Beautiful Sacrifice (17 page)

“Bad?” he asked.

“Not enough to matter.”

But she didn’t pull away from the arm encircling her waist. She liked it there. She liked having Hunter close. He smelled of cheap restroom soap with an underlay of darkness, salt, and man.

Breathe,
she reminded herself.

She did, and felt his scent race into her lungs, her blood. The sudden uptick in her heartbeat owed nothing to fear and everything to being a woman close to a man she wanted.

This is crazy,
she told herself.

No. Crazy is what I’ll be if he doesn’t step away.

Nothing that had happened during the day had made Hunter less appealing to her. Everything he’d done had simply increased what had already been a compelling sensual lure. She tried not to lean on his strength, but he was there and her legs were stiff, he was warm and she was cold.

She hoped he didn’t know how much she needed him close, then closer. This afternoon she had learned the difference between almost-blackmailers and murderers. In her new world, Hunter was an angel. A dark one, yes, but they were the most intriguing kind.

“Doesn’t look like much, but it has what we need,” Hunter said.

Still holding her, he leaned back into the Jeep. One-handed, he snagged his computer from under the passenger seat. When he straightened, his breath was against her ear, his arm around her waist comforting…and more, much more.

She forced herself to look away from him, to tear through the sensual web weaving around them, binding them closer.

The coastal scrub was kept away from the house by the concrete walkway that was covered with a fine coat of sand and a fringe of dirt that was blue in the moonlight. Toad calls and insect noises ebbed and flowed with the sound of the waves. The front steps were weathered gray wood.

“Looks real good to me,” she said.

“I haven’t been out here to clean up for a while,” Hunter admitted. “I’ve been too busy with work to come to Uncle Danny’s summer place.”

“You’re sure he won’t mind us using it?”

“I talked to him on the phone while you were asleep. He told me the usual.”

“Which is?”

“To leave it better than I found it. He probably wants me to fix the gutters or something.” Hunter sounded more amused than irritated.

Motion sensors kicked on. Spotlights pointed the way to the weather-beaten porch. There was a scurry of critters racing for the shadows.

“Just like being on a dig,” Lina said, laughing.

“So long as they stay outside and don’t bite, my uncle don’t pay them no never mind,” Hunter said.

His drawl sounded just right, like he’d grown up with it. One accent for the city, one for the country.

Another light went on inside the house. At the end of the driveway Lina saw a tiny garage. Its door was closed.

“Is your uncle here now?” she asked.

“No. He only likes Padre in the summer. Then he complains about all the damn people. Think that’s why he likes it,” Hunter said. “Under all the gruff, he’s a people person.”

“What about you?”

“What do you think?” Hunter asked with a sideways look.

She smiled slightly. “I don’t think you’re a people person.”

“Gold star on your forehead, sweetheart. I’m real choosy about who shares my time. An hour wasted on social chitchat is an hour of my life I’ll never get back.”

“And here I am, invading more than an hour,” she said unhappily.

His arm tightened, pulling her even closer, until she could feel the flex and play of his thigh along her hip. The easy power of him pleased her in ways that kept surprising her. She’d never been much for the macho type, having seen way too many of them in Mexico. But Hunter…Hunter simply was what he was, no fuss, no bother, no strutting.

“You can invade my life anytime you like,” he said, “for however long you want. Besides, I’m a blackmailer, remember?”

“Better than kidnappers and murderers.”

“I’m relieved.” And he was. He didn’t want Lina angry to be in his company. He simply wanted her.

Hunter stepped up onto the narrow porch that ran along the front of the house. Computer in one hand, he pulled a key from his jeans pocket with the other. Despite the weathered appearance of the door, the lock was bright and well oiled. The door opened without a creak or grind.

“Come on in,” he said.

He put his computer on a dusty table and headed straight to a surprisingly complex security system across the room. Quickly he punched in a long code. Lights on the panel flickered from red or orange to green.

“I bet your uncle installs security systems along with rescuing debutantes,” Lina said, setting her purse next to his computer.

