Deliciously Dangerous (13 page)

“Here we go,” Drew said softly.

As soon as the engine was ready, Callie eased the plane out of the hangar and wasted no time pointing its nose toward the runway, her mind on takeoff.

Just then alarms sounded, and men came running. She saw Kyoto, Frost and Michaels put their hands up.

“They’re great at playacting, aren’t they?” Drew said as they gunned the engine and took off into the sky.

She could only hope that Jammer was close behind her. It wasn’t long before his voice came over the radio and she knew they were free and clear.

“This was all a ruse to fool Jammer?” asked Callie, making sure their radios were off so Jammer couldn’t hear the conversation.

“Yeah, the base commander took care of the details and our guys were released as soon as the planes were safely in the air.”

“Wow, that took some pull.”

“Gillian has it, my friend. She went straight to the president.”

“All I care about is that these weapons will soon be in Colombia and this deal with Fuentes will happen. We can move in on the Ghost once the DEA gets the leaders of the Libertad.”

“Yeah, Gillian wants me to rendezvous with the head DEA agent in Colombia once we get there. Will you be all right alone with this guy, Callie?”

“I can handle the Ghost,” Callie said, trying to keep her tone neutral.

“Yeah. Isn’t that a kick in the pants? He was right under our noses the whole time.”

“You have to admire that, though. He hid in plain sight.”

“Didn’t say I didn’t admire it, but how are
you
doing with keeping your feelings for him compartmentalized?”

So much for neutral. She sighed. “As best I can. I won’t lie to you, Drew. He’s a lot different from the man I thought he was.”

“That’s the trouble with working undercover. Nothing’s black and white. I’ve liked quite a few guys I’ve had to take down. Didn’t make it easier, but I didn’t hesitate,” Drew said.

“I won’t, either. I promise.”

“I know you won’t. You’re Allie’s sister.”

T
HE FLIGHT TO
C
ARTAGENA
took approximately six hours. As soon as they reached Colombian airspace, they were directed to a place to land. Once the planes
were on the ground, Drew and Callie disembarked to greet a large number of men who were there to unload the weapons for delivery to Fuentes.

Drew took his leave and made his way toward the city. Callie and Jammer got into the waiting black SUV and were soon at Fuentes’s compound.

The house was beautiful, with white stucco walls and numerous plants and trees giving it a lush, tropical look. They were ushered up the stairs and into the residence.

Fuentes was there to meet them at the door. He shook hands with Jammer, then ogled Callie.

First his eyes narrowed and he took his time with her face, his eyes touching on her hair, then traveling down her body. They lingered on her breasts before he finished his slow exploration.

Callie did not like the look in his eyes and wanted to do the man bodily harm.

Jammer didn’t move, in fact he didn’t seem to pay her any attention. It surprised her, because he’d been so protective of her until now. Then it dawned on her. He didn’t want Fuentes to know that he cared.

“A very beautiful woman. Perhaps we can do some deals of our own,” he said suggestively.

Jammer walked into the house while Fuentes crowded her. She forced a smile. “As long as your money is green,
señor,
I think that will be quite possible.”

Very deftly she sidestepped him and his outstretched hand, and he returned to business, addressing both of them as he followed Jammer inside.

“First, I must insist that all weapons be turned over
to my guards. Your room has been readied. Please enjoy some refreshments. Since you are a day early, we will have some time to get acquainted,” Fuentes said, his eyes on Callie. “I took the liberty of providing some garments for you both, as I understood you had to travel light. Please make yourselves at home. I must leave you now to take care of some pressing business. Jammer, please accompany me.”

As they left the room, a woman approached her. When Callie looked up, she met the eyes of Leila Mendez, a Watchdog operative. She was dressed as a maid and offered Callie food from a tray.

“What can I get you to drink?” she asked in accented English.

Callie shook her head and acknowledged Leila with a nod.

Leila suddenly dropped the tray, and while the guards in the room were distracted, slipped Callie a note. In Spanish, she apologized profusely, and after cleaning up the mess, she left.

