by Cindy Dees
“Whatever the hell this is,” he muttered to himself.
She gazed apprehensively out the window at the gray stone buildings, the same color as the mountain from whence they came. The day was cloudy, with a cool haze hanging below a low ceiling of clouds. It fit her mood.
“Here we are,” John announced in a brisk, businesslike tone.
She stared at the nondescript building before her. Two stories tall, it looked exactly the same as every other building on the street, except for a small, rusted plaque beside the door. The word Cantina was more missing than present. What letters weren’t rusted out appeared to have been shot out. Not an encouraging sign. She jumped when her car door opened. John had come around to her side of the vehicle to open it and she’d been too distracted to notice. She had to get her head in the game. Fast.
“Don’t hesitate,” he murmured. “We’re being watched.”
She nodded and climbed out. She turned to face the pub, and was immensely relieved when John’s hand came to rest in the small of her back. She resisted an urge to turn into him, to burrow against his chest and hide in his strong arms. Strong. She had to be strong for Mike and for her parents.
He ushered her to the door and pushed it open before her. She was surprised when he stepped inside in front of her, effectively blocking her passage. He paused for several long seconds. It dawned on her belatedly that he was checking the place out before he let her go inside. Yup. A hired gun of her own.
He stepped aside, and she eased inside, trying not to convey exactly how terrified she was by her expression or movement. This time John merely touched her elbow, guiding her across the room to a table in the far corner. He conspicuously took the seat that put his back against two walls.
“Sit beside me on my left,” he instructed quietly.
She nodded and did as he said. A small man who looked like a sun-dried raisin came over to their table and asked cautiously if they would like something to drink. John replied easily that the two of them would both like something nonalcoholic and in a can-unopened.
A significant look passed between him and the bartender. The two men nodded slightly, as if they’d just had an entire conversation that she’d missed. As the man went away to get their drinks, she leaned toward John and breathed, “What was that all about?”
A supremely unconcerned expression on his face, he replied under his breath, “No one can slip anything in our drink if it comes out of a pressurized, unopened can. I just served notice to the locals that I’m no amateur, and they will have to go through me to get to you.”
“You promised you wouldn’t-”
He cut her off quickly. “And I won’t. But there are going to be a few ground rules, for your safety and mine. I’m just establishing those up front.”
She only vaguely understood what he was talking about. It all sounded like testosterone-induced posturing to her. The thing about the tampered drinks made sense, though. She had to give him credit for that. She wouldn’t have thought of it herself.
The raisin guy set two sodas, still in the can and unopened, on the table in front of them. John smiled and peeled off a nice-size bill from his money clip and passed it to the guy with a word of thanks and directions to keep the change. The guy’s eyes lit up and he smiled a little more widely at them.
“Hmm. Interesting,” John murmured.
“How so?”
“The bartender is a low-level flunky. That measly tip was significant to him, which means he’s not paid a lot by the big boys, hence he’s not far up the food chain. This may take a while.”
“Why?”
“We’ll have to work our way up through layers of management, as it were, to get to the folks you’re really here to talk to. Get ready to do a whole lot of soda drinking, babe.”
His prediction wasn’t wrong. Over the course of the next several hours, a half-dozen men wandered into the joint and made their way to the table in the back corner. John made it crystal clear that it was her job to sit there and sip sodas while he did all the early-round talking. And she had to admit, he was really good at it. He was pleasant and relaxed with everyone, and he put all the interviewers at ease. He never hinted at anything threatening or did any macho posturing. He was respectful and quiet, and the locals seemed impressed with him. Lord knew she was, too. No way would her patience have held up like this. She’d have been ranting and raving and demanding to see Huayar in person hours ago.
“Ahh. Now we’re getting somewhere,” John muttered as the cantina door opened once more and the red light of sunset streamed inside the bar. The joint’s true dinginess shone in stark relief for a moment, and then the door swung closed once more, cloaking the establishment in more flattering half-light.
She gazed at the pair of men who’d walked into the bar. One of them was noticeably better dressed than the other locals, his long-sleeved white shirt pressed, starched and well-tailored. His jeans weren’t threadbare, and his boots were made of ostrich skin. A definite step up the crime ladder.
John gestured easily to the seats across from them. “May I buy you a drink, gentlemen?”
The new men nodded and ordered a local brand of beer she’d never heard of. Only when the brown bottles had been delivered and the bartender had retreated, did the crisply dressed one speak. “Miss Montez, we’ve been awaiting your arrival. What delayed you?”
She started at being addressed directly. She glanced over at John to see if he wanted to intervene, but he merely shrugged slightly and indicated that she should answer. “Uhh, there was no delay. It took a few days to get the right travel papers to come down here. I’m sorry if I worried you.”
Something nudged her foot warningly-from John’s side of the table. He must not want her apologizing to these guys. She supposed it did show weakness. And one must never show weakness to jackals if one didn’t want to be said jackals’ next meal.
“Have you got what you said you would bring?”
“I keep my promises, Mr.-” She let the question hang in the air.