“It was the original business. Then things started going to hell south of the border and he expanded the menu options for customers. Personal security training, threat evaluation, kidnap negotiations, bodyguards, whatever the customer wants—as long as it’s legal.”

“So you’re a bodyguard, too?” she asked.

His mouth flattened. “Only when I don’t say no fast enough, and only for very short periods—corporate meetings across the border and such. I don’t have the social skills to be a high-level bodyguard. And I don’t want them.”

You could guard my body anytime,
Lina thought immediately.

She had just enough self-control left not to say it aloud. For the first time in her life, she wanted to have the kind of affair that women wrote memoirs about. With Hunter.

“So your uncle comes to a crowded place and complains a lot,” she said, struggling for a neutral topic. “Does he complain about other things?”

“Only on the days that end in
y
.”

She laughed softly. “Sounds like Abuelita. ‘Why don’t you dress better, Lina?’ ‘Why don’t you have a man, Lina?’ ‘I can’t wait forever for my great-great-grandchildren.’”

“Children are a gift,” he said without thinking as he locked the door behind them and reset the security system.

“You sound like you have personal knowledge,” Lina said.

And then she held her breath, waiting for his answer.

“I do. Did. She and her mother died.”

Lina’s hand went to Hunter’s arm. She wanted to say she was sorry, but the words were so useless. She put her arms around him and held him, just held him, wishing she could take away the kind of pain that no one should have to know.

“It was years ago,” he said, holding her in turn.

“Not for you,” she said huskily. “It’s there every day you wake up, fresh as dawn.”

His arms tightened. For long minutes they just stood, sharing warmth and life. Slowly Hunter released her. It was that or take her to the nearest flat surface and eat her alive. But she was too vulnerable right now and he had just enough self-control left not to take advantage of her.

“Maybe I should sic my uncle on your
abuelita,
” he said.

Lina took a shaky breath. “Abuelita would shred him. In Mexico, any woman who has even the smallest measure of power has to be tough and smart enough to know where and when to use it. Manipulate, manage, and never get caught with your hand on the power switch.”

Hunter laughed softly. “Every culture has its version of a dragon lady.”

“There’s a reason. Patriarchy creates them every time.” Lina took another long breath. “What’s that smell?”

“Dust.”

“No, not that. The flowery one.”

“Plumeria. My uncle won’t pay to have the house dusted, but there’s a gardener to pamper the greenery.”

Lina thought about the army of workers who attended the Reyes Balam estate. It was something she had taken for granted as a child. As an adult on her own, she appreciated the luxury of the estate and understood that it went two ways. The men and women of the nearby villages had steady, lifelong work on the estate, money to feed their children and to celebrate their religion. Celia sponsored the brightest kids through high school. The ones who had ambition she sent to college or technical school, whichever the child chose. Reyes Balam depended on the villagers and they depended on Reyes Balam.

“Uncle Danny claims he hates all the flowers that my aunt planted and loved,” Hunter said. “But after she died a few years back, he hired someone to keep the flowers alive.”

“He loved her,” Lina murmured, wondering what it would be like.

“Still does.” Hunter pulled the sheet off the low, Danish Modern couch. The smell of dust rose, then settled beneath the perfume from outside. “But you’d have to shove glass splinters under his fingernails to get him to admit it. I used to think that was funny. Now I understand.”

“You loved your wife,” she said.

There was a taut silence, a near-silent rush of breath, and then Hunter spoke in a neutral voice. “I got Pauline pregnant when I was eighteen and she was seventeen.” He smiled thinly. “Sometimes the party lasts longer than the party hat.”

Lina waited. Hunter didn’t show anything on his exterior, but she sensed the cost of every word he said.

“Little Suzanne was the light in my life,” he said after a moment. “Four years later Pauline told me I wasn’t Suzanne’s sperm donor. Her boyfriend was out of jail and she wanted a divorce so she could live with the man she loved. I didn’t want to let go of Suzanne, but I believed a child had a right to live with her father and mother. The three of them lived on alimony and child support until the drugged-out son of a bitch met a long-haul rig head-on at over one hundred miles an hour. The trucker got a few broken bones. Pauline and Suzanne died instantly. Her lover took a week to die. I hope he hurt like hell on fire every second of it.”

