Spy Hard Page 4

  A man could hope.

  She gave him another tremulous smile as the air between them filled with tension. Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and she licked her lips in a nervous gesture.

  Which brought his X-rated dreams about her to mind. Was she thinking about kissing him?

  The temperature in the room shot up a couple of degrees. She had the most kissable mouth he’d ever seen, with a slight crease in the middle of the bottom lip. And all of a sudden he couldn’t take his eyes off her full lips.

  She leaned a little closer.

  He couldn’t believe it.

  She looked so nervous it was a toss-up whether she’d kiss him or run away first.

  Every cell in his body voted for the first option. He held very still, careful not to scare her away.

  She leaned another inch closer. And looked pitifully miserable about it, while trying to keep a come-hither smile on her face. Not very convincing. He had half a mind to close the distance between them just to put her out of her misery.

  The more she fidgeted, the better the idea seemed. For some reason, he was desperate all of a sudden to feel those full lips pressed against his. She smelled like flowers, which made him wonder what she would taste like. He was betting on honey.

  In the end, he wasn’t sure who made the last small move that brought them together.

  Her soft lips tasted like sweet papaya. Okay, that was more logical and likely than honey. They had papaya on the menu pretty much every single day. Good thing he really liked it.

  An odd, exhilarating feeling hit him like a lightning bolt out of nowhere and sent his head spinning. He wanted to sink into her sweetness, to take her up—here and now—on everything she was reluctantly offering.

  Dozens of erotic images filled his mind, ridiculously hot compared to how chaste the kiss was. He wanted to lay her down on that couch, wanted to bare her breasts to his gaze and mouth. He wanted to see her eyes clouding with pleasure.

  He pressed closer and licked the corner of her lips. She gave a soft, startled sigh, but didn’t move back. If anything, she leaned toward him. Hot need plowed through him like a freight train.

  He wanted her naked.

  He put his hands over her rib cage, his fingers spread out, his thumbs massaging the spot under her breasts. Considering her earlier display of nerves, he expected her to protest.

  She didn’t.

  In the back of his mind, he was aware of the open door. He knew if someone walked by, it would mean instant execution. They’d drag him outside and shoot him like a dog. He was a dog, for taking advantage of her like this.

  Yet with Melanie’s lips on his, the guilt and the risk didn’t seem so grave, and was certainly worth it.

  He knew he was in trouble when he realized he was thinking like a hormone-crazed teenage boy and not like a trained operative. Still, everything he was pushed him to proceed with the seduction.

  Only the sure knowledge that she was playing him could make him pull away.

  She looked shocked and disconcerted, her eyes wide with disbelief. Not because he’d pulled back, he suspected, but because she’d done what she had. She was probably surprised that she’d actually gone through with it.

  So was he.

  He watched as that hesitant smile returned to her lips. He had to give her credit for pulling herself together in short order.

  “Perhaps we could go someplace more private,” she suggested, and swallowed hard.

  His body sang with pleasure at the suggestion, even if he couldn’t follow through with it under any circumstances. “Such as?” he asked anyway.

  “Down by the river?”

  Again, images from his dream came back to him. But so did her whispered prayer from the night before, a clear image as she had stood up there on the balcony. And it put things into perspective.

  He was to be her ticket out of the compound.

  She glanced away, and he followed her gaze. A backpack peeked from under the bed, no doubt holding her escape kit. Did she have a weapon? Guns were all around the place, always handy. Getting her hands on one shouldn’t have been too difficult.

  Did she plan on shooting him once he got her far enough from this place? She looked all soft on the outside, but a glint in her eyes told him that she had found a steel core somewhere deep down, a core he’d do better not to trifle with.

  But how he wanted to. Trifle with her. Preferably while they were both naked.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” There. He still had some common sense left, and his response to her proved it.

  He took another look at her lips. Then he stood and walked away from her before he could do something colossally stupid, like kiss her again.

