Seduction Under Fire (18 page)

“I know,” she whispered softly, stroking his dampened hair away from his temple.

He took her mouth in a kiss laced with only the slightest suggestion of tenderness. Then he began to move, determined to coax Camille’s body toward ecstasy for the third time that night.

* * *

The longer Camille lay in Aaron’s arms, listening to his even breathing, the worse she felt. She should have known better than to give her body to a man she cared about, not when it was just another roll in the hay for him. What a mess she’d created.

It turned out her greatest naïveté wasn’t that of sexual inexperience, but of the way she’d believed she could separate her physical needs from her emotional ones. On the verge of a panic attack, she slid out of the room and found her clothes on the dark cabin floor.

The kitchen light turned on.

“Come back to bed,” Aaron said quietly.

Camille glanced up and then away. She couldn’t look at his perfect, nude body—such a painful reminder of how far out of her league he was. “Look, you don’t need to pretend, not with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not stupid. I knew I’d be another notch on your bedpost and I thought that would be okay. I didn’t expect to feel so cheap afterward.” She swallowed a lump in her throat.

Aaron tugged on her wrist, dragging her against him. “I won’t let you belittle what happened here tonight. Look at me, Camille.”

She could not. Never in her life had she felt so weak. And over what—a man?

He waited silently until she decided to get the inevitable battle over with and met his eyes.

“You don’t think you mean anything to me, is that it?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

He huffed. “Every single time I’ve had to make a choice, I’ve chosen you. Think about that. I’ve been with you every step you’ve taken and I’ve given you everything I have to give—my trust, my support, whatever is left of my life.”

“That’s your pride talking, Aaron. You can’t stand that I’m not falling all over myself with gratitude for the privilege of being bedded by you.” A noise akin to thunder rolled through him. Camille felt the vibrations through her fists. Her resolve wavered, but it was too late to turn back. She’d dug her own grave and it was time to get in it. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m relieved to be rid of my virginity, but that’s all tonight was about. Nothing more.”

Aaron’s eyes were hard as stone. “Let me get this straight. You were using me?”

“Right.” Oh, the lies she told.

“You don’t need anyone, is that it?”

“I don’t need anyone, especially you.”

He pressed his forehead against her temple, his lips close to her ear. “Liar.”

The word rippled through her like a puff of acrid smoke. She pushed against him. “Let me go.” She had to get out of the situation before she broke down and begged him to forgive her.

His grip on her intensified before he abruptly released her. She stumbled back.

Aaron’s features had taken on a sheen of anger, his eyes narrow, his muscles rigid. “I’m not going to beg you to be with me.” His voice was tight with control. “But this conversation is far from over. Consider yourself warned.”

He walked into the stateroom and shut the door.

Camille let out the breath she’d been holding and closed her eyes. Like everything else in her life, her thirtieth birthday had gone horribly wrong. Sure, she was no longer a virgin, but the price to her heart had been too steep.

* * *

According to the
Los Angeles Times,
Camille and Aaron were dead.

Three days after Camille’s birthday, Aaron read the headline at a marina newsstand after picking up a package from Dreyer at a shipping store. Doing his best to play it cool, he piled a stack of local and international newspapers into his arms and handed a large bill to the cashier before hurrying back on board.

They’d laid low in the waters north of La Paz without daring to venture near the city until they’d formulated a new plan. It had taken them a day of brainstorming, but they had one now and it was worth breaking their own rule of trusting no one to contact Dreyer. Aaron didn’t actually think Dreyer was the one who’d ratted their location out to the cartel, but since they’d cut off communications with the outside world, the ambushes had stopped. There was no arguing with results like that. Still, their plan required technological equipment neither of them were savvy enough to create from scratch.

Dreyer supported their idea, which was why a small cardboard box now sat on the kitchen counter. But before dealing with that, Aaron was itching to read what the newspapers had to say about him.

At the dining table, he pored over the papers. On the front page of the
L.A. Times,
a color photo of Rosalia’s mother clutching a picture of her daughter at a candlelight vigil accompanied an article on the stalled negotiations between the Mexican and American governments on the girl’s recovery. Aaron’s heart clenched at the sobering reminder of what he and Camille were fighting for.

