Green Beret Bodyguard

by Carol Ericson

  Lola cranked open the door and propped it open with her foot while Dr. Felson wedged her shoulder against it to hold it ajar. She winked at Lola. “I don’t blame you. I’m not comfortable wandering around the basement at night, either.”

  Lola slipped into the hallway as Dr. Trapp’s voice whined, “I hope you’re not squeamish, Dr. Felson.”

  Lola quickened her pace over the freshly mopped floor. It occurred to her that maybe her stealthy stranger had been someone from the janitorial staff. Whoever it was, he or she had been skulking outside the door—no other word for it.

  Jabbing at the elevator button, Lola threw a glance at Dr. Felson, still stationed in the doorway of the morgue. Dr. Felson called down the hallway, “I hope it’s not slow tonight. Dr. Trapp’s getting very antsy in here.”

  An orange light illuminated the B above the car as the elevator settled into place. The doors rumbled open and Lola flashed a thumbs-up sign to Dr. Felson and slipped inside the confines of the four walls. Safety.

  She’d grab one of the security guards to see her safely to her car, and then maybe she could shake this aura of doom that had hung over her for too long. She rubbed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. In reality, she’d never escape the dread that had overcome her life since her brother, Gabriel, had disappeared in Afghanistan…not until he was home safe and sound.

  The doors slid open at the lobby level, where a few people still milled around, perhaps coming in to visit patients. Miami Hope’s emergency entrance, which would be bustling, was around the corner and facing a different street.

  Lola spied her favorite security guard, Sergio, and waved. “Hola, Sergio. Qué tal?”

  Sergio flashed her a big smile. “Hola, doctore. Estoy bien. Trabajando tarde?”

  “Sí, I’m working a little late. Can you walk me to my car? Or at least watch me? I’m on this level.”

  “No problema.” He took two steps toward the door leading to the parking structure and held it open for her. “Where’s your car?”

  “It’s in the second aisle, two from the end. If you could just walk me to the end of the aisle that would be great.”

  The soles of her sneakers squeaked on the smooth surface of the parking garage. Sergio’s solid presence beside her was comforting. When they reached her car’s aisle, she put her hand on Sergio’s arm. “This is good. Gracias.”

  Lola beeped her remote. Grabbing the handle of her car door, she turned and waved at Sergio, who was still stationed at the end of the aisle. She tossed her purse into the passenger seat and dropped onto the leather on the driver’s side.

  She clicked her locks, and almost immediately a frisson of fear spiraled up her spine. Then a hand clamped over her mouth from behind and a husky voice rasped in her ear, “I need your help.”

  Chapter Two

  The woman’s soft lips parted beneath the loose clasp of his hand, her lipstick sticking to his palm. He clicked the safety of his unloaded weapon in case she got any ideas about laying on the horn. Her hands grasped the steering wheel, her knuckles white against the black leather.

  God, he felt like the slime of the earth, but he needed to take her by surprise so she couldn’t warn anyone, couldn’t warn his enemies. Her bottle-green eyes, wide above his hand clamped over the bottom half of her face, met his gaze in the rearview mirror.

  “I’m sorry. I need information from you. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Air escaped noisily from her nose and her hot breath condensed on his palm. He cupped his hand, giving her space to breathe. “I’ll remove my hand from your mouth if you promise not to scream. Can you promise me that?”

  She nodded, and dark strands of hair that had escaped from her ponytail tickled the back of his hand. He slid his fingers across her soft cheek and held his breath.

  Crying out, she scrabbled for the door handle and he cinched her upper arm with his fingers. “I’m Jack Coburn.”

  The utterance of his name had a powerful effect on her. She fell back against her seat and jerked her head around to face him. “Y-you’re Jack Coburn? Prove it.”

  Out of all the passports and IDs in the black duffel bag, not one had his name printed on it. But he had something better. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and withdrew the crumpled letter. He held it out to her, and she snatched it from his hand.

  She smoothed out the single sheet of paper against the steering wheel, and Jack coiled his muscles in case she went for the horn. She didn’t.

