by Cindy Dees
He’d steadfastly denied being in Charlie Squad from the very beginning. Even last night, when she’d told him her father was out to kill every member of the team, he’d denied being one of them.
Her whole life was unraveling around her, and no matter what she did, she couldn’t seem to hold it all together. The threads were slipping through her fingers faster than she could gather them back up. She just wanted Joe to be who he said he was, needed him to be a good guy, to love her back.
Was that too much to ask?
Chapter 15
Cari was gone when Joe got out of the shower. He dried off quickly, wrapped the towel around his hips and walked out into the bedroom to get some clothes. Cari wasn’t in the bedroom, either. Probably just as well. She was still pretty freaked out by the knife fight.
He had a fair bit of damage control to do with her. He needed to track her down and talk with her. Calmly. When he wasn’t so on edge. The shower helped release a lot of the pent-up violence still racing through his blood. He was still mad as hell at Rico for picking the damned fight in the first place, but his gut-pounding anger had receded to manageable proportions. Unfortunately, her father was waiting for him right now. First, Eduardo, then Cari.
He dressed, toweled his hair dry and combed it into place. Time to go beard the lion in his den. He walked downstairs and headed for Eduardo’s office, keeping an eye out for Cari. He didn’t see her out and about. He knocked on the office door and Eduardo called for him to enter. As he stepped inside, all his attention zeroed in on the man seated at the desk across the room. A person didn’t deal with Eduardo Ferrare without every brain cell on high alert. Not if he wanted to live for long.
As he approached the desk, Eduardo waved at a chair and said, “Have a seat, Joe.”
That was the first time Eduardo had ever used his name. And he was inviting Joe to actually sit down? Whoa. What was up with that? He took the proffered seat.
“Did you see Gunter on your way down here?” Eduardo snapped.
“No.”
Eduardo stood up impatiently. “He’s not answering his cell phone. I’ll be back in a minute.”
The second Eduardo left the room, Joe stood up and went around to the far side of Eduardo’s desk. A thin stack of file folders sat on the glass desktop. They hadn’t been there the last time Joe was in this office. Could these be the files that Eduardo had paid his informants so handsomely for?
He didn’t have much time. Joe flipped open the first file folder. And stared in complete and utter horror…at his own military personnel file.
Shock exploded in his brain, nearly blinding him. He struggled to focus, to make out the words blurring together on the page. His job qualifications, physical description, home address, for God’s sake! At least there wasn’t a freaking picture in there, too!
Quickly, he flipped through the other folders. Mac, Tex, Howdy, Dutch and even the colonel. They were all here. All the important details of their training and personal lives were sitting on their archenemy’s desk.
As he understood it, these personnel files were classified at roughly the same level as U. S. nuclear information. How had anybody sneaked this information out of Charlie Squad headquarters? To his knowledge, there were only a handful of places in the entire armed forces where any record of their existence was kept, let alone all these details.
Had Eduardo figured out who he was? Was that the purpose of this little tête-à-tête with his father-in-law?
Every nerve in his body screamed at him to run. Now. As far away and as fast as he could go. Except he couldn’t leave Cari behind. He’d promised Julia and, more importantly, he’d promised Cari. He wouldn’t abandon her to her father’s tender mercies, under any circumstances. He’d sneak out of this office. Go upstairs and get her right now. They’d have to press ahead with the escape plan immediately. It would be a hundred times more dangerous in daylight, but what choice did they have?
Voices spoke on the other side of the office door. Joe scuttled out from behind the desk and flopped down in one of the chairs in front, just as Eduardo opened the door and walked in. He watched in silence as the older man crossed the room and sat down at his desk.
“You said you wanted to talk to me?” Joe said cautiously.
Eduardo leaned back in his chair and swiveled to face the ocean before answering. He gazed out the wall of windows for a minute before saying, “I caught the little sideshow out by the pool.”
