by Cindy Gerard
That all changed right now.
As of now, he was officially back in the game, because this lying, conniving, sexy-as-ever-loving-sin, wack-job of a woman had dragged him out of his hidey-hole.
So… did he thank her or throttle her? And what in holy hell was he supposed to make of her? Though her conspiracy talk was off-the-charts crazy, that gunman had been sent by someone. Someone she’d either pissed off or someone who wanted her silenced—or both.
He scrubbed a hand over his face.
Okay, so if he bought into her conspiracy theory—and that was a big if—who was behind it, and what was their endgame? It was bad enough that he’d lost friends that day. Bad enough that he’d taken the fall. But if she was right—if it was far bigger than an operation gone sideways—then it meant that his being framed was only a microscopic blip on the radar of a far bigger plot. Which reduced the importance of what had happened to him to less than nothing.
And that really pissed him off. Because he was more than nothing. His team had been more than nothing. And suddenly, because of her, if it was the last thing he did, he wanted not only justice for them, but he wanted this bastard taken out. And he wanted to be the one doing it.
“All right, Ms. Hot Tamale Diaz,” he said, deciding to give her what she wanted. “We’re going to play this out. We are going to proceed as though we have our fingers on the trigger of a gun that’s going to go boom in the face of the man who killed a lot of good men, a lot of innocent people, and ruined my life.
“But so help me God,” he warned her when relief and satisfaction filled her eyes, “if you don’t deliver the goods—”
“I’ll deliver,” she promised. And though he had a shitload of reasons not to trust her, the conviction in her words made him want to believe—at least part of her story. She was still lying her gorgeous ass off about who she was and what she did. Reporter? Not a chance. She was personally vested in this—her heavy-handed tactics at the bar told that story.
“If you sell me out, chica, be warned: There’s not a corner of this earth remote enough for you to hide in.”
She had nothing to say to that, but her eyes told him he’d made her a believer.
“Aeropuerto. Rapido,” he told the taxi driver, hoping to hell he wasn’t going to regret his decision.
9
When Brown decided to move, he moved. They hit the Jorge Chavez International Airport running. First stop was at a small hangar far away from the busy international commercial terminals. With an order for the cabdriver to wait that Brown insured by tipping him with some of the money he’d lifted from her pockets, he grabbed her hand and they raced into the building.
“Do you think we’re being followed?” she asked breathlessly.
“If there had been more than one shooter, we’d have met up with him before we left the hotel.”
That made sense, but didn’t stop her from constantly looking over her shoulder.
The hangar housed several small private planes and as Brown jogged briskly across the concrete floor, she’d either have to keep up or fall flat on her face. He dragged her along behind him at a break-neck pace.
“What are we doing here?” They ducked around and under several wings before stopping beside a vintage twin turboprop Beechcraft King Air.
“Getting my passport.”
The Beechcraft was a sweetheart of a plane—her dad had been a Beechcraft buff so she recognized the make and model immediately. PRIMETIME AIR CARGO was sprawled across the gleaming white fuselage in glittering red, white, and blue letters.
For a man who claimed no love of country, they were interesting color choices, she thought as he unlocked the door with a key he fished out of his boot.
And for a man who didn’t want anyone to think he gave two rips about anything, the plane was immaculately clean and well cared for.
“If you sell me out, chica, be warned: There’s not a corner of this earth remote enough for you to hide in.”
Despite the pulsing heat under the tin roof of the hangar, she suppressed a shiver at the memory of the look in his eyes. He’d meant it. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned—or like a man who’d been played by a woman.
But that sword sliced both ways. If it turned out he’d lied and he was responsible for Ramon’s death, she wouldn’t hesitate to throw him to the wolves.
“We’d better ditch the guns here. Stash them in the plane.” He held out his hand.
He was right. They’d never make it past airport security. Reluctantly, she handed hers over.
