Spy Hard

Her words were so filled with desperation they twisted even his stone-cold heart. He kept his gaze on her. So they were both Texans. He told himself that didn’t mean they had any sort of connection.

She was the spoiled girlfriend of a murderous criminal, probably upset because she didn’t get as many diamonds this week as she’d expected. Sounded like she’d had a fight with Don Pedro earlier. None of Jase’s business.

Suddenly she turned his way and peered into the shadows, alarm ringing in her voice as she asked, “Who’s there?”

He stepped forward. “Sorry if I bothered you. I’m Jase. I’m looking for one of the men.”

She shrunk back.

And he realized what he must look like, fresh from a fight, with blood on his shirt and face, violence still hanging around him in the air. “Sorry.” He turned to go.

“Wait,” she called after him. “Are you the one who brought that little boy in?”

He raised his gaze back to her. Her large eyes watched him carefully from above a straight, pert nose.

“Consuela from the kitchen told me,” she said.

He swore silently. Consuela talked too much. “Scrawny little thing.” He gave a dismissive gesture. “I don’t think we’ll see much work out of him. He might not even make it.”

Her face turned even sadder, if possible, the corners of her full lips turning down. She nodded and walked inside the house without looking at him again.

She wasn’t what he’d expected from the Don’s girlfriend. Although Jase could only see her from the chest up—the wooden railing hid the rest—she looked more like a schoolteacher than a Brazilian photo model, which was Don Pedro’s usual entertainment, if the rumors around camp were true.

This one looked wholesome and fragile, completely inappropriate for the Don. How in hell did someone like her find her way to a place like this?

Clearly a mistake. A mistake she was rapidly realizing, judging by her whispered prayer. Well, he couldn’t help her with her troubles. His hands were plenty full already. She’d be nothing but a distraction. And a distracted undercover operative was a dead undercover operative.

He moved on. Dogs barked in their enclosures. The river rushed on in the distance. He didn’t take a dozen steps before Alejandro materialized from the darkness.

The man’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What are you doing here?”

“Lucas sent me to find you.”

“You shouldn’t be hanging around the house.” His voice dripped with disapproval. He puffed his chest out as if he wasn’t just another lackey, one measly step above Jase.

“I thought you might have gone up to play cards with the guys in packing.”

“Shot the dice with the idiots at the stables.” His grim look said he didn’t win. “Jorge got back. Says he saw another burned village to the south. Cristobal is definitely heading this way.”

Which meant there would be a major battle in a couple of days.

“We’ll take care of him.” Jase squared his shoulders in a macho display for Alejandro’s sake. But his mind was on the boy. He needed to get Mochi out of here at the first opportunity.

He tried not to think of the crying woman whose sad eyes haunted him.

Chapter Two

The woman on the balcony came to him in his sleep. Naked. The dark jungle whispered its mysterious song around them. Silver moonlight splashed on her skin, her long hair tumbling to her waist.

Jase’s body turned hard with need, but for some reason he couldn’t reach for her. Then he saw at last what held him back. Thorny vines tied him to a tree. He watched, unable to move, as a black jaguar stole forward from the bushes and crouched, getting ready to lunge at the woman. Blood glistened on the animal’s muzzle. And as Jase looked around, he could see a small foot sticking out from under the bush where the jaguar had come from. Mochi.

He woke to shouting outside the barracks, cold sweat covering his body. Sunlight filtered through the burlap curtains. Lucas rushed in, an extra belt of bullets swung over his shoulder, a scowl on his face.

“What is it?” Jase grabbed his gun first, his shirt second.

“We’re preparing for battle. Cristobal sent a messenger. He demands unconditional surrender.”

A glance out the window revealed a man lying in the dust on his back behind one of the jeeps. A familiar knife protruded from his throat, the very one that Jase had traded for Mochi. Alejandro was always eager to score points.

“And that would be the messenger?”

