Chapter Four
“He’s three.” Her voice softened as she spoke of her child. “Santiago sent him back to the States, to his family there. That’s when I came up with my plan. I have to get back to him before he forgets who I am.”
A mother. Christ. Just when he was getting to understand her. Hell, he appreciated her honesty even though her story disgusted him. But to learn she was a mother…
“Saldana’s kid?”
Her expression twisted—was that revulsion? She nodded. “His name is Hector.”
“Saldana sent him to the States.”
“To his family in Miami, he said.” She crossed the pool to where her clothes were stretched out on rocks, like she couldn’t bear to be naked when she spoke of her son.
“How long ago?”
“Almost four months.” She hauled herself out of the water and slipped on the T-shirt, which clung to her wet body. “I didn’t know what to do,” she added quickly, as if she didn’t want him to judge her further. “I had no way to leave. When Eric Reyes told me soldiers were coming, I knew that was my only chance to get away. I never thought it would take days to get to the States. I thought it would be only hours, and Santiago wasn’t there, so he wouldn’t know I was gone right away. Now, no matter how fast we get to Miami—” She choked back a sob.
“Santiago will have hidden him,” Alex concluded.
She looked at him, stricken, as if hoping he wouldn’t think so too. “I have to get to him, Shepard. Don’t you see?”
He did. Only he knew the DEA would be waiting for her when they got to Tegucigalpa. She’d be debriefed before they let her go. If they let her go. Her kid could be in kindergarten in Timbuktu before she found him.
Part of him wondered if that wasn’t for the best. What chance did the kid of a drug lord and a whore have? The only way Alex had survived a similar lineage was through entering the foster system. That alone had saved him from repeating his parents’ mistakes.
He wanted to say it to her, the part of him that wanted to punish her. But her eyes were big and sad, and while he told himself she could be acting to gain his sympathy, she knew him well enough by now to know he didn’t have any.
He almost wished he did.
“The dress, the one you ripped up, that one was his favorite. He would fall asleep rubbing the fabric between his fingers. I was going to wear it when I found him.”
He clamped his jaw against the offer to buy her another one when they were in civilization. After all, what kind of mother wore a dress like that to care for her child?
She didn’t look at him, clearly not wanting to feel his judgment. She reached for her socks, brown with blood, ripped by friction and shook them out.
He swam over to her. “Wait. Your feet need to be dry. See if these people have any socks, anything you can wrap your feet in, or you’ll get jungle rot.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she murmured.
He grabbed her arms, forcing her to look at him. She let out a little cry of alarm but he didn’t release her.
“What good are you going to do that little boy if you’re laid up in a hospital somewhere? If you don’t take care of yourself, how can you expect to take care of him?”
She lifted her gaze, her lips tight with anger. “I know you can’t believe me, but I would do anything for him.”
He didn’t believe her, but it wouldn’t help the situation to say it. “Then do what I say.”
The anger dissolved and she nodded, backing away.
“It’s not good for you to wear wet underwear, either. You could have some serious chafing.”
She climbed to her feet. “I have clean underwear.”
She pulled them out of her pack—God help him, white lace ones this time—and stripped off the pink ones. Right in front of him. What the hell? Just when he’d finally got his arousal under control. Jesus Christ.
He couldn’t tear his gaze away, even as she stepped into the panties, pulled them up those gorgeous legs and snapped them in place at her hips.
She reached for her pants and looked down at him, knowledge in her eyes. “Breakfast should be almost ready. Are you coming?”
“I’ll be right there,” he said through his teeth.
Isabella was sitting at the table with her new friend and his family, laughing, eating like a starving person, when Alex joined them. Her smile was bright with mischief when she looked at him.
“Everything all right?” she asked, as if she knew just what he’d been doing.
He grunted in response and sat at the end of the bench when others made room for him.
“We were gone so long, they thought we were having sex.”
He grunted again. She was trying to get a rise from him, and she was, just not one he was going to show her.
