The town of La Lagunita
Today Carmelo only wanted Tony to scare the shit out of debtor Javier Larez, thankfully, instead of thumping on him, or worse, breaking body parts. Bone breaks were the hardest injuries to fake. Tony usually managed it by dislocating a joint, making the bone press awkwardly against the flesh, so it looked out of whack enough to be busted, but, Holy Madonna, how he hated the feel of doing it, like disjointing an especially tough chicken.
After the job, Tony told Carmelo to drive to La Caleta Bar. When they pulled up across the street, Verónica was already standing at the curb in front of the bar, her arms crossed, a plastic shopping bag dangling from one forearm.
She’d asked to come to town with them to restock her supply of massage oils—or so she said. While disembarking the Cessna after landing at the mainland airport of Maiquetía, she whispered to Tony, “Meet me at La Caleta Bar when you’re finished with your job. We need to talk.”
Talk, Tony assumed, could only equal something unpleasant for him, like maybe he’d be subjected to a you need to do the honorable thing and marry me speech. Verónica was Latina, and many of that culture were still very conservative Catholics. Now that she was no longer overwhelmed by the immediate panic of being caught, she might be having second thoughts about her chosen method of escape.
He frowned. Did she somehow know…? She couldn’t know that last night he had a fleeting thought about making her his girlfriend, could she? Hell, he hadn’t even been serious, anyway. Verónica would make a guy a fine wife someday, sure. And someday Tony wanted a wife of his own…just not a woman who would remind him of what a shitheel he was every morning that he gazed at her across his bowl of cornflakes.
So you won’t tell?
Stomach churning, he seized the car door handle in a rigid grip. Before last night, shooting Nicole O’Dwyer had been the worst thing he’d ever done to a woman on the job. Not anymore.
“So what are we doing?” Carmelo asked him.
“Why don’t you get a drink with Fredo in the bar?” Fredo was Verónica’s bodyguard.
Tony shoved open the car door and started across the street, his focus naturally dropping from the loose-fitting blue blouse Verónica wore down to her jeans, which were snug enough to show the curvy outline of her legs. The sight brought back the unwelcome memory of being between those luscious thighs. Unwelcome because he loved how her legs felt wrapped around him—one of his favorite parts of sex. A woman’s legs could be long, short, thin, or thick, and none of the particulars mattered once he’d finessed himself between a pair—then the playing field equalized. All female legs were great…although Verónica’s were especially soft and snug.
And now his cock was stirring.
Huge shitheel. One-hundred-percent.
As he drew closer, he saw that Verónica looked irritated, the same way she had yesterday when he interrupted her massage session. Not at all like the mouse he’d dealt with in Cuntrera’s den. Not like the smiley, chatty, touchy—as in, she’d touched his knee—woman he’d faced over breakfast this morning…and why he’d chatted, too, he still couldn’t figure out. And what the hell was up with her blast of temper?
Maybe she was a moody person. Maybe not. Maybe too many maybes were stacking up next to this woman, and it wasn’t sitting well.
He and Carmelo stopped in front of her and Fredo.
Verónica observed the men with pursed her lips. We need to talk.
The obvious addendum would be privately. “Give us some time,” he said to Carmelo.
Carmelo fit a cigarette into the side of his mouth. “Why?”
“I want to take Verónica out back and fuck her.”
Carmelo’s brows flew sky-high.
A crude tactic, but effective. Sex was the one thing these men would always make time for.
Carmelo’s face split into a wolfish, gap-toothed grin as Antonio took Verónica by the arm and led her to the bar’s back alley.
“I would complain about my reputation,” she said drolly in Spanish. “But I suppose I already don’t have one where you’re concerned.”
Letting go of her, he turned to confront her. “You wanted to talk?” He spoke Spanish as well. Maybe if he were lucky, Verónica would merely hand him his ass with a good verbal smackdown. That he could—and would—take. He didn’t have to view what happened last night from many different angles to know he deserved it.
She set her shopping bag on the ground, re-crossed her arms, and gave him an intense stare.
He braced himself.
“I would like to know,” she told him in perfect American English, “what a Phoenix Agency operative is doing horning in on my mission.”
His shock was utter. He stood frozen, not moving a single muscle on the outside, while on the inside, his chest went cold and his mind raced. What the hell had he done to blow his cover? And what did she mean by her mission?
“Don’t bother denying it,” she told him. “I Extracted the information from you this morning over breakfast, so I know it’s true.”
He switched to English too. “You did what?” he demanded.
“I’m what you’d call an Extractor. I have the psychic ability to draw information out of people and ensure it’s the truth.”
He scowled. “The fuck you do.” He was extremely not fond of the idea of information having been drawn out of him against his will.
“Most people don’t know when I’m Extracting, but you picked up on it this morning. So don’t stand there acting like this is hogwash when deep down you know I’m telling the truth.”
