Behind the Mask (Undercover Associates Book 4)

by Carolyn Crane

  “Wait.” She grabbed his mask before he could stop her. “This is the kind they sell at the markets. This is just thin plastic.” She looked up. “This is a bullshit one. We need to trade—you can’t wear the bullshit one.”

  “I only need…a bullshit one.”

  “You’d be the one out there, front and center.”

  “Fear is my armor,” he said.

  She snorted. “You need more armor than fear. You’ve taken blows to the face. It’s documented. It was because of this mask that you survived.”

  He twisted her hair in a finger, voice low. “Your knowledge of my exploits—I do not always enjoy it.”

  She turned the metal-reinforced one over. “This one is too small. I don’t understand…” Inwardly he sighed, knowing he couldn’t prevent what was coming—this was a woman who solved puzzles for a living. She looked up when she got it. “You modified your good mask to fit Paolo the day you guys went out to the airfield. You let Paolo have all of the protection.”

  He twisted her hair another loop. “Paolo’s vulnerability was a greater danger to me than bullets, just as it will be with you.” She tried to pull away but he kept her hair, not wanting to let her go.

  “You need to wear the reinforced one,” she said. “You’re the one exposed.”

  “Too small now. I cut the edges down. It would not look right. It would not work.”

  She said nothing. She of all people could understand the effect of the mask. El Gorrion’s men would know, deep down, if it was too small. She was so far inside his secret world it seemed a kind of madness. He never wanted her to leave.

  “Hey.” She slapped his wrist. “Stop pulling my hair.”

  He let go. “Discúlpame.” Forgive me.

  “You went out there on the airstrip in this flimsy thing.”

  “It would seem so.”

  She sniffed her angry sniff.

  “Do not question my choices as Kabakas,” he said.

  She was silent for a long time. He didn’t like it, this unhappy silence of hers. He wanted to shake the words out of her. Finally she spoke. “You said before that Paolo was better off without you.” Here she paused. “You are so full of shit.”

  Her words stilled him. He loved her. Maybe he always had. “If anything happens to me, you will see that Paolo is cared for. You will get the formula to Julian.”

  She began to protest.

  He spoke over her. “You will see that Paolo is cared for and that the crops are put right.”

  Her gaze was solemn. “Nothing will happen, because I have your back. That’s what this is.”

  He studied her face. “For this mission?”

  “For always.”

  He clapped his hand onto the back of her head and pulled her to him, pressing his lips to her forehead. “And I have yours, corazón.” His heart thundered. He’d never had a partner before. He wanted to tell her how much it meant, but he couldn’t find the words. And it was time.

  They slipped into the Aussies’ room and gave them directions. The two of them took off. Hugo and Zelda watched from the Aussies’ window, watched as the travelers posing as them moved stealthily down the street toward the alley, following the route Hugo had drawn for them. It was how he and Zelda would’ve gone.

  He rested a hand on her shoulder.

  “Ack,” Zelda said when the two veered into an alley. “Nothing like a violent turn into an alley to say I’m furtive.”

  The man at the bus stop got up.

  “Nevertheless, off they go,” he said, mouth close enough to her ear to kiss it. The man in the doorway folded up his newspaper and pushed away from the wall. He too disappeared down the street, shadowing the Aussies. Good.

  Zelda and Hugo climbed out of the window and onto the roof wearing the other couple’s clothes and backpacks, heavy with weaponry. Hugo felt his scars tear as they dropped onto the next rooftop. He hadn’t brought the salve, but he did have something for infection. It would be enough.

  They stole across and climbed down into an alley, heading toward the office building district, looking for a good vehicle to take. His man in Bogotá had come through with more information—the connection Ruiz had used for e-mailing Julian was near a small town southeast of their location. It was paid for by El Gorrion’s shell company. He’d narrowed down coordinates. The greenhouse they sought would be somewhere around El Gorrion’s compound.