  Chapter Three

  Jase strode to the stairs without looking back. Who knew that with all the cold-blooded killers inside the hacienda, Melanie’s room would be the most dangerous part of the house? He wasn’t scared of the men. He’d been well trained to take care of thugs like Don Pedro’s. With Melanie, on the other hand, for the first time in his life, he felt out of his depth.

  He didn’t like the feeling.

  She’d somehow managed to turn him on while, at the same time, massively confusing him.

  The only thing weirder than her hitting on him was his instant attraction to her. That’d come out of nowhere. He didn’t have a pregnant woman fetish or anything. Never had a pregnant girlfriend. Wasn’t even sure if pregnant women were into men or were awash with some mommy hormones that preoccupied them, making things like sex irrelevant. Those labor and delivery scenes he’d seen in movies flashed into his mind, scenes where the woman screamed at the father and did her best to break the man’s fingers.

  He flexed his hands.

  He hadn’t planned on doing that. Ever.

  Yet he found Melanie sexy as hell. And enigmatic. With a touch of vulnerability. But with enough guts to go after what she wanted.

  Okay. Boyish obsession ends now.

  He shuffled down the stairs, his neck tucked in, doing his best not to draw attention to himself, noting the two men who’d come in since he’d gone upstairs. If nobody paid attention to him, maybe he could hang around a few more minutes.

  He glanced around, looking for one of the Don’s satellite phones, but he didn’t see any of them out in plain sight. Bugging that would be just as effective as bugging the man’s office, and possibly easier to accomplish.

  A faint taste of Melanie still lingered on his lips, reminding him that months had passed since he’d last touched a woman. Melanie had reawakened his body and then some, but only danger awaited him in that direction, so he refocused his thoughts on the men by the table. They were eating, holding bowls of steaming food the women must have brought up while Jase had been upstairs.

  His stomach growled. He ignored it.

  Roberto, who wasn’t eating, spotted him and called out as he wrestled with a sizable roll of paper. “Come give me a hand. Here. Hold this.”

  Okay. Good. Excellent, in fact.

  A command to stay instead of a lecture on all the reasons he shouldn’t be in here.

  The man struggled to spread out a large jungle map on a table, a taped-together puzzle of what looked like Google Maps printouts.

  Jase moved to hold down two corners, spotted the satellite phone under the edge of the paper. Roberto grabbed a hand grenade to weigh down another corner, then pulled his knife and speared the last corner to the wood with the blade. He gave a swarthy grin, apparently satisfied with his own ingenuity.

  “Let’s see if we can figure this out, amigos.” He bent to carefully examine the expanse of trees, interrupted here and there by the river or a clearing. He pointed to the middle of the map and followed the line of the river to the point where it looped back on itself a little. “We’re here.”

  None of the camp showed. The satellite pictures had probably been taken years ago, when the camp had been nothing but a couple of wood huts hidden under the trees. Only after Don Pedro’s he
adquarters had been destroyed by Cristobal last year had the boss begun serious building here.

  The men examined the map as they ate.

  “Here is one of the burned villages.” One of them pointed at the edge of the map with his fork.

  “And here is another.” Roberto tapped a spot not far from the first. “So we know Cristobal is going to hit us from the southeast.”

  Jase scanned the map in every direction. He hadn’t seen a rendering this detailed of the area before. He’d studied aerial photos of the jungle before leaving on this mission, but back then he hadn’t yet known where exactly the Don’s new headquarters were, so he’d had no reason to inspect this exact spot out of the endless jungle specifically.

  Some sort of a building showed on the satellite map about thirty miles to the north of them.

  “What’s that?” he asked, not sure whether he would get an answer.

  But Roberto seemed to be in a talkative mood. “A scientific research station. They monitor one square mile of jungle and record every animal that passes through it. Some kind of biodiversity research. A chopper brings them supplies and switches staff out every month. They don’t move outside their boundaries.”

