Behind the Mask (Undercover Associates Book 4)

by Carolyn Crane

  He kissed her head. She thought about his mother.

  “I still have these dreams about Hovde,” she said.

  “What happens?”

  She shook her head. Talking about the dreams might give them weight and power.

  “Tell me. What does he do?”

  “Sometimes I get loose and I take his blade, but I can’t find him. He’s doing horrible things and it’s my fault, but I can’t find him to stop him. Sometimes I just can’t get loose. Sometimes I get loose and I can’t find the blade he used on me, and I need that blade because nothing else will kill him. I need to kill him to end it, but I never can.”

  He pulled her closer, resting his chin on top of her head. “I wish I could give you that. The chance to kill him. To end it.”

  “You can’t.”

  The mountains and the sky, the whole world, it was all so huge, but suddenly she wasn’t alone in it. She was with Hugo. They were two people together in their darkness in the fading Valencia day.

  You have already made it the best part of you, I think.

  She pressed her forehead to his chest, felt the strong, steady heartbeat of this killer who trusted her heart. Hugo, the killer who liked to carry her—trying so valiantly to help contain her darkness.

  He couldn’t. Nobody could. She could never forgive herself—not ever.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Dax lay facedown on the massage table in one of the private rooms connected to the Valencia Hilton spa, towel slung around his waist. The woman across the room arranged the tools of her trade. The small flashes of skin he’d seen under the bathrobe as she’d come out revealed a lot of tattoos she’d perhaps regret someday, though she looked slightly insane, so maybe not.

  He, however, was glad for the harsh lines of her and the madness in her eyes. He had an artistic sensibility for these things.

  A knock sounded on the door.

  “Come in.”

  Two fair-haired men came in.

  The way they held themselves didn’t give them away whatsoever. You would never think they were extensively armed and wildly dangerous.

  You would never think this was their first face-to-face meeting with the man who’d controlled their destinies for years.

  Aside from rare exceptions, Dax and the Associates had only ever dealt with each other on the phone. But that was far more than they’d dealt with Zelda. Most Associates didn’t even know Zelda, aside from having heard her name. She’d always been content to stay behind the scenes for the most part, putting her formidable skills toward tactics and execution.

  Dax had been content to allow it. He’d anticipated something like this, though nothing so extreme. He adjusted his towel and sat up. “Give us a moment,” he said to the attendant, and she left. He nodded at the first man. “Cole.”

  “Dax, I presume.” Cole offered his hand. Dax shook it, and then he shook Riley’s.

  People said the nature of things was to evolve. That was wrong. Dax knew better than most that it was the nature of things to unravel. It was the nature of systems to degrade. Entropy ruled.

  He and Zelda had created the Associates to have a semi-cellular structure, insulating their agents from the two of them at the top. Everyone was safer that way. But with Zelda offline and possibly working against them, Dax knew he needed to remove that layer between him and the men. Nothing was safe now, and the situation with the tanker was devolving fast. The pirate leader was starting to lose it. People would die if they blew up that tanker.

  Lots of them.

  Dax would do what it took to stop that from happening, no matter what it cost him. And it was starting to look like it would cost him dearly—it would cost him Zelda, the truest friend he’d ever known.

  Well, the agents would be loyal to him—they’d always dealt with him; Zelda was just a name to most of them.

  “You’ve found your rooms?”

  They nodded.

  “I’ve set it up to look like we’re there for the week.” Two local women would be making a nice bit of change for the job of occupying the room and ordering enough food for three men and themselves. Unmaking the beds. Playing the TV.

  “We just spoke with Rio,” Riley said. “He says they’re in Juachez, in la pensión El Refugio. They’re on their way to the El Gorrion compound.”

  Dax nodded. “Still no word on why?”

  Riley shook his head.

  Dax squinted at the colorful wallpaper. Vines and bamboo. There wasn’t much he didn’t understand, but these moves of Zelda’s had him mystified.