  Her brow creased as she scanned the letter. “I wrote this…to Jack Coburn. But I’ve never met him before, so how do I know you’re Jack?”

  He lifted his shoulders, the gun dangling from his fingers, the barrel pointing to the floor of the car. “I don’t know how to prove it to you. I got it straight from an Afghan boy, but I couldn’t bring him with me as a character reference.”

  The woman, Lola, curled her slim fingers around the sheet of paper, crumpling it into familiar lines. “What are you talking about? You need someone else to tell you who you are?”

  Okay, time to play the pity card, and maybe she won’t scream bloody murder and escape from the car.

  Massaging his temple, he dropped his eyelids, peering at her through slits. “Yes, I do. You see, Lola Famosa—” the name rolled off his tongue “—I can’t remember a damned thing about myself or what I was doing in Afghanistan, but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with you and this guy Gabriel you wrote about in your letter.”

  Was Gabriel her husband? Jack studied Lola’s profile with its firm chin at odds with the pert nose, and the long black lashes that blinked in confusion. If so, Gabriel was one lucky guy…or not. Where the hell was Gabriel, anyway?

  She swung around suddenly and jabbed her finger in his chest. “Are you putting me on? What are you doing here? Why did you choose this method—” she waved her hands around the interior of the car “—to contact me? Once you located me, you couldn’t leave me a note at the hospital? You had to go skulking around the morgue?”

  The morgue? Jack let that one pass. “The reason I have amnesia is because someone pushed me off the side of a mountain and then left me there to die. When I made it back to the town, the Afghan boy, Yasir, found me. He told me I was some kind of spy. I’m thinking maybe I can go directly to the U.S. Embassy or somehow contact the CIA, but I suspect neither of those august institutions would be thrilled to find me alive.”

  Lola gasped. “You think the United States government is after you?”

  “I’m on some airport security watch list.” He grabbed her fingers, fiddling with the cup holder in the console. “What does it mean? What was I doing in Afghanistan?”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?” She shifted in her seat and studied his face with her wide eyes. “You don’t know.”

  Tilting his chin toward the letter abandoned in her lap, he said, “I know you were willing to pay me a million dollars to bring your husband home safely.”

  Those long lashes swept her cheeks and her bottom lip trembled. Her voice choked. “And you obviously didn’t bring Gabriel with you.”

  Before he could stop himself, he traced the soft curve of her cheek with his fingertip. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know who or where Gabriel is, if I ever did.”

  A visible shudder coursed through her frame, and then she straightened her shoulders. “Oh, you knew, Mr. Coburn. I paid you a million dollars up front to retrieve Gabe from Afghanistan, to negotiate his release.”

  He branded this new bit of knowledge into his brain. One more tiny piece of the puzzle falling into place. “His release from whom?”

  “Terrorists.” She lifted her doe eyes to his face, and the look in their depths made him want to take her in his arms and shield her from the world and every bad thing in it.

  A car two spaces down roared to life, and Lola stiffened and grabbed the steering wheel. She looked like she could use a drink. First he’d scared the hell out of her and then had to admit he hadn’t a clue to her hu
sband’s whereabouts.

  “Do you want to talk somewhere else? Maybe if you can fill me in on some details, I can start to remember.” A muscle jumped in his jaw. And if she didn’t want to fill him in?

  He’d come home without her husband. She didn’t owe him anything, and there was no way he was going to force information out of her. He’d done enough damage to her nerves for one night by pulling this stunt in her car.

  “Sure. There’s a little bar not too far from the hospital.” She ran both hands across her face as if wiping away tears, when not a single one had spilled onto her cheek.

  “Can I sit up front?” He balanced a knee on the console between the two front seats. “I left the gun on the floor. It wasn’t loaded.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.” She dragged her purse by its handle from the passenger seat, and Jack squeezed his large frame into the front.

  “Lo siento. If I could’ve done it any other way, I would have.”

  Cranking on the engine, she raised one dark brow in his direction. “You speak Spanish?”

