On the Loose (13 page)

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

Morazán Province, El Salvador

It was a dark and stormy night
—the words went through Honey's mind and stuck. Very dark, she silently added, very stormy. They'd gone beyond rain in the last half hour, way beyond, straight into a tropical deluge—most of it, as far as she could tell, dropping right on top of the Land Cruiser.

Unless Smith had accidentally driven them straight into a waterfall.

Which she wouldn't put past him.

“We're lost.” The words slipped out of her. She hadn't meant to say them out loud, but there they were, lying in the air between them now, the truth.

Just as well. He needed to know.

“No, we're not,” he said.

Yes, they were.

“I have a GPS and a map, and we're on a road,” he said calmly.

No, they weren't.

“This isn't a road.” It was a streambed, or a river, or a flooded rut. She could hear the water rushing by the tires, and yes, she could see the GPS in his hand, and the map in his lap, and the flashlight in his other hand, and even with all that, they were still lost. The radio was out and the phone didn't work, basically, she knew, because they were stopped under a waterfall, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, with not a damn thing anywhere in sight.

“We have a break in contact with the convoy,” Smith conceded, “but we are not lost.”

Yes, they were, with the nose of their vehicle noticeably lower than the tail end of their vehicle, which meant they were headed downhill—which pretty much summed up her take on the situation as well.

Great. She and the Land Cruiser were in agreement. Only Smith was in denial.

Honey liked adventure, to a point. She loved traveling with Thomas, had loved the trip to Nepal, and had been to Antarctica and the Sahara with him, exploring and investigating all sorts of scientific phenomena—without ever getting lost. She'd gone adventuring with Haydon and his inevitable film crews to Alaska, the Amazon, and Borneo, documenting environmental disasters—without ever getting lost. With Gerald and William, she'd survived countless clubs from Saint-Tropez to Monte Carlo, and with her mother, she'd personally conquered the rarefied shopping districts of Dupont Circle, Georgetown, and Upper Northwest near Friendship Heights, not to mention Fifth Avenue and every boutique in Manhattan.

Never lost.

She let out a sigh.

“Do you need another granola bar, or a drink of water?” he asked, calm as a rock, which was starting to get under her skin. Panic was in the air, and he was clueless.

“Suck eggs.” If he could get them lost, she could sigh.

Smith held the GPS back up and muttered something under his breath—she thought it was “Eggs,
geezus.
”

Ditto, as far as she was concerned. She started to sigh again, then held it back, which probably wasn't healthy.

Damn, it was dark out there.

And Julia was in trouble. Honey knew it down to her bones, and for all the other adventures she'd had, this was the worst, because her sister's safety, maybe even her life, was at stake. If Julia was pregnant, as Father Bartolo had suggested with all his ranting and threatened recriminations, then something terrible and awful had happened to her, and Honey needed to find her. Julia would never have willingly had sexual relations with a man, not after having taken her vows, and Honey wasn't buying into immaculate conception, not with her baby sister involved.

She needed to find damn Diego Garcia and probably shoot him, and Smith had lost the convoy. She didn't know how. But from the looks of where Smith had stopped to try and get reorganized, he didn't have a clue where the other Land Cruiser and the cargo truck had gone. They'd simply disappeared in the darkness and the deluge.

They'd gotten a call—their last call—informing them of a detour they needed to make on their way to the Campos plantation, and between one curve and the next, the other two vehicles had disappeared.

Smith had obviously missed a turn, or made a turn he wasn't supposed to make. She was guessing the latter, because no one would have de-toured them into a waterfall.

No, she thought, looking out the windshield and giving her head a shake. This situation had “mistake” written all over it.

And dammit, those were her trade goods on that truck. If Julia was with the rebels, the anti-tank missiles and grenades were Honey's ticket into their camp, along with the briefcase at her feet—of course, the briefcase she was sure contained money, lots of money. That thing would probably get her into anywhere she wanted, especially into trouble.

“We're not that far from St. Joseph,” she said. “Maybe we should go there first and get our bearings.”

“I thought you said we were lost.”

“We are,” she said. “We're just lost not that far from the St. Joseph School and Orphanage.” She'd been studying the map of El Salvador for weeks before she'd been shanghaied into this disaster, and she knew that no matter how far off track he'd gotten them, St. Joseph was between where they'd been and where they were going.

He muttered something noncommittal, which she was sure was not an admission of his deficient navigation skills.

Honey looked back out the windshield and tried to control a shiver. This was not rain, not unless it was End of the World rain, apocalyptic rain, forty days' worth jammed into one night, either that or it really was a freaking waterfall. There was no other explanation for the sheer amount of water pouring over the SUV. If they weren't already in a river, they would be in about five more minutes.