“They didn’t have any socks, but they gave me some sandals.” She held up one foot with a simple leather sandal on it.
“You won’t get far in those.”
“That’s the good news. They’ve got a truck.”
That was good news. His mood improved immediately. “How much?”
“Not for sale, but they’ll give us a ride into Tegucigalpa. That’s where we’re heading, right?”
“Right.” There would be a third party there to keep him from doing anything else idiotic.
“We leave after breakfast.” She beamed at him. “Did I do good?”
“Thank you for not leaving me there,” Isabella said softly as she settled in between one of Vicente’s burly sons and Alex on the old Ford’s bench seat. “I know you wanted to leave me.”
“I have orders from the DEA to bring you in,” he said.
She sobered. “Of course. Orders.”
“How long is it to Tegucigalpa?” he asked Vicente’s son.
“Six or seven hours.”
Alex sat back, impatient to have this mission accomplished already. To get Isabella Canales out of his hair.
“At least we won’t be walking,” Isabella said. “You can get some sleep.”
As if he could relax with her all pressed up against him. “Yeah, sleep.”
“I suppose it’s too much to hope this thing has air conditioning,” she continued cheerfully, clueless about what lay ahead. “But I’m going to sleep.”
“Knock yourself out.” Maybe then he’d be less aware of her.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat once Vicente’s son started the engine. She shifted, and shifted again, and again.
Her eyes popped open after just a few minutes. “I can’t sleep. I’m too excited. Tell me a story.”
He snorted, looking out the open window at the passing jungle. “I’m no storyteller.”
“I don’t want you to make up one. I want you to tell me about your girl. What’s her name?”
He turned to look at her. “Rebecca. Why are you so determined to know about her?”
“Because I want to know what kind of woman makes a man like you fall in love.”
“A man like me?”
“A hard man. One who sees things in black and white.”
“Are you insulting me?”
“Are you denying that’s what you do? Is she as righteous as you?”
“Rebecca hasn’t seen the bad things in life like I have. She doesn’t believe people are all bad. She can’t really wrap her mind around why jobs like mine exist.”
“She’s your pure, like Hector is mine. You don’t want this part of your life to touch her.”
“Yeah,” he said, surprised by her insight.
“She wouldn’t judge me.”
“Like you said, I wouldn’t let her see that side of my life.”
She flinched at the words, but she didn’t give up. “How did the two of you meet?”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I read romance novels to go to sleep. Do you have a romance novel in your pack?”
“How I met Rebecca is not a romance novel,” he said with a smirk.
“Is it going to have a happily ever after?” she asked.
“Well, yeah, I hope so.”
“Then tell me.”
“All right. It was at the movies. I’d gone with some buddies. She was there, in line in front of me, so pretty. Real old fashioned, you know? Blonde and wholesome. She was even wearing a skirt.” She’d looked like one of those girls out of an old movie, fresh-faced and innocent. She’d been wary of him. His certainty that they belonged together scared her at first. As soon as he knew, he’d backed off, unwilling to risk losing her. His intensity had scared him. He’d never wanted anything as badly as he wanted a future with Rebecca. A nice, normal picket-fence future. “I couldn’t take my eyes off her. So I blew off my buddies and went to some chick flick with her.”
He turned to see Isabella’s reaction but she was asleep, her head back against the seat, her mouth open.
Once she was out, he contacted his team to tell them they would meet back at Tegucigalpa. After he’d made contact, he relaxed. Well, as much as he could with the goddess snuggled against him like he was some goddamn pillow.
For God’s sake, he’d been an asshole to her. Why did she feel comfortable enough with him to curl up practically in his damn lap? Was she just so comfortable with men? He couldn’t imagine her being as unguarded with Saldana and his men, but maybe he was mistaken.
The other thought that worked its way into his brain was that the other men in her life were even worse assholes than he was. He knew that was the sympathetic side of his brain talking. He couldn’t afford to be sympathetic.
But when he dropped off to sleep, it was Isabella’s laughing brown eyes he dreamed of.
