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SHOW NO MERCY - Book 1 Black Ops Inc.
Pocket Books
Book No. 1 - "Black Ops Inc."
ISBN-10: 1416566724
ISBN-13: 978-1416566724
OCTOBER 2008
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
New York Times Best Selling book!
Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Nominee
The sultry heat . . .
Only two things can compel journalist Jenna McMillan back to Buenos Aires after terrorists held her captive there just months before: a rare interview with a shadowy billionaire and the memory of the dark and dangerous man who saved her. . . .
Hides the deadliest threats . . .
Bad guys, bombs, and bullets are Gabriel Jones’s way of life. But he’ll never forget the brash redhead he rescued not so long ago . . . or the passionate kiss they shared before he sent her packing.
And exposes the deepest desires. . . .
Now, forced together by a bombing at the National Congress, Jenna and Gabe confront the urgent longings that simmer between them. But this surprise meeting is no coincidence. A ruthless enemy stalks them with deadly precision. The question is . . . if they make it out alive, will Gabe turn his back on Jenna . . . again?
EXCERPT: SHOW NO MERCY - Book No. 1 - "Black Ops Inc. "
Gabe Jones assessed his surroundings through closed eyes, heavy and gritty with sleep. Drug induced, he concluded, and breathed deep to clear his head.
Clean, he realized, attempting to ID the scent. Not sterile. Lavender, maybe. He shifted a shoulder, turned his head and sank into luxury. Down pillows. Expensive linens.
Finally, he opened his eyes to soft, slanting sunlight that shone through tall narrow windows, then glanced off gleaming hardwood floors in flickering prisms of blue, yellow and green.
It was morning. But of what day?
He lifted his arm to check his watch. Gone. Then he slid his hand down beneath the sheet to discover that his clothes were also gone.
He might have been alarmed, maybe should have been, except he recognized the style and the opulence of his quarters.
He was lying in a huge bed in the middle of an equally large bedroom. Tall plastered walls had been painted a cool shade of blue. Pricey artwork hung everywhere, adorned dressers, bookcases. Ornate, expensive furniture – the woman loved her dead kings – filled the room. Sheer panels billowed softly in an ocean-scented breeze that eased in through floor to ceiling windows.
An oasis. Juliana’s oasis. Yeah, he recognized her touch. May have even slept in this bed once before.
The question was, why was he here now?
And the bigger question, why was there a long, leggy and very mouthy redhead sound asleep in a chair beside the bed? And the mother of all questions: Why would a woman who had hated his guts on first sight and from all indications hadn’t changed her opinion in the nine months since she’d left Argentina be holding vigil at his side.
He stared at Jenna McMillan’s sleeping face. At the generous, ripe mouth that could fool an unsuspecting man into thinking that only sweetness and light and uncensored sex could possibly slip between those lush, sensual lips. At the thick turn of auburn lashes that brushed her cheeks and covered eyes the color of forest moss. Eyes, he reminded himself, that could shoot daggers at a moment’s notice and slice a man’s ego to the quick.
The woman was a pest, a nuisance and the worst kind of trouble. So why was he fighting to convince himself he wasn’t glad to see her?
Drugs, he concluded. Juliana had doused him with some heavy-duty painkillers.
But that didn’t answer the most obvious question. What was Jenna doing here in Argentina?
He lay his head back down on the pillow, stared at the ceiling and tapped his memory for answers.
They flooded in like the sunlight deluging the room.
The stake out.
The machine gunner.
Jenna on the steps of the Congress building.
The car bomb.
Slowly, the rest of the details filed together into a progressive line. He’d come to in Doc’s make-shift ER in back of the cantina. Juliana had been there. Had told him he needed surgery on his leg.
His leg. Shit. Oh, shit. His leg.
Panic boiled up in his gut with a roiling nausea. He braced himself, then jerked the sheet aside. Forced himself to look down.
It was still there.
Sweet Jesus God, his leg was still there. Wrapped from knee to ankle in thick, sterile dressing, but it was there.
Relief made him light-headed.
The soft rustle of fabric made him realize he had an audience. And he was laying there bare-ass naked.
“I … um … you’re … oh, gosh … awake.”
He turned his head, said nothing. Only watched as Jenna stiffly straightened in the chair and made several valiant attempts to keep her gaze above his lap level.
Tried and failed.
And damn, if his dick didn’t react to those huge, hungry eyes licking across his body and to the brilliant shade of red flooding her cheeks.
“So it would seem,” he said, his voice gravel rough with knee-jerk carnal need.
A need that pissed him off. And apparently, left the woman with the most wicked mouth south of the equator, speechless.
