At twenty-six, Cav felt more like he was eighty. Glaring at the light, he pushed his shoulder-length hair behind him and got to his bare feet. Dammit, he was going to throw up!
Butch pushed a mug of steaming coffee in his direction as he emerged from the tiny bathroom, a towel draped around his hips. “Here, take this. You look like shit warmed over.”
Smirking at his best friend, Cav snapped, “Just give me the fuckin’ cup of coffee” as he plopped down on the creaky wooden stool at the small round table.
Grinning, Butch nursed his own coffee, his blue eyes dancing with mischief. “You’re so sweet the morning after….”
Snorting, Cav lifted the coffee, his hand none too steady. “Why the hell do you look so damned perky this morning?” He lifted the cup to his lips, the fragrant brew making his empty stomach growl. At least the coffee smelled and tasted good. That was progress.
“Because,” Butch said lightly, “I didn’t get stone-assed drunk on pisco sours with that asshole special ops dude like you did. Really, Cav, you’re an ex-SEAL and you let the bastard provoke you into a dumb drinking match.”
Cav’s eyes were red-rimmed and watering as he offered a one-shouldered shrug. “Ain’t gonna let some Spec Four dude drink me under the table. Us SEALs are tough.”
“Yeah…right. Well, you certainly look like you could pull off a PSD right now. Five-day beard, your hair looks like shit, you look like shit and your skin is pasty lookin’. Oh, and your hands shake.”
“Up yours,” Cav returned.
“I guess the General will call back.”
“Did he say anything about the PSD?” Cav demanded, wiping his sweaty brow with the back of his forearm. Now, because he’d drunk so damned much, he was going to start sweating it out. It would mean another shower in an hour. Cav hated smelling like a drunk.
“Yeah. One of their Home School Foundation charities in northern Costa Rica just got burned to the ground last night. Seems a drug lord with his soldiers attacked it and murdered two women teachers. A third woman managed to escape into the jungle.”
Cav’s mouth twisted. “Great. Drug lords. What the hell is new down here in Central and South America?” he grumped. “What’s he want me to do?”
“The woman who survived, Lia Cassidy, called in the attack to Delos Charity Central in Alexandria, Virginia. She’s asking for help.”
Cav slid his friend a surprised look. “Usually, charities are off limits, even to those bastards.”
Shrugging, Butch muttered, “Apparently not any more. General Culver, who’s over in Istanbul, Turkey right now on a NATO exercise, got a call from his wife, Dilara, who runs the charity. He said he thought of you as a PSD for this survivor, Lia Cassidy.”
“Shit!”
“Hey, the pay is good, my man.” Butch looked around their third-story apartment, which was small but clean—if they cleaned it. A housekeeper came in once a week to clean, their focus was to provide personal security for rich people who could pay their high fees.
“What’s he offering?” Cav mumbled, sucking down the hot coffee and feeling his stomach roll again.
“Well, right now he wants you to go in undercover as a replacement teacher for the facility they’re going to rebuild. That entails a lot more than just carrying a rifle around looking mean and efficient. He’s offering you ten grand for a month.”
Perking up, Cav liked the sound of that. “Seriously, dude?”
“Yeah,” Butch said, puckering his lips. “Wish to hell I had a sugar daddy like this General in my back pocket like you do. Ten grand has a nice ring to it.”
Wiping his sweaty brow, Cav grumbled, “This woman, Lia Cassidy? She must be someone important for them to throw that kind of money out.”
“Dunno. He didn’t give details. But he wants you undercover, no guns showing. He’s already in touch with the Costa Rican government to give you permission to come into their country armed.”
Cav knew this particular Central American country had no military force, only a police force. Guns were strictly forbidden by anyone except their own efficient police force. To be caught there with weapons meant an automatic prison sentence, a long one, and Cav knew that for a security clearance, government permission was a must.
“Okay,” he said, his voice low and gravelly, “so far that sounds good. What else did he tell you?”
“That the drug lord suspected of doing this was Dante Medina, otherwise known as La Araña.”
“The Spider? Who’s he? Some local asshole?”
