Hot Intent (Hqn)

by Dees, Cindy

  She ordered a pot of coffee and paid for it with cash from the stolen purse.

  “Where’d you get the money?” he asked suspiciously.

  “I liberated a purse from its owner before I rescued you,” she explained under her breath.

  “Nice touch,” he commented.

  Huh?

  “What’s the plan?” he asked nervously.

  She really didn’t like the way his gaze was darting around in constant motion like he expected a violent attack at any moment. “Relax. You’ll draw too much attention if you keep looking so uptight.”

  If anything, his expression got more wild, but he did stop looking around so overtly. “Are you feeling all right, Alex? What did they inject you with?”

  His eyes got that shuttered, stubborn look they got when he was refusing to tell her something. “I don’t feel so hot,” he announced.

  “You need a restroom?” she asked in quick concern. “It’s down that hall.”

  “Got it,” he said thickly. He rushed from the table in the direction she pointed, distinctly green about the gills.

  She waited a few minutes for him to return, but he didn’t. Worried, she rose to her feet, moved quickly down the hall to the restroom and knocked on the door. No answer.

  “Alex?” she called quietly through the panel.

  Still no answer. She tested the doorknob. Locked. Crap. Had he passed out? Or worse? What the hell had they drugged him with, anyway? It was a simple lock. She fumbled in the purse, came up with a ballpoint pen and jammed its tip into the circular hole in the center of the knob. The lock clicked open. She threw the door open—

  Empty. The tiny bathroom was empty! Where had he gone? She’d watched the hallway the whole time he’d been in here. No way had he slipped back out into the café without her seeing him. The window. It was closed but not locked. He’d bailed out on her? What the hell was going on with him? He’d separated from her back at the Zacara factory and now he’d ditched her in the middle of downtown Guantánamo?

  Equal parts furious and terrified, she threw open the window and looked down the alley. No surprise, Alex was long gone. In the loose gravel of the alley, he’d left no footprints that she could see. Not that she was any kind of trained tracker, anyway.

  Crap. Now what?

  It wasn’t as if she could go back to the Navy base and ask to be let in again. Not after she’d busted the two of them out like that. Her brain felt wrapped in cotton candy. God, she was exhausted. She tried to remember the last time she’d slept, and nothing came to mind. Alex always said never to underestimate the power of food and sleep during an undercover op.

  She retreated down the hall and asked the waitress in her halting Spanish where she could find a room to stay in, nothing fancy. Just a place to sleep. The girl named a place and gave her quick directions that Katie only half-understood. But she nodded her thanks and headed out.

  Belatedly, it dawned on her that Alex would tell her the last place she should go was the one the girl had named for her. Katie wandered the streets for a little while, searching fruitlessly for him until it occurred to her that there were likely soldiers out looking for her, too. Not to mention Alex would never be dumb enough to roam around in broad daylight when he was a fugitive.

  Clearly, she was way too tired to make smart decisions right now. She saw a cardboard sign in the window of a tiny, cluttered convenience store advertising a room for rent. She swerved into the bodega and grabbed the sign out of the window. It turned out to be upstairs, and the proprietor wasn’t thrilled about only renting it for the week. He was looking for a long-term renter. But when she plunked down a credit card and told him to charge a full month’s rent for the week, he shut up quickly enough.

  It wasn’t fancy. A single bed against one wall. A phone-booth-size toilet and sink. A hot plate that looked like a severe fire hazard sitting on top of the lone dresser. That was it.

  With a look askance at the cleanliness of the sheets, she laid down fully dressed on the bed. She could not believe he’d ditched her a second time! She would figure out how to escape from Cuba later, when she could think straight. One thing she knew: when she got home, she was going to find Alex and kill him. And if she couldn’t accomplish the deed by herself, she would sic her brothers on him.

  *

  ALEX CROUCHED IN the ruined house, looking around in panic. They were coming for him. He could feel it. They’d turned Katie, and she was after him, too. No one could be trusted. A little voice whispered to him that paranoia wasn’t healthy. But an answering voice inside his head screamed that it wasn’t paranoia if people were really coming after him.

