by KaLyn Cooper
“Do you—” Rafe started to ask but the woman interrupted.
“Do you remember me?”
Jacin stared at her pretty face. Cartel parties were filled with beautiful women. Maybe he’d met her at one, or more, of the over-the-top private events they seem to hold every few weeks. “Maybe. I’m not sure I can place you.” Terror struck him as he wondered if he’d slept with her. Solis had surrounded himself with some of the most gorgeous women Jacin had ever seen. As a cartel lieutenant, he was often given the ones his boss rejected. “Have we…did we…” Damn. He didn’t want to come right out in front of Rafe and ask her if they’d fucked, because those two were obviously now involved, and if Rafe was with this woman, Melina was available.
She quickly answered, “No.”
“Do you remember helping us escape from Cali?” Rafe’s question brought more internal searching.
“I helped you back in Cali?” Jacin’s mind was blank.
“You helped us both,” the woman claimed. “In retrospect, I’m not sure we were properly introduced. You were pretty out of it, but we did speak briefly. I’m Harper Tambini.” She shot out her hand and quickly grabbed his for a brief shake.
“We can revisit this line of questioning later,” Rafe announced. “I need to know, when was the last time you saw Melina?”
Jacin sighed. “Yesterday afternoon.” Then his brain kicked in. “Why?”
Rafe took in a deep breath before he let it out slowly. “She’s been kidnapped by Pablo Valez.”
“What the fuck does that pipsqueak want with my wo…Melina?” Whew. He’d almost slipped and called Melina his woman. She wasn’t his anymore, damn it. Once again, he’d screwed things up with her. But what did Valez want with her?
“He’s trying to take over his uncle’s cartel and thinks by killing me he can make that happen,” Rafe explained.
“And what, Carlos Narváez is just going to step aside and give a multimillion dollar business to his nephew who kept flunking out of college?” The idea was ridiculous. Most cartel capos were actually highly educated businessmen, often educated in the United States or England.
Rafe looked at Jacin for a long time. “Narváez is dead.”
“You killed him?” The question popped out before Jacin could hold back.
“No.” Harper lifted her chin proudly. “I did. But unfortunately Pablo doesn’t know that, or he’d be coming after me, not Rafe.”
Rafe pulled her closer to him. “I’d rather have the man-child coming after me than you.”
“But we’re going after him together,” she insisted, staring directly into Rafe’s face.
“What does Melina have to do with this?” Maybe Jacin’s brain was still a little jarred, but something was missing.
Rafe reached into his pocket and extracted his cell phone.
Thirty seconds later, only the beeping monitor assured Jacin his heart was still beating as he watched Valez smack the woman he loved. “Again,” he croaked out. Now that the shock factor was over, he could try to objectively watch the video.
Harper gently laid her hand on his sheet-covered knee. “Jacin, we’re doing everything we can to find her. In the twelve hours since Rafe received this message, we’ve assembled a team here at Fort Hood, and we have the best people working on this case.”
“We’ll find her, I promise.” Rafe grabbed the metal siderail. “When Melina left here yesterday, did she mention she was going to go somewhere? Was she meeting someone?”
Anger flared deep inside Jacin. “Yeah, she was going to D.C. to meet up with you.”
“Actually, she was going to meet with both of us.” Harper laid her free hand on Rafe’s shoulder. “We’d offered to take her out to supper to thank her for helping us escape Cali. Without her, and you, we never would’ve made it out of there alive.”
“That’s the second time you said I helped you back in Columbia.” Jacin closed his eyes and dug into blackness. Nothing. Not a sliver of memory. “What did I do?”
“You rode shotgun from Melina’s house to the airport where we took Narváez’s helicopter.” Rafe waited.
“I don’t remember any of that.” He hated the blank spaces more than anything.
Harper picked up the story. “Melina was taking you to Bogotá to the embassy.”
Jacin nodded, not that he agreed or remembered, but the action made sense.
Rafe returned to questioning. “So, did Melina say where she was going when she left here yesterday?”
