by Cindy Gerard
He smiled and patted backs and shook hands and kissed cheeks and bit back his panic as he worked his way toward the house, constantly tracking Emilio. As long as he’d been in sight, Rafe had held it together. But he’d lost Emilio by the buffet table, only to catch a glimpse of his back disappearing through the atrium doors.
He had to get into the villa now.
“Raphael.”
Cesar’s voice stopped him.
Damn it.
He froze, pasted on a smile, and turned to his uncle. “Wonderful party,” he said.
Cesar nodded, his gaze hard on Rafe’s face. “And the meeting with Emilio. It went well, I think.”
“Yes. Yes, it seemed to.”
“I believe he will be contacting you very soon with his decision.”
“My hopes are high,” Rafe said with a nod. “You must excuse me now. The wine,” he said, implying that he needed to relieve himself.
Cesar smiled and clapped him on the back. “Go.”
He was already gone, sprinting inside, then finding the fourth door on the east side of the atrium per B.J.’s report.
The door was open a crack when he reached it. When he saw Emilio’s hand knotted in B.J.’s hair, heard her gasp of pain as he pushed her to her knees, he almost lost it but knew if he did that he’d get them both killed.
He drew a bracing breath, then burst into the room.
“Emilio?”
The don paused in the process of unzipping, slowly turned around. And said nothing.
Rafe made a big show of taking in the situation, then drawing the only conclusion a man who wanted into the organization could draw.
His eyes grew hard as he turned them on B.J. He stalked toward her, grabbed her arm, and dragged her to her feet.
“You whore! You fucking bitch!”
Brittany whimpered.
“This? This is what I can expect from you? To force yourself on any man with a cock? On a man as important as Emilio Garcia?”
“He … he made me,” she wailed, tears streaming down her face.
“Shut up! You think I believe anything you say? I could kill you for this,” he spat, pouring it on. Emilio had to buy this. He had to buy that Rafe could kill her, not just for cuckolding him but for the insult to the drug lord.
B.J. took all her cues from him. She whimpered like a spoiled, scared brat. “Please, you must believe—”
Rafe drew his arm back and slapped her across the face. “I said, shut up.”
He hated hurting her. But his anger had to look real or they could both end up dead.
“Emilio. I beg your forgiveness.” Rafe closed his eyes, breathed deep, dug for composure. “I sincerely hope this will not influence your decision concerning our business discussion.”
Emilio looked from Rafe to Brittany and back again. “You need to find yourself a good Colombian woman. A woman who knows her place,” Emilio said, and Rafe could sense that he not only embraced the opportunity to lay all the blame on Brittany but was relieved that Rafe’s anger was not directed at him.
“Apparently,” Rafe said, glaring at B. J. as she wept quietly. “Again,” Rafe said, embarrassed, “my apologies. You will understand, I hope, that I feel the need to excuse myself from the lovely party.” He jerked B.J. roughly against him. “I have business with Brittany that I must attend to.”
“Certainly,” Emilio said. “I’ll have a car sent around front to take you back to Cesar’s.”
“Thank you. And if I could impose on you to inform Cesar that Brittany developed a headache and I had to take her home. I do not wish for him to leave the party early on our account.”
“Of course,” Emilio said.
Rafe nodded his appreciation, then dragged Brittany toward the door. “You may not have any pride but you will not embarrass me further by wailing in front of the other guests or the driver. Now pull yourself together.”
He apologized once more to Emilio and forcefully ushered her out of the room.
“Remind me not to tick you off for real,” B.J. whispered when they were settled in the back of the limo with the privacy glass closed and the radio turned up so there was no chance the chauffeur could hear them.
Rafe stared straight ahead, his jaw tight, his hands clenched into fists on his thighs. “Oh, trust me. I’m pissed.”
Okay. She’d walked into that one. She’d known he would be angry. Just like she’d known he would come for her.
“Look, Mendoza—”
He held up a hand, cutting her off. “Do not say a word.”
He looked at her then, and the anguish in his eyes almost destroyed her. “You made me hurt you.”
The slap. Yeah. She’d known he’d be beating himself up over that. “I’m fine. And it was necessary.”
“None of it would have been necessary if you hadn’t decided you had to play hero and take on Emilio by yourself. What would you have done if I hadn’t gotten there?”
She’d been about ten seconds from faking a drunken stupor and passing out on the floor, that’s what she would have done. “I knew you would,” she said simply.
The minute the words were out of her mouth, the stark unvarnished truth of them hit her like a blow. It was true. She had known he would come. She’d trusted him to come. Without question.
The realization stunned her. On past ops she had always relied on her backup because they’d been paid to do the job, just as she had. It was all for the good of the op. But with Rafe, it was different. She’d inherently known it was different. She’d understood that duty or not, he would have come for her, because he had feelings for her.