“No, Medina runs the northern highlands area of that country, growing cocaine and marijuana all around the Monteverde Cloud Forest area. Apparently he’s pretty powerful,” Butch said. “And he’s not nice.”
“What drug lord is?” Cav demanded, rubbing his aching forehead. He’d already tossed down some serious ibuprofen to dull that drumbeat clanging in his head. He silently cursed the Spec Four dude. He’d barely won the drinking match, watching as the guy passed out at the bar before he did.
Luckily, Butch had picked him up, paid the bar tab and hauled his sorry ass out of the seedy bar and to their beat-up Jeep parked out in front. Cav came to as Butch flopped him onto his bed in their apartment. Then, he promptly passed out again.
“La Araña is lethal,” Butch warned, “and I suspect that’s why General Culver is offering you this nice, big fat check for however many months you have to protect this survivor. Apparently he’s a mean player and runs his soldiers and the whole area with a steel fist.”
“And it’s probably not wrapped in velvet, either,” Cav said, a lopsided grin pulling at his mouth.
“No, I don’t think so. Anyway, the overview the General gave me was that he and his wife are gonna fly into San José in five days. I guess that’s when his NATO gig is finished, and he can get freed up to go with his wife to assess the damage to the building and to the charity itself. He wants you to meet him at the San José airport, and he’s already wired the money into your bank account here in Lima. All you have to do is get presentable, buddy, and show up at that airport.”
“That sounds easy enough,” Cav rumbled. It didn’t seem to be much of a PSD in Cav’s estimation. Normally, he took on freelance security assignments for the rich and powerful. The CIA wouldn’t hire him, even though he was an ex-SEAL and offered them a special deal, thanks to a hot mess in his sordid past.
Cav felt old anger stirring in him and didn’t go there. He had enough nightmares about that fucked up op. He didn’t want to think about it or allow it out of his kill box during his waking hours. And when it did escape, he’d hit the bottle to drown all his grief, rage and need to kill the Taliban who had delivered a devastating attack to his team.
“You got five days to clean up your act,” Butch said, gesturing toward his beard. “If you’re going undercover as an American teacher who speaks Spanish, you got to clean up real good, Bro, starting with this shaggy hair of yours and getting rid of that beard.”
Grunting, Cav rose and walked over to the tiny kitchen, pouring another cup of coffee. “I’ll look presentable. I don’t need you mother-henning me.”
Chuckling, Butch leaned back in his chair, grinning as he passed by to sit down at the table. “Oh, buddy, you need a keeper right now. We’ve been doing PSD’s here in Peru for the past year, and when you don’t have a gig, you’re fuckin’ drowning your head in a bottle of pisco.”
Cav drank the coffee, saying nothing. Butch was his best friend on SEAL team Three, Bravo Platoon, and had torn a ligament in his knee. That had saved his life, because he’d had to miss that last op where his team was killed, except for him. He was the lone survivor.
“An American teacher, huh?” he muttered, thinking about the new job.
Grimacing, Butch gave him a dark look. “Yeah, you’re posing as an English teacher. In Costa Rica, all children are taught two languages: Spanish and English. It’s a pretty progressive country compared to the rest of those sorry-assed nations, if you ask me.”
“I’ve got my PSD gig coming up in a week, so we’ll leave our sweet little apartment to poor Esmeralda. That gal’s gonna shit at how bad this place looks. More work for her…”
“She always does, so it’s nothing new,” Cav muttered. The two of them never cooked and always ate out. Their dirty clothes were strewn all over the place, and Esmeralda, their housekeeper, always picked up everything, muttering under her breath, and shooting them looks that would drop a jaguar at ten feet. She was an older woman, round, five foot two, and part Quechua Indian with long, black braids.
Esmeralda hated dirt and dust as much as the men didn’t mind living in it. Hell, after being in the desert of Afghanistan for six years, Cav was used to filth. It rubbed like fiery sandpaper into every part of his exposed body. He’d learned early on to wear a protective tribal shemagh around his neck to prevent that fine, gritty gray sand from leaking down his neck and into his inner body parts.
