Dangerous to Hold (14 page)

The gleam in Maggie's eyes deepened as she remembered Jake's terse rundown of the situation in the camp. He'd confirmed that Sarah Chandler was safe, that she'd donned the dead nun's robes as cover the night of the raid to protect herself and the three children. According to Jake, the disguise had kept her from being molested. So far. At that moment, however, he'd sounded as though he wanted to strangle the woman himself.

He probably did. After five days in Sarah Chandler's company, Jake no doubt couldn't wait to see the last of the socialite. Maggie grinned, wondering just what the other woman made of the terse, hard-eyed mercenary. Jake wasn't exactly sociable, even when he wasn't in the field. In this undercover role, he must terrify the poor woman.

Although… Maggie had to admit Sarah Chandler had shown real courage and ingenuity in carrying off her disguise this long. The media had painted her as weak-willed and shallow, but Maggie knew that no one was that one dimensional. Maybe, just maybe, there was more to Sarah Chandler than anyone realized. After all, she was Senator Chandler's daughter.

Maggie's grin deepened as she pictured Adam Ridgeway facing down the big, bluff senator, who never appeared in public without an unlit cigar clamped in one corner of his mouth. That would be a confrontation worth seeing. Unleashed, unrestrained energy versus absolute control. Raw power colliding with unshakable authority. Maggie put her money on Adam, hands down.

Still, she thought, if she had to choose between witnessing a spectacular demonstration of two civilized, sophisticated males locking horns like bull elks or walking down a dusty road in a colorful, sweltering tropical city, she'd choose to be here. Cartoza's capital—called confusingly enough, Cartoza City—teemed with life.

City dwellers shouted as they alternately zoomed their vehicles for a few yards, then braked to a screeching halt a few inches from the pedestrians clogging the streets. People, taxis, buses, trucks, donkeys and one or two pigs streamed in or out of the city. Traffic was snarled hopelessly around the plaza that housed the colorful open-air market, Cartoza's center of commerce.

Concentrating on her role, Maggie settled her face into calm, quiet lines and shrank within herself. Someone with her height would stand out in a crowd unless she made herself inconspicuous. Head bowed, shoulders slightly slumped,
hands folded over the .22 tucked into her sleeve, she entered the throng of people swarming through the market. She had a couple of days before the drop. She intended to use them.

 

By the time she joined the women who invited her to share their evening meal at a rickety table set in a patch of shade cast by a market stall, Maggie had gathered a cache of informational nuggets. Cartoza was a small country, barely a hundred miles from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast. Everyone was related to everyone else in some remote way. And everyone knew what happened in the interior, although few talked about it openly to outsiders.

Of course, the sisters of Our Lady of Sorrows weren't really outsiders. The nuns understood how difficult it was for a woman to stretch a little bit of milk among five children. Their work brought them into contact with the grinding poverty of the working people.

“One does what one must, Sister,” a tired, once-pretty young woman said, scrupulously dividing her dish of paella to give Maggie half.

Maggie ate slowly, listening while the women described the hardships since the guerrillas had begun battling government troops, with the peasants caught between.

“The
federales,
they make it so hard on us,” another woman said with a sigh. “They set up roadblocks. They stop our trucks. They search everything for chemicals. We were four hours getting home from market last week.”

The mention of chemicals set Maggie's pulse tripping. She knew that cocaine-processing plants needed a steady supply of hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid and ether to leach the coca leaves and extract a paste that could be shaped into bricks for shipping to refineries. She also knew that a good percentage of the population in many Latin American countries had become economically dependent on coca production. There weren't any programs like welfare or unemployment or food stamps in these countries. People starved to death every day. As a result, many peasants worked the coca fields or tried
desperately to make a living by smuggling chemicals to the plants hidden deep in the interior. It wasn't a matter of right or wrong. It was a matter of survival.

Jake's initial reports had confirmed the report that a drug lord had set up a processing plant in Cartoza's interior. The same lord supplied the funds to arm the rebels, thus keeping the government too busy to mount a major search for his plant. Although this part of the operation was outside OMEGA's area of responsibility, Maggie couldn't let slip the chance to gather any useful information. Washing down the paella that had suddenly lodged in her throat with tepid orangeade, she turned a gentle, inquiring look on the woman who'd just spoken.

