Unmasking the Mercenary

by Jennifer Morey

  “The only danger Josef faced was from Farid and his son. Josef was an honest man. Farid and his son are not.”

  “I’ll find Farid,” Rem said.

  Alan nodded, the satisfaction of vengeance in his eyes. “Then on behalf of Josef, I thank you.”

  Rem led Haley out of the shop. He ought to be celebrating finally locating Farid, after all the careful planning and patience. Instead, all he felt was anger. It consumed him. He still couldn’t believe Haley actually thought he’d killed Josef. How easy it had been for her to think it, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to kill a man for not telling him what he wanted to know. Whatever happened to her observation that he wouldn’t have killed the courier without a good and just reason?

  Rem caught himself. What the hell was he doing? Why did her opinion of him matter so much?

  It didn’t help that thoughts of last night kept filtering into his head. Watching the haunting effects of Iraq fade in the wake of Haley’s passion. The sight of her face would be forever burned into his memory. He doubted if any other challenge had ever felt more gratifying. Wiping a terrible experience from a beautiful woman’s mind, an experience that didn’t belong in such a pure and lovely body. He’d exulted that he’d been the man to do that for her, if only for a few incredible moments. He’d tasted that. Intoxicating pleasure. Nothing standing in the way of its absolute intensity.

  Now she was contradicting herself, believing he’d murdered an innocent man for not giving him what he wanted. Had she been playing him all this time? Why? To uncover what he was hiding? Maybe Cullen had put her up to the task. Maybe he’d learned more than he’d let on and Haley was his way to get Rem, put another notch on his long list of conquests.

  Waving down a cab, he opened the back door for Haley, looking up and down the street before getting in after her. He spotted a dark car parked along the street with three men inside. Ammar. Whoever had tailed Haley had probably summoned him. He smiled. Now Ammar would follow him to South America, and after Rem killed him, he’d take care of Farid.

  “Rem.”

  He turned his head to see Haley nodding toward the black car. He faced forward. “I know.”

  “We don’t want them to know we’re going to South America,” she said. “How are we going to lose them?”

  He didn’t answer, just waved a cab and opened the back door for her. She hesitated before getting in, sending him a purposeful look, one full of disbelief.

  “It’s Ammar,” she said.

  “I know. Get in.”

  “If we don’t lose them, they’ll know where we’re going. They’ll follow us.”

  “Get in the cab.”

  She stared at him. But finally she complied, sliding over on the backseat with sharp blue eyes focused on him intently.

  “Are you mad about earlier?” she asked.

  Knowing she was referring to her quick assumption that he’d killed Josef, he leaned back against the seat and let her assumption take flight.

  “I’m sorry I…” Her pause revealed her struggle to find words. “It’s just…I didn’t know what happened.”

  “It’s what anyone would have thought at first.” But he hated how it got to him, even for a few seconds, that she’d thought he’d mercilessly killed someone. He was not accustomed to caring what people thought of him. That she made him care threw him into a tailspin. He didn’t know what to do with all the clashing emotions. He was a merc. He was a merc who’d killed many, many times. But he was a merc who’d never taken innocent lives. Most people who knew anything about him shied away. The ones who didn’t were just like him. They understood what he did. But Haley…she twisted that concept of merc-with-a-purpose around in his heart until he could find no beginning or end in his soul.

  Damn it! He was who he was. Why couldn’t she accept that?

  “Rem—”

  “Just let it go, Haley. It’s done. Over.”

  Her sea-blue eyes beckoned him. “I know you wouldn’t have done it without a good reason.”

  “You’ll change your mind after South America.”

  That made her pause again, only this time in contemplative thought. She glanced out the back window. Rem didn’t have to look with her to know Ammar and his men followed. But what had she ascertained in that brilliant mind of hers? He was beginning to think the step ahead he’d thought he’d maintained was shortening faster than he was ready.

