Hard Target: Elite Ops - Book One (2 page)

Yet he’d been so attentive, so different on this trip. So anxious to please her, while keeping his temper completely in check. Last week she’d been considering which attorney to use in a divorce. Now she was just grateful she was standing here overhearing his phone conversation in the next room.

Her thoughts raced and her blood chilled, but her feet were glued to the imported floor. She stared across the opulent suite’s living room to the open balcony doors. The heir to the Mercado Tequila fortune settled for nothing less than the finest, even when planning his family’s demise.

An ocean breeze blew through the room, ruffling her hair like a playful lover. The Gulf of Mexico was just as blue as it had been ten minutes ago when Max kissed her on the sand, yet everything had changed. She was listening to her husband order their son’s kidnapping and her murder.

Why?
Did he want complete control over Zach’s life?

“I’ll meet you after. It’ll probably be midnight or later. I’ll be dealing with the fallout from their disappearances.”

His laugh was low and rich, sounding the same as it had moments ago on the beach, but the words were cruel. “I’ve always been an excellent actor. Playing the grieving widower and desperate father won’t be hard.”

She’d been holding her breath and took a quiet gulp of air against the nausea that threatened. Perspiration was running down her back. Everything over the past twenty-four hours had been a lie, but she still didn’t understand the reason.

“Yes, payment as we discussed. But you may have to keep him in seclusion until you hear from me. There won’t be any margin for error.” She heard impatience in his voice now.

Oh my god.
What was he thinking?

Zach needed care and monitoring by qualified nurses almost round the clock. He had to go back to Dallas for the LVAD pump. She couldn’t even process what would happen if the center called now with a donor.

She had to get Zach and herself out of here until she understood what the hell was going on. She knew she wasn’t dreaming when she accepted the idea of getting on a plane without breaking into a cold sweat. Her fear of flying was completely swallowed up in her new fear of Max.

“I’ve got to go. Anna’ll be here soon.”

That shocked her out of her frozen reverie and she inched from the entryway, closing the door silently behind her.

Racing to the elevator, she threw herself inside and stabbed the lobby button. Zach should still be eating lunch at the beach with his cousins.

He didn’t have the new phone that Max had just given him yesterday. She’d asked him to leave it in the room, concerned it would be ruined in all the sand and surf. At least she had the hospital pager in her beach bag. She didn’t go anywhere without it in case the doctors of Children’s Transplant Center called with word of a matching donor.

Where were their passports?

No!

She stopped walking beside the ladies’ lounge in the lobby and wanted to scream when she realized their travel documents were in the suite’s room safe.

Jesus . . . God. Help.

Tears were streaming down her cheeks as a maid pushing a cleaning cart opened the swinging door. “Are you alright,
señora
?”

“Sí. Gracias.”
Anna nodded, smiling weakly before ducking into the restroom herself. She had to pull it together. Weeping while walking through a five-star hotel would draw more attention than she could afford.

Soothing music played a soft island rhythm. A wall fountain gurgled and overstuffed chairs beckoned—a tranquilizing retreat under any other circumstances. Anna sank into one of the overstuffed chairs and felt her perspiration soak into the upholstery. She took a ragged breath. She had to have a plan.

Her whole life, she had always known her next step. Even when Zach got sick, and she felt as though she’d stepped into an abyss, the doctors had given her a course of action. Use meds, install a pacemaker, the LVAD if necessary, and wait for a heart. God, the only time she’d never had a plan had been when she’d met and married Max at nineteen in a whirlwind romance. She’d thrown caution—and her carefully considered roadmap for an education and career—to the wind to marry him, never dreaming what his enchanting exterior disguised. Her stomach roiled under the strain.

A plan.

The police? Not an option, even if they believed her wild story. With the corruption in the Mexican police force and the Mercado family wealth, she couldn’t trust that they weren’t already on the payroll.

Max wasn’t taking Zach till later tonight, so she had a little time. But she was wearing a bikini with a sarong cover-up, plus she was barefoot with barely twenty dollars in cash. Everything—Zach’s meds, her passport, Zach’s passport, their clothes, plus all her credit cards—was in the suite with Max.