  “El Gorrion is amassing men at his compound.” Riley said.

  “He’s waiting for Kabakas,” Dax said. “You’ve never seen a fighter like Kabakas. He had some very esoteric training, to say the least.”

  “We could take Kabakas while he’s focused on taking the compound.” Riley, ever the strategist. “We come in from the rear while he’s focused on El Gorrion’s people.”

  “You’re not hearing me.” Dax leaned down and drew a tablet from the satchel at the foot of the bed. He went up on his elbows and pulled up some photos and handed it up to Riley. “Here’s the airstrip after Kabakas attacked it. With nothing but blades.” It was a lot of carnage. “And that was him out of practice,” Dax added.

  “But if he’s distracted…”

  “No. I do not know the nature of the mission or why she’s allied with Kabakas, but if he wants to strike at El Gorrion, we have to let him. We use Kabakas to strike at El Gorrion. We then use Zelda to strike at Kabakas.”

  Riley squinted, waiting for an explanation.

  Zelda would never forgive him. Dax had known this day would come, but he hadn’t imagined it would arrive quite this fast.

  She’d be pulling him off that table if she were there. She was always the one to wipe the lipstick from his jaw or bandage his bleeding back and find him a new shirt, to warn him against stranger sex. Don’t go down to the lobby, Dax. Don’t go to the park tonight, Dax. Don’t lie down on that table, Dax.

  It was just him and his fighters now. They were the best men you could get, but they’d never look through him the way Zelda always had. Her pain gave a level of insight other people couldn’t touch.

  Riley’s gaze was piercing. He was as fierce a student as a leader, and ruthless.

  “Zelda will feed him enough tranquilizer to put down an elephant,” Dax explained. “She just won’t know it.”

  “How will you get her to do that?”

  “People aren’t that complicated,” Dax said. He’d handle her the way he handled everybody, the way he handled the fucking world—without apology. “Settle into your rooms. Meet me in an hour on the helipad up top.” He stretched back out to demonstrate that the meet was over. He’d feel more evened out in an hour.

  Did they wonder how it felt to betray his longtime partner?

  The men left, and the woman was back. She resumed her place on the chair and continued filing her nails to points. Dax waited for her to blot everything out. He could hear Zelda’s voice, the way she’d talk to him at times like this. Oh, my poor Greek boy. How much fucking will it take to erase this one?

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Hugo woke first. He was stunned that he’d slept at all. She lay in his arms, still out. Quietly, slowly, he bent his head to her neck to take in her scent.

  He’d believed her when she’d told him about her sister; it was then he’d begun to trust her. And she could have driven off when he’d pushed that Jeep out of the mud. He’d gone back there to push knowing, in part, that she could try. Needing her not to.

  Impossible to kill her. He’d put off killing her in service to the plants, but he’d just been lying to himself—he couldn’t kill her. He’d realized it sitting on the dirty rubber floor mat of the bus to Juachez. She’d slept, head on his shoulder. He’d held her all through that trip—lightly, so that his touch wouldn’t wake her. It was then that he knew he wouldn’t kill her, that he would protect her always.

  A
nd then she’d turned up in the hotel room. It had been a risk not to follow her, but something had driven him to take it. He’d needed that certainty, he supposed.

  But the way she had opened herself to him, told him her secret. He didn’t know what would happen now; he knew only that she was his, and that he would protect her always. He wanted to wake her up and tell her that. What would she say?

  She stirred. His pulse stepped up a notch, thinking of her sliding her naked body against the cool sheets, imagining sliding aside the covers, touching her, enjoying her.

  She’d trusted him enough to tell him her hardest secrets, and what had he given her? He’d been barely human with her, fucking her like an animal.

  He wanted to do it again—and not gently, either.