“Call me Fuego.”
Fuego? Fire? A little heavy-handed on the machismo, but whatever. “I keep my promises, Mr. Fuego.”
“Just Fuego, Miss Montez.”
“As you wish. Tell me, Fuego, do you have what I want, as well?”
He shrugged and she pressed, “The deal is they will be safe and unharmed when they are returned to me. Your employer has kept his word, has he not? My family is all right, yes?”
She glanced out the corner of her eye and realized that John had gone stock-still in his seat. Shock was quickly being chased from his expression by something cold and dangerous-killing rage. Abject relief that she’d extracted her promise from him before they’d come in here flooded her. The next time she glanced over at him, his expression was completely bland, as casual as it had been all afternoon.
“We have done as we promised, Miss Montez. Your family is alive.”
“And unhurt?” she pressed.
The guy looked irritated at the pressure. “They are fine,” he finally conceded.
She leaned back in her seat, so relieved she felt ill. She wanted to ask what came next, to get this guy to spell out the details of the trade, but John would no doubt kick her under the table if she looked too eager. Besides, her throat was too tight to speak without choking, which would make her look weak and panicky. As hard as it was for her to rein in her impatience, she sat there, sipping at a tepid soda, and waited for Fuego to do something with the big, fat ball bouncing around in the middle of his court. The man stared at her for several long minutes. It felt like forever, but she managed not to squirm under his scrutiny.
Finally, the guy leaned forward. “My employer is eager to speak with you.”
“And I with him. I want to get this over with as soon as possible.”
“Unfortunately, he is not here this week. He is…on a retreat…in the mountains. You may wait here for him, or you may go to him if you are in a hurry.”
John l
eaned forward. “How far up into the mountains is this retreat?”
Fuego glanced over at him in irritation, like John was an impudent underling who didn’t know his proper place. It amused her to think that Fuego might have underestimated her gunslinger. But then, maybe that was the idea. She sat back and let John play his game. She watched as he threw a rather dull look at Fuego, the kind that hired muscle without a lot of brain cells to spare might use. It would have amused her if so damn much wasn’t at stake.
“How far?” John repeated. “I ain’t no fan of nature hikes in no jungle. Too many damned bugs and critters.”
In fact, the high mountains of Peru were carpeted in arboreal rain forests, which were a far cry from the tropical jungle of the lower altitudes, but then she suspected John knew that.
Fuego shrugged. “It’s a few days away. Not bad if you know what you’re doing. But for you…” He let the insult hang in the air, unspoken.
John’s eyes took on a truculent glint. “I didn’t say I can’t camp and hike. I just said I don’t like it. I mean, who in hell wants to go anywhere without television and cold beer?”
She bit back a smile at that one.
Contempt glittered in Fuego’s gaze. “If I give you a set of coordinates, do you think you could find them?”
John shrugged. “Sure thing.”
Fuego pulled a ballpoint pen out of his coat pocket-sporting the logo of a Las Vegas casino-and scribbled on a water-ringed napkin. He pushed the scrawled string of numbers across the table at her. She looked down at them, barely able to read the messy scrawl.
“Three days. Be there by sunset, or they die.”
And with that grim announcement, Fuego abruptly pushed back from the table and stood up. Melina started as John mirrored the movement. Fuego lurched in surprise as John’s hand snaked out so fast the guy didn’t even get a chance to flinch, and trapped the guy’s neck in an iron grip.
“Give your boss a message for me, will ya, Foo-ay-go? No matter how long it takes us to hike up to him, he touches one hair on any of his hostages’ heads before we get there, and he’ll regret ever being born. You catch my drift? We’ll get there when we get there, and he’ll damned well be waiting for us with a smile on his face and her family happy, well fed, and without a scratch on ’em.”
“Or else what?” Fuego hissed.
John let go of the guy’s throat with a little shove. While the guy stumbled and righted himself, John settled into what could only be interpreted as a trained-fighting stance. When he didn’t answer the thug’s question, Melina glanced up at him. And gulped. There was one, and only one way to describe the look in his eyes. Death.
Fuego took a careful step backward. Another. Then he turned and sauntered out of the place with patently false bravado. It was obvious the guy’s shoulder blades were itching like mad and he was restraining an impulse to jump and run.
The door closed behind Fuego and his henchman and everyone in the room audibly let out a collectively held breath.
“C’mon, Mel,” John muttered. “Let’s get out of here before Fuego and his pals get any bright ideas.”
He dropped several large bills on the table and nodded at the bartender, who nodded back. John called out a polite thanks for the man’s hospitality, and then he and Melinda stepped outside into the cool evening. John went first again, pausing in the door to take a good look around before he stepped fully outside. He didn’t have to say a word to get her to hustle into the Land Rover.
John wasted no time starting the engine and heading down the narrow street. They departed town from the opposite way they’d entered. The road deteriorated fast as it wound even higher into the mountains, and the going was slow.
They’d been driving for maybe two hours in charged silence, and full night was upon them when he stopped the car abruptly. The terrain around them was rocky, and trees loomed overhead, intensifying the night’s darkness.