What was she going to do?

With startling clarity she knew, and the knowledge of what it entailed had her dashing for one of the stalls to empty the contents of her stomach. Kneeling on the cold hard tile, despair washed over her in relentless waves along with the nausea. After a few minutes, she rose on shaky knees to stagger to the sinks.

She was going to have to go back upstairs and have sex with her husband, putting on the performance of a lifetime and acting as if she hadn’t just overheard him threatening to take Zach and dispose of her body like so much trash. She’d go to bed with him, pretending to be enjoying that “comfort sex” and when he got up to get showered and dressed, she’d grab her clothes along with Zach’s and run.

Could she do it?

If she wanted to save herself and her son, she’d have to. But she had to have their passports, Zach’s meds, and some cash before they could leave. They had to get out of Mexico this afternoon, before Max suspected she knew anything.

Chapter Two

Dallas, Texas

H
E STARED IN
disbelief at the damning words crawling across the bottom of the muted twenty-four hour news channel.
DEA Agent Leland Hollis testifies for the cartel in drug bust debacle at home of Ellis Colton. Colton sues government for six million dollars.

Jesus
. His picture on the screen was larger than the one of the president stepping onto Air Force One for the weekend. He didn’t even turn up the volume, he’d heard enough earlier in the day. Trust the media to sensationalize the details and interpret them in the most shocking way possible

Shaking his head, Leland turned off the TV and headed for the hotel balcony with a bottle of single malt scotch and a glass. Rain had been falling for so long he assumed the patio chair cushion would be waterlogged when he sat, but a wet butt was a small price to pay. He wouldn’t be wearing this suit again.

He longed to leave the hotel, but the thought of running into someone he knew was more than he could stand since the story had hit the newsstands along with the cable networks. Ellis Colton’s attorney had insisted he stay at a hotel instead of at home, and given the nature of the case, Leland had been fine with that.

Being a DEA agent, there were plenty of Vega cartel members ready to take a shot at him, and several who knew exactly where he lived. One more reason to be grateful he was single. Leland would be going crazy right now if he had a family to protect in the midst of this insanity.

Still, tonight the walls of the Best Western were closing in, particularly after the life-changing decision he’d just made. Mentally, he’d left the agency when he’d made the phone call to the civil attorney weeks ago. But yesterday in the courtroom that determination had become etched in stone when he broke the ‘blue wall of silence.’ Finishing his testimony this afternoon had cinched it.

He plopped in the seat with a minor squish and propped his orthopedic boot cast on the glass-topped table, grateful to be outside. The pain in his ankle was knifing its way up his leg into his back. Three more weeks and he’d be out of the boot.

He contemplated taking a pain pill as the unopened bottle of Laphroaig 18 Year Old beckoned—a toss-up as to which was worse for his career. One was illegal, the other insidious. But in light of those headlines, it didn’t matter anymore. He’d just quit his job, whether he’d wanted to or not.

The irony was that the only one who understood was Ford Johnson. After the fiasco that almost killed him, Johnson visited Leland in the hospital. Supposedly he had stopped by to check on his downed officer, but really the man had needed to talk. Ford had felt as much to blame as Leland for the disastrous bust.

Vicodin was in his dopp kit in the bathroom. His last bottle, although he had means to get more, and he was oh-so-tempted. It was easy with his contacts.

He’d like to tell himself he hadn’t had much of a choice. But he’d always had a choice with the pills. He’d just chosen poorly once and had been paying ever since.

His feet vibrated from the bass thrumming in the room under his. He hadn’t realized the speakers on the hotel televisions were that powerful. Taking a deep breath, he broke the seal on the bottle and poured the inaugural shot for his private pity party as the sliding glass door opened on the first floor patio below him. Dark music filled with despair and angst rocketed skyward, melting the balcony railings.

Wasn’t that perfect?

Guitars shrieked with ear-splitting intensity and he wondered if he was going to have to call the management when he heard a woman’s voice over the heavy metal. “Turn it down, honey. That’s too loud.”

