“We didn’t want Mr. Hayes to find out because . . . well, because we’re using the hotel’s resources. It’s the maître d’s birthday and we were going to throw him a surprise party. That’s why we’re not dressed properly. We’re all here on our day off.”
Acosta’s eyes bored into hers for what seemed like an hour, but Tasha didn’t so much as blink.
Finally, he let her go and stepped back, and then surveyed the room full of fugitives, who were doing their best to look sheepish as they hung their heads and nodded agreement with Tasha’s confession.
“Very well, then. But I hope Mr. Hayes punishes you all for your thievery,” Acosta announced, then strode from the room without a backward glance.
Tasha let out a relieved breath and looked up to find Quinn studying her intently.
“You’re either very brave or very stupid,” he said.
Tasha dipped her head in acknowledgment. “I could say the same about you,” she countered.
Quinn snorted and then, with one hand holding the door open, turned back to her and said softly, “Sometimes, bravery and stupidity are the same thing.”
As the door swung shut behind him, Tasha’s mouth curled up into a half-smile. “Wedding planner. White slaver. Philosopher. Will the real Quinn Hayes please stand up?” she murmured to herself.
Then she turned back toward the fugitives, who were all looking at her as if she had just snatched a helpless baby from the jaws of a hungry crocodile.
She crossed her arms over her chest and rocked back on her heels.
“Now,” she began. “Would someone like to tell me what’s going on here?”
The leader of the fugitives exchanged a wary glance with another man, who Tasha took to be the second-in-command. “We mustn’t. All I can do is to assure you that we’re in good hands with Mr. Hayes.”
“And how do you know that?” Tasha asked with a skeptical tilt of her head.
“He’s a good man,” the leader said.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because,” a young girl said, poking her head out from underneath the table in the center of the room. “My brother knows him. They met long ago.” She paused for a second, then looked up at Tasha with her soft brown eyes and added, “When they were both in prison.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The wedding planner was a suspect in the disappearance of two - people, was trafficking in human beings, and—as Tasha had just discovered—was also an ex-con.
This did not bode well for her little sister’s wedding.
She had to find Celie and warn her to stay away from Quinn until Tasha had a chance to determine what was going on here. Even more important, she needed to caution Celie to stay out of Acosta’s path. No way did she want her baby sister exposed to a creep like him.
“Celie? Are you in there?” she called, tapping on the door of her sister’s suite.
There was no answer from inside.
“Must be in the shower,” Tasha muttered to herself.
Well, she might as well get checked in to her own room and see if Cal had arrived. She’d suggest that they try to leave this cursed hotel right now, but knew it would be pointless. There was no way they could get back to San Pedro before dark, and traveling in the jungle at night wasn’t smart. They’d just have to wait it out until tomorrow morning.
She took the stairs down to the main floor, careful to watch for any snakes or scorpions or deadly frogs that might be lurking in the stairwell.
As she turned the corner on the first floor, she nearly collided with a dark-haired woman who was running down the hall.
“Oh, pardon me,” the woman said, reaching out a hand to steady Tasha as she leaped back out of the way.
It was the front desk clerk who had checked them in. What was her name again? Tasha glanced at the woman’s name tag. Olivia.
“I’m sorry. That was my fault. I was coming to see if my room was ready. You wouldn’t happen to know if I can check in now, would you?”
Olivia smoothed her shiny black hair over one shoulder before answering. “Yes. I tried to find you when housekeeping called down to tell me your room was done, but you were gone.”
“I had an . . . um, errand to run,” Tasha said.
“Hmm,” Olivia answered as if she didn’t believe her, then said, “If you’ll follow me, I’ll get you your room key.”
Obediently, Tasha followed the front desk clerk back into the soothing lobby of the hotel. The plump birds were right where she’d left them an hour ago, sunning themselves at the edge of the fountain.
Olivia seated herself on a stool behind the desk and clacked away at some computer keys. Then, after a whirring set of clicks, she slid a key card over the marble counter.
“There you are. Room 214. That’s back up the stairs and to your left.”
“Thank you,” Tasha said, pocketing the card. She had turned to leave when Olivia’s voice stopped her.
“Oh, and I see here that you have a message.”
Tasha turned back to face the front desk clerk and raised her eyebrows questioningly.
“Your sister called down about fifteen minutes ago. She wanted to let you know that she and Quinn were going out to scout locations for her wedding.”
Tasha’s hand fluttered to her chest. What? Her sister had gone out with Quinn? Into the jungle? Alone?
“Where did they go? Were they on foot?”
Olivia smoothed a hand over her hair again, a habit that was beginning to annoy Tasha. The woman’s hair was beautiful, black and shiny and smooth, not a hair out of place. So why did she keep fiddling with it?
“No, they used the zip line,” Olivia answered, nodding her chin in the direction of the landing pad on the roof, where Celie and Tasha had first arrived.
Tasha turned on her heel. She was not going to leave her little sister alone with a suspected slave trader. God only knew what might happen. He might kidnap her and try to sell her into the sex trade. With Celie’s trusting nature, she could be halfway to Venezuela before realizing that Quinn’s motives weren’t exactly pure.
