Hot Soldier Bodyguard

by Cindy Dees

  Cari finally gathered the courage to glance over at Joe. Undisguised pride in her shone in his dark gaze. He got it. He knew what that necklace represented, and he definitely knew what her refusal of it meant.

  And then a strange thing happened. Of all people, Gunter reached beneath the table and gave her hand a quick squeeze. It happened so fast she didn’t even really register the slight pressure on her fingers until it was gone.

  She’d done it. She’d made the break with her father. She’d finally seen him for what he was and rejected being used by him any longer. She’d grown up.

  And she owed it all to Joe. Without him, she might never have seen her father clearly, might never have known what real love acted like. She smiled brilliantly across the table at her husband, her gratitude for his lessons in love boundless. He nodded infinitesimally in return, a smile playing around the corners of his eyes.

  Dessert was served: crepes stuffed with flambéed plantains and fresh pineapple. The whole thing was smothered in a sinful pecan-caramel sauce and topped with whipped cream. And tonight, she was going to eat every last bite of it!

  Her spoon bit into the delicious confection, and the first sticky, tempting bite was halfway to her mouth when she heard a sudden disturbance from the direction of the front door. Someone—a man—was talking excitedly, demanding entrance and claiming to need to see Eduardo immediately.

  Every head turned toward the noise. The bodyguards at the far end of the table, closest to the commotion, reached under their coats for their weapons.

  Cari frowned as the South African information broker from the day before burst into the dining room, accompanied by two very agitated guards.

  “Señor Ferrare, I apologize for coming to you this way, but it is a matter of greatest urgency.”

  Eduardo frowned. “I’ve already gotten the information I was looking for from another source. The money has already been collected.”

  The South African waved a hand impatiently. “It’s not that. In attempting to acquire that information for you, I ran across something much more important.”

  Cari’s frown deepened as Eduardo leaned forward, alert and eager. “What did you find?” her father asked aggressively.

  A horrifying thought overwhelmed Cari. Had this guy figured out that the Blackjacks had a man inside Eduardo’s house, eating supper at his table at this very moment?

  She interjected, with desperate calm, “Daddy, why don’t you and your associate adjourn this conversation to somewhere more private, like your office?” Maybe that would give Joe a few minutes to make a run for it. Give him a fighting chance to get out of here alive.

  Her father slashed a decisive hand through the air. “No, I want to hear it right now.”

  The South African gulped. Took a big swallow. Not good. Not good at all. He was getting ready to reveal something bad. Something that would make her father angry. It had to be Joe. Frantic, she glanced over at Joe, willing him to excuse himself from the table. To pretend to go to the bathroom or something. To get out of here!

  But Joe just sat there, a faint frown between his eyes, staring at the South African. If the table hadn’t been so wide, she would have kicked his foot under the table to get his attention. She all but threw her napkin at him to get him to look at her so she could motion him to flee.

  The South African cleared his throat. “My…sources…intercepted this message less than an hour ago. It was transmitted from an operating location in the north-central United States to the Pentagon Operations Center. It’s a very classified message.”

  “And what did this message have to say that sent you flying in here in the middle of dessert?” Eduardo prompted the man.

  “Ahh, well, yes.” The South African cleared his throat nervously. “It was a transmission from the Blackjacks. That’s why it was brought to my attention right away. They were reporting…” He looked down at the top piece of paper clutched in his hand. “Let me read it to you: ‘The Blackjacks commander regrets to inform ops that the primary target of Operation Moneybag has met with a most unfortunate accident and has died. Photographic confirmation to follow.’”

  A sick feeling started at the bottom of Cari’s stomach and began to worm its way upward as Eduardo growled, “What the hell is Operation Moneybag?”

  The South African cringed a little as he answered, “It’s not what. It’s who. Operation Moneybag was your daughter, Julia. The Blackjacks have killed her.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cari leaped up out of her seat at about the same time as Eduardo did.

  “What?” her father bellowed.

