Dutch thrashed against the tangle around his legs. The damned gillie net wouldn’t let go of him. He had to get moving. One of his teammates was down, and a hail of lead was flying over his head.

“Report!” he bellowed into the throat mike over the sound of the gunfire. “Who’s hit? Where are you?”

“It’s Simon. I’m at your—” a gurgling gasp “—ten o’clock. Don’t come—” another liquid rasp “—over here. Too hot.”

That was a death rattle if he’d ever heard one. Dutch cursed foully. Not Simon. Not his kid brother. “Hang in there, you little twerp,” he yelled in his mike. “Don’t you die on me!”

He jumped up and took off running in Simon’s direction. The green-black jungle seemed to stretch on forever around him, slow-motion flashes of hot lead zinging past in a red laser pattern all around him. He zigzagged and leapfrogged side to side as he fired randomly at the unseen ambushers.

A scream from in front of him. He hit the dirt, rolled, and came to a skidding halt in a firing position with his rifle against his cheek. The scene before him came into focus just as one of Ferrare’s men leaned down, knife in hand, over Simon’s prone body. Dutch barely felt the bullet slam into his own leg, so intent was he on the macabre scene playing out before him.

“Nooooo!” he screamed. He pulled the trigger over and over until the rifle clicked, empty…

Dutch lurched awake, bolt upright in bed. He rubbed his palms across his sweat-soaked face and realized his hands were shaking. Bad. His whole body was shaking, in fact.

Simon. An agony of loss ripped through him. He’d always known his brother died a violent death. How in the hell could he have forgotten the way his brother had suffered? Christ. His throat had been slit and he’d been left to bleed out like a pig, his lifeblood draining out on the ground as if he was some kind of fucking animal.

Was Julia responsible for it? Had she set them up? Or had her father used her unknowingly?

A need for vengeance sliced through him, as cold and sharp as an assassin’s stiletto. All these years later, a violent need to kill his brother’s killers ripped through him.

Julia’s body language at his laptop earlier shouted that she’d found some or all of what she’d been looking for. But what? When he’d asked her what she’d found, she’d shrugged and mumbled some lie about still looking for a way to break into her father’s financial records.

She’d almost suckered him. Again. Almost convinced him she was basically a decent person who was just the victim of her father’s machinations.

But God. What she’d been party to doing to his baby brother…only a viper of the worst kind could do that to another human being and live with himself.

She was her father’s daughter, after all. And her old man was a psychopathic bastard and possibly the most evil human being Dutch had ever come across in his many years of chasing criminals and terrorists. Had she inherited a little of her father’s callous viciousness?

Julia rolled over and mumbled something at him. God, he needed to hurt her. To make her feel the pain Simon had felt. He literally shook with the effort to hold his hands still at his sides. How long he fought himself, he couldn’t say. By the time he finally beat back the violence humming through him, he was drenched with sweat. Exhausted.

Still breathing hard, he tried desperately to remember more about the ambush, but nothing came back to him. Just a flood of memories of Simon when they were kids, raising hell and becoming men together. Joining the Blackjacks together. He’d always protected his little brother. Taken care of him. Until that night in the jungle. He’d failed Simon completely then.

He must have dozed off, because he woke with another lurch some time later. He was startled to see light creeping around the curtains. He’d slept through the rest of the night? Thank God.

Maybe a couple hours’ sleep would hold at bay any more of those blasted nightmares. Were he not in the habit of being so brutally honest with himself, he would pretend he wasn’t scared of the damned things. But he was. And it galled him. What kind of soldier was afraid of his own brain? A fucking crazy one about to be out of a job.

He slid out of bed quietly. Julia was still sleeping peacefully on her side of the king-size bed. Lord, she was beautiful. How could she be responsible for so much hurt and betrayal? A fleeting taste of last night’s rage soured his tongue.

