by Karen Anders
Rio sat down on the couch. When she wasn’t worrying about the situation with Fuentes and thinking about how she was going to get the bastard, she was thinking about Max and how much she wanted to let go and love him. Really love him with no strings attached and no baggage.
But she had baggage. She had plenty of it. She couldn’t go through it again, losing someone she loved. Making a life with Max beckoned like a beautiful jewel, but her fear held her paralyzed.
She wasn’t sure what to think anymore…. Was Shane alive, and if so, was he a traitor or a hero? Again she wondered if perhaps he was the undercover agent that needed protection. That would be the best scenario.
Rio got up and peered through the glass of the office. Max had gotten her candy, but he was talking to Drew, who was closing up the panel of the helicopter.
Thank God. It was time to go. She reached for the door handle at the same time a blast ripped through the warehouse. The glass in the office exploded and the report from the detonation threw Rio away from the door. She landed on her back, her senses reeling and her ears throbbing.
She heard footsteps and crunching glass just before someone grabbed her hair and yanked her against him, her back to his chest. Her scalp on fire, an instant later she felt the cold muzzle of his gun against her temple. His voice next to her ear made her shudder.
“Hola, Agent Marshall. We meet again.”
Rio elbowed him in the ribs, but Fuentes only grunted and pushed the gun harder to her temple.
“Do not test me more than you already have.” His fist was still in her hair, and tears sprang to the corners of her eyes as he gave it a vicious twist. “Now I will release you, and you will do as I say, when I say. Are we understood?” To underscore the questions, he tugged her even more tightly against him.
“Yes,” she choked out. She was thinking only of Max. She wanted to rush from the room and find him, assure herself he was alive.
“Good,” Fuentes said quite pleasantly, and released her as suddenly as he’d grabbed her.
She staggered forward and landed hard on her hands and knees on the linoleum floor.
“Get up. Time is precious. We must go.”
She scrambled up, wanting to keep her eyes on him at all times.
“Go where?”
“Back to Colombia where I can, once again, bestow on you my excellent hospitality. Mi casa, su casa, no?”
Her heart started to pound in her chest and fear edged up her throat, squeezing it tight.
“I’d rather not. I don’t care for your accommodations—the food sucked.”
He laughed, and then backhanded her across the face.
She felt her lip split, but when the pain subsided, she gave him no quarter with a hard glare.
“Ah, it seems you are one to be broken. Fear not, gato, I will use up your nine lives.”
He grabbed her elbow and shoved her roughly ahead of him. “Walking, no talking. Not until we’re clear of the warehouse.”
Pain kicked hard at her heart when she couldn’t see Max and his friends because of all the dust and debris. She could only hope they were all alive. Especially Max. She wanted to cry for the man, for the lover, for the scattered moments in this crazy Maui trip they might have made into more. If she’d thought she’d loved before, those illusions were all blasted away. It had been all too brief.
She hadn’t realized she’d stopped walking. A vicious shove sent her sprawling. Fuentes and his goons laughed. She pushed to her feet, her eyes searching for Max. A scream bubbled in her throat, the agony of not knowing if she’d lost him raking at her heart.
“Walk.”
She stumbled with another push. Once out of the hangar she was forced into a waiting vehicle and driven to a sleek private jet that sat on the runway.
She asked, “What do you want with me?”
“Answers to my questions, gato. If I don’t get what I want from you the first time, I’ll ask over and over again.”
For a split second all those terrible memories of torture came flooding in and her mouth went dry.
He pushed her out of the car and ushered her up the stairs of the plane. Once inside, he buckled her in.
“Wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, would we?” He laughed. Then he sat down next to her, keeping the gun trained on her the whole time.
She was dependent on Max to find her. If Max and the others were dead, there was likely to be no rescue at all. That meant her survival depended solely on her and for the first time that thought held no appeal at all.
