On the Loose Read online

  Seven, eight, zero, four, four, two.

  Forty-eight hours.

  Six numbers.

  Five suitcases.

  And one bodyguard built like the Rock of Gibraltar—that’s what she was taking into the mountains of El Salvador with her, and she’d be damned if she came back out empty-handed. He was her ace in the hole, even if he hadn’t called her, not once in four months, not even to see if she’d made it home okay, the jerk.

  A one-night stand—that’s all she’d been to him, but that was about to change, big-time. Dammit.

  She reached up and clasped the pendant strung on a silver chain around her neck. The small ivory-colored piece of reticulated quartz was the one thing she’d been given to guarantee his complete, total, and instant cooperation.

  Fortunately, it was the only thing she needed—a small comfort as he got closer and closer and the urge to run got stronger and stronger. It took effort, dammit, to hold her ground, which was ridiculous for reasons she wasn’t about to explore. Honoria York-Lytton did not run away, ever. She was the one with all the cards here. Not him.

  At the edge of the pool, he stopped and looked down at her through his sunglasses, his expression unreadable, and yet somehow, his message clear: disapproval with a strong dose of “You’ve got no business being here.”

  She wished he was right, but he wasn’t, far from it, no matter how much he glared, and that’s exactly what he was doing behind his glasses. She could feel it.

  Slowly, without taking her eyes off him, she brought the tiny cocktail straw in her piña colada to her lips...and sipped. The seconds ticked by in utter silence, one after the other, with the sun shining, the palm trees swaying, the water lapping at her butt, and him not moving a muscle, just standing there, broad-shouldered and broad through the chest, looming over her in a beautiful suit and a pair of perfectly polished loafers.

  She knew his name now, his full name. She’d read it in the report she’d been given, a cursory résumé that had dead-ended two years ago at a place referred to only as SDF. God only knew what he’d been up to since then, besides being in San Luis one night—God and the man who had given her the piece of quartz.

  That man knew what he’d been up to. That man knew everything, even about her...everything, which had not made her happy. Oh, no, not at all.

  Among a few other tantalizing tidbits, like him growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and going to the University of Wyoming in Laramie, the report on Mr. C. Smith Rydell had contained his physical stats, but she’d already known how tall he was—tall enough that in two-inch platforms, she barely came to his collarbone. She’d already known how much he weighed—enough to cord his body with layer upon layer of hard muscle, enough to rope his shoulders with a dozen of those layers, enough to six-pack his abs and burn the memory of him into every single cell she had. His hair was darker than it had been in San Luis, still blond in a few streaks here and there, but mostly a tawny shade of brown, just as long, but better cut. She remembered his eyes were a dark hazel with thick, dark lashes, and his mouth—

  Oh, yes, she remembered his mouth.

  She remembered too much about a man who had put her on a plane and never given her another thought.

  Letting out a resigned sigh, he knelt down and brought himself almost eye level with her.

  “This better be good, Honey.”

  She took another sip, long and slow, then licked the end of the tiny straw.

  Oh, it was good, all right, good enough for the United States government to make a case against her and against him, good enough to send her into exile and him into jail, good enough to get them both killed, if they failed.

  She wasn’t going to tell him that, though, not until he knew he didn’t have a choice. Not until he knew that come hell, high water, or a Salvadoran death squad, he was going to be right by her side—because she didn’t have a choice, either, and not just because of the damn CIA and their damn threats.

  Finished with the straw, she stuck it back in the drink and set the glass down next to his feet.

  “A man in Washington told me to give this to you, that you would know what it meant—exactly what it meant,” she said, reaching up and slipping the necklace off over the top of her head. She held it out, and the pendant dangled between them, with the bright, tropical sunlight shining through the quartz and glinting off the silver chain looped around her fingers.

  He didn’t make a move to take it, just grew very, very still and stared at the damn thing.