  They decided on a small rusty Volvo. Zelda slipped right in and started hotwiring it. With her glasses, brown hair, and simple skirt, she looked like she belonged in a library or lab, but here she was, yanking out wires with the quick, confident movements of a predator. She was his woman in full flower, and they were stronger together. The knowledge that they were stronger together sat with him hard, but it also sat with him easy.

  They drove until they hit the point where they’d be noticed, and then they hid the Volvo on the side of the road behind a decaying guard post, a relic of the war. He threw brush onto it. From there they headed up through the jungle, loosely following the dirt road that led to the El Gorrion compound. It was perhaps two miles up. They arrived at midnight.

  The barbed-wire perimeter was clear of trees but not of soldiers. There were so many of them. Fighters everywhere. El Gorrion was building up. Expecting trouble.

  He and Zelda melted back as more men rolled by, eight to a Jeep.

  A vegetable truck idled off to the side, just outside the first security entrance, the driver’s face lit by his phone. “El Gorrion’s,” Hugo said. “No vegetables. They’ll fill it with product.”

  He snuck up and dragged the man out of the cab and into the dark jungle, where they questioned him. The man talked easily. Hugo didn’t have to touch him, and he talked. He gave them a greenhouse, a mile over. You had to go back down the main road and up a little-used trail. Hugo carried him into an abandoned shed and Zelda tied and gagged him.

  “It’ll take hours for him to work out of those bindings,” she said. “Maybe a day.”

  He wouldn’t have to ask about her knots. She’d been in the CIA. He could trust her knots.

  “What?” she asked, noting his expression.

  “Nothing,” he said, wondering if the trust was on his face, or maybe the love. He took the man’s hat, phone, keys, and sunglasses.

  “I miss this,” she said as they stole back to the truck. “This mission feeling. The energy.”

  Hugo drove them back down to the main road and turned onto the less-traveled dirt road, heading up into a different part of the jungle.

  They were heading to an area that was near El Gorrion’s compound, but not on it. Smart of El Gorrion to keep operations away from his main compound, so that one attack couldn’t take him all the way down.

  This was deeper, darker jungle; the tree trunks here were tall and thin, seeking light at the top of the thick ceiling of foliage. They pulled the truck off to the side and covered it best they could. Hugo pulled on his gloves and arranged his bandolier.

  “What do you make of the buildup?” she asked.

  “He thinks Kabakas is coming.”

  “And so he is.”

  He raised his eyes to her. “I want to save the savinca, not kill more men. Kabakas is a harsh, blunt weapon. Like a bomb when a knife would do.”

  “Kabakas saved me on that airfield.”

  He flexed his hands in the gloves, black leather dully lit in the moonlight, enjoying the strength of her gaze. He reached up and drew a leather-clad finger down the pale skin of her cheek. She still liked the gloves. She just liked his hands better.

  “Will you wear the mask?” she asked.

  “Handling a few obstacles,” he said, sliding two fingers along her jawline, “I think the mask is not so much needed.” He dropped his hand. This was not so good for concentration. “I’ll put it on if I need to. You’ll stay behind.”

  “They’re expecting a sidekick now.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Don’t shield me.” He reco
gnized the hitch in her voice—she got that when she felt emotion. “Trust me as a partner.”

  He trusted her as he’d never trusted anyone. Didn’t she see it? He grabbed her hair and let her feel it that way. Him and the gloves, the way she sometimes liked. “I trust you as more than a partner.” It was a revolution inside him, that trust. A seismic shift. A new North Pole.

  They continued on foot, staying just outside the ATV tracks with the aid of a flashlight on low. The driver had said there was a processing lab in the area and some outbuildings a mile beyond it. He used the Spanish term for crop science. That would be the greenhouse—it fit all the criteria: near the compound but not on it, accessible for deliveries, but not on a road.

  Chemical scents grew stronger as they moved deeper into the midnight-black jungle. He played the dim beam on the decaying foliage, showing her where to walk. The thick canopy made it a good place for an open-air lab for coca processing, but the canopy would soon thin; the chemical waste from even the smallest processing lab was devastating to life of all kinds.

