Crazy Sweet (18 page)

CHAPTER

22

F
ROM THE PRIVACY of the bathroom, Smith brought up the menu on Honey’s pink flip phone and wrote down its number. Then he keyed in a different, thirteen-digit number, verified it onscreen, and hit “send.”

He got an answer on the second ring.

“Drug Enforcement Agency,” an official-sounding female voice said.

Damn
. Just his luck. He’d been hoping someone else would be answering that number tonight—anyone else.

“Carol? It’s Smith Rydell,” he said, stopping his pacing and sitting on the edge of the bathtub, where he could keep an eye on Honey in the other room.

“So?” the woman said, her voice turning glacial.

She’d always been quick, just not quick enough not to get wrapped up in the rebound of his divorce.

“I need a favor,” he said.

“You don’t work here anymore, remember?”

“I’m in trouble.”

“Then get yourself out.”

He could almost see her handset heading back toward its cradle.

“Carol, Carol,” he said quickly, and loudly, in case she really had already moved to hang up on him.

“Go on.”

“I’ve got a problem. I’m in El Salvador on a civilian cell phone, and I need to call my commanding officer on a secure channel. The situation here is somewhere between urgent and desperate. Can you help me?”

“Are you trying to get me fired, Smith? Call the embassy,” she said curtly.

The instant he’d heard her voice, he’d known this wouldn’t be easy. It had been a rough breakup, and it had been him doing all the breaking.

“That’s part of my problem,” he said, rising from the edge of the tub and pacing over to the window. “I need to do this without State or anyone else knowing about it for a while. Carol, please.”

“You are trying to get me fired, you jerk.”

“I am a jerk, you’re right.” And he’d never been more of a jerk than after his divorce. “But I’ve got reason to believe one of my teammates is in danger, and if I can make the call, maybe I can keep her from getting hurt.”

“
Her?
” The tone of voice was unmistakable, pure bitch.

Ouch. He hadn’t known Carol still cared quite so much.

“An operator who goes by the name Red Dog.”

There was a moment’s silence, then, “
La cazadora espectral?
You’re working with Red Dog?
The
Red Dog?”

Well, that set him back a bit, and yes, as far as he knew, he was working with
the
Red Dog. He was pretty sure there was only one—thank God.

“Yes.”

“Wow. Tell her nice hits in Colón.”

Geezus,
news traveled fast.

“They were, and I did.” He looked out the window, checking the street. The situation hadn’t changed. It was still chaos with subguns and tire fires.

“
Oh, my, God.
” Carol practically swooned over the phone. “You were there? With her? In Colón?”

Normally, that was a question he wouldn’t have answered, but he was in trouble, and he did need help, and something was telling him he’d just stumbled onto a way to get it.

“Yes,” he said, counting on being able to work this whole Red Dog thing to his advantage, and hers.

“Is she as amazing as they say?”

“Yes.” An amazing amount of trouble.

“And beautiful?”

“Very.” In her own kick-ass, take-no-prisoners, tough-girl way. When Red Dog walked into a room, people noticed, and a good many of them stepped back. It was an interesting phenomenon to observe. She wasn’t that big, but she managed to dominate a good bit of the space around herself—space nobody intruded on, not without reason or her permission.

“And is it true that she doesn’t remember her own name?”

“Yes.” And he guessed that made it official. He was now president of the Red Dog Fan Club. “She knows her name, but only because she’s been told. She doesn’t remember it.” Neither did he remember Carol ever being quite so breathlessly excited about anything, except during sex. This was a new side of her.

“How
awful,
” she said in a way that sounded a lot like “how cool,” as in “how romantically tragic, to lose your mind and become a vengeful killer.”

He didn’t want to tell her that there was no vengeance involved. It was Gillian’s job, no more, no less, except when it came to Tony Royce, which brought him back to the point of the phone call.

“She’s in trouble, Carol, and I’m her only hope.” Just call him Obi-Wan.

“Okay,” Carol said after a slight hesitation. “But I’m doing this for her, not you; I want to make that perfectly clear.”

Got it, he thought.

“I appreciate it, Carol.” God, had he really made love to this woman? It never failed to amaze him how much animosity could be generated by intimacy.

“What’s your phone number?”

He read it to her, and she read it back for him to verify.

“And who do you want to call?”

“General Buck Grant, in Washington, D.C.”

There was another moment of silence, before she spoke.

“You’re with
them
now?”

He wasn’t answering that question, and after a moment’s silence, Carol knew it.

“Okay. Fine. Be that way. Press your ‘end’ key twice,” she said, “and leave your phone turned on. I’m going to set up a satellite link between Grant’s office and the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador.”

When he and Carol had first met, she’d been assigned to the Central American desk. Now she was a communications supervisor with all the tricks up her sleeve and at her fingertips.

