Authors: Gabby Grant
Was she insane? That problem had nothing at all to do with
Joe. It was between her and Mark, alone. Mark was the one who’d doubted her
veracity, not this man here. This man who’d snatched her from the jaws of
near-certain death and pulled her to safety.
“Joe,” she said, feeling ridiculous, “I didn’t mean to
over-react. I know you-”
“Hey,” he said lightly gripping her upper arms, “no
apologies.”
Why then did Ana feel the sudden need to apologize for every
terrible thing she’d ever done to him, every rotten thing she’d ever said. Of
all the people she’d known,
Joe
was
one of the best: loyal,
fierce, honest to the core. Unlike Ana, he’d never once pretended to be
anything he wasn’t. He’d never once lied about his feelings.
“And, no looking back,” he said, strengthening his hold and
falling into her eyes with a gaze that held her captive. “I mean it.”
But, right now, with Joe being this close, with the heat of
his hands on her skin- palpable still through the thick flannel of his shirt-
not looking back was next to impossible. Ana couldn’t help but think how
different her life might have been. Couldn’t help but wonder how it would have
felt being lost forever in somebody’s arms
who
worshiped her completely.
Ana found it impossible to pull away from the anchors of his
eyes. Impossible not to remember how very much together the two of them once
had been. More impossible still to imagine another woman had not already come
along and claimed a man like Joe for her own.
“Then why?” she asked, forcing the question from her
swelling throat. “Why, Joe?”
He slipped his arms around her lower back and pulled her to
him, as memory, sight and sound fled to Costa Negra- and the purposeful
pounding of Pacific waves.
“Why haven’t you gone on?” Ana asked, as he steadied his
embrace and looked deep in her eyes, his eyes mirroring her question. “Or, have
you...?”
Wind rustled outside, recalling the reckless rhythm of the
sea, the spiraling magic of a tropical moon...
“I could never
go on,
Ana
,”
Joe said, his voice a coarse whisper. “Never forget you, if that’s what you’re
asking.”
Ana felt her world flash hot and her knees grow weak as his
breath drew nearer.
“Ana,” Joe said, sliding one hand into her hair, inclining
his head in toward hers, “you’re not the sort of woman a man easily forgets.”
No, but what sort of woman was she?
Ana wondered,
dizzied by the wine and the white-hot flash of his impending flesh.
An
idiot? A cheat?
Someone to whom sacred vows meant nothing?
“Joe,” she said, her lower lip trembling, “we can’t...”
But then the warmth of his mouth closed in, reminding her
not only that they
could,
but that they had- and would again.
Ana felt herself falling backwards off a cliff- to a
forgotten place and time, as approaching lips magnetized...his bristling
moustache tickled and teased, recalling other unspeakable pleasures.
He kissed her chastely at first, beckoning each bittersweet
memory with the increasing pressure of his lips.
Ana made a half-hearted attempt to pull away but, sensing
her ambiguity, Joe clamped her to him, deepening his kiss with the fervent
forgotten passion of all their yesterdays.
Flames licked the curve of her spine where Joe’s fingers
traced and followed, working their way over her shoulders and back up into her
hair, his heat and his hunger apparent in the rock hard press of his body.
And Ana’s body remembered and responded in kind, molding itself
to his steady frame,
wild,
wet kisses flaring from her
lips. Lips that sizzled and tingled and burned like a pine forest ablaze as his
firm commanding mouth moved in again and again, trailing hot tickling kisses
from her lips, to her neck, to her earlobes...then back again to her mouth,
where her breath baited and begged.
Hands traveled and caressed, each crying out, both
searching. They were lost, lost to each other. Lost to a moment so great that
past and present fused in one scorching hue and there was nothing left but
melting flesh between them...
Until, Ana stepped outside herself and saw, with a terror,
what she was doing.
A gush of winter wind rocketed against the building, sending
the small windows of the cabin rattling in their casings.
“No!” Ana said, breaking free of his ravaging lips and
pressing back on his shoulders.
What
had happened to her? Was she really
in such a state that Mark meant nothing? That everything he had done- that the
two of them had shared and sacrificed for each other- could be swept away in
one reckless embrace?
