by Trish Loye
“Nothing’s going on,” his mother said briskly. “We just haven’t seen you in too long and wanted to have a nice dinner.”
His sister snickered behind him.
He turned to her. “You couldn’t have warned me?”
“And miss all the fun?”
He threw up his hands. “Who is she, Mom? And why would you do this to the poor girl? You know I’m not interested, and it just makes it awkward for everyone.”
His father had joined them in the kitchen, blocking the entrance to the hall like a jailor keeping Marc locked up. “You will be nice to this girl,” he said.
“Oh, Gavriel,” his mom said. “Marc is always nice. He wouldn’t hurt an innocent girl’s feelings.”
His sister outright guffawed.
“Shut it, twerp.”
“Marc, don’t speak to your sister that way,” his mother said calmly.
The doorbell rang, and his stomach sank. He really didn’t want to be on a blind date with his family watching. How had they even found someone on such short notice?
“Marc, go answer the door,” his mother instructed.
Sadie just giggled.
He shook his head and went to the door. The woman who stood there was pretty, with golden hair and skin, and soft brown eyes that she averted shyly.
“Hello,” she said. “You must be Marc. Your mother has told me so much about you.” She held out her hand.
“Hi.” He shook it carefully. Soft and delicate.
Nice.
He groaned silently. Nice wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t for him. Not that he wanted exciting or dangerous. Hell no, that was worse than nice. He’d tried that once and almost been killed. He’d vowed never to go down that route again. Now he mostly kept to women who enjoyed playing just as much as he did. He made sure the woman had a good time, and then they both went back to their own beds and lives.
But he did not date nice women.
“Come on in,” he said politely. It wasn’t her fault his mother meddled in his life. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
He made small talk as they walked back to the kitchen. Her name was Colleen, and she was a nurse at the Ottawa Hospital. Once in the kitchen, he left her in his mother’s hands and went to speak with his still snickering sister.
“It’s not that funny.”
“Omigod,” she said. “It really is. The look on your face when the doorbell rang. Complete fight-or-flight. Classic. Would have loved to be able to show my class.” Sadie was a psych professor at the University of Toronto.
“What are you doing here anyway?”
“It’s reading week. I’m heading to Mexico with some girlfriends and thought I’d fly out of Ottawa so I could visit.” She leaned close. “You know, because I’m the good child.”
“They just don’t know the real you.”
She laughed.
His mother turned to them and frowned. “Marc, why don’t you show Colleen where to sit while Sadie helps me bring out the food.”
Even Colleen looked uncomfortable now. The table was only a few steps from the kitchen so Marc wasn’t sure what exactly he was supposed to show her, but he’d do his best to make her time here easy without leading her on.
“You didn’t know I was coming,” she whispered to him.
Outside of work, Marc didn’t believe in lying. “No,” he said just as quietly. “My mother thinks I need to settle down.”
“And what do you think?”
“Fuck no.”
Her eyes widened.
He grimaced. Maybe he’d been a little too forceful with his response.
She nodded and sat in her seat, keeping her eyes averted. Shit, if his mother saw this, he’d never hear the end of it. His shoulders slumped. He’d been rude to a woman who’d done nothing to him. Time to make her feel welcome. He sat down beside her and dragged out his charm.
“I’m sorry if that came out wrong.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward her conspiratorially. “My mother is crazy for the idea of me settling down and providing more grandkids.”
Colleen smiled tentatively. “My mother blackmailed me into coming.”
Now that was interesting. He smiled. “Tell me more.”
“She told me she wouldn’t babysit my cats anymore when I go on vacation if I didn’t meet her friend’s son.”
Cats. As in more than one.
He had to put extra effort into keeping his smile as she went on to tell him about Mr. Squeakers, Prince Charming, and Snowball. Fuck, the woman was in her mid-twenties. How many cats would she have by the time she was thirty?
