Dangerous Liaisons (10 page)

Jesse slumped in a seat beside a trash barrel at Bogotá International Airport. Despite the cotton chemise worn beneath her oversized peasant dress, the straps of the one-piece, latex foam belly and breasts—part of her fat, middle-aged Colombian laborer disguise—chaffed her shoulders. Ernesta had insisted on the lifelike latex foam.

“Just because no one is going to touch, doesn’t mean the disguise shouldn’t be as real as possible. You never know. Some young man might become smitten.”
Ernesta had grinned that morning as she applied the finishing touches to the dark makeup covering Jesse’s face, neck, arms, and hands.

Jesse shifted in her seat and the black wig’s thick locks brushed her shoulder blades. “Any young man who tries touching these breasts is liable to get a mouthful of fist,” she had told Ernesta. “I’m in no mood for amoré.”

The five-foot-one bombshell had grinned. Jesse felt certain amoré wasn’t what Ernesta had in mind.

Ernesta had spent the first four of her teen years on Bogotá streets. If there was one thing she understood, it was what it was like to disdain a man’s touch. She also understood what kind of breasts it took to convince a man they were real.

A year after Jesse joined the Marines, she transferred to a unit in Colombia assigned to guard the embassy. While out on the town one night, she found Ernesta hustling on the streets. Something about the girl suggested she was different. It wasn’t just her looks. Ernesta had brains.

Jesse spoke to the Colombian Ambassador about Ernesta. That day changed the lives of both women. Ambassador Sanchez gave Jesse Emilio Santiago’s number, and passed Jesse’s name onto the OIA.

Emilio was a genius at falsifying documents. When the Colombians needed advice on forged documents, they sought out Emilio. He operated a costume shop storefront, and an illegal forgery shop in the back. The government knew about Emilio’s back door business, but because they needed him, they looked the other way.

When Jesse brought Ernesta to him, Ernesta displayed a knack for costuming that delighted Emilio. He was thirty years her senior, but Ernesta worshiped him. He died eight years later. Now, three years after his death, Jesse recognized the sadness that hung in the background of Ernesta’s life.

Jesse often wondered how Ambassador Sanchez had known to match Ernesta with Emilio. She also wondered what would have happened had she not spoken to him that day. Six months after returning to the States, Blue Team leader contacted her. It took a while, but she finally figured out that Sanchez had brought her to OIA’s attention. It seemed the Ambassador was a compulsive matchmaker.

Jesse shifted in her seat. The foam of the oversized buttocks behaved like a form fitting cushion, but she had been sitting at the airport for two hours, and even the soft foam had become uncomfortable in the hard airport seat. Customs was taking longer than usual, and passengers from Cole’s plane were only beginning to trickle out.

Cole Smith. The man had become a monkey wrench she couldn’t ignore. Juanita’s dossier confirmed he had been Green Team Leader for the Colombian mission. Jesse took a slow breath. Why hadn’t she gone into the village? If she had, probably neither of them would be alive. Somehow, the argument didn’t quite reach her heart. Cole had been there, had made it out—no thanks to her.

A corner of her mouth twitched upon recalling the
darling
childhood he had enjoyed on his parent’s horse ranch. He had been voted high school prom king. At Texas A&M, he had majored in veterinary medicine with a minor in political science. He was a member of Kappa-Xi fraternity, All-American lacrosse and track, ROTC, then had attended officer training school after graduation. Officer training was a family tradition. His father, grandfather, and other male ancestors as far back as records went had all served in the military.

Michael’s information confirmed Cole had led the Colombian mission. The admiration that had first washed over her upon reading the file resurfaced. Not many men could survive eighteen days of beatings and torture by cartel drug runners. The courage it had taken to survive, then chase after her with unwavering determination, made her heart ache.

She also hadn’t been surprised to learn Cole was neither an ivy leaguer, nor a private school brat, but an Aggie through and through. She could imagine all the pretty sorority girls seeking a MRS degree, dying to land a husband with Cole’s pedigree. She had known such gold diggers at Berkley. His file didn’t mention a woman, but he had to have someone waiting for him back home. Men like him always did. A tremor rippled through her belly. She had no right to care who burned the midnight oil for him.

A tall, broad shouldered man emerged from the flight gate and Jesse’s heart fluttered before she realized he wasn’t Cole. She was acting like a fool. Whether three thousand miles away, or three feet, she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Had she erred in contacting him? He had nearly died because of her mistake. His teammates had paid the ultimate price. She might not be doing him any favors by involving him.