  Hugo’s blood heated as he thought about the savinca bushes, trapped in the poisoned soil, just as he had been trapped as a boy, nowhere to run, veins filling with anger and fear.

  Soon he felt the presence of others. A sense that they weren’t alone. Deeper in, he heard the muffled sounds of men walking quietly.

  He touched her sleeve and placed a finger upon his lips. She nodded.

  He never knew who tripped the wire—her, him; it didn’t matter. He heard the snap and pushed her away just as a mass of boulders crashed down from above.

  Hugo put on the mask. Shouts rang out. “Don the mask and stay down.”

  He rushed out onto the ATV path and walked into the gunfire, which quickly ceased as the trio of guards caught sight of him strolling toward them in the moonlight.

  They lowered their weapons, stilled.

  Hugo pulled out a barong.

  Finally, one turned and ran. The other two followed.

  He allowed it. With his ears he followed their retreat.

  He’d pushed them back without killing. It gave him hope, the ease of it. He did not need them dead.

  A rustle in the bushes next to a chemical drum. Somebody hiding.

  He stalked toward it, blades poised. He peered over and saw a young boy cowering in the darkness, dirt on his cheek, something that was probably dried blood on his clothes. Maybe twelve, this one.

  The boy stared up at him, clutching a rifle, eyes wide—as though Hugo were death itself. It made Hugo feel so tired. He’d felt like a good man for a moment, repelling without killing, but this one saw what he was.

  He spoke to the boy as if in a dream. “If you run now, Kabakas cannot see you.”

  The boy stared.

  “Go!”

  The boy ran off.

  Hugo made another circuit through the area. She strolled up next to him. “Kabakas kills without mercy, allowing only the messenger to escape.”

  A line from one of the songs. He’d hated those songs, but he understood her meaning; they might think him an impostor. They might come back—with others.

  “El Gorrion will kill them for abandoning their posts,” Hugo said. “They will not be so eager to report this. Still, we should hurry.”

  Get the intel and go.

  They switched on flashlights and moved through, keeping the ATV trail in sight. Sometime later, they reached the greenhouse, set back in a small clearing. Unguarded.

  They had some time here; El Gorrion would be expecting Kabakas to attack the compound or the lab they’d passed; not an out-of-the-way jungle greenhouse.

  The ramshackle facility was constructed of cinder block and corrugated metal, with the jungle pushing at the seams. Panels of chicken wire glass stretched over the top.

  He kept watch over the surroundings as she picked the lock.

  She was taking too long. “Stand back.” He burst open the door with a kick and strolled into the dark, cool space. It smelled of bright, angular chemicals and soft, wet soil.

  She followed behind him, playing her flashlight beam on four rows of plants of different kinds, evenly spaced apart on wide planks that were supported by sawhorses.

  Her stride changed in this space, she became more confident; jaunty, even, as she inspected the rows.

  “Gotcha, motherfucker.” She stopped in front of one of them. “This is what he’s testing on.” She slid a leaf through two fingers. “Watching how they die.”

  He loved how disgusted she sounded. They shared this passion for the plants.

  “And this one, dead.” She poked the bent-over stem of another plant.

  Her anger was as gorgeous as her passion. He moved to her; he’d never wanted her more. It was thrilling and not entirely comfortable. “This is the way you were when I would not call Paolo by name,” he rumbled into her ear from somewhere deep in his heart. “Battling on the side of the weak.”

  “I’m definitely in a battling mood right now.” She read a note scribbled on a small pad near one of the plants.

  He moved her hair to one side and slid a finger down the back of her neck. “A battling mood renders you especially beautiful, corazón.”

  Even from behind her he could sense her smile—he saw it in the shape of her cheek, heard it in her voice. “I’m not going to be able to concentrate if you stand there saying stuff like that.”

  “I think you will,” he said. “This is your habitat, is it not?”