  She understood. She’d been more than a little unnerved by the stone summons when it had been given to her—and it was nothing less. A summons: for her, a command she ignored at her peril; for him, she’d been promised, a call to duty he would obey, no questions asked.

  And yet he didn’t reach out to take it.

  “I want a name,” he said, when he finally spoke. “I want to know who, what, when, where, and how in the hell that came into your possession.” His words were slow and measured, his voice the stone-cold definition of don’t-fuck-with-me authority.

  And she loved it—oh, yes. It was exactly what she needed, all his growl and grumble, all the sleek menace he could muster, and even with all that on her side, she was scared spitless by what the man in Washington expected her to do.

  But Mr. C. Smith Rydell didn’t need to know she was scared, ever.

  Pushing her sunglasses down on her nose, she looked up at him from over the top of the frames, giving him a cool once-over, and sure as hell not bothering to tell him who had given her the necklace. The name was hanging in the air between them, and he knew it.

  So she held his gaze, quiet and steady, until he got her message.

  “No way,” he said, shaking his head, a slight, disbelieving grin curving the corner of his mouth. “You’re not that connected. Nobody is that connected. You didn’t get to that guy.”

  “You are so incredibly right, as usual, Mr. Rydell,” she said, pushing her sunglasses back up. “I didn’t get to him. He got to me.”

  Another silence ensued, another discomfiting, tension-filled silence, and Honey could tell it was going to be one helluva long forty-eight hours—one helluva long, dangerous, and no doubt unbearably hot and sweaty forty-eight hours.

  God, she hoped she had the strength for it.

  Sonuvabitch.

  Smith stared at the necklace, stared at the sun-shot piece of quartz, and in his head, he kept swearing, one cold-edged curse after another.

  Honey, he could have handled—his gaze dropped down the front of her—maybe. But the stone was nonnegotiable, an ivory-colored pendant carved into a chess piece, a white rook, and with her standing in front of him, and Peru hell and gone behind him, and damned Jenkins handing out orders like candy at a parade, the piece could only have come from the one man with the authority to make even General Grant jump: White Rook, the White Rook, a shadowy figure in the stratosphere of U.S. government who had created SDF eleven years ago with a stroke of his pen.

  And White Rook had sent him Honey York.

  Goddammit.

  The situation was starting to give him a real bad, edgy feeling, and he hated it when he got a real bad, edgy feeling, especially before lunch.

  He picked up her piña colada and looked to either side of the pool before taking a long swallow. There were a hundred people milling around the area, and he didn’t know a one of them besides the idiot at his back and the piece of work at his feet—and that could be good, or bad, or mean absolutely nothing.

  “This hasn’t got a damn thing to do with coffee, does it?” he said, setting the drink down on the deck and letting his gaze fall back on her. Blond, rich, too damn beautiful for anybody’s good, and nothing but trouble—if anyone needed a body guard at the Blake, it was definitely Honey York.

  “A little, maybe,” she said, “but not really.”

  He swore again, a bit more crudely, then took the necklace and slipped it into his pocket—because he didn’t have a choice.

&n
bsp; “Come on, Ms. York,” he said, extending his hand to help her out of the pool. “Let’s go some-place where you can explain to me why I shouldn’t put your butt back on a plane headed home, no matter how much jewelry you’ve packed into Panama.”

  He had to accept the assignment, whatever it actually turned out to be, but that was the only thing he had to do. The planning and execution of an SDF mission was strictly up to the operators—in this case, him—and in his book, there wasn’t one reason in a thousand for her to be any part of whatever happened next, especially if it was going to happen in El Salvador.

  He let his gaze slide down her body as she came up out of the water—okay, he could think of one, but that was not going to happen, not on a mission.

  The minute she was solidly on the deck, he let go of her hand and took a step back, keeping a safe distance, if that was even possible with her, which he seriously doubted. She’d been nothing but trouble since the day they’d met, even if they hadn’t even spent a whole day together. He never had understood what in the hell had compelled him to leave a perfectly good beer, in a perfectly good cantina, and cross a lousy street filling up with bad guys in order to save her from potential harm.