More for his benefit than hers, he reached for the sheet and tugged it across his lap. Then he watched her face as a breath she must have been holding for the better part of a minute, eased out.
“How long have I been out of it?”
She made a big production of stretching and yawning in a failed attempt to look casual. “Since yesterday.”
A day. He’d lost a day. And Juliana had brought him to Bahia Blanca.
“How are you feeling?” Her voice lacked its usual bravado as she dragged a handful of long, unruly red hair away from her eyes and tucked it behind her ear.
Like I’ve been broad-sided by a two-by-four. Both his head and his leg throbbed like a bitch. But he wasn’t going there. He had plenty of questions of his own. And he wanted plenty of answers.
He lifted his hand to his itchy jaw. When he connected, he realized why. Thick stubble. He hated stubble.
“I … um … my Dad. He broke his leg once.”
He turned his head, stared into uncertainty.
Where was she going with this?
“He had to spend some time in … bed.”
Jesus, was she blushing?
“His beard … well. I remember how it drove him crazy,” she went on, looking at the wall, looking out the window, at the floor, anywhere but at him. “I … used to give him shaves. I … guess I could … give you one. If you’d want me to, that is.”
If he hadn’t already been flat on his back, her offer would have slammed him there even though she sounded about as anxious to perform the personal task as she would be to walk into a pool of quicksand.
And yet she had offered.
Interesting.
Because she’d felt obligated? Wanted to make him feel obligated? Or was it the old inherent nurturing gene kicking in? He hadn’t thought she had one.
Or maybe she’s just being nice, Jones.
Yeah, that was going to happen.
He was about to say no thank you, don’t bother, but something stopped him. Maybe it was the obvious reluctance on her face. Maybe it was the fact that he hated living with stubble.
Maybe he just felt mean and nasty and pissed that he was so weak and he wanted to make her squirm a little more.
“Yeah. Sure. Knock yourself out,” he said finally then watched her face as surprise registered followed by suspicion followed by determination to soldier on.
When she stood, he closed his eyes, drifted on the aftermath of sedation and gnawing pain to the sound of water running in the adjoining bathroom.
He didn’t have it in him to flinch when a hot, wet cloth caressed his face and roused him. Without opening his eyes, he let a breath of tension ease out. Damn. It felt good. And as she eased a hip onto the edge of the mattress then pulled a bedside stand close, he realized she smelled good. Musky and sweet. Like a woman. Like sex.
He measured his breaths.
Forced himself not to open his eyes, knew that the combo of tactile and visual sensations would shoot him toward terrain studded with landmines.
Deep breaths, dumb ass.
You’re in control here.
Damn right he was. For all of a nanosecond.
When she removed the cloth and carefully spread shaving gel over his lower face and throat, all of his erogenous zones stood up and took note.
Her hands were surprisingly steady. Her touch acutely soft and sensual.
It’s a shave, he told himself. Just a damn shave.
But when she leaned over him to gain better access and touched the razor to his jaw, her breast brushed his bare chest and his traitorous dick stirred to life beneath the sheet.
He fought to swallow a groan.
Fought and failed.
She pulled back like she'd been stung. "What? Did I nick you?"
If only. Nothing like a little blood loss to bring a man to his senses.
He made a major tactical error then. He opened his eyes. Met hers. Reacted with his he-man gene when distress furrowed her brow, darkening her irises to sea green as her gaze flicked from his eyes to his face and back again.
“No.” His voice was thick with arousal. He cleared his throat. “No. I’m fine. It’s all … fine.”
Just fuckin’ fine.
Even more than the dull throbbing pain in his calf and the pounding in his head, he felt a keen, pulsing awareness of her hip pressing against him, of her woman’s heat melding with his. Felt a raw, urgent need to pull all that soft, yielding warmth against him and satisfy the ache in his groin.
He folded his hands over his lap to hide the tenting action going on underneath the sheets.
Sonofabitch. He did not want to react to this woman on any level other than indifference. Yet here he was. Raised to full mast, ready to set sail in a sea of wet, steamy sex.
It was all wrong. He didn’t want to react to anyone or anything. It was how he ran his life. It was how he stayed alive. Yet somehow from the first moment he’d seen Jenna McMillan, she’d managed to test every self-defense mechanism he’d ever erected.
Suddenly he was tired. So tired, he let down his guard. When she paused to rinse the razor, he met her eyes again. And in them, he saw the last thing he needed to see.
A responding physical pull.
An answering chemical heat.
The same combustible attraction that he damn well didn’t want to acknowledge let alone give in to.
And, damn it, that wasn’t all. Underlying all the animal magnetism, he sensed something that thickened this messy stew of sensations.