“I’m going to put you on a local channel that will connect your phone to the embassy and simultaneously block your cell tower reception and transmission,” she continued. “Give me about five minutes. If it doesn’t work, I’ll call you back from here.”

He did as he’d been told, pressing the “end” key twice, before walking back into the bedroom. He knew what she was trying to do, and he was grateful. If it worked, Grant’s transmissions would be uplinked to the DOS secure satellite network, terminated at the San Salvador embassy’s computer, and digitally transmitted to his phone at minimum power. His transmissions would follow the same route in reverse. The only opportunity for anyone to monitor the conversation would be if they could intercept the 0.6-watt transmissions between Honey’s cell phone and the embassy computer.

The risk was considered acceptable in an emergency situation, and the route bought him the hours he needed. The embassy computer logs wouldn’t be reviewed until after the morning office staff arrived at work, between nine and ten o’clock. By then, he’d be on a plane headed back to the States.

Stretching out on the bed, he settled in to wait. Five minutes.

His gaze strayed to Honey sitting next to him.

A lot could happen in five minutes, but he doubted if anything would.

She was busy taking all the bows and bobby pins out of her hair and putting them in a zebra-striped, zippered makeup bag trimmed in red leather. There was a reason she had so many pins, the same reason she’d had her hair pulled into a French twist. Unleashed, it was wild, out of control, going crazy with the heat and the humidity.

“Nice hairdo,” he said, just to get her to stick her tongue out at him again.

She didn’t disappoint, and he had a feeling that’s why she’d done it for the second freaking time. She knew he liked it.

She knew he wanted to kiss her.

She knew every man she met wanted to kiss her.

Women, especially hot, spoiled, beautiful women, were enough to turn a guy into an absolute idiot, and he was disappointed as hell to find out he was no exception, not when it came to her.

Geezus.
He usually had more sense.

Finished with the last pin, she ran her hands up into her hair and slipped her fingers through the whole tawny blond mess, stirring it up, rubbing her scalp, giving it all a little shake.

He wanted to look away. Honestly, he did, but he couldn’t.

When she was done, she gave her hair a final toss over her shoulder and met his gaze, very directly, across the very short length of bed separating them.

Very short.

“Interesting phone call, Smith,” she said.

“You couldn’t have heard my phone call all the way from over here.”

The look she gave him said only one thing:
Oh, yeah?

Shit.

He hadn’t said anything too incriminating or classified, but he hated to think he’d misjudged the distance between them, or the acuity of a sorority girl’s hearing.

“What do you think you heard?”

“I heard you admit to a woman named Carol that you’re a jerk, which tells me
something
must have been going on between the two of you.”

Okay, she’d heard plenty, probably everything.

“Not as much as you’re thinking,” he assured her.

“So it was just sex?”

Geezus
.

“It was none of your business.”

“I think it’s cool that you know you’re a jerk. Most guys aren’t that aware of their shortcomings,” she said, digging back into her tote bag.

He grinned. She was such a piece of work.

“I’m not most guys,” he said, which got him another roll of her eyes.

His grin broadened.

“What about the other woman you mentioned? Red Dog? The one who doesn’t know her own name? What’s her story?”

He held her gaze but didn’t say anything.

“That’s a pretty interesting name, Red Dog,” she said, undaunted.

“You might want to forget you ever heard it.”

“Betcha I don’t.”

“Betcha you should.”

“You don’t scare me anymore.”

He could, in about half a second flat. He’d actually had quite a bit of training in how to scare the holy fucking crap out of anybody in less than half a second flat. It was considered a basic skill in his line of work. A guy had to have it, or he couldn’t do the job.

But Honey wasn’t a job. She was an accident, a wondrous, fluffy-haired, green-eyed, barefoot accident with soft pink shimmery lips.

“What happened to your red lipstick?”

“Makeup remover,” she said, showing him a small, wadded-up tissue with candy-apple-red smears on it. “I changed my outfit, so I changed my lipstick.”

Well, well, well, who would ever have believed it? His green parrot shirt and khaki cargoes had been elevated to the status of “outfit.”

He honestly hadn’t thought he owned any “outfits.” But he could see it. Sure. She’d rolled up the pants legs, which gave the trousers a certain
esprit de
something or another. She’d tied the tails of the shirt, to better accent her waist, which was something he had never, ever,
ever
done with his green parrot shirt. Or the blue one. Or with any shirt he owned.

She wasn’t wearing a bra with the shirt, which he never did either, but somehow, the whole braless thing looked really enticing on her, whereas he’d bet his ass nobody had ever noticed it on him.

And then there were the buttons. He was a casual kind of guy, but that last button she’d left unbuttoned? He usually kept it buttoned. It was button number three. Nonetheless, he was awfully glad that she’d left it undone. It was just enough to tease him, without pushing him straight over the edge.

“You smell good.” Really good. Not that she hadn’t smelled good before, but now she smelled good in a different, really riveting way.