“I think I’ll retire now,” Callie told the guards. “Please lead the way to my accommodations.”

One guard escorted her down a hall and opened one of the doors. Callie went inside the room and closed it behind her. She sat down on the bed and opened the note.

“Meet me on the balcony.”

As she watched, the ink disappeared from the paper. Callie discarded it in a wastebasket.

She went to the French doors and opened them, step
ping out. Leila rapelled down from an upstairs balcony, landing silently.

“Gillian sends her congratulations for a job well done. That plane heist went off without a hitch.” Callie nodded.

“The buy goes down tomorrow. The DEA and government forces are amassing a few miles from town. These are the coordinates in case you need to get out of here in a hurry, and here is a gun. I’m sure the guards took yours. Once the buy is done, the undercover agent will reveal himself and that will spring the trap. So keep your head down and your eyes on the Ghost. If I know that guy, he will have a contingency plan.”

“Agreed,” Callie said, realizing that this would be her last night with Jammer.

“T
HAT IS A SPECIAL WOMAN
,” Fuentes said as the door closed behind them. He moved behind a large desk. He opened an intricately scrolled box and took out a cigar, neatly clipped the end and lit it. Taking a puff, he grinned.

Jammer wished he could wipe the smirk off Fuentes’s face with his fist. It took all his willpower not to react. “She’s quite a spitfire and keeps me on my toes. But we don’t need to talk about her. We have more pressing matters to discuss.”

“Indeed, we do. The Ghost will be here when?”

“Tomorrow, exactly as I promised. Is everything set?”

“Yes, yes. Everything is ready at my end. It is fortuitous that you were able to secure my shipment. The
consequences of your failure would have been severe. I’m afraid that your boss, the Ghost, would have lost his right-hand man.”

“Then it’s a good thing that I’m resourceful.”

“Yes, it is. I have heard quite a bit about your friend Gina Callahan. She has quite a reputation. Is all of it true?”

“All that and more.”

“That is good. It is satisfying to spar with a woman with spunk, makes the taming of her all the better. Don’t you agree?”

Jammer clenched his fist behind his back, tamping down his need to protect Callie. Fuentes would learn soon enough what it meant to fuck with the United States in general and the DEA in particular.

He used the memory of his dead colleagues to keep himself in check. This wasn’t about him or Callie. It was about them, and he would see that justice was served. He would put Fuentes behind bars and make sure it was his testimony that kept him there.

Fuentes indicated that Jammer should sit down. From a crystal decanter, he poured out a snifter of brandy for each of them.

Jammer forced himself to move, shoving the tension out of his body. He reached for the glass and settled into the chair.

“I haven’t made any progress in finding that bitch of a DEA agent and her bodyguard. She had the gall to spy on my compound and the nerve to escape me before I was finished with her. Damn DEA, they will never learn. I kill their agents as fast as they send them.”

“So she’s the one that got away, eh?”

“Yes, she made a mockery of me and that I cannot tolerate. After this deal is complete, I want you to find them for me. When you do, I want them eliminated and I want them to suffer. You will do this for me?”

“Eduardo, the Ghost keeps me busy with other jobs.”

“But murder is something you’ve done in the past. You surely do as the Ghost tells you.”

“I am at his service.”

“I will speak with him tomorrow. If he orders you to, then will you kill them?”

“I will complete whatever task the Ghost puts in front of me, Eduardo.”

The man nodded and slammed away from his desk. “I can’t believe that little bitch got away from me twice. In the meantime, I’ve had to keep my guard up. A smashed phone was found near where she was held captive. I fear that there may be a traitor in my compound.”

“We’ll have to ferret him out,” Jammer said with a slight smile, thinking that the phone he’d left had effectively made Eduardo paranoid. Taken the focus off Rio and Max.

“Yes, and when we do, I’ll cut his heart out.”

“Sounds like a fitting end for a traitor.”

“It is.”

“I will say
buenos noches,
Eduardo.”

Jammer rose and set the snifter of brandy on the edge of the desk, then walked to the door. He reached for the handle just as Eduardo said, “I will have your woman.”