He pulled on his pants and a shirt and shrugged into his coat. He’d slip out and get some breakfast for them. He let himself out of the hotel room quietly, strode down the hallway, and trotted down the stairs. He reached for the handle of the exit door and froze.

He spun away from the clear glass, plastering his big frame against the wall--out of sight of the four men peering in the windows of his SUV.

Son of a—

He slid along the wall slowly, easing away from the door. When he was clear of the men’s sight line, he turned and sprinted for the stairs. He burst into the room and Julia lurched awake. He ordered sharply, “Get up. We’ve got to go. Now.”

Her eyes were huge and black as she stumbled out of bed and pulled on her clothes. He stuffed what little gear they had into his coat pockets. No time to wipe down the room for prints. Besides, the bastards knew they were here. No need to cover their tracks.

He tucked the laptop under his arm and headed for the door the second Julia’s head emerged from her sweater. He eased the door open and peered out into the hallway. Clear. He stepped out with her close on his heels and headed for the front of the hotel, away from their pursuers. They approached the crossing hallway. The elevator dinged, announcing its imminent arrival on the second floor. A gut instinct honed over years of fieldwork exploded a warning in his brain. He reversed course rapidly, grabbing Julia by the arm and spinning her around to run beside him in the opposite direction.

“Where to?” she gasped.

A long hallway stretched before them. He dared not return to their room. A maid’s cleaning cart stood at the far end of the hall. It was a long distance to cover in a few seconds, but an open doorway stood beside it. If they could just make that door…

He put on an extra burst of speed, stretching his long legs into a full sprint for their lives. He half lifted Julia, propelling her along beside him.

“Jump!” he ordered at the last second before he went airborne.

They dived for the door. He twisted and landed on his shoulder. Julia landed on top of him and he absorbed the impact with a grunt.

He looked up and saw a maid drawing breath to scream. Crap. And then Julia was talking low and urgent in rapid Spanish.

She clambered off him and he climbed to his feet beside her. He listened as she quickly explained to the maid that the two of them were running from Immigration agents who were after her. The maid nodded sagely, pulled her cleaning cart all the way into the room, and closed the door behind her. Damn, Julia could lie like a pro.

The woman eyed Dutch critically. In Spanish, she said, “He will be a close fit. But I think we can get him out the usual way.”

The usual way? What the heck had they stumbled into here? Some sort of underground railroad?

Julia frowned and gave voice to his thoughts. “The usual way?”

The maid smiled. “You are far from the first illegal to come through here. We take care of our own.”

Julia thanked her with warm sincerity and a graceful offer of compensation for the risks the woman was offering to take. Dutch’s Spanish was fluent, but Julia was working the woman so well that he kept his mouth shut. The maid was visibly responding to Julia’s gentle, compassionate nature. If he didn’t already know Julia’s true nature, he would buy this act of hers hook, line and sinker. As if he needed more proof, here it was—he was standing before a truly accomplished actress.

He tuned back in to what she was saying. “…so we ride in the cart to the hotel’s laundry and then a couple of the maintenance guys will carry us outside? Are you sure they can pick up my friend? He’s pretty big.”

Dutch sighed. The bane of his special-ops career—his size. Sometimes it was freaking hard to hide six and a half feet of muscular body.

“Where will they take us once we’re outside?” he murmured to Julia in English.

She turned to the maid and relayed the question. He blinked at the maid’s answer. A dumpster? Could be damned dangerous if a trash truck came along and tossed them in its crusher. But the maid went on to explain that they would signal the driver by tying a cloth to a handle on the dumpster so he’d know he had human cargo.

Not a bad scam. “What’s it going to cost us?” he asked under his breath. “I’ve got about two grand in cash on me.”

Julia smiled and turned to the maid. “Is a thousand dollars cash thanks enough to all of you for the risk you will be taking?” She added apologetically, “It’s all we can spare at the moment, but we can get you more if you need it.”