Before joining Phoenix Agency, Tony might’ve thought this was hogwash. But then he met Dan Romeo’s wife, Mia, who had precognitive skills—and found out that many of the other agency wives also possessed psychic abilities. He’d become a believer, and…. Verónica being able to pull truth out of him would explain his inexplicable chattiness at breakfast. He had assumed his guilty conscience made him act weird, but that wouldn’t fit either. Since when did he “act weird” on assignment? He felt the skin surrounding his mouth pull tight. “Explain.”
She shrugged. “I key in on a question to ask, and then I secretly transfer energy into the person while thinking about the information I want to Extract. Unfortunately, this means I have to be touching the subject, which often proves inconvenient and can also lead men to assume I’m hitting on them when”—a note of wry amusement entered her voice—“I’m not.”
His cheeks heated. Okay, yeah, that possibility had entered his mind, even though it wouldn’t have made an iota of sense.
She exhaled a sudden breath. “So who hired you?” she shot at him. “Dawson Pharmaceuticals? To get the leukemia cure, right?”
He lifted his brows slowly and way, way up high. Well, the gig certainly was up, wasn’t it? If she was this clued in, she was right; there was no sense denying it. “Affirmative.”
Her beauty mark darkened into an angry apple seed. “Those two-timing assholes!”
Two-timing? And then information from his initial mission briefing came rushing back to him. “Holy shit, you’re the operative from Baretta Investigations out of Philly, aren’t you?”
Her lips thinned into something less than a smile. “That would be me.”
Hell. Now all the odd stuff he’d been picking up about her made sense: his impression that she could disguise herself, her high-class perfume, her confident-then-quivering nature.
“I cannot believe Dawson—”
“Hold up.” He cut off her rant. “Before you get your panties too tightly into a wad, you should know Dawson Pharmaceuticals came to Phoenix Agency only after they thought you were dead or compromised. You haven’t communicated with them since you came here.”
Air blasted from her nostrils. “Cuntrera’s men confiscated my cell when I first arrived, and all the phones in the house are bugged.”
He gave her a slick smile. “I’ve managed to check in.”
That earned him the full brunt of her glare. “You’re a man and a Sicilian. You have all kinds of freedoms I don’t, and yet, you know what? I’ve still managed to do this mission. Or—” She made a wipe-away gesture. “I would have managed it if you hadn’t interrupted me last night at Gaetano’s safe.”
He dropped the smile. “That would be generously assuming you could’ve broken into the box.” He narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t see any tools with you.”
Her expression turned smug. “I Extracted the combination from Gaetano. I could’ve just opened it, paisano. Which I still plan to do. Which brings me to the main thrust of this conversation: you can leave now.”
His hackles rose.
“I’ve been here much longer than you have, and this is my job.” One-fingered, she jabbed herself in the sternum. “My collar, my payoff.”
“We’re talking about the cure for leukemia here, Verónica—not exactly the time to be getting all territorial. This is about who’s the best man for this job, and, as you just pointed out, I have more freedom of movement than you do. Give me the combination and I’ll—”
“Oh, hahahaha!”
He stopped speaking.
She resumed her crossed-arm stance. And now that he knew she wasn’t a quivering flower of a woman desperate to save a sick mother, he let himself openly study how the position pushed her breasts up and enjoy the passionate red bloom in her cheeks from their argument and—
There went his cock again. He scowled. Damn this woman.
“I can do this mission, Antonio, and I need to do it. This is my first big job for Baretta, and if I don’t succeed, they’re going to think they hired no one but a hand-wavey, turban-wearing kook.” She gestured down the alley. “So go. As in, pack your bags, tender your resignation to Cuntrera, and find your way to Simón Bolívar International Airport.”
He blazed a look at her.
“‘Simon says go,’ if that’s what you need to hear.”
“All right,” he bit off, sharper than necessary probably, but then who the hell liked being outmaneuvered? She had the fucking combination. He had zip. “Go for it. I won’t stand in your way. But just for ha-has, tell me—” He curled his lip. “Do you always use sex so cavalierly on your missions?”
“No. Do you?”
“I’m not the one being cavalier here, chica.”
That took her aback. She panned his face, her forehead knitting. Then, after a long moment, she gestured offhandedly. “Whatever, Antonio. Don’t worry about it. We both did what we had to do in the line of duty, so…” She shrugged. “It’s fine.”
He stared at her. A raging muddle of emotions crammed one on top of the other inside him, grinding together like tectonic plates in earthquakes of things like astonishment and confusion.
It’s fine.
He clenched his teeth.
Whatever.
This was too damned much to take.
“Jim-fucking-dandy. Here I’ve been tearing my soul apart, thinking I took advantage of a desperate woman when it turns out you’re a fucking operative who just sauntered away from banging me with hardly a hitch in her step, apparently singing fa-la-la.” He damn well didn’t get it.
How could one woman break over taking her top off in a strip club and another remain whole and intact after sacrificing her virtue to a man who—as far as she knew—didn’t possess any redeeming qualities?
Answer: she hadn’t pulled it off.
She did feel used by him, and the worst thing was, he’d liked… No, he wasn’t going to go there.
He made a military-precise one-eighty and marched down the alley, pounding up dust with each stomp of his boots.