  “What are you going to do there?” she asked, confirming his worry.

  The cab came to a stop in front of the Prague Marriott Hotel. Without answering, he paid the fare and asked the driver to wait for them.

  He opened the cab door and would have gotten out, but Haley’s hand on his arm stopped him. He looked over at her.

  “No matter what you intend to do,” she said, her magnificent eyes intent, and then her smooth, sultry voice going in for the kill, “I trust you.”

  The declaration arrowed through him. It found his weakness. The one Ammar knew too well. The one Rem tried so hard to avoid. And here she was, doing things to him that could ruin all his plans. His well-thought-out revenge. He needed that revenge. When he got it, he just might be able to go on with his life, to find the peace that he’d been seeking for so many years.

  But that peace came without compromise. He wasn’t changing for anyone, least of all Haley. She represented too much of what had been denied him through his hardest times.

  “You shouldn’t,” he said with more meaning coming out in his tone than made him comfortable.

  And of course, she was relentless.

  “I wasn’t talking about my heart.”

  No, she was talking about killing with a reason. He battled with defenses that bordered on resentment, knowing his ego was fighting for the limelight. “Cullen was right about one thing, Haley. This is personal for me.”

  She was totally unflustered. “I know,” she said tartly. “I also know you’re hiding something from me. Or maybe it’s Cullen you fear. But whatever it is, I’m going to find out, and when I do, I promise I won’t think less of you.”

  He looked into her beautiful eyes, lingering in the gaze they shared. Bittersweet realization struck him that she would, in fact, uncover his secret. And when she did, the two of them could never be.

  “Be careful what you promise, sweetheart,” he said, the gruffness in his voice manifested by his emotion. “Some promises are impossible to keep.”

  Chapter 11

  Rem’s words kept running through her head. Haley hadn’t said much on their way to Foz do Iguacu, which the locals called Foz. She was too preoccupied with her thoughts. Now she sat across from him at an outdoor table of a not-so-nice bar on the main drag, enduring his occasional and assessing glances between his surveillance of the street.

  Why was he so sure she’d think less of him when she discovered what he was hiding? Had he done something to earn it? Another wayward set of circumstances not unlike the one when he was fourteen that had made him turn to drugs to survive? Or was he as unabashedly disreputable as he let people believe?

  That last thought disconcerted her. How could she be so wrong about the only man who’d been able to breach the walls she’d erected after Iraq? Or had it required a man like him and she just hadn’t realized that yet? Maybe exactly what she’d needed was a ruthless man with good intentions in bed. Ruthless men had violated her in Iraq, despite her lack of memory of the attack. It made perfect sense that someone equally frightening would erase the negativity of her ordeal by treating her gently in the most intimate situation.

  The idea of bringing terrorists down appealed to her, and on a deeper level she could relate to Rem’s thirst for blood. But he was so scary about it. Quiet. Lurking. Certain of his ability. She’d sensed that about him the first second she’d seen him outside Habib’s market.

  Music thumped from inside the bar. People walked by in front of the patio, talking, laughing, speaking Portuguese or Spanish. Though the sun had set long ago, th
e heavy heat made her feel sticky. Rem shifted in his chair, the hem of his short-sleeved shirt molding for a second over the shape of the pistol tucked in the waist of his jeans. He’d bought it and another one from a man they’d met earlier that day, since they couldn’t fly armed. It had bothered her that he’d known the man and made her wonder when he’d contacted him. She didn’t like his secrets.

  She was in a potentially volatile area of Brazil with a dangerous man whose agenda involved more than getting the men who’d tortured and killed his sister. Why did he want Ammar to follow them? Because she knew that was his intention back in Prague. Was that why he stole the diamonds? He had to know Ammar would do anything to get them back. If Rem took them to South America, where he’d find Farid, Ammar was sure to trail them. Did he want them both in the same place to make it easier to move in for the kill?