  Potential, hell.

  There’d been nothing “potential” about it. Those bad guys had been gunning for her, and everything inside him had said “intervene” in big block letters. Sure, she’d gotten herself into trouble that day in San Luis by wandering off the beaten tourist path, but he had not been able to let the mistake stand and take care of itself, not when he’d seen her and instantly known what was getting ready to happen.

  So here he was again. Dammit.

  He let her precede him to a nearby chaise longue and waited while she slipped on a pair of black-sequined sparkle sandals and tied a sheer black sarong low around her hips, and he tried not to be too interested in the process, especially the whole wrapping-something-around-her-hips process.

  Right.

  Now all he had to do was debrief her, get all the pertinent information out of her little steel trap of a brain, and then send her on her way, because there was nothing that could need doing in El Salvador that he couldn’t do better, faster, and more safely without her.

  No, he wouldn’t be taking Honoria York-Lytton with him into Morazán. No way in hell.

  CHAPTER THREE

  No fucking way in hell.

  Smith picked up one of the photographs Honey had set out on the table in her garden bungalow, listening to her brief him on the operation and her part in it, and all he could think was no fucking way in hell.

  “The mayday call came in two days ago, and my butt was on a plane out of Dulles last night,” she said. “The failed mission was diplomatic, top priority.”

  Weren’t they all? he thought, but kept his opinion to himself. He’d been on a few “top priority” diplomatic missions, a couple where the rate of fire had exceeded the rate of diplomacy by a hundred to one.

  He took off his sunglasses and gave the photo a closer look.

  “The CIA knows the guerrillas found their downed plane, the pilot, and the courier’s pouch he was carrying,” she said. “What they don’t know is if Diego and his men found—”

  “Diego?” he interrupted, shifting his attention from the eight-by-ten glossy of a plane’s broken tail section and pinning her with his gaze. Diego?

  “Diego Garcia, the guerrilla leader.”

  Yeah, yeah, he knew, but geezus.

  “You’re on a first-name basis with the commander of the Cuerpo Nacional de Libertad? The CNL?”

  “We met that night in San Luis, in the sacristy at St. Mary’s. We had dinner together.”

  “I remember.” Clearly, but he sure as hell hadn’t considered it a friggin’ social engagement.

  “And we’ve...uh, corresponded a few times since.”

  He stared at her, dead silent.

  Correfuckingsponded?

  “So, uh...well,” she continued, glancing at the photographs and absently straightening one edge of the pile, “what the...uh, CIA doesn’t know is if the CNL found the flash drive the pilot was also transporting. It wasn’t mentioned in their list of demands. But the Agency wants it back, and after we retrieve the courier’s pouch, we’re supposed to get the rebels to take us to the plane, unless this Campos guy can, so we can search for—”

  “Stop,” he said, lifting his hand, his jaw suddenly so tight he could barely speak. “Stop right there.”

  If the CIA wanted their damn courier’s pouch and their damn flash drive back, great. Fine. He’d call Kid or Creed, and they’d go get them. But nothing about the op made sense, if Honey was involved. He couldn’t think of a better way to get himself killed, because there was no better way. Oh, hell, no. Taking a hothouse blonde into Morazán to hook up with a bunch of jungle runners to go search the friggin’ cockpit and fuse-lage of a crashed Cessna was a guaranteed goatfuck.

  And there she’d be, right smack-dab in the middle of it, with her little sparkle sandals and her cocktail umbrellas, and all the power and money she had at her beck and call not doing her one goddamn bit of good.

  Hell, no, nothing about it made sense—except for one little thing.

  “Corresponding,” he said, dropping the photo back on the table. It was a question, and he damn well expected an answer.

  “Notes,” she said. “Well, note cards. Embossed. A couple of them.”

  Embossed.

  Of course.

  “And, uh...he writes back on that really thin paper that you can almost see through.”

  Smith bet the CIA had loved that.