MAX WOKE SLOWLY. His brain felt like someone had been playing tennis with it. His ears rang and his vision was a bit blurred. He sat up and felt dizzy, then held himself still until the sensation passed. Then he spotted Drew and his team sprawled on the hangar floor. He checked each person and breathed easier to find out they were all alive.
Oh God. Rio!
He rose, ignoring the pain in his head, and ran to the office. The door had been blown off its hinges, glass crunching under his feet.
Rio was gone. He broke apart inside for just an instant. He would have taken her alive.
“Max,” Drew said weakly as he came up to him.
“She’s gone. Fuentes has taken her.” Max felt his heart pounding in his chest. After all the words he’d spouted about helping her, he’d failed her.
“What the hell happened?” asked Jason.
“Concussion grenades. They used them so Rio wouldn’t be harmed in a gun battle,” Max growled.
“Smart.” Drew looked at Max. “So what do we do now, Carpenter?”
“We go after her and if he’s harmed her, there’s going to be one less drug lord in Colombia.”
“Works for me,” Drew said as they all headed toward the chopper.
12
SHE KNEW WHERE SHE WAS.
Cartagena, Colombia. She recognized the city she’d spent a lot of time in, with its bright bougainvillea tumbling from colonial balconies and the shimmering Caribbean looking like a jewel.
They took her from the plane and bound her hands and feet before gagging her and throwing her into the back of a covered pickup truck. The drive was completely unpleasant as she couldn’t brace herself at turns, which aggravated the bumps, bruises and cuts that stung and ached all over her exhausted body.
But she understood this was just a precursor to what she would have to endure. Wherever they were taking her was going to be much, much worse.
She was terrified of what they were going to do to her, but she had handled it the first time around. She would handle it now.
She thought about Max and what they had shared from the moment they’d had to flee Fuentes’s men. She thought about what she would have thrown away if Fuentes hadn’t captured her. She would have walked away from Max because of her own fear of losing him. Now she realized the time she spent with Max would have been worth anything. There were never any guarantees in life.
She acknowledged that recent events could end up robbing her of finding out just what they might have had together, but that didn’t stop her from thinking about what she’d want, if it were up to her.
Max, if he was alive, would come after her. She knew it in her heart. A sob caught in her throat as she thought about losing him, and that maybe it was too late for them, but she fortified herself with the secure knowledge Max just wouldn’t let her down.
The truck stopped moving and adrenaline surged into Rio’s system. The back door opened and she was unceremoniously dragged from the bed of the truck onto the ground.
The impact jarred her ribs and she moaned behind the gag. When the pain subsided, she looked around. She was in back of a beautiful villa.
“Welcome to my home, whore. Rojo por la Mañana.”
Red in the morning. The sunrise here must be quite beautiful to turn the stucco walls of the villa red. What a lovely name for a place where she’d find her end.
“Take her to a cell,” Fuentes said in a clipped tone, and she was picked up by one of
the guards and taken into the building.
Once inside, she was shown down a hallway to the back of the place where there were a row of cells. She tried to mentally prepare herself; she wasn’t going to let this intimidate her. She refused to make a sound when he dropped her onto the hard packed dirt floor.
He removed her bonds and her gag and then left, locking the door behind him.
She was going to believe that it was only a matter of time before Max found her and saved her. She only had to hold out until then. She wasn’t going to think about him being dead.
BACK IN L.A., MAX paced another hangar as Drew’s team prepared to go to Colombia.
“Are you sure you don’t want to consult the FBI, Max?” Drew asked for the tenth time. “I have an open ticket with Watchdog. Anything I need I get, but the FBI will crucify you if they find out that you’re going into Colombia without authorization.”
“The DEA isn’t going to be crazy about it, either,” Jason said, hauling a black duffel up the ramp of the jet.
“I was supposed to protect her,” Max said, trying not to let his desperation show.
“Still, you could lose your…”
“No. I can’t go to the FBI or DEA. Remember the mole in the operation somewhere? Whoever it is will tip off Fuentes we’re coming. I can’t risk the agency telling me to stay put and waste time while they decide what to do about Rio. We go.”