J
AMMER WENT RED-HOT
inside. He almost lost control and leaped across the desk to pummel Fuentes. But he tamped the urge down. Eduardo wouldn’t ever touch Callie.

“You are welcome to her,” Jammer said, “once this buy is over and I am done with her.”

Eduardo chuckled. “I now have even more to look forward to.”

Jammer made sure that he shut the door in an easy and controlled way. He stalked down the hall and met up with a guard, who took him to his room.

He went inside, but Callie wasn’t there. Then he saw the open French doors and thought he caught voices. He made his way to the balcony, where he found her.

Callie turned. “Oh, hi. I didn’t hear you come in.”

Jammer looked around. “Were you talking to someone out here?”

“No. How did it go?”

“Eduardo wants to make you his love slave.”

“Like hell he does. He even tries and I’ll make him a soprano. Then I’ll really get mean.”

Jammer chuckled, releasing the last of the tension in his body. He pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her to hold her tight. She slipped her arms around his neck. “Everything will work out just fine,” Jammer said into her sweet-smelling hair.

Deep down he knew that it wouldn’t be fine. He would nab Fuentes and Callie would go back to Watchdog with the satisfaction that she had helped put away a dangerous and ruthless drug lord. But the fact that they couldn’t be together weighed heavily on him. He knew it had to be done, but every time he tried to put distance between them, they became closer than ever.

“Your indifference out there when Fuentes was ogling me…That was an act, right?”

He hugged her tighter. “Of course. I don’t want him to sense how much you mean to me.”

“I knew that, but I just needed to hear you say it.”

He let her go and met her eyes. “I’m the one who said you shouldn’t be here. You remember that? I wanted you as far away from Fuentes as you could get, but circumstances dictated that I bring you along.”

“Yes, I remember, and now I see why, but I had to be here. I had to see it through.”

“I know why you had to come.” He knew her dedication to her job and the need to carry out her goal of arresting the Ghost and bringing him to justice were all that mattered. He also knew that she was torn by the discovery. He liked to think it was because she cared for him on a deeper level. But he wasn’t going to be a
fool. She’d never shown any indication that she cared for him.

“We’d better get some sleep. We’ll need to be fresh for tomorrow when the buy goes down.”

“All right,” she said, her eyes dark with her own secrets and her own agenda.

He went inside, but Callie didn’t immediately follow. He turned to find her watching him. Her eyes went over every inch of him, from his hair down to his feet.

“Jammer, this is our last night together, isn’t it?

Tomorrow will change everything.”

“Don’t…don’t talk about it.”

“It will change, and we can’t get away from it no matter how much we want to.” She said it quietly and, if he wasn’t mistaken, with real regret.

“No, I guess we can’t.”

She reached over and picked an exotic flower off a vine growing close to the house. She came into the room but left the French doors open. Dimming the lights, she walked up to Jammer and slipped her hands under his shirt. Her palms were cool, and the petals of the flower whispered over his skin like butterfly wings. He shuddered as she lifted off his shirt.

She slid her hands up over his pectoral muscles and back down to his waistband, unbuckling, unbuttoning and unzipping.

With her palm in the middle of his chest, she pushed him onto the chaise longue.

“You look like a Greek god lying there.”

“I’m just a flesh-and-blood man and I need you.”

“I need you, too. I need you so much.”

She leaned across him, still fully clothed. As she began to kiss his chest, he started to undress her. When she opened her mouth over his flat nipple, he moaned and jerked her toward him. She gasped and he rid her of the rest of her clothes.

She kissed him then and her mouth was warm and soft against his. He poured himself into the kiss, knowing that their time grew short. His hands found her breasts and he cupped them, rubbing his palms over her engorged nipples, jerking her up until he could suck first one, then the other into his mouth. She cried out softly, lowered herself farther and farther down his body until she took him into her mouth.

His hips bucked and he moaned at the hot contact, at the tingling, sleek strokes of her tongue as she pulled at him.