“Wait here.” He tucked her Glock in his waistband and pulled down the airstairs. “I’ll be right back.”
He trotted up the five steps and ducked inside. Curious about what she’d find inside, she ignored his order to wait and followed him up the stairs.
He spun around so fast that if he hadn’t grabbed her and pulled her against him, she would have tumbled backward down the steps.
For a very long, very intense several seconds, they stood that way. Him gripping her upper arms, her breasts pressed against his chest, their gazes clashing and hot. For a wild and crazy instant, she thought he would kiss her. For an even wilder and crazier instant, she thought she might let him.
“I told you to wait,” he growled, breaking the spell.
Stunned by her reaction to him, she lifted her chin and gave him a “you’re not the boss of me” look.
He shook his head and with a roll of his eyes, let her go.
And damn if she wasn’t shaking. She steadied herself with a deep breath.
What the hell was that?
Adrenaline. Had to be. And sleep deprivation. And the constant, recurring memory of the pillow exploding on the bed from the gunman’s MP5K.
While Brown dug around in the cockpit, she grounded herself by looking around the plane. Pretty basic, totally empty. Apparently the cargo business wasn’t merely a front. The passenger seats had been removed and the fuselage was rigged with nylon straps fixed to the floor to secure freight.
“Let’s go.” Suddenly he was right behind her.
She jumped and whirled around. Hyper- awareness. More proof that she was running on empty.
He stuffed his passport and some cash into his hip pocket.
“You travel light.”
“I travel fast.” Face grim, he headed down the airstairs.
Whatever that moment had been about earlier, he clearly hadn’t liked it any better than she had. Which was fine with her.
“Now what?” she asked after he’d locked up and they were hustling back toward the hangar door.
“This is your show, chica. You tell me.”
After a quick look around outside to insure that they hadn’t been followed, he gripped her elbow and sprinted for the waiting cab.
• • •
Her Kevlar vest had stopped two rounds from penetrating her chest cavity. Besides saving her life, the vest had saved her from broken ribs when she’d hit the roof of the cab. Pain ripped through her body with every breath she drew, but she’d recover. It was her arm that worried her. She couldn’t feel her hand anymore, and blood still trickled sticky and warm down her arm, despite the makeshift tourniquet she’d forced the cabdriver to tie at gunpoint.
Slumped in the backseat of the stinking, hot relic of a taxi, she felt herself slipping. Blood loss. Shock. Disbelief that she’d blown it so badly. That she’d become the prey. That both targets had gotten away.
She was so damn pissed.
“H… how long?” she asked in Spanish, disgusted by the weakness in her voice.
The adrenaline that had mainlined through her system when she’d tumbled off the roof of the cab and had made it possible for her to crawl into the backseat had let her down. Her MP5K had easily persuaded him to speed away from the hotel, then park in a back alley several blocks away. It seemed like an eternity had passed since she’d made him use his phone to call the number she’d committed to memory before she’d left for Lima. She never commissio
ned a job without a contingency plan, and was anal-retentive about backup—even though she’d never had to use it until now.
The cabbie quaked behind the wheel. “Twenty-seven minutes,” he said, the fear thick in his trembling voice. He’d learned quickly to be precise.
Twenty-seven minutes. Two minutes since she’d asked the last time.
What was taking so damn long? Someone should be here by now.
She felt her eyes roll back in the sockets and her head fall backward, and she snapped to with a start. This was bad. She couldn’t win the battle to stay conscious much longer.
But she had to hang on. Had to. She caught herself going under again and forced herself to a more upright position. Knowing she needed the shock of pain to keep her even semi-alert, she jabbed the barrel of the MP5K against her ribs. And bit back a scream as the blinding, white-hot pain exploded through her brain.
A black SUV suddenly pulled up parallel to the taxi. Two doors opened, then closed. The driver’s-side door of the cab flew open with a gruffly ordered, “¡Vaya!” Go.
