Her Enemy Protector (15 page)

“Yeah, it would,” he agreed, obviously thinking hard. “I wonder if we could get ahold of a couple of wet suits.”

“Gunter keeps all the diving gear locked up.”

Joe frowned. “Maybe I could get a couple of wet suits dumped on the beach and hidden where we could get at them.”

“Motion detectors all the way to the water,” Cari replied.

Joe nodded. “Yeah, I saw those when I was watching the place.”

“You watched this place?” she asked, surprised. “For how long?”

“A couple weeks. Technically, I was watching you. But I also scoped out possible ways to pull you out of here.”

“And found none,” she added bitterly.

He smiled gently. “Don’t knock it. How else would I have managed to convince you to marry me?”

Startled by the sincerity in his voice, she replied, “Don’t sell yourself short. If I’d have met you under perfectly normal circumstances, I’d have been interested in you.”

He shrugged. “Under normal circumstances, our paths would never have crossed.”

Her gaze narrowed. “You see me as some spoiled little rich girl, don’t you? You think I run around with the jet set, partying the nights away and being generally useless.”

“I didn’t say that,” he replied evenly.

No, but he thought it. They all did. Everyone who lived outside her world and looked at it from afar thought she had some great life. But outsiders didn’t live with bodyguards dictating their every movement, with the constant threat of kidnapping or murder hanging over their heads. Outsiders didn’t flinch at every loud noise or get awakened in the middle of the night and hustled down to a panic room in the basement to hide, locked in with a terrified maid for hours on end while God knows what transpired upstairs.

She said defensively, “You think it’s been a bed of roses growing up in this house because my father has so much money, don’t you? You think wealth makes it all better?”

His back went stiff. “It sure as hell beats growing up without any money at all.”

She paused, arrested. He’d just given her a rare glimpse at the real man behind the facade he kept so carefully in place. Grew up poor, did he? “Did you have two parents when you were a kid?” she asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Did they love you?”

“Of course they did.”

She reached out and trailed her fingers across his cheek gently. “Ah, Joe. I’d have traded all this luxury in a heartbeat to remember what my mother looked like. To know what a hug from her felt like. To know that something other than my father’s jealousy and rage cost me my mother.”

He muttered dangerously, “What do you mean? What exactly happened to your mother?”

“Eduardo killed her when I was a toddler. He decided she was having an affair and broke her neck with his bare hands. Julia overheard him bragging about it once.”

Joe stared. Then his brow grew thunderous. Then, finally, the tension left his shoulders and he moved, shifting to sit behind her, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her back against his solid warmth. “I’m sorry, princess. I keep forgetting to look past the surface with you.”

“Past the surface?” she repeated.

“There’s so much more to you than meets the eye. You’re so dazzlingly beautiful it’s easy to get caught up in just looking at you. I keep having to remind myself not to underestimate the woman behind the looks.”

Warmth that went beyond shared body heat flowed through her. “That’s possibly the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” she murmured.

“Then you’re going to be one easy lady to romance,” he laughed. “I haven’t even begun to ply you with real flattery yet.”

She snuggled deeper into his arms. “Sounds yummy.”

He chuckled and, if she wasn’t mistaken, buried his nose in her hair for an instant. But then the light touch of his breath on her ear withdrew and he said quietly, “Tell me about your childhood. What was it like growing up here?”

“We didn’t really grow up here. We spent most of the time at the main compound. It’s on the other side of St. George at the edge of the jungle—”

“I know the place.”

He did? How was that? Her mind spun with possible answers to that one. Belatedly, she continued. “I was two when my mother died. Julia—she’s five years older than me— mostly raised me. The servants were too afraid of my father to do much more than feed and clothe us.”

“What about Eduardo? Was he around a lot?”

“No. He traveled all the time. The thing was, nobody ever knew when he might come or go. By the time I was ten or so, though, he had his organization pretty well established and started to spend more time at home.”

“What kind of father was he?” Joe prompted.