  Everywhere he’d gone today, he’d felt eyes on him. Stares, boring into his back. Cell phones being muttered into, reporting sightings of him. Reporting his position. Calling in spooks to snatch him and make him disappear. He even felt Katie’s fake concern reaching out to him to suck him into her trap.

  Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. He crept into a small closet, pulled the warped door as shut as it would go and huddled in the corner, hugging his knees and rocking back and forth.

  *

  KATIE HAD NO idea how long she slept. She woke up a couple of times to go to the restroom, but that was about it. It was morning when she woke based on the sun streaming in her east-facing window. Eighteen hours’ worth of sleep or so later, she finally felt human again. Alert. And pissed.

  How could Alex abandon her not once but twice? If the guy didn’t want to be with her, all he had to do was say so. But ditching her in a hostile country to sink or swim on her own...what total jackassery.

  What in the world was wrong with him? The Alex she’d met in Zaghastan would never have acted like this. What had the CIA done to him? Had they destroyed the Alex she’d known and loved? Was he gone forever?

  One part of her, the hopeful part, wanted to stick around and fight through the crap to find that old Alex. But another, larger part, the fearful part, wanted to cut her losses and run from the train wreck that was the inside of his head.

  Either way, pain tore at her heart, ripping out big, awful chunks of it and tossing them on the ground carelessly.

  Something approaching actual hatred coursed through her veins, hot and acid. Although whether it was hatred of Alex or his employer, she couldn’t say. First order of business, get home. Second on her to-do list, murder Alex. Slowly and painfully. Maybe she could recruit her brothers to help. One of them must know how to torture a guy.

  She took stock of the contents of her stolen purse. It held enough cash to buy food for a couple of days. And the woman’s credit cards. Although they were probably cut off by now.

  Tucking most of the cash in her bra, she took the rest downstairs to the bodega. She bought a couple of big bottles of water, a few apples, a box of crackers and a can of tuna. The city’s food supply was still pretty limited, but it would do.

  A woman was working behind the counter this morning. Katie practiced the Spanish phrases she would need in her head and then approached the woman to ask where she could get access to a telephone with international service. The lady gave her a weird look and Katie added hastily that she could pay for the call.

  The woman gestured with her head for Katie to follow and stepped behind a cloth curtain. Katie ducked into a tiny storeroom.

  “Twenty dollars, U.S., for three minutes,” the woman said, fishing a cell phone out of her pocket.

  That was probably double the going rate, but Katie wasn’t going to quibble about a little gringo gouging. “Done.” She pulled a twenty out of her bra and traded it for the phone. She dialed André Fortinay’s number and prayed the call would go through and not be traced by the Cuban secret police in the next three minutes.

  “Doctors Unlimited,” a female voice answered.

  Ashley Osborne. The perky office assistant who’d sent her down here in the first place. “This is Katie McCloud. I need to speak to André.”

  “He’s in a meeting. Can he call you back?�
�

  “No. Interrupt him. I’ve got one shot at contacting him, and then I’m screwed.”

  “Oh. Sure, then. Hang on, I’ll get him right away.” At least the girl had the good grace to sound alarmed.

  “Hi, Katie. What’s up?” André murmured a few seconds later.

  “I’m stranded in the city of Guantánamo, off base. I need to get out of Cuba ASAP, and I can’t go back to the military base.”

  “Why not? Where’s Alex?”

  “Long story and I’ve only got about two minutes on this line. I have no idea where Alex is. He ditched me.”

  “You’re kidding. He’s nuts about you.”

  “Right now, he’s just nuts. Can you get me an exit option, or am I hosed?”

  “Where are you specifically?”

  Katie stuck her head through the curtain and asked for the street address. The woman gave it to her and she relayed it to André.

  “Can you call me back in an hour?” he asked her.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Okay. Hang on, then. I’m going to use the other line to make a phone call. I promise I’ll come back to this line.”

  Katie waited in an agony of impatience as the seconds ticked by. The woman poked her head through the curtain and announced that her three minutes were up. Katie dug out another bill, a ten this time, and handed it to the woman.