She cared about him. At least she thought she did.
When in the hell had that happened?
And when had what she cared started to matter to him?
She went back to work with the razor – and damn if the answer wasn’t painfully obvious: He’d started to care the moment he’d first set eyes on her, embattled from her abduction, scared out of her mind, poised to defend herself with a damn iron frying pan.
Jesus, she’d been something.
She was something. Something special. Too special for the likes of him. Which is why he’d intended to quit caring the day he’d let her walk out of his life at the Ezeiza airport nine months ago.
Yeah, he’d let her go when he’d known he could have made her stay. That should have been his first clue. The woman meant more to him than a quick lay and a quicker good-bye.
And now she was here. It pissed him off to react so strongly to her. Made him mean because mean was the only way he knew how to react to all this need.
“What are you doing here?” he growled, weary of wrestling with feelings he was never going to act on anyway.
His gruff question startled her. Her cheeks turned that amazing shade of red again. And though he was certain she wasn’t aware of it, she’d bitten her lower lip between her teeth. Nervous. He was making her nervous. Good.
Join the club, sweetheart.
Very slowly, she let her lip slide out, all plump and perfect and pink.
And poison, he reminded himself. She had a mouth on her as lethal as belladonna. And a helluva lot of nerve to show up down here again and fuck with his head.
“Here? As in here, here? I’m giving you a shave.”
He shot her a stone cold glare to tell her just how cute he thought she wasn’t. “That’s not what I asked you.”
Again, that lush lower lip disappeared between her teeth.
Her eyes – green like jungle ferns now – were wide and evasive. “You mean, what am I doing in Argentina?”
“That would be the money question, yeah.”
She seemed to consider as she rinsed the razor again then slid it expertly from cheek to jaw. “I’m on vacation.”
And he was the queen of England.
She was not only sucking that amazing lip through her teeth as she concentrated, he got the feeling she might also be lying through her teeth.
She was hiding something. Big surprise. The question was what and why?
“On vacation. Is that a fact?”
“It is, yeah.”
Her body language gave her away. And he wasn’t letting up on her.
“So … your vacation just happened to land you at the Congress building at the very same time a bomb went off.”
She looked away as she rinsed the razor. “Some coincidence, huh?”
He gave her his best hard ass look. “Just so you know, I don’t believe in the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny or coincidence.” God he was tired. “Wanna try again?”
That brought on a world class scowl. “You know what, I don’t think I like your tone.”
He barked out a laugh, wished he hadn’t when pain lashed through his head. He reached up, touched his temple and discovered a knot the size of a hen’s egg. “And I don’t think I give a shit. Now what were you really doing there?”
“That would fall into the ‘none of your business’ category.” Belligerence times ten.
He snagged the towel from her hand when she started to pat his jaw dry.
“I’ve got a hole in my calf the size of your explanation.” He dragged the towel over his face. “You’ll understand if I think that makes it my business.”
“Tell you what.” She busied herself gathering the shaving paraphernalia. “Why don’t you tell me what you were doing there?”
He glared at her.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” She rose and headed for the bathroom. “What’s good for the goose doesn’t cut it for the gander.”
Swearing, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, dragging the sheet across his lap as he did – and the room went red, white and blue stars when he sat up straight.
Warm hands gripped his shoulders and eased him back down on the pillow before he took a header onto the white cypress floor.
“You’ve also got a concussion, so just settle down and try to lie still.”
Fuck.
He closed his eyes. Breathed deep and swallowed back slick, rolling nausea.
“Need a bowl?”
He sucked in two more breaths. “No. I’m okay.”
“Yeah and I’m that tooth fairy you don’t believe in.”
She made to move away again. He latched onto her wrist, held tight with all the puny strength left in him. “We’re not … finished,” he mumbled and knew he was about to slip under again.
“Yeah, I figured that.” A softness in her voice almost sounded like affection. “But for now, you need to sleep, okay? Just sleep.”
She didn’t have to tell him twice. The soothing sound of her voice, the softness of her fingers gently prying his off her wrist and the residual pain medication sluicing around in his blood stream all took a toll.
He drifted off to the caress of her hand across his forehead, the feel of cool sheets beneath him and a reverently whispered, “Holy, holy cow,” as the top sheet abruptly lifted then settled back down over his lower body.
TAKE NO PRISONERS - Book 2 Black Ops Inc.Pocket Books
Book No. 2 - "Black Ops Inc. "
ISBN-10: 1416566740
ISBN-13: 978-1416566748
NOVEMBER 2008
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
New York Times Best Selling book!
Rita Winner - Best Romantic Suspense
RITA finalist!