“Do you have a plan for when we start to float away?” she asked, working to keep any stray, strident note out of her voice. There was no reason for him to know she was on edge. But the question was real. She wanted to know about the floating-away problem, and she wanted to know right now, and Mr. I'm in Charge, Get Used to It had better have an answer, because she was getting nervous, and she didn't like to get nervous, especially when she was practically trapped underwater.

Oh, hell, what a terrible thought to have.

“We are not going to float away.”

“Bull,” she whispered under her breath, way under.

“If you've got something to say, go ahead and say it,” he said. “God forbid you should hold anything back.”

She was holding plenty back, like that last sigh.

“Bull,” she repeated a little louder, and a gust of wind caught them, rocking the Land Cruiser back and forth, a huge gust, and then another, buffeting them around. She clutched the door handle, and felt an edge of fear slide down her spine. She couldn't say for certain, but between the headlights and the occasional flash of lightning, she thought they were on one of those roads that had been dug out of the hillside, the kind with one real side made out of dirt and rocks and vegetation, and one drop-off side made out of thin air.

And now there was buffeting wind.

Damn, oh, damn.

When the wind passed, Honey took hold of her purse, dragged it into her lap, and started searching. She'd had it. Panic was going to win, unless she wrestled it down and drowned it.

“What are you doing?” he asked, as if it was any of his business.

“Looking for something.” As if that wasn't obvious.

“If it's another granola bar, I've changed my mind. I think you're already on sugar overload. You need to switch to protein.”

“I don't have any protein.”

“Then get an MRE out of my ruck.”

“I don't want an MRE, I want a drink.” What the hell else could she possibly need right now? She couldn't think of a thing—other than maybe a driver who knew where in the hell they were. But she wasn't going to be telling him that now, was she?

“What kind of drink?” he asked, sounding skeptical.

She threw him an incredulous glance, and he swore under his breath.

“I heard that,” she said, digging back into her purse, and boy, did he have a lot of nerve. If she'd been driving, they'd still be with the convoy.

“Don't get so drunk that I have to carry you out of here,” Smith said coolly. “I don't need the aggravation.”

Fat chance. She only had two tiny bottles, both strictly for medicinal purposes.

“And I don't need you yelling at me.” Smith had been his father's mother's maiden name, and coming from a long line of hyphens, she personally understood how names could get a little out of hand. But that didn't explain his first name. Nothing did.

“I'm not yelling.”

“Bull,” she whispered again. She was scared, and when she was scared, sometimes a little bourbon helped brace her. Not enough to get drunk. Honoria York-Lytton hadn't been drunk since she'd been eighteen, and that was a fact. But she had been known to brace herself a bit now and then with a shot of bourbon during a difficult situation—her current situation being a case in point. And despite all the natural drama, it wasn't the wind, and the rain, or the being lost that scared her the most.

It was the being lost, and being late, and not making it to Julia before the forty-eight hours were up. Garcia had promised to disappear if his timetable wasn't met, and if by some awful set of circumstances, Julia really was carrying his child, he might very well take her with him—again,
goddammit.

Honey hated him.

She'd only written him those nice, chatty, embossed notes because deep in her heart she'd been afraid she would need him someday for the exact damned reason she did need him. And she knew he'd only written her back because he hoped to get more money out of her.

It was called business, and networking.

Well, she didn't have a problem doing business, and she was networked from the Hudson to the Potomac, inside track all the way. She did have a problem with her sister living by a value system that at best seemed painfully naïve, and at worst was dangerous. If the pope had decided against the Salvadoran guerrillas, didn't that mean the nuns followed suit?

Apparently not at St. Joseph.

Somebody needed to read them the riot act, at least one of them, and Honey was the girl to do it. The other three misguided saints could do what they wanted, but it was time for Julia to come home.

She found one of the bottles and screwed off the lid.

“You know we're on a schedule here,” she said, in case he'd forgotten. “A tight schedule.”

Smith didn't answer, but she was pretty sure she'd gotten her point across.

The next few long moments passed in silence, with the rustle of his map and the glare of his flashlight the only activity in the cab of the Land Cruiser—and her, slowly sipping her bourbon, letting each small drink sit in her mouth, clear her sinuses, and sharpen her senses before she swallowed.

“Okay, I think I've found the problem,” he said, putting his finger on the map.

Good.

“We're in a slight depression.”

Honey slanted him a disbelieving glance. What a brilliant piece of insight. She was definitely in a slight depression, and no, the bourbon wasn't helping.