  “They got any good stuff?” Jase played the part of the opportunistic jungle thug, wondering if the scientists knew just how close they were to some serious trouble.

  Roberto shrugged. “Not the kind of equipment we could use here. And their perimeter security is too good. That’s how they keep track of the animals. They’re not worth the bother.”

  Jase filed that information away in his brain and kept his mouth shut while the others marked the approximate location of the enemy troops on the map and tried to guess the numbers. He paid close attention until a shout from above interrupted the murmur of voices.

  “What the hell are you doing? In your room!” Don Pedro growled at Melanie at the top of the stairs, his eyes narrowed with fury, his mouth drawn into a sharp, cruel line of displeasure.

  Looked like the Don had stepped out of his office and caught her watching the men from above. No doubt she’d been plotting her escape, picking the next chump to try her tricks on.

  If the Don had come out earlier when Jase’d been in her room…

  He thanked his lucky stars and watched as she headed toward her door, her neck pulled in. Apparently she didn’t move quickly enough. The Don grabbed her by the arm. Hard enough to leave marks.

  Jase’s muscles tightened.

  Her hands slid in a protective gesture to her abdomen as she tried to pull away. She winced as the man shoved her toward her room. The door closed behind them with a slam.

  Then the Don proceeded to shout at her some more in Spanish, his tirade muted now and unintelligible to the men downstairs. A small pause came, then something crashed.

  Jase’s muscles twitched.

  She’d tried to use him and he didn’t like that, but he liked this even less. Instinct, and everything he was, pushed him to leap up the stairs and bust into that room. But his training held him back, even as his jaw muscles pulled tighter with every passing second.

  Keep it cool. Don’t break cover.

  The Don was obviously having a bad day. Having his mortal enemy, Cristobal, who’d nearly brought him down not that long ago, marching on his camp had visibly rattled the big boss. Jase had never seen him look anything less than invincible before.

  He’d rather see him dead, all considered.

  He noted the position of every man in the room again, each weapon, calculated angles and speed, shifted into a better position without letting go of the map. If she cried out…

  But even as he thought that, the Don stormed out of Melanie’s room and yelled down below for everyone to work before disappearing in his office once again. The men shrugged off the display of temper—nothing they hadn’t seen before. None of them seemed to care one whit for the woman upstairs. They were all focused on the upcoming battle.

  The bastard had slammed Melanie’s door so hard behind him that it’d bounced open again. Jase kept watching that gap in the door from the corner of his eye while he pretended to pay attention to Roberto and the others.

  Then he caught movement. The door closed with a quiet click.

  She was all right then—well enough, at least, to get up and move around. He relaxed marginally. Of course, the Don wouldn’t risk hurting the baby.

  But after the baby was born… Jase rolled the tension out of his shoulders. Okay, so maybe she had a good reason for wanting to get away from this place, sooner rather than later.

  She either ran now, or she would have to take her chances here.

  Pretty soon she’d be too far along in the pregnancy to risk a trek through the jungle. And she couldn’t run once the baby was born. A newborn wouldn’t survive the grueling trek. Plus, once the baby was born, the Don would no longer need her. Who knew how long after the birth the Don would let her live. Any of the camp women could be brought up to the house to take care of the kid.

  Jase didn’t blame her for trying to use him to gain her freedom. A part of him even wished he could help. He was drawn to Melanie in a way he hadn’t been drawn to any of the others.

  But more than her life was at stake here.

  By bringing down the Don, he would be saving thousands eventually.

  He pushed thoughts of the woman aside. His full attention needed to be on the men. He had to be vigilant, to be fully present in the here and now so he wouldn’t make a mistake.

  “How badly do you think we’re outnumbered?” one of the men wondered aloud.

  Roberto shot him a glare.

  Some of these men had been present at the fight at the previous camp and knew Cristobal was no pushover. Their losses in that fight had been rough.