  Why keep it from her, then? Did he have some other connection with Ammar and Farid? Maybe it was his relationship with the two that he meant to keep buried. A chill cruised over her sweat-dampened skin. No. Anything but that. He couldn’t have a history with terrorists. He just couldn’t.

  “What will you do if Ammar doesn’t follow you?” she asked. No getting around what she insinuated. She knew he’d intended exactly that—for Ammar to follow the diamonds.

  His eyes moved from perusing the street to her. “He’ll come.”

  At least he didn’t deny it. “Is that why you took the diamonds?”

  He resumed his study of the street, calm as could be. It was unnerving how unruffled he was.

  “What will you do with them when it’s over?”

  “I don’t know,” he said without looking at her.

  “Are you going to sell them and keep the money?”

  She watched his brow lower as her meaning sank in. His attention returned to her. “What am I supposed to do with them?” He snorted. “Or maybe the more appropriate question is, what would Cullen do with them?”

  “I don’t understand your obsession with Cullen.” Even though she did. “It doesn’t matter what he’d do with the diamonds. What are you going to do with them?”

  “Sell them to someone I know and buy a really nice yacht.”

  “Your sarcasm tells me all I need to know.” She tossed her hair away from her face and looked away.

  “You want to believe I’ll be like everyone else and do the noble thing, is that it? Like give it to a popular charity?”

  “No, I would never expect you to do anything so ordinary.”

  “I never pretended to be anything but who I am.”

  “Nope, you never did.”

  She didn’t have to see him to know he sat over there stewing. “The money from those diamonds would allow me to gear my company with state-of-the-art equipment,” he said at last.

  But she heard the cynicism in his tone. “Oh, you mean your rogue private military company?” She couldn’t stop the emotion from flying along with the words. “Is that the one we’re talking about?”

  “The one I took over from Dane after he was so conveniently killed? Yes, that would be the one.”

  “Right. Pioneer Security Consultants. And you say you aren’t pretending?”

  “To be like Cullen? No. I never pretend to be what I am not.”

  “Then why the noble name, hmm?”

  He stood from the chair and took a menacing step over to her. Leaning down, he took both her arms in his grasp and pulled her to her feet. She lost her breath as the full impact of his angry face loomed above her. So much intensity. The strength of his personality engulfed her. Drive. Purpose. Conviction. He had it all in glorious abundance. It fascinated her how he could miss seeing it himself.

  “Because, while I’m not like the great and mighty Cullen McQueen, neither am I like Dane Charter.”

  He practically spat the last name.

  Didn’t he realize all he’d done was prove her point? It didn’t matter, though. He believed he didn’t belong in the same circles as men like Cullen, and that spelled out only one thing to her. When they returned to the States, he wouldn’t want any more to do with her. She traveled among people like Cullen. He’d leave her to find someone he thought was more like him.

  Haley stepped back, shrugging her shoulders and arms to loosen his hold on her. He let her go.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about that revelation. Did she want to continue this when they arrived back home? She couldn’t stop herself from taking in his body, big and hard and sexy. She met his eyes, watching her with all that intensity. God, she loved that about him. Too much. If she wasn’t careful, she’d fall too much for him and have to deal with losing him later.

  Turning, she left the sidewalk restaurant to find a cab. It was a short drive to their hotel from here. The Tropical das Cataratas hotel was a sprawling colonial-style building in the Iguacu National Park, surrounded by dense jungle. Their room had a stunning partial view of the Iguacu Falls.

  A figure leaning against the wall of the building across the street pulled her attention away from her thoughts. Rem must have seen him, too. He tugged her to a stop, turning her into his arms. She came against his body and felt him slide his arms around her, his hands on her back.

  She marveled at the look of hungry desire on his face. Was he only acting?

  “Let’s order room service when we get back to the hotel,” he said.

  Was this for the benefit of the stranger? “What are you doing, Rem?”

  “We haven’t eaten yet.”