Like a blessing from heaven, his military-grade secure phone buzzed in his pocket. Please be a mission. Blackwell’s name came up on the screen. “I have to take this,” Marc said to Colleen and excused himself. In the hall, he swiped his phone on. “Koven here.”
“You’re recalled,” Colonel Blackwell said. “We need you on a flight to Colombia tonight.”
“Thank God,” he muttered.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing, sir. What’s the situation?”
“Hostage recovery. A former FARC leader has captured an SIS agent, and we’ve been called for assistance. They have someone in play but don’t want to jeopardize their agent’s position.”
The secret intelligence service, formerly called MI6, needed their help recovering an agent? “Why wouldn’t they hand this over to someone in SIS or even the SAS?” Marc asked.
“Apparently the people in charge want to keep this secret from their own people.”
Marc paused. “Are we stepping into some kind of political quagmire?”
“Perhaps,” Blackwell said. “But if an agency, or more importantly, an operator, needs help, then we respond. I’ll worry about ramifications later.”
“Roger that.”
“You’ll meet the others when you transfer in Houston. Be on the eight o’clock flight tonight. The details are being sent to your phone now.” Blackwell hung up.
Marc checked his watch. Just before six. He was going to have to hustle to catch that flight. He started for the kitchen but stopped when his father stepped in front of him.
“You’re leaving.” A frown settled on his father’s face.
“I have to go,” he said lamely. “Work.”
“This work you do…for a security company. It’s more important than your family? Than your mother’s feelings? She’s worked hard all day making dinner for you.”
He didn’t have time for his father’s guilt trip. “It’s important,” he gritted out, scrubbing a hand over his face. He wanted to tell them about EDGE, but he couldn’t. No one was allowed to know about the organization or the work they did.
“Ever since you left CSIS, you are even busier than before, but the work you do… It’s not for the country.” His dad waved a hand impatiently. “It’s for a company. To make money.” He made a noise in his throat before he shook his head. “That is not the son I raised.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Marc said evenly, even as he wondered how his father could believe that he’d trade his passion to do what was right for making a buck.
His mother stepped into the hall, and her eyes dimmed when she saw them. “You have to leave,” she said quietly.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’ll visit again soon. I promise.”
The look on her face showed she didn’t believe him. Hell, he didn’t believe him.
His sister stepped in and saved him again with a hug. “It was good to see you. Be safe.”
He didn’t reply. Going to rescue a foreign agent from a rebel army known to be one of the biggest cocaine suppliers in the world was not “being safe.”
His mother grabbed him next. “I see the look on your face. I know you do more than just work at a security company.”
He shook his head. He couldn’t have her thinking that—even if he secretly wanted them to know—because she might start talking about it to others. “Mom—”
“Don’t worry, son. I
won’t tell anyone anything. As long as you come home safe.”
“I’ll try,” he said softly.
She nodded. “And then we’ll talk about your love life.”
Two days later…
Near Caparrapí, in the department of Cundinamarca of Colombia
Quinn Sinclair’s phone buzzed. She stopped in the hallway of the clinic and pulled it out. A text from Damien.
Latest?
She huffed out a breath. He wanted a report. She shoved her phone back into her pocket. He’d have to wait. She opened the door to the one of the four exam rooms and appraised the battered man lying on the gurney. It looked as if he’d been someone’s punching bag. His worn jeans and rubber boots were covered in mud, and there was a distinct smell of gasoline about him.
A coca farmer then. Once they harvested and mulched the coca leaves, farmers mixed them with cement and gasoline to make a paste they sold up the chain.
“What happened to you?” she asked in Spanish. She’d purposely lost her Glasgow accent during training.
“Vicente Ramirez,” said a woman who stood by the bed. She gripped her hands together and frowned down at the man. “The bastardo had his men beat my husband.”
“Shhh, Maria,” the husband said. “Don’t call him names. You don’t know who’s listening.”