The cabdriver couldn’t get out from behind the wheel fast enough. He took off running down the alley, stumbled, righted himself, and disappeared in the dark as the rear door of the cab opened.
“What took you… so fucking long?” she gritted out, fighting both unconsciousness and pain as a pair of strong arms reached inside and helped her out.
“GPS isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. How bad?”
She didn’t know this man or his driver. She only knew their service came highly recommended. “Bad enough.”
“The doc is waiting,” he said, then picked her up when her knees buckled and her world went blacker than black.
• • •
It was 11:10 p.m. by the time Eva had retrieved her passport and extra cash from the locker where she’d stashed them at the international terminal. “Two tickets to Washington, D.C.,” she told the ticketing agent. “Earliest flight possible.”
Mike’s eyebrows shot up. The implications of D.C. being her home base clearly weren’t lost on him, but he didn’t comment. And that was a huge relief because he had made a big deal over her passport.
Make that passports. She’d stood, jaw tight, arms crossed under her breasts, after he’d snatched the two fake documents out of her hand, scanned them, then handed both back with a knowing smile.
“My, my. Got yourself a good ink man, there. Creative. And smart. He even included an entrance stamp to keep eyebrows from raising when you go through customs. But I’m so confused. Which is it? Pamela Diaz or”—he glanced at the second forged document—“Emily Bradshaw? Or is Mata Hari still going to turn up somewhere on one of these little blue books?”
What she had was access to the CIA’s resources, and a trustworthy friend in the documents department who hadn’t asked questions. She was glad now that she’d double-covered her bases. Pamela Diaz was on someone’s hit list, but Emily Bradshaw was just another American tourist returning home.
And Brown had no room to talk: They’d booked his ticket under the name John Mason. He knew as much or more about forged documents as she did.
She let him wonder about her true identity. She still wasn’t ready to tell him the truth about who she was or what she did. They’d taken a chance on standby tickets and gotten lucky with a 12:30 a.m. flight. Even though they barely made the boarding call, Brown insisted they board at the last possible second, which gave him an opportunity to study every passenger as they filed onto the plane. Only after he was satisfied no one on the flight had any interest in them and that no one could board after they committed did they finally walk down the Jetway.
Fatigue hit Eva like a hammer by the time they found their row and she sank wearily into the window seat. They had about fourteen hours of travel ahead of them, with a stop in Bogota, Colombia, before they finally landed at Dulles in D.C. Plenty of time to decide if Brown was a man she could trust with the whole truth, or if she would cut her losses and turn him loose after she’d mined as much information out of him as she could.
She still had a lot of sorting out to do. Even before she’d tracked him down and flown to Peru to talk to him, even before she’d ended up getting shot at, she’d been a bit of an emotional mess, not knowing what to believe. Nearly thirty-six hours with little sleep and Brown’s moving proclamation of innocence had combined to skew her ability to critically assess all the information even more. Did she believe him or the OSD report? Did she believe her gut that something wasn’t right? She’d spun everything inside out, upside down, and backward until all she felt was frustrated.
Turning her head, she glanced at Brown. He’d already closed his eyes. His lashes were long… the very tips rested above the swelling on his cheekbone where blue and purple would join the red skin. The imprint of her boot heel was going to leave a helluva bruise.
The emotional side of her wanted to believe the worst of Brown… but there were still so many unanswered questions that her rational side wouldn’t let her commit, especially since her profession had taught her that everyone lied. She just hadn’t been prepared for those lies to hit her on a personal level.
Too weary to think about it anymore, she followed his lead and closed her eyes. The onboard safety drill droned on in the background. She was vaguely aware of the plane moving down the apron toward the runway, away from Lima and a gunman who had tried to kill her. By the time it registered that they were airborne, exhaustion had taken over and she’d drifted off to sleep.