A dangerous attraction . . .
Abbie Hughes no longer trusts men, but despite her cool indifference, her long legs and showgirl face still draw plenty of advances. Between working as a Vegas blackjack dealer, going to school, and keeping an eye on her younger brother, Cory, there’s no time for romance—until the night a sexy, mysterious stranger places a wager at her table.
Spurred by revenge . . .
Sam Lang left Black Ops, Inc. when tragedy struck his family. Although he’s determined to retire his M-16 rifle and K-bar knife to lead a quiet life on his ranch, a vengeful quest will send him on a dangerous manhunt for the ruthless international crime lord who murdered his sister.
. . . Reveals a savage threat they can’t ignore.
Though Sam suspects Abbie is in on a lucrative gem-smuggling deal her brother made with the enemy, their attraction is undeniable. Now Cory is missing, and together they search the wild backcountry of Honduras to find him. With evil on their trail and bearing down, they must trust each other completely or face certain death alone. . . .
Excerpt: Take No Prisoners - Book No. 2 - "Black Ops Inc. "
Abbie spotted the posterboy the minute she came back from break. It was hard not to. The guy was incredible looking. While she felt a little kernel of unease that he’d turned up again – where she worked this time – she wasn’t going to let it throw her off her stride.
The Vegas strip wasn’t all that big. Not really. There were only so many places for people to eat, sleep and gamble. When he drifted off twenty minutes or so later without so much as looking her way, she chalked it up to coincidence. Just as she found it coincidental that the tall man with the dark eyes and short dark hair who’d been playing the slot beside the golden boy ambled over to the black jack tables.
Big guy. The western cut white shirt and slim, crisp Wrangler jeans told her he was a real cowboy. The kind who made their living in the saddle, not the kind who just dressed the part. He was confident but quiet with it, she decided as she dealt all around to her full table then cut another glance the big guy’s way.
He stood a few feet back from the tables, arms crossed over a broad chest, long legs planted about a shoulder width apart, eyes intent on the action on the blackjack table next to hers. On any given night there were a lot of lookers in a casino so it wasn’t unusual that he stood back from the crowd and just watched. What was unusual was that between deals, her gaze kept gravitating back to him.
What was even more curious was that when one of her players scooped up his chips and wandered off, leaving the third base chair empty, Abbie found herself wishing the tall cowboy would take his place.
What was up with that? And what was up with the little stutter step of her heart when he ambled over, nodded hello and eased his lean hips onto the chair.
“Howdy,” she said with what she told herself was a standard, welcoming smile.
He answered with a polite nod as he reached into his hip pocket and dug out his wallet. When she’d paid and collected bets all around, he tossed a hundred dollar bill onto the table.
Abbie scooped it up, counted out one hundred in chips from the chip tray, then spread them on the green felt table top for him to see. After he’d gathered them in and stacked them in front of him, she tucked the hundred into the slot in front of her.
“Place your bets,” she said to the table of seven, then dealt the first round face-up from the shoe. When all players had two cards face up, she announced her own total. “Dealer has thirteen.”
Her first base player asked for a hit, which busted him. When she got to cute quiet cowboy, he waved his hand over his cards, standing pat with eighteen.
You could tell a lot about a person from their hands. Abbie saw a lot of hands – polished and manicured, dirty and rough, thin and arthritic. The cowboy’s hands were big, like he was. His fingers were tan and long with blunt, clean nails, not buffed. Buffed, in her book, said pretentious. His were not. They were capable hands. A working man’s hands, with the occasional scar to show he was more than a gentleman rancher. Plenty of calluses. He dug in.
She liked him for that. Was happy for him when she drew a king, which busted her. “Luck’s running your way,” she said with a smile as she paid him.
He looked up at her then and for the first time she was hit with the full force of his smile. Shy and sweet, yet she got the distinct impression there was something dark and dangerous about him.
Whoa. Where had that come from? And what the heck was going on with her?
Hundreds – hell, thousands – of players sat at her table in any given month. Some were serious, some were fun and funny, some sad. And yeah, some of them deserved a second look. None of them, however, flipped her switches or tripped her triggers like this man was flipping and tripping them right now. It was unsettling as all get out.
“Place your bets,” she announced again then dealt around the table when all players had slid chips into their betting boxes.
Where the blond poster boy had been bad boy gorgeous, there wasn’t one thing about this man that suggested boy. Abbie pegged him for mid-thirties – maybe closer to forty, but it wasn’t anything physical that gave her that impression. He was rock solid and sort of rough and tumble looking. Dark brown hair, close cut, dark, dark brown eyes, all seeing. Nice face. Hard face. All edgy angles and bold lines.