“Mo-om!” Exasperation was clear in the one word as the patio door slammed shut, and a semi-peace ruled again with a slight lessening of the thrumming bass at his feet.

God bless America and mothers who would fuss about headbanger music played at thundering decibels.

The burner cell phone in his pocket jangled, surprising him. He recognized the incoming caller, the only person he would have picked up for. “How the hell did you get this number, Gavin?”

“You’re not that hard to find. This is what I do.” The CEO of Armored Extraction Guards and Investigative Security, or AEGIS, Gavin Bartholomew specialized in private security, risk management, and the recovery of people and assets in foreign countries.

“I know. You do it all. I shouldn’t be surprised you found the number, but I just bought this thing yesterday. The only person who knows I own the phone is the checker at Walmart.”

Gavin snorted. “Well I know now.
The National Enquirer
can’t be far behind.”

“I would laugh if I thought that wasn’t true.”

“Relax, Buddy, I lied. You weren’t that easy to find, but why did I have to hear about this crap on CNN?”

Leland could hear the hurt in his former partner’s voice. “I didn’t want to bother you. You’ve had a lot going on. How’s Kat?” Gavin’s wife was one of Leland’s favorite people. He stared at the glass of liquor but didn’t pick it up.

“Feeling crappy. Nauseated. She’s thrown up everything except her toenails today. She’s finally resting now.”

Stage IV breast cancer metastasized to the liver. Just when you thought your own problems were insurmountable, someone else could remind you how much you’d rather not trade troubles with anyone.

“She saw you on the news before she fell asleep. Asked me to check on you,” added Gavin. And that was so like Kat. To think of others even when she was . . . dying. It physically hurt to think about that.

“They warned us it would be this way, but I never thought . . . God, I fucking hate cancer.” The fear in Gavin’s voice made Leland’s heart ache for both his friends.

They’d treated him like family, and he’d dropped off the face of the earth. Leland hadn’t known what to say then, and he didn’t know what to say now, but his friend refused to dwell on the horror that was coming. “Sooo. How are you? Gotta say, the news cameras did not get your best side.”

Leland forced a levity into his voice that he didn’t feel. “Screw you, Bartholomew. Every side is my good side.”

Gavin’s deep chuckle echoed over the line. “It’s good to know you still have a rich fantasy life. What have you gotten yourself into?”

Leland didn’t miss the unspoken subtext:
How did you end up testifying for the defense?
He had kept Gavin out of the loop on purpose because of everything going on with Kat, but if his friend had tracked him down—especially in the midst of his own personal crisis, he deserved an explanation.

“The cable news folks have covered all the basics, if not the finer points of the situation. A snitch sold a civilian CPA, Ellis Colton, as a Class One Columbian drug smuggler to my supervisor, Hank Preston.”

“How did it go down?” asked Gavin.

Leland quit staring at the glass on the table and finally took a deep sip of the scotch. The salty vanilla taste and peat smoke were like coming home. He savored the feeling. It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself the luxury. Besides, this was hard to talk about.

“The DEA hit the Coltons’ home with a commando SWAT team made up of local police and federal agents. They killed a sleeping toddler, critically wounded a second and severed Jan Colton’s spine, putting her in a wheelchair for life. Except they had it all wrong.”

Leland remembered the look of devastation on Ellis Colton’s face. He took another sip and started to knock back the rest of the scotch but couldn’t. Love made people so freaking vulnerable. He never wanted to be that unprotected. It took him a moment before he could keep talking.

“The criminal informant was lying about everything, and Hank Preston refused to accept that he was being played. Not one illegal substance was found in the CPA’s house. Preston’s snitch was Juan Santos. Remember that bastard?”

Gavin made unhappy sounds on the other end of the phone.

“Santos was paid over thirty grand for a fabrication and has since disappeared. It’d be comical if it wasn’t so damn tragic.” Leland could still hear the Colton babies screaming if he let himself focus on that night. He didn’t even have to close his eyes anymore before prickles of sweat would break out on his upper lip.

“What happened during the raid?” asked Gavin.