• • •
Eva awoke slowly. Worked the kinks out of her neck and yawned. The cabin was dark. Only a few reading lights and the exit lights diffused the darkness. The engines were a soft, reassuring drone as she shifted and stared down at the vast expanse of the Caribbean through a thin cloud cover. Dawn broke over the horizon, slow and true and absolute. Death, taxes, sunrise, sunset. About the only things she felt she could count on these days.
And then there was Brown.
He was stretched out as far as the seat would allow, his long legs sprawled, his head turned toward her, snoring softly. She felt an odd little clutch in her chest as an unwelcome wave of tenderness washed through her.
He looked exhausted and tortured even as he slept.
And she didn’t have a clue why she cared.
She turned back to the window. Guilt, maybe?
Yes, she’d flown to Peru to bring him back to the States. Yes, she’d used extreme measures to coerce him. And no, she hadn’t planned on being so…
You hadn’t planned on being so what, Eva? she asked herself.
Affected, she supposed. By his physical presence. By his smart-ass sense of humor. Or by the vulnerability that he tried to hide behind everything from anger to sick humor to a don’t-give-a-damn swagger.
“The hell I did.”
She still got chills thinking about the conviction and despair in his voice… and the tears he’d tried desperately to hide.
She swallowed hard and told herself it was because she was exhausted. Or, hello, terrified? When she closed her eyes she could still see the pillow exploding as round after round from the MP5K pumped into it.
Her head had been in that exact same spot seconds before the gunman had opened fire. If Brown hadn’t had a change of heart, if he hadn’t cut the flex cuffs, hadn’t heard a suspicious sound on the terrace outside the room, she’d be dead.
He’d saved her life… and she wasn’t even sure yet if she trusted that he’d told her the truth about OSD. She didn’t have one solid shred of evidence to convince her that he wasn’t in league with whoever was behind it and possibly so much more.
Maybe he’d been coerced. Maybe he’d been in it for the money—he’d sure changed his tune about helping her once she’d mentioned paying him. If he was innocent, then she needed to corroborate his story and enlist his help in figuring this thing out.
If he was guilty, well, she still needed him to help her ferret out the rest of the truth. And when it was over
, then she’d level her own kind of justice.
10
Mike woke up with a stiff shoulder and a pain in his neck.
The pain in his ass was awake, too, responding to the flight attendant’s request for her to move her seat to the upright position and prepare for landing in Bogota.
He yawned and stretched and shook the cobwebs from his head. “How long is our layover?”
She reached into her bag and checked her ticket. “Couple of hours.”
“Good. That’ll give us time to grab something to eat. We’ll have a nice little chat and chew. It’ll be fun. You can fill me in—no excuses, no stalling this time, clear?”
Her glare had plenty of bite to it, but she finally nodded. “Clear.”
The El Dorado International Airport in Bogota was a major Central American hub, and the terminal teemed with travelers. Giving a more-than-passing glance at a bar two doors down, Mike stood in line at a fast-food café where he grabbed sandwiches, a couple of apples, and two sodas.
“I took a guess and went for the ham.” He tossed the to-go bag on the table she’d found in a relatively quiet corner of the terminal and dropped into a chair across from her. After digging inside for a sandwich, he shoved the bag across the table to her.
“Start from the beginning,” he said after taking a huge bite. He was starving.
She gave him a look. “Can I at least eat my sandwich first?”
He popped the top on a soda, wishing it was a beer, and passed it to her before opening his own. “Multitask. I’ll even give you a place to start. Who are you really?”
The sandwich stopped halfway to her mouth.
Here it comes. Another lie.
It was time to lay things out for her.
He met her eyes over his sandwich. “You think that I’m not going to figure that out once we land in the States? I’ve got a few friends in high places.”
His buddies at Black Ops, Inc. had recently relocated their organization from Buenos Aires to the States. He didn’t know where they were based, because the nature of their covert activities required a high level of anonymity, but he did know how to reach out and touch them. He’d helped them out on their last two missions and knew that all he had to do was ask and they’d get him what he wanted.
