Undercover Wife

by Debra Webb

  The interrogation had begun then. They’d questioned her for over two hours. Erin hugged her arms around herself and tried to ease the weak but steady trembling rampant in her. She’d managed to stick to her story. She was Sara Wilks from Austin. They’d shown her a wanted poster with a picture of Logan and his former partner. The mirror image of herself, only with black hair, had stared back at Erin. The likeness was eerie. The man who appeared to be in charge had questioned her unmercifully. Called her a liar on more than one occasion and suggested that perhaps she needed additional motivation to tell the truth. She’d known what he meant. She fully expected to be dragged from the cell any time now and tortured until she said what they wanted to hear.

  Erin threaded her fingers through her hair and released a heavy breath. Maybe she should just tell them the truth about who she was and where she’d actually come from. But Logan had warned her to remember everything he’d taught her. There had to be some reason he didn’t want these people to know the truth. She paced the length of the cell again. Would they kill them if they knew the truth or would it simply blow their cover for the mission?

  She frowned, confusion and renewed fear drilling into her brain. Logan was too smart to let anything like this happen, wasn’t he? A man with enough clout to come into a federal prison in the middle of the night and leave with a prisoner surely knew his business.

  But here they were just the same. In a Mexican prison that verified everything she’d ever heard about the less than savory institutions.

  She remembered enough Spanish from high school to understand that they were in deep trouble. Obviously believing that she didn’t comprehend a word they said, the men had spoken freely. She shuddered when she recalled the remarks one had made about what he would like to do to her.

  Footsteps coming from somewhere beyond her line of vision jerked her attention to the bars at the front of the cell. Her chest tightened with renewed dread. Logan, flanked by two guards, stopped at the door. Her heart did a funny little leap at the sight of him. She resisted the urge to shake her head. It just wouldn’t do to analyze that bit of irony. She was stuck in this place because of Logan and yet she couldn’t stop such a silly reaction to him. Thankfully, he looked no worse for the wear. She’d imagined all sorts of terrible things the guards might have done to him. She shuddered when she considered some of the ones she’d feared would be done to her before this was over.

  Prayer appeared to be their only recourse now. If their circumstances grew any more dire, that might not even help.

  “Abra la célula y déjenos.”

  The order to unlock her cell and leave them came from Logan. Stunned, Erin watched in disbelief as the two guards obeyed without hesitation.

  Silence thickened for a full minute before she could bring herself to do anything other than stare at Logan. The woman in her reveled in every handsome detail of his face and his tall, lean frame. And at the same time, her more rational side demanded that she fear this man she scarcely knew and who had complete power over her universe. The most ludicrous part was that somehow, some part of her trusted him though she knew she shouldn’t.

  “I don’t understand,” she finally managed to articulate. None of this made sense. Had Logan somehow talked his way out of this predicament? Were they free to go now? Was the mission blown?

  “You did good, Bailey,” he said, a wide grin spreading across his beard-shadowed face. “I didn’t think you had it in you, but you did.”

  The epiphany dawned three seconds later. “This was a setup.” The anger she’d felt when he forced her to fire that weapon at him when she hadn’t wanted to slammed into her twofold.

  “A test,” he countered. “We had to be sure you could take the mental pressure.” He leaned against the open door. “This was the only way to gauge it.”

  “I thought they were going to kill me.” She advanced on him. He’d let her think the worst. Let her waste her time and energy worrying about him…praying for him. “I worried that you were being tortured or worse.” She poked him in the chest with her forefinger. “And all the while you were probably sitting at some desk with your feet up and laughing your ass off at how gullible I am.”

  He folded his arms over his chest, for protection maybe because she definitely had murder on her mind. “Actually I’ve been observing your reaction to interrogation.” He cocked an eyebrow. “I am impressed, Bailey. You stuck with the story until the bitter end.”

  Erin could barely hear him over the roar of fury in her ears. She struggled to keep her cool, but it was becoming increasingly difficult with him looking so damned smug about the whole thing.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t go for three or four hours!” she fairly shouted, her cool disappearing completely in spite of her best efforts. “How can you be sure two hours of interrogation was enough? Maybe my humiliation wasn’t quite complete.”

  His gaze turned dead serious. “Because any more than that would have been a waste. Esteban doesn’t waste time. He would either have believed you by then or he would have killed you.”

  She held that too serious gaze for a couple of anxious seconds more before another blast of fury shored up her waning anger. “No more surprises, Logan.” She planted her hands on her hips and glared at him. His only reaction was another of those infuriating grins. “I mean it. If I’m in this thing, I’m in all the way. You keep me up to speed on what’s going on or I’m out. Do you hear me? No…more…surprises.”

  “Loud and clear, Bailey.” He straightened and stared down at her. “There’s just one more thing we have to get out of the way first.”

  She braced herself for yet another tactical maneuver. The sudden realization that he’d seen her in her underwear during the body search seared through her brain. “I’d better get advance warning from now on before you say or do anything,” she cautioned. No way was she playing this game one minute longer.

  “Agreed.”

  Uh-oh. That was entirely too easy.