“He’s a pendejo, and I would kill him if I could,” Maria said.
The man reached a hand for her and she took it in both her own.
Quinn stepped forward and began to examine the man, getting him to sit up. He groaned and held his side. She made a mental note to check his ribs. “So why did Ramirez decide to beat you up?”
“Because my husband sells his coca paste to Señor Pérez,” his wife said indignantly.
Garcia Pérez had been a commander in FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, as well as a notorious drug trafficker with a reputation for a lavish lifestyle. FARC, had recently signed a peace treaty with the government. Pérez had rejected the deal to demilitarize and move to a concentration zone supervised by the United Nations. He, like the men who followed him, had refused to disarm and leave, which meant the expelled FARC leader completely ran the cocaine business in the area.
But Vicente Ramirez and Los Urabeños were moving into all of FARC’s old territory and aiming to be the biggest cartel in Colombia. This wasn’t the first skirmish between Pérez and Ramirez, and it wouldn’t be the last. Unfortunately, farmers, like the ones around Caparrapí, were the ones who paid for it.
Quinn knew all the key players in this region. It was part of her job. Her real job.
“Are you the one Señor Pérez calls Diabla Rojo?” the injured man asked quietly.
Quinn rolled her eyes as she palpated the man’s wrist and arm. He winced when she touched his radius. The bruising suggested a break. “Yes, he started calling me that when I refused to treat him one day.”
The wife gasped. “You refused Señor Pérez?”
“Just at first. I ended up treating him. But only because it’s hard to refuse a man when he puts a gun to your head.”
The woman gasped again and crossed herself. “No wonder they call you that.”
“We have a message for you,” the farmer said.
Quinn looked at him and saw the fear in his eyes. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“Señor Ramirez told me to tell Diabla Rojo to stop helping Señor Pérez or he would kill you. Like he’s going to kill everyone who helps Pérez. Like he said he’d kill me.” The man shook his head. “What am I supposed to do? How can I not sell to Pérez? He will kill me if I don’t.”
She had no answer for him. There was nothing sane about the situation the farmer found himself in, caught between two power-hungry criminals. The police couldn’t help. They were too far from a city, and half the police were corrupt anyway.
Quinn did the only thing she could for the man. “I need to check your stomach.” She gestured for the man to lie back again. She palpated each of the quadrants, frowning when she hit a tender spot near one of the man’s kidneys.
“Doctor McKenzie,” the clerk’s voice called over the intercom. Her Spanish accent softened her English words. “Someone is here to see you.”
Quinn sighed through her nose. She wasn’t a proper doctor, and no matter how many times she told them she was only a medic, they insisted on calling her doctor. She wasn’t sure why she was hung up on that detail when she was lying to them about her name and who she really was.
A spy for the British government.
But the clerk knew better than to bother her when she was dealing with a patient. She pressed the intercom button. “I’m busy, Isabella,” she replied. “Have Dr. Taylor see them.” Ian Taylor was the other doctor at their little clinic, originally from a busy hospital in London, he could handle anything that came in.
“Señor Gómez is the one who wants to talk to you.”
Shit. One of Pérez’s men. He’d probably come to take her to Pérez’s compound. She didn’t have time for that today. There was a woman in another room who was having a baby. Quinn needed to be here for that.
“Doctor McKenzie? He insists on speaking with you.” Fear suffused the clerk’s tone.
Quinn rolled her shoulders, trying to loosen the stiff muscles. “He’ll have to wait, Isabella. I can’t leave my patients.”
Her orders from the British government would say differently. She’d been assigned by the Special Reconnaissance Regiment—a secretive branch of the British Special Forces that trained under the SAS—to gather any information on Pérez and his dealings that she could. Someone suspected he had ties to the United Kingdom and she had to find them. As an operator she had her mission, but right now, her patients needed her. She wanted to rule out any internal bleeding before checking in with the woman in labor.