Returning to civilization, even the civilization of the city of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, resulted in culture shock after being in the jungle for weeks. Alex could only imagine what it was like for Isabella after four years. He watched her pressed to the grimy glass of the truck windshield, taking in the sights, barely breathing as her attention darted from one thing to another. She was like a little kid. He swore he heard her whimper when they passed a bookstore.
As Vicente’s son Gerardo made his way through traffic, Isabella kept up a running stream of comments, reading signs aloud, chattering about the people and the cars, making the jungle seem downright quiet.
Gerardo knew the way to the embassy, thank God, and dropped them off in front, by the concrete rows of planters. Isabella hobbled for a moment on her bad feet, and Alex caught her elbow. As he guided her into the building, he wondered if his men had made it back to town.
Together they approached the marine standing at the entrance. Alex could feel Isabella’s tension rising with each step. He couldn’t blame her. Hell, this was a whole new world for her, one she hadn’t been in as an adult. She wouldn’t be pampered.
Within minutes of the marine announcing their arrival, DEA agents had swarmed them like the bugs in the jungle, surrounding Isabella, separating her from him.
“Wait, wait,” Alex called, trying to get to her. She was scared, he could see it in her wide eyes, the way she sought him. Damn, they were treating her like a criminal, patting her down, cuffing her and dumping out her pack.
One of the agents took the pink vibrator and twisted it open violently. Alex recognized the device that she’d slipped in the battery pack—a portable thumb drive.
“This is everything Eric told me to look for on Santiago’s computer,” she said softly.
Alex couldn’t explain why her words kicked him in the chest. She hadn’t told him she had that information. Okay, just because she had the drive didn’t mean she knew what was on it, but that she didn’t trust him enough to tell him she was carrying something so important.
Hell, what did it matter? He’d done his best to get her back here as quickly as possible. He wouldn’t have done anything differently. But now he was going to have to answer for not knowing.
Still, as the agents pulled her in one direction and him in another for debriefing, he called, “She needs medical attention. For her feet.”
Isabella held his eyes as long as she could—he wasn’t sure what she was trying to tell him—before she disappeared into the building, surrounded by men in suits.
After his own debriefing, Alex walked out of the embassy to the nearby hotel recommended by the staff. He forced himself to stop wondering how Isabella was holding up. She’d probably charmed the entire intelligence agency before they released her and sent her over to the hotel.
One of the marines delivered his mail packet as he exited the conference room, and Alex returned the crisp salute with a halfhearted one of his own before he pawed through the tied-together packet. Four letters from his dad—his foster father—and two from Rebecca. He grinned. In anticipation, he stopped for a six pack, then went to his room and dug in, saving the letters from Rebecca for last.
Now the words blurred in front of him, only partially because of the tequila he’d bought when the store didn’t have any brands of beer he’d heard of. Turned out, he was glad of it. Beer couldn’t get him drunk enough, and he needed to get drunk.
He’d guessed what was coming from one of his dad’s letters.
Keep your head.
Life doesn’t always go as planned.
We love you no matter what.
His dad was an old soldier who wrote newsy letters, not sentimental ones, though Alex could always feel the love underneath the words.
Rebecca must have gone to his folks. That would be something she’d do, a decision she’d agonize over. Not the decision of leaving him, maybe, but the decision of telling him in a letter instead of waiting till he got home.
Better he learns before he gets home and finds you married to someone else, he could imagine his dad saying, and he tossed back another shot.
Better he find out when he’s too far away to do something foolish, like use his training to kill the guy.
He threw the shot glass across the room as hard as he could. It bounced off the wall and onto the carpet without the satisfying shatter.
Dropping to the edge of the bed, he dragged his hands over his head. She’d been too good for him. He’d known that, had hoped she wouldn’t realize it, that he’d be able to make himself worthy of her by the time they married. He didn’t deserve her. He prayed the man she was marrying did.
There was someone he did deserve, the woman who’d been occupying his mind and other parts for days. A woman who was in the hotel room just down the hall.