Barefoot With a Stranger (Barefoot Bay Undercover Book 2) (9 page)

Not exactly how he was thinking about making her forget her ex. But, if Gabe was right about her life goals, Mal was all wrong for her. Hell, with his life, he was all wrong for any woman who wanted more than one night of a good time. That’s all he could offer.

Gabe walked to the door of the last bungalow on the cul-de-sac, but stopped a few yards away. “Now let’s talk about what I really want from you down there.”

“Not to guide her through Caibarién and act as the producer of a fake documentary while she snags some DNA?” He’d had a sneaking suspicion it was more than that when Gabe briefed him on the phone a few days ago.

“Well, yes, that, and…” Gabe turned to Mal, a world of hurt in his eyes. “I gotta know what happened to Isadora, Mal.”

He stared at his friend, completely understanding the request. Except… “You know I’m banned from ever entering Gitmo, right? They think I’d have some kind of access to secret files, so denied access is part of my punishment.”

“Punishment?” Gabe snorted. “That part’s a blessing. But, you don’t have anywhere near the prison. She left our…her…kid in Caibarién, so there must be a clue there. Someone must know something. Maybe why…she stayed there after I had to leave.”

Mal eyed Gabe closely. “Are you pissed at her for not telling you?”

He didn’t answer right away, looking off with uncertainty in his eyes. “She couldn’t leave Cuba if she had a baby, because he would have been a Cuban citizen and you know they wouldn’t let him go easily. And she knew as well as I did the consequences of me returning to the island.”

Death. That was the consequence. The pricks who wanted him dead would never touch Gabe on US soil, or anywhere else, but if he tried to enter Cuba? He wouldn’t make it through José Martí airport without a bullet in his back. Even Gabe. Especially Gabe.

“I just have to be sure no one knew that she and I were….” He closed his eyes. “If someone took her out as vengeance against me, that someone’s gonna die.”

He didn’t bother to argue or suggest that the someone dying might be Gabe if he made the mistake of trying to go to Cuba. Why state the obvious? “Investigating her death is not a two-day job, Gabe. You need a spy on the ground, a professional who can infiltrate and dig. You know I can’t do that for very long without getting on the CIA radar. Drummand still has spies in the country and a staff up in DC that does what he wants them to do.”

Gabe looked skyward at the mention of the CIA supervisor they’d both worked for when they were at Guantanamo Bay prison on assignment.

“Whose dick does Roger Drummand suck to keep his job anyway?” Gabe mused. “He can’t still be getting a paycheck based on the power of his father’s reputation.”

“Like hell he couldn’t be. William Drummand’s face is practically etched in marble in the entry of Langley, still the most-revered Cold War spy ever to come through the agency.”

“I met him once,” Gabe said.

“Don’t tell me. He has an ego the size of Russia, lives on his past glories and expects his son to do the same?”

“Actually, he was a cool old dude. Powerful as shit, yeah. And he really cares about the agency.”

Mal snorted. “Then that apple fell far because Roger’s not even fit to tie Dad’s shoes. Every assignment and promotion he ever got was because of his last name. When William Drummand kicks, Roger will be shuffled to an even less important job than whatever he has now.”

“But in the meantime…” Gabe reminded him.

“In the meantime, I have to remember that uncovering an embezzler in his organization was probably Roger Drummand’s greatest career achievement. And if he thinks I got the money they never found and he could lock me up again, it would be another feather in his almost bald cap.”

“You mean to tell me they never located the half mill?” Gabe blew out a whistle as he reached the door.

“I guess someone found it, but not the US government.”

“Think your old pal the motherly secretary has it?”

Mal shook his head. “Don’t know, don’t care. And I won’t let Alana Cevallos take the blame now any more than I would then.”

“My pal, the fucking hero.”

Mal ignored the comment. “Did what I had to do.”

“Taking the fall for Drummand’s secretary and spending four years in prison wouldn’t have been idiotic at all, Mal, if she’d been a hot piece of ass you were boning instead of a middle-aged single mother of three.”