“It took you four hours to get home,
señora?
You must have traveled far.”

“No, Sister, it was those pesky
federales,
I tell you. They set up a checkpoint on the only road into the mountains. Traffic was backed up for two or three miles. They searched everyone, everything. Everyone had to get off the bus in front of us and open every bundle. Then the searchers found some gallon containers under a load of manure on the truck ahead of us.” She shook her head. “As soon as the police would unload a container, the husband would flap his arms and argue while the wife snatched it up, ran around to the other side and shoved it back on the truck.”

The younger woman chuckled. “My sister-in-law's cousin tried sitting on a container last month. The woman weighs well over two hundred pounds. The
federales
didn't find that container.”

She caught herself and threw an embarrassed glance at Maggie. “She does not do that often, Sister. But her baby was sick and needed medicines.”

Maggie couldn't condemn these women for their obvious acceptance of the illegal trade. They were caught in a system perpetuated by her own country's insatiable appetite for a deadly, destructive drug. But neither could she condone their
support. So she simply nodded and tried to steer the conversation toward the destination of these chemical containers.

 

Two hours later, Maggie waited for the reverberations of the lights-out bell to stop bouncing off the walls of her small room at the convent, then punched the code for OMEGA control into her satellite transceiver. As soon as Cowboy came on-line, Maggie pressed the transmit button with her thumb.

“Tell Thunder that I have something he might be interested in.”

“He's downstairs. Want to talk to him?”

“Yes.”

“Hang tight. I'll call him.”

Maggie propped one foot up on the chair beside the narrow bed, hunched a shoulder and pressed the transceiver to her ear. She'd guessed that Adam—code name Thunder—would still be at OMEGA headquarters. There was only two hours' time difference between Cartoza's capital and D.C. It wasn't yet eight o'clock in the evening there. Adam was probably just getting ready to attend some diplomatic dinner or political fund-raiser—no doubt with that sleek, ultraelegant redhead who usually accompanied him to such functions. The one pictured hanging on Adam's arm in a glossy magazine that had featured a story about Washington's most eligible bachelors. The one in the yellow silk sheath that contained less than a yard of material, probably cost more than Maggie had taken home last month, and left no doubt in anyone's mind that underwear was a quaint, if outmoded, custom of the middle classes.

Maggie glanced down at her white, unadorned underwear and grinned.

“Thunder here.” Adam's low, steady voice came over the receiver. “What do you have?”

Maggie summarized her conversation with the women. “It's all coming together,” she concluded, trying hard to keep the excitement out of her voice. “Once we extract the neutrals
and Jaguar springs the trap on the middleman, we should go for these druggies.”

“No. Under no circumstances.”

Maggie frowned at the denial. “I think I can pin down their location in the next day or so.”

“I can't authorize extending the operation.”

Adam paused, and Maggie waited for the explanation she knew would follow. For all his cool authority, Adam wasn't arbitrary. Most of the time.

“Despite Senator Chandler's cooperation, rumors are starting to circulate about the raid and the fact that his daughter was serving in the area. It's only a matter of time until one of the wire services picks up the story and plasters her picture across the front page again. That flimsy disguise Jaguar told us about won't last. Your mission is to get her out of there in one piece.”

“I've got the extraction laid on,” Maggie reminded him. “A joint U.S. and Cartozan force, in unmarked helicopters, will be ready to move the moment Jaguar signals.”

“Good. Concentrate on the extraction, not on the drug lords,” Adam reiterated in his precise way. He hesitated. “We'll pass your information on to the appropriate narcotics agencies. Good work, Chameleon.”

“Thanks,” Maggie responded dryly.

She signed off a few moments later. Tucking the transceiver under her pillow, next to her .22, she stretched out on the narrow bed.

Maggie was a professional. She understood the importance of focusing on the operation she was responsible for and letting others handle theirs. She knew that Adam would ensure the information she uncovered was passed to people who would use it.

