or be outsmarted and outmaneuvered. “They took the receptionist?”
“Yes, she was not going willingly, and she was crying hard.”
Beau looked toward the building, pushing his wet hair off his face. Without a word he started toward it, his head clearing. When he got to the wall that was now complete rubble, he put up his hand to ward off the intense heat of the fire. The rain was doing a good job of keeping it at bay. He stepped over the small lip of the wall that was intact and peered inside.
There was a body with a hole in the forehead. The lab coat was filthy and covered in blood, the stethoscope still around his neck.
Beau turned away, blocking the view as Kinley made it to him. “Dr. Costa is dead.”
Her eyes stricken with guilt, she said, “Well, that’s it then. We failed and it’s my fault.”
“What?”
“We failed, Beau.”
“Not yet.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“We go after her. They had to have taken her for a reason. She must know something.” Water sluiced off his face and trailed down his arms. The jungle was going to be a muddy mess.
“What?” Her eyes widened and she grabbed his forearm. “Go into the jungle after an army of ruthless cartel goons? Are you out of your mind?”
“No. We can get her back. There were only twelve men. I can handle that.”
She stepped back and glared at him. “We were expressly forbidden to engage the Las Espadas! We can’t go after them.”
“Do you know what they’re going to do to her? They’re going to torture her and once they get her to talk—and believe me, they will get her to talk—they’re going to kill her. Are you seriously telling me we should walk away when the life of this woman and the security of the US hang in the balance?”
“They were orders, Beau.”
“And that’s enough for you to turn your back on a terrorist threat? I know that you care about terrorists because one murdered your father. In addition, you were just in the cartel’s hands, helpless just like she is now.” He had no way of knowing whether or not Montoya was a threat, but he was going to err on the side of caution. And, yeah, he was being a sumbitch. He knew it and, judging by the tightening in her face, she knew it, too.
“Orders,” she repeated, her mouth tightening. “Using my father’s murder against me is not fair, Beau.” She bit her lip, the battle of her conscience and her experience warring on her face. “I’m not ignorant or immune to what I know they’re going to do to her. But…orders are orders.”
He ignored the emotion in her eyes. This was too important for him not to bring out the big guns. Her hair was plastered to her head. Her makeup was long gone. She had a bruise on her face from her ordeal yesterday. She was trembling and wired as tight as a drum. And all that emotion had to go somewhere. She’d never been more beautiful to him in her life.
“Where is that woman that wanted to take down el Ajeer? If we don’t do this, Montoya is free to do whatever he wants, unleash whatever he has planned on American soil. Do you want that on your conscience? Do you want her torture and death on your conscience when we could have done something about it?”
“No, of course not! But it’s suicide and career-ending to go against orders, to go into an unfamiliar jungle in a foreign land after armed men without a plan or permission from our superiors!”
“Kinley, I’ve made a living going into unfamiliar places and taking down armed men. I’m not asking for permission. I don’t ask for permission. I complete a mission, whatever it takes.”
She folded her arms against her chest.
He didn’t realize how much he wanted her to step out of her comfort zone and go with him. “Montoya might even have information on el Ajeer. He works for the cartel. He’s their go-to guy. I bet he knows plenty about el Ajeer.”
“I know what you’re doing. You’re playing on my emotions.”
“All in, Kinley.” He wanted her on this. He needed her on this all the way. Y
eah, right, he was a goner for sure, even though he knew she was more interested in her career than she was in him. That had stung. He’d racked up all of three days with this woman, but somehow it meant something.
He’d been just about to spill his guts and she’d cut him off at the knees. He figured it was always better to know than to be in the dark.
She looked away. He shoved back his disappointment and started to walk toward the front of the building. “We’re wasting time. Why don’t you go to the extraction site and wait for me?”
She grabbed his arm, trying to slow his forward momentum. Her small hands and petite body couldn’t stop him, but the anguish in her voice did. He stopped and rounded on her.
“Beau. I’m not going to leave and let you do this alone. We’re supposed to be a team and we’ve already lost Daniel. We had to leave him. I’m not leaving you.”