“They would have taken the blue route,” Olivia called after her as she hurried across the lobby toward the stairs leading to the roof.
Tasha yanked open the door and pounded up the steps. After recovering from her not-quite-ten-point landing this morning, she had looked around and seen other landing pads dotted about the roof. Now, she headed toward the one with a blue marker, assuming from Olivia’s comment that this was the line Celie and Quinn had taken.
As she clipped herself into a harness and stepped to the edge of the platform in preparation for takeoff, Tasha forced herself not to look down at the jungle floor thirty feet below.
She didn’t have time to be scared. She had to save her baby sister.
Jorge Acosta slowly lowered the newspaper he had raised a moment ago to shield his face from view of the women in the lobby. He dismissed the front desk clerk—she was of no consequence— and, instead, focused his attention on the woman with the light brown hair.
She had lied to him.
She was not a hotel employee, but, rather, a guest.
The question was, why had she lied?
The answer was easy. She had to be involved with the workers that had been stolen from him. It could not be a coincidence.
And now she was off to meet Quinn Hayes somewhere in the jungle.
Again, he added two and two together and came up with four. This must have something to do with his workers.
He got to his feet as the woman disappeared through the doorway, easily escaping the notice of the harried front desk clerk who had turned her attention to another task.
For years, his workers had been mysteriously vanishing—usually in small groups of three or four several times a year. His second-in-command, Luis Ortega, had said there were rumors that they had help in escaping, but Acosta refused to believe that anyone would be foolish enough to risk their lives to bring a few worthless slaves to freedom. Th
at is, until this latest batch disappeared. Not in a small group of three or four, but nearly two dozen men, women, and children, who were in the guarded barracks one evening and gone by morning. Even he had to admit that this could not have been accomplished without outside assistance.
When Luis tracked the fugitives as far as San Pedro and Quinn Hayes was mentioned, Acosta knew Hayes had to be involved. He didn’t know yet whether Hayes was motivated by revenge or profit, but that didn’t really matter.
Either way, Acosta now believed he had enough evidence to kill Hayes . . . and the woman who had just left to find him.
Her lies could mean only one thing: Quinn and this woman were hiding the fugitives.
Now they would have to die.
As he turned to follow the woman, a half a dozen blue-gray tan-agers suddenly took flight. He closed his eyes and raised his hands instinctively to protect himself. The birds soon settled down to roost and Acosta cursed them under his breath as he strode to the stairwell, not realizing that the birds had been spooked by the young, dark-haired girl hiding in the shadows.
CHAPTER FIVE
Quinn unclipped his harness from the zip line and stepped away from the landing platform to await his client’s arrival. While he waited, he looked around the clearing with a critical eye. It was not a large space—perhaps enough for twenty people, no more—but it was beautiful. The clearing was flanked by lush trees and bushes heavy with brightly blooming flowers. Through the foliage at the edge of the clearing, he could see the sparkling water of a small river and hear the soothing sound of it rushing over the cliff forty feet below. It wasn’t a large waterfall, so the noise wasn’t bad. The bride and groom would have to speak up to be heard, but they - wouldn’t need to yell.
All in all, it would be a lovely place to—
Quinn’s thoughts were interrupted by the raucous chirps and howls of a small band of monkeys that suddenly came flying out from behind him.
“Omigod, what’s that?”
Quinn turned to find Celie O’Shaunessey clinging to her harness as she watched, wide-eyed, as the monkeys stopped on the opposite side of the clearing, their bright beady eyes staring intently at the intruders.
Quinn frowned. “Monkeys,” he answered. “And it looks like - they’re staking this place out as their own for the time being.”
Celie stepped out of her harness and walked farther into the clearing. “They’re so cute,” she breathed.
“They can also be dangerous,” Quinn warned, putting a hand out to stop Celie from going any farther. Monkeys had been known to pelt unwary travelers with nuts and sticks, or even feces, if they felt they were being threatened.
He studied the group of small tan-and-orange faces and saw several babies—yet another reason to keep his client out of their way. Monkeys, like most animals, would kill to protect their young.
“Aw, but they’re like little wizened old people,” Celie cooed.
Quinn swallowed a sigh and kept a firm grasp on his client’s arm when she would have taken another step toward the howling
monkeys. These were not cuddly cartoon animals. They were wild creatures with strong limbs and razor-sharp teeth.
“Yes. Well, I think we should move on to the second location I wanted to show you. You don’t want your wedding disrupted by a gang of shrieking monkeys, do you?”
“Oh, but it’s so beautiful here.” Celie turned to him with a beatific smile and Quinn blinked. Before this moment, he hadn’t realized how much she looked like her sister, but there was something in his client’s almond-shaped blue eyes just now that reminded him of the way Tasha had looked when she’d first seen the lobby of the hotel. Something that had told him the world-weary attitude she wore was nothing more than a cloak she used to shield herself from hurt.
Quinn snorted. Where the hell had that thought come from?
He had enough to deal with without waxing poetic about a woman he had just met.
Even if she was cute.
And smart.
And incredibly brave.
“Unhand my sister, you . . . you slave trader, you.”