Still, she couldn't rid herself of the conviction that a little more digging, a few more casual contacts, and she'd have the location and maybe the name of the man who was supplying Jake's band of guerillas.

She nibbled on her lower lip, wide awake and staring up into the darkness.

It was going to be a long night.

S
arah rolled over on her side and wiggled, trying to find a little padding in the thin bedroll to cushion her hips. She sighed, wondering if this long night would ever end.

She'd spent what was left of the daylight hours caring for Eleanora. The woman had refused to speak, refused to even look at Sarah as she bathed her face and dabbed it with antiseptic.

Jack had come back to the hut briefly. He'd stayed only long enough to kneel in front of Eleanora and press her cheekbones with a gentle finger. They weren't broken, he'd informed Sarah. He wouldn't be able to tell about the nose until the swelling went down, but then, there wasn't much they could do about it even if it was broken. Then he'd grabbed his automatic rifle and left.

When he returned a little while ago, minus the weapon, Sarah had already fed the children and Eleanora and had them bedded down. He'd frowned at Sarah across the hut, as if wanting to have that talk he'd promised, but a small moan
from Eleanora had broken the shimmering tension between them.

Now Sarah lay restless and on edge, her ear tuned to the labored breathing of the woman beside her, but every other sense achingly aware of the man who'd rigged a hammock in the far corner of the shack.

She'd had so little time to think, so little time to let herself recall what had happened this afternoon beside the pool. Now she found that she couldn't think about it without wanting to creep across the quiet hut and touch Jack lightly on the arm to awaken him. Everything in her wanted to lead him out into the dark privacy of the night. The realization that she desired him, that she ached for him with an intensity she'd never known, filled her with confusion and kept sleep at bay.

A sobbing whimper wrenched Sarah from her self-absorption. Teresa twitched in her hammock, caught in the throes of a bad dream. Sarah rolled over and started to rise, then hesitated as a dark shadow moved toward the girl.

“Hush,
niña,
it's okay,” Jack whispered. “Don't be afraid.”

His low, calming voice sent waves of longing rippling along Sarah's nerves. She would've given anything she possessed, which admittedly wasn't much at that particular moment, to hear him whisper like that to her. To have him hold her gently and soothe away her fears.

She watched, breath suspended, while he stooped to pick up something from the floor. Sarah couldn't see the object, but she knew instinctively it was the root, in its frilly dress. Jack tucked the doll in Teresa's arm, then melted back into the darkness.

Oh, God, Sarah groaned to herself as she eased back down onto the bedroll. Why did the blasted, infuriating man have to be so damned contradictory? Why couldn't he be totally evil, so she could hate him? Or totally good, so she could love him?

Her thought came zinging back to mock her. She couldn't love Jack if he was a plaster saint. She couldn't love him if
he didn't possess the hard, biting edge that made him so different, so unlike any other man she'd ever known.

She loved him just the way he was.

Sarah's stomach lurched, and she flung up an arm to cover her eyes. She'd done some stupid, useless things in her life, and this ranked right up there among the worst of them. For all her so-called sophistication, for all her determination not to become emotionally dependent on this man, she'd merged more than her body with him this afternoon. Somehow, sometime during those searing, soaring moments, she'd merged her soul.

What in the world was she going to do about it?

What
could
she do about it?

She groaned again, not quite as silently this time, and flopped over to bury her face in the bedroll.

 

The sharp tang of cosmolene, the grease used for packing and shipping weapons, permeated the still morning air outside the hut. Jake wiped the last residue of grease from a blue steel barrel, frowning slightly. He'd dug through several crates to find something halfway acceptable as a replacement for his bartered rifle.

“I need to talk to you.”

He glanced up at the sound of Sarah's voice. She stood in the doorway of the shack, one foot tapping under the skirts of that damn black robe.

“So talk,” he said, resting the barrel across his knees.

Her gaze flicked to the children playing in the shade a few feet away. “Not here. We need to speak privately. About…about yesterday.”

He sent her a mocking look. “I thought you didn't want to discuss yesterday. Ever.”