He turned the page and blinked back, caught off guard by a black-and-white still picture from a grainy video of a crowd of masked, armed men watching two bodies burn on a pyre. “Hey, Camille, according to the
Times,
the Cortez Cartel released a video of our deaths.”

“Is that so?” She angled for a better view. “Looks like the paper’s convinced the bodies are us. That’s pretty shoddy journalism.”

“The journalist tacks on a disclaimer that no indisputable proof of the bodies’ identities has emerged, but—the journalist asks—why would the cartel lie about the murder of two Americans instead of continuing to use their captives as leverage?”

“I’m guessing it’s because they don’t want to show weakness by admitting their prisoners escaped.”

Aaron skimmed a Mexican paper. “Get this—according to this paper, the only logical explanation for escalating violence in La Paz is that a rival cartel has moved in. Only no cartel—including the powerful La Mérida Cartel—had claimed responsibility for the violence. So the papers are making the leap of logic that an unknown cartel had entered the fray. The Ghost Cartel.”

Camille broke out in laughter so genuine that Aaron stopped reading to watch the way her face lit up. God, she was beautiful. “I can’t believe we’ve earned a nickname. That’s terrible.”

Aaron forced his gaze back to the paper before she had a chance to notice him gawking. “Listen to this. Mexican authorities’ latest grisly discovery of three bodies in a Dumpster behind what appeared to be an abandoned hideout disguised as a bar brings the body count of dead Cortez operatives to nine in fourteen days. The city of La Paz is on the verge of a lockdown, with the mayor threatening curfews and stoppages of airline flights should the bloodshed continue.”

“You need to call Dreyer, make sure our families know we’re alive and well.”

“When we spoke yesterday, he assured me our families have been warned that ICE is going to keep our escape on the down low. Hopefully they don’t believe everything they read.”

With an incredulous shake of his head, Aaron set the newspapers aside. Reading about his own death was bizarre, but not the only extraordinary thing to happen to Aaron while in Mexico. He didn’t believe in fate and he definitely didn’t believe in luck, but he’d always believed in his ability to create success by keeping his eyes open for unexpected opportunities. It was a fine theory and had led to many wonderful experiences in his life...right up until he realized that for two full years, he’d been blind to the fact that the woman he’d convinced himself to hate was actually his soul mate.

The tricky part was waiting for her to admit they belonged together. He could tell that on some level she’d figured it out...and was scared witless about it.

He wasn’t sure how to alleviate her fears, wasn’t even sure what she was afraid of and couldn’t decide how to start a conversation about it. Would professing his love help the situation or scare her more? Until he figured it out, he’d decided to give her a lot of space, which was pretty much torture given how small the yacht was. He didn’t touch her, tried not to watch her and didn’t hassle her about her choice to spend nights on the sofa, though he suffered from absolute sleeplessness and knew she did the same.

Feigning indifference to her bordered on intolerable, so instead Aaron gave all his energy over to rescuing Rosalia Perez and digging up enough intel on the Cortez Cartel to shut down the cartel’s weapons-smuggling operation and put Rodrigo Perez behind bars for life.

With that goal in mind, he opened the package from Dreyer and poured a state-of-the-art tracking device and GPS locator onto the table. “Looks good. Now we have to figure out how to get close enough to the cartel delivery truck to put this on.”

Camille lifted the device, studying it. “The next ferry departure will be Tuesday. If the delivery truck’s on it, it’ll be locked up for the eighteen-hour trip. That’s our window. That’s when we plant the device.”

“I like the way you think.”

“Only problem is getting on board the ferry without ID.”

“Very few people are above accepting a bribe if it’s big enough. Hopefully that includes the ferry staff. I’m willing to risk it if you are.”

“I am, absolutely.”

“We can hire a private charter to Mazatlán. I’ve seen plenty of them around. Then we only need to bribe our way onto the ferry for the return trip.”

Camille powered up the GPS locator. “I used a device like this on the job once upon a time. Unlike this model, that one had a self-destruct feature. Jacob and I used the explosion as a diversion while we breached a security fence. I might not have been able to build a tracking device, but I could definitely manage a bomb. What do you think?”