Maybe that’s where the dangerous part came. He had a look about him that was both disconcerting and compelling. A presence suggesting experience and intelligence and a core solid confidence that needed no outward display or action to reinforce it.
He was the quintessential quiet hero type. Matthew McConaughey without the long hair and boyish charm – and with a shirt on, something McConaughey was generally filmed without. Although, the cowboy did have his own brand of charisma going on because he was sure as the world throwing her for a loop.
“Cards?” she asked him now.
“Double down.”
Smart player, she thought and split his pair of eights. She grinned again when he eventually beat the table and her on both cards.
“I think maybe you’re my luck.” He tossed a toke in the form of a red chip her way.
“Tip,” she said loud enough for her pit boss to hear, showed him the five-dollar chip before she pocketed it. “Thanks,” she said smiling at him.
“My pleasure.”
He spoke so softly that the only reason she understood what he said was because she was looking right at him. The din of the casino drowned out his words to anyone else at the table as the rest of the players talked and joked or commiserated with each other.
The next words out of his mouth – “What time do you get off?” – threw her for a complete loop.
She averted her gaze. “Place your bets,” she told the table at large thinking, Hokay. Quiet doesn’t necessarily equate to shy.
The man moved fast. Which both surprised and pleased her because it meant that all this ‘awareness’, for lack of a better word, wasn’t one-sided. It also made her a little nervous. Her first instinct was to give him her standard, Sorry. No fraternizing with the customers.
But then she got an image of a devil sitting on her shoulder – a red haired pixie devil with a remarkable resemblance to Crystal. “Don’t you dare brush him off. Look at him. Look! At! Him!”
She chanced meeting his eyes again – his expression was expectant but not pressuring – and found herself mouthing, “Midnight.”
A hint of a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Where?”
She didn’t hesitate nearly long enough. “Here.” God, what was she doing?
“Cards?” she asked the table.
He gave her the “Hit me” signal when she came around to him.
He broke twenty-one, shrugged.
“Sorry,” she said, liking the easy way he took the loss. “Better luck next time.”
“Counting on it.” He stood. “Later,” he said for her ears only then he strolled away from the table.
“Dealer pays sixteen,” she said absently as she paid all winners and surreptitiously watched what was arguably one of the finest Wrangler butts she’d ever seen get lost in a sea of gamblers.
FEEL THE HEAT - Book 4 Black Ops Inc.
Pocket Books
Book No. 4 - "Black Ops Inc. "
ISBN-10: 1439153604
ISBN-13: 978-1439153604
October 2009
BOOK DESCRIPTION:4 1/2 top Pick from Romantic Times
A RACE FOR SURVIVAL . . .
Bold, blond Defense Intelligence officer B. J. Chase isn’t exactly thrilled when she’s summoned from personal leave to investigate an alarming national security breach—until the suspicious death of a government official blows her covert mission sky high.
TURNS INTO A HEART-POUNDING ADVENTURE . . .
Gorgeous Black Ops bad boy Raphael Mendoza always feared his family’s dark history would haunt him. But he never expected it might hold the key to dismantling a rogue weapons system. Now with cool B.J. Chase posing as his hot babe fiancée, he returns to his uncle in Colombia to convince him he can be trusted with the family’s dirtiest business secrets.
. . . AND IGNITES A PASSIONATE FIRE.
Carrying out a deception among ruthless killers brings Rafe and B.J. too close to ignore the heat between them. Now, they must work together as the closest of partners as the countdown to international catastrophe closes in.
EXCERPT: FEEL THE HEAT - Book No. 4 - "Black Ops Inc. "
CHAPTER 1
B.J. Chase had worn her black tank top and khaki shorts too many hours to count in the Venezuelan climate where the heat and humidity were often measured in terms of ripe, riper and ‘for God’s sake, take a shower’.
Restless and on edge, she tapped her thumbs on the steering wheel of a rusted out red Jeep Cherokee, circa 1990, feeling a trail of perspiration trickle down her back. No time to worry about her deodorant letting her down now. Weeks of surveillance, back alley connections and righteous fieldwork were finally going to pay off. The deal was going down and it was going down tonight, right here on this dark, garbage littered back alley in Caracas.
“Provided Eduardo actually shows up,” B.J. reminded herself under her breath.
Oh, yeah … and she had to get out of here alive once he did.