  He extracted himself and went to the window, pushing aside the curtains. Nearly time. He dressed quietly. The gloves tumbled from his pack and he scooped them up from the floor, cock growing hard as steel as he thought of the way she’d looked at them. The mask didn’t turn her on, but the gloves—she’d admitted it there in the doorway.

  He put them on. And went to her, lowering himself to the bed.

  With a gloved finger he touched her arm, the bare skin just above the sheet edge, then trailed that finger down, dragging the sheet with him, down over her hip, over her naked body, baring her to the glove.

  She turned and mumbled as he slid his hand up her legs, caressing her thighs.

  She opened her eyes and hitched in a breath to see him over her, touching her with the battle-roughened gloves.

  The rough, hard gloves on her tender belly, her nipples, it seemed wrong—these were the gloves he wore for killing, but he and Zelda were wrong in so much. She wanted the gloves. He would give her the gloves.

  “This is what your man does now,” he said to her. “He fucks you with the gloves.”

  The gloves cut off sensation from his hands, but the look in her eyes as she realized what he was doing got him hard as granite. He trailed his fingers down her belly and touched her between her legs.

  She gasped as he stroked her. He could see her pulse banging madly in her throat. He brought his gloved hand to her lips. “Lick yourself off Kabakas’s gloves,” he said. She took the leather into her mouth.

  “Good.” He stood and, still wearing the gloves, pulled open the fly of his cargo pants and shoved them down a ways, letting his cock spring out over her. He threw a condom onto her belly. “Put it on me,” he growled.

  She didn’t put it on. She turned onto her side and rose up, took hold of his cock, and licked the gleaming drop off the tip.

  He grabbed her hair and she hissed out a jagged breath as she closed her mouth around the tip, playing her tongue around the head. He pushed into her in frustration, but then he realized what she needed; he took her hair roughly in his gloved hands and shoved into her, fucking her face, making her feel him, making her feel the leather.

  She took him deep; he could feel the back of her throat. She gagged once and he pushed in harder. They were somewhere new together, completely wrong and completely right.

  “Touch yourself,” he said. “Spread your knees and touch yourself so that I can see.” It wasn’t something he could actually see—the logistics weren’t there—but he knew she would like it. They were working in imagination now, the Kabakas who saw all, took all. He’d never imagined fucking as Kabakas. He would prefer not to act the part of Kabakas in this; Kabakas was a creature of death, but the line between them had grown dangerously thin, and her pleasure was his, and her mouth was like hot velvet. He couldn’t last…couldn’t last…

  “Enough!” He pulled out of her mouth and pointed to the condom. She unwrapped it and put it on as he caressed her shoulders with leather-clad fingers. Then he pushed her down and climbed over her, catching up her wrists in one gloved hand, so that she’d feel the leather in a hard way. With the other hand, he caressed her cheek, her neck, her lips, just a little bit of a threat. He couldn’t believe how beautiful she was, how utterly on the verge.

  “Open,” he whispered.

  She opened and let him push in a gloved finger.

  “How does it taste?”

  “Like madness,” she said when he took it out and swept his hand over her breasts, her belly. “Like pure and utter…” She trailed off, shuddering with arousal as he touched her.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “Like pure and utter what?” he asked her. Because he wanted to know. He wanted her inside and out.

  “Everything, too…just…uh…” She loved him touching her with the gloves, taking her with those gloves. She’d always had a thing about them. Especially when she made herself think about the photo she’d marveled at forever. God, Kabakas taking her with those gloves.

  So why was it starting to get old?

  He put his mouth to her ear, licking the tender shell of it, making it hot with his breath, making her feel him. She liked the gloves, yes.

  “Wait,” she breathed.

  He stilled. “What is it, señorita?”

  “Take them off.”

  He pulled away. “What?”

  “The gloves.”

  He knelt over her with a humorous glint in his eyes. “After all this?”

  “I want Hugo, not Kabakas.”

  The humor went out of his eyes.

