Savage Secrets (Titan #6) (3 page)

She worked behind the screen and walked toward the edge of the partition. Such a tease, like she knew he was ready to knock the thing over to get a good look at what housed her voice, laugh, and never-ending legs.

“Fine. Go.” She shooed him away with a grand sweep of her arm. “Team Titan, off to the next job.”

The sound of the Ts rolling off her tongue made his chest collapse. Ribs crumbling. Lungs deflating. A reaction based solely on intuition. “You know more about me than I know about you. Come on out of your hiding place.”

“Almost done with my prep work.” More of that accent that turned him on and made him unable to walk out of the room.

A pause dangled in the air. Rocco heard a zap of electricity, and bright white sparks sprayed from behind the divider. Shock therapy was in store for the man still groaning on the floor, and for a brief second, Rocco almost pitied the terrorist. Almost.

“Perfect,” she whispered. More sparks. More zaps.

Without his control, his eyes slammed shut for a half second, just long enough that a cold shiver ran down his shoulders. But he had this. No flashbacks or star-sightings would happen right now. Those zaps were real as the body behind that screen. There was no way in hell this was a hallucination.

She stepped out, an image of beauty in that desolate, craptastic interrogation site. One long leg then the next teased him to the point of distraction. He followed the length of her boot, drinking in the skin tight black pants over the sway of her hips. A black shirt covered her torso and stretched over what he knew were the definition of perfect breasts. Finally, Rocco let his focus caress the curve of her lips, the deepness and darkness of her intense stare.

More than model gorgeous. More than manufactured beauty. She was sweet and sultry. A vision. Standing there, with electrical cables and a torture table at the ready, she couldn’t have been more out of place. Yet this was her room. She owned it, and that kind of confidence was unshakable.

He cleared his throat. “Do you need a hand?”

“Does it look like I do?” She looked over her shoulder, smiling a half grin, clearly knowing the connotation behind his question, challenging him to say it out loud. She stopped and stared with narrowed eyes and pursed lips. Then she smiled again, nodding. “Do you believe in coincidence?”

Coincidence? More like luck, walking into a room manned by a woman as deadly and dangerous as she was beautiful and breathtaking. He heard noises from the outer room. Seems he’d overstayed his prescribed amount of time before back up was ready to check in. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

CHAPTER THREE

Yassine Harhour stubbed out his cigarette in a crystal ashtray. It was the third one in a row, and his patience was growing thin. His men were not often tardy. Never were they a no call, no show. His lieutenant was both. Several of his men stepped in and out of the living room of their British home base. Unvoiced concerns upped the tension. The missing man—more trustworthy than most—was one Yassine had found living on the streets at the start of the Tunisian Revolution. He’d taken him in, educated him, offered him food and shelter. His absence was alarming. This lieutenant had potential and been groomed for greater things within Yassine’s flourishing network, the Algerian Combat Group.
The ACG
.

He nodded to his men. “Find out what has detained Firas.”

“Yes, El Mateperros.” A gaggle of men jumped into action. Even his own men feared him, but they stayed loyal. He was going to be an international player, and they wanted their slice of famous pie. Rolling another pinch of tobacco, Yassine admired his favorite view—the bucolic landscape for which the English countryside was known—and thought about the juxtaposition of cultures he’d brought together: his Spanish moniker,
El Mateperros
, his English country estate, and his Northern African combatants.

England was his favorite place to hunker down. Besides all the time spent absorbing their culture for research purposes, it allowed him to enjoy things that Northern Africa or the Middle East lacked. Fish and chips. Newsstands filled with tabloids. An entertaining Royal family. England was also strategic. Other than the ACG’s bombing mishap a few weeks ago, Yassine did not believe that intelligence agencies knew he was still there, hiding in plain sight.

“El Mateperros.” An up-and-comer addressed him.

“Yes?”

“Firas is gone. His outpost has extensive damage.”

Yassine lit a fresh cigarette, sliding it in his thumb and forefinger. When his empire was attacked, his pulse raced, and his addiction to nicotine flared its familiar head. Saliva wet his mouth. A desire for revenge coursed violently through his blood though he didn’t know the who or the why. Just that there would be repercussions.

He ground his teeth together and gave the order that earned him the Spanish nickname the Dog Killer. Revenge so great, so fantastically atrocious, that when his men killed, they left a message to others.
If you cross the ACG, no one will live to tell about it. Not even the family dog
.

***

Caterina drained the last of her Diet Coke and fidgeted with the empty plastic bottle. She didn’t
want
to have a run-in with that soldier of a man, no matter how good looking he might’ve been. He defined
caliente
. Hot. Hot. Hot. Rugged and dangerous, walking in boots and camo. Her heart pounded, even now.

What was his name? Something that fit with that I’m-gonna-kill-ya look. Rambo, Iceman, Flex. It had to be uber-macho because no one walked around with a ready-to-scorch-the-earth glare unless he’d earned a good call name.

But for now, he was Handsome.

For now
? She would never see him again. There was no
for now
. “Forget about him.”

And now you’re talking to yourself
. She cursed a string of red hot irritation both at him and at herself, though she knew she should be proud that her ability to read a person had correctly identified him as the mercenary type when she first saw him hugging a park bench, messed up out of his mind.

Her eyelids sank shut, and she blew out a breath, both a little frustrated
and
a little interested. He was a little of a lot of things that she didn’t have time for, especially after a very productive day. Yesterday, she’d gained new intelligence on El Mateperros. He was mostly underground, an international chameleon that intelligence communities spanning the globe had an interest in apprehending, especially after the ACG had botched their bombing in London. Thus MI6 had hired her.