“Three kids eight and under,” Mal said. “All of whom would have been orphans and trapped in a wretched Communist country if Alana had gone to prison. They had everything to lose, and I had nothing.”

“Just a hot-shit undercover career that some people would kill to have.”

He still didn’t care. Those kids would have been lost, or worse, if he hadn’t taken the blame when Roger Drummand discovered that someone had stolen five hundred grand from the government coffers at Gitmo. And when Alana came to him and told him she was going to be blamed for it, he did the only thing he could do for the single mother.

Gabe headed up the stairs to a sunny-yellow bungalow with a small brass sign that said McBain Security, pausing for a second. “Don’t you
want
to know where that money is?”

He hoped it was in four healthy accounts, accruing a future for those kids and their mother. “Don’t know, don’t care.”

“Think she has it?” Gabe asked, clearly still a master at reading people’s thoughts.

“Then she wouldn’t still work at Gitmo,” Mal said, purposely not answering the question. “Or stay in that crappy Cuban town.” At Gabe’s look, Mal added, “I know people, too.”

“The only person you need to know is me,” Gabe said.

Mal laughed. “Still the most arrogant dickhead around.”

“Usually. And I’m also the only arrogant dickhead around who can help you.”

“I thought I was here to help you,” Mal said.

“How do you think I’m going to pay you for this favor?”

“I don’t want to be paid, Gabe.”

Gabe put his hand on the door and nodded to the sign. “You do realize I don’t really work for a resort bodyguard company, right? You
do
know what I do here, right? Private witness protection. People who don’t want to be found, ever, by anyone, come to me. You could be a client. No charge. I can get you everything you need, every single piece of paper and ID, to set you up somewhere else. Not a federal agent in sight watching your every move.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d considered putting Gabe’s talent to work. But it never felt right. Why should he run when he was an innocent man? Still, the possibility intrigued. “Where would I live?”

“I got people all over the world, my friend. Fiji, Hong Kong, Tokelau. You could be the fucking King of Micronesia. Name a country that appeals.”

“The United States of America. You know, the country where I was born and the one I fought for as a Marine, then worked for as a spy on the side of the red, white, and blue. That country.”

“Sorry.” The single word held so much punch, it made Mal swallow hard. “That country thinks you stole half a million dollars from the Guantanamo till. Pick another one.”

“I’m not interested in another one.”

Gabe looked genuinely disgusted. “Instead, you’ll spend your life looking over your shoulder knowing that no matter what you do someone is always watching, waiting for you to slip up.”

“At least I’m not looking over my shoulder at Micronesia.”

“Have you seen those islands? The place is a damn paradise.”

“Would you live there?” Mal challenged.

“Dude. I’m living
here
.” He swept his hand. “Bareass Bay. Where lost spies come to die. You’ll fit right in, my man.”

Mal followed Gabe into a small office, the front area desks peppered with a few muscular guys who probably worked as freelance bodyguards or resort security, two women on computers, and, tucked in the back, Uncle Nino in his bright pink shirt, a phone to his ear.

“My office is back there,” Gabe said. “Don’t pinch my sexy assistant, or he’ll sauté you in hot garlic oil.”

Mal smiled as he nodded to the old man and followed Gabe into an unremarkable space that consisted of little more than a desk and chair, a bookshelf, and a straight-backed and rather uninviting guest chair. The only thing of visual interest in the room was a glass jar stuffed with cash on top of the shelves.

“Speaking of what’s wrong with this picture…” Mal said, a little stunned at the sparse surroundings. “Is that how you pay people?”

Gabe threw a dirty look at the money jar. “I got a woman on staff who charges me every time I swear.”

Mal let out a hoot. “Bet she’s rich.”

Gabe fell into the chair behind his desk, no humor on his face. “I don’t want to be here in this particular hellhole, and yet, here I am. My own private Micronesia.”

Mal frowned. “The private wit-sec program isn’t going well?”