Huh? Quinn spun around to see the woman he had just been thinking about flying down the zip line straight toward him.
He wasn’t going through this again.
He stepped away from the landing platform as Tasha jerked to a halt at the end of the line, grunting as the cable bit painfully into her chest.
He might be a gentleman—though even that was questionable—but he damn sure wasn’t a martyr.
Quinn rubbed the spot at the back of his head that was still sore from this morning’s tumble to the rooftop. No. He wasn’t going to get rammed into again.
Not even for the cute, smart, incredibly brave woman who just happened to be glaring holes through him at the moment.
He stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Is there something I can help you with?” he asked, and then leaped into action when he spied something out of the corner of his eye.
“Yes, you—” Tasha broke off as Quinn lunged at her, his hands grasping for the waistband of her shorts like some deranged rapist.
“Stop it!” she ordered and slapped ineffectually at his searching fingers.
Quinn grabbed her by the front of her shirt and yanked her hard against his chest. Tasha felt the air whoosh out of her lungs as she stared up at him, unsure whether her reaction was in response to being manhandled or from the sudden way her heart started fluttering as they once again made full body contact.
God, he smelled good.
And felt good, all pressed up against her, his body hard in all the right places.
Tasha blinked.
No. No, no, no. She could not feel this way about someone like Quinn Hayes.
She struggled against him, trying to get him to let her go, but he just kept fumbling at her waistband with one hand while the other held her pressed to his chest.
“Stop squirming, damn it,” he said roughly as Tasha became uncomfortably aware that he had another hard-on.
“Are you on Viagra?” she muttered.
She felt his arms go around her waist then, and her feet came off the ground as he took a step backward, away from the landing platform. Startled, she squealed and wrapped her arms around Quinn’s neck to keep from falling as she realized that rather than trying to unzip her shorts, he’d unclipped her from the zip line.
Tasha looked up into his greenish brown eyes and felt as if her heart had stopped. The same force that had sucker punched her this morning hit her again and she shivered against the force of it.
She couldn’t be attracted to him. He was a bad, bad man.
But her warning to herself dissipated like mist in the morning sunlight when Quinn leaned into her, his firm, warm body pressing into hers as his mouth stopped just a breath away from hers.
“Who needs Viagra? I’ve got you,” he said softly.
Then, as if he couldn’t stop himself, he lowered his head that last inch, his eyes on hers the whole time. Tasha knew she should let go of him. Move her head back. Anything. Especially since her little sister was standing right there, gaping at them.
Instead, she licked her bottom lip in an age-old come-on, her mouth opening in anticipation of Quinn’s kiss.
And, omigod, he might be a bad, bad man, but he was a good, good kisser.
Tasha heard herself let out a noise that sounded like a purr as Quinn’s tongue touched hers, then the purr turned to a breathy moan when he sucked her into his mouth. She felt her entire body go limp and hot and wet and, without even thinking about where she was or what she was doing or who was watching, she let her hands slide down Quinn’s back until his tight, firm butt was filling her palms. She’d always been a sucker for a guy with a cute ass and, even through the fabric of Quinn’s khakis, she could feel that his was world-class.
Unable to help herself, Tasha squeezed, and his hips pulsed forward, his erection letting her know that he was just as affected by her as she was by him
.
With his hands still splayed against her back, pressing her to him, Quinn lifted his head.
“I’ve never been more happy to own a hotel as I am at this moment,” he said, sliding one hand up her back to bury his fingers in the hair at the base of her neck.
Tasha shivered and swallowed, trying to get a few brain cells to start firing again. “Why’s that?” she asked.
“Because when this is all over we need to get a room.” With his mouth quirked up into a half-grin, Quinn leaned down again and kissed the tip of her nose, then slowly let his arms fall to his sides.
Bemused, Tasha blinked, trying to process what he’d just said.
They needed to get a room?
When what was over?
She looked up, intending to ask just that, then clamped her mouth closed when Quinn turned his attention to the landing platform. She hissed in a breath when she realized that she had been followed.
As Jorge Acosta unclipped himself from the zip line, Tasha suddenly realized what Quinn had been doing earlier. He hadn’t been fumbling with her shorts. He was merely trying to get her out of the way so Acosta wouldn’t land on top of her.
And she’d misread it as a pass.
She was such an idiot.
Soon to be a dead idiot, because Acosta would surely recognize her from this morning, and he didn’t seem like the type to appreciate a good joke. Especially not when the joke was on him.
“I’ll take care of this,” Quinn said in a voice that made Tasha shiver.
Acosta stepped off the platform and Quinn strode forward to meet him. Tasha wished she knew what to do.
Running and hiding in the jungle was an appealing option.
“Who’s that?” Celie whispered as she sidestepped over a dead vine to reach Tasha’s side.
“Jorge Acosta,” Tasha answered shortly. “He’s rumored to be the corrupt leader of a secret police force here in Costa Playa that does the president’s dirty work. Not a nice guy.”
As Celie shuffled closer, Tasha scanned the clearing, looking for anything she might use as a weapon if Acosta attacked. There were several small rocks and twigs on the jungle floor, but nothing that looked too lethal.
Catch of the Day Page 20