It was a well-kept secret among her intel-seeking-and-sharing friends that she knew El Mateperros better than most people on Earth, a sad secret because her years chasing him didn’t yield much information, even sadder because no one knew why. She’d tracked the leader’s lieutenant down and told MI6 that she’d extract the information and pass it along if Titan could make the apprehension. It’d been a special request, but British Intelligence knew her well and made the arrangements, no questions asked. She could only imagine what it had cost them to hire Titan. But MI6’s investment in Jared Westin’s group showed two things that made her
muy satisfecha
: they were very invested taking down El Mateperros, and they wanted complete deniability for what she would do with the lieutenant.

The interrogation went well, and they now knew El Mateperros was searching for a new explosives distributor with his eye on Daniel Locke, an up-and-coming arms dealer with a reputation for being just as evasive as El Mateperros. Locke had first appeared on analysts’ radar about a year ago. No one could pin point him or even find out what he looked like. Except for rumors and results, Locke didn’t exist. But she could find him. The interrogation gave her enough to extrapolate about an upcoming meeting between Locke and El Mateperros. MI6 was so hungry for the ACG that they’d take the information and run with it.

Something would turn up, and she find Locke and track El Mateperros. She’d take the bastard down. It was her life’s mission, the sole goal of her very existence.

Her cell phone buzzed on the floor next to the couch. She answered it before the first vibration stopped. “Yes?”

“Miss Cruz.” Her British counterpart’s accent didn’t sound as calm as normal. “Good news and bad news.”

Bad news she could handle. It was the good news that made her uneasy. It was far too early for any kind of good news. “Start with the good.”

“Right.” A heavy breath. “Well, it doesn’t really matter. We have Daniel Locke.”

“What? Why?” She gnashed her molars and strangled the cap onto her Diet Coke. The plan was to follow Locke to El Mateperros. “That sounds like ‘we messed up,’ not ‘we have good news.’”

“Well, yes.” Another heavy breath. He took what sounded like a long drag of a cigarette. “We
do
know where Locke is. We also learned that Locke was recently married. The story behind the man, if you will.”

She uncapped and recapped the soda bottle. “You’ve said ‘was’ several times.”

“Yes.
Was
. He
was
vacationing on his honeymoon prior to his meeting with El Mateperros. He
was
piloting a small Cessna, which crashed. When I said we had him, I didn’t mean alive. Two bodies were recovered.”

Caterina’s heart sank. Locke was dead, and she was out an immediate way to track down El Mateperros. “But…”

“Back to where we started. No one to track to El Mateperros. I’m sorry, Miss Cruz.”

What was there to say? Nothing. She had to find another way. So very close and then, poof, the closest thing she had to a—
wait
!

“Who knows he’s dead?”

“What? Oh, well, no one. It was all serendipitous, really. Our timing. His demise.”

Serendipitous? Not what she’d call it. “Local police think some John Doe fell out of the sky?”

“We’ve handled it. A MI6 clean team swept the scene. Nothing to worry about, Miss Cruz.”

“I’m not worrying. I’m—”
Keeping this idea to myself
. “Never mind. Thank you for the update.”

No one knew Locke was dead, and his mysterious demise played to her advantage. A smile crept onto her face. It was risky and took a major assumption as a cold, hard fact: Locke’s reputation for keeping his identity a secret extended to El Mateperros, at least until they met.

All she needed was a new,
live
Daniel Locke.

She looked at the wall of photos, maps, and leads she’d tacked up. If it were a normal night, she’d pace. Thinking. Strategizing. Planning. Instead, she was casting a role in a complicated game of charades.

MI6 would never give her an agent. They wanted deniability. What about…?

A quick flip of her Diet Coke bottle, and she stared at her phone. Small world coincidences happened for a reason. Handsome was in her life because the stars had aligned, and she was meant to stumble upon a guy who could handle this job. Titan would work outside the lines. She’d known Jared Westin long enough that he’d let his man do this job even if nobody sanctioned it. Titan’s man could do this. That she knew. She could read people. Hell, she’d read him and had him down to his job description with barely a shared conversation.

She tossed the Diet Coke bottle across the room. It ricocheted off the trash can rim and landed on the empty bag of Funyons. Dinner of champions—or at least of those who valued their time searching for terrorist cells more than meeting each tier of the food pyramid.

Kicking off her boots, she reached into her back pocket. Same as every day, she took out the pictures and went through them, one by one. All five of them, tattered and fingered, the edges softened by wear, the color faded.

Tears flooded her eyes. A Pavlovian response to the years of paging through them and weeping. Yes, she was still upset, still grieving, but really, she wanted vengeance. Caterina blinked her sight clear and dialed the phone number she’d memorized years ago.

The phone rang, and she held it to her ear while pocketing the pictures. A recorded message picked up. “Thank you for calling the Titan Group. If you know your party’s extension, please dial it now.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Rocco used the retina scanner then scanned his thumb to gain access to the outer hallway at Titan headquarters. He hadn’t gone home, having left a very unhappy ex-girlfriend there before his latest assignment. Besides, HQ felt like more like home anyway. After jumping through a few more security hoops, he settled onto his chair in the war room and waited for the others. He was early and had planned it that way so he could drink his coffee and kick it with anyone at the office. But no one was there, except for Parker who was in full out geek-lovers-mode over some piece of techno-babble, leaving Rocco was alone with his caffeine and thoughts. Normally, that wasn’t a bad combination, but the note on the hotel bathroom mirror and that sexier-than-hell interrogator were on his mind.

“Morning, roomie.” Roman walked into the room.

Thank God
. Someone to distract him even though he’d left Roman’s only an hour ago. “Morning.”