Her voice caught and he dragged her against him, hard. “Kinley, we can’t waste time. I don’t want to be insensitive.” The truth of the matter was a world of feelings had opened up for him. Not because they were dancing on the edge of a knife, trying to complete a mission that just got almost impossible, but because with each moment he was showing her what was beneath his rock-hard shield—a side of himself he’d buried a while ago. She was giving him back something he’d lost.
She wiped at her eyes and stared at him. “Well, you’re being an ass, but I’m in. All in,” she snapped with just the kind of attitude he liked. Fiery.
“Then get your all-in ass into the vehicle before we lose these guys.”
She brushed by him, stalking to the car. “We won’t lose them. I put a tracker on one of the jeeps.”
He huffed out a laugh and shook his head. Well, look at her thinking tactically like a Navy SEAL. He liked it a whole helluva lot.
“Stop looking so smug and get your insensitive ass in the car.”
Her confidence turned him on, right here right now, in the middle of a crucial mission with her stepping completely out of her comfort zone. She’d been pushed hard for two days, seen more death in that time span than she had ever, he was sure. He strode up to her and grabbed her shirtfront and jerked her toward him. She made a little squeak as his mouth clamped over hers.
Kinley had kissed him before, but nothing like this. She swore her toes curled in her soggy shoes, and as his mouth slid over hers, her hands crawled around his waist. She held on. He was ferociously warm and tight against her. Not an inch of him soft, and all of it getting harder. Excitement coursed through her blood and cut at her composure. His mouth molded with a fragile pressure that was such a contrast to the man, and which made her body tingle with expectation. He kissed her like she was his next breath and she returned the kiss like he was hers.
His tongue was bold and sweeping and her mind just melted into sensation. His hand slid upward. The backs of his fingers fluttered to her throat, gathering her fraying nerves as they went and making her unbearably greedy for more. His fingertips spanned her jaw, holding her as if she’d vanish. It was so sexy, and she wanted to get closer, unconsciously pushing her hips into his. He drew back a fraction.
“Wow,” she whispered against his mouth.
He rubbed a thumb over her lips.
“Aren’t we wasting time?”
“I don’t care,” he said, pulling her back against him and kissing her again.
He drew back. Something in his dark eyes sent a fresh pulse of awareness through her. This man made her feel so much at once she couldn’t pinpoint anything when he was kissing her. And suddenly she realized…her numbness. It was gone, replaced by a pulsating, supercharged energy that was all-consuming.
“Okay,” he said. “Now get in.”
She huffed, but it had no impact as he settled in the driver’s seat and fired up the engine. She grabbed the tracker and turned it on. It started to blip, and Beau put the car into gear. Gunning the engine, he took off.
And he didn’t slow down. The Mercedes was made to hug the road and it was a tank, enough to plow through rain and mud. When they came to a turnoff that made Kinley swallow hard, he gave her a reassuring glance.
It looked like nothing but a rutted road heading to the middle of nowhere. There were no signs that the rain was going to let up. Yeah, October was one of the rainiest months here.
“You ready for this?” he asked.
“Let’s get this done and go home and stop that bastard.”
His grim, locked-and-loaded look said it all.
He turned onto the rutted road and they took off again. They probably shouldn’t have been barreling down this road, more like a poor excuse for a path, at top speed. Branches slapped the windows, green and brown flying past. But they were gaining on the blip. It wouldn’t be long before they were in very close proximity.
Then the blip froze.
“They’ve stopped.”
“Probably for the night. How close are we?”
“About a mile or so.” He slowed the car and came to a stop.
“We’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot. We don’t want to alert them that we’re here.” He did some maneuvering to get the vehicle turned around and pointed in the direction they’d come.
He reached back and grabbed one of the submachine guns and a utility belt, rapidly adding to it, totally in his element. He pulled the wicked knife he always carried out of his pants pocket. “Here, take this to cut her bonds.”
“I cannot believe we’re going to assault an armed camp of cartel goons against orders.”