It was difficult not to be restless, not to move his body, shift his limbs, in an effort to ease the ache that her expert mouth created in his every muscle and pore. He twisted on the chaise, his hips thrusting uncontrollably. Breaking her contact, he yanked her up against him and pushed into her so hard she cried out and climaxed. He grunted as she took him, held him, moved over him, matching him stroke for stroke as she continued to pulsate and shudder around him. He had no recourse, no way to stop the climax rushing to overtake him, and didn’t even try. She grasped his biceps, arching back as he came with a long, jerking groan. It was as if he couldn’t get deep enough, couldn’t pour enough of himself into her. It was beyond seeking physical pleasure. It was as if his soul recognized her and only her.

They clasped each other when it was over, and his voice was hoarse when he said, “How am I going to let you go?”

She pressed her face against his neck and said softly, “Don’t let me go right now. Don’t let go.”

He held on tightly to her, shifting them to the bed, where they curled into each other.

He didn’t want to sleep. He wanted to hold her for as long as he could. But when sleep came, his arms didn’t loosen around her.

T
HE COOL BREEZE
on her skin woke her as she shifted on the mattress to glance at the clock. Still early. She snuggled up to Jammer, then felt her stomach lurch. Today would be the day she arrested him for crimes against the U.S. It was going to hurt very badly.

She rolled away from him and got up to take a shower. Under the spray, she hardened herself; she could have no mercy. She would have to treat him like any other criminal. Detaching herself wasn’t going to be easy, but she had to do it. Powerful emotions twisted in her chest but she shoved them down. The time had come for her to fulfill her mission.

When she came out of the bathroom, Jammer smiled at her and went in. When he was done, they went for breakfast.

Fuentes was in the dining room and it wasn’t long before they were served eggs, bacon and fruit. Someone brought Callie coffee and juice. She ate, keeping her eyes on her plate and away from what she was sure were lecherous looks from the drug lord.

Jammer conversed with him in a monotone voice. When breakfast was done, Fuentes pushed back from the table. The sound of trucks filtered through the open windows. Fuentes checked his watch and smiled. “Ah, our guests are arriving. It’s time to seal the deal with the Libertad.”

“Gina, I was wondering if I could talk to you for a moment up in the room?” Jammer said.

Callie looked at him, then at Fuentes. The smug smile that crawled across the man’s face made her skin crawl. “Sure,” she said with a smile of her own, as if she wasn’t aware that Fuentes intended to make her his. Not damned likely.

She followed Jammer back to the bedroom. He closed the door behind her, took her hand and brought her over to a chair in the corner. It had heavy metal sides and weighed a ton, but was very comfortable.

“Have a seat,” he said. When she did, she was too slow to stop the slide and click of the handcuffs that encircled her wrist. When she pulled, she found herself shackled to the chair.

“What the…” she said, looking down at the cuffs, then up at Jammer.

He backed away and grabbed the bag he’d brought with him to Colombia.

“I’m sorry, Callie.”

She jerked her head upright at the sound of her name—her real name—on his lips. Fear twisted through her, that she might finally be at the mercy of Jammer. This time he knew she had every intention of betraying him.

“You know who I am?”

“I always have. From the very beginning, I knew everything.”

“How is that possible?”

He turned around and slipped a gun into his waistband at the small of his back.

“You have someone on the inside,” she said.

“You could say that.”

Suddenly she realized who he was—the undercover DEA agent! “All this time I’ve been chasing you and you’ve been on our side all along. Three years of my life have just been rendered meaningless.”

“No, they haven’t, Callie. You and the other agencies protected my every step.”

“How do you figure that?”

“You built my cover by making me notorious. It brought me to the attention of Fuentes—my ultimate goal. So nothing you did was meaningless. Every action was a stepping-stone to justice.”

She couldn’t argue with his logic, and it did give her satisfaction that she had helped to keep this man safe. “Gillian’s going to be so pissed.”

“I’m sure a lot of government agencies will.” He came back over to the chair. “It has to be this way. I can’t be distracted. Do you understand?”

“No. I’m a black ops government agent. I can help you. Now uncuff me!” Relief gave way to anger that Jammer would leave her here in the room while he went out into serious danger.