“He never failed to provide for us. We always had new clothes and went to good schools. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he openly loved us. But in his own way, he showed us he cared. I think he always regretted that we weren’t boys.”

Joe’s arms tightened briefly and he mumbled, “I, for one, am thrilled that you’re a girl.”

She laughed.

“Tell me more.”

She couldn’t tell if this was some sort of subtle interrogation for the purposes of doing his job or whether Joe was simply interested in her life. Either way, she continued speaking. “He always brought us gifts when he’d been out of the country. Sometimes a stuffed toy or a box of expensive chocolates. Once, he brought us both silk dresses from Paris. He had us wear them to a big party he threw for the leaders of the drug cartel he was trying to hook up with.”

“And did he?”

She frowned. “Did he what?”

“Did he hook up with the drug cartel?”

“Oh. Sort of. A couple of the members didn’t want to do business with him. They said he was too violent. So he killed them and then asked to join the cartel again. The survivors let him in.”

“Did he talk about business around you and your sister?”

“Actually, he was pretty careful about not talking around us. I think he liked pretending we didn’t know what he did. He always told us he owned a bunch of coffee plantations. When we were young, most of what Julia and I knew we learned from eavesdropping on the servants.”

Joe snorted. “How old were you girls when you figured out what he really did?”

She had to think about that one. She searched her memory for a time when she didn’t know what and who her father was. “I can’t remember ever not knowing that Daddy killed people and sold drugs that make people sick.”

“What did you think about that?”

“I used to lie in bed at night and pray that no one would come to our house and kill us to get even with Daddy for killing someone they loved. Which is to say, I had a lot of nightmares and insomnia, even as a little kid.”

“Wow. That’s some burden to carry around,” he commented.

“You know, the worst of it wasn’t the fear. It was the guilt.” She hadn’t thought about this stuff in a long time. The old pain seared across her stomach like an ulcer.

“Guilt? Why?” Joe asked when she didn’t continue.

She considered her words before answering slowly, “I used to think that if Julia and I hadn’t been born, Daddy wouldn’t have needed to turn to crime to support us. I figured it was all our fault. To get the money to take care of us, he had to do the things he did.”

“And how old were you when you grew out of that illusion?”

She gazed out at the ocean, a vague, growling mass out there in the dark. “My head grew out of the notion before I hit my teens. But I don’t know if the heart ever grows out of something like that.”

Joe lurched behind her. “You don’t honestly think your father’s life of crime is your fault, do you?”

She shrugged. “I know it sounds stupid. Like I said, the head gets over it. But you have to admit, there is a certain element of truth to our part in all of this. If Julia and I had ever gone to the authorities, maybe he could’ve been stopped. Maybe a lot of lives could’ve been saved. Maybe she and I are as guilty, in our own way, as he is.”

“Julia’s disappearance has caused a major blow to your father’s activities. She very much wants to do whatever she can to stop him further.”

She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Right. While I partied the night away and let her take all the heat. And the guilt train just keeps on rolling.”

“Your sister was in a unique position by being your father’s banker. You didn’t have the luxury of having her insider knowledge.”

She snapped, “I may not be his banker, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know any inside stuff.”

“Like what?” he challenged. “What do you know that could be of use to the authorities?”

“Well, I know when he’s going to have important meetings. He always wants me to put in an appearance at them. To serve drinks to his guests and let them grab a quick feel or two.”

Joe’s arms tightened at that.

She shrugged. “At least he never made me sleep with any of them. I hear that some of the men in the cartel make their wives and daughters service important clients.”

“Sick bastards,” Joe said.

“Lucky for you, Eduardo told me I didn’t have to show up for tonight’s meeting. I guess he figured you might go nuts if someone touched me, and he doesn’t want a scene with this bunch.”

“There’s a meeting? Tonight?”

“Yeah. An important one. He’s had it planned for weeks. He’s been really antsy to meet whoever’s coming.”

“When’s the meeting?”