  “The police, they will come looking if you stay on the line,” the woman hissed.

  “I’ll buy you a new phone. Just let me finish this call. It’s life-and-death.” Katie wasn’t sure the phrase life-and-death translated well into Spanish, but the woman backed out of the storeroom with a dubious look on her face.

  “Katie? Still there?”

  Thank God. André. “Yes.”

  “Make your way to the docks on the west side of the bay. Look for a freighter called the Constellation Caelum. That’s spelled C-a-e-l-u-m. Identify yourself as the onboard nurse who’s just been hired.”

  “But I’m not a nurse!”

  “Fake it. An asset on the crew will contact you with an egress plan once the Caelum has left Cuban waters. The ship sails in a few hours, so you’ll need to head down there immediately.”

  “Thanks,” she murmured gratefully.

  “Don’t thank me until you get home,” he replied wryly.

  “Should I go looking for Alex and try to bring him with me?” she asked reluctantly. As livid as she was at him, it wasn’t right to just abandon him the way he had abandoned her.

  “Alex can take care of himself,” André replied a shade tartly. “Trust me.”

  “I think they drugged him. He had an IV drip in his arm when I found him, and there were syringes on a table. Two of them were empty.”

  “I’ve got him covered. You just take care of yourself,” André said heavily. The man sounded unhappy, and she didn’t blame him. The guy had put a ton of effort into championing Alex with his superiors.

  No sooner had she hung up than remorse for bailing out on Alex slammed into her. Not that he deserved an ounce of sympathy from her. Her remorse had more to do with the rightness or wrongness of her actions. As for Alex, he could go straight to hell and rot.

  A tiny part of her brain recognized her anger as self-defense against the pain of being abandoned. But it was the only thing holding her together right now, the only thing letting her function. She drew the anger close around her, hanging on to it tightly.

  She ducked out of the storeroom and handed the phone back to the woman with a word of thanks and the rest of her cash. She was grateful for the woman’s patience. Katie took her plastic grocery bag of food and water and walked out of the store. She asked a random woman where the docks were and took off walking in the direction the lady had pointed.

  It took nearly an hour to walk down to the pier. A half dozen freighters were in port, and it wasn’t difficult to spot the Caelum. The ship was broad and long, sitting low in the water. A grain ship, maybe? She headed for the gangplank leading to a small door in the ship’s hull close to the waterline.

  A darkly tanned, rough-looking man lounged in front of the walkway. She’d ditched the military ID out of the woman’s wallet but had kept the driver’s license. She pulled that out now.

  “I’m Marianne Kleck,” she said expectantly. The guy threw her an I-don’t-give-a-damn look and didn’t bother to answer.

  “The new nurse,” she tried. Then, “I’ve been hired on to the Caelum.”

  “No shit?” He had a heavy accent. Maybe South African. At least he spoke English.

  “Are you going to let me board or do I have to call the captain?”

  “You got identification?”

  She handed over the driver’s license.

  “Your hair’s the wrong color.”

  “I heard blondes have more fun. Thought I’d see if it’s true.”

  He grinned in a distinctively wolfish way that made her skin crawl as his gaze roamed boldly up and down her body. “Yeah, sure. Welcome aboard.”

  She paused in the hatch. “Can you direct me to the infirmary?”

  “Amidship, deck three, just aft of the beam.”

  Whatever the heck all that meant. She ducked into a narrow, all-steel stairwell and climbed until a door with a large number three painted on it came into sight. The passageway beyond was dim and claustrophobic with exposed metal pipes crowding down from above. Randomly, she wandered down it and spotted a Red Cross painted on a door. Thank God. She opened it and slipped inside. She fumbled around on the wall until she found a light switch.

  Oh, God, it was tiny. The room had a bunk bed on one wall, about two feet of floor space and a tall cabinet on the opposite wall with at least twenty drawers in it. A sink stood beside the cabinet, and a tiny desk was tucked behind the open door. Someone strode by outside and she closed the door quickly. Curious, she opened all the drawers and was alarmed to see an array of medical supplies, some of whose purposes she had only the vaguest notion of.