Joe sighed. “I’m sorry about that. I swear, I didn’t start it. I tried to talk him out of it—”
Eduardo interrupted. “I heard you.”
“Oh.” Joe sat there in silence. Okay, then. Why he wasn’t dead already, he hadn’t the foggiest idea. Was it possible that Eduardo hadn’t made the connection between him and Joe Rodriguez? Ferrare wasn’t stupid.
Guilty people had a tendency to babble. He had to keep his cool. Continue to act like he had nothing to hide. As if he had not a care in the world.
He sat back, telegraphing to Eduardo that he’d have to initiate the conversation. After all, he’d called this little meeting in the first place. Joe wasn’t going to carry the ball, here.
Eduardo read the signal and picked up the ball right on cue. “You handled yourself well out there today. Where’d you learn to fight like that?”
Joe shrugged. “There are places in the States where the streets are still pretty tough. I grew up in one of them.”
“And the medical stuff?”
“I learned that in firefighter school. I thought I told you before that I’m an EMT. I’ve been scraping people off concrete for a while now.”
“Is that why you were so calm under pressure?”
Joe laughed. “You didn’t see the part where I went upstairs and cleaned out my shorts.”
Eduardo leaned back in his chair. He steepled his fingers together under his chin and studied Joe intently. “I may have underestimated you.”
Joe leaned back, as well, sprawling casually, his feet outstretched and his arms hanging loosely over the sides of the chair. But his mind was racing a mile a minute. Where was Ferrare going with this conversation?
It could not possibly be good to have drawn the man’s attention in this way, particularly by displaying some of the extremely specialized skills he’d acquired as a member of Charlie Squad. He had to get out of here. The sooner the better.
“The only thing you may have underestimated was how much I truly love your daughter. And even though I’m really digging this father-son bonding bit, I gotta split, man. If you don’t mind, I really need to get back to Cari and calm her down a little bit. She’s still pretty freaked out.”
“She’ll get over it,” Eduardo replied carelessly. “If you see Gunter on your way out, send him in here.”
Joe did his damndest not to clench his jaw at the callous tone from Cari’s own father. He stepped into the hallway and practically ran into Gunter, who looked to be heading for Ferrare’s office already.
“Hey! Just the guy I was looking for,” Joe said jovially. “The boss man wants to talk to you.” He didn’t stop to chat but rather headed straight for the stairs and his overwrought wife.
Gunter watched Joe go. Good-looking young man. A lot smarter than he acted. He could see why Cari was head over heels for him. The good news was, Joe seemed to feel the same way about her, too. Lord knows, she deserved a little happiness after growing up in this hellhole.
He shook himself out of his reverie and stepped into Eduardo’s office. “You wanted to see me, sir?”
Eduardo gestured for him to close the door and waved him into one of the chairs in front of his desk. When he’d sat down, his boss asked, “What do you make of all the shenanigans by the pool this afternoon?”
“I think Rico’s damned lucky to be alive right now.”
“The American handled him pretty easily, didn’t he?”
Gunter snorted. “He owned Rico. He could’ve disarmed Rico and slit the boy’s throat anytime he wanted
to.”
Eduardo’s eyes narrowed. If Gunter wasn’t mistaken— and he usually wasn’t—his boss was working his way into a cold, killing rage. Those were the worst ones of all. When Eduardo shouted and broke things, one or two people bought the farm and then he was appeased. But when Eduardo went ice-cold like this, Gunter had seen dozens of people die before Eduardo’s rage was assuaged.
Had the fight between Rico and Joe set him off? Why in the world would that make him this angry? Rico would die slowly and painfully and Joe…
Hmm. That was a conundrum now, wasn’t it? Did Eduardo dare kill Cari’s husband? Especially because she was so obviously besotted with him. Eduardo’s hold over his daughter was tenuous at best these days, and the old man knew it. If he killed Joe, Eduardo would, without question, lose Cari, too.