  “Apparently I speak a lot of languages.” He snapped his seat belt and adjusted the seat, shooting a glance her way. He had to trust she wasn’t going to drive straight to a police station or, worse, call in the suits who’d been staking out the Miami airport.

  She dragged her bottom lip between her teeth and furrowed her brow. “Must be strange to lose your memory.”

  He didn’t think Lola Famosa, Dr. Lola Famosa, was going to rat him out just yet. She probably wanted information about her husband as badly as Jack wanted information about himself. He could trust her to keep this little meeting to herself…for now.

  His shoulders slumped and he closed his eyes. “Strange doesn’t begin to describe it.”

  THE TIRES SQUEALED AS LOLA wheeled her Mercedes into a slotted parking space in front of the Cubana Cubano Bar. At this hour on a Monday night, Mario’s place would be quiet enough to talk but just crowded enough for safety. Just in case the man filling her passenger seat wasn’t really Jack Coburn.

  She cut the engine and turned her head to study him. He had to be Coburn. He’d fallen asleep before she’d even pulled out of the hospital parking lot. What crazed murderer-slash-kidnapper-slash-rapist would conk out just when he had his prey secluded in her car?

  Besides she’d had dreams about that low, sexy voice of his after hearing it over the phone six months ago. There couldn’t be two voices with the power to invade her dreams, could there?

  Peering into the backseat, she spotted his gun discarded on the floor of the car. She reached over, checked the safety and stowed it in her handbag. No self-respecting bad guy would abandon his weapon that easily, either.

  “Coburn?” She nudged his shoulder. He mumbled and leaned his head against the window, his long, dark hair falling across his forehead.

  With his intense, dark eyes closed to the world and his tight jaw relaxed in sleep, he looked almost carefree. Awake, the man vibrated with energy, his long, lean frame poised for action, any kind of action.

  That was probably why her father’s friend had suggested she contact Coburn to negotiate Gabriel’s release.

  She tapped a solid bicep. Coburn felt as hard as he looked. Her glance dropped to his crotch, and her cheeks heated up in the relative privacy of her car. The poor guy might have some information about Gabriel, the U.S. government might be after him and he definitely had some form of amnesia. And here she was turning him into a sex object.

  Could she help it when the man looked like an Adonis?

  “Coburn?” She squeezed his arm and pushed at his shoulder again.

  Passing a hand over his face, he asked, “Did I fall asleep?”

  “You must be exhausted. When did you get back to the U.S.?”

  “Over a week ago.” He rubbed his eyes and shook the hair out of his face.

  Yep, just about the time someone started watching her. Why did he wait so long to contact her?

  “Do you want to go inside for a drink?” She tipped her head toward the bar outside the car window. “We can talk. Maybe I can help you and maybe you can help me.”

  He reached into the backseat, and she touched his arm. “I put it in my purse.”

  “Is this a safe neighborhood?”

  “Not really.”

  He dragged a black bag from the floor of the car and slung the strap across his chest. “I’ll take my bag with me, then.”

  Lola pushed open the door and stepped inside the dimly lit bar as Jack put his hand on her back. They could’ve been any couple on a date, except she had a weapon in her handbag and he had no memory.

  A Latin love song crooned from the speakers, and Lola waved at the short man singing along behind the bar in a lusty baritone. “Hola, Mario.”

  “Hey, Lolita. Long time no see, chica.”

  “Can you bring us a couple of beers?” She glanced at Jack, who dipped his head in assent. “Two Cristals…and two shots of tequila.”

  “A beer and a shot?” Jack lifted one eyebrow, looking awfully sexy for a guy who didn’t know who he was.

  Dropping into a leather booth, she let out a gusty sigh. “Believe me, when you ambushed me in my car that was just the last straw in a long line of straws today.”

  “You’re a doctor, a pediatrician. Must be rough some days.” The leather creaked beneath him as he slid into the booth across from her and hunched forward on the table.

  Jack’s dark gaze bore into her, into her soul, its intensity sending a thrill of fear…or excitement…racing up her spine. Not fear—unease. Or something. She couldn’t quite put her finger on the pulse of the matter. Perhaps his mode of introducing himself in the car with a gun and a hand over her mouth had forever branded him as dangerous. But something about his predicament called out to her, or at least her bleeding heart.

