On the Loose Read online

  “I’d say you’ve got a crush on me.”

  Smith gave her a quick, quelling glance, and went back to watching the road. A crush. He didn’t think so.

  They drove along in silence for a long while, with the windshield wipers slapping back and forth, the heater blowing hot, and the scent of her cigarillo, cherry whiskey, teasing the air. And with every passing, silent mile, the atmosphere inside the cab became more laden, riper, heavier. He was watching the road, but she was watching him. He could feel her awareness washing up against him, feel her gaze sliding over him. It was a distinctive, unusually compelling sensation, and he liked it.

  He liked it a lot.

  “There hasn’t been anyone since you,” she said, her voice very soft, the words carefully spoken.

  And he liked that even better.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Campos Plantation, Morazán Province, El Salvador

  This was amazing.

  Amazingly dangerous.

  Alejandro Campos looked down at the pistol in his hand and was nearly flabbergasted at its appearance in his home. It was one of a matched set of Colt .45s, with the owner’s name engraved on the slide.

  The last time he’d seen the pistol had been two weeks ago up on the Torola River. It had also been the last time he’d seen the pistol’s owner—Diego Garcia.

  “What is Diego Garcia’s pistol doing at my villa?” he asked, looking up from the gun and meeting Max’s gaze.

  “A nun brought it, patrón. Señor Jake has her in the foyer. One of the guards found the pistola hidden under her robes.”

  He looked at the old man for a moment.

  “Under her robes?” he repeated, because he couldn’t possibly have heard Max correctly.

  “Sí, patrón. Under her robes.”

  And wasn’t that the most perfectly awful news he’d had in the last five minutes?

  Oh, hell, yes.

  No wonder the nuns in Morazán were ending up pregnant, if the men of Morazán were frisking them under their robes.

  “Bring the religiosa to me, inmediatamente.” The flip side of the bad news was even the idea, let alone the reality, of a pistol-carrying nun. The guard on duty deserved a bonus for reaching a level of sharp-eyed suspicion that would have eluded a hundred lesser men.

  Under her robes. Good God.

  Instead of moving to get the good sister, Max’s gaze dropped to his employer’s lap.

  Campos immediately understood.

  “Isidora!” he called out. “Pantalónes, por favor.”

  He had barely gotten himself decently clothed and reorganized before Max returned to the kitchen, with Jake and the woman close behind.

  Woman, not nun.

  He knew the difference.

  Nuns did not have cleavage.

  This woman did, a fascinating phenomenon created by a habit twelve sizes too big that was falling off, and an intriguing array of somewhat unbuttoned multibutton T-shirts underneath—and maybe a push-up bra.

  Nuns, typically, did not have Spyderco knives in their pockets, or cinch up their habits with gun belts.

  This woman had, with a hand-tooled, elaborately scrolled, leather gun belt with an engraved silver belt buckle and a hand-tooled leather holster with the initials DG on it. Half her habit was caught up in the belt and bloused over the top, revealing the other set of clothing she had on under her robes, which made the frisking business a whole lot easier to buy.

  Nobody would mistake this woman for a nun—except Maximiliano, who thought all women were saints.

  But even Max had to have wondered about the earrings. Nuns did not wear multiple earrings.

  This woman did, three on one side and two on the other, a matched set of pearls and tiny, square-cut sapphires, plus a small gold cross dangling from her left ear.

  Nuns did not have canvas messenger bags bandoliered across their chests, macramé bracelets on their wrists, rings on their fingers, and button-fly jeans lying low on their hips—and most importantly of all, nuns did not get him hot.

  This woman did, standing in Campos’s kitchen, soaking wet, with somebody else’s clothes falling off her, and her own clothes clinging like plastic wrap to five feet eight inches of lanky curves—with cleavage.

  Not even the gloriously lovely Sister Julia got him hot, not in any sense of the word. Sister Julia was one hundred percent pure nun. She looked like an angel.

  This woman looked like an angel, too, one of the Victoria’s Secret angels. Dark, shoulder-length, sable-colored hair, wet and slicked back off her face, pale skin sprinkled with freckles across her nose, eyes to match her sapphire earrings, and a face that said she was more trouble than she was worth.