Lucas flashed a ferocious grin and rushed on out the back door. Jase washed his face then followed after him, heading to the kitchen to see about the kid and get some coffee. Then he would go straight to the main house. The Don would be calling his people today, needing all his alliances to back him in the battle. Now was a better time than ever to plant that bug. They could gain some serious intelligence out of this.

He strode through the long building he bunked in that resembled the Indian longhouses, a half wall of bamboo erected here and there for privacy. In other places colorful horse blankets hung from the ceiling to separate the bunks from each other. In general, the men didn’t much care about their lodgings. Anything was better than sleeping in the open jungle, at the mercy of the elements and the animals.

He pushed through the door into the kitchen, which was little more than a large shack attached to the barracks. But he found the blanket Mochi had slept on empty.

Before he could have gotten worried about the kid, the boy walked in through the back door, chewing on a large chunk of flatbread. The woman from the balcony last night stepped in right behind him, a hand on her round, pregnant belly the railing had hidden the night before.

“Sorry, I’m—” She froze at the sight of Jase. Unease widened her big, thick-lashed Bambi eyes, the color of dark chocolate with gold specs that somehow made them mesmerizing. She pressed her full lips together as she drew back. She’d probably thought all the men were outside and had expected only Consuela in the kitchen.

Once again, she saw him at his worst. His hair hadn’t met up with his comb yet this morning; his face hadn’t seen a razor in a week. He was unkempt and half-naked… And he couldn’t believe he was worrying about his looks, for heaven’s sake.

He shrugged into his wrinkled shirt and ran his fingers through his hair. “Can I help you?”

It behooved anyone to be nice to the boss’s girlfriend.

The boss’s pregnant girlfriend.

She looked five or six months along. So much for those slim hips in his dream. Not that she looked any less sexy just the way she was. Her full lips captured his attention for a few seconds before his gaze dropped to her breasts that stretched the thin material of her strappy dress. His body instantly responded to her.

Suicidal much? the voice of reason asked in his head. For once in his life, he resolved to listen to it.

“Where are this boy’s parents?” Her voice sounded like home.

He would have lied if he said her slight Texas twang didn’t affect him. Her large, dark eyes were ringed with shadows, as if she hadn’t gotten much sleep lately. None of his business. He wasn’t going to get involved in any trouble the boss’s girlfriend might be having. Going anywhere near her, even allowing himself to dream of her, was trouble with a capital T.

For a second he weighed what he should tell her, then decided to go with the truth. She didn’t look like the type who would press someone like Mochi into child slavery. “His whole village was wiped out. His name is Mochi.”

“He needs some clothes.”

Jase looked over the dirty little kid in his even dirtier loincloth. Pants would have been good, at the very least. He thought of his few meager pieces of clothing, none of which would remotely fit the boy. Where was he supposed to find kid’s clothing around here? Department stores didn’t exactly dot the jungle.

“I can send some cloth down from the house. I’ll tell Consuela to make something for him,” the woman suggested.

He had a feeling Don Pedro wouldn’t be pleased if he knew that his woman visited the barracks and chatted with a foot soldier. She was going to get him in trouble. But a decent chunk of cloth would have been nice. “Much appreciated.”

He put a hand on Mochi’s shoulder then stepped back, drawing the boy with him.

“You don’t sound local.”

“Part Mexican, part Zapotec, part Texan.” He didn’t like the way her eyes lit up at the Texan part. She better not think he would be her helping hand with her troubles. He had compromised this op badly enough already by taking responsibility for Mochi.

“I’m Melanie Key. From Austin. Do you go back to the U.S. sometimes?” She seemed to be holding her breath, waiting for the answer.

“Never.” He squashed any budding hope decisively and turned Mochi around to go. “Come on, buddy.”

They needed to have a talk about what areas of the compound were safe and unsafe, how to stay out of the way. This place was different than the jungle. The kid needed a whole new kind of survival training.

He nodded to Melanie and left her where she stood. He didn’t know what her troubles were, but he wasn’t going to get involved in them under any circumstances.

He’d learned his lesson the last time, with a Venezuelan journalist whose long legs had somehow convinced him that he had to save her from the secret police, even if that side adventure jeopardized his mission in the country. Only she’d been a counterspy, sent to turn him.