Somewhere in the distance, the feral snarls of a cat fight rose above the rough idle of the Jeep’s motor. The driver’s seat creaked and groaned when she shifted behind the wheel. She’d bought the Jeep at a used car lot three weeks ago when she and three other DIA agents had first arrived in Caracas. The seat was sprung; the fenders were rusted out. Some genius had hacked off the top at some point and done a sloppy job of welding a roll bar to the frame. A spider web of cracks burst away from a bullet hole on the passenger side windshield. Beneath the pitted hood, the engine knocked like a Jehovah Witness rapping on a nonbeliever’s door but the guys in the motor pool at the U.S. Embassy had done a little tinkering and pronounced it sound. A luxury ride, it was not. B.J. didn’t need luxury. She needed speed and reliability and that’s what the Jeep would give her if this meet went sour and she had to burn rubber out of here.
She checked her watch, frowned. It was nearly three a.m. Eduardo was late.
“Where the hell is he?” she muttered into the commo mike hidden in the center of the Celtic cross that nestled in the dampness between her breasts.
“Cool your jets.” Maynard’s voice whispered sharply in her earpiece.
Like Hogan and Collins, Maynard wasn’t exactly thrilled that this was her show. They were older, had more seniority and were openly unimpressed with her military background, her education and the fact that she’d spearheaded this DIA operation from its inception back in DC nearly six months ago.
Nope, the boys didn’t like that she’d drawn team leader assignment. That was fine. They didn’t have to like it, just like they didn’t have to be impressed. They just had to do their job, which was guard her back. And regardless of the crude message implied by the set of brass balls that had mysteriously appeared on her desk the day after her immediate supervisor, Dale Sherwood, had put her in charge, she knew they would do it.
She tamped down her impatience then made herself draw a settling breath. She wished she had a piece of chocolate. Chocolate always calmed her but chocolate, in this heat, was off the table. So was breathing easy.
She felt more jumpy by the minute. Eduardo had set up this meet. He’d told her to come alone. Yeah, right. The three other DIA officers lurked in the shadows with a little insurance in the form of M-4’s with night scopes. She had, however, followed Eduardo’s instructions to park, flick the headlights three times, then kill them. Now she waited in the dark, heat pulsing from the potholed alley, sweat trickling between her shoulder blades and her breasts and soaking her shirt while her heart tripped at double time.
She had to believe he would show. Men like him – parasites without conscience or scruples – would sell out their own mothers for a helluva lot less than the $20K she’d already paid him for partial information. No way was Eduardo going to miss out on the other half of his forty grand that she would trade him tonight for the rest of the info he’d promised to deliver.
Yet when she searched the dark ahead of her all she could see were shadows. The alley was narrow and winding, flanked on both sides by an endless row of three and four story adobe and brick buildings. Some, she assumed, housed businesses, some residences. All but one, were dark. A pale light spilled out of a first story window several yards ahead of her. It was the only light other than the dim glow of the pale green gauges on the Jeep’s dashboard.
She lifted damp blond hair off her neck and swiped at the perspiration coating her nape. Her hair and humidity were not friends. Even though she’d used a scrunchie to wrestle the unruly mass of it into a tail, some of the thick, springy curls had escaped around her face.
“Heads up.” Hogan’s voice sounded in her earpiece. “There’s movement, your twelve o’clock.”
All of her senses slammed into overdrive. It was show time. They were finally going to get what they’d come for. Last March a cache of controversial computer files had been recovered in Colombia tying Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez to FARC – the communist rebel group intent on ousting the U.S.-friendly Colombian government from power. The treasure trove – found on a dead guerrilla leader's laptop during a military raid – had been just the tip of the iceberg. Since then, B.J. had been setting things in motion, ferreting out contacts, paring down informants and finally scoring tonight’s meet with Eduardo of no last name. He was supposed to provide enough additional Intel to make it possible for the US to ratchet up the pressure on Venezuela to stop aiding FARC without having to impose sanctions on one of America’s most important oil suppliers.
“Come on, come on,” she muttered under her breath, then damn near jumped out of her skin when she heard the sound of footsteps on the gritty pavement.
A man appeared out of the shadows: Eduardo. Short, swarthy, black hair hanging in a long braid down the middle of his back, a gold hoop in his left ear. If there was a conscience or a heart behind his cold hard eyes, both were buried so deep neither had seen the light of day in a very long while.
Now it got dicey. This is what she got paid the little bucks to do.
Her Glock 19 pressed against her right kidney where she’d tucked it into the waistband of her khaki shorts. The weight and pressure were both comforting and reassuring. So was the sawed-off 12 gauge shotgun lying lengthwise at her feet on the floor of the Jeep, stock facing the driver’s door.
She pulled up on the door handle, put her shoulder into it and pushed. The rusted hinges squawked but finally swung open. Her sandaled foot hit the pocked pavement. Mindful of both the position of the shotgun and her distance from it, she left the door open. “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to sho—“
Snick-click.
