Hard Target (28 page)

She galloped ahead and slammed into the revolving door at the far side. She was already on the street when Tay finally caught up.

"Let's go," she said. Her heart pounded in her throat, as they walked as quickly as possible toward the bakery. Ahead and to their right was thick with market vendors and their patrons.

She could feel Tay beside her, his shoulder bumping hers as they avoided the people around them.

Suddenly, Ramos stepped out from the bakery. Quickly, Dawna drew Tay into the alcove of an empty stall. "Wait. He'll go back in if he sees us."

Tay nodded. Then, before she could move, he peered out briefly. "He's started to walk away from us. Let's go."

"No, Tay. Give him a moment. He'll be on his guard."

"He'll be looking for you, not me." He strode out and away from the alcove.

"Tay! Wait!" She kept her voice as soft as she could, not wanting to yell, but Tay ignored her.

She had no choice but to follow.

She couldn't see Ramos. Nor could Tay, she bet, seeing how he peered around the narrow alleys, head and shoulders above the short population.

He stopped, briefly, still scanning the crowd. Immediately, Dawna did the same. Most Bolivian women here wore straw hats, and in the sea of pale straw, it shouldn't have been hard to spot an unadorned head, but it was.

Dawna hurried toward Tay. He turned to wait for her, and suddenly, a door to their left flew open, smashing into Tay. He stumbled. Dawna lunged forward to catch him. Ramos roared away around the next corner.

"Let's go," Tay gritted out, catching his balance. They raced after Ramos.

Dawna stalled at the corner. The intersection ahead was a six-way labyrinth, filled with afternoon shoppers and downtown workers. Each of the narrow alleys was packed with vendors, their stands thick with wares and food and shaded with every color of canvas. The din that filled the pungent air was incredible, Latino music, people talking, each hawking everything from orange juice to money exchange. Beyond, the vehicular traffic filled in with unmuffled engines and honking horns.

They'd lost Ramos. Dawna blew out a frustrated breath with Tay letting out a well-seasoned curse. Tightening her jaw, she turned away from him. "We may as well go back to the embassy."

Robert Taylor cornered Dawna as soon as she entered the back mantrap of the embassy. He'd been jockeying between reporters and other callers requesting the status of the ambassador. Fortunately, the ambassador's schedule was light this week, and with a few quick words to Robert, Dawna had the security issues he'd raised now settled. Tay left her to do her work and headed for her office. After securing his weapon, he waited by the window for her return.

"I'm sorry," he stated bluntly when finally entered. "It was my fault Ramos got away."

"You should be sorry." She slammed her door and trapped them in her office. "I told you to wait. I told you to trust me. I know Ramos. You don't."

"Not as much as you believed, apparently."

She shot him a frigid glare, and he knew his words were uncalled for. "Maybe so, but enough to guess his movements, and the way he thinks," she snapped back. "He wasn't going to automatically assume he'd lost me. He knows I'm tenacious. And he saw you, too. We should have waited longer, allowed him to feel more secure."

She was right. He knew better, himself. Clandestine activities had been his life for the last three years. Tay knew how to tail someone, and yet, feeling a bit too secure, a bit too cocky with Dawna at his side, he'd refused her advice and stepped out of the alcove too soon.

He hadn't trusted her instincts, when he should have. She knew the city better and she knew what Ramos would expect her to do.

Storming past him to stand beside her desk, Dawna ran her hands through her blond hair. Now dry, it flipped defiantly back into her face. She spun around, still stewing on his mistake. "All right. I can accept that you won't tell me about your activities with the CIA and why you think Martin is only following you and why you think it's not related to this case, but I can't accept why you didn't trust me back there! What have I done to you, that you can't let me do my job?"

Tay pressed his forefinger and thumb into the soft flesh above the bridge of his nose. "You've done nothing to me. I...." His words went soft. "You're the one who shouldn't trust me."

"Damn right." She gripped the back of her chair. "And furthermore, you're impeding an investigation. You're only here because Ambassador Legace is extending a courtesy to my HQ, and I know for a fact that he
will
pull rank on them and send you back home in a heartbeat if I could prove that you were getting in my way! And after today, I can prove that!" Her words ended more like a bark than the warning he was sure she'd hoped they'd been.

He watched her for a long moment, wondering if she was testing him. Not about the part where the ambassador was able to pull rank. He knew she was correct in that. If push came to shove, HQ would lose. Ambassador Legace had that much influence. But would Dawna press to get rid of him?

Probably. The safety of the embassy was too important to her. And it was to him, too.

"You're right," he conceded. "This is your investigation. At least we know that Ramos is still in the city."