Jesse had found no trace of anything dirty in Cole's file. Teaming up with someone she didn’t know was risky, but he was the one who had lost the team. She grieved for the men, wanted justice for them, but they were his friends. He had a right to be a part of the operation, and to ensure its success.

Michael had given her a name, Menendez, a judge on Perez’s payroll. This was the closest anyone had come to Perez, and more than she had hoped for. Juanita’s intel had netted zero, which Jesse half expected. Juanita’s career would be made if she tracked down such a high profile criminal. Any information she found would likely go into her personal work file. What a world they lived in. The good guys withheld information in order to further their careers, while the bad guys handed over information to former lovers.

At least Juanita had gotten Jesse the sniffer. Though Jesse hadn’t had any luck in obtaining a line on the other high tech equipment she needed. The recon for Maria’s rescue mission had been her first in Colombia, and aside from one other person, Michael was her only contact, and he’d given all he could. It looked like she’d be going into Menendez’s place nearly naked.

Her attention snagged on a man two gates over. He sat down in a chair, shook open a newspaper, and began reading. The tiny hairs on her neck prickled. Two tourists ambled by. She detected no covert acknowledgment between the tourists and the man reading the newspaper, but they knew each other…and they were looking for her.

A dozen people abruptly poured through Cole’s flight gate. Jesse spotted him and his Stetson over the heads of the crowd. Well, damn, if he wasn’t the All American cowboy. She shifted attention to the next gate over and, with drooping eyelids, watched Cole in her peripheral vision. The people ahead of him dispersed, and he paused, casually scanning the terminal. Cole’s gaze caught on the man with the newspaper and his mouth tightened. Jesse detected an almost imperceptible shake of the head from the man. Cole whirled and started toward the stairs leading to the ground floor rental counter.

Jesse swiveled away from the man with the newspaper, bent over her foam belly and boobs, and reached into the canvass tote bag between her legs. She rooted around, pulled out a cell phone, and picked up the bag. Ignoring the furious beat of her heart, she stood, legs apart and bowlegged in her oversized, one-piece dress, grabbed her pantyhose by the crotch and yanked like she had seen other peasant women do. Satisfied the man with the newspaper hadn’t given her a second glance, she ambled down the concourse.

Seconds later, lost in the crowd moving in the opposite direction Cole had taken, she punched out his number on the phone.

He answered on the first ring. “Yeah.”

“Senior, you were supposed to come alone,” she whispered in Spanish.

“Who did you spot?" he asked.

“Who did you tell?” she demanded.

“If I had taken off for Colombia without a word, Green Leader would have agents all over the place,” Cole replied. “Telling him I was coming here was the only way to keep him in our sights.”

Fear tightened her chest. She’d wanted to give Cole the chance to put his teammates to rest, but he was making the same mistake she had.

“I’ve underestimated him for the last time,” she said.

“This is the smart way,” Cole said.

“I said alone,” she replied. “You should have trusted me, Cole.”

“Jess—”

She hit the end button on the phone and dropped it into the bag.

Two minutes later, Jesse stepped onto the escalator leading to the main exit. Her heart slowed as the last line in Juanita’s report on Cole floated across her mental vision:
Amadeo Perez visited me while I was held captive in the village.

Jesse paused beneath a rubber tree four kilometers from the village where Green Team had been slaughtered, swung her backpack from her shoulders, and dropped it onto the ground beside her. She pulled the canteen from the leg pocket of her fatigues, unscrewed the lid and brought the canteen to her lips. The water went down cool against her parched throat. She screwed the lid back on, slipped the canteen into its pocket, and swiped sweat from her forehead with the back of a sleeve. Heat hung in the air so thick even the croaking of the tree frogs sounded labored.

Her chest tightened. She’d planned on Cole accompanying her on this mission. She’d had the idea that he would want to help get Martinez home, then find Green Team…his team. After discovering yesterday that Cole had brought a team to Colombia, she tried talking herself into aborting the plan altogether. In the end, however, she had been unable to give up this one chance to give Martinez’s family some closure and to maybe find the men the U.S. had deserted in Colombia.

But helping the Martinez family had been harder than she’d imagined. Stupid. How could she possibly have thought she would truly understand their pain? After she’d buried Martinez’s body in the graveyard that lay a half a kilometer from the remote village, she’d gone in search of his family.

His brother found her.

“You think burying him makes up for the fact you got him killed?” he had shouted.