She took another swallow.

“If we move forward about...fifty meters, we should be on high enough ground to get our communications up and running.”

“Move?” She didn't think so. “We can't see our hands in front of our faces.”

“This isn't supposed to last the night. I checked the weather report at Ilopango, before we left. When it lightens up, we'll inch down the road. It'll be fine.”

She didn't think so.

“There will be no inching.” No inching themselves right off a cliff.

“I thought you were worried about your tight schedule?”

And I thought you knew what you were doing,
she thought, but again, she kept the news flash to herself.

“I offered to drive,” she said instead. That wasn't a news flash, that was a fact, a very succinct, heartfelt, I-told-you-so fact, and she had no problem whatsoever sharing it with him.

“You're pushing your luck, Ms. York,” he said, and went back to checking his map and his damn GPS.

Ms. York? This man had slept with her, and he was calling her Ms. York? What gall.

“I know your name,” she said.

“No, you don't.”

Yes, she did.

She took another small sip of bourbon, sitting quietly and looking out the windshield as Mother Nature and all hell broke loose on the world and sent sheets of water driving into the Land Cruiser.

“Cats hate rain,” she said.

The rustling stopped. Then he gave the map a good snap and spread it out over the steering wheel.

“Dogs don't mind it,” she added, and took another sip of bourbon.

“Why don't you stop while you're ahead.” It was an order, not a question.

“You were crabby in San Luis, too,” she said. “You're always crabby, probably the crabbiest person I know. You get crabby in the heat, and you get crabby in the rain, and—”

“And you become unreasonable and lose all capability for thinking logically when you're scared.”

She was struck speechless...almost. “That is the most
untrue
—”

“
Christ,
I'd have been dead twenty years ago, if that happened to me. Thinking clearly in a crisis is a skill you might want to spend some time developing, for your own sake...let alone mine.” The last was muttered under his breath, but she heard it loud and clear.

She sat back in her seat, her jaw clamped shut. She wasn't speaking to him...right after she told him this last thing.

“I only have enough bourbon for one, two shots, and I won't be sharing, so you'll have to go someplace else to vent your repressed anger at your mother for giving you such a weird name and have your...your...and have your crabby little breakdown.”

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

Someplace else?

Smith didn't think so.

And his crabby little breakdown?

Right.

Like that was going to happen.

Like it had ever happened.

God, like he even knew what in the hell a crabby little breakdown was—unless it was one of those things Natalie had done a few times.

Fuck.

Like he could even begin to get himself that worked up over anything—anything at all. He didn't have that much emotion in him on a good day, and on a bad day, he tended to have even less.

Lost? Not really.

The GPS coordinates, sporadic though they'd been, had allowed him to track their progress precisely on his map. He'd stopped the Land Cruiser when he'd noticed their path was diverging ever farther from the road he thought he'd turned onto, and realized they were following a trail that snaked through the hills above a stream.

When he'd first broken visual contact with the other vehicles, he'd increased his speed to catch up with the lead Land Cruiser. When that hadn't worked, he'd slowed down to allow the truck to catch up to him, but that hadn't worked, either, and now he was certain neither vehicle was on this track.

Even if the radio had been working, which it wasn't, linking up with the convoy under the present circumstances would have been difficult. The track was too narrow for him to turn their vehicle around. His plan was to keep going forward when they could, get to higher ground, and get on the cell phone when the rain let up.

Except for the goddamn torrential rain, and being stuck in a car with a woman on the verge of a meltdown, tonight actually wasn't so bad. As long as nobody was shooting at him, he usually figured he was in pretty good shape, and nobody was shooting. Hell, the bad guys could be twenty feet away and they wouldn't know which way to point their weapons. The weather was wild out there.

But from Honey's point of view, he could see where the night could be looking a little scary. They were definitely off track. But not lost, not even in the ballpark of lost. True, the rain was amazing, completely biblical. It had gone beyond being a pain in the ass into some weirdly cool territory. He had never seen anything like it, but the storm wasn't slated to last much longer, and he didn't think they were going to float away before it ran itself out.

If he did, he'd be taking precautions. That's what he did. Anticipate problems and deal with them before they had a chance to come about.

She, on the other hand, had gone from enjoying the rain to thinking the worst, and her idea of a precaution was a minibottle of bourbon. When actually, the situation was fine, far from disaster. They had food, water, shelter—and the potential ingredients for sex. Him. Her.

Yeah, he was thinking it. He'd been thinking it ever since her little whisper in the dark about him being the last guy she'd had. Any guy would be thinking it, no matter how much rain was coming down.

