Spy Hard

Which meant there would be a major battle in a couple of days.

“We’ll take care of him.” Jase squared his shoulders in a macho display for Alejandro’s sake. But his mind was on the boy. He needed to get Mochi out of here at the first opportunity.

He tried not to think of the crying woman whose sad eyes haunted him.

Chapter Two

The woman on the balcony came to him in his sleep. Naked. The dark jungle whispered its mysterious song around them. Silver moonlight splashed on her skin, her long hair tumbling to her waist.

Jase’s body turned hard with need, but for some reason he couldn’t reach for her. Then he saw at last what held him back. Thorny vines tied him to a tree. He watched, unable to move, as a black jaguar stole forward from the bushes and crouched, getting ready to lunge at the woman. Blood glistened on the animal’s muzzle. And as Jase looked around, he could see a small foot sticking out from under the bush where the jaguar had come from. Mochi.

He woke to shouting outside the barracks, cold sweat covering his body. Sunlight filtered through the burlap curtains. Lucas rushed in, an extra belt of bullets swung over his shoulder, a scowl on his face.

“What is it?” Jase grabbed his gun first, his shirt second.

“We’re preparing for battle. Cristobal sent a messenger. He demands unconditional surrender.”

A glance out the window revealed a man lying in the dust on his back behind one of the jeeps. A familiar knife protruded from his throat, the very one that Jase had traded for Mochi. Alejandro was always eager to score points.

“And that would be the messenger?”

Lucas flashed a ferocious grin and rushed on out the back door. Jase washed his face then followed after him, heading to the kitchen to see about the kid and get some coffee. Then he would go straight to the main house. The Don would be calling his people today, needing all his alliances to back him in the battle. Now was a better time than ever to plant that bug. They could gain some serious intelligence out of this.

He strode through the long building he bunked in that resembled the Indian longhouses, a half wall of bamboo erected here and there for privacy. In other places colorful horse blankets hung from the ceiling to separate the bunks from each other. In general, the men didn’t much care about their lodgings. Anything was better than sleeping in the open jungle, at the mercy of the elements and the animals.

He pushed through the door into the kitchen, which was little more than a large shack attached to the barracks. But he found the blanket Mochi had slept on empty.

Before he could have gotten worried about the kid, the boy walked in through the back door, chewing on a large chunk of flatbread. The woman from the balcony last night stepped in right behind him, a hand on her round, pregnant belly the railing had hidden the night before.

“Sorry, I’m—” She froze at the sight of Jase. Unease widened her big, thick-lashed Bambi eyes, the color of dark chocolate with gold specs that somehow made them mesmerizing. She pressed her full lips together as she drew back. She’d probably thought all the men were outside and had expected only Consuela in the kitchen.

Once again, she saw him at his worst. His hair hadn’t met up with his comb yet this morning; his face hadn’t seen a razor in a week. He was unkempt and half-naked… And he couldn’t believe he was worrying about his looks, for heaven’s sake.

He shrugged into his wrinkled shirt and ran his fingers through his hair. “Can I help you?”

It behooved anyone to be nice to the boss’s girlfriend.

The boss’s pregnant girlfriend.

She looked five or six months along. So much for those slim hips in his dream. Not that she looked any less sexy just the way she was. Her full lips captured his attention for a few seconds before his gaze dropped to her breasts that stretched the thin material of her strappy dress. His body instantly responded to her.

Suicidal much? the voice of reason asked in his head. For once in his life, he resolved to listen to it.

“Where are this boy’s parents?” Her voice sounded like home.

He would have lied if he said her slight Texas twang didn’t affect him. Her large, dark eyes were ringed with shadows, as if she hadn’t gotten much sleep lately. None of his business. He wasn’t going to get involved in any trouble the boss’s girlfriend might be having. Going anywhere near her, even allowing himself to dream of her, was trouble with a capital T.

For a second he weighed what he should tell her, then decided to go with the truth. She didn’t look like the type who would press someone like Mochi into child slavery. “His whole village was wiped out. His name is Mochi.”

“He needs some clothes.”

Jase looked over the dirty little kid in his even dirtier loincloth. Pants would have been good, at the very least. He thought of his few meager pieces of clothing, none of which would remotely fit the boy. Where was he supposed to find kid’s clothing around here? Department stores didn’t exactly dot the jungle.

“I can send some cloth down from the house. I’ll tell Consuela to make something for him,” the woman suggested.

He had a feeling Don Pedro wouldn’t be pleased if he knew that his woman visited the barracks and chatted with a foot soldier. She was going to get him in trouble. But a decent chunk of cloth would have been nice. “Much appreciated.”

He put a hand on Mochi’s shoulder then stepped back, drawing the boy with him.

“You don’t sound local.”

“Part Mexican, part Zapotec, part Texan.” He didn’t like the way her eyes lit up at the Texan part. She better not think he would be her helping hand with her troubles. He had compromised this op badly enough already by taking responsibility for Mochi.

“I’m Melanie Key. From Austin. Do you go back to the U.S. sometimes?” She seemed to be holding her breath, waiting for the answer.

“Never.” He squashed any budding hope decisively and turned Mochi around to go. “Come on, buddy.”

They needed to have a talk about what areas of the compound were safe and unsafe, how to stay out of the way. This place was different than the jungle. The kid needed a whole new kind of survival training.

He nodded to Melanie and left her where she stood. He didn’t know what her troubles were, but he wasn’t going to get involved in them under any circumstances.

He’d learned his lesson the last time, with a Venezuelan journalist whose long legs had somehow convinced him that he had to save her from the secret police, even if that side adventure jeopardized his mission in the country. Only she’d been a counterspy, sent to turn him.

She’d been good. He’d fallen for her, and he didn’t fall easily. He didn’t do relationships. So sure, he had a hard time resisting damsels in distress. He enjoyed a good rescue, but at the end he always walked away.

But he wasn’t going to have to walk away from Melanie, because this was one crazy side adventure he wasn’t going to walk into, to start with.

He was going to have a very simple motto when it came to her and those troubled, gold-speckled eyes of hers: STAY AWAY.

DON PEDRO WAITED at the top of the stairs with a frown on his hawkish face when Melanie returned to the hacienda from the barracks. “Where have you been?”

Her heart beat in her throat as she looked up at her brother-in-law. Her body tensed. He was shorter than she, but somehow always managed to loom over her. “Stretching my legs. I needed fresh air.”

“That’s why you have the balcony.” His small, mud-colored eyes flashed.

“Not much room here for a walk,” she said good-naturedly, determined to keep things light despite the gathering tension in the air. “The men look busy. Lots of running around out there.”

His thin upper lip curled. “Some idiot might be coming to challenge me. Who the hell does he think he is?” He pointed his index finger at Melanie. “You are not to leave the house. You carry my sole heir.”

They never discussed it, but she sort of figured he couldn’t have children of his own. And Julio, the husband she’d lost to a drunk driver in Rio seven months ago, had been Pedro’s only brother.

She took the steps slowly, hoping he would move off before she reached the top, but he stayed where he stood.

He put a hand on her arm when she reached him, a milder expression replacing the anger on his face. “Come sit with me for a while. We should spend more time together.” He nodded toward his bedroom.

“My back aches from the walk. I should probably lie down.” She pressed her hands to the small of her back and hoped she looked drawn enough to be convincing.

Displeasure flashed in his eyes, impatience tightening the muscles of his jaw. He watched her closely, as if contemplating whether or not to push, but at the end he let her go. “We wouldn’t want to harm the child.”