So what was a little dirt? Hell, their place was clean compared with where they’d lived all those years in Afghanistan.
But the old Indian woman didn’t know that. She just muttered in pidgin Spanish and part Quechua, reprimanding them, shaking her finger at them and then pointing to the messes they’d left everywhere. Cav grinned and Butch patently ignored her.
“I guess the General’s not callin’ back,” Butch said finally. “He said to meet him five days from now at the Costa Rica airport. He’ll have his assistant email the particulars, so all you gotta do is show up. He also said he’s emailing a photo of Lia Cassidy to you, so you can ID her once you’re on the ground in San José. They’ll have drivers and a rental SUV’s, and you’ll all be taken north to La Fortuna, the village where the attack occurred. Right now, the police are crawling all over the place trying to find out who torched the joint and murdered those two women.”
“Cowards,” Cav muttered.
Butch grimaced. “They were pro’s, Cav.” He held up his thumb and forefinger, pretending it was a gun. “A clean shot in the head to each woman, and then they were left outside the building, unmolested and in their nightgowns. I guess there are three small buildings that serve as living quarters for the three women.”
Frowning, Cav said, “I wonder how the third woman, this Cassidy woman, got away?”
“Maybe she heard the shots,” Butch offered.
Shrugging, Cav said gruffly, “I’ll find out more when I get boots on the ground.”
By mid-afternoon, Cav was over the worst of his hangover. He’d shaved, which he didn’t do often, and now, as he stared in the foggy mirror in the bathroom, he saw all the small scars and cuts his face had accumulated over the years, since working with the team. He didn’t look too closely at his bloodshot hazel eyes. There were bags beneath them, too. And he’d nicked himself twice with the damned dull razor.
No, he wasn’t a pretty picture, but he had five days to try to look like a normal human being. He grinned. He’d found out since childhood there was no such thing as “normal.” “Normal” was a setting on a clothes dryer.
Tomorrow, he’d go to the barbershop over in Los Flores and spend some money to get a decent haircut. No bilingual American teacher would show up looking like a junkyard dog, and Cav knew he had to play the part, especially since he was going in undercover.
“Hey,” Butch whistled, stopping at the opened door to the bathroom. He waved a piece of paper in his direction. “I think your sorry ass just got a gold star.” He chuckled. “Not that you deserve this kind of luck. Take a look, pardner.”
Frowning, Cav wiped his hands on a towel and took the proffered piece of paper. When he turned it over, he froze. There was a colored photo of a woman, a damn beautiful woman. The name beneath it read, Lia Cassidy.
“I wonder if she’s single?” Butch said, his grin turning evil. He waggled his bushy red eyebrows in Cav’s direction.
Cav’s scowl deepened as he quickly perused the photo. It showed a young woman with short, curly brown hair, edged in red and gold highlights. Her gray eyes were large, intelligent looking, and spaced far apart. He felt his whole lower body flame to life. The woman was truly a looker, with her oval face and wide, soft mouth. Cav could almost taste her lips beneath his. She had delicate ears and was wearing a set of white pearl earrings, along with a conservative white blouse to bring out her English complexion.
“She looks pretty serious to me,” Butch said, craning his neck, studying the photo.
“I wonder when this was taken,” Cav asked absently. In fact, he had a whole lot of questions about this woman who worked for Delos Charity.
Butch said, “I wonder if she’s unattached?”
Making a sound of displeasure, Cav shook his head. “Your balls are your brains, Bro.”
“Like yours aren’t?” Butch returned mildly, needling his scowling friend.
“Women are nothing but trouble.” Cav declared as he shoved the paper back into Butch’s hand. “She’s probably single, but attached. How many women her age are out there doing full-time charity work?”
“Yeah, and who knows? She might have some guy that she’s already hooked up with? Maybe married.”
“Doubtful,” Cav muttered, brushing his teeth.
“Well, this PSD is pretty sweet, if you ask me. A good-looking woman thrown into the deal doesn’t hurt.”
“I’m not interested,” Cav growled, spitting out the toothpaste and then rinsing his mouth out. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s ten grand a month on two legs, that’s all.”