At least he'd been thinking it up until she'd started unraveling.

“I don't have any repressed anger at my mother,” he said. “She was a saint.”

Honey didn't say a word on her side of the cab, just sat there, looking out the windshield, looking angry, and looking worried—and he felt a pang of guilt, not his first of the night,
dammit,
and probably not his last.

She'd been the one to drag him into this, no matter how many other people had their hands in the cookie jar. Grant, and Dobbs, and White Rook, and those damn photos were merely the aftereffects of Smith showing up at St. Mary's in San Luis, and he'd only been there because of her.

And he'd only gotten that far because for whatever reason, when he'd seen her standing out in front of the damn Hotel Palacio, he had not been able to leave well enough alone.

“Her name was Melinda Jo,” he said, and then wondered for a moment if he was really going to talk about his mother.
Geezus.
The last woman he'd talked with about his mother had been the one he'd married, and she'd stolen his socks when she'd left him, every single pair.

He'd never understood that.

“Melinda Jo Rydell,” he elaborated, “and she died in a car accident when I was nine.” Hell, he was going to do it.

“Oh.” The word was soft. She didn't budge, not an inch. There was only the word.

But he'd gotten her attention, and the more she focused on his mother, the less she'd be focusing on herself and whatever dire doom she was imagining, and that's all she needed, a little break to get her through the storm.

Her two-shots-of-bourbon method might do the trick. He wasn't really worried about Honey getting drunk, despite her size. She'd had two shots that night in San Luis with no noticeable effect, and she'd had plenty to eat since they'd landed in San Salvador, a late lunch at Ilopango, and numerous snacks on the road. She was actually kind of an eating machine, always nibbling on something.

But, hell, he was talking anyway.

“She wasn't as old as you are now,” he continued. “Blond hair, brown eyes, not very tall.” No taller than Honey. “My dad married her young, seventeen. She didn't quite make it out of high school, and at twenty-six, she was in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. He lived, she died.” History as far as he was concerned, old news, but here he was, dragging it out and sharing it with a woman he hadn't spent so much as twenty-four consecutive hours with, using his dark family secret to calm her down.

It was working. Honey had turned to face him, being all but perched on the edge of her seat now, her face still a little drawn, but curiosity starting to win.

“Her maiden name was Hill, and they were one hundred percent pure Arkansas redneck. My grandpa, Walter Hill, was a mean son of a bitch until the day he died, so I always figured Mom might not have had it so good at home, growing up.”

She was nodding, her expression intent.

Women were so sweet that way, always trying to help a guy out with his conversation.

“I know, well, I know how difficult those situations can be,” she said.

He doubted it.

“My York-Lytton grandfather was mean, too,” she went on. “But it was always from a distance, barked orders and edicts coming down from on high to stay off the banisters, and don't slam the doors, and no running in the upstairs halls. We hardly ever saw him. He didn't like children in the house. A fifty-room estate, and there wasn't enough room for me and my brothers to be there without bugging him.”

Fifty rooms?

He'd grown up in seven, and now he lived in one—one huge open loft in a building in Denver's lower downtown at 738 Steele Street. His place was kind of commando central, with Creed and Cody's jungle across the hall, Skeeter's abandoned spaceship and Superman's art gallery one floor up, and the Steele Street armory and firing range one floor down.

He'd done all right for himself, sure, especially since coming on board with Special Defense Force, but Honey still didn't have any business being in this Land Cruiser with him. Under normal circumstances, their paths would not have come within a hundred miles of each other, let alone crossed.

“I can guarantee you that redneck Arkansas fathers don't hand out too many of their edicts from a distance,” he said, reaching over and taking the small bottle out of her hand.

Honey was a quick girl, and she didn't miss his implication.

“He hurt her?” Her voice was even softer than before.

Smith finished the bourbon, all five drops of it, and thought that someday he should take her out for a real drink, something with a mixer in it, or at least ice—and maybe dinner, something that didn't come out of her purse.

He handed the bottle back. There wasn't much of his life he could talk about, nothing he'd done professionally. Most of his missions were going to the grave with him, shared only with the men and women who'd been there.

But in the dark, in the rain, with a woman he liked far more than he should, he could talk about sweet Melinda Jo.

“My father remarried years ago, but he keeps a picture of my mother on a bookshelf in the family room. I remember she always wore jeans or slacks of some sort, but the day the picture was taken, she was wearing a dress. I was fifteen when my cousin pointed something out to me I'd never noticed. It was strange—I'd looked at the photograph hundreds of times, and yet I'd never seen the scar on her leg. I thought it was a shadow, a trick of the light or something, but my cousin had the story, and in the way of every family's dirty laundry, he'd decided it was time to air it out and put me in the know.”