She’d been good. He’d fallen for her, and he didn’t fall easily. He didn’t do relationships. So sure, he had a hard time resisting damsels in distress. He enjoyed a good rescue, but at the end he always walked away.

But he wasn’t going to have to walk away from Melanie, because this was one crazy side adventure he wasn’t going to walk into, to start with.

He was going to have a very simple motto when it came to her and those troubled, gold-speckled eyes of hers: STAY AWAY.

DON PEDRO WAITED at the top of the stairs with a frown on his hawkish face when Melanie returned to the hacienda from the barracks. “Where have you been?”

Her heart beat in her throat as she looked up at her brother-in-law. Her body tensed. He was shorter than she, but somehow always managed to loom over her. “Stretching my legs. I needed fresh air.”

“That’s why you have the balcony.” His small, mud-colored eyes flashed.

“Not much room here for a walk,” she said good-naturedly, determined to keep things light despite the gathering tension in the air. “The men look busy. Lots of running around out there.”

His thin upper lip curled. “Some idiot might be coming to challenge me. Who the hell does he think he is?” He pointed his index finger at Melanie. “You are not to leave the house. You carry my sole heir.”

They never discussed it, but she sort of figured he couldn’t have children of his own. And Julio, the husband she’d lost to a drunk driver in Rio seven months ago, had been Pedro’s only brother.

She took the steps slowly, hoping he would move off before she reached the top, but he stayed where he stood.

He put a hand on her arm when she reached him, a milder expression replacing the anger on his face. “Come sit with me for a while. We should spend more time together.” He nodded toward his bedroom.

“My back aches from the walk. I should probably lie down.” She pressed her hands to the small of her back and hoped she looked drawn enough to be convincing.

Displeasure flashed in his eyes, impatience tightening the muscles of his jaw. He watched her closely, as if contemplating whether or not to push, but at the end he let her go. “We wouldn’t want to harm the child.”

He wanted her son first and foremost. He wanted her, too, in his bed, although not nearly as badly. But once he had her baby…

“You’ll stay inside,” he said, his voice hard steel again, before he turned to stalk into his office.

When he’d been at the family mansion in the city, he’d consorted with models and actresses. She’d seen the type of women; she’d attended a number of his lavish receptions. There, he acted the successful businessman, all charm and generosity. Here in camp, where he at last showed his true face, the cooking women served his basic needs. She’d heard the noises, would no doubt hear them again today when one of them brought Pedro’s lunch up to him.

She hurried to her room and locked the door behind her before he could decide he wanted to deviate from the routine. She sank into the chair in the corner and put her feet on the small stool. Her ankles were swelling again.

Her baby kicked. She pressed her hand against the spot, loving the feel of that connection. Part of her couldn’t wait to see her son, part of her panicked at the thought that in a month, he would be born and she would become a mother.

She wasn’t ready.

She’d planned on growing up before the baby came. She’d wanted and needed to change. She needed to become a strong and independent woman, because that was the sort of mother she wanted to be. She had planned on doing a lot of work on herself before they got to this stage.

Then Pedro had trapped her and derailed her plans. Nothing was going to happen now as she’d planned it. She thought of the pretty nursery she’d been working on in her apartment back in Rio. The crib. That was where she’d planned to raise her baby, not here.

She pushed to her feet and waddled over to the armoire, bent—not without some difficulty—and fished out the backpack she’d come here with. The bag was on the smallish side, but she wasn’t going on a long trip. And she couldn’t carry too much extra weight anyway. She was carrying enough already.

She put the bag on the bed and closed her eyes for a second. God, she really was going to do this.

She’d been in denial these past few months. She hadn’t believed Pedro was really going to hold her here. She’d thought he would come to his senses, reach deep and find some last, forgotten shred of decency.

He hadn’t. She’d made a mistake to think that because he was Julio’s brother, the two men would be similar in some basic way. But Pedro wasn’t bound by any sense of honor. Pedro did what he wanted, took what he wanted.