John pivoted in his seat to face her. He exploded, “They’ve got your family? Why in bloody hell didn’t you tell me that before?”
Chapter 8
Fury flowed through John, hot and bright, burning away the fog that had enveloped him for the past eight months. He hadn’t even known it was there until Mel made him this mad and banished the blanket of numbness that had shrouded him. He almost felt…alive.
“Tell me everything,” he enunciated carefully past the control he was barely exercising on his temper. “Right now. I want to know everything.”
Melina had the good sense to look scared. “Don’t you understand?” she cried softly. “This is my family we’re talking about! I can’t risk them by involving you any more!”
“You can and you will.”
She shook her head in mute denial.
“Look. I can open that door, shove you out, and leave you in the middle of nowhere. Right here and right now. Give me one good reason why I should continue with this mission if you won’t be honest with me.”
Sorrowfully, she made eye contact with him. “Because you care about me…at least a little bit?” When he didn’t reply, she added, “Didn’t the past two nights mean anything to you at all?”
That was a low blow. But it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve it. He sighed as some of his fury drained from him. “Do you want to die?” he asked her wearily.
“Actually, I expect to before this is all said and done.”
He stared at her, truly shocked. And after a decade in this business, he was a damned hard man to shock. “Come again?”
“You heard me,” she snapped with a hint of her usual fire.
“Why do you expect to die?” he burst out. As screwed up as he was in the head, even he would never go into an op assuming he was going to die in it.
She sighed. “I got a phone call four days ago. The man said they had my brother and my parents and they would torture them and start sending me body parts if I didn’t do exactly as they said.”
John prompted, “And they said to tell no one else, particularly the police.”
She nodded.
“Then what did you do?”
“I went to a clinic and got the shots I’d need to come to Peru, took vacation from work, told everyone a lie about needing to get away for a while, and then I headed for Pirate Pete’s.”
“Why did you come to Pete’s? Did someone tell you about us?”
“My brother used you guys once to deliver a package for him. I remembered him saying that Pirate Pete’s would take anything anywhere and not ask too many questions. And I knew I couldn’t make this trip on my own.” She laughed ruefully. “It’s not like you can walk up to some stranger and say, ‘Excuse me, would you mind taking me to the hideout of some violent criminal in Peru?’”
“So you knew you were leading me into a death trap.”
She flinched at that one. “I hoped not.”
He was probably within his rights to ream her out for dragging him blind into this, but he wasn’t entirely sure he blamed her. If his family’s lives had been on the line, he might’ve done the very same thing. Desperation was a funny thing. It made you do stuff you never dreamed you’d do under normal circumstances.
He never imagined he’d crawl away from the bloody corpses of his guys, but it had been that or die himself. Not that he’d been all that keen on surviving that black night. But somebody had to make it back to base, to tell the tale of his men’s heroism, to muster a recovery op to bring back their bodies. It was one of the most sacred creeds of the Special Forces. They never left behind one of their own…alive or dead.
“Okay. So you came to Pirate Pete’s and hired me to bring you down here. Did you have any communication with the kidnappers between the time you walked into the store, and when you and I left the island?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
She frowned. “Yes, I’m sure. I swear, I’m telling you the truth.”
“You were told to go to Lima and then call that phone number. Anything else?
”
“Yeah. I was told to hurry if I didn’t want to start receiving ears and fingers in the mail.”
“Do you know who these people are?” It was the critical question. He could only hope that by getting her to open up about the other stuff, she’d tell him the truth on this one, now.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
“What language did the guy speak to you in?”
“Spanish.”
“Native? Mexican Spanish? Castilian Spanish? Could you tell anything about where the speaker was from?”
She paused, thinking about it. “I’d guess some variant of South American Spanish. But then, we’re in Peru, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, last time I checked.” He thought for a moment. “Did he say anything at all that might be construed as having political overtones? Mention of a cause? Any political words like rebels or revolution or even the word government?”
“Nothing. I don’t think the kidnappers are political. Frankly, I’m convinced they’re criminals.”
He pounced on that. “Why?”
“Why else would they want me?”
His eyebrows shot up. Now they were getting somewhere. “Do tell,” he commented blandly, doing his best to conceal his excitement.
“Well, think about what I do. I research synthetic drugs.”
He frowned. “Aren’t most drugs synthetic these days?”
“I don’t develop medicine. I create bad drugs. As in synthetic heroin. Methamphetamines. Illegal drugs.”
Holy crap. “And you’re on the payroll of an international pharmaceutical firm!” he exclaimed.
She laughed. “It’s not like that. They know what I’m doing.”
“Huh?”
“When methamphetamine was invented, the ingredients to make it were readily available over the counter. It took governments and law enforcement years to catch up with regulating the ingredients. Rather than wait for the next designer drug to hit the streets and then try to regulate the chemicals to make it, we’re taking a proactive approach this time. I work with commonly available substances in a laboratory and see if I can concoct compounds with hallucinatory or addictive qualities.”
