Until Midnight (4 page)

explosion shook the ground beneath their feet and a column of flame shot into the air.

“Explosion,” Nicki shouted.

Adam grabbed for her arm and yanked her into the covering of a thick clump of

shrubbery. “And it came from the direction of your bungalow.”

“What?” Debris was raining everywhere and the flames glowed brightly. They

covered their heads with their arms.

“Your bungalow.” Adam rose to a half-crouch. “Do me a big favor and stay here for

a minute. I know you’re big and strong and brave but I’d also like to keep you alive. I’ll be right back.”

Nicki fumed but she stayed hidden as Adam crab-walked across the path and into

the opposite flora. She counted off the seconds impatiently and was just about to go after him, regardless of what he’d said, when he was back and hiding next to her again.

“Well?” she asked.

“It was your place, honey. No doubt about it. And it’s a total disaster.”

Nicki’s stomach cramped. “Holy shit. Adam, all my stuff was in there, My cell

phone. My clothes…everything.”

“But you’re alive and that’s what’s important.” He grabbed her elbow with fingers

suddenly as hard as steel. ”Come on.”

“Where are we going?” She knew it would be foolish to resist him, and anyway, he

was doing the right thing. They
did
need to get out of the immediate area.

“My bungalow.” He tugged her along through the dense growth. “We can’t stay

out in the open.”

26

Until Midnight

It took them the better part of ten minutes, pausing frequently to listen for anyone following them, before they reached Adam’s place. He had the bungalow farthest from the main building, isolated by itself and almost concealed by the trees and shrubs around it.

“Stay here for a minute,” Adam ordered, leaving her leaning against a thick tree

trunk.

Nicki watched him silently check the perimeter of the house, careful to keep himself concealed at all time. When he reached the patio she saw him feel for something with his fingertips, then work his way around the house doing the same, his gun solidly in his right hand. In a moment she saw the slider to the patio open and Adam beckoned her. She ran at a crouch until he pulled her inside.

“You had a perimeter wire,” she commented. Something she should have thought

to do herself. But who knew in this secluded, heavily guarded retreat she’d need to run the thin wire all around her bungalow as a trap for anyone trying to enter.

“Always do.” He closed the door, locked it and drew the drapes across it.

Nicki realized all the rest of the curtains were closed, too. The only light came from a tiny lamp in one corner of the living room.

“I know I don’t have to tell you to stay away from windows,” Adam said as he

prowled from one room to the other.

“No, you don’t.” She took her gun from the small of her back and racked the slide, checking yet again to make sure she had a bullet chambered. “So now what.”

Adam finally dropped into one of the big armchairs and crossed his legs so the

ankle of one rested on the knee of the other. Nicki raked her eyes over him and

swallowed a bubble of lust. Even with danger hissing at their heels, she couldn’t help noticing the lean, muscular length of his body. The dusting of dark hair on his legs and arms. Remembering how those arms had felt around her and how that body had felt

next to her. She squeezed her thighs together to conceal what she was sure would be a suspicious trickle of moisture dampening them.

27

Desiree Holt & Cerise DeLand

Holy shit!

Someone was trying to kill her and all she could think about was getting down with Mr. Sex On The Hoof. She wanted to bang herself on the head with her gun. Would the real Nicole Welles please stand up?

Adam’s laugh was a low rumble. “We may be the only two people who get horny

hiding from killers. But don’t worry, honey. When this is all over, we’ll have plenty of time for that.”

“All over?” She blew out a breath. “I don’t even know what
it
is yet. How safe are we here?”

“As safe as any place else right now. No one saw me with you except the guy who

misfired, so no one will come looking for you here. We need a battle plan.”

“We need to find out who’s behind this and how they got someone in here,” she

pointed out.

“You’re probably the only one who can answer that question.” His cell phone,

which he’d placed on the little table next to him, began to vibrate and dance. “Or maybe we’ll have our answer now.”

She watched as he eyed the text scrolling across the small screen and saw the

muscles in his face tighten, the lines deepen.

“What? It’s something, isn’t it?”

He looked over at her. “Our dead body is Hector Felanda. He’s in the international data base. He’s an enforcer for Felix Calderon, head of the Campeche drug cartel.”

Nicki could literally feel the blood drain from her face. Son of a bitch. Somehow

Calderon had tagged her and found her. She should have known better than to stay

anywhere in Mexico, but she’d figured at Costalegre she was far enough away. Not to mention being in the most secure compound she could find. Well, she could add this to her list of Stupid Things I Never Should Have Done.

She realized Adam was staring at her, a strange look on his face.

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Until Midnight

“What is it?” he asked. “You know this guy?”

“No.” She shook her head. “But I know why he’s here. My last job was a hostage

rescue from Calderon’s compound. There was bloodshed and I think one of the

casualties was his brother.”

“I guess that means you’re off his Christmas card list.” Adam’s voice had an ironic edge to it. And something else.

”I’m sure that’s true. But why are you looking at me like that? What do you know

about Calderon?”

He took so long answering she wasn’t sure he’d actually say anything. Finally he

unfolded himself from the chair and began pacing, still holding his gun.