  “And what do you two write each other about?” he asked.

  “The weather.”

  Bullshit.

  “And the hardships of camp life.”

  More bullshit.

  “And Julia.”

  Bingo, bango, bongo. Game over.

  “Get packed,” he said, slipping his sunglasses inside his jacket pocket. “Whatever trouble your sister has gotten herself into, you’re not the one who can get her out. You’re going home.” And if this was the kind of plan the spooks at Langley were running down the back side of State, it might be time for a desk job somewhere. Either that, or he needed to be carrying more ammo.

  “I can’t.”

  “Then I’ll do it for you,” he said, turning on his heel and heading for the closet.

  “I mean I can’t go home. The ticket they gave me, it was only one-way.”

  “Then we’ll buy another one.” He’d have Skeeter expense it out to the U.S. Embassy in Panama. Brett Jenkins could thank him later, because, man, he was doing the boy a favor. Far better to get stuck with the tab on an international airline ticket, than to have to explain how you lost the daughter of a former ambassador in the wilds of El Salvador. Jenkins would be stumbling over that one for the rest of a very shortlived career.

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Yes, it is.” With an American Express card and a passport, nothing could be easier.

  He reached the closet, with her hot on his heels, swung the door open—and stopped cold.

  What the fuck?

  The closet was a walk-in, and there were eight frickin’ Louis Vuitton suitcases in it. Five of them the big ones.

  “What—” he started, then stopped. “What” was not the question.

  “Why” was the question, as in why would any one person need so much stuff? Anywhere? Anytime? To do anything? And he was about ready to ask it, when she dropped another bomb.

  “No, it’s not easy. Not at all. They’re not going to let me back in.”

  Feeling that bad edginess growing stronger and starting to crawl up the back of his neck, he turned to face her. “Who isn’t going to let you back in where?”

  “The CIA is not going to let me back into the United States, not without slapping a charge of treason on me, not unless I bring them the courier’s pouch, the missing flash drive, and Diego Garcia’s assurance that the Campos cof
fee plantation in Morazán will not be part of the CNL’s next push down the Torola River.”

  She’d done it again, struck him dumb—but okay, all right, he was starting to get the picture, and it was way bigger than Sister Julia and two embossed notes. Treason, geezus, and the rest of it—well, hell, he knew the Campos plantation, had deployed out of it once. Alejandro Campos had a knack for working all sides toward the middle without getting in the line of fire or on anyone’s demolish-and-destroy list. The guy was deep in the game, brokering power between his base of operations in Morazán and dozens of points north and south across Central America and beyond; a player, a drug dealer, an arms dealer, whatever people needed him to be, ally or enemy, and Smith couldn’t imagine why the CIA wanted Honoria York-Lytton to run interference for him with the CNL. Hell, knowing Campos, he’d probably financed the rebel group’s last sortie—and knowing Campos, he’d probably sold them out three times while doing it, which would explain the CIA’s vested interest in keeping him in one piece. That kind of talent was hard to find.

  But treason, Christ, that was all too easy to find. The sacristy of St. Mary’s had been full of treason that night in San Luis—at least it could be construed that way by someone with a motive, like an agency who needed to retrieve a goddamn courier’s pouch and a fucking flash drive from a guerrilla group in the mountains and, for a thousand reasons, didn’t want anyone to know it was them doing it, or that the whole goddamn problem was theirs, a description that fit every single thing the CIA did.

  His gaze dropped down Honey again, from the top of her devilishly wild blond curls to the ten little hot pink toes peeking out of her sparkle sandals, all five feet two inches of one hundred percent pure girly-girl, the high maintenance, high-octane version.

  Right.

  That’s who he’d send into the jungle to get his stuff back.

  Not.

  Not for any reason on God’s green earth, which begged the question.

  “Why you?”

  “Diego requested me. There have been a few...well, events that have taken place recently. They’ve left people on edge, upset the balance so to speak, and apparently I’m the only one he trusts right now.”