  Which was probably why she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Yes, he’d checked. He always checked. In Campos’s experience, and he had quite a lot, beautiful women with bad disguises and stolen .45s actually were nothing but trouble. Actually, in his experience, beautiful women with good disguises and their own custom .45s were nothing but trouble—take Jewel, for example.

  But this woman was not Joya Molara Gualterio, not by any stretch of the imagination. She was scared, for one thing, and Jewel baby did not get scared. She got even.

  “What’s your name?” Campos asked.

  “Robbins. L-Lily Robbins of Albuquerque. Albuquerque, New Mexico, that is. I’m a teacher, a high school teacher—social studies, geography, sometimes reading. I’m on sabbatical. Here, I mean, in El Salvador. But I’m going back to...to, uh, Albuquerque. I hope.”

  One of his eyebrows shot up, and he glanced at Jake.

  Good Lord, the woman was a fountain of information, all of it tumbling and blurting out of her, and wasn’t that sweet of her to clarify about Albuquerque.

  Jake shrugged, the slightest lift of his shoulder, but he’d recognized it, too. Unvarnished truth with no holding back. How odd.

  “And how did you come by Diego Garcia’s pistol?”

  Her pale face grew even paler.

  “The p-pistol is Garcia’s?”

  And how odd that she didn’t know whose pistol she’d taken.

  Campos released the magazine out of the gun with a practiced move and checked the chamber before presenting her with the side of the slide engraved with the owner’s name.

  Diego Garcia, it said in flowing script.

  “Sí, señorita. It is Garcia’s, and you have it. Why?”

  “It...it was in the Jeep.” She looked a little stunned, a little wide-eyed, and was a shade breathless, but under the circumstances, whatever they turned out to be, he didn’t blame her. It was a wild night.

  Campos looked at Jake.

  “She drove up in a black Jeep. The guards are checking it out now.”

  They didn’t need to check it out. A black Jeep with Diego Garcia’s pistol in it was undoubtedly Diego Garcia’s black Jeep. Campos had ridden in it two weeks ago.

  “Was she alone?”

  “Yes.”

  Well, then, that was it. All hell was going to break loose. Diego Garcia did not loan his Jeep to anyone, especially not American women, and Lily Robbins had Made In U.S.A., Albuquerque, New Mexico, stamped all over her. Campos looked to the guard standing by the kitchen door and made a brief gesture, touching the inside edge of his hand to his neck.

  The guard turned on his heel and left.

  “Take off the habit,” he ordered her, then checked the magazine before seating it back in the pistol. He did not chamber a round. When she didn’t immediately obey, he called for Isidora again. “Isidora, venga. Ayude a esta mujer para quitar las vestimentas de monja.” Come help this woman take off her habit.

  In moments, the cook was there, with two children underfoot, chattering away while stripping the woman out of the offending attire.

  Lily Robbins resisted for a second, but then seemed to understand and started helping, beginning with lifting the messenger bag off over the top of her head. But she didn’t let go of it. She didn’t put it on the floor or the table. She k
ept the strap over her shoulder, kept it close.

  He’d planned on searching it anyway, but now he was truly curious.

  “It’s a terrible costume. No one in this room believes you are one of the sisters from up in the hills,” he said, taking the gun belt from her when it came off. He slipped the Colt back in its holster.

  “I had it more buttoned up and on a little better before. In the car, I was...I was trying to get out of it, in case I had to leave the Jeep and run. I’m b-being followed.”

  “Of course you are.” She had Diego Garcia’s hand-engraved pistol and his late-model Jeep Cherokee. He could guarantee the CNL captain would follow her to the ends of the earth to get them back. He was that kind of guy.

  “By soldiers, armed soldiers.”

  “Soldiers are always armed.” Campos didn’t mind stating the obvious, especially to women whose nerves were straddling the edge. It could help anchor them a bit. “You were at St. Joseph, correct?”

  “Yes, but h-how do you know that?”