“Yes, well, I've had some time to think, to come to a few decisions. I didn't get much rest last night.”

“No kidding. Do you always toss and turn in bed like that? You keep a man awake all night just listening to you.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Jake could've
kicked himself. Who was he kidding? Any man who shared a bed with Sarah wouldn't want to get much sleep. His hormones shot into overdrive at the vivid image that leaped into his mind, an image of a small, curved body sprawled across a wide, rumpled bed.

A flush stained her face. “I didn't realize I was such a restless sleeper. No one's ever mentioned it before.”

“No one, Miss Chandler?”

His soft, taunting drawl surprised Jake as much as it did Sarah. He cursed himself when she drew back, hurt reflected in her expressive eyes.

Dammit, what was the matter with him this morning? Jake's hand tightened on the gun barrel as he realized exactly what had triggered his mocking response. Old-fashioned, gut-level jealousy. A destructive emotion he hadn't known he was capable of, and sure as hell didn't like acknowledging.

With brutal honesty, Jake forced himself to admit he'd spent the long hours of the night struggling to reconcile the Sarah he knew with the one whose picture had been plastered across the dailies for so many weeks. The woman the press had crucified had been made to look shallow, selfish, immoral. The woman he knew was no saint, but her courage and determination to care for the children had tugged at Jake's heart. It had taken him a while to accept that whatever she'd been or done before had shaped her into the remarkable woman she now was. But that was as far as he'd gotten.

Sarah, however, tackled the issue head-on. She came to stand before him, planted both hands on her hips and sent him a steely look.

“That's another thing I want to talk to you about. How you discovered who I am. And how my identity figures into this little…situation we have.”

“Situation?”

Jake didn't much care for her choice of words. He wasn't exactly sure what was between them or where it was going, but he'd describe it differently.

Not
affair.
It was too intense to call an affair.

Not
relationship.
That was too pansy.

“Situation,” she replied firmly, then ran out of patience. “Are you going to get off that crate and take a walk with me, or do I have to do something totally unnunlike and knock you on your backside?”

Jake stared at the diminutive figure before him. Whatever had kept Sarah tossing and turning, whatever decision she'd come to in the dark hours of the night, had put a fierce spark of determination in her eyes. He stared at her, impressed in spite of himself.

There probably weren't two women in the world more dissimilar than Sarah Chandler and Maggie Sinclair in appearance, background, or current employment, but at that moment he could have sworn they were sisters. Maggie was the only woman who'd ever taken Jake down during the defensive-maneuvers training he conducted for OMEGA agents. Right now, Sarah could probably toss him on his head—and would definitely enjoy doing it.

The fierce protectiveness that had colored Jake's feelings for Sarah since the night of the raid shifted, altering subtly in shape and substance. Jake hadn't planned to tell her about the extraction until just before he left camp tomorrow. He'd hoped to minimize her worry and fear and lessen the chance that she might inadvertently let something slip. But, seeing the determination in her eyes, he knew it was time.

Jake set the gun barrel aside and wiped his hands on the stiff khaki shirt he'd been using as a rag, the one so stained with Eduard's blood that it was good for nothing else, and rose.

“You're right. We need to talk. Is Eleanora well enough to walk to the pool?”

She nodded. “I think so. She doesn't speak, but she got up and insisted on dressing herself this morning.”

“I'll go let Pig-face know I'm taking you out of camp for a little while.” Jake thought rapidly. “I'll tell him you need to gather some fiddlewood bark to soak and use on Eleanora's face.”

Sarah slanted him a wry look. “More prehistoric medicine?”

He grinned down at her, feeling the tension that had sprung up between them ease. “Indian shamans in the Amazon rain forest still use the bark in a sort of herbal bath to cure sores caused by tropical parasites. I doubt if it would have any real usefulness on bruises, but I'm betting that Pig-face won't know that.”

He didn't.

The big man grunted, not happy at being awakened this early to be informed of Jake's plans. The animosity between the two men hadn't lessened since the night the lieutenant had stumbled into the little hut, but he'd kept his distance since then. Still, Jake knew it was only a matter of time until Enrique erupted.