Lina didn’t know what to say, so she simply watched Hunter methodically tear off more slipcovers from the furniture.

“I didn’t particularly love my wife, but I loved my little girl,” he said finally. “How about you? Any great loves in your life?”

She had to swallow several times before she answered. His neutral voice and seething emotions made her want to weep.

“No,” she said. “No loves great or small. Living north of the border for seven months a year and south of the border the rest of time…” She shrugged. “When I was old enough to live on my own, I was too hooked on the thrill of the digs to worry about spending quality time on anything else.”

Silently Hunter folded slipcovers and put them in a tiny hall closet. He wasn’t about to say the truth out loud: he was glad she hadn’t found a man, married, and settled down before he had ever known her.

Lina studied the furniture. Unlike life, it was all clean lines and smooth surfaces. The colors were solid earth tones and blacks, as if the clock had stopped at a very fashionable 1954 and never started again.

“The bedrooms are back here,” Hunter said. “We’ll need to get into town early and buy clothes and supplies.”

“And then what?”

“See what my ICE contacts and my uncles come up with.”

“I should be at the family estate soon,” Lina said. “I promised Mother and Abuelita.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing your family home.”

Silently she absorbed the fact that Hunter assumed he was going with her. She started to object, but didn’t. Everyone was always harping on how she should bring a man home to meet the family.

Hunter was all man.

“No argument?” he asked.

“We have to assume the objects came from the Yucatan,” she said.

“Looks like it. More important, the tools who tried to grab you came from there. Right now I’m as worried about you as I am about Jase.”

Lina gave Hunter a startled look. “Jase is in more danger.”

“He’s under guard in the hospital. His family is under guard. He’s safer than you are.”

“Under guard?”

“I talked to Stu Brubaker, Jase’s boss. I told him straight up that he had sent Jase blindfolded into a firefight, and if anything else happened to him, Brubaker’s political ass was on my firing line.”

She looked at Hunter’s eyes and saw the predator she had always sensed beneath his easy movements. It didn’t worry her. Life had taught her that it was better to have a predator with her than against her.

Predators were strong enough to be gentle.

“I bet the boss didn’t like that,” Lina said.

“From me, no, but he got to the bottom line even before I called. He put the guards on Jase and his family. Right now Brubaker is backdating files to make it clear that Jase was officially working undercover for him on a very politically sensitive project.”

“Wasn’t he?”

“In a back-door kind of way. The files make it up front, which means that Jase was shot in the line of duty. Uncle Sam will take care of the bills. Every last penny of them. If Jase comes out of this injury less than one hundred percent, he’ll get full disability whether he stays in the field or not. Jase’s choice.”

She cleared her throat. “Sounds like you and Brubaker had quite a chat.”

“In our family, we call it a come-to-Jesus talk. Brubaker’s a good man underneath the bureaucracy. It shook him hard to see Ali and the kids. Reminded him that more than an attaboy from the vice president was at stake in this sorry game. And Brubaker’s plenty savvy enough to know that his career is gone if he doesn’t take real good care of Jase.”

“So he won’t fire Jase over the artifacts even if they aren’t found?”

“Not while I’m on watch. Brubaker and I have a Mexican standoff on that subject. If my guess is right, he’s quietly twisting arms to get his hands on some objects that are close enough to pass at the repatriation ceremony. Since we’re talking truckloads of goods already slated to be handed over, and there was no hoo-ha over Jase’s artifacts in the first place, it should work.”

“Then you don’t need me anymore. Jase’s job is safe.” Lina’s voice dried up as she looked into Hunter’s eyes. They were intense, focused solely on her.

Hunter shook his head. “Sweetheart, you couldn’t be more wrong. You’re not going anywhere alone until I know who and what this El Maya dude is. He pulled the trigger on your kidnapping. And Jase.”

“My family has bodyguards,” she pointed out. “Everyone with money in Mexico does.”

He nodded. “Ever think that some of the money your family has might not be clean, and that’s a reason for you to worry and for men to be after you?”