One part of her wanted to embrace the idea. Another part, the part that guarded her from disappointment and pain—didn’t want any part of it … didn’t want the responsibility of knowing someone would willingly put his life on the line for her simply because, well, because she was important to him.
She’d seen just how important when he’d burst into Emilio’s office. She saw it now, in the thousand-mile stare that told her he was so angry he couldn’t talk or he might explode; in the rigid posture that told her that it took all of his control to keep from punching his fist through the window.
She didn’t know how to feel about that. She didn’t know what to think or what to say. So she said the one thing that put everything back in perspective.
She leaned in close, as if she meant to kiss him, a show for the chauffeur in the event he was watching. “I found the files,” she whispered.
When he whipped his head her way, she touched her fingers to her bodice, tugged the flash drive out just far enough for him to see it, then tucked it away again. “Didn’t have time to read them but I copied them to the flash drive. We’ll need to get to Cesar’s computer as soon as we get back.”
“Well,” he said after a long moment, “as long as you got results for risking your life, it was all worth it then, wasn’t it?”
Okay. So he wasn’t past his anger yet.
She breathed deep, deciding to quit while she was behind. The rest of the drive back to the Munoz villa passed in angry silence, both of them, if not content, at least resigned to be alone with their thoughts.
And the thought B.J. kept coming back to was that while her confrontation with Emilio Garcia had terrified her, the idea of letting Raphael Mendoza into her life scared her to death.
It took a while for the maid to come to the door of Cesar and Aliria’s villa to let Rafe and B.J. inside. Clearly, because of the party the staff thought they would have the evening off and had either retired early or gone home.
“Por favor,” Rafe said with a smile as B.J. hurried up the stairs ahead of them to their bedroom suite. “Don’t trouble yourself. We don’t need anything, and Señor and Señorita Munoz aren’t going to return for hours yet.”
“Gracias, Señor .”
He watched the maid walk back to the servants’ quarters. Hopefully that was where she’d stay. They needed to be able to access Cesar’s office and his compute
r to read through the documents B.J. had copied.
He bounded up the stairs then stopped just outside their bedroom door. He had to get control of himself. He was still so angry at B.J., so full of fear for her. If Emilio had … he stopped himself, forced back the image of Garcia’s hands on her.
“Get past it,” he muttered, and opened the bedroom door.
Cristo.
She’d already stripped out of her dress and was standing there in a white thong, hurriedly arranging a skimpy lemon yellow tube top over her breasts.
All that pale, fragile skin. All the things Emilio could have done to her…
He snapped then.
All the anger and fear and love—yeah, love, damn it—she’d stirred in him with her careless bravery boiled to the surface like a lava flow. Blazing hot, out of control, unstoppable.
She’d barely registered that he was there when he dragged her into his arms, slammed his mouth over hers, and kissed her, long and hard. When he finally came up for air, her breath was as ragged as his and he hadn’t relieved nearly enough of the tension that had built up inside of him.
Breathing hard, he knotted his hands in her hair, pressed his forehead to hers. “Another time, another place,” he ground out, “and I’d have you naked and flat on your back.”
Her eyes were wide with shock … and something else. Desire. “But it’s not another time. And we have to get out of this place.”
Breathless. She made him breathless. And stupid.
“Screw it. We both know there might not be another time.”
He saw in her eyes that she understood that too as he backed her up against the wall, jerked down her top, and filled his hands with her breasts. She gasped, sharp and aroused, as he lowered his head and took her into his mouth.
“I am so not through being pissed at you,” he murmured as he skimmed the thong down her hips.
“Yeah. I … Oh God … I got that,” she whispered against his mouth as she frantically unbuckled his belt and shoved his pants down around his ankles.
Then he was inside her, slamming into her. She gripped his shoulders, hooked a leg around his hips, and cried out when he grasped her ass and lifted her. Frantic to go deeper, to somehow make her understand the depth of his fear, the strength of his arousal, he lost total control. He shot into her on a hoarse groan, all fury and fire and emotion rife with passions he couldn’t even name.
Only heartbeats had passed since he’d taken her— yet a lifetime of need and discovery had just passed between them.
He held her close as they both came down from the rush. “You okay?” he whispered gruffly, his face pressed into the soft hollow of her throat where her pulse thrummed, fast and wild.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured as he slowly lowered her to the floor. “I’m sorry I scared you.”
“Yeah.” He touched a hand to her face. “Me, too.”
He kissed her again. A kiss filled with apology. “Steady?”
She laughed. “Never again.”
“That’s what you’re wearing?” Rafe asked when she walked out of the bathroom less than five minutes later, readjusting her top. She’d somehow managed to shimmy into a pair of skintight, lime green spandex Capri pants.