“Max,” Drew cautioned, “I’m with you on this all the way. I just thought you might want to consider your job.”
“I don’t give a damn about my job right now. All that matters is getting Rio out of there. You know as well as I do that once they get what they want out of her they’re going to kill her. All we have right now is time. The faster we get to her, the better her chances are.”
“Okay.” Drew held up his hands in mock surrender.
A dark-haired man with a short ponytail entered the hangar dressed in black and carrying a laptop case. Drew waved him over. “This is Damian Frost. He’s a genius with a computer. He’ll find out where that jet landed and he’s also the one who’s been working on your mole.”
Max nodded to Damian. “Thanks, man.”
“No problem.”
The Irish accent threw him for a minute, then he remembered Allie talking about all the operatives that had helped her through her mission with the Ghost. Jason Kyoto was Japanese and had been her former assistant until she’d found out that Callie had hired him to be her bodyguard. Leila Mendez, a martial arts expert, had escaped Colombia to become a top field agent. Thad Michaels had saved the president’s life and was a former boxer and Australian Special Forces guy who’d turned mercenary, and Damian Frost was former IRA. Certainly an interesting group of people. They had all been recruited by Watchdog.
Minutes later they boarded the plane and Drew got behind the controls and took off.
Jason looked over at Max. “Are you familiar with body armor and assault weapons?”
“Yes. I’m a marine. You don’t have to worry about me.”
Jason smiled. “Freaking A. You guys know how to kick some serious ass.”
DREW’S EXCELLENT OPERATIVE, Damian Frost, had traced the jet to Cartagena. Hours later, they had just checked in to a hotel room there when Drew’s phone rang. Drew answered, “Yeah.”
He looked at Max with a shocked look on his face. “It’s for you.”
“What?” Max took the phone and put it to his ear. “Who is this?”
“It doesn’t matter who I am,” a man said, his voice low and steely. “I have information you want regarding a very beautiful DEA agent.”
“Rio. Where is she?” Max demanded, his heart rolling over in his chest.
“I’ll tell you this information, but I have two conditions.”
“Name them,” Max growled.
“No one touches Eduardo Fuentes. If he dies, I’ll make it very unpleasant for you.”
“I hear you. And the other condition?”
“Stop pursuing the Ghost, Mr. Carpenter. It’s a futile search and a waste of your time.”
“Is this the Ghost?” Max asked, thinking how much danger Callie was going to face if he didn’t get to the Ghost first. “Are you Rio’s brother, Shane?”
There was a long pause and Max thought he might have blown it. Then the man spoke. “Shane McMasters no longer exists. I already told you. It doesn’t matter who I am.” Impatience laced his voice.
Max clutched the phone until his hand turned white. He wanted to throttle the man whose voice was so calm. He knew in his churning gut this was the Ghost. He wanted to make the man a ghost for real. He thought of Rio, of the terror she was suffering at the hands of Fuentes. “Tell me where Rio is.”
“I’ll have your word first, Mr. Carpenter.”
“What makes you think I’ll keep my word once Rio is safe?” Max scoffed.
“You will. That’s the kind of man you are. Do we have a deal?”
“We have a deal,” Max said through gritted teeth.
“She’s being held in the villa Rojo por la Mañana. It’s about twenty miles west out of the city of Cartagena. Be quick, Mr. Carpenter. She is much too beautiful to die.”
Max’s heart bucked violently, fury causing it to beat harder. Savagely, he cursed and closed the phone with a snap.
“I know where she is,” he announced. After a moment, Max turned to Damian Frost. “I really need you to find that mole, Mr. Frost.”
“Aye, I’ve been flat out with the search,” Frost said as he intertwined his fingers and cracked his knuckles, grinning at Max. “You go save your good lady and I’ll get back to it.” He started tapping on the keys of his laptop.
