Crazy Hearts

by Tara Janzen

  But this old guy didn’t have a chance against her. Even at five feet, five inches and a hundred and twenty pounds she was one of the agency’s big bad girls - and most of the time she had enough sense to stay away from the big bad boys. Why Corday was different, she didn’t even want to know.

  Her mojito came, and in between paying for it and pocketing her change, she slipped the silver cigarette case out of her bodice and set it next to Jack’s beer with her hand covering it.

  Or maybe all she needed was a vacation, just a little time off to recharge.

  “Thanks, sugar,” the redhead drawled on Jack’s other side. “Or should I be saying muchas gracias, azucar?”

  Despite her best efforts, Lani’s damn annoyed sigh escaped her.

  Squidbreath did not seem to notice.

  “It’s no problem, ma’am,” he said. “I’m happy to help.”

  Lani didn’t doubt it for a moment. Every guy she knew was happy to help redheads who were practically falling out of their halter tops.

  “I like a helpful man,” the redhead said, her voice a low, intimate purr. “Maybe we could get together later and party.”

  “Maybe we could, ma’am.”

  Oh, for crying out loud, Lani thought.

  With the cigarette case on the bar between them, it was time for her to pick up her drink and wander off. Instead, in her estimation, and much to her irritation, Panama Jack was far too distracted by the redheaded woman to be left alone with the case. Damn Benjamin Neville for bringing a tradecraft rookie in on her mission, and why in the hell hadn’t she noticed Lieutenant Corday’s shortcomings earlier?

  Because you spent too much time staring at his butt, Lani girl.

  Well, hell. She couldn’t deny it.

  Stalling, she took a sip of the mojito and let her gaze drift across the mirror behind the bar - until it slammed into a black-eyed gaze locked onto her like a tractor beam, Alek Zhivkov, a.k.a. Zhivkov the Butcher. She swore one succinct word. She had ten rounds in an XDM Compact .45 in her purse, and if this deal got salty, his name was going on the one she kept in the chamber. Zhivkov had a long, sordid list of international crimes as a Russian Mafia enforcer, mostly in human trafficking, and she hated to see him branching out into her neck of the woods, illegal arms sales. As for Nikolayevich, if Zhivkov was checking up on him, she gave him a month on the outside, before he was dead.

  It was time to run, and the smart money said she should take the case with her, but she no sooner closed her hand around it, than Corday’s hand came around hers, holding onto her like he was never going to let her go.

  Twenty minutes, Jack thought. That’s how late she’d been getting to Las Palmas, twenty minutes of hell, and now she thought she was going to skip out on him?

  He didn’t think so. A minute ago, she could have left as planned. Thirty seconds ago, he might still have let her go, but not now, not under the current circumstances.

  “Later then, sugar,” the flirty redhead said, turning and walking away, thankfully at an angle that didn’t impede his line of sight to the lobby.

  Jack turned back to his beer, shifting his gaze to the mirror to keep everyone in sight, including his hand-holding partner. The light in the bar was dim, but he still got an eyeful.

  Zebra stripes. Wow. If he’d thought she looked good in muddy camos, Lani Powell flat-out owned him in a strapless, black and white-striped mini-dress, and here he was again, just a little bit upside down and inside out.

  “You were followed,” he said. Despite the redhead trying to distract him, he’d known the instant Lani had entered Las Palmas, and he’d known the instant she’d slipped in next to him at the bar, but he hadn’t known that the bare curves of her shoulders and the upper curves of her breasts were so creamily, silkily beautiful, or that her skin had a golden glow. He hadn’t known he had such a weakness for bad-girl make-up and leather cuff bracelets.

  He had known he had a weakness for her, and the damned torturous twenty minutes he’d spent wondering where in the hell she was had proved it the hard way.

  “Roger, that,” she acknowledged.