  “That’s not possible!” Cari cried out at the same moment.

  “I’m afraid it is very possible,” the South African replied regretfully. “I have the pictures right here if you’d like to see them, sir….” The guy advanced down the length of the table, holding out the bundle of photos in his hand like a talisman to ward off evil—or, in his case, a swift death to the messenger.

  Eduardo snatched what turned out to be several eight-by-ten photographs, and Cari moved to peer over his shoulder at the grainy black-and-white images.

  “Those were taken with a long-range camera, so the quality’s not the best. But they’re good enough to identify the, uh, victim and the men with her.”

  Cari stared down in horror. There was no doubt about it. That was Julia, all right, sprawled on the snow-covered ground with a huge black stain discoloring the snow around her. A blossom of black stained her coat, as well, directly over her heart. Her eyes were closed, her face a ghostly, ghastly white in the picture.

  Two men crouched down beside her, both brandishing pistols in their hands. The legs of a third man were visible just entering the frame of the picture. But what riveted Cari’s attention was the man at Julia’s right, his face clearly visible. It was the driver who’d delivered her and Joe to Judge Cabot’s house and then driven them here two nights ago. The man that Joe had called Tom. The man she’d believed to be Colonel Foley, the commander of the Blackjacks.

  Eduardo stabbed a finger at the same face she was staring at. “That’s Tom Foley!” he snarled. His voice rose in a roar. “That bastard killed my baby!”

  Joe craned his neck to look at the pictures. Panic ripped through him. No way had the Blackjacks killed Julia! Hell, Dutch was planning to marry her. This message was a hoax.

  Unable to see the incriminating photographs, he finally half stood and snatched one of them off the table.

  Son of a bitch. That was Julia lying on the ground, all right. And that was the colonel beside her, and that was Julia’s blood all over the ground. There wasn’t a whole lot of background in the photograph, but he recognized that rise of rock behind Julia. Montana.

  He remembered the night well. Julia had set up a meeting with her father, and the Blackjacks had staked out the site to catch the bastard. Except Eduardo had set an ambush of his own. Shooting had broken out and Eduardo had pulled a gun and aimed it at Dutch, the man Julia loved. She’d dived in front of Dutch and taken a bullet from her father’s own gun.

  That pair of legs just coming into the picture were his as he’d sprinted up to render first aid to Julia.

  Where in the hell had this photo come from? He tried to picture the scene that night at a rest stop along a lonely Montana highway. The angle this was taken from set it over in the large grassy area beside the picnic tables, where Eduardo’s helicopter had been parked. There must have been some sort of surveillance camera mounted on the helicopter and this photo was lifted from the film footage of the meeting between Julia and her father.

  Eduardo would definitely recognize the meeting he’d had with Julia. Would know he’d been the one to shoot her. And he would also know that his daughter had ultimately survived her injuries and was in hiding with the Blackjacks right now. Which meant…

  The rat bastard! Eduardo had set up this whole scene, tonight! Joe’s mind raced. Why?

  The answer was obvious. Eduardo knew he was a Bl
ackjack plant and had to alienate Cari, so she wouldn’t blame him for killing the man she loved.

  This was an elaborate trap. And from the horror dawning on Cari’s face, it was working.

  Something exploded in Cari’s brain. It was like a hundred isolated puzzle pieces of information had all suddenly flown into place and she could finally see the whole picture.

  The Blackjacks had killed Julia. Joe was a Blackjack. He was here to kill her father and had used her to get close to Eduardo. She stared down at the gruesome pictures of her sister’s body—he would kill her, too, if he had to.

  Oh, God, Julia. Grief broke over her with the fury of a raging avalanche, turning her world upside down, burying her completely under its crushing weight.

  And one of the men responsible for it was sitting across the table from her. He’d been making goo-goo eyes at her just moments before. She’d made love to him! God, she’d been such a fool!

  “How could you?” she cried at him.

  Joe looked startled. “How could I what?”