The distinctive metallic click of a safety on an AK-47 assault rifle had her freezing mid-sentence. Her heart rate ratcheted up to triple time as Eduardo stopped abruptly about three yards in front of her, slowly lifting his hands above his head.
A man dressed in a black wife beater and dark cammo cargo pants and wielding the AK stepped out from behind him. He gestured with the business end of the rifle for her to raise her hands too. “Up high. Let’s see ‘em, cara.”
The look on Eduardo’s face told her that he was as surprised as she was. And that they were both as good as dead if she didn’t do what she was told.
She didn’t want to be dead.
Stall, she thought, as adrenaline zipped through her blood like rocket fuel. She needed to make something happen until her back up took charge of the situation.
Very slowly, she lifted her hands, all the while inching closer to the open door of the jeep and the shotgun that lay just out of reach on the floor.
Where were they--?
Oh, God. Her runaway heart rate plummeted when she saw Maynard, Hogan and Collins suddenly illuminated by the beams of three powerful mag lights and marching slowly toward her.
Their hands were linked on top of their heads. Three men walking behind them pointed assault rifles at their backs, prodding them forward. The lot of them looked ready to chew nails. They were pissed and embarrassed that they’d been caught with their pants down. Join the club.
What kind of men were they dealing with that they could get the drop on experienced DIA field officers? Men, she quickly decided, who had either known they were coming, or men who had the skills the DIA officers lacked.
She cut a cautious glance toward the Jeep. Knew that if she was going to make a move, it had to be now.
She dove toward the 12 gauge.
The man with the AK struck like a viper. He grabbed her arm, yanked her away from the door then slammed her up against the vehicle.
“Not smart.” He pinned her against the Jeep with the weight of his body. “Now I’ll tell you again. Keep your hands where I can see them. That way no one gets hurt.”
And he could hurt her, she had no doubt about that. Hell, he could have killed her by now she thought as he turned Eduardo over to one of his men. One bullet. Close range. Clean and simple.
For whatever reason, she was still fit and fine. The others were fine too. Which gave her reason to hope that they still had a prayer of getting out of this alive. To do that, she had to play heads up ball which meant she had to work through the adrenaline rush that mixed with fear and made her shaky, and quickly assess her adversary.
This close, it wasn’t that difficult. The face that met hers, mere inches away was not a face she would expect to meet in a dark alley on the wrong side of a mission that was rapidly heading south. Wholesome was the word that came to mind. Altar boy angelic – if one could overlook the assault rifle.
The tattoo she’d caught a glimpse of on his upper arm appeared to be of a cross of some sort that did not, however, put her in mind of altars or boys. Neither did the gold crucifix that hung from his neck and lay against a broad chest so smooth it could have been waxed.
His eyes were dark, almost black, like the hair that he wore cut military close. His skin was caramel toned, his face clean-shaven and flawless but for a small, triangular scar that rode at the left corner of a full, sensuous mouth. She was used to assessing and cataloguing adversaries on the fly. What she wasn’t used to was thinking of the enemy in terms of disarmingly handsome – or that she would be ultra sensitive to the fact that he was plastered so tightly against her she could feel the heat radiating off his body like a pulse.
He wasn’t a big man – maybe five nine, five ten – but the body pressed against hers was as lean and hard as the Jeep at her back. The steely grip on her arm was capable of inflicting pain – yet he only used it to control her.
Something about him made her think he’d spent some time in the States. He was clean, his bearing disciplined and practiced. He knew exactly what he was doing, where his men were and how to take control. Situational awareness. Like a soldier. Like a merc, she thought and knew that alive or not, they were still in deep trouble.
Or worse, he could be on Chavez’s payroll – possibly police, maybe even paramilitary. Chavez wouldn’t take kindly to Eduardo passing along secret government information and would sure as hell want to stop the transaction.
But she knew how Chavez worked. If these were his men, she’d be bleeding out in the gutter by now. No questions asked.
So no, this detail had not been sent by Chavez. So … CIA maybe? This guy had the look – they all did – the skills and the ‘no one can touch me’ attitude. And if not CIA, then a close equivalent. Bad asses with license to kill, thrill and wreak havoc wherever they decided havoc needed to be wreaked.
Which brought her back to the immediate problem. If they were CIA then someone, somewhere had screwed up royally because no way should one government agency interfere with another’s sting. Either way, his guns were still just as big and just as bad and she was still in just as much trouble because in her experience Spooks didn’t care about rules or diplomacy.
