Behind the Mask (Undercover Associates Book 4) (37 page)

“L
ike pure and
utter what?” he asked her. Because he wanted to know. He wanted her inside and out.

“Everything, too…just…
uh
…” She loved him touching her with the gloves, taking her with those gloves. She’d always had a thing about them. Especially when she made herself think about the photo she’d marveled at forever. God, Kabakas taking her with those gloves.

So why was it starting to get old?

He put his mouth to her ear, licking the tender shell of it, making it hot with his breath, making her feel him. She liked the gloves, yes.

“Wait,” she breathed.

He stilled. “What is it,
señorita
?”

“Take them off.”

He pulled away. “What?”

“The gloves.”

He knelt over her with a humorous glint in his eyes. “After all this?”

“I want Hugo, not Kabakas.”

The humor went out of his eyes.

There’d been a time when she might have described the expression that crossed his face as stony, unreadable. Now she knew what it was: gratitude. Affection. It swelled her heart.

She reached up and settled her hands on his chest. “I want you to touch me,” she said. “Only you.”

With a wild force he started yanking off the gloves, tugging feverishly at the fingers like they wouldn’t come off fast enough. He threw them aside and settled his hands on her belly.

Just that sent a jolt of pleasure through her. “Like this?”

“Yes,” she whispered, feeling lost in his gaze, lost in his hard, jagged beauty.

He slid his hands all over her, covering every inch of her skin, as though he knew she needed that. And then he stretched his big, ruined body over hers and covered her.

“Like this?”

“Yes.”

He was a storm, taking her. He touched her in all of her pain and all of her truth. Being touched by Hugo—this, for her, was the ultimate kink.

He kissed her, and just when she thought she couldn’t stand the wait any longer, he settled between her legs and guided himself into her, spearing her. “This is what your man does to you now,” he whispered.

She loved how he said that, how caveman it was. “Say it again.”

He grunted, not one to take commands; instead he fucked her harder, riding them both into oblivion.

Darkness fell.

He rolled off the bed and went to the window to peer out through the small gap between the colorful curtain panels. The scene felt…unnatural. Or was he merely on edge being so deep in El Gorrion’s territory?

A rustling sound. The bed. She appeared next to him, clad in just those glasses. He preferred her in glasses and brown hair—far more so than the plumage of bright blonde and crystal green eyes. Her everyday self took his breath away.

“What?” she asked.

“Perhaps nothing.” He guided her to stand in front of him and look out the gap.

“We’ve been found,” she said.

He settled his hands on her shoulders, his chin grazing her hair, peering out with her. “Say more.”

“The man at one o’clock. The man at eleven o’clock. The one at the bus stop. They’re too well placed. It’s not natural. The sight lines…”

“Too perfect.”

She said nothing. His
señorita
, so silent and lethal. He never wanted to lose this feeling of having a partner. It felt good—too good, maybe. He didn’t know how they fit on the outside; but they fit on the inside.

“I’m thinking about the Aussies,” she said. “Maybe using them as decoys. The woman is my size, blonde. The man isn’t big enough, but if we bulked him up, if they moved fast. We need to find them and hire them.”

“Find them without asking around,” he added. “This is too much El Gorrion’s territory.”

They ended up finding them through a process of deduction and a helpful German drug addict. Hugo and Zelda went to their room and made the deal; they would pay them well to dress in their clothes, switch luggage, and sneak down the street. The beleaguered travelers didn’t ask a lot of questions—they didn’t want the deal to go away. It would be safe enough for them; El Gorrion’s men would be angry when they found out, but they would not attack
turistas
. They would gain nothing but trouble from that.

“If they ask what we look like, or any other questions, you tell them everything,” Hugo said. “Tell them what they want to know, and they won’t hurt you.” He was so tired of all of the death. He didn’t want any more people to die.

Back in the room, Hugo and Zelda shoved their weapons and essentials into the Aussies’ ragged neon-colored packs. He disguised the swords by wrapping them with a sweatshirt, then he nestled them in.

She stilled his hand as he began to wrap the masks. “Let me see.” He handed her the heavy one, the metal-lined one. She put it up to her face. “What do you think?”

He grabbed her wrist, forcing her to lower it.

“What?”

“I hate seeing it on you as much as I hated seeing it on Paolo.”

“Why?”

He didn’t know how to explain it—how he found his taste for being Kabakas waning. “Don’t wear it unless we need it.” He let her go.

“What I wouldn’t have given to hold your mask way back when. This metal backing would distribute a blow,” she said. “Even resist a bullet.”

“Certain calibers at certain angles,” he said, fingering the cheaper mask, the mercadillo version. “Bullet-resistant, not bulletproof. Do not be casual out there. If we must wear these, you must not be casual.”

“Wait.” She grabbed his mask before he could stop her. “This is the kind they sell at the markets. This is just thin plastic.” She looked up. “This is a bullshit one. We need to trade—you can’t wear the bullshit one.”

“I only need…a bullshit one.”

“You’d be the one out there, front and center.”

“Fear is my armor,” he said.

She snorted. “You need more armor than fear. You’ve taken blows to the face. It’s documented. It was because of this mask that you survived.”

He twisted her hair in a finger, voice low. “Your knowledge of my exploits—I do not always enjoy it.”