  “Today’s our third anniversary, Baby.”

  She hated that he called her that. But that’s what Logan Wilks, aka John Logan, had deemed the best solution for ensuring she didn’t forget who she was. It was part of the cover. But she didn’t have to like it.

  “So,” she shot back. “What’s that got to do with here and now? And I don’t want you calling me Baby unless it’s necessary.”

  “Everything I do is necessary,” he told her in a tone that brooked no argument. “And our anniversary is the reason we were able to put off joining Esteban a week ago. He thinks we’ve been in the Bahamas having a second honeymoon. In just over twenty-four hours, he’s going to be expecting to see a couple fresh from a week of sharing ‘Kodak’ moments.”

  “Get to the point, Logan,” she demanded, impatient. “What is it you have to get out of the way before we can ditch this dump?”

  She should have seen it coming. Should have at least suspected, but she hadn’t.

  Logan kissed her. Took her face in his hands, plunged his fingers into her hair and held her there while his mouth plundered hers.

  She struggled at first, but the feel of his firm lips on hers soon turned coaxing. She flattened her palms against his chest in a last-ditch effort to shove him away, but failed miserably. Instead, her fingers immediately fisted in the cotton of his shirt, effectively drawing him nearer when she should have pushed him away.

  Fire rushed through her veins, heating her skin, heightening the desire that had been there, way deep down, from the start. Something had clicked for her the moment she laid eyes on him. A regard that, despite the external wariness between them, only deepened with time and proximity.

  He eased closer to her, aligning himself more fully with her, allowing the subtlest contact. His tongue traced her lips and she opened for him, took him inside her. Her feminine muscles reacted, tightened. Her heart thundered beneath her sternum. The idea that the guards might be watching didn’t matter. Her entire being was consumed with the taste of him
…the feel of his mouth on hers…the hunger of her body for his. She melted against him, molding fully to his incredibly male frame. If he stripped her naked and took her right there against the crumbling cell wall, she wouldn’t have tried to stop him. His touch was magic, his taste drugging. She was his for the taking.

  He drew back, his uneven breath fanning her sizzling lips. Then he released her and stepped away.

  The haze of lust cleared from his expression instantly. “I needed to be sure you could be convincing as my loving wife and not bolt and run.”

  She went rigid. Another test. Not real. Just a test. The blood rushed to her face, staining her cheeks. It had been all too real for her, but he didn’t have to know that. “Save the theatrics for an audience, Logan,” she retorted. “You’re not the first man I’ve kissed and you won’t be the last.”

  One corner of his mouth twitched, infuriating her all the more. “I didn’t think I would be.” He hitched his thumb toward the exit. “Let’s get going. We have final preparations to make before heading to Colombia.”

  She grabbed him by the arm before he could get away. “We’re going to Colombia now?” Her heart was racing again. No more tests. This would be the real thing. Life and death. There couldn’t be any wrong moves.

  “That’s right, Bailey. We leave tomorrow night. By dawn the day after that, we’ll be in Esteban’s compound.” That dark, dark gaze searched hers. “Are you ready to risk your life for me, Baby?”

  Erin steeled herself against the deluge of emotions that threatened to rain down upon her. She was past the point of no return already. There was no other choice. She wanted her freedom back—wanted her life back. This was for her.

  “Yeah,” she returned pointedly. “I’m ready to risk my life for me.”

  A slow smile slid across his handsome face and something electrical passed between them…a connection or an interest of sorts, only it went far deeper than the physical. His gaze held hers until the moment passed.

  “Let’s do it then.”

  Erin followed him down the dank corridor. She said one final prayer for their safety as the events of the past six days whirled through her mind. She could do things she’d never dreamed herself capable of. She was stronger than she’d known, but would it be enough to keep her alive?

  Would it be enough, she admitted, to keep Logan alive?

  Chapter Four

  Erin’s first look at the country of Colombia was breathtaking. The jagged lines of the Andes Mountains, covered with emerald green trees, jutted heavenward and were draped in low-lying clouds. The glimpse of a major city nestled amid the soaring peaks gave the impression of vulnerability. But Erin knew from Logan’s description that the city of Medellín was anything but vulnerable. It was a place where evil lurked behind seemingly innocuous, everyday facades. A place where no one was safe from the cartel’s far-reaching iron grip. Though certainly not every citizen of the vast city was a part of the cartel, anyone who resided there had likely been touched in one way or another by the insidious presence of one drug lord or another.

  There was no real escape.

  What a fitting destination.

  Erin looked away. How could her life have come to this? She was a quiet, passive individual. She’d never purposely harmed anyone. The idea that she was now a criminal—a prisoner—still startled her. She’d grown up in a small town a few miles west of Atlanta. An only child, her parents had doted on her constantly. She’d been their whole world, as they had been hers. Then one day her mother didn’t show up after school. Erin had waited and waited, but no one came. Just before dark a patrol car had arrived and taken her to the local police station. Her parents had died in a car crash that afternoon.

  In an instant, her whole world changed.