“It’s fine. It’s actually a brilliant idea, and I could stay busy and rich, but…” He huffed out a breath and looked out a small window that faced a building similar to this one, probably housing another service for the resort. “I came here to be close to where I hoped Isadora would be.”

Mal’s gut tightened at the admission. “Cuba.”

Gabe nodded slowly. “And now she’s…”

Dead. Fuck. “I’m really sorry, Gabe,” he said, not for the first time. “I know…I know what she meant to you.”

“You better than anyone,” Gabe said.

“The glory days at Gitmo…” Mal could still smell the back room at Abbey Road where they’d worked together. Mal, armed to the nines, pretending to be a guard but really trying to get the detainees to trust him so he could get inside information. Meanwhile, Gabe used his extraordinary skills to persuade the “borderline terrorists,” as they used to call the ones who weren’t totally hard-core, to help the United States. And Isadora, the talented and beautiful CIA translator who managed to take Gabe’s mostly off-color words and make them work in Pakistani, Arabic, and Kurdish.

“They weren’t exactly glory days,” Gabe said. “But I was really happy. Proving you can be happy in any shithole if you’re with the right person.”

Mal couldn’t help smiling, just remembering how good Gabe and Isa were together. “She brought out a side in you I don’t think many people see. Tender Gabe.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Mal leaned forward. “Love-Note-Leaving Gabe.”

His friend laughed, shaking his head. “Stuck them in our secret cubbyhole in the Country Club like a couple of teenagers.”

“In the benches along the wall.” Mal remembered everything about where they’d done their best work. Dubbed the Country Club, it was more like a lounge, a spacious area where a few particularly talented CIA consultants worked under the relentless watch of Roger Drummand on his pet project of turning detainees into US spies in their own countries. “We used to stash porn in there for when you really needed to make one of those scum-suckers switch sides. Yeah, I remember.”

“That’s not all I stashed,” Gabe said, laughing at a memory. “There’s a beauty of a Beretta Nano in there.”

“What?” Mal choked a laugh. “How the hell did you do that and I didn’t know?”

“I did a lot of things you didn’t know. I was scared something could happen. A riot or uprising. Something that would trap Isadora in that room with a detainee, so I used our note cubby to hide the pistol.”

Mal shook his head. “Ballsy.”

“Those morons couldn’t find a gun if it was stuck up their ass. That pistol is probably still there.” He shifted his gaze to the small window, his smile fading. “And so’s Isadora’s kid, Mal. Somewhere on that fucking rock. And I
know
he’s mine.”

He’d never heard Gabe sound so…beaten.

“I’ll help you,” Mal promised. “I won’t be able to bring him back myself, but we’ll find him. We’ll make sure he’s yours. And then we’ll come up with a way to get him to you.”

Gabe gave a tight smile. “And find out what happened to Isadora.”

“Do you know anything at all about how she died?”

“Nothing,” Gabe admitted. “Not one of my few contacts down there knows a thing. Just that she was last living with this Ramos family on a farm. Surely they’ll know what happened to her. Was it natural causes? An accident? Or…retribution against me.”

“No one knew about you two,” Mal said, wanting to take the look of abject pain off Gabe’s face. “Only me.”

“But after she got pregnant?” Gabe shook his head. “If I hadn’t had to leave Gitmo and take down those pricks in Miami, everything would have been different.”

“You were doing your job,” Mal reminded him. “And you saved a lot of lives and stopped a lot of trouble by identifying Cuban spies.”

“And made a lot of enemies.” He raked his hand through his hair and looked away, misery in every pore on his face. “I need closure. I can’t fucking
breathe
until I have closure.”

“I’ll find out what I can,” Mal assured him. “But what about Chessie?”

“What about her?”

“She’s smart, Gabe. She’ll hear me ask questions. She might have a few of her own.”

Gabe nodded, as if he’d already considered that. “Look, she knows there was a woman, obviously. And she knows I cared about her. She wouldn’t wonder why you’re trying to find out how she died.”