She knew that now, but it was almost too late.

She packed some clothes—a pair of lightweight maternity pants and a long-sleeved shirt—most of the fruit from the fruit bowl on the table, her box of prenatal vitamins and the antimalaria pills she’d been taking faithfully.

She could hear Pedro talking to someone at the top of the landing. She listened for the voices, trying to gauge whether they were coming closer. Locked door or not, if he knocked, she would have to let him in. Otherwise, he’d just kick the door in. He’d done that before.

She hurried.

Jase. She tasted the name on her lips. He was the one. He was going to save her.

Trouble was coming. She’d caught the sense of increased tension, caught bits and pieces of talk here and there, saw the hustle and bustle outside. She wanted to be gone by the time the fighting began. Or before her sinister brother-in-law completely lost his patience with her.

Jase seemed to be different than the average thug around camp. That he was part American had to count for something. And while he looked just as hard-edged and dangerous as the others, he didn’t have that sense of depravity about him that defined the rest of Pedro’s men.

Plus, he was attracted to her on some level. That had been apparent in his graphite-gray eyes before he shuttered them. She’d stifled the answering twinge of awareness. Well, of course, she would notice those eyes and that body. Those hard muscles—Were something she was not going to think about. She refused to be attracted to anyone who would work for a man like her brother-in-law.

She’d sworn off men, anyway, especially the alpha male type. Her father had controlled her long enough. Julio had seemed nice, but had quickly turned all macho, head of the house, you’ll-do-as-told, after the wedding. And Don Pedro…

She shuddered when she thought of what her life would become if she couldn’t get away from here.

She put a few extra items into the bag, then looked into the rustic mirror on the wall. “If you don’t want others to control your life, then don’t let them,” she said the words out loud, voicing the resolution she’d come to while she’d tossed and turned through all those sleepless nights in the jungle’s humid heat.

There was only one solution: she had to take control.

She had to get herself out of here. And she would, using Jase somehow to achieve her goal. He was the key to her escape. And she would do whatever it took to get away from here. She’d been praying for a rescuer for too long—a police raid, or drug bust, anything. But nobody was coming. She had to accept at last that saving herself would be up to her. She fisted her hands. She would get away from this cursed place. And once she did, no man was ever going to control her life again.

“Some years from now, we’re going to meet a nice, mellow guy who loves kids,” she promised her baby. “Maybe a low-key music teacher,” she added. She liked music.

But first she would have to deal with Jase.

She stashed the backpack under her bed. Step one, completed.

Now on to step two. Somehow, she had to trick Jase into helping her. She couldn’t blackmail or threaten him into it. She had a feeling he wouldn’t find her overly threatening. That left bribery. In exchange for his assistance, she would give him something he wanted. And since she had no money, the only avenue left to her was seduction.

The thought of what that might entail filled her with mixed emotions. But she drew a deep breath and strengthened her resolve. She placed a hand on her abdomen. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to get us out of here.” She would go to any length to save her baby.

THE MEN SPENT the morning preparing for battle. No teams had left the camp on their scheduled transport trips. Runners were sent to the teams who were out with orders to return to the camp posthaste. The downstairs of the main house brimmed with the Don’s closest men. Everyone expected the fighting to begin by the following morning.

Cristobal’s men were still some hours away, and they wouldn’t want to fight as soon as they got here. They would want to map the terrain first, get a good night’s sleep.

Jase had been turned away at the door when he’d gone up to the hacienda to discuss taking over Paulo’s position in packing. Roberto had other priorities right now. He was focused on strengthening the camp’s defenses and didn’t have time for ambitious foot soldiers.

So Jase dropped that plan and had gone back an hour later, pretending to be looking for Lucas. He’d gotten turned away once again. By noon, he was still no closer to planting the bug, and his nerves hummed with frustration.

He hated the waiting part of undercover ops. Of course, 90 percent of undercover ops consisted of waiting. He’d made progress over the past couple of months, had gained important information, but he wanted to have that damn bug planted already.