The maid’s gaping mouth was answer enough. They had their escape route. A few last details were worked out quickly. This maid would leave now with Julia hidden in the bottom of her cleaning cart. Another maid would be by in a little while to pick him up. He didn’t like being separated, but it seemed to be the only way. He pulled the cash out of his wallet and handed it to the maid.

He put a hand on Julia’s arm and stared down at her. “Be careful,” he murmured. “And don’t go anywhere without me.”

She smiled up at him. Healing warmth spread through him whether he liked it or not. She had the damnedest effect on him.

“You, too,” she murmured. A pause. “It’s going to feel strange being separated from you.”

He nodded tersely. “Time to go.”

She clung to his hand for a moment and then stepped back resolutely. He helped her curl up in the compartment that usually stored buckets and other miscellaneous cleaning equipment. How in the hell he was supposed to fit in that tiny space, he had no idea. But he would find a way. No fucking way was he getting left behind. He shut the compartment’s door and nodded at the maid. She opened the hallway door and slipped out with her secret cargo.

And then he was alone. Oddly enough, it did feel as though part of him was missing. Restless, he peered around the edges of the drawn curtains. As he’d expected. One of Julia’s pursuers from the ski resort was patrolling the parking lot. He had a big, fat black eye. Must be one of the guys he’d dropped in his ski condo that first day.

Dutch shifted his surveillance to the hallway door’s peephole. It only took about five minutes for two of the guys from the parking lot to come into view. They looked grim. Determined.

Dutch pulled his eye away from the peephole once they were past. He felt pretty grim right about now, too. How in the hell had these guys found him and Julia so fast? He’d used his non-traceable credit card issued by the government for when he was on Blackjack missions to pay for their room. Did Julia’s pursuers have police contacts? Maybe Eduardo’s FBI mole? Who else could have found them like this? The fuckers were literally staying right on his and Julia’s heels. His estimation of the threat to her notched up yet another level.

Where were the rest of the guys who’d been chasing Julia? Surely they were around here somewhere. His hackles lifted at the thought of more of these jerks roaming around without him knowing where they were.

The good news was, the thugs couldn’t bust into every room in the hotel looking for him and Julia. The bad news was, they might convince the manager to let them into his and Julia’s original room. Then the bastards would know how close behind the two of them they really were. And there was nothing more persistent than a bloodhound after it acquired a fresh scent.

The pair of men patrolling the hallway passed by twice more. Definitely scouting. Not much he could do now but sit tight and wait for his ride.

He looked around the hotel room. A strong sense of déjà vu broadsided him as he paced the confined space. He’d done this before. In similar circumstances.

His head started to hurt. He shut the curtains to block out the painful sunlight and stretched out on the bed. He closed his eyes against the throbbing in his temples.

The room’s walls began to close in on him, and abruptly he was sitting in another hotel room, in another place and time.

He’d been waiting for Julia then, too. Waiting to give her final instructions for leaving Gavarone in case she couldn’t get outside her father’s compound before the Blackjacks sprung their trap, or in case she missed her rendezvous with the team.

He’d been too impatient to sit still. So eager to see her he couldn’t think straight. Too in love to breathe.

Whoa.

Dutch sat upright abruptly, back in New Mexico in a rush. He’d been in fucking love with her? He knew better than to get involved with a target on a mission. He never let his emotions interfere with his work. He was the iceman. Everyone accused him of being a robot because he always held his feelings so tightly in check. Even after his brother’s death.

He subsided against the pillows, shaken. The longer he lay there, the worse his head hurt. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched the headboard until his fingers ached. He focused on the pain, concentrating with all his might on holding back the insidious certainty that, on that particular mission, he hadn’t been a robot. Hadn’t frozen out his feelings. Had let a woman inside his guard. And it had cost his brother his life. He couldn’t possibly have been in love with Julia!

But the lightness in his heart whenever he’d thought of her was real. The way he’d craved her presence, the way everything had seemed more vivid when she was with him…it wasn’t his imagination. And dammit, some of those reactions lingered even now, any time she was near. This very second, her absence rubbed at him, a raw spot in his gut that demanded relief.

