Beneath the Secrets: Part One (10 page)

But could she be saved? It depended on how this mission ended. It depended on what it forced her to do. And she’d do anything, absolutely anything to get what she’d come for. “You don’t know me well enough to know that.”

“I know. I know because I still see hope in your eyes.”

It was all she could do to not press her fist to the ache in her belly his words created. She did have hope. It was small but it was real, and she was desperate to discover it was for good reason.
 
But that hope had everything to do with why she couldn’t walk away.
 

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said, fighting the tightness in her throat. “I’ll let you save me the day you let me save you.”

“I told you, Kara, I can’t be saved. I’ve made my choices. I have my reasons for staying my course. I’m headed to hell and I’ve accepted that.”

And to make this “hope” reality she knew that she was headed the same place. “Then I guess I’ll see you there.”

His eyes narrowed, sharpened. “I find it hard to believe that a woman who’s working in a dangerous environment to take care of a sick mother would welcome a trip to hell.”

“How do you know about my mother?”

“I had someone inside the company files before I ever walked into the building.” And, thanks to the contract he and his brothers had with a large number of airports, he’d been able to charter Kyle to San Fran the minute he’d known his destination. “I know what your HR file, DMV, and any other public record in existence says about you. I know Richter and Mendez believe you’re doing this to pay for your mother’s medical.” He closed the distance between them, towering over her again, the heat of his body radiating into hers. “I believe that’s what you set them up to believe; otherwise you’d jump at my offer to get out.”

“How does being in debt to someone else inside this life get me out, Blake? At the pay Mendez gives me, I only have to work here a year to leave on my own, on my terms.”

“No one leaves Mendez on their terms. Why do you think I contract only for my clients? So they don’t own me, Kara.”
 

“Mendez doesn’t own me.”

“He does. You just don’t know it yet. Or else you know something I don’t know, and I’m leaning in that direction.” A knock sounded on the door and Kara almost jumped. “That would be our pizza,” Blake said. “Not my ‘crew’.” He reached up and gently slid her hair behind her ear, then leaned in close, his lips brushing her earlobe. “I’m not buying your life story and, one way or the other, be it you telling me, or me finding out on my own, I’m going to discover the truth.” He stepped away from her and walked toward the door.
 

Kara stared after him, barely able to breathe, frozen in place. Time stood still and her mind raced. She was in so much trouble with Blake, it would take a shovel and ten men she didn’t have to dig her out.
 

“Kara, can you grab the drinks?” Blake called from the door.
 

Grab the drinks? That snapped her back to reality. She was in a t-shirt and nothing else. Kara scurried to peek around the corner to find the door angled so that Blake’s body blocked her from view.
 

“I’m here,” she said, and he handed her two liters of soda. Kara rushed away from the view of the door as he called out, “Order some ice, will you?”

Ice. Right. Kara set the drinks on the nightstand and headed to the desk. By the time she called downstairs, Blake was placing the pizza boxes on the bed, inspecting the contents of each. It was an odd moment to Kara, as if they were some normal couple sharing a hotel snack. And she was going along with it, as if she didn’t know he was going to discover who she was, and then she’d be dead.
 

***

He’d slept with the enemy and now he was eating pizza with the enemy. On a bed. With her leaned against the headboard, her long, sexy legs stretched out beside his, hers crossed at the ankle. And she was wearing only his shirt. Which he liked her in a little too much.
 

This wasn’t the first time Blake had slept with an enemy, or shared a meal with one for that matter. It wasn’t the first time he couldn’t keep his eyes off the enemy either. Only this time it wasn’t out of concern he might be stabbed in the back if he looked away. It was because Kara, with her long dark hair and creamy white skin, seemed to seduce him simply by being there. There was only one other woman who’d ever compelled him as she did. That he didn’t know if she was the true enemy was a problem he had to fix yesterday.
 

“Cat got your tongue?” he asked, reaching for his third slice.

“You have a lot of pizza to eat. I figured I better let you get to it but…”
 

He finished off a bite and arched a brow at her hesitation. “But?”
 

“I have ideas on who’s stealing from Mendez.” She placed a slice of pizza on a napkin. “I brought the data to show you. I really want to show you but it’s in my briefcase.”

“What ideas?” He filled his glass with soda and offered her more with a lift of the bottle. “And have you told Mendez?”

Kara held out her glass. “This person cheating him is a family member of Mendez’s. I’m not sure how he’ll take it.”

“So you’d rather I deliver the bad news?” he asked, setting the bottle back on the nightstand.
 

“Seems a smart choice to me.”

He inclined his head in agreement. “As smart as packing a weapon which I assume you know how to use?”

“Yes.”

“How’d you learn to shoot?”
 

“My father,” she said without hesitation but her voice soft, barely there.
 

“The fisherman.”
 

She rotated to her knees to face him. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what, Kara?”

“Don’t try to figure me out.”

“Why?”
 

“Because it’s wasted energy when I can give you what you want.”

Her.
He wanted her. His fingers curled on into his fist. No, damn it. He wanted Alvarez and he wanted him dead. “Which is what, Kara? What do you think I want?”
 

“To impress Mendez.”

She wasn’t wrong. Mendez was his ticket to Alvarez. “Go on.”

“It’s his nephew. He runs the shipping operation.”
 

“Did you tell the former head of security?”

 
“He was in on this entire theft ring.”

“You seem certain.”
 

“If you let me have my briefcase, I’ll show you why you should be, too.”