  She sniffed and moved to the next plant. There were notes next to each one.

  How could her fellow agents not have forgiven her? How could they not believe in her? Could they not feel her heart? He kissed the back of her neck.

  “Ruiz made notes by each plant. Dates, a number—probably the formula used, the range of intensity. High to low.” On she went. He wasn’t listening—he couldn’t hear over the banging of his pulse in his ears and the realization that he loved her.

  He loved her.

  She turned to him, always sensing him. Did she sense his love? Did she sense how it made the world new and colorful and dangerous? Her eyes widened as he went to her and slid his hands around her waist—she felt things—they felt each other. The connection disturbed him, yet he wouldn’t have it any other way. He jerked her to him with all the violence of the love inside him and devoured her lips, tasting the inside of her mouth, breathing her breath, forcing himself to kiss her more gently than he wished. He would always care for her and protect her, even from himself.

  She smiled into the kiss. “What’s this for?”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t know what to say to her at all, so he pulled away from her and went to the doorway, scanning the jungle beyond with his full senses. Nothing.

  So far.

  She set to examining a metal shelving unit that held oddly shaped glassware vessels marked with lines and letters, shoved in next to jars and boxes, some with colorful labels; some with the skull and crossbones denoting poison. She shone the flashlight on one label after another. “Likely suspects for the component parts. And let’s hope he’s as careful as I think he is, and that he has his dirty computer in here. The one he doesn’t want people to see.” She checked inside cabinets and soon came to a tall metal locker in the corner. Padlocked.

  Hugo leaned in the doorway, half his attention on the surrounding jungle, but the liveliest half was on her as she went at the padlock with a pick she had fashioned from paper clips.

  “Damn,” she said, shoving the clips into her mouth and shaking out her hands. “Let’s try that again.”

  “I think it will never get old,” he said, “seeing you in this way.”

  She smiled. “What way?”

  He gestured vaguely, unable to find the words. Perhaps she would take it as her being in a lab, seeing her that way. But really, he was gesturing at the world. At the madness of being in love with her, of no longer being alone. He needed to tell her, but he did not know how. It seemed too big
for three words.

  She found what she’d wanted—a laptop. She opened it and hit a few buttons, warming up the computer. Then she started pulling jars of solution off the shelves. “The most accessible. The least dust. He tried these last.” She smelled one and wrinkled her nose.

  “Poison,” he observed. “Be careful.”

  “Doesn’t Kabakas have somewhere to be?”

  He nodded once. Yes, he’d go out and search the area. He’d do this for her, be her attack dog. “How much time do you need?”

  “Maybe ten minutes.”

  He pulled the mask down over his face. “You’ll have it. We won’t be able to leave by the trail.”

  “Roger that,” she said.

  He slipped out the door and melted out into the jungle, spinning his awareness out in all directions, moving lightly over the uneven jungle bed. All the years on those islands across the Sulu Archipelago had made him feel comfortable stalking and fighting in this type of terrain, even in the dark, attuned to the sounds, the scatter of small mammals and startled birds, the moist feel of the air, the scent of decay.

  Crunches under the vast canopy. He stilled and closed his eyes. Regular human footsteps were heavy and easy to recognize, but a man being quiet could sound like other large animals.

  He waited. Nothing.

  It had felt good not to kill. He wondered now if it had been foolish. Counting on their fear of El Gorrion.

  He went on, thoughts consumed by the boy hiding behind the drum and those wide brown eyes, peering up at him in terror.

  People’s terror of him had never bothered him before; he’d always taken it as a badge of honor, a type of security, but that boy’s terror had felt nearly physical.

  It was her, he realized. She’d made life feel more precious to him. When he’d looked at the old man dead in his shop in Buena Vista, when he’d bought the street-corner barongs, he’d felt bad for not having empathy. Perhaps he’d been better off without it. She’d made it hurt to be Kabakas.

  Crunch.

  A human. One. Near the trail, but not on it.