  “How could you kill my sister? She was gentle and kind. She’d never hurt anyone. And you murdered her!” She heard the hysteria creeping into her voice. And she reveled in it. Embraced the madness. Julia was gone.

  Joe stared in horror of his own as Cari continued screaming accusations at him. “What did she ever do to you? All we ever wanted was a normal life away from all of this!” She waved her arm, encompassing the room.

  Damn. She was going to totally blow any chance of a cover he had left! “Honey,” he said soothingly, “I didn’t have anything to do with this. You know I would never hurt an innocent.”

  Except he could see the memory of him stabbing Rico swimming afresh in her eyes. Rico wasn’t an innocent, dammit!

  “Will you kill me, too, Joe? Or whatever your name is?” Cari cried out. “Or are you only here to kill my father?”

  At that, several of the men near him lurched. Dammit! She was going to get him killed if she didn’t shut her mouth!

  His heart bled for her. He ached to put his arms around her, to comfort her. To take away the grief that was eating her alive. To tell her there was no way Julia could be dead.

  If it was only his life on the line, he wouldn’t hesitate to tell her this was a hoax and take the consequences himself. But there were the other five members of his team to protect. He wasn’t about to spout off that they couldn’t have killed Julia last night because four of them were here in Gavarone, staked out around this building, and that Dutch was with Julia.

  That would send all of Eduardo’s men outside with guns blazing and land the team in a firefight they couldn’t hope to win. No matter how much it pained him to make Cari suffer like this, he couldn’t offer her concrete proof that Julia had not been murdered. All he could give her was his word.

  Cari collapsed against her father’s shoulder, crying hysterically. Joe looked up at Eduardo, who was all but gloating over her head at him.

  He stood up. “You low-down, selfish, twisted son of a bitch. How could you do this to your own daughter?”

  Cari looked up, her eyes red and furious. “Don’t you dare say anything to my father! He makes no excuses for who he is. But you…you’re a liar!” she finished furiously.

  Joe looked her square in the eye. “Cari,” he said reasonably, desperately. “I’ve never lied to you. Ever. I swear. I’ve refused to answer certain questions, but I’ve never lied. I love you, and I’m telling you now, Julia isn’t dead.”

  “If you truly loved me, you wouldn’t have let the Blackjacks kill her, would you? So there’s the biggest lie of all! You never cared for me one bit!”

  Cari pushed away from her father and advanced toward him. She stabbed a finger at the picture Joe held in his hand. “He—that man—drove us to get married! You’re in the Blackjacks up to your neck! You could have stopped them from killing Julia.”

  Well, shit. She’d gone and put the final nail in his coffin. The intensity of her shock and grief was such that she wasn’t using her head. She couldn’t see this lie by Eduardo for what it was.

  “Grab him!” Eduardo ordered, a small smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “And take him downstairs.”

  About half the table charged Joe. Shit. He was going down. But he couldn’t leave Cari like this. He couldn’t die with her believing that her sister was dead. Hands shoved him and he fell back into his seat. He looked up and noticed that, oddly enough, Gunter hadn’t moved. Eduardo’s chief of security hadn’t budged when it was revealed that one of his boss’s archenemies was sitting at the dinner table.

  As fists rained on his head and rough hands snatched at him, dragging him from his seat, Joe snatched the cell phone out of his pant pocket. Under the table, he flipped it across the floor in the direction of Gunter’s feet.

  “Cari,” Joe shouted over the din of yelling men, “make the call! She’s not dead!”

  And then he went down, under a punishing barrage of fists and feet, and his frenzied thoughts turned to the immediate necessity of blocking the worst of the blows pummeling him from all sides.

  “Take him downstairs!” Eduardo ordered again.

  Joe was dragged to his feet, the beating suspended for the moment. Somebody had landed a vicious kick to his right kidney, and the shooting agony from that overrode most of the other contusions and injuries.

  He vaguely heard Cari sobbing, and the sound tore at his heart. He’d tried so damned hard to spare her more of this violence at her father’s hands. And he’d failed. How much more pain had he set her up for in his clumsy efforts to protect her?