What sorcery had Julia Ferrare performed to get to him back then? Whatever it was, she was doing it again. How could he simultaneously love and hate a woman like this?

His control was slipping, inch by inch. He had to fight it. To fight her! But how? He’d sworn to protect her until this was over.

He ought to just kill her now and be done with it. Except breaking his word rankled. Stupid, but that was just the way he was. He’d promised. Besides. The lure of nabbing her father was more than he could walk away from. He would give his right nut to nail that fucker.

The abyss retreated. He felt it hovering near, though, lying in wait for another chance to strike at him. For him to let down his guard and let it in.

As the wait for his escape dragged out, his normally prodigious patience stretched thinner and thinner. In his line of work, it wasn’t uncommon to sit in the same spot without moving for two days at a time, doing surveillance or waiting for a target to step into his rifle sights. But this separation from Julia was driving him crazy by slow degrees. An overpowering need to see her, to make sure she was safe, rode him hard.

It was almost two hours later, and he was on the edge of certifiably insane, before a knock finally sounded on the door and a female voice announced, “Housekeeping.”

Thank God. He leaped to his feet, stopping only long enough at the peephole to verify that the woman was alone. He let the maid in. The girl was young and very scared looking. “Relax,” he said to her lightly in Spanish. “This will be a piece of cake.”

She smiled timidly, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Great. He didn’t need her panicking on him at the worst possible moment. “What’s your name?” he asked her as he helped her empty out the bottom of her cart.

“Maria,” she mumbled.

“Pretty name. My mother’s middle name is Maria. After my grandmother. They’re two feisty women. They chased a bear out of our strawberry patch once with an empty shotgun and a golf club.”

It was a patent lie, but it brought a real smile to the girl’s face, and the terrified set of her shoulders eased a bit. “I bet your mother and grandmother are real fighters, too,” he commented. “Takes courage to let your baby girl come to the United States to make a better life for herself.”

The girl’s shoulders squared even more. Much better. He said briskly, “We’re clear on the plan, right? You just wheel your cart from here straight down to the laundry and leave it there. The maintenance guys will take it from there.”

She nodded.

He got down on his hands and knees and paused in the act of levering himself into the cramped space. “Thank you,” he told her sincerely.

“Piece of cake,” the maid replied in halting English.

How he crammed his entire body into the storage space, he had no idea. It was such a tight fit the girl had to stow his laptop computer in the laundry bag at the end of the cart. He recalled his claustrophobia training in survival school and did what he’d been taught. He located the air hole and did his best to relax and slow his breathing. Long before he’d succeeded fully, the hallway door opened and the girl wheeled him out.

The cart stopped in front of the service elevator, waiting for a ride to the basement and safety. A male voice from off to the left asked the maid to stop. Dammit! She mumbled in Spanish that she spoke no English. The guy tried again, in louder English. Not a Spanish speaker, apparently.

Stay cool, Maria. Keep your head. He willed the girl to hear his thoughts. The elevator dinged. The guy raised his voice even more, and the maid, bless her heart, burst out in a spate of rapid, upset Spanish.

Dutch registered vaguely that her outburst had to do with this guy slowing her down and how much work she had to do and that he was going to get her fired. But what really held his attention was that she pushed the cart on to the elevator as she railed.

The elevator door closed, shutting out the sound of the maid, still protesting the man’s interference vociferously. Whew, that had been a close call. What a gutsy girl. As slick a move as he’d ever seen.

He held his position in the cart when the elevator doors opened again. In a few seconds, someone came to investigate, and a hushed female voice asked, “Are you there, señor?”

“Yeah,” he murmured back.

“Where is Maria?”

“A man is questioning her upstairs. But she managed to get the cart on the elevator before they could stop her. Does she need help?” Dutch asked urgently.

“I’ll go up and check on her.”

“Thanks.” The last thing he needed was that girl on his conscience.