  “Sure. Room service.” She wasn’t in the mood to play along with him. Not after wondering if he had a closer connection to Ammar than he’d allowed anyone to know so far.

  He leaned closer.

  “Don’t you dare,” she warned.

  “I’m going to kiss you. Make it look good.”

  “Rem, don’t.”

  His lips pressed against hers. She stared up at him, his eyes still open, too. He lifted his head and a crooked grin gave him the look of a wily pirate.

  She couldn’t help her adoration. “Why are you doing this?” The fire had left her voice. It had moved to her heart.

  “One,” he kissed her softly, melting her further. “I want to.” He kissed her again. “And two, it will make it look like I’m distracted.”

  His mouth moved over hers, sending delicious sensation flying through her nerve endings.

  “You mean you’re not?” she whispered against his lips.

  He smiled sexily and chuckled. “No.” He kissed her harder. “I am.”

  The sound of his chuckle was a rarity, a gift. It incited her desire.

  Angling her head, she opened her mouth and slid her arms over his muscular shoulders, letting the feel of his strength and warmth fuel her further. His hands pulled her tighter against him.

  She found his tongue and toyed with it, until the toying changed to an intimate dance. His breaths blew faster onto her skin. She pressed her breasts firmer against his hard chest. With a low grunt, his hands slid to her rear and he pressed her against his growing hardness.

  “Let’s go to the room,” he rasped. He didn’t sound like he was acting.

  “Rem.” Hearing the loss of control in her own voice, she knew going to the room would be a huge mistake just now.

  “I want you.”

  She believed him.

  He broke apart from the kiss and took hold of her hand, lacing his fingers with hers. She forgot to look for the stranger before Rem flagged down a cab. His hands caressed her as he guided her inside, slid off her as she sat in the backseat. He sat close, telling the driver where to take them before leaning toward her, caging her with his bulk.

  He didn’t look through the back window. He just kissed her.

  She put her hand on his chest, meaning to stop him, but the feel of his mouth on hers was too strong to turn away. He kissed her all the way back to the hotel. There, he fumbled with money to pay the driver, and then took her hand and hurried toward the elevator.

  Heat throbbed
between her legs as the elevator door closed behind them and another couple. Her heart beat fast and she had to conceal her breathing. When the doors slid open on their floor, he pulled her behind him, walking with long strides toward their room. He wasn’t pretending anymore, and she was a fool for wanting him this way.

  Inside the room, she moved away from him, folding her arms and going over to the only window. She had to think about this. Too much more of him would have her falling madly in love. Not trusting him to be there for her when this was over, that seemed pretty stupid to her right now.

  She heard him approach from behind. Heard his breathing. Felt his heat. He put his hands on the curve of her shoulders and pressed a kiss on her back. Then her neck. Haley tilted her head and closed her eyes, unable to resist the sensation.

  “Rem—”

  “Shhh.”

  “I…” His mouth did incredible things to her jaw. The corner of her mouth. His hands slid over her lower stomach, causing the muscles there to spasm in pleasured response.

  “I don’t want to do this,” she breathed, opening her eyes.

  “It’ll be even better than the last time,” he said, kissing his way back down her neck.

  His hands moved up to cover her breasts. She moaned and closed her eyes again. That was what she was afraid of. That it would be better. Better than anything she’d felt in her life.

  “Rem…please. Stop.”

  His hands went back to her stomach and went still. He lifted his mouth off her neck. “What’s the matter?”

  She didn’t know how to tell him. Should she come right out and ask him what he was hiding? Would he tell her?

  He straightened and moved back a step. She turned to face him. And saw the passion still in his eyes, and the restraint to respect her wishes.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  She hesitated. “What aren’t you telling me about Ammar?”

  It took him a few seconds to answer. “What makes you think there’s something I know about Ammar?”

  She could see he was hedging. “Why can’t you tell me?”

  “He killed my sister.”