He shook his head and headed for the door. Callie called to him in the only name she knew. “Jammer!”

He spun around and came back to the chair. He knelt in front of her, his face twisted with emotion. “For once, just this once, I want you to call me by my real name.”

Her heart pounded in her chest. “What is your real name?”

She watched him blink quickly, as if he was afraid to take his eyes off her for even a fraction of a second. “It’s Shane, Callie. Shane McMasters.”

“Shane McMasters is dead,” she said bluntly, as if he was playing her. But then she saw the truth in his eyes. He drifted away from her in body and mind, losing himself in a past that haunted his eyes, even now.

“I was. I was a ghost until you opened that hotel room door in Paris. Then I started to live again. I became whole again.”

All the emotion she’d contained in her burst free. “Let me go. Don’t go out there by yourself. Shane, please don’t do this.”

“I have to! For my fellow agents who were ambushed by that butcher. He left us for dead. Now he’s going to answer for those murders and all his other crimes.”

Callie just stared at him, at the wild gleam of pain in his eyes, the muscles and tendons that stood out in his neck, the heavy rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

He took a badge out of the bag and rubbed the DEA letters with his thumb. When he looked up at her, tears glistened in his eyes. They slipped down his cheeks. She reached out and cupped his jaw. He pressed his forehead to hers. The tears she’d been holding back
for so long spilled over and down her own cheeks, mingling with his.

His hand closed around her wrist, as if she was his only anchor. “I love you, Callie.”

A sob caught in her throat, his admission slamming into her with actual force. “Oh God, Shane. I love you, too. So don’t do this to me. Don’t make me wait here not knowing, not being able to help the man I love. I’ll never forgive you for this.”

Through her tears she watched him struggle with her words.

“I know, but you’ll be alive,” he said.

He pulled out of her embrace, even as she tried to hold on, to get through to him.

“I’ve got to go.”

“You’ll come back to get me. Say that you will.”

“I won’t. Someone will come to release you. I promise that. But we can’t be together.”

“Why not?”

“During the trial I’ll be in protective custody. After that, I have to disappear. Fuentes won’t rest until he finds me, kills me and everyone I love.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“And give up your family? Everyone and everything you know?” Anguish laced his voice. “No. I can’t ask that of you. I had to do it and it rips my heart out to know that my sister, Rio, thinks I’ve been dead for three years.”

“No,” Callie said softly, but the thought of leaving her family—Allie and Max and her parents—was unbear
able. But never to see Jam…Shane again was crushing her heart.

“I love you so much, Callie.”

“Shane, no, please don’t leave. Please uncuff me.”

But he turned, set what looked like the cuff key on the nightstand and walked out of the room. Callie sat there in silence as his footsteps retreated down the hall. Her heart was breaking into little pieces. If anything happened to him, how could she go on? Now that he had revealed his true identity, now that they could really be together, the promise of spending a lifetime with him was something she wanted more than anything.

She pulled at the cuff frantically. Got up and tried to drag the chair, but it wouldn’t budge. Then she heard the doorknob turning and she stiffened. If that was him coming back, she was going to kick his ass.

But Leila slipped inside and rushed over to her. “I wondered what happened to you. Did he leave you here for that bastard Fuentes?”

“No, he’s undercover DEA.”

“What?
He’s
the undercover DEA agent we’ve heard so much about? Those bastards. Trying to get all the glory for themselves. Well, we’re not standing for that.”

“He left the key on the nightstand,” Callie said urgently.

Leila rushed over to the stand and grabbed the key, unlocking the cuffs.

As soon as Callie was free, she went for the gun she’d concealed in her bag. Cocking it and chambering a bullet, she said, “Let’s go.”

They rushed out the door and down the hall. “This way,” Leila said.

Callie followed her through the dining room and into the kitchen. They slipped out the back door and saw Fuentes and several men in green uniforms near an open box of the surface-to-air missiles that Callie had flown to Colombia.

They were laughing and talking like old friends. Shane was walking toward them. Several men with automatic weapons milled about, looking bored.