  Jase kept his eyes hooded, pretending to be studying the map, but studied the men one by one instead. Could he find an ally among them, somebody who would be willing to provide information? Would any consider defection?

  If they had any reservations about the boss upstairs, they kept quiet about it. None would dare to air any doubts in front of Roberto and risk looking anything but 100 percent committed.

  Jase held down the corners of the map and considered the satellite phone that made a bump under the paper. The phone was big and clumsy compared to his super spy phone that he’d lost crossing a mangrove swamp with Lucas and the others a month back.

  That one had been special-issue: waterproof, bulletproof to a point, even damn near fireproof. It hadn’t been caiman-proof, however. When one of the large reptiles ripped away a chunk of Jase’s pants, it’d swallowed the damned thing right with the fabric.

  Had he been alone, he would have hunted down the toothy bastard and gutted it, but he had to let it go in the interest of preserving his cover. He couldn’t go hunting for a phone nobody even knew he had.

  He missed that phone, and didn’t like being cut off from the men back at headquarters for the time being, but right now the Don’s phone was more important. He shifted from one foot to the other, pretended that the corner of the map slipped from his hand, grabbed after the paper to roll it back out and “accidentally” knocked the phone to the floor in the process. It rolled under the table.

  “Sorry, man. Didn’t see that.” He let the paper go and squatted to retrieve the phone, grabbing for it with his left hand while going for the bug with the right.

  The cloner would duplicate the signal to a U.S. Army satellite, every future conversation would be recorded and stored on a secure server. He snapped the back off the phone with his thumb, plugged the bug in, then popped the back into place as he stood.

  He put the phone back on the table, where someone else was now holding his corners of the map.

  Roberto shot him an annoyed look, but he seemed too busy figuring out Cristobal’s next move to pay much attention to anything else.

  Jase backed away and out of the room. He cast a last look at Melanie’s door, which remained firmly closed. A strange tightness appe
ared in the middle of his chest.

  Probably heartburn. As enthusiastic as Consuela was with spices, it was a miracle he still had any stomach lining left. He rubbed the strange sensation away with the heel of his hand as he stepped out into the humid jungle air.

  He strode back to the barracks, swung by the kitchen on the way. Speaking of the tequila-swigging matron…Consuela was stitching two pieces of plain linen cloth together that stood out in stark contrast against her red and orange block print muumuu. She sat on the ground, her feet extended toward Jase. She wore no shoes. She didn’t need them; the inch-thick cracked and hardened layer of calluses on the bottom of her feet protected her soles just fine.

  Another woman chopped sugar cane in the back. Pretty ironic. Some of the men in camp were running around like headless chickens out there, while the women went on with their chores as if the whole camp wasn’t preparing for battle.

  He glanced around but didn’t see Mochi in any of the corners. “Where’s the kid?” They’d have to have another talk about the importance of sticking around the women and keeping out of the way, especially once the fighting began.

  “Alejandro came and got him,” Consuela mumbled with a shrug. “His shirt is almost done.”

  But Jase was already turning back out the door. He hurried on toward the dog pens, broke into a run. With the camp in a complete upheaval, nobody thought his haste suspicious. Nobody stopped to question him.

  The dogs perked up at the sight of him, then looked disappointed when they realized he wasn’t bringing leftovers, as he often did. The animals were all scarred, but still wagging their tails, not holding an ounce of grudge toward the humans who’d chosen this life for them.

  He scratched a bulky head sticking out from between the bars. The dog in the next enclosure jumped up on its hind legs, wanting attention, as well. He was almost as tall as Jase. “Hey ya, Killer.” He patted that one, too, as he passed.

  He’d considered, more than once, setting them free in the night. But if the wild boars and the jaguars didn’t get them, they’d kill each other. As much as he hated to see them taken to the towns to be abused in the ring, he couldn’t come up with a decent plan to save them. They’d be in his report when he finally got out of here. Their best hope was a U.S. military hit on the camp. They would be liberated then.