A pause lingered for a moment, then, as if satisfied with his apology and admittance, she nodded. "He's lived here all his life. Which reminds me, I want to look at his employment file again."

She left him alone for a few minutes. When she returned, she spread the entire file out on her desk. To her credit, she was willing to forgive and forget his screw-up, and he was grateful for that.

"Let's see what we have. I started to read this last night, but I fell asleep halfway through it."

He glanced down. "Mr. Taylor scanned all this for me."

Dawna shook her head. "He didn't scan the papers we have downstairs. It's not much more, just a few notes from the initial interview, but it may be important."

Tay leaned over her. There was no scent of delicate perfume today. A touch of soap and some of the brunch they'd shared mixed with the heat of her body. Enough to make him swallow down the need rising in him.

"Dawna?"

She didn't look up. "Yes?"

"I'm sorry."

He could see her blink. She tipped her head up to face him. Her jaw tight, her eyes wary, she answered, "You said that. All I wanted was for you to trust me. I'm good at my job."

"It's hard for me. Not just to trust you, but everyone."

Slowly, her expression softened. "I know. It's okay."

"No, it's not. I think I understand what's wrong. My father didn't trust my mother to understand his need to be a good cop. Or even to share things that he should have shared. Work was always so important, and he made it more important than us. We were only supposed to support him because he had an important job. My mother resented his attitude and didn't trust him in return. Their marriage didn't last ten years."

She bit her lip. "You lived with your mother after that?"

He nodded. "Ironically, she had to work hard to support us and sometimes she had to put work first. But I think that lesson made her bitter."

"And that's all you've known. Maybe your subconscious is just coming to grips with this, and that's why you're remembering your mother, now of all times."

"Yeah, it's a tough lesson, and one I don't want to mess up," he breathed out in a single, disgusted exhale. "And I don't have any reason to expect you to trust me. I just want you to, that's all."

Pain flickered in her eyes. "Are you going to tell me why you think Martin isn't involved in this case?"

He thought again of the people still undercover. Of the strong South American connection. Of the man behind bars in the States awaiting a trial on trafficking narcotics and sending illegal arms to his South American friends, to be shipped somewhere else.

He thought of the murder of the undercover operative two weeks before his assignment was complete. Then he thought of the mysterious group living somewhere in the US who planned to free their friend before his trial, using weapons hidden somewhere for that purpose.

He couldn't talk about the case. Not here, anyway. There was already a security problem in this embassy. "No. But if it's anything, I'm not as sure anymore that Martin isn't involved with this embassy somehow."

Dawna turned to the file spread out in front of her. "Maybe you should go back home. If Martin is in some way related to your CIA activities, he'll follow you there. That'll give me one less headache."

For a moment, he considered it. But as soon as the realization hit him of what he was doing, he shoved the idea away. "Forget it. I'm not leaving."

"Because you have a job to do, right?" She kept scanning the file.

"Because I care about you."

She snapped her head over and instantly, he regretted his words. She didn't believe him. "You're not going to leave because you've been sent here to make sure I fail. Admit it."

"That's not true. Dawna, the Commanding Officer who punished you retired two years ago. HQ doesn't care anymore about what we did. But I do." It was a lie. He'd been an undercover operative for too long. The lies were flowing off his tongue too blasted easily. HQ did care about their image. They did have a long memory, and Tay was just placating her.

God, what had he become?

"You care about me?" Her tone was derisive. "And you want to prove you're done with running away when life gets difficult?"

Tay jerked back. Dawna was right. Shit, she was so right. "I don't run away."
Again, another lie
.

She straightened. "Yeah, sure. You want to prove that you don't run away like your father always did. He ran back to the police station when things got tough at home, right? And you want to prove you aren't like that." She gave him an exasperated look. "Even though you ran away from helping me, three years ago. You were just as much to blame for that night as I was. You wanted to screw me in that car as much as I wanted to screw you. We both got caught."

"I didn't run away! I quit my job there because they wouldn't accept my offer of full responsibility. The Commanding Officer wanted an example and he chose you. So I quit."

He shut up. He didn't dare say anymore.

Dawna let out a disbelieving noise. "Sure you quit, but they couldn't bear to accept your resignation, so they kept your name on the nominal roll and kept you as instructor. Were they paying you as well?"

He couldn't speak. She already knew too much, even thought she didn't believe it. And he
was
still officially an instructor there. Now that his work for the CIA was completed, he'd planned to return as instructor again. He was technically still here, wasn't he, in that capacity?

He wished he could prove to her he'd quit as instructor solely on principle, but she wouldn't believe him. He'd already betrayed her once.

And maybe it wasn't the whole truth after all.

"I can't prove my words right now, but maybe someday you'll believe me."