  “And the guy who followed you, the one lost in the flowers back in the lobby, has called in his reinforcements. The black-haired man coming in through the French doors and staring a hole in your back looks like rough trade, and the bald guy walking in from the rear of the bar is planning on cutting off your escape.”

  He saw her shift her gaze beyond the bar to the far corner of the room.

  “Rough trade’s name is Alek Zhivkov,” she said, “also known as Zhivkov the Butcher. Baldy is Dmitri Yudin.”

  Somehow, her knowing all these guys didn’t improve his mood.

  “Anglo-Saxon jungle queen doing business with old-school Russians in the heart of Panama City, I guess that’s what globalization is all about,” he said, trying to keep the tightness out of his voice, and failing. “We can either fight our way out of here or give them what they want. How important is the silver case under your hand?”

  “It’s electro-magnetically encrypted with the BIC-code of a shipping container holding a load of stolen, third generation SAMs, French Mistral, Russian SA-18, and Stinger B missiles headed toward Afghanistan.”

  Fight to the death, then, dammit. Their deaths, not his, and sure as hell not hers, which meant run.

  “There’s a stairway on the balcony that leads to the rooftop restaurant, and—“

  “A fire escape down the back of the hotel,” she interrupted him.

  Good, he thought. They’d both done their homework, and with enough speed, they should be able to get some distance on the Russians.

  “You take the case, babe, and run like hell.”

  Smart girl, she didn’t waste a second buying into his plan. Scooping up the case, she turned away from the bar and slipped into the crowd. He was right behind her—and right behind them were the Russians. He heard the commotion of them bulling their way through the people packing the room.

  Quick on her feet, his girl made it to the balcony five yards ahead of him. In the few extra seconds it took him to get outside, she had already covered the open ground to the broad, stone staircase and was halfway to the first landing, darting her way through people heading upstairs to dine. At midnight, the restaurant would still be busy, and there was a good chance they could slip onto the fire escape before the Russians spotted them.

  He caught her on the second landing, and as unobtrusively as possible, the two of them breezed past the hostess and crossed through the maze of tables and diners, heading to the north wall of the building. When they reached the fire escape, Lani quickly stepped over the side, onto the top rung, and started down. He followed, damned impressed that they’d shaken the bad guys.

  But then someone swore and she stopped.

  “Oh, excuse me,” she said between a rapid-fire stream of angry Spanish. “I’m sorry, oh . . . excuse me.”

  What in the hell was going on, he wondered, trying to look below him. He couldn’t see much, staring down into darkness, but she at least started moving again, even though she was still murmuring apologies and someone else was still swearing. A few more rungs down, when he reached the first landing, the situation became crystal clear. Anywhere else in the world, a metal ladder bolted to the side of a building and occasionally interspersed with small metal landings was called a fire escape. In Casco Viejo on a Friday night fueled by seco con leche and rum, it was called Lover’s Lane.

  Clothing was coming off here and there, a jacket, a scarf, a shoe, and buttons were coming undone on every landing all the way to the street.

  So much for the afternoon he’d spent planning escape routes. He shrugged out of his too-damn-easy-to-spot white suit jacket and left it hanging on the railing with the other folks’ clothes.

  When they reached the second landing, someone from above shouted down in thick, Russian-accented Spanish, “Alto!” Stop!

  Not very damn likely, Jack thought. Some of these folks were past the “stopping�
� part of the evening. Except he stopped, and Lani stopped, and in the instant of silence between the shouted command and the torrent of verbal abuse directed back up from the people crowding the fire escape, he had a brilliantly tactical idea—camouflage.

  Pulling her close, he wrapped her zebra-striped curves in his arms and pressed her up against the building. Instinct more than brains brought his mouth down on hers, and pure, unadulterated pleasure, sweet and intense, kept it there, moment after lush, sensual moment as her lips parted, welcoming him inside, and so it would have gone, an endless kiss into something more, with her hot body pressed up against his, if the Russians had left.

  They did not.