  And the fact that he’d just asked her about herself, sympathized with her situation when he must be impatient as hell to pump her for information about himself. “Ask,” not “pump.” She just couldn’t seem to drag her thoughts away from the bedroom while in the same vicinity as this man.

  She cleared her throat and her dirty mind. “Yes, I’m a pediatrician. I love it most of the time, but some days it just breaks my heart.”

  Her thoughts flitted to Eddie, the boy whose mother had just been sliced, diced and categorized in Miami Hope’s morgue.

  Mario danced to their table, bearing a tray and swaying his hips to the beat of the music filtering through the bar. “Dos cervezas y dos tragos de tequila.”

  He clicked the bottles and glasses onto the table and winked. “Enjoy.”

  Lola picked up her shot glass, clinked it with Jack’s and tossed back the tequila. The fiery liquid burned her throat, and she chased it by biting into a slice of lime. Puckering her lips, she squeezed her lids closed for a moment.

  When she opened her slightly watery eyes, Jack’s face swam into focus. His lips were twisted into something close to a smile, and then he wrapped them around the beer bottle and tipped back his head.

  “Now that that’s out of the way—” Lola dabbed her sticky fingers on a cocktail napkin “—let’s get down to business.”

  “So who is Jack Coburn?” He eased back in his seat, extending his arms along the edge of the red banquette.

  “Jack Coburn…you are a hostage negotiator.”

  “CIA?”

  “Freelance.”

  “And you hired me to negotiate for your husband’s release from terrorists in Afghanistan. What was…is your husband doing in Afghanistan?”

  At first Lola had been content to allow Jack to believe Gabriel was her husband, when he still had possession of his gun. Now…she wanted to set the record straight. “Gabriel is not my husband.”

  Jack’s eyes flickered. With interest? With relief?

  “Gabriel Famosa is my brother, and he’s a doctor like me. Well, not exactly like me. Gabe’s a research scientist.”

  “Is he doing re
search in Afghanistan?”

  She nodded, taking a sip of beer straight from the bottle. “He was overseas, anyway, working with Doctors Without Borders. Then he heard about a deadly flu strain popping up outside of Kabul. Gabe being Gabe, he rushed to Afghanistan to study the virus. It’s his specialty—the flu virus. He’s been working on flu vaccines for years.”

  “Then he was kidnapped and his captors demanded ransom.”

  “That’s the weird part.” Lola took another gulp of beer. “They didn’t ask for ransom. Doctors Without Borders found out about the kidnapping and made inquiries as to what the kidnappers wanted, but they never made any demands.”

  Jack put his hand over her nervous fingers, picking at the green label on the bottle. “I hate to ask this, Lola, but how do you know Gabriel is alive?”

  Her fingers stilled under the warm touch from his calloused hand. “Proof of life. Isn’t that what you hostage negotiators call it? At least that’s what you told me before. Someone sent pictures of Gabe holding a current newspaper to the head of MSF.”

  He dropped his hand to the table where he drummed his fingers. “MSF. Médecins Sans Frontières.”

  “That’s right. That’s how Doctors Without Borders is known internationally.” How did Jack know all this stuff, including foreign languages, when he couldn’t even remember his own name? Which brought them back to the question at hand.

  “D-do you want to go through all this, or do you just want me to tell you what I know about Jack Coburn?”

  He traced the rough pad of his thumb around the rim of the shot glass, still full of the clear liquid. “Any background info you can give me is good. So the people at MSF contacted you?”

  “Yes.” The call had turned her world upside down. Gabe was all the family she had. “I was ready to give anything to get him back, but no requests were made.”

  “Did you try the U.S. government?”

  “I contacted the State Department. They informed me they didn’t negotiate with terrorists.” She snorted, the taste in her mouth more sour than the lime she’d just sucked.

  “How did you find me?” He wrapped his hands around the beer bottle, the whiteness of his knuckles against his brown hands the only sign of tension.