 
Blake considered her a moment and pushed off the mattress, grabbing the pizza boxes and setting them on the desk before returning to the side of the bed. With his hands on his hips, he studied her. “You want your briefcase; tell me how you drugged me.”

She hesitated, her lips thinning, but she agreed. “Fine. Yes. I’ll tell you. It wasn’t hard. The drug I used makes you pass out within ten minutes of contact with the skin.”

Holy hell. Blake didn’t even want to think about how dangerous that could be in the wrong hands. His simple mission to kill Alvarez had just gotten as complicated as reading a map after a bottle of bourbon. “What drug?” he demanded tightly. “I need a name.”

“I don’t know the name.”
 

“I don’t believe you.”

“Right. We have trust issues. You’ve told me.”

His jaw tightened. “Start with how and when you used it on me.”

“It comes in thin white strips. You can rub them on any surface of an object or directly on the skin. Once a person touches it, the drug absorbs into the blood stream. So…you see. I was telling the truth before. I didn’t have to stay with you that night in Denver. I could have placed the drug on the folder and left right after I got to your room.”

Theirs eyes locked and held, the air crackling with electricity. Blake let this fears over this new drug slide away, his need to know where she was going with this suddenly all that mattered. “And yet you didn’t leave.”

“No,” she said softly. “I stayed.”

“Why, Kara? Why did you choose to stay with me?”

Chapter Nine

Why?
 

Blake’s question hung in the air and Kara didn’t know the answer. Why hadn’t she left that Denver hotel room without sleeping with him? She’d contemplated that question over and over in the past week, unable to stop thinking about him. She didn’t have an answer besides that she’d been feeling alone, as if the world was on her shoulders. She was alone. No one was helping her. Whatever she made happen, she made happen. And in his eyes, she’d seen pain and torment so like what she felt, that she had actually believed, if only for one night, they might just save each other. And they had, or he had her. He’d taken her away, made her feel whole again in a way no stranger should be able to. She’d needed it and him.

“Kara,” Blake prodded.
 

Her gaze snapped back to his, from the floor where it had settled. “I stayed with you and I didn’t have to. It’s the only answer I have. I just…I don’t want you thinking I slept with you to get that file. And I didn’t want to drug you. I struggled to go through with it.”

“But you did,” he observed again, but his eyes were softer now, his voice gentler.
 

“I had to. You have to know that.” And she had. Just not for the reasons he thought and damn if her stomach didn’t knot with the half-lie. How could she feel guilty for lying to a man who’d kill her if he knew the truth? Or at least hand her over to someone who would?
 

“Yes,” he said after an eternal silence. “You had to.”

Relief washed over her that she told herself was about gaining his trust, avoiding danger, but it was more than that. When she’d looked in his eyes in Denver, she’d felt a connection she couldn’t seem to shake.
 

“You shouldn’t have been there at all,” Blake continued. “You helped Richter gain leverage over both of us. He’ll wait for the right time and blackmail us both because he knows what we both know. Mendez won’t be happy about you helping Richter or me letting myself get drugged. ”

But she hadn’t been working for Richter at all, and Blake was too smart not to figure that out if she didn’t distract him and fast. “Then we have to stop these theft issues. That has to help us with Mendez.”

“Don’t kid yourself. No matter what good you do for him, if Mendez finds out you undermined him, it won’t matter. We need a plan if he tries. I’ll have my team work on something we can use as leverage on him but if he contacts you, I have to know right away.”
 

“I’ll get your briefcase,” Blake said, heading to the hallway where he’d left his bag.
 

Kara pressed her hand to her knotted stomach, feeling like she was swimming in the quicksand of her lies and she had this wild, ridiculous urge to tell him everything. She barely contained a nearly hysterical laugh at how deadly a mistake that would be.
 

Blake returned and set her case on the bed between them. “Show me what you’ve found.”

Seizing the chance to shift the topic from Richter, she quickly removed her MacBook Air and powered it up. “When I first told Mendez about the discrepancies,” she explained, settling against the headboard, her legs stretched out in front of her, “I hadn’t put two and two together. The data showed random places where the restaurant data and the pier ‘special product’ shipment numbers didn’t match. But since then, I’ve found four more cities with those kinds of discrepancies, and…” She clicked on a collage of photos, showing two men exchanging envelopes and turned the screen for him to see more clearly. Blake moved to sit next to her, their bodies aligned from hip to foot. She swallowed against the dryness in her throat, and continued. “That’s Ignacio, the nephew,” she said, pointing out the man on the left with a scar down his cheek and long black hair. “The one on the right is Alex Gomez. He’s the regional manager for the restaurants here locally.”

Blake stared at the photo and then glared at Kara. “You took these shots?”

“Yes.”

He rotated to stare at her. “Are you flipping nuts, Kara? If you would have been caught—”

“I used a long-range zoom lens. I wasn’t even close to them. The fact that was able to, though, tells you how poorly they’re running the operation.” Kara pulled up another picture, this one of a small boat floating next to a larger one, and men loading it with boxes. “It looks like they skim the product right here on the pier. Once it leaves though, I’m clueless. I don’t know where it’s going or who might be involved. I just know Ignacio is where it starts.”

He cut her a sideways look. “You’re just a secretary, my ass.”

She bristled. “I’m offended by that statement for every secretary that saves her boss’s ass about ten times a day.”

His lips twisted wryly. “When’s the next shipment out?”

“Midnight tonight.” She glanced at the clock. It was already ten. “In two hours.”

“Then I think tonight is the night Ignacio meets the new head of security.”

Kara shut her computer. “I want to go.”