The door slammed open and thudded against the wall. “You will not keep Señor Pérez waiting.”
The man in the doorway was squat and coarse, with thick lips. His mustache saved him from looking completely like a toad, but it didn’t do anything to improve his looks.
“Get out, Gómez,” she snapped. “I’m busy.”
“Pinche Puta. You will come when he wants. This pendejo doesn’t matter.” Gómez pulled a Beretta 9mm from under the back of his shirt. He pointed the gun at the farmer. The wife gasped.
“You’re coming with me either way,” Gómez said. “It’s up to you if this man lives.” The wife’s eyes widened while the man just looked resigned.
Quinn wouldn’t put up a fight. She pressed the intercom button. “Please get Dr. Taylor to take over for me.”
She stripped off her latex gloves, itching to disarm the smug man in front of her, but that would blow her cover. They couldn’t suspect that she was anything but Dr. Quinn McKenzie from Scotland, there on a tour with Doctors Without Borders.
She panted a little as if from fear and then faced Gómez, trying to look scared rather than pissed. Though that would still suit with her cover of a typical hot-tempered redhead from Scotland. Her unit back home had laughed at that, considering she was known for her cool-headedness.
Best not to think of them right now. It would pull her out of character.
She crossed her arms. “Please tell me that Señor Pérez doesn’t have a headache again.”
He probably did, because the pills she’d been giving him were laced with a drug that induced headaches when he stopped taking them. He needed her to supply him, and he thought of her as his personal doctor. It worked for her mission, but it also meant she had to be at Pérez’s beck and call.
Even if that meant sacrificing the care of innocents. In the end, the mission always came first.
2
Gómez drove to Pérez’s compound in an open-topped jeep. Quinn bumped along in the passenger seat, holding onto the bar and wishing for a seat belt. She didn’t speak to Gómez or bother asking him why she was here. He’d never tell her.
The first few times she’d been
“asked” to the compound, she’d tried talking to Gómez. He was high up in Pérez’s organization, but as she discovered, not so high that he knew anything of value. He was just another asshole she had to put up with.
Greenery encased either side of the road as they sped by. The Colombian jungle was thick with heat, bugs, mahogany, and Quindio wax palm trees—a dense barrier to the hidden coca fields that grew in the foothills of the Andes Mountains of this fertile region.
Gómez turned down the private road that led to the compound and Pérez’s mansion, and they passed through the armed gate set in the eight-foot stone wall. Manicured lawns swept away from the wall where the jungle crowded over. The huge white stone house had pillars in the front and a full-length second-floor balcony where an armed guard strolled. The first floor also had a wraparound porch. More guards watched their arrival from the roof. Behind the house, the pool and tennis courts were just visible. Quinn had never seen anyone play tennis since she’d become a regular “guest.”
Gómez pulled up to the front of the house and turned off the jeep. He didn’t say anything but walked up the steps to the wide double doors, not caring if she followed. She grabbed her medical kit and trailed him, scanning the area around her.
She couldn’t spot the slender path she’d cut through the thick undergrowth in her first weeks here, but she spotted the tree by the wall that she used when she surveyed the compound. She knew the guard’s schedule and what to expect when she entered the house, but that didn’t stop a cold chill from washing over her skin.
The inside of the house was just as lavish as the outside. Gleaming marble floors, a glittering chandelier, and an eight-foot-tall gilded mirror greeted them in the foyer. Along with a skinny man in stained cargo pants and a tank top, wielding an AR-15 assault rifle.
She ignored the guard and followed Gómez down the hall, automatically checking for cameras as she went. Like always, there were none. Pérez believed in having real bodies guard him, but she’d been trained to evaluate security measures in case she needed to bypass them.
Gómez opened a narrow white door just off the kitchen and revealed a staircase leading down. He trotted down the steps without a backward glance. Great. Basements always meant fewer exits and worse lighting, and the stairs, open on one side gave no cover to the person descending.