She didn’t. But she hoped that bringing him home would banish the family’s thoughts of him alone in the jungle, his body ravaged by animals. And he had been ravaged. Even his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him and Jesse didn’t want them to remember him that way. So she took the one thing from his body that might bring some comfort. She’d been right. When Jesse pulled from her pocket the cross Martinez had worn around his neck, his brother broke down into tears.

She still didn’t know why he agreed to take her to the hiding place of his sister-in-law and her daughter. Through tears, Martinez’s wife clutched the cross while she told Jesse the rumors about where Green Team had been buried. Jesse still felt the gentle pressure of the woman’s fingers when she squeezed Jesse’s hand and said in a quiet voice, “Make his death matter.”

Jesse’s eyes stung, but no tears followed. She had cried herself dry on the trek between their village and this spot where Green Team was rumored to be buried, four kilometers from the place they’d been murdered.

She surveyed the ground beneath the canopy ahead. She wouldn’t have noticed the difference in the eight-by-eight plot of ground if she hadn’t known what to look for, but the lack of living ground cover and fallen leaves and twigs indicated she’d found the gravesite she sought. She pushed from the tree, grabbing the small backpack as she started toward the spot.

Her small folding shovel made digging slow, but after ten minutes of digging, she uncovered a man’s fingers. Jesse forced back bile. No turning back. She had to be certain this was Green Team and not other victims of Perez. Minutes later, she stared down at the upper half of a man who wore U.S. fatigues. Her hands shook as she gently pulled back the collar until his dog tags were visible against a bullet riddled chest. She lifted the tags and read the name
Robert Mills
. The man she’d seen shot to death.

Jesse gently laid the tags back on his chest, closed the shirt collar, then stood and began covering the bodies again.

Tears finally broke through her resolve when she scattered a last armful of foliage onto the unmarked graves. If Cole wanted to do one good thing, he would get his men home.

That evening, Jesse pushed open the flimsy louver doors of the cantina across the street from her seedy hotel. The odors of tobacco smoke and stale booze rolled over her. She cut short a grimace when half a dozen grimy men seated at the bar and tables glanced at her. Until now, she hadn’t thought much of Ernesta’s choice of a peasant girl disguise: baggy cargo pants, white t-shirt, no bra, thick, brown wig, and dark makeup. Jesse had a feeling the girl meant to stir up some male/female action.

Jesse let the louver doors swing shut behind her. Before the room plunged back into shadow, she spotted Cole seated in a corner booth near the rear exit, hunched over a bottle of Tres-Xs and a shot glass. She had made him wait an hour and a half while she watched from the hotel to be sure none of his associates had followed him.

She maintained the posture of an indentured peasant-- slumped shoulders, downcast eyes, face shielded by stringy hair as she shuffled past the tables to Cole’s booth. She’d staked out the place before choosing it as a meeting site, but still marveled at how much it looked like a saloon straight from an old western movie, complete with bar mirror, rickety round tables, wooden chairs, and a brass spittoon at each end of the scuffed oak bar.

Jesse slid into the seat beside Cole, which gave her full view of the room, and murmured in Portuguese, “I found Green Team.”

Shock flickered across his features then disappeared. He slipped an arm around her shoulders. Jesse frowned, then realized his intent when he looked over the top of her head and called to the bartender, “Dos cervezas, por favor.”

Cole looked at her and said in a quiet tone, “What did you do, Jess?”

Before she could halt the memory, she envisioned Robert Mills’ fingers sticking up through fresh turned dirt.

“Jess.”

Her mind jumbled.

“Jess.”

She jarred back to the cantina and Cole’s arm, warm around her shoulders.

“What is it?” he demanded, and Jesse realized a tear was slipping down her cheek.

She exhaled a slow breath. “I gave Martinez’s family closure. You can do the same for Green Team’s loved ones.”
And yourself
, she silently added. “Use the team you brought to get them home.”

Cole’s gaze sharpened and she tensed with the realization that was just smart enough to ask questions she didn’t want to answer.

He nodded. “We’ll get Green Team home.”

Relief threatened to bring a rush of tears.

“About that team,” he said, and Jesse froze. “They’re not the men you spotted at the airport.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you haven’t spotted
my
team.”

She stared. “You’re telling me you brought not one, but two teams?”

“I let Lanton send a team.” She started to interject, but he cut her off. “You want him to suspect I have doubts?” Cole shook his head. “Don’t worry. I carefully chose my own team; four men with ties to the men we lost here. They don’t know about our deal.” Jesse lifted a brow, and he added, “They want you, don’t mistake that, but they’re soldiers to the core and will follow my orders without question.”

Like you do Lanton’s
? she wondered.