“We aren’t. I am. You have your marching orders. Get in. Get her free. Get out. Get here. Got it?”
“You get all the fun,” she said, saluting him.
He pulled down the visor and smeared his face with camouflage paint that they had picked up courtesy of the arms dealer contact, then handed it to her. “Face and hands,” he said “We have the element of surprise and I have the skills to handle them. You just get that woman out of there and hightail it back to the coupe.”
He pulled the keys out of the ignition and handed them to her. “As soon as you get here, fire her up and be ready to go.”
She nodded, smearing her own face. Her nerves were steady, as she had been on many a drug bust and had taken down her fair share of go-fast boats and armed-to-the-teeth smugglers, knew how to use the semiautomatic Beau shoved into her hands. “Only use that if you have to. Any gunfire is going to focus every tango in the camp on you. You need to be quiet and quick.”
She nodded. He reached up and fiddled with the light in the roof of the car. When he opened his door, it remained pitch-black. He slipped out and Kinley followed suit.
He grabbed her arm and dragged her against his hard body, kissing her, hard. “Do what you have to do,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Beau.” She pulled him back and kissed him, hard.
He started down the road and Kinley followed. There was a quarter moon and it didn’t help her see the rutted and muddy road ahead of them. Stepping in pools of water, mud slippery and squishy beneath her sneakers, she did her best to follow. Beau moved like a commando, quiet, sure-footed and almost invisible beside her. If she was to assault an enemy camp of ruthless cartel killers, she couldn’t have had better backup.
In the distance Kinley could make out a fire, and she heard the low murmur of voices filtering to her. Then laughter. The camp.
There were only two jeeps parked near the tents and Kinley had to wonder where the third one was.
The terrain evened out and Beau grabbed her arm and pulled her off to the side, right behind one of the jeeps. Beau’s gaze went around the camp. “I’m going to do some quick recon. You stay put. Don’t move a muscle until I come back.”
Before she could respond, he was gone, melting into the jungle. She strained to see him, but it was impossible, and she hunched down lower for the longest five minutes of her life. Suddenly her skin rippled with awareness and her head snapped to the right. Beau moved in as quietly as he’
d left.
He bent close to her ear and whispered, “She’s in the tent in the middle. I lifted up one of the stakes which will make it easier for you to crawl under and then get back out. There is only one guard at the flap, so be as quiet as possible. Her hands and feet are bound.”
He cupped her face and gave her such an intense look she felt it all the way to her soul. “Don’t take any risks. I’ll draw them away.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed him hard. “Be careful. Come back to me.”
When she released him, he flashed a confident grin. “This will be a walk in the park. Hooyah, cher. Wait until you hear my signal.”
“Wait. What is your signal?”
He flashed that same cocky grin. “Oh, you’ll know it when you hear it.”
He disappeared like he had the last time and Kinley moved silently toward the middle tent, keeping low.
She waited, every nerve taut. Then she heard the explosion. She ducked under the flap and put her finger to her lips as the woman’s head whipped around. She drew out Beau’s knife and cut the woman’s bonds.
“¿Quién es usted?”
“Do you speak English?”
“Yes.” Her eyes widened. “Oh, I recognize you. You’re that haughty woman who insisted on meeting with my husband today.”
“Your husband? You’re Maria?” Kinley sliced through the rope binding Maria’s feet and then the one around her hands. “Follow me.”
“Yes, I’m Maria. Th-th-they killed my husband when he refused to help them. Who exactly are you?”
As they were getting ready to go under the flap, a hand grabbed the back of Kinley’s shirt and hauled her to her feet, backhanding her across the face. She reeled away and hit the tent pole. Her eyes watered and she worked her jaw, tasting the blood in her mouth. This time she wasn’t tied to a chair.
“You cannot escape.” He stepped close and she put her hands up, the knife folded and concealed in her hand.
“Okay, okay, no punching! Maybe we can work out a deal.” She moved to him, her expression giving new meaning to the words Come on, honey. I’m yours. “Just you and me.”