He walked by the main house every chance he got. On his fifth pass, he spotted Melanie on the balcony once again. He would have been lying if he said he didn’t feel a little thrill when her eyes settled on him.

“You,” she said in a bossy tone. “Come right up. I need you to help me move something.”

Exactly the break he needed. He stifled a grin and put on an expression of mindless obedience. “Sí, señora. Right away.”

Having heard the exchange, the man at the door let him through at last. Half a dozen men stood around the table in the large room he walked into, a combination foyer-slash-living-room area that had been converted into a war room.

The men glanced up at his entrance, but nobody questioned him. They trusted the guard at the door not to let in anyone who didn’t have any business being in there. They were all busy drawing up battle plans and arguing with each other.

Jase headed straight for the stairs.

That did draw attention.

“Hey,” Roberto called after him. “Where do you think you’re going?”

He hunched his shoulders, put his head down, making himself into the very picture of subservience. “The señora wants me to move some furniture.”

Roberto rolled his eyes, probably thinking how it was just like a woman to be interior decorating with an impending battle looming over their heads. Which was exactly what Jase was thinking, so he shot an I-know-what-you-mean look back at the man and shook his head slightly.

Roberto waved him on with a disgusted gesture and returned to his battle planning.

No need to hurry now. Jase noted every door, every hallway, every man. He planned on getting a good look around upstairs as well, but as he reached the top of the stairs, he found the woman waiting for him in her open doorway.

She wore white this time, a linen dress designed for the climate and to accommodate her motherly curves.

“In here.” She gestured with impatience. “I need this couch moved out of the sun. I want it in the far corner.” She drew into the middle of the room.

He followed her. Did she know that a battle was coming? Did she trust Don Pedro so blindly that she didn’t realize how much danger she was in? Cristobal would be no pushover. He’d all but obliterated the Don’s previous headquarters. The man was playing to win.

“I just want to be more comfortable,” she was saying.

Silk pillows, fans, a sprawling bed with mosquito netting, books and stacks of magazines filled the large space. The Don had clearly settled her in for a long stay. She could have run a small convenience store out of her room.

He tried not to think of the stark contrast between the barracks and her room, between what she had at her disposal and what Mochi had, sleeping on the floor next to the stove in the kitchen. She was the boss’s pampered girlfriend. She lived in a different world from the rest of them. That bothered him, but he didn’t let it show.

He grabbed the end of the couch and dragged the damned thing to where she pointed. Took him about three seconds. But she didn’t look pleased. She looked disappointed.

“Wrong spot?”

She shook her head, looking at him with something akin to panic. Which made him wonder just what was going on in that beautiful head of hers. Then the next second, her whole demeanor changed, as if she’d just thought of something.

“Thank you.” Her full lips stretched into a smile. “Would you like a glass of cold tea?”

Definitely. Especially if she kept smiling at him like that. But that quick change in her demeanor made him uneasy. “I better get going.”

“It’s just—” She looked away. “It’d be great to talk to another American. I get lonely up here.”

The bossy attitude she’d displayed on the balcony was gone. Maybe she only used that tone around the men to assure their respect and to make sure they wouldn’t perceive her as weak. But she seemed to be letting her guard down around him. Whatever the reason, her vulnerability grabbed him as nothing else could have, and somewhat mollified him. She did look lonely, and desperate, suddenly, in some way.

“I can’t imagine Don Pedro would neglect a woman as beautiful as you are,” he told her in a light tone, still feeling that more was going on here than what was being said.

But instead of lightening the mood, his words made her frown.

“I’m not his…” She actually blushed.

He couldn’t remember the last time he saw a woman do that. Certainly didn’t expect it from a drug lord’s live-in girlfriend. Interesting.

“I was married to his brother,” she told him.

Huh. And the plot thickens.

He’d damn near memorized the Don’s file while preparing for this op. The man had a brother, Julio, in Brazil, who’d been killed a few months back in a car accident. Jase didn’t remember any mention of a wife.