JAMMER CLOSED THE CHEAP throwaway phone he’d used to talk to Max Carpenter. Dropping it on the ground, he gave it a quick crack with his boot heel, laughing softly. Let Eduardo find it and worry whether it was one of his people using it to betray him.
“You have a traitor in your midst, Eduardo.” That hadn’t been a lie. Standing outside of the back of the villa, Jammer caught the guard who exited the cells. In perfect Spanish, he warned, “You touch her in any way that violates her and I’ll kill you.”
“What do you care for this woman?”
“She’s more likely to talk if she’s treated well. Do I make myself clear?”
“You are clear.”
Jammer peered at the woman through the small window. He’d done all he could for her; he let the emotion he felt slip free of the tight reins. Shane was gone, but his sister was very much alive. He prayed that Max Carpenter loved her as much as Jammer thought he did, since her life now depended on him.
Jammer also hoped he’d pegged the FBI agent’s character and he would leave Eduardo alive as promised. As the Ghost, he’d worked way too hard to put all this together to lose it now. He was close to selling Fuentes the biggest shipment of armaments he’d ever assembled. It would support Fuentes’s bid to be one of the richest drug lords in Colombia. For Fuentes, securing a partnership with the Defensores de la Libertad would guarantee his operation’s success and make him untouchable. That’s exactly what the Ghost was hoping for. It would make destroying Fuentes so much sweeter. Just a bit longer and Jammer would have what he wanted.
He hoped that Max Carpenter got what he wanted, too.
RIO DIDN’T KNOW HOW long she’d been lying on the dirt floor. She’d been passing the time fantasizing about Max. She remembered his mouth, so soft and clever and the way he knew how to put it to good use. She remembered his warm, sure hands running over her, making her fidget and moan.
The sound of footsteps made her shoot up from the floor. A man appeared in front of her cell.
“It’s about time,” she croaked. “I called down for extra towels an hour ago.”
The guard chuckled, pinning her with a knowing gaze, and Rio stood stolidly, ignoring all the painful places on her body.
He entered the cell and clamped bright silver handcuffs on her, then motioned her ahead. Rio moved past
him, thinking what a waste this was because she wasn’t giving up any information.
The guard gripped her arm and pushed her forward.
“What’s with all the shoving?” she complained.
He just pushed her again.
“Vamos,” he snapped, crowding behind her as she was ushered to a room with nothing in it but a chair and a table. She caught a glimpse of the gorgeous setting outside. The sight seemed so surreal compared to the crudeness of her cell.
“I will ask you questions. You will answer these questions or you will be punished,” the soldier informed her.
“Are you going to put me in a time-out?”
“No,” he said, and then backhanded her. “Does this clear it up?”
“That makes it very clear.”
“Good. Now who is the traitor in Mr. Fuentes’s compound? Who has been informing on him?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I warn you, señorita. I do not play games.”
“I’m not playing games. I don’t have the information you seek.”
He slapped her again, and this time she and the chair almost tipped over.
“So you have the answer now?”
“Yes,” she lied, tired of being pushed around. It was time to push back. An explosion ripped through the quiet day and her jailer turned to gape. It was the opening she needed.
She used her manacled fists like a sledgehammer and caught him squarely in the jaw. He staggered and she spun, executing a perfect kick to his head, which sent him down to the ground. When he groaned and started to rise, she kicked him again.
Immediately, she bent down and searched him for the cuff keys. It took a second to get them off. She put them on him, hands behind his back, and then grabbed his gun.
She headed for the door, but when she was two feet from it, it burst open and men in black stood on the other side.
“Max!” she cried and ran to him as he took her into his arms and squeezed her tight, placing a kiss at her temple. That just wouldn’t do. She grabbed the back of his head and pulled him down. She kissed him hard, his mouth as soft and clever as she remembered, the movement of his lips and tongue primal and greedy. She drew back and she stared up at him, a feline smile on her lips.