Disgusted with himself, Jacin admitted, “She didn’t say much of anything as she left my room. Not even good-bye. We…we had a fight.”
“Okay,” Harper said. “So she was upset.” Her gaze went back and forth between the two men. “What does she do when she’s upset? Some women jump into a tub of ice cream, one woman I know hits the range and starts naming the targets, my friend, Katlin, cooks as though we’re being invaded and she needs to stock up enough food to feed an army.”
Rafe looked at him as though in agreement. At the same time they said, “She cooks.”
Harper’s excitement filled the room. “Was she staying in a hotel? Maybe one of those extended-stay places that are almost like a condo?”
Jacin slumped back into the bed. “I don’t know. We had so little time alone together. When she said she had to leave to get to D.C., and see you, I lost it.” An action he would regret the rest of his life.
“Does she know anyone in this area?” Harper inquired.
“Her brother is stationed here.” Jacin rubbed his sore eyes, thankful they’d given him medication to reduce the swelling and placed cold packs on his face while he was unconscious. “I’m such an ass. I didn’t even ask her if she’d seen her brother. They’re very close.”
Rafe whipped out his phone and had a man on the line within seconds. “Melina has a brother stationed here at Fort Hood. It’s a point to start.” There was a pause as though he was listening. “Will do.”
“Have you ever heard Melina talk about a woman named Mary Weston?” Rafe asked.
“No, that name doesn’t sound familiar. Why? Is she important?” Jacin mentally chastised himself. “Of course she’s important. Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked.”
Rafe fiddled with his phone for a minute. “Watch the video one more time. I’m going to try to stop it. I want you to take a good look at this woman and tell me if you’ve ever seen her before.”
Jacin watched the video this time from an analytical point of view rather than emotional. It was hard to ignore the fury and hatred that stirred deep within him every time he saw Melina’s head wobble to the side after being hit. He was certain, though, he didn’t recognize the woman.
“Thanks for all your help.” Rafe was obviously winding things up.
“Get me out of here.” With great effort, Jacin pulled himself into a sitting position.
“Whoa.” Rafe laid a hand on Jacin’s shoulder. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Jacin stared at Rafe then glanced to Harper. “If our roles were reversed and it was Harper who’d been kidnapped, would you allow a few bumps and bruises to keep you from the woman you love?”
“Fuck no.” Rafe’s answer was immediate.
“That fuckwad has my woman.” Jacin started unhooking wires. “I’m going to kill the son of a bitch…slowly.”
When all the machines started going haywire, Jacin’s new watchdog threw open the door. “What’s going on in here?”
Jacin sized up Bill. They were about the same height, although the new CIA recruit had at least ten more pounds on him. When he glanced at Rafe, it was as though they had the same idea.
Rafe slugged the unsuspecting kid then caught him before he could hit the floor.
“Jacin, get in the shower and get cleaned up,” Harper ordered. “There’s no way in hell we can sneak you out of here looking like that or with your bare ass hanging out of the hospital gown.”
“Harper and I will strip him out of these clothes and get him i
nto the bed.” The two of them had the man nearly naked by the time Jacin stood on the cold tile floor. Bill started to rouse when they lifted him onto the bed so Rafe punched him one more time to be sure he wouldn’t come to anytime soon.
Starting with the heart monitors, Harper quickly ripped the small sticky discs off Jacin’s chest and placed them in the same position on the young man in the bed. She turned off the flow in the tubes then carefully removed the tape over Jacin’s IV before she extracted the long needle and pressed on the vein.
Jacin was feeling better by the minute. Freedom and the need to save Melina had given his life purpose.
Harper cleverly taped the now-useless tubes to Bill’s hand to make it look as though it was connected.
Once Jacin was free of wires and tubes, Rafe pushed him toward the small bathroom. “Make it quick, but don’t shave. The scruff helps cover the yellow and green of the bruises.”