Joe dropped his arms to her waist, dumbfounded. Or maybe
horrified more aptly described the look on his face, as his color plummeted and
his eyes went hazy brown.
“Oh God, Ana I never meant-”
Ana bit into her lip, feeling her own eyes sting, catching
herself on a truth much too terrible to bear. She’d almost slipped over.
Right
over the edge- with Joe...
“Oh God,” Joe repeated, flushed.
“God, god...”
“You’d better the hell be praying for redemption, McFadden!”
Mark shouted from the doorway. “Because you’re about to meet your maker!”
Joe released Ana just as Mark lunged in his direction.
“You sick bastard!” Mark screeched, flying across the room
and flipping McFadden against the counter.
“Hey!” Joe gasped, deflecting Mark’s fists with upheld
hands.
Ana looked frantically toward the crying baby in the doorway
and saw it was Isabel, cradled to the chest of a tall blonde with short wavy
hair.
“Asshole!” Mark shouted, slamming McFadden’s frame across
the room and ramming it into the sofa after the two tumbled over an end table,
spilling and shattering a ginger jar lamp.
Isabel wailed and Ana raced to her.
“Here,” the woman said, handing over the distraught baby.
“Go to Mama, Isabel.”
Ana pulled Isa to her, as furniture crashed and curses
rumbled in the center of the room.
“My God, if you’ll just listen-” Joe wailed between pummels.
“Listen?” Mark scoffed, grabbing McFadden by the skin at the
scruff of his neck.
Joe grimaced and Carolyn ran toward them.
“I oughta take that sorry tongue of yours and cram it down
your throat!”
“Sir!” Carolyn said, trying to press between them. But with
Mark pinning McFadden to the floor, it was impossible.
Though Joe had taken a bruising, he hadn’t returned one
punch and now was paying the price in what appeared a near loss of
consciousness.
“For God’s sake!”
Ana said, rushing over
and holding the baby up out of the fray.
“Mark!”
But Mark was intent on McFadden. So intent that it scared
the life out of Ana.
“Mark!”
“
Da-da,” Isabel chortled.
Mark blinked hard and swung his head around the room,
looking first to Isabel, then
Ana
, then the woman
who’d come with him.
“Christ,”
he said, dropping Joe onto the carpet
like a hot potato. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”
Mark stood on shaky knees and wiped off his jeans.
Then a bullet cut the air.
Joe sat bolt upright and stared at the blonde, taking her
face in fully for the first time. “Carolyn?”
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said as another bullet pinged
and Ana kicked the door shut with her heel.
“Mr. Smith!” a voice called through a
bull
horn
, “we know you are in there!”
Joe scrambled to his feet and held his finger to his lips,
silencing the others.
Ana cupped her hand over Isabel’s mouth, as the baby
threatened to squeal.
Neal, who was nearest the window, pressed his back to the
wall, then cautiously tilted his head around and peered out. “Chinese,” he
hissed at Joe.
Joe smiled tightly at Carolyn. “Guess I’m in demand.”
“Mr. Smith!” the horn bellowed anew. “Ten seconds. Either
you come out or we come in with machine guns firing!”
Joe looked around the room. “Were you followed?” he asked
Neal.
“Negative,” Mark answered.
Joe looked to Carolyn for verification, but she didn’t
dissent. Carolyn Walker,
Jesu Cristo
, of all the fricking times. And
here he was about to run out on her again.
Joe looked down at his watch and cursed. They’d tracked him,
just like that bastard out back. “We’ve got a guest in the boat house,” Joe
told Neal.
“What guest?” Ana asked, feeling
a slight
tremble take
hold of her knees.
Mark raised his brow.
“He’ll need a paramedic, just as soon as you can call.”
“Ten!” the bullhorn began.
Ana shot Joe a panicked look and steadied the baby against
her.
“Nine!”
There was only one other way out of here but, with Sun-tzu’s
men in hot pursuit, they’d never all make it, especially with a baby.
“Eight!”
Joe dug his fist into his jeans and pulled out a key ring.
“Here,” he said, tossing the keys at Mark, “back of the cabin. Ana,” he said,
“around the back of the lake...”
