Last Spy Standing

How in hell did she see him?

The first blow almost took off his nose. He dropped the old pistol he’d bought in the village, knowing he wasn’t going to use it, not yet, not until he had some answers. And for that, he needed both hands to restrain her.

He grabbed her wrist and held the machete away from them. She launched herself at him again, and they ended up grappling on the ground in short order, which was a really bad idea, considering all the poisonous bugs and snakes. The sooner he got her under control the better.

“Quit it,” he snapped at her.

She ignored him.

He kicked the embers as they rolled, and the flames livened up, giving them both a little more light. He could see Zak from the corner of his eye, working madly on the restraint on his leg.

“You stay where you are,” he growled at the kid. The last thing he needed was for the idiot to pick up one of the discarded guns and shoot him by accident.

That small diversion—his attention on Zak for a split second—was enough for her to make her move. She flawlessly executed a flip he remembered from special ops training. Interesting. And where would she have learned that?

He responded with a move a martial arts fanatic taught him while he’d spent two years deep undercover in Thailand. That made her eyes go wide and got him control of the machete at last.

He tossed the weapon aside and pinned her to the ground, embarrassed to be breathing so hard. Her firm breasts pressed into his chest. That image of her at the guesthouse, wearing nothing but a towel, popped into his mind. He batted it away. “Where did you get your training?”

“Where did you get yours?” She strained against him, taxing his focus.

“Who do you work for?” Don’t think lean pink thighs.

“Same guy everyone works for around here.” She grunted with frustration as she tried to heave him off, undaunted by the sixty or so pounds he had on her.

He kept her firmly in place, ignoring the interesting ways her body moved under his. At another time, in another place … Focus. “Not me.”

“Let me guess, you’re Cristobal’s.”

Cristobal was a rival drug lord, controlling vast territories north of the river. He had the reputation of being a ruthless bastard who didn’t hesitate to burn whole villages if someone crossed him.

“Guess again.” He transferred both of her wrists to one hand, then reached out with the other and grabbed his gun from the ground, feeling much better with a weapon handy.

She stared at the barrel and turned all soft under him, her large eyes filling with tears. “Juarez is going to kill me if I don’t bring the kid back. You don’t know my situation. You have to help me. Please.”

He went slack like an idiot at the sight of her tears. She immediately shoved her knee where sharp knees had no business going. Her elbow slammed into his chin, and before he could begin to breathe again, she was out from under him and running into the jungle, taking a split second to sweep down and pick up her own weapon.

What was wrong with him? He was the most cynical man he knew. He could usually smell a trap or a scam from a mile away. But something about her kept sneaking under his defenses.

He rolled to his feet and tore after her, limping, determined not to make the same mistake again. They were both playing with their lives like this, dammit. He couldn’t see her in the darkness—the thick canopy above didn’t let through much moonlight. He fired a warning shot in the general direction where he could hear her moving.

Then he could no longer hear her. Could he have shot her by accident? So much the better. Except, part of him didn’t like the idea of Megan Cassidy dead, no matter how much grief she’d caused him. He caught himself. There he went again, thinking stupid thoughts.

He stole forward step by slow step. At last he spotted her figure emerging out of the darkness. She faced him head-on, her legs slightly apart, with her gun in both hands, aimed directly at him. A movie poster combination of dangerous and sexy. She made a fine-looking enemy, he had to give her that.

But he was done letting that affect him. He pointed his own gun right back at her. “Now what?”

“One of us shoots the other and gets what she wants.” Everything about her was cocky, from her stance to her voice.

It turned him on, God help him. But he was a professional. “Juarez will kill Zak if he gets him back,” he said, deciding to reason with her instead of using brute force and threats. He could always fall back on those. Maybe he could appeal to her feminine compassion. “He’s just a kid.”

For a moment she wavered. But only for a moment. “That’s between the two of them.”

All right, so she wasn’t interested in compassion—not that big a surprise. Maybe she was interested in money. “I’ll pay you for him.”

“I’m not after money,” she snapped, as if offended. “Why do you want the two-bit crook? You two business partners? He screwed the big boss over. He’s going to do the same with you.”

He thought for a long moment, trying to figure her out, then decided to take a calculated gamble. “He’s not a two-bit crook, exactly. He’s the son of a U.S. governor.”

That gave her pause. “Which one?”

He told her, and again she wavered.

“The reward would be substantial.” He pushed.

She didn’t even bother to acknowledge that. “So you’re U.S. law enforcement or something.”

He calculated how far they’d come from Zak. Far enough. The kid should be out of hearing distance. “Or something.”

For a second she took her eyes off him to scan the black jungle behind him. Her gun never moved, however. “Where is the rest of your team?”

“Where I come from, we don’t waste a whole team’s time on a quick little job like rescuing a politician’s idiot son.”

She considered him for a long time. “Are you one of Colonel Wilson’s men?”

He went still. Now that was a question he hadn’t expected. Who the hell was she? “How do you know Colonel Wilson?”

The Colonel headed the Special Designation Defense Unit, SDDU, a top secret team of commando soldiers who ran various secret missions around the globe without anyone knowing. So how did she know?

“You’re not CIA. The FBI never sends just one man. If you were a mercenary, you wouldn’t have helped me. There was no money in it,” she added. “So that didn’t leave much.”

Sound logic. But it didn’t explain how she’d come to know about his team. Very few people knew about the SDDU. A handful of top government officials, and the few FBI and CIA agents who’d done joint missions. Had she?

“Who do you work for?”

She pressed her generous lips into a tight line as she glared at him without saying anything.

“Have you infiltrated Juarez’s band of criminals?” He couldn’t help being a little impressed.

“You’re ruining an undercover op a full year in the making,” she snapped at him. “I need Zak.”

He reported to the Colonel, not to anyone else. “You can’t have him.”

“There’ll be a meeting between Juarez and the big boss, Don Pedro, next week. No outsider has ever been to the Don’s secret stronghold before. We know he deals weapons to terrorists from there. I need to know what kind and how much. I need to uncover his connections. These are weapons that could march straight north, across Mexico and then through the U.S. border.”

She was hunting terrorist connections abroad. A CIA spook then. He should have guessed. She’d ruled out the CIA for him first, because that was her outfit and if he was with them, she would have known it.

He was beginning to understand her better now. She was trusted at Juarez’s camp, but not enough for Juarez to include her in his personal retinue. Except, if she did something his other men couldn’t accomplish, like bringing back the kid who’d killed his brother-in-law …