“Have you ever built a bomb?” Aaron asked.

“No, but I took a seminar on bomb defusing during Special Forces training, so I have a basic knowledge. I say we buy a cheap laptop and tap into an unsecured Wi-Fi signal, let the internet teach us the rest. I can handle—”

He glanced up to see Camille’s gaze fixed on the window. He followed her line of sight to their reflection and straightened. The air surrounding them crackled with the tension of too many things left unsaid.

The last time they stood before this table, he’d brought her to orgasm with his finger. He’d watched her glorious, supple body writhe and shudder with pleasure in his arms. She’d whispered his name when she came. Every time she came that night. Under her breath, like a prayer or a curse. He wondered if she was conscious of doing that, wondered if she’d say his name again right now if he lifted her to the table and sunk his tongue into her sweet flesh.

Closing his eyes, he swallowed hard as the searing need to possess her ignited within him. He harnessed it, but barely, and opened them again to find her watching him through the reflection, her expression anxious and her skin flushed pink.

“I see you, Camille.”

She stopped breathing. Her eyes grew wider.

“You’re trying to hide from me, but you can’t. I see you.”

Her fingers shot out to tinker nervously with the tracking device. He settled his hand over hers and she stilled.

It was her turn to close her eyes. She shifted her body weight to lean against him as her head tilted back to rest on his shoulder, exposing the slender length of her neck. He grazed her skin with closed lips, wanting to stake his claim on her body with his teeth. Holding himself in check.

She sucked in a ragged breath and tensed. Twisting her hand from under his, she broke free of his hold, walked from the table and picked up her bike helmet. “Let’s get out of here.” Her voice was hoarse and trembling. “We have a bomb to build and we’re wasting time.”

* * *

It took several hours of research and shopping to come up with a blueprint and materials, but it was disturbingly easy how two people—foreigners, at that—could make up their minds to build a bomb and, within the same day, gather everything they needed.

Because their dirt bike was lying in a ravine in the desert, they took a taxi to a used motorbike lot and bought a new one. They then bought a cheap laptop and tapped into an internet signal at a downtown coffeehouse. Without much searching, they found easy-to-follow instructions for creating an explosive with a remote detonator. Walmart and two different hardware stores supplied almost everything else, except dynamite.

For that, they waited until midnight to cruise by the numerous construction sites that dotted the landscape between La Paz and Pichilingue. At a partially erected resort being carved into a cliff along the bay, they found what they were looking for behind a short chain-link fence, next to a portable office trailer. Camille’s flashlight zeroed in on a nondescript metal supply shed secured by a chain and padlock.

With newly purchased bolt cutters, Aaron clipped a hole in the fence and they slipped in. The debris-strewn construction zone showed no signs of life, no security teams or guard dogs, only silent excavators and bulldozers that lay like sleeping giants amid innumerable pallets of pavers and Dumpsters.

The supply shed was a cinch to open with the cutters. The crate of dynamite was clearly marked with bright red lettering.
¡Cuidad! ¡Explosivos!
Aaron carefully plucked five sticks from the shredded-paper packing filler and nestled them into a backpack.

They were back on board the
Happily Ever After
before the moon hit the mountain ridges to the west of the city. After anchoring the boat on the leeward coast of a tiny island, Aaron joined Camille at the kitchen table, poring over the directions and sorting through their purchases.

“This is going to take some time. I don’t want to make a mistake and blow us up.”

“Gotta say, I’m happy to hear that. Anyhow, you have two days until Tuesday’s ferry departure. If you need even more time, the delivery truck usually skips Thursday’s ferry and goes out again on Saturday. Do what you have to do to get it right because if we screw up this chance, Perez and his men will go so deep underground, we might never find Rosalia.”

* * *

Saturday afternoon, six days after Camille began building the bomb, both the
Puerto Azul
and the suddenly cash-flush cocaptains of
Sea Dreamin’,
a private yacht charter, embarked on the eighteen-hour journey across the Sea of Cortez, the former transporting an unmarked delivery truck most likely filled with weapons and the latter transporting a pair of American newlyweds to the next destination of their honeymoon...or so Aaron and Camille’s story went.