“Yeah, you and women seem to be at odds with one another.”
“They’re good for one night, and that’s it.”
Butch studied the photo. “She looks kind of sad.” He turned it so Cav could stare at it. “Doesn’t she?”
“What? Is that your SEAL intuition at work?” Cav wiped his mouth with the towel and dropped it onto the counter. Esmeralda was always on his ass to hang it up where he’d originally found it.
“Yeah. She’s got really beautiful eyes,” Butch sighed. “A man could lose his soul in ’em, if you asked me.”
“I didn’t,” Cav snapped, yanking the paper from him and walking out of the bathroom. He headed down the hall to the kitchen.
“So,” Butch crowed, following him. “You do like her!”
Cav wasn’t going to give his friend satisfaction one way or another. He dropped the photo on his unmade bed and hauled out a small suitcase from beneath it. Butch was a damned good-looking dude and never had trouble inviting the señoritas over to their table, no matter which bar they frequented.
Latin women like Americans because they considered them rich, especially compared to the Latino patrons in the bar. It was probably true, although neither of them ever flashed cash. That would be stupid. It could get them rolled in some cobblestone back-alley some night.
The buddies always dressed down, never wore watches or jewelry, and sported a three or four-day growth of beard. And there was Cav’s shaggy hair. They could pass for working class bastards or Americans strung out on drugs looking for a fix.
That was fine with Cav. As a SEAL, he had been taught how to blend in, not stand out. But for some reason, that picture of Lia Cassidy was beginning to bother him. She was incredibly beautiful, but Butch was right, there was real sadness in those huge gray eyes of hers. It needled the hell out of him. How could someone so young, bright and innocent looking be that sad. Hell, he himself carried that kind of sadness deep inside himself. And honestly, it was ball-aching grief that he had still not worked through over the loss of his team.
Cav had been the only survivor, barely clinging to life, and for what? So he could remember his other seven-team members? Those guys had all been brothers to him—the only family that had ever loved him, cared for him, supported him, and was, yes, even kind to him. His sea daddy, Master Chief Gordon Parker, had molded him well, and he’d taken to the transformation, dropping his
angry, rebellious attitude and forging it into becoming a damn good SEAL.
Later, after packing his meager belongings, Cav sat down and picked up the picture of Lia Cassidy. It was a professional photo, taken with the lights at the right angles to bring out the best features of her face: her eyes and those beautifully shaped lips of hers. Her brows were softly winged above her soulful gray eyes and, he had to admit it, they tugged at his heart.
The color of her eyes was arresting, not quite silver but not pewter, either. They were the kind of eyes a man could stare into and lose himself. Her face was heart-shaped, her chin sporting a small dimple. Her high, starched white collar was lost in the curls of her hair, bringing out the slender length of her neck.
Eyes narrowing, Cav wondered if the photo had been retouched. He thought he detected a thin scar curving around the left side of her throat toward the center. But maybe it was his imagination—or their lousy printer acting up again. Still, it disturbed him because it was a familiar place a bad guy would choose to slice into a person’s neck to open up their carotid artery. Once opened, the person would bleed out in a matter of two to three minutes.
Rubbing his forehead, he studied the picture again, wondering. Just…wondering.
He dropped the paper on his bunk. Clasping his hands between his opened thighs, he stared down at the wooden floor that needed to be swept and mopped. Butch was going on a PSD for a Lima mine baron who always feared for his life when he had to visit his many mines in Chile. He’d be gone for two weeks and Cav was looking at a minimum of four weeks away from their apartment.
Esmeralda was probably going to be happy as hell that her “two messy boys,” as she called them, were away. At least the apartment would be clean until they got back.
His heart warmed towards the old Indian woman. Cav and Butch paid her a lot more than most women earned doing the same job, but they knew that Esmeralda was a grandmother to a huge family and that the extra money would go to feeding and clothing the children. God knew, he and Butch earned on average about a hundred thousand dollars a year as freelance security operators. The world was growing more dangerous, not safer. And his kind was in demand more than ever.
Nowhere to Hide (Delos Series Book 1) Page 3