  Erin blinked back the tears that never failed to accompany thoughts of her parents. She’d had no other family, but couldn’t complain about the foster home the system had chosen for her. The Martins had been good to her, but she had never allowed herself to love them or trust them completely. She hadn’t meant to hold back her emotions, it just happened.

  Some part of her had simply closed down after the loss of her parents. She’d only been twelve after all. Her heart wouldn’t let her trust anyone again the way she’d trusted her parents. They were supposed to be there for her and one day they were suddenly gone. As an adult she understood that it certainly wasn’t by choice or by any fault of theirs, but the lonely, heart-broken child in her couldn’t forgive them for leaving her. She’d loved them so much. It wasn’t until Jeff that she’d permitted herself to feel that emotion again.

  And look where it had gotten her. He had assured her that what she was doing was legal, that he had the various companies’ permission for her to attempt to breach their cyber security. What a liar he’d been. Oh, he’d proven his company’s worth all right, but she had paid the price.

  No way would she ever trust anyone with her heart again.

  Erin forced the emotion from her eyes and focused her attention to the here and now. The same plane that had flown them from Atlanta to Mexico touched down at a rustic, out-of-the-way airfield a few miles from their intended final destination.

  The landing wasn’t smooth. She braced herself and hoped the pilot knew how to stop this thing before they ran out of landing strip. Her knuckles whitened where she gripped the armrests as the plane hurtled toward a wall of dense woods…the same ones she’d admired only moments ago. The breath stalled in her lungs as the screech of straining brakes and engines shattered the quiet.

  The plane skidded to a stop just yards shy of plunging into the tree line. Several seconds elapsed before Erin remembered to breathe. Some part of her kept expecting the crash, but it never came. Fear dropped to a more tolerable level, and her focus slowly widened to include the others onboard the aircraft.

  “Up and at ’em, Bailey,” Logan said as he stood. “This is where the fun begins.”

  He flashed her that too cocky grin of his as Erin fumbled with her safety belt, released it then pushed out of her seat. He never smiled except for that cock-sure twisting of his lips. She’d figured out his motivation for the flirtatious and completely unnerving gesture. He knew it rattled her and that was his goal. Most times when she got rattled, she got mad. He wanted her angry. At the moment, she wished it was that simple. Anger had taken a back seat—way back—to the terror climbing up her spine. She felt numbed by it, but squared her shoulders and bit back the fear she didn’t want him to see.

  Her attempt crashed and burned.

  Logan read her too easily. She saw the understanding in his eyes a fraction of a second before he blinked it away. “There’s an SUV, a rental, waiting for us here. It was rented in Bogota yesterday, along with a hotel room, where a man and woman vaguely matching our descriptions stayed the night. We’ll drive back to Medellín and then on to Esteban’s compound from there.”

  When he started to turn away, Erin asked, “What was the name of the hotel?” She had to remember to pay attention, to be keenly observant. He’d told her that over and over. It was all about the mission now.

  Logan looked back at her. “The Bogota Plaza.” A hint of a real smile touched that usually controlled expression of his. “Very good, Bailey.”

  Erin relaxed marginally then. She’d finally done the impossible. She’d actually impressed John Logan outside one of his initiated tests. Wow. Maybe there was hope. Or maybe leaving out the name of the hotel was a test. Erin shook off the thought. She couldn’t walk around worrying whether she’d met his expectations. They were on the same side.

  The temperature felt considerably cooler outside than what they’d left behind at the makeshift training center. Erin chafed her arms and wished for the jacket that was in her duffel. The air was noticeably thinner as well. Logan had warned her about that and the headaches that might come before her body adjusted to the unfamiliar altitude.

  Ramon, the driver, loaded Logan and Erin’s duffels into the back of an SUV. Maveric
k, the pilot, was in deep, hushed conversation with Logan. Erin, as usual, was the outsider. Part of, but not quite in, the discussions and planning. She hated that arrangement. Logan still didn’t let her all the way in. Not even after she’d passed all his little tests. She shivered as she considered the events of the past couple of days. Profound disbelief flooded her each time she recalled how Logan had goaded her into pulling that trigger with the weapon aimed directly at him.

  What if he’d made a mistake and there had been one final round in her clip? Oh, he’d laughed and said that was what Kevlar was for. But still, Erin hadn’t liked it. Couldn’t believe he’d go to that kind of extreme measure.

  He had made his point rightly enough. She’d had to face the reality that she was capable of far more than she would ever have believed. Maybe it was all the accumulated stress of the past few months, combined with the unprecedented pressure of the past week. Who knew? Whatever the case, Erin now conceded that she could do what she had to. She shuddered at the thought. What would her parents think of her now?

  Then again…

  A smile suddenly tugged the corners of her mouth upward. Wouldn’t Jeff think twice about double-crossing her now? She might not have been such an easy target if she’d shown half the strength in the past that she’d dredged up under Logan’s tutelage. A new surge of determination solidified her shaky resolve. Logan had promised Jeff would get his if she helped with this mission. From now on that would be her battle cry, the dangling carrot to keep her going.

  She would do whatever it took to see that justice was served. All she had to do was stay alive to see it.