She turned the metal-reinforced one over. “This one is too small. I don’t understand…” Inwardly he sighed, knowing he couldn’t prevent what was coming—this was a woman who solved puzzles for a living. She looked up when she got it. “You modified your good mask to fit Paolo the day you guys went out to the airfield. You let Paolo have all of the protection.”

He twisted her hair another loop. “Paolo’s vulnerability was a greater danger to me than bullets, just as it will be with you.” She tried to pull away but he kept her hair, not wanting to let her go.

“You need to wear the reinforced one,” she said. “You’re the one exposed.”

“Too small now. I cut the edges down. It would not look right. It would not work.”

She said nothing. She of all people could understand the effect of the mask. El Gorrion’s men would know, deep down, if it was too small. She was so far inside his secret world it seemed a kind of madness. He never wanted her to leave.

“Hey.” She slapped his wrist. “Stop pulling my hair.”

He let go. “
Discúlpame
.”
Forgive me.

“You went out there on the airstrip in this flimsy thing.”

“It would seem so.”

She sniffed her angry sniff.

“Do not question my choices as Kabakas,” he said.

She was silent for a long time. He didn’t like it, this unhappy silence of hers. He wanted to shake the words out of her. Finally she spoke. “You said before that Paolo was better off without you.” Here she paused. “You are so full of shit.”

Her words stilled him. He loved her. Maybe he always had. “If anything happens to me, you will see that Paolo is cared for. You will get the formula to Julian.”

She began to protest.

He spoke over her. “You will see that Paolo is cared for and that the crops are put right.”

Her gaze was solemn. “Nothing will happen, because I have your back. That’s what this is.”

He studied her face. “For this mission?”

“For always.”

He clapped his hand onto the back of her head and pulled her to him, pressing his lips to her forehead. “And I have yours,
corazón
.” His heart thundered. He’d never had a partner before. He wanted to tell her how much it meant, but he couldn’t find the words. And it was time.

They slipped into the Aussies’ room and gave them directions. The two of them took off. Hugo and Zelda watched from the Aussies’ window, watched as the travelers posing as them moved stealthily down the street toward the alley, following the route Hugo had drawn for them. It was how he and Zelda would’ve gone.

He rested a hand on her shoulder.

“Ack,” Zelda said when the two veered into an alley. “Nothing like a violent turn into an alley to say I’m
furtive
.”

The man at the bus stop got up.

“Nevertheless, off they go,” he said, mouth close enough to her ear to kiss it. The man in the doorway folded up his newspaper and pushed away from the wall. He too disappeared down the street, shadowing the Aussies. Good.

Zelda and Hugo climbed out of the window and onto the roof wearing the other couple’s clothes and backpacks, heavy with weaponry. Hugo felt his scars tear as they dropped onto the next rooftop. He hadn’t brought the salve, but he did have something for infection. It would be enough.

They stole across and climbed down into an alley, heading toward the office building district, looking for a good vehicle to take. His man in Bogotá had come through with more information—the connection Ruiz had used for e-mailing Julian was near a small town southeast of their location. It was paid for by El Gorrion’s shell company. He’d narrowed down coordinates. The greenhouse they sought would be somewhere around El Gorrion’s compound.

They decided on a small rusty Volvo. Zelda slipped right in and started hotwiring it. With her glasses, brown hair, and simple skirt, she looked like she belonged in a library or lab, but here she was, yanking out wires with the quick, confident movements of a predator. She was his woman in full flower, and they were stronger together. The knowledge that they were stronger together sat with him hard, but it also sat with him easy.

They drove until
they hit the point where they’d be noticed, and then they hid the Volvo on the side of the road behind a decaying guard post, a relic of the war. He threw brush onto it. From there they headed up through the jungle, loosely following the dirt road that led to the El Gorrion compound. It was perhaps two miles up. They arrived at midnight.

The barbed-wire perimeter was clear of trees but not of soldiers. There were so many of them. Fighters everywhere. El Gorrion was building up. Expecting trouble.

He and Zelda melted back as more men rolled by, eight to a Jeep.

A vegetable truck idled off to the side, just outside the first security entrance, the driver’s face lit by his phone. “El Gorrion’s,” Hugo said. “No vegetables. They’ll fill it with product.”

He snuck up and dragged the man out of the cab and into the dark jungle, where they questioned him. The man talked easily. Hugo didn’t have to touch him, and he talked. He gave them a greenhouse, a mile over. You had to go back down the main road and up a little-used trail. Hugo carried him into an abandoned shed and Zelda tied and gagged him.

“It’ll take hours for him to work out of those bindings,” she said. “Maybe a day.”

He wouldn’t have to ask about her knots. She’d been in the CIA. He could trust her knots.

“What?” she asked, noting his expression.

“Nothing,” he said, wondering if the trust was on his face, or maybe the love. He took the man’s hat, phone, keys, and sunglasses.

“I miss this,” she said as they stole back to the truck. “This mission feeling. The energy.”

Hugo drove them back down to the main road and turned onto the less-traveled dirt road, heading up into a different part of the jungle.

They were heading to an area that was near El Gorrion’s compound, but not on it. Smart of El Gorrion to keep operations away from his main compound, so that one attack couldn’t take him all the way down.

This was deeper, darker jungle; the tree trunks here were tall and thin, seeking light at the top of the thick ceiling of foliage. They pulled the truck off to the side and covered it best they could. Hugo pulled on his gloves and arranged his bandolier.