She was very still, waiting, her mouth set, her gaze unwavering. With such a buildup, she had to know what was coming, and Smith wished like hell he could disappoint her. But the only disappointment in the story was its truth.

“It was a burn scar, almost a brand. My grandpa laid into her with a hot poker one night and deliberately held it on her leg to mark her. She was only thirteen at the time.”

Honey's hand came to the base of her throat, the concern on her face turning to unmistakable shock.

“I'm—I'm so sorry.”

“I'd never really liked the old bastard,” he said. “But after I found out what he'd done, I hated him. That he had scarred her. That he'd hurt my mom.”

He stopped and shifted his attention out the windshield, waiting for a moment.

Okay. Maybe he had a little more emotion in him than he'd thought. He still hated the old bastard, and Walter Hill had been dead for twenty years—and it had probably been six years since he'd given the son of a bitch a thought.

Well, hell. “It was a long time ago.”

He dragged his hand back through his hair, then draped his arm over the steering wheel.

“Her life, and the old shack where they lived, it was way below the poverty line. Nothing but squalor, abuse, too much liquor, and never enough education.”

“Until you.”

“I got the education,” he agreed. “And thanks to my dad, I managed to skip the squalor and abuse, but make no mistake, I'm still a good fifty percent redneck, no apologies and no regrets. Some of the people I've worked for, I think they test for it in the blood.”

“Because it makes you tough.”

A small grin curved his mouth. Yeah, that was it, but he was surprised a blue-blooded socialite knew it.

“Damn near indestructible. It really does take a bullet to kill us, and sometimes even that won't do the trick.”

“Us,” she said, saying the word with a surprising thoughtfulness. “You mean guys like you.”

“Yes.”

“I didn't think there were any other guys like you.”

His grin broadened.

Maybe he was in love.

He hated to think so, really he did. Love had not been his strong suit in life, and the truth was, black patent leather hair bows and gold jewelry aside, he liked Honey too much to want to ruin it with another screwed-up relationship. There were thousands of guys like him in the world. He'd worked with them, bled with them, killed a few—okay, more than a few—and gone up against them, but he honestly didn't think there were too many Park Avenue princesses knocking around the backwaters of the borderlands in any other Third World country, looking for a sister who should have been the responsibility of the Catholic Church.

“There's a couple of other guys out there like me,” he admitted. “But you wouldn't like either one of them.”

“Bull,” she said, letting out a short laugh. “I'd probably adore both of them.” Her mouth curved into an easy smile, and another emotion went through him, hot and sweet.

God, she was gorgeous.

He remembered what it had been like to kiss her.

He remembered what it had been like to be inside her, and how she'd felt, naked in his arms—so freaking soft, and so incredibly hot. The whole night in San Luis was permanently hardwired into his memory banks—and there she was, not three feet away, smelling like Paradise perfume in a lingering cloud of cherry whiskey cigar smoke, with her hair coming undone.

She was so unexpected. Her eyes clear and guileless and such a pure ocean green, her skin so satiny, her hair those hundred subtle shades of blond, everything about her so polished and just so, and then there were the cigarillos and the bourbon, and those hot, soft words she'd spoken in his ear:
Do me, Smith.

Geezus.
Those words and the sound of them had truly been seared into his brain.

What would it take, he wondered, to “do her” again tonight? Complete abandonment of common sense? Total disregard for mission protocol? Or simply giving in to what he wanted—her.

Dammit
. He knew better, but he didn't think knowing better was going to be much of a deterrent. Not when they were trapped in the middle of nowhere, alone in the dark, with nothing but time on their hands.

The last guy she'd been with had been him, four months ago in San Luis? He didn't even want to analyze the huge sense of relief those words had given him. Nobody got exclusive rights off a one-night stand, and if he'd been able to in any way, shape, or form put her out of his mind, none of it would have mattered. But every time he'd seen her picture in the paper, it had mattered. A lot. And driven him a little bit closer to an edge he knew better than to go over for a woman, any woman, but especially a woman he was probably never going to see again the rest of his life.

But life had thrown him a curve, a whole set of them in extra-small BDUs, and they were sitting next to him in the dark, in the middle of a rainstorm.

“So the point of all this is about that name you're thinking.”

“Yes?” She tilted her head to one side, giving him her full attention.

“My mother didn't give me that name. I dreamed it up myself at fifteen, and my dad let me make it legal.”

She stared at him for a second, then asked the inevitable question. “Why?” Which he always considered one step better than “What in the world were you thinking?”