  He registered Gunter’s voice comforting Cari. Herding her out of the room. He had no idea whether or not Gunter understood his last shouted words to Cari. Furthermore, he didn’t have the slightest idea whether or not the German would give her the phone. He could only hope the man thought enough of her to spare her the unnecessary misery of wrongly believing her sister was dead.

  A phalanx of thugs dragged him into the kitchen and down the same stairs he’d explored last night. They shoved him into a darkened room and someone started punching him again before the lights were even turned on. Aww, hell. He was going to get to see the business end of that padded interrogation room, after all.

  Cari was only dimly aware of Gunter’s strong arm around her shoulders, guiding her upstairs and away from all the shouting and swearing downstairs. The quiet in her room was shocking, in contrast.

  “Come in here, child.” She was startled when Gunter led her not to her bed or to the sofa but rather into the bathroom. He closed the door behind her, propped her against the counter and turned on her shower’s hot-water tap full blast.

  “What are you doing?” she gathered herself enough to ask.

  He smiled gently. “You didn’t honestly think I didn’t know about your safe room, did you?”

  She stared at him in surprise. “Is it really safe? Or do you have something in here that I haven’t found?”

  He shook his head. “No, those little jamming devices you installed are top-notch. Even if I hadn’t decided to let you have a certain amount of privacy, they would have been difficult to overcome. You designed them well, querida.”

  A fresh flow of tears gushed at the endearment that Julia had used with her so often. Gunter handed her a tissue and said quietly, “You and I need to talk.”

  She blew her nose ungracefully and grabbed another tissue to swab at her eyes. “About what?” she mumbled.

  “Joe gave you a message and gave me something just before he was taken out of the dining room. You and I need to figure out what to do with them both.”

  “I hope Daddy kills him for what he did,” Cari spat out. “He could’ve told them not to kill her, but he didn’t. He let them kill my sister!”

  “Ahh, Carina. You are so young. So naive.”

  She frowned. Joe had said the same thing to her in this very room not so long ago. “I wish you all would quit treating me like a child! I’m not, yo
u know.”

  Gunter smiled. “No, you’re not, are you? You’ve grown up. And now it’s time to make a grown-up decision. Joe told you to make a call. And then he threw this to me.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out Joe’s cell phone. The same one she’d modified so he could call the Blackjacks. What did it mean?

  “I assume you know what ‘call’ Joe was referring to? I’m guessing you know how to get in touch with the Blackjacks?”

  She frowned. “Not really. Although I could probably figure it out. He called someone on that phone earlier today.”

  She stared at the small instrument lying in Gunter’s callused hand. “It won’t make any difference. They’ll lie to me the same way Joe did. They’ll tell me they didn’t kill Julia. Except I’ve seen the pictures with my own two eyes.” Her voice broke into a sob and she fell apart again, crying uncontrollably as her grief swamped her anew.

  Gunter shrugged. “I don’t know what they’ll tell you. You won’t know until you make the call. I do know this, though. It’s possible to see what you expect to see when sometimes the truth is very different.”

  “You think I should talk to those bastards?” Cari asked incredulously.

  “I think you should act as an adult. I think you should not take what just happened at face value and I think you should decide for yourself exactly who is telling the truth here.”

  She stared at the German long and hard. He’d worked for her father for as long as she could remember. He’d always been loyal to her father, steadfast in his duties as Eduardo’s chief of security. Was he actually going behind her father’s back here? If so, it was a monumental event.

  She looked up at Gunter. “You think I should make the call, don’t you?”

  He looked her in the eye. Seemed to search for the right words. And then said, very slowly, as if each word weighed heavily on his conscience, “I’ve stood by over the years and watched your father do some terrible things to you and Julia. But this—” he swallowed thickly “—this is too much. If it were just Joe, I’d let Eduardo kill him. But I can’t stand by and let your father take away a man who loves you like that boy loves you.”