  Over the side they came, pushing and shouting for the lovers to get out of their way.

  He obliged, pushing Lani ahead of him down the last rungs of the fire escape. Back on the ground, he took her hand in his, and they ran down the nearest alley. In less than a block, they’d left the elegant and brightly lit world of Las Palmas behind and entered the maze of cobblestone streets and narrow walkways that made up the barrio section of the historic old town. He held to a northwest course, making for one of the main streets where they could catch a taxi to the embassy.

  The music coming from the hotel’s bar grew fainter with every step they took, giving him ample opportunity to silently wonder what in the ever-loving world had he be thinking? He’d manhandled a C.I.A. agent, kissed a spy, ran his hands up the side of her amazing curves and loved every second of it. And in the middle of a rocky escape, way too much of his brain was wondering how to do it again.

  The sound of a gunshot zipping down the alley cleared all that nonsense out of his mind in a nano-second. He shoved his shoulder hard against the first wooden door he saw, wrenching the door handle at the same time, and the two of them burst into the overgrown courtyard of an abandoned house.

  One thing he really liked about working with her, besides the rare opportunity to kiss the stuffing out of her, was that the two of them thought a lot alike. If this was going to turn into a shoot-out, they needed cover, which she spotted the same time he did, a set of large iron doors hanging half open on the ground floor that must have served as the home’s service entrance. She all but dove inside, with him right behind her, almost on top of her, with another shot whacking into the door behind them.

  “Cripes!” she swore, breathing hard, her face dirt-streaked, her dress ruined. She was low to the ground, crouched behind the door, looking out the door with a semi-auto pistol in her hands that looked to be .45 caliber—his favorite.

  “We’ve got two problems,” he said, his gaze quartering the part of the courtyard he could see without exposing himself. He could tell she was doing the same over on her side

  “The Russians and the cops,” she said.

  “Exactly.” Neither of them wanted to explain their situation to the Panamanian government, local or otherwise. “There’s got to be a door that opens onto the street, and we’re less than a block off the sea wall. If we can get to the water, we can get to a boat.”

  “You’re thinking like a SEAL.”

  He almost grinned. “Sweetheart, I am a SEAL.”

  Another shot hit the iron door, and he aimed for the muzzle flash, squeezing off a round that hit something that grunted and moaned.

  “Down by one,” she said, then fired. “Make that two.”

  Yeah, he’d heard something else collapse out there with a groan, but there was still a lot of rustling and stumbling going on in the courtyard.

  “I think there are more than just the three guys we saw in the Las Palmas,” he said.

  “I agree. We need to move out, if we’re going to get out.”

  God, they were good together.

  “I’ll lay down some fire, try to hold their attention back here while you go out the front.”

  “I’ll meet you at the sea wall.” Once again, there was no debate. She took the plan and ran with it, literally, and after a moment’s hesitation at the front door to check out the street, she disappeared into the darkness.

  He fired a couple more rounds into the courtyard to give the Russians something to think about, and followed her out. They were going to make it.

  Then he heard a shot.

  Lani heard it, too.

  Worse, she’d felt it burn a path across her shoulder. Halfway over the sea wall, she dropped like a stone onto the beach, shocked into losing her grip. She’d never been shot before, and the pain was disorientating. She tried to catch her breath and check herself out, and cursed herself for losing her gun. Before she’d even begun to think straight, let alone decide if she’d done more damage to herself by falling than by getting shot, Jack was there by her side, grim-faced and serious.

  “Lani?”

  “Flipper?” Okay, she wasn’t dying, and a few tentative moves convinced her she hadn’t broken anything. “Help me up.”

  “You’re bleeding. Where are you hurt?” His voice was smooth and calm, and just hearing it helped sooth her jangled nerves. He was with her, and they were going to make it out of here—Yes, ma’am, I can take care of you, one hundred percent guaranteed.

  “My right shoulder.”