“It’s either this or one of those ridiculous dresses. Remind me to thank Reed for his brilliant wardrobe choices,” she sputtered, slipping on a pair of gold espadrille sandals.
Okay. So they were both short on work clothes. He’d have to make do with what he was wearing, too.
She grabbed the flash drive from the bed and they headed out the door and ran quickly downstairs.
“This is becoming a habit,” B.J. said as once again she picked the lock on Cesar’s office door.
“I see a great future for you as a cat burglar,” Rafe murmured dryly as they hurried inside the office and made a beeline for Cesar’s computer.
B.J. found the key and unlocked the top desk drawer, then retrieved her cell phone while they waited for the computer to boot up.
“Jesus.” Rafe cupped his palm over his jaw and squeezed after B.J. had loaded the folder from the flash drive and started scrolling through the documents she’d copied from Garcia’s laptop. “The details are all here.”
And the plan was chilling. So were the players. They’d suspected all along that Emilio Garcia and the drug cartel were merely middlemen, brokers, as it were, making a huge profit by helping whatever terrorist group was fronting the cash and would carry out the plan.
“Crystal was right,” Rafe said when he saw the name of a known bin Laden associate pop up in a document. “There’s our Al Qaeda connection. Sheik Abdul Azeem.”
“Azeem? From the U.S. embassy bombing in Madrid last year?”
“The same.”
“We’ve been waiting for him to rear his ugly head again.”
“Looks like the wait is over. I can’t believe some sonofabitch in the U.S. government sold our technology to this bastard.” But the fact was, someone had. “Check the next document. We need to find the location of the facility.”
Emilio was a stickler for detail—the drug don would no doubt use the documents as insurance in the event his money didn’t come through. The next document they opened contained meticulous accounting of costs for the development of the project, for equipment, salaries, parts, shipping—all to a warehouse in Santa Marta.
“That has to be it,” B.J. whispered, not wanting to attract any of the staff who might happen to wander by Cesar’s closed office door. They were working in the dark with a penlight and the computer screen the only light in the room. “The facility is in Santa Marta. Look—building specs. I’ll bet there’s a blueprint in here somewhere.”
A few more clicks and she found it.
“Gotta be the whole shebang,” Rafe said after seeing how large the building was and its proximity to both a railroad line and the seaport. “Looks like they put all their eggs in one basket,” he said, studying the blueprint for the building.
“I agree. See this? This part of the building is designated for E-bomb development, this part,” she added, pointing to the screen, “for the Black Ruby cloaking device.”
“And there’s the missile storage,” Rafe added.
“Is that a crane?”
He nodded, studying the diagram. “They’d need some way to load the missiles onto the sub,” Rafe surmised.
“Quite the operation.”
“Won’t be when we’re finished with it. Print that,” he added, referring to the blueprint.
That plant would cease to exist provided Nate and the guys had been able to get the munitions they would need to breach a facility that size.
“It’s going to be heavily guarded,” B.J. pointed out.
“Understatement,” he agreed as she hit the print button and then went on to another document.
B.J. breathed in sharply when she read it. “Oh, my God. There’s the target. Stephanie was right. It’s the Niagara-Mohawk power plant.”
She glanced up at Rafe as he leaned in closer, a renewed sense of urgency enveloping them both. The bastards were going to hit the plant near Syracuse, New York, and go for total and permanent blackout over a third of the United States. Only unlike the 2003 temporary blackout, there would be no recovery from this attack.
“When?”
“I’m looking … Oh God. The launch of the missile carrying the E-bomb is scheduled for midnight on the twentieth. Less than sixty hours from now.”
Face grim, Rafe scanned the rest of the document, looking for more info.
“There it is,” B.J. said, slumping back in the desk chair. “The sub carrying the bomb is due to leave port from Santa Marta at six a.m. on the eighteenth and travel up the eastern seaboard the next two and a half days. Rafe … that means the sub is leaving tomorrow morning!”
Rafe snagged the copy of the blueprints from the printer. “Pull the flash drive. We’ve got to get out of here, contact the guys, then hope to hell we can charter a flight to Santa Marta.”<
br />
“But we still haven’t found the U.S. connection.”
“That’ll have to wait until we have a chance to review the rest of the data. Right now we have to get to Santa Marta, intercept that sub, and keep it from leaving. And we’ve got exactly”—he checked his watch; it was closing in on eight p.m.—“ten hours to do it.”
He could see that she didn’t like the idea of leaving that piece of the puzzle unsolved. That made two of them. “Look, Green’s taking care of Stephanie. I’m not worried about her. And we will find the traitor. One problem at a time.”