Thankfully, the cart lurched into motion again. His hamstrings were starting to cramp up, and it was getting damned stuffy. The doors opened abruptly and he squinted at the flood of bright light.

“Quickly, señor,” said a male voice. “Into this crate.”

Dutch rolled out of the cleaning cart and eyed the wooden box before him. It was substantially larger than his previous hiding spot, at any rate. His limbs only half cooperating, he snatched his computer and climbed into the box. A lid clamped down, and darkness wrapped around him. The crate tilted onto a dolly and someone grunted as they pushed him into motion. A minute later a male voice counted to three and he was heaved up into the air. He braced himself as best he could, but rolled wildly in the box as it tumbled to a soft landing.

And then an overpowering stench hit him. Rotting trash. Ye gods. He was definitely in a dumpster.

A man’s voice nearby. “The garbage truck will be here in about fifteen minutes. Sit tight until then.”

He might die of asphyxiation before then. And Julia. How was she standing the hideous smell? He waited several seconds and heard nothing at all.

“Julia?” he whispered.

Nothing. He tried again. Panic surged in his chest. What had they done with her? So far, the hotel staff had done exactly as they’d said they would. Should he trust them?

Should he blow this escape and break out to go look for her? Eduardo’s goon would still be patrolling the parking lot. He would have to take that guy out, which would probably draw the attention of his buddies. And then the bastards would know Julia was still nearby. At least she’d better still be nearby. If she had cut and run on him…

He didn’t know if he would be more terrified or disappointed. He’d been relieved beyond belief when she’d agreed not to bolt on him yesterday. Made his job a hell of a lot easier. Right. That was why he’d nearly puked in relief when she had agreed to stick with him. It had nothing to do with the feelings that were tearing him apart, no sirree. He was a fucked up mess.

He stayed put for ten minutes and then he couldn’t stand it any longer. He had to go find her. It was a royal pain twisting around in the box until he could plant both feet on the top of his crate. But he managed to make like a pretzel and position himself. He drew a deep breath and prepared to kick out the lid when, suddenly, he heard two male voices approaching.

He froze, straining with all his might to listen. His heart started beating normally again when they came close enough for him to hear them speaking in Spanish. He jostled as they carefully set something in the dumpster.

“Dutch?” a husky female voice whispered.

Julia. His relief was so intense he momentarily felt light-headed. “I’m here.”

“Thank God.”

On that, they could both agree. He was grateful that the men who’d helped them had spared her the long wait in the fetid pile of trash. A pick-up must be imminent.

Sure enough, the men’s voices had barely faded when the loud rumble of a truck approached. “You ready to move, honey?” he murmured.

He heard a sob in her voice. “I’m so scared. Thank God you’re here.”

“Everything’s going according to plan. And I promised I wouldn’t leave you,” he chided gently.

The dumpster lurched just then and her only answer was a soft cry of surprise.

“Hang on,” he instructed. “Brace yourself as best you can.” He did the same as they slowly tipped over. His crate tumbled over twice and came to a rest. If possible, the stench was even worse in here. The truck drove away and proceeded for about five minutes. And then, thankfully, it stopped. A man’s voice called out low to them, instructing them to keep talking until he found them. Julia spoke a steady stream of thanks for this man’s assistance. Her voice retreated as she climbed out of the truck.

“Your turn, señor,” the man said.

In a matter of seconds, the lid cracked open and he climbed out onto a soggy, disgusting mound of filth. And then he was over the side, crushing Julia in a spontaneous hug of relief. If she smelled any worse than him, he couldn’t tell, but he didn’t care in the least. Her smile was the sweetest sight he’d seen in years.

She wrapped her slender, strong arms around his waist and held him every bit as tightly as he was holding her.

“I don’t ever want to be apart from you again,” she murmured fervently against his chest.

“Me neither.” The words were out of his mouth before he even realized what he’d said. Me neither? Sweet Mother of God, what had he gone and done?