On unsteady legs, Jacin shuffled into the tiny room and closed the door. Leaning on the sink he forced air into his lungs before looking into the mirror. His face didn’t look as bad as he thought it would. Somewhere underneath the slightly swollen eyes was the man he’d once been, and wanted to be again.
“You okay in there?” Rafe called through the door.
“Yeah. Just peachy.” Perhaps old bananas would have been a better comparison.
“Hand out that gown so we can get it on this guy,” Rafe ordered.
When Jacin shoved the flimsy garment the hospital provided out the door, Rafe handed him the dress shirt and pants. They would do.
His eyes dropped to a small black bag on the back of the sink. His own shaving kit, a hand sewn leather bag Melina had given him for his thirtieth birthday, was no doubt the prized possession of someone else high in the Cali cartel by now. When he unzipped the generic bag, it was filled with his favorite necessities. Melina had bought this for him. She was always doing things like that, knowing what he needed before he did. She was an amazing woman.
As he stepped into the hot shower, his favorite body wash in hand, she was all he could think of.
The first time he’d ever seen her, she had on a red dress cut low enough over her large breasts to just hint at the hidden temptation. The material clung to every curve of her luscious body and stopped mid-thigh. Every man in that Irish pub in Georgetown wanted her…except him. He was on a mission to extract information from a Russian Embassy staffer.
She was also on a mission…her first…to seduce Jacin. Oh, how the CIA fucked with agents in training.
Jacin squeezed the small black bottle filling his hands with the fragrant gel. He rubbed it into his hair and scrubbed, wincing when he pressed too hard above his right temple where he’d been hit so many times he’d lost count.
He wondered if Valez had beaten Melina off camera. He’d hit her hard enough she probably already had a concussion. But she was tough. She’d make it through. She had to.
The day after Melina had failed to seduce him, Jacin ran into her at the Langley training center. Realizing they’d both been duped, they’d struck up an unusual friendship. He’d kept it in that zone on purpose. Melina was perfect…always. Her delicate hands were so soft, her nails flawlessly manicured. Never a hair out of place, yet it wasn’t sprayed down into a helmet. No, it felt as though he was running his fingers to the finest silk. Every time he’d see her around CIA headquarters, she wore business attire. Before her, he never thought straight skirts that fell almost to a woman’s knees and low-heeled black pumps were sexy. Her appearance screamed high maintenance. Not his kind of woman.
Christ, was he wrong.
A few years later, when he reported to Columbia to check out a new emerald mining operation, she was established as his handler. He was all set to hike the Andes by himself to try to find the new mine that was producing some of the largest sapphires, rubies, and emeralds the market had ever seen. There were even rumors this new mine had found a vein of diamonds.
Melina had insisted Jacin take backup. The registered mines were heavily guarded, but poachers protected their secret locations with trigger-happy guerrillas. When he showed up the next morning at the designated location, Melina was decked out in the fast-drying shorts, a cool tech tank, and well-worn hiking boots. The duty belt with knives, guns, and extra magazines was the clincher. This was not a fashion statement. It was experience. She’d impressed him again as she loaded his gear into the Land Rover, efficiently packed with everything two people would need for several weeks in the backcountry.
Jacin rarely regretted anything, but he distinctly remembered chastising himself that morning for never taking Melina to bed when he had the chance back in D.C. He’d underestimated her just as any man would do. No doubt the reason the CIA had recruited her.
As he stuck his head under the hot water and rinsed the soap from his hair, he wondered if he would ever feel the ecstasy of sliding into her body again. Could they return to a completely professional relationship like they had those first days wandering around Eastern Columbia, backtracking the black-market gems?
Sitting beside her every day as they traveled farther and farther away from civilization, then sleeping next to her under the stars, each in their own bag, he’d grown to like and respect the woman.
An hour after the sunset on the fifth day of their journey, they’d finally made their way to the tiny village a few miles from the mine. Melina had looked at the dirty and tired children as they stumbled home beside mothers looking equally haggard, and she’d cried. It was as though she could feel their hopelessness and despair.