  Beside the sink, she discovered a tiny closet with a life jacket hanging from a hook up high and a tiny refrigerator taking up the bottom half of the space. Inside the refrigerator were a half dozen glass medical bottles of serums. Crud. What were those? She read the labels and only recognized the morphine and penicillin. She had no idea what the others were. Fake it, huh? Nobody had better get hurt before she got off this boat.

  Memory of the gigantic suture needles in the drawer behind her made her shudder to even think of. No way could she sew human flesh together. Yick.

  The door opened. “I ’ear there’s a hot sheila aboard,” a big, blond man boomed in a thick Aussie drawl.

  She took an instinctive step back from the burly sailor as the guy whistled under his breath. “No lie. You’ll dine with me tonoight. And I’m thinkin’ I’ll be bunkin’ in with you.”

  “There will be no bunking in with anyone, thank you very much,” she retorted sharply.

  He shrugged. “Well, if ye want the crew to gang-rape ye, that’s your call.”

  “Gang—what?” What the hell had André gotten her into?

  “I can crack the noggins of every bloke in the crew with my bare ’ands, lass. You’d be woise to let me bunk in ’ere until I can dump ye overboard.”

  “Dump me overboard?” she exclaimed.

  “Well, yes. That’s what our friend André said ye wanted. As for me, if ye’ve a yen to cozy up with me for the entire cruise, I wouldn’t be sayin’ no to it.”

  She sagged in relief. “No, no. That’s fine. He said you’d have the egress plan when I got here.”

  “Shame. That’s quite a noice pair o’ knockers ye’re sportin’ there.”

  “Uh, thanks. When exactly do you anticipate being able to drop me off?”

  “If we get under way on toime, then tonoight, late. ’Ard to tell with these Cubanos, though. They do things in their own sweet toime. Sit toight in ’ere until I come fer ye.”

  “Will do.”

  The big Aussie backed out of t
he infirmary with a grin. He’d better not literally dump her overboard. But the casual way he’d mentioned it made her fear that was exactly what he had in mind.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  AS THE DRUG-INDUCED drowsiness wore off, sharp awareness replaced it, turning Alex’s paranoia into action. As dusk fell, he stole a car and headed out. Havana was where he had knowledge that could get him out of Cuba. He had to make a quick trip to Washington, D.C., to take care of a few loose ends, and then he was going off the grid for good. He’d had it with double-crosses and backstabbing. He wasn’t about to stick around and let them kill him. Or worse.

  He paced the confines of the ruined house, working feeling and blood flow back into his legs. Christ, what had they shot him up with? He felt like death warmed over. His fingers were numb, and his emotions were similarly anesthetized, which was the one decent side effect of being drugged.

  Now that his mind was clear, he could be properly furious that Katie had betrayed him and gone over to the enemy like that. Although, she’d never made any secret of being a dyed-in-the-wool American patriot. Logic dictated that he should feel anger toward her. Rage, even. But instead, he felt an almost robotic calm. That, and a certainty that he would kill her before he let her betray him again.

  And then there were his supposed employers. He rolled his eyes. He knew better than just about anyone how dirty major governments really got their hands. Screw them all. He was done.

  *

  KATIE ATE HER snacks and hid in the infirmary for the evening. Whether the crew would actually gang-rape her or not, she had no idea. She suspected the Aussie had said it just to get into her pants. But she wasn’t a hundred percent certain, hence the hibernation act.

  A ship’s mate of some kind had come in to meet her and ask if she was properly provisioned to sail. She’d managed to maintain a pleasant expression and meet the man’s eyes when she said she was. She lied and said that a crew member had already given her a tour of the ship, too. He checked off a box on a clipboard and left quickly after that.

  She napped on the bottom bunk until it was time to sail. The Caelum started to rumble and shake as the mighty diesel engines came to life. The sound was shockingly loud. She couldn’t imagine weeks and weeks of living with that roar around her. It was maybe an hour until the ship shuddered into motion and began to rock ever so slightly. They were under way.