He’d already lost Julia and, in doing so, had nearly lost his proverbial shirt. Despite the outward appearances of normalcy around here, Eduardo’s elder daughter had taken off with almost every bit of cash in the till. Ferrare was quietly selling art pieces and vacation homes fast to raise the capital to keep his empire afloat.
Desperate men did desperate things. Eduardo’s next move could be absolutely anything. Literally. There was nothing Gunter wouldn’t put past his boss to do.
His gut twisted with a need to protect Cari from whatever came next. If she really cared for Joe and, more importantly, if Joe really cared for her, she’d earned a shot at true love with him. Lord knows, the poor girl had had little of that in her life, so far.
“Take a look at this.” Eduardo pulled a folder off the top of a small stack of files sitting in the middle of his desk and pushed it across the glass surface.
Gunter frowned and picked it up. Opened it. Scanned through its rather meager contents.
Joseph Rodriguez, nicknamed Doc. Member of Charlie Squad since…
Gunter did the math in his head. Almost ten years.
Native Spanish speaker, field medic. Height: Six feet two inches. Weight: 180 pounds. Black hair, dark-brown eyes, olive complexion. Highly intelligent, very handsome, thinks well on his feet. Current location: Unknown. Subject is working an undercover assignment at an undisclosed location. Single, never married. Home address…
Gunter frowned. He didn’t like this. Didn’t like this at all. His gut was fluttering with one of those unpleasant intuitions that never presaged anything good.
Eduardo’s voice was positively silky. “Sound like anyone we know?”
Gunter closed his eyes. Opened them. And nothing but a continuous string of curses came to his mind. The bastard had used Cari to get to her father. It had been an act all along. Cold, killing rage of his own began to bubble up in his gut. Finally, he was able to collect himself enough to mutter, “Are you absolutely sure? It’ll kill her, you know.”
Eduardo bellowed, “It may get me killed! The viper is nestled within my very bosom!”
Poor Cari. Poor, poor Cari. She was going to die when her father killed the one man she’d thought really loved her. The one man who’d cravenly and completely betrayed her. If he had betrayed her.
Gunter leaned forward. “You’ve got to be dead sure be-fore you do anything!” he admonished desperately. “For Cari’s sake.”
“To hell with Cari,” Eduardo snarled.
Gunter leaped to his feet. He had to get through Eduardo’s rage. Make him hear reason. He couldn’t go off half-cocked here and just start killing without verifying the facts. It was too important to the young woman crying her eyes out in her maid’s room in the servants’ quarters right now. That’s where he’d been when the summons had come from Eduardo. He’d been standing around like a damn fool, being generally useless while he tried to figure out some way to comfort Cari. The maids kept murmuring about love hurting and how all men were dogs. He didn’t see how that was going to do any good. He needed Cari to tell him exactly what Joe had done to upset her. Then he could go pound some sense into her young man and fix her pain. Action. He needed to do something to make it better.
Meanwhile, here was her father not giving a tinker’s damn about her and talking himself into destroying what might be the one bright and shining light in her life. Gunter gritted his teeth. He mustn’t let Eduardo do anything disastrous.
He took a deep, calming breath. It didn’t help one blessed bit. He ground out, “Cari’s all you’ve got left. Make the damn call. It’ll take you two minutes to talk to your mole and find out where this Rodriguez guy is operating at the moment. And then we’ll know for sure.”
Eduardo’s eyes narrowed. He glared at the interference from his number one lieutenant.
Gunter watched his employer gather himself with difficulty. He’d never taken well to anyone contradicting him, and it was a tribute to Gunter’s decades of unswervingly loyal service that Eduardo didn’t pull the pistol out of his drawer and shoot him on the spot. Hell, Gunter was almost more surprised that Eduardo didn’t do it.
“Fine,” Eduardo snapped. “I’ll verify the damned information. Are you satisfied?”
Gunter subsided in his chair. “Yes, sir. And if it turns out he’s in Charlie Squad, I’ll kill him for you myself.”