“Two in the morning or so. They’re having late drinks at a nightclub and then coming back here to discuss business.”

“Who’s he meeting with?”

“I have no idea. Someone new with whom he’s never done business. I got the impression these guys deal in something he’s never dabbled in before.”

“So Eduardo’s diversifying?”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you for sure. But that’s my impression.”

“I’m inclined to trust your impressions. And my own impression is that I need to find out who’s at this meeting. I’m going to need your help. Are you game?”

“To do what? Spy on my own father?”

“Exactly. Will you help me?”

Cari gulped. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. We could get in a lot of trouble if we got caught.”

Joe shrugged. “So we don’t get caught.”

Right. Like that was an easy thing. But then, if Joe was as good as the rest of Charlie Squad, he probably could spy on the meeting without getting caught. He’d already figured out how to get around the security cameras watching the grounds below. She’d lived here on and off for most of her life and had never figured that one out.

Except something was still making her terribly uncomfortable about the whole idea of spying on tonight’s meeting. Something besides the risk. Something having to do with…

Oh, my God.
Something having to do with not wanting to spy on her father
because it would be disloyal to him.
Disloyal? Why in the world was she worried about being disloyal? It wasn’t like Eduardo had ever done anything to earn her loyalty. Except be her father. Except let her live. Except provide for her in his own way.

And then the terrible, awful, horrible truth dawned on her. The same truth that had been staring her right in the face ever since Tony’s death. The truth that had made Tony’s murder hurt so bad. How could she not have seen it before now?

She’d never truly intended to run away from her father at all. She’d been running away from something else all that time. She’d been running away as fast as she could from the fact that
she still loved her father.

And here she was, bound to a man who’d sworn to take her away from Eduardo at all costs. What in the hell was she supposed to do now?

Chapter 9

A
sick feeling settled in the pit of Joe’s stomach at the look on Cari’s face. Buyer’s remorse. Damn! He was as much a prisoner in this house as she was. She couldn’t back out now or he could kiss his butt goodbye.

He’d known it was one of the risks going in. Her sister had pulled a stunt like this nearly a decade ago. Julia had agreed to help Charlie Squad arrest her father, only to back out of the deal at the last minute. While she was at it, she’d gone on to set up the team for an ambush by Eduardo’s men.

Thankfully, when Julia contacted them a few months ago, she
had
followed through on her promise to help Charlie Squad. But even then, Dutch, the team member who’d been her primary contact on the op, said she’d had periods of doubt about going through with handing over incriminating information about her father.

What was it about Eduardo Ferrare that commanded such loyalty from his daughters? Neither Julia nor Carina had any illusions about what a monster he could be, nor of the crimes he was capable of. Both of them had feared for their own lives at his hands. How could they still love him? Surely, that was the only reason either woman would remain loyal to the guy.

Was it really as simple as them both living lives so deprived of love that the occasional scraps of attention Eduardo threw at them were all they knew? Is that why they clung to him like they did? Talk about tragic.

Now the question was, could Carina be lured away from her father? Dutch and Julia had been in love once before and fell in love again when they reunited. Unfortunately, Joe didn’t have that past history with Cari to call upon. All he had was the here and now. And he had precious little leverage to use to pry Cari from Eduardo’s clutches.

The only real bond they had at this point was the attraction leaping and twisting between them, and that was a fragile thing, at best. Damn. He’d just have to make what use of it he could.

Over Cari’s head, he glanced at his watch. A little before midnight. He had about an hour to distract her, to get her back on board with the idea of helping him spy on her old man. He hated having to play her like this, but she gave him no choice.

He leaned down slightly, inhaling the clean, sweet citrus scent of her hair. “How long has it been since I told you how beautiful you are?” he murmured.

She replied, “I think it’s been at least an hour.”

“You know, the thing about beauty,” he reflected, “is that when you actually get to know a physically attractive person, they either get a lot more or a lot less beautiful in your eyes.”