“Let’s back away from the Jeep, okay, querida? Easy now,” he warned in a voice that was as sultry as the night and lightly laced with a Spanish accent. Even though he spoke softly, however, there was no mistaking the order or the threat as he pressed the nose of the AK against her rib cage and with a firm grip on her upper arm, guided her away from the Jeep and, thankfully, several inches away from him.
He peered over the open driver’s side door then smiled when he spotted the shotgun. “Cute gun,” he said, like he was complimenting her wardrobe – which was feeling mighty damn inadequate when his dark gaze raked her body up and down before he shouldered around her and plucked the shotgun off the floor.
With hardly a backward glance, he tossed the gun to one of his men then leaned in close and started patting her down.
She gritted her teeth, resigned to suffer pain and humiliation and rough hands. He surprised her again when he tugged her Glock out her waistband then made quick and painless work of searching her.
“I do like a woman who knows her weapons.” He glanced from the pistol to her face, smiled again as he pulled the earpiece out of her ear and tossed it away. “You have any other surprises, mi chica bonita?”
Smooth. Smooth and smug. And while she was both surprised and grateful that he hadn’t manhandled her, she could do without the condescending attitude.
“I’m not your pretty girl.”
His smile faded. “But you are my pretty problem. And you’re a complication I don’t have time for. Come on, let’s go.”
“Go where?” She put on the skids when he urged her forward.
He grunted out something that might have passed for a laugh as his men bound Maynard’s, Hogan’s, Collins’s and Eduardo’s hands behind their backs with flex cuffs. “You don’t get to ask questions. You just get to do as you’re told.”
When he started hauling her down the alley toward his men, she dug in her heels and latched on to the Jeep’s roll bar in a death grip. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He expelled a weary breath. “You don’t get to call the shots, either. Now I said, let’s go.” He didn’t mess around this time. He jerked her hard, breaking her hold.
“Look,” she reasoned, fighting him every step. “You need to let us go. You’ve got to know we’re all American citizens.”
He stopped, leaned in close and growled in her ear. “That’s not something you want to broadcast in this part of the city. But since you’re so proud of the fact, why don’t you tell me what four Americans are doing here this time of night?”
When their eyes met this time, a shocking heat arced between them that transcended the hottest South American night.
Holy God. Where had that come from? Shaken, she forced herself to hold his gaze, told herself it was only anger and adrenaline that had her heartbeat revving and every self-preservation instinct she possessed warning her to look away.
“We’re with the USDA. On an agricultural exchange program,” she lied like the good DIA officer she was, launching into the cover story they’d developed in the event something like this happened. She knew the cover was lame but it was all she had. Three veteran DIA officers with assault rifles and high tech commo equipment were supposed to have insured she wouldn’t need to use it.
He looked at her like she’d grown two heads, then barked out a laugh. “USDA officials with American military issue M-4’s? I don’t think so. Wanna try again?”
“Check my pocket.” Anything to buy time, stall, minimize their profile until they could either figure out how to get away or stay alive until the Intelligence Officer at the Embassy figured out they were in trouble and sent a team to find them. “My credentials are in there.”
“I’m sure they are. But fake ID’s are a dime a dozen.” His warm breath fanned her nape as he tugged her hands behind her back and secured her wrists with the flex cuffs one of his men had tossed him. “I’ve got a hundred of ‘em. Who would you like me to be? The Welcome Wagon? Scooby Do? Or maybe you’d like me to be Batman. You choose. It’ll be fun.”
Oh, yeah. He’d definitely spent time in the States. The way he carried himself may be all sexy Latino swagger and yeah, he spoke with a Spanish accent but this guy’s attitude and jargon were definitely a product of the American culture.
His trip tightened on her arm and he forced her down the alley and away from the Jeep.
“Where are you taking us?”
“Some place where I can minimize the problem you’re making for me.”
His fingers still in a viselike grip around her upper arm, he guided her a couple of blocks then around a corner where two black vans sat under the beam of a streetlight so pale it was almost nonexistent. One of the men pulled a hood over Eduardo’s face then shoved him into the rear vehicle. Then they roughly tugged black hoods over Maynard, Hogan and Collins then guided them none too gently into the other van.
Oh, God. She was next. Her captor pushed her in the same direction; the gaping darkness inside the open door had her heart slamming. She put on the brakes again. She wasn’t going to give up that easily. She was losing her mole and the information she’d worked months to uncover. She had no idea what they planned to do with them – beatings, rape, torture …
She blocked the images from her mine. This was not going to end here. She wasn’t going to let it. She’d worked too hard, Eduardo mattered too much.
“You really need to let us go,” she tried one last time.
“Be a good girl and that might happen.”
Then he pulled a hood down over her head.
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