  She was wearing a habit, and Diego Garcia spent a lot of time at St. Joseph. After reading Sister Julia’s letter, Campos now knew why the CNL captain was spending so much time on his knees.

  It hadn’t been quite the reason he’d thought.

  “I know everything, Ms. Robbins, except why you are here, why you’re wearing one of Sister Bettine’s habits, and why you stole Diego Garcia’s Jeep.”

  “The Jeep is his, too?” she asked with appropriate dismay. She was in trouble, and it was good for her to know it.

  “Sí.”

  If he wasn’t mistaken, she swore under her breath—another thing nuns did not do.

  “It was Sister Julia who told me to come here,” she said, struggling to get out of the sodden, heavy habit, a difficult proposition, even with Isidora’s help. “She gave me a map and said you could help me.”

  “Help you do what?”

  “Just...just get through this, this awful night,” she said, working down a row of buttons.

  Which wasn’t much of an answer. Getting through the night was considerably less than what most people asked of him, and probably considerably less than what she really needed. No matter, he’d find out everything soon enough.

  “Garcia, and his men,” she continued, “they...It’s been...been a bad week at the orphanage. People dying. It’s been...” Her voice trailed off, maybe on a sob, or possibly a catch of her breath.

  “Who has died?”

  She stopped in her undressing for a moment and met his gaze. “Sister Bettine died on Sunday.”

  Well, he hadn’t known that.

  “Dei gratia,” Campos murmured, making the sign of the cross. Isidora and Max did the same. “What happened?”

  “She started feeling poorly shortly after supper on Saturday night, and on Sunday afternoon, she slipped away.” The woman stepped out of the habit as Isidora worked it down to her feet. “Sister Julia said Sister Bettine was r-ready to go, called by God. She was very, very old.”

  “Eighty-eight her last birthday, but still robust the last time I saw her.” Very robust, about a hundred pounds more robust and four inches taller than Lily Robbins. She’d been the largest nun in Morazán—Battle-ax Bettine. “She will be missed.” Campos turned to his cook. “Isidora, we’ll launder the habit and have it returned to the sisters.”

  “Sí, patrón.” The woman gathered up the habit and her children and trundled off to the laundry room. Max began wiping up the floor where Lily had dripped rain.

  “You said people dying; has someone else died at St. Joseph?”

  “A man,” she said. “He—”

  “Patrón.” A guard entered the kitchen. “The CNL is here; one troop truck and a pickup truck have been stopped at the gate.”

  Por Dios.

  “Has our patrol returned?”

  “Not yet, patrón.”

  “I want their report immediately when they get back.”

  “Sí, patrón.”

  “Jake,” Campos said, handing over the holstered pistol. “If Garcia himself is here, we’ll talk. If it’s one of his lieutenants, give them the Jeep and the pistol, and send them on their way. Tell the lieutenant this incident tonight is of no consequence. The Capitán and I will deal with it during our meeting tomorrow.”

  Jake gave him a quick nod and took Garcia’s weapon, before heading for the front door. The man knew the drill, knew how to maintain domination of the field while allowing everyone to save face—unless domination by brute force became the only choice.

  And Jake knew how to do that, too, as did all of Campos’s men. With tomorrow’s negotiations and money on the line, Campos was counting on the CNL soldiers to be content with the return of the Capitán’s vehicle and sidearm, and to back off.

  Campos turned to Lily. “Come with me.”

  He directed her to an open stairway leading up to a balcony and loft overlooking the kitchen and dining area.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, without budging an inch in the right direction, which was simply unacceptable.

  “Ms. Robbins, you came to me,” Campos said clearly. “I’m assuming because of the men now parked on the road to my villa. If you want to go back with them to St. Joseph, by all means, stand there and ask questions. If you want to get back to Albuquerque, New Mexico, you will do as I say.”

  He gestured once more to the broad, curving stairs, and this time, she started forward.

  At the top of the stairs, he opened one of a set of double doors and directed her into a room.

  “This is my office. You may have a seat by the fireplace.”

  Max had laid a good fire, and with the strike of a match, Campos had it lit.

  It took some effort for him to rise from the hearth, effort attached to pain, and when she was still standing by the door, he rephrased his statement.