Twenty minutes later, he left the smaller children splashing happily in the pool, Eleanora sitting silently on the rock, and Eduard on guard.

“We'll only go a little way down this trail,” Jake told the boy. “You just have to call out, and I'll be back within seconds.”

The boy nodded.

“Wait for us here. We may be a while. Sarah and I have much to discuss, but we'll hear you if you need us.”

Jake led the way down the narrow, twisting trail. After the first bend, they were out of sight, but not out of earshot. He could hear Ricci shrieking as Teresa splashed him, and Teresa's answering cry when the boy dunked her precious doll. Using his machete, Jake hacked the twisting vines from a toppled tree trunk, then whacked the wood once or twice with the flat of his blade to dislodge any occupants.

Nothing more threatening than a small ctenosaur emerged, its scaly, blue-banded skin and spiny back quivering in outrage. The lizard, which Jake knew could grow to the size of a small dog, bobbed its head up and down as a signal that the tree trunk was private territory. Jake smiled at Sarah's invol
untary “Ugh,” and nudged the creature on its waddling way with the toe of his boot.

Holding her skirts up with both hands to make sure nothing slithered underneath them, Sarah approached the trunk. She settled herself gingerly, then reached behind her neck to untie the strings of the veil.

Jake stabbed the machete into the dirt beside the tree to keep it close at hand and propped a foot up on the impromptu bench. Leaning easily on arms crossed over his knee, he watched while Sarah loosened the tie that held her hair. Her fingers raked through it, lifting the soft, fine curtain of pale silk off her neck. Sighing, she unhooked the top few buttons of her habit and flapped the material against her heated skin.

“When and if I get back to civilization, I don't think I'll ever wear black again,” she murmured.

Jake, who had entertained more than one fantasy about Sarah's small, deliciously curved body in a black lace garter belt and little else, smiled ruefully to himself.

“You'll get back,” he told her quietly.

She stopped fanning the material and tilted her head to look up at him. “Will I?”

“I'm doing my best to make it happen.”

Jake hesitated, then took the first step in what he knew would be a difficult explanation. There was so much he wasn't cleared to tell her—about OMEGA, about the mission, about himself.

“I contacted someone yesterday who'll arrange to take you out of here,” he told her slowly.

Her fingers curled around the fabric, scrunching it in her fist. “You contacted someone yesterday?” She wet her lips. “Was that before or after you recognized me?”

He shrugged. “Let's just say my contact confirmed the doubts I had about Sister Sarah.”

“And from the description you gave him, he recognized Sarah Chandler.”

The bitterness in her voice made Jake frown.

“It couldn't have been that difficult,” she continued when
he didn't respond. “I suppose the press has already picked up the story of the raid. My picture is no doubt splashed all over the dailies again.”

She shivered. It was a quick, involuntary shake, so much like that of a small, trapped animal that Jake's jaw tightened.

“There aren't any news stories. Not yet.”

“Never mind. I guess it doesn't really matter how you recognized me. What matters is what you're going to do about it.” She rose and faced him, nose to nose. “Just tell me how much this is costing my father.”

“Your father?”

“My father. How much are you and this contact of yours charging him to arrange this little escape of mine?”

Jake straightened. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Her chin jutted out. “It didn't take you long to cash in on the prize that was right under your nose, did it? You wouldn't let the welfare of a nun and three children interfere with your business deals, but you can arrange something overnight for a senator's daughter.”

“Oh, for crissakes!”

“So how much did you ask for, gringo? You can tell me. I'd like to know what you think a senator's daughter is worth.”

“I'm not ransoming you, dammit.”

“Keep your voice down!” she hissed. “I don't want the children running down here until you and I get a few things settled between us.”

“It sounds to me like you've already got everything settled in your mind.”

Jake told himself that he shouldn't blame her for leaping to conclusions. Hell, he'd done everything in his power to make her think he was a conscienceless expatriate who'd sell his country for a few dollars. But somehow the fact that he'd succeeded so well didn't give him one iota of satisfaction.