That garnered a brief flash of Eduardo’s teeth that was more snarl than smile. “If he’s Charlie Squad, I’ll kill him myself. After I make him suffer a great deal.”
Gunter watched apprehensively as Eduardo pulled out his address book and dialed a phone number with great deliberation.
“Hello, it’s me. I need you to get me a piece of information right away. Yes, now. Where is Joe Rodriguez working undercover at this very moment?”
Gunter waited in suspense so thick he thought it might choke him.
“Then find out!” Eduardo shouted into the phone. “This is life or death! I’ll give you ten thousand dollars extra on your next payment if you get the information within the next hour. If you don’t call me with my answer by midnight tonight, I’ll kill you. Understood?”
Gunter winced. He’d taught the old silver-or-lead trick to Eduardo himself. Bribe the informants handsomely, but kill them if they don’t produce. The Stasi had found it to be the most effective formula by far for extracting information from coerced informants. And they’d tested every method in the book. Hell, the Stasi had written the book.
Eduardo slammed down the phone. “Now we wait, my old friend.”
Gunter stared at his boss in dismay. Now they waited, indeed.
Chapter 16
Cari’s feet dragged as she headed reluctantly for dinner. She didn’t want to face either her father or Joe right now. But Gunter had been clear when he’d fetched her out of Grace’s room in the servants’ quarters. Tonight’s meal was a command performance. Her eyes narrowed bitterly. Performance being the operative word. She would be expected to paint on a cheerful face, to act as if everything was okay when her mind was in turmoil, her heart in an uproar.
She needed straight talk from Joe. Honesty. Answers. Who was he? What was he really here to do? And, most importantly, how did he really feel about her?
While she was busy stewing over such things, she might as well stew over how she really felt about him. Her primary reaction to the knife fight had been pure, unadulterated panic that Joe would be hurt or even killed. That thought still sent her heart up into her throat and made her palms clammy with the cold sweat of terror. It had even crossed her mind to jump into the fight and throw herself on Rico’s knife to save Joe. She closed her eyes on pain so sharp at the thought of losing Joe that a knife might as well have slipped between her ribs.
He kept telling her she had no idea what love was. But dammit, if being willing to sacrifice herself to keep him safe wasn’t love, she gave up. Whether she liked it or not—and whether he liked it or not—she loved Joe whatever-his-name-was.
No matter that he was capable of explosive violence. No matter whether he did the things he did in the name of serving his country or to advance his own nefarious ambitions. The identity of his master made no difference
whatsoever to her heart. And, frankly, that scared the hell out of her.
She’d loved her father through all of the atrocities he’d committed. Was she repeating the same colossal mistake? Was she simply blind when it came to the men she loved?
And maybe that was her answer. Maybe love was, indeed, blind. She’d told Joe before that the heart loves where it wills. She’d urged him to follow his heart, despite their age difference. Maybe she should just follow her heart in spite of her concerns over Joe’s alignment with the law.
And maybe she was working too darned hard to justify why she ought to give herself permission to love Joe. Maybe if she’d just stop analyzing for a second, she’d look herself square in the eye and admit that all these arguments were moot. She loved him. End of discussion.
The question was, what to do about it?
Did she dare pursue a relationship with him? Was she stepping out from between Eduardo and Julia’s feud only to land in the middle of a private war between Eduardo and Joe? Would she live a life of fear, waiting at home alone for an ominous knock on the door from a stranger to tell her Joe had died?
Overthinking again, darn it.
If she’d learned nothing else growing up around her volatile father and the deadly world he lived in, it was to take each day as it came. To enjoy the richness of the moment at hand and not dwell on a past that couldn’t be changed or a future that might or might not ever arrive.
Sure, a future with Joe would have its uncertainties. If he was in Charlie Squad, she’d have to wait out the long absences that came with the job. If he was a wanna-be crime lord… Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