  “You will have a seat by the fireplace, and you will not move, until I say you may. Are we clear?”

  She hesitated for another moment, before moving into place and sinking into one of the overstuffed leather club chairs flanking the stone hearth. There were two T-shirts plastered to her lovely bosom, a sleeveless tangerine one with little buttons, and over it a dark turquoise one that was unbuttoned to her waist. They were both cotton, both wet.

  She was shivering, a tremor running through her, so Campos limped over to the bathroom, and tried not to think about how much his leg was starting to hurt, and how much he wished he could just go the hell to bed with a couple of Sofia’s Vicodins in his system—and, if he was honest, with Lily Robbins, or someone very much like her, curled up next to him.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. Not tonight. Dammit.

  He pulled two large towels out of the linen closet in the bathroom and limped his sorry ass back to the fireplace.

  “One for your hair, and one to wrap around your shoulders,” he said, handing them over before he dropped into the chair opposite hers. After he got the rest of her story, he would decide what to do with her.

  Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he pressed a button to make a call.

  “Contact our convoy,” he said, when Jake answered. “Route them through Tilomonte. Have them hold up there until they’re directed to proceed.”

  There were a lot of things Campos didn’t need tonight, and Garcia’s men meeting up with the Agency’s LAWs and his briefcase was real close to the top of his list.

  He let his gaze fall back on the woman.

  He could toss her back out into the rain, but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to, not tonight, a decision based somewhat on her looks and the fear in her eyes. It was a crappy strategy, completely unprofessional, and yet, there it was—she was a beautiful damsel in distress, who had somehow ended up in the middle of one of his problems. So he’d keep her at least through the night, unless she proved to be more trouble than she was worth, or not worth the trouble of keeping her.

  Then all bets were off. Campos could have her delivered to a hotel in
San Miguel and be done with her before midnight. But Sister Julia had sent her to him, and Sister Julia’s sister was expected shortly this evening, and somehow Campos thought he could serve himself best by keeping unexpected guests well within his grasp. After he got the CIA’s documents and data back, things could sort themselves out. People could run around and steal whatever they wanted at that point. For now, he needed to be in charge.

  “Tell me about this man who died at St. Joseph.”

  She stopped toweling her hair and met his gaze across the short distance separating them. “There have been two this week. Garcia, he...he shot a soldier, a young soldier. He shot him dead, tonight, in the chapel. That’s why I ran. It was awful, worse than awful, the screaming, and the uproar, and...and the blood, and I knew I needed to get out of there as fast as I could.”

  This was not good.

  “You saw this?”

  She nodded, her face pale.

  Poor thing. Violence was such a shock to the uninitiated and the unprepared.

  “One of his own soldiers?” He hadn’t heard of any Salvadoran troops near Cristobal in the last couple of weeks.

  “Yes. There’s a nun, a Sister Teresa—”

  Oh, yes, Campos thought, as she went on to tell the story he’d read in Sister Julia’s letter, but with the addition of another lover, which didn’t work well anyplace, but which really didn’t work in Latin American countries. The whole part about Garcia killing the young man in the chapel was especially distressing.

  And again, not for the first time in the last few months, he wondered if it was time for him to cut his ties and go home. Blood, death, religion, drugs, guerrilla warfare—and him in the middle of it for too damn long.

  In her letter, Sister Julia had been afraid the breaking of Teresa’s vows would bring the wrath of God down on St. Joseph, and Campos figured that was a pretty fair description of Diego Garcia, especially a cuckolded Diego Garcia.

  Under normal circumstances, and Campos had a very broad definition of “normal,” Garcia could be as businesslike as a Brazilian banker—cutthroat but predictable. But with the woman carrying his child getting hot and heavy with another man, especially some young stud out of his own CNL troop, and the woman being a nun, well, yes, Campos could see where it would be both the wrath of God and the work of the devil, and at least one guaranteed death. It was a wonder Teresa was still alive—if in fact she was. From St. Joseph to Campos’s villa was at most an hour’s drive, even on a bad night. Anything could have happened up there in an hour.