“Every one of them has a horse in this race.” Cole removed his arm from her shoulders. He ticked off his fingers one by one, “Caruthers, Fletcher, Young, and Roush. Caruthers was Quinn’s partner for seven years. Sal got Fletcher the job with Green Team. Young and Benton were roommates at Annapolis and got each other through Naval Aviator training. Young is engaged to Benton’s sister. Roush and Pete were a team in Green Team. When offered a spot in Blue Team, Pete refused because he’d have to leave Roush behind. Robby was the only one who didn’t have ties.”

Jesse’s heart twisted painfully at the memory of witnessing Robby’s death.

Cole took a breath. “If you’re right about Lanton, they’ll rip him limb from limb.”

Unexpected rage rushed to the surface. The first thing Hwuang Kano taught her was that her physical prowess, her ability to kick ass, was a tool, nothing more. Anger had no place in getting any job done. She had been able to maintain that belief—until now. Was it Cole that incited this cold rage? No. It was the same helpless feeling she had experienced the day her mother stuck Amanda in an institution.

“Don’t worry,” he said as if reading her mind. “Things aren’t as out of control as they seem.”

She gave her head a slow shake. “Lanton murdered seven men and a little girl and is still Green Leader. How much more out of control does it need to get? Listen, Tex, this is my mission. If you can’t live with that—” She broke off at the sound of approaching footsteps and snuggled close to Cole’s unyielding body.

He slipped his arm around her shoulders and she grimaced. Meeting in a public bar had been a bad idea. She remembered their private meeting in her hotel room and the warmth of his hands on her body. That hadn’t been any better.

The bartender set two bottles of beer on the table. Jesse started at realizing the man’s size. Where had he been when she entered the cantina? She caught the leer he gave her. She dropped her gaze. Dammit, the man could wrestle King Kong and win.

After the big man left, Jesse leaned closer to Cole and whispered, “First, you tell me to trust you, then you tell me to trust complete strangers—strangers who won’t hesitate to kill me the first chance they get.”

“No. These men are on our side.”

“You thought Lanton was on our side. You don’t know anything for sure. You don’t really know I’m innocent.”

He started to reply, but broke off, distracted by something behind her. Jesse started to turn, but Cole pulled her close. She froze when he nuzzled her ear.

“Our friend at the bar is watching,” he whispered. “We have to play nice.”

Cole brushed his nose against her ear. His warm breath tickled the tiny hairs on her neck. Heat rippled through her midsection.

“I admit I wanted revenge," he whispered. "After reading your service record, I had to know why someone like you would turn.”

Her stomach did a flip. Her entire life was in that file—growing up in North Dakota, losing her father at age eleven, Amanda, her military service. She remembered the investigation when she had gotten her Top Secret clearance. Federal agents had interviewed her high school teachers, neighbors, college friends, and family.

“I latched onto every bit of information that came within ten miles of me.” He squeezed her shoulder. “I got so good, I could smell when something was in the air. In the beginning, I thought I knew you better than your own mother, and was convinced I’d figured you out.”

He brushed his lips against her throat. She’d forgotten how soft a man’s lips could be. She grabbed her beer, glad for the cool bottle against her palm.

“I got my hands on your service record.” His voice caressed her senses the way his mouth caressed her body. “Then your psyche file, your exemplary record with Blue Team, your college days at Berkley.”

Berkley.
Had he learned about Michael Quesada?

“Even your childhood,” he ended.

Good Lord. She had been so proud of her recon on him. For the first time in her life, her target knew more about her than she did about him.

“None of that says I’m innocent.” She wasn’t feeling innocent. The warmth of his fingers penetrated to the bone, and she wished mightily they weren’t in a cantina. She took a swig of beer and set the bottle on the table.

“After you ran out on me in New York, I dug deeper and found out about the endowment fund,” Cole said.

Jesse jerked her head around before halting the reaction.

“Easy, Jess,” he warned. “Let’s not attract attention.”

She couldn’t believe he was giving her tips on how to stay inconspicuous. Mr. Apple Pie, All American? He stood out like a bulldog on a greyhound racetrack.

Cole gave her an approving look. “A six million dollar endowment fund buried under four corporations. No trite offshore banks, but right there under the noses of anyone who knew where to look. Very nice.”

Jesse’s mind raced. He had found the endowment fund, which meant he was the one who found Amanda’s trust fund. She should have realized that when he admitted knowing about the transfer from the Caymen account into the Philips and Rothman fund. He hadn’t lied. Cole had led Lanton to her, and her money and—she stared.

“You found my safe deposit box.”