  There’d been a time when she might have described the expression that crossed his face as stony, unreadable. Now she knew what it was: gratitude. Affection. It swelled her heart.

  She reached up and settled her hands on his chest. “I want you to touch me,” she said. “Only you.”

  With a wild force he started yanking off the gloves, tugging feverishly at the fingers like they wouldn’t come off fast enough. He threw them aside and settled his hands on her belly.

  Just that sent a jolt of pleasure through her. “Like this?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, feeling lost in his gaze, lost in his hard, jagged beauty.

  He slid his hands all over her, covering every inch of her skin, as though he knew she needed that. And then he stretched his big, ruined body over hers and covered her.

  “Like this?”

  “Yes.”

  He was a storm, taking her. He touched her in all of her pain and all of her truth. Being touched by Hugo—this, for her, was the ultimate kink.

  He kissed her, and just when she thought she couldn’t stand the wait any longer, he settled between her legs and guided himself into her, spearing her. “This is what your man does to you now,” he whispered.

  She loved how he said that, how caveman it was. “Say it again.”

  He grunted, not one to take commands; instead he fucked her harder, riding them both into oblivion.

  Darkness fell.

  He rolled off the bed and went to the window to peer out through the small gap between the colorful curtain panels. The scene felt…unnatural. Or was he merely on edge being so deep in El Gorrion’s territory?

  A rustling sound. The bed. She appeared next to him, clad in just those glasses. He preferred her in glasses and brown hair—far more so than the plumage of bright blonde and crystal green eyes. Her everyday self took his breath away.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Perhaps nothing.” He guided her to stand in front of him and look out the gap.

  “We’ve been found,” she said.

  He settled his hands on her shoulders, his chin grazing her hair, peering out with her. “Say more.”

  “The man at one o’clock. The man at eleven o’clock. The one at the bus stop. They’re too well placed. It’s not natural. The sight lines…”

  “Too perfect.”

  She said nothing. His señorita, so silent and lethal. He never wanted to lose this feeling of having a partner. It felt good—too good, maybe. He didn’t know how they fit on the outside; but they fit on the inside.

  “I’m thinking about the Aussies,” she said. “Maybe using them as decoys. The woman is my size, blonde. The man isn’
t big enough, but if we bulked him up, if they moved fast. We need to find them and hire them.”

  “Find them without asking around,” he added. “This is too much El Gorrion’s territory.”

  They ended up finding them through a process of deduction and a helpful German drug addict. Hugo and Zelda went to their room and made the deal; they would pay them well to dress in their clothes, switch luggage, and sneak down the street. The beleaguered travelers didn’t ask a lot of questions—they didn’t want the deal to go away. It would be safe enough for them; El Gorrion’s men would be angry when they found out, but they would not attack turistas. They would gain nothing but trouble from that.

  “If they ask what we look like, or any other questions, you tell them everything,” Hugo said. “Tell them what they want to know, and they won’t hurt you.” He was so tired of all of the death. He didn’t want any more people to die.

  Back in the room, Hugo and Zelda shoved their weapons and essentials into the Aussies’ ragged neon-colored packs. He disguised the swords by wrapping them with a sweatshirt, then he nestled them in.

  She stilled his hand as he began to wrap the masks. “Let me see.” He handed her the heavy one, the metal-lined one. She put it up to her face. “What do you think?”

  He grabbed her wrist, forcing her to lower it.

  “What?”

  “I hate seeing it on you as much as I hated seeing it on Paolo.”

  “Why?”

  He didn’t know how to explain it—how he found his taste for being Kabakas waning. “Don’t wear it unless we need it.” He let her go.

  “What I wouldn’t have given to hold your mask way back when. This metal backing would distribute a blow,” she said. “Even resist a bullet.”

  “Certain calibers at certain angles,” he said, fingering the cheaper mask, the mercadillo version. “Bullet-resistant, not bulletproof. Do not be casual out there. If we must wear these, you must not be casual.”