  He looked at the wound and swore softly under his breath. “You’re just skinned, babe, but I’m going to carry you.”

  “Good idea.” It was going to take more time than they had for her to get steady on her feet, a fact proved by the shot fired from above. It hit the water, ten feet out, but was still way too damn close.

  He turned and raised his pistol in one smooth move, aiming a precise shot toward the top of the wall, and a body came over the side, landing in the sand with a deathly thud.

  “Change in plans,” he said, kicking off his shoes and stripping off his slacks. “We’re heading out to sea.”

  Another good idea, really, but Lani didn’t see a boat anywhere close to where they were beached. Then she did see some boats, a lot of boats, moored at the Muelle Fiscal wharf, but the wharf was a long way away.

  “How far can you swim?” She thought it was a question worth asking, especially as how he’d already picked her up and was carrying her out into the water.

  “Miles,” he assured her.

  “Yes, but how far can you swim with me?” With the Pacific Ocean lapping at her butt, that was the sticking point.

  He just grinned and kissed the tip of her nose as they sunk into the water and he turned her over onto her back. “Even farther,” he said.

  “The saltwater hurts like hell.” And it did, burning like a brand where the bullet had sliced her skin open. For a moment, all she wanted was out of the water, and she started to panic.

  But his voice came to her, steady as a rock. “I was born in Alabama, in the northern part of the state, and when I was five, my folks packed us all up, my two brothers, one sister, and me and we moved over to Louisiana. Now there’s a great state.”

  Stroke after stroke, they headed into deeper water on a course that would take them to the wharf, where - in between telling her his life story - he informed her they would “borrow” a boat.

  He never faltered, not once, not for an instant, but she did. By the time he got her into one of the motorized canoes the locals called piraguas, she felt half dead, feverish, and like she might not make it. But he knew better.

  “You’re doing great, Lani. Just hang in there. We’re almost home. Everything is going to be okay.”

  Home was the U.S. Embassy. Across the bay, she could see the lights of central Panama City, and as they came up to the Balboa Monument, she knew he was right. Home wasn’t very far away.

  Slowly, with effort, she brought her hand up to the bodice of her dress and felt the silver cigarette case still secure in the secret pocket.

  Yes, she thought. Everything was going to be okay.

  Epilogue

  Four months later, somewhere in Louisiana

  “Hey, babe, you want to hand me that bait can?” she asked.

  Fishing had been
his idea. Jack would be the first to admit it, but who in the world would have guessed his secret agent girlfriend would take to it like a duck to water?

  Not him, that was for damn sure, or he might have held off for a few years.

  Whether she was after largemouth bass, crappie, or a mess of bream and shellcracker for supper, Little Miss Blondie left his bed way too damn early every morning to get down to the lake and start casting her line.

  From where he was stretched out on the dock, he rolled over and looked in the white plastic bucket she’d brought down. The water was murky in the bucket.

  “What have you got in here?”

  “Ditch shrimp.”

  “You go, girl,” he said around a yawn, pushing the bait bucket in her direction.

  He was on leave, and she was still on hiatus, and hiatus looked good on her, almost as good as her Daisy Duke cut-offs and bikini top. Barefoot and suntanned, her hair had gotten long enough for a little ponytail in back, and he knew she liked sporting one around.

  He liked sporting her around, taking her down to the nearest backwater roadhouse for crawfish and zydeco, and every night, bringing her back to their cabin in the swamp oak and tupelo forest, where he made love to her by the light of a southern moon.

  Down on the end of the dock, she got a bite, her cane pole dipping toward the water, and with a dimpled smile and a short laugh, she pulled the fish in and got busy baiting another shrimp on her line. From this angle, he could see the scar across her shoulder from the night she’d been shot. She thought it made her look tough.

  He thought she was tough.

  “What did you get?” he asked, more to be polite than any actual interest. It was too early in the morning to be interested in fish.

  “Bluegill.” She looked up with the smile still on her face.