Her tears had broken him. When he took her into his arms, felt her body shake as she emotionally fell apart, he’d known in that moment that he loved her and would the rest of his life. That night, as they bedded down outside of town, she thanked him with a kiss.
He’d refused to let it stop there. He’d kissed his way down her neck then traced the curve of her breasts with the tip of his tongue. Running his hands up her bare back, he released the snaps of her bra before he yanked it and her shirt over her head. The first time he’d seen her breasts bared to him was seared into his mind, next to the salty taste of her nipples that he’d licked and sucked that night, and many afterward. When he slid his hand over her wet sex, parting her soft lips for the first time, she’d broken their kiss to gasp.
Jacin smiled as he squeezed another dollop of shower gel onto his hand and rubbed it across his chest as he started to wash the rest of his body. He closed his eyes and remembered the way she touched him that night, lightly running long soft fingers through his chest hair, discovering his flat nipples, which until that night he’d never thought were erogenous. He brought the soap suds down to his erect cock, remembering the way she touched it so gingerly the first time. With the memory of sliding into her tight, soft channel as fresh as though it were yesterday, he stroked himself and exploded almost immediately, just as he’d done inside her on the side of a mountain so many years before.
“You okay in there?” Rafe’s question interrupted one of the best memories of his life.
“Yeah. Just using muscles that hadn’t been stretched in a while.” Then he reassured Rafe, “I’ll be out in just a minute.”
As he toweled off, Jacin thought about the gems he’d purchased the next day. They had posed as American buyers offering a new conduit for the rough rocks. Using his own money, Jacin purchased several additional diamonds and emeralds. One extremely large, very clear emerald he’d had cut and made into a ring he’d given Melina a year later as a constant reminder for her of their time together. She’d worn it every day since.
Part of his agreement with the grandfatherly dealer included additional money that would be used to send several children to the United States for schooling. He’d worked with international children’s foundations previously and had since personally funded ten children from that tiny mining town to be educated in the States.
He’d also purchased several more diamonds since then, including one that
had been exquisitely cut into 2.25 carats. It waited for him in a safe deposit box in Washington D.C. He’d always intended to have it adorn Melina’s left hand.
Since Rafe was truly out of her life, he had a chance to make that happen. Right after he saved her.
6
“Are you all right?” Melina asked as soon as the door finally shut behind both their captors when the men left to get something to eat for breakfast. Throughout the night they had taken turns watching over them, not allowing the women to speak to each other.
She needed to check on the other woman, so she leaned forward and went on her tiptoes to lift the chair off the floor as she’d been taught in survival training. Her head hurt like a son of a bitch. Nausea swept through her whole body so she had to set the chair back on all four legs for a minute while she regained her equilibrium with slow deep breaths.
“I’m fine,” the woman snapped out.
What was her name? Melina struggled to remember. Mary. That was it.
Melina turned her head slowly to see for herself. “We both know that’s a lie, Mary. You’re tied to a chair, probably scared out of your mind because Valez ordered you killed, after Tweedledee and Tweedledum have…” She couldn’t terrorize the poor woman any more.
“I called them Scarface and TT, short for terrible teeth.”
A laugh burst from deep inside Melina, but the pain in her side cut it short. The two men had been far from gentle with her as she struggled when they’d tied her to the chair. “Perfect names for those two,” she admitted, then began turning toward Mary.
Fully facing her fellow captive, Melina apologized, “I can’t begin to tell you just how sorry I am they dragged you into this. Now that Rafe knows I’ve been kidnapped, someone will come for us.”
“He’s supposed to meet that other guy…” Mary hesitated as though trying to think of the man’s name.
“Pablo Valez,” Melina helped her out.
“Yeah, Valez at some airstrip. How’s he going to come and get us?” Helplessness wove through Mary’s words.
“I have no idea what plans they are making, but Rafe is a former SEAL and works for the U.S. government.” At least Melina hoped he still worked for the CIA. “Someone will come for us.” She just hoped it was in time.
