I woke up the next morning in a bed in the guest room mansion in a cold sweat, panicked about where I was.

I wished I was back in the regular mansion with Corbin.

It had been an interesting night, to say the least. The hundred or so members of the Reyes staff had gotten drunk, rowdy, and partied through the night as Louisa and I did a combination of bartending, stripping, and letting them take the occasional body shot. I had overheard the drunken men speaking about the whereabouts of Luis Reyes. Interestingly, many of them hadn’t ever seen him. Actually, none of them had, ever.

I rolled over in the single bed I was in and sat up. Louisa slept soundly in the bed next to mine under the sheets, her chest rising and falling in the morning sun. She looked beautiful. Feminine. I wondered if Corbin had ever looked at me like I was looking at Louisa now.

Corbin. Why couldn’t I get him off my mind? The sex we’d had our first night in Mexico had been under the guise of proving that I really was a prostitute. Yet when we were hooking up, it had felt more real than all the sex I’d had in my last relationship. Not fake at all.

But then there was the fact that I was fucking an ex-convict during my first field op as a DEA agent, and how wrong the logical part of my brain felt it was to do such a thing. I’m sure people in the world had done crazier things, but yeah—sleeping with your partner was a pretty big no-no. What was I supposed to do? Report Corbin and I’s relationship to HR?

I put my feet on the ground and walked to the window, looking out over the rolling hills of the Reyes property. This was the jungle, both literally and figuratively. In isolation here, the law was not the same as the civilized world. The law here was about power, money, and sex. Marco had the power to have you killed, so he was at the top of the chain. Corbin had the power to sell Marco’s cocaine, so Marco respected him. And me? My power was apparently in my sexuality, which pissed me off just a little. Marco saw me as a piece of property, and without Corbin to protect me, who knew what might become of me.

I wondered if the whole idea that I needed to even come here in the first place had been way off. Maybe I had been too bullish in requesting my promotion at just the wrong time. I glanced over at Louisa, who had seemed so relaxed yesterday putting on a show for the men, like she truly didn’t have a care in the world.

I let out a loud, frustrated sigh that I couldn’t have been born a man in the sixties, when sleeping with your undercover partner was the usual James Bond protocol.

Louisa, stirring from my sigh, opened her eyes and caught me staring at her.

“You’re up early,” she said groggily. Slowly, she sat up.

“I know,” I said. “I couldn’t sleep once the sun came in.”

She stood up and stretched her arms over her head. “Nice job last night by the way. I know you’re new to this whole thing since you’re just Corbin’s sidepiece. You’re a natural, though.”

“Thanks,” I replied, gathering up my things for the ride back to the main mansion. “So we should head back to the main mansion then, right?”

“Yes, but, have you ever been to the falls?”

“The falls?” I asked.

She smiled at me before getting into a sort of downward dog type pose.

“It’s barely sunrise. All the men got so drunk last night, they’ll be sleeping for at least another four or five hours. Let’s go check out the falls. It’ll be fun. I promise. We won’t get in trouble.”

I stiffened, but decided what the hell. I’d get to see a different side of the place. And maybe get closer to Louisa, to see if she had any information on Luis’s whereabouts, since she seemed to be so entrenched in this whole operation.

“Fine. I don’t have a bathing suit though.”

“You won’t need one,” Louisa grinned.

* * *

We hiked a couple of miles into the backwoods of the Reyes’ property in our flip flops. The cool morning air felt soothing. The sun was still very low in the sky, having not had a chance to heat up the earth yet.

“Gorgeous landscape,” I said aloud to Louisa as she walked next to me.

“So you really like Corbin, don’t you?” she answered, ignoring my comment.

“It’s just business,” I said.

“So? You’re not allowed to like the guy you are doing ‘business’ with?” she made air quotes with her hands. “Corbin isn’t like the rest of the guys who do business here. He’s young and he’s sexy as fuck. I saw the way you were looking at him. Don’t lie.”

I raised an eyebrow. I wasn’t sure where she was going with this one, but Louisa was more perceptive than I had thought, so I figured I might as well bait her.

“Well, you know. Corbin is such a lady killer anyways. I’m sure he jumps from girl to girl. No sense getting attached.”

Louisa’s lips curved up in a soft smile, like she knew something I didn’t. “Really? Why would you think that?”

I swallowed. “Well, I don’t know. He just seems like the type of guy who would be with a lot of women.”

“He’s not like that, though.”

I felt almost angry now. “How do you know that?”

Louisa stopped walking for a moment and put her leg on a fallen tree to stretch her hamstring.

“Because I tried to sleep with him a while back.”

My heart raced. Corbin and my relationship was rather superficial, and we’d certainly never discussed other partners.

“And did you?”

“Yes. He said that I wasn’t his type.”

“Oh.”

Was I Corbin’s type? As much as I wanted to believe I was his special something, there was that side of me who was worried that he was a giant manwhore.

Before I could finish my response, I heard a faint rush of water.

“Come this way,” she said, her speed picking up to an almost-jog as she led the way on a faint path that zipped in and out of trees.

I followed Louisa around a rocky bend to see a 100 foot tall waterfall glistening in the sun. Under the falls were a series of rocks, and beautiful white sand lined both sides of the river where the powerful stream of water created a misty haze spreading out through parts of the stream.

Louisa turned over her shoulder and smiled at me. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

It was—breathtakingly so. I smiled at the beauty of the ridiculousness of this situation. Hanging out with a prostitute in the middle of a drug lord’s mansion in Mexico on an undercover mission.

Years later, I would look back on this moment and chuckle out loud, and people would wonder what I was remembering.

If I made it out of here, that is.

Louisa started to strip. I was a little shocked at first, but then why not skinny dip? After all the crazy things that had already happened on this trip, what would it matter if we took it off in the isolated jungle?

I took off my clothes, put them on a rock, and waded into the water, feeling as happy and girlish as I ever had in my life. It was so hard to believe this was work.

In that moment something pulled at my heartstrings, and I couldn’t believe what it was. I wished Corbin was there with me. I dove into the water headfirst.