Ana gripped the baby’s head to her neck for dear life.
“Seven!”
“There’s a path,” Joe continued, just beyond that sprig of
pines.
Leads to my jeep.
As far as they know, I’m here
alone.”
Carolyn, who’d been busily searching the back of the cabin,
came to him. “There’s no back door.”
“Six!”
“Bedroom window,” Joe mouthed, as car doors popped open and
footfalls sounded on the path to the house. “Go!”
“You’re pressing my patience, Mr. Smith. Five!”
Mark herded Ana and Isabel into the bedroom and turned for
Carolyn, who stood, waiting for Joe.
“Four!”
“Go, dammit. Go!”
he told her.
A tear glistened in her eye.
“Three!”
Mark, who’d already helped
Ana
and
the baby out the window, returned and took Carolyn by the elbow. “Major...” he
said.
“Two!”
“
Sorry about Panama,”
Joe mouthed, as Neal pulled her
away.
“One!”
“Alright, already!” Joe shouted, throwing back the cabin
door. “I know how to count.”
***
Albert Kane dismissed the team and sent them home for the
night. As soon as Mark returned, they could tackle this new development. The
body in the Orange County morgue had been identified as one Chinese mafia
operative
Hay
Long. He was purported to work in a dark
capacity for Chinese intelligence, but irrefutable verification was hard to
come by.
Kane was starting to see a pattern, a pattern most
definitely based on his own unique plan.
Now if he could only
decipher who’d gotten hold of it and why.
If the Chinese were in on it,
then that could possibly implicate Kane’s old buddy Au Yang. But Au Yang had
been dead for a couple of years, or at least supposedly out of official
operation. Still, even if he were alive, Albert felt sure Tom’s old pal could
never become embroiled in such a heinous scheme.
The fact that neither Albert nor Mark had received further
specific threats regarding Ana had to mean she was no longer their ace in the
hole. For if the enemy still held that card, Albert was certain they would have
played it by now. And Mark and Albert would have seen more graphic proof of the
terrorists’ displeasure at their noncompliance in resignation than some silly
red-herring coat. No, the perpetrators of Volcano would have seen to it Kane
and Neal knew the direct consequence of their wavering by providing proof-
gruesome and verifiable. After each murderous assault, they’d always sent
photographic evidence: sometimes by fax, others as graphic j-peg files attached
to blank-bodied e-mails. But always, there’d been irrefutable evidence the
terrorists meant to make good on their threats against those who failed to
cooperate.
Maria’d been sequestered in confinement at the DIPAC as a
temporary measure while Mark weighed whether or not to turn her over to the
police. In either case, Mark’s judgement had been to wait until the DOS had the
larger problem more under control, before subjecting Maria’s case to the media
feeding frenzy that would likely ensue the moment her situation went public and
she exercised her civilian rights in obtaining counsel.
Albert wasn’t even convinced Mark would press charges. He
had so much on his plate and an unexplained soft spot for the nanny besides.
Were the situations reversed, Kane wasn’t so sure he’d exhibit so much
leniency, but Mark seemed certain she’d operated out of ignorance and fear, not
malice.
But they still had that very important missing link: the
identity of the person to whom Maria had been feeding information. If only
she’d had a way to tell them or had somehow been able to recall more
information, Mark and Albert would be farther along in solving their problem
now.
***
Maria sat weeping in the DIPAC isolation unit. She’d never
seen Mr. Neal like that. He hadn’t been angry; it had been much worse. The
senor
had been completely devoid of emotion. It had been as if Maria meant
nothing.
That all her dedicated service had been washed away
in one weak moment.
Okay, it was several.
Several weak
moments.
Maria dug her fist into her jumper pocket and fingered her
rosary.
It was not like she’d done it on purpose, she thought,
lightly rubbing the smooth beads. As God was her witness, Maria never would
have done anything intentional to hurt little Isabelita.
It was the man, that evil man who’d threatened to hurt her
Pepe if she refused to cooperate. More sinister, was his offer to provide funds
for Pepe’s medical care if she did. It all seemed so harmless at first. Maria hadn’t
known
why
they’d wanted the information, but it had seemed harmless
enough at the time.