“I don’t usually believe in coincidence,” he started. “Usually there’s a logical reason for two things to collide. But it has to be just pure chance that you and I ended up here.

At this resort, at exactly the same time.”

“I don’t understand. What does that have to do with Calderon? And the attempts to

kill me?”

Again he paused, as if searching for the right words. “The last case I worked was a pisser. And nearly did me in.” he blew out a breath. “One of my team members, Mike Reason, had a beautiful sister. Emily. Bright, funny. She’d come over here to attend Georgetown Law, wanted a taste of the ‘United States political scene’, or so she said.

When she graduated she got a job working as a paralegal in one of the top international law firms in D.C. Mike begged her to come home, didn’t like her being so far away. Out on her own like that.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I was the one who flew here with Mike when he had to identify her body.”

“Oh, Adam. I’m so sorry.”

“Emily had been to a party with some people from work. They used to hang out at

someone’s house on Friday or Saturday nights. Her roommate said for the past few

weeks she’d come home disoriented, breathing heavily, hardly remembering anything

that went on at the parties. Emily had allergies and so at first, she told her roommate 29

Desiree Holt & Cerise DeLand

perhaps she’d been in a place with too much dust. So she kept taking more and more of her meds.”

Nicki shook her head. “So what happened just before Emily died?”

“The night she died, Emily came home in the early morning hours. She collapsed on

the couch. The roommate was still out. By the time the roommate got in the next

morning, she found Emily and called EMS, but it was too late.”

The story was horrific. Nicki couldn’t have moved from her chair if he’d asked her to. “What was the cause of death?”

Adam rolled his shoulders in dismay. “Long story short? The roommate told the

police she thought Em had taken too much of her prescription—and that’s what caused her heart failure. The police went with that on the initial investigation report. Because there were no signs of foul play, the police put it on the back burner. But when Mike got to Washington, he was like a maniac insisting they treat it like a homicide. I don’t think he slept and he barely ate while the D.C. Medical Examiners held off doing an autopsy for days. At first, they couldn’t ID her without fingerprints.”

“They had to get them through the State Department and Immigration,” Nicki

added.

“Right. So while the M.E.’s office held off, Mike investigated himself. He must have given everyone she knew the third degree, but no one told him anything suspicious.

No, there were no drugs at the office parties. No, Emily had never acted like she had a drug problem. No, she wasn’t drinking. No, she wasn’t feeling bad, except for the

breathing and allergy problems. No, no, no to everything, but Emily was still dead.” He paused. “Finally, Mike decided to pack up all her things to ship them home to Tel Aviv.

But as he went through her belongings, he came across these cute little plastic packets of something called Pleasant Dreams. He took it to a private lab in Gaithersburg and had it analyzed. Discovered it was used in an incense or potpourri burner. And the initial reaction to inhaling this stuff was something like a drug called Ultima, which was 30

Until Midnight

supposed to give ‘the ultimate high’. A drug that had been traced back to Calderon’s gang.”

Nicki sighed. “Did Mike share the analysis with the M.E.?”

“He did. I was over here by that time. The drug analysis plus confirmation of her

fingerprints moved them off their asses. They sped up the request for bodily fluid analysis and two days later, they got a cause of death. Heart failure. Inflammation of the sinuses, too. If she inhaled this Pleasant Dreams concoction on a regular basis, then took too much of her allergy meds, she was playing with fire.”

“Not homicide then,” Nicki concluded.

“No. But damn close.”

She nodded. “Lethal to some. Maybe lethal to a lot more. Meanwhile, you can’t be a one-man detective agency and a revenge squad.”

“No? Don’t doubt my training. I’m looking for how the drug is distributed. Every

last detail. Because someone’s pulling the strings besides that slimy cartel leader. Has to be. How did he and his caballeros run it into the States? It is one thing to conceal and smuggle raw coke over the Rio Grande in rocker panels or in the backpacks of illegal immigrants, but to bring in a refined chemical with lethal effects? How to distribute it without red-flags from your Federal Drug Administration? Not easy.”

“Ah. So others were affected,” she guessed.

He pointed a finger at her and pulled it like the trigger of a gun. “We got more

reports of people dying or being hospitalized. Heart failure. Sinus inflammation. Not just people going to parties, either. Housewives. Office workers. Upscale furniture store clerks. Makes no sense.”

“And wasn’t that a big ‘fuck you’ to Uncle Sam for them to be selling the drug right under the noses of the United States government?” Nicki commented in disgust. “Right in their seat of power. They must have really gotten their rocks off.”

31

Desiree Holt & Cerise DeLand

“Mike and I worked every lead, every angle, looked at the data ‘til we were blue.

We tried to find the trail on the suppliers. Finally, we got a snitch who pointed us to Calderon’s gang. But in the end we still couldn’t find exactly how the drug got into the U.S. or how it was distributed. And more people kept dying.”

“Adam! Oh, my god. How devastating.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Anyway, we never got beyond the lead to Calderon.

Absolutely no place.” He winced. “Which is really unusual for Mossad. I pretty much burned myself out working this with Mike. And it was just getting to be too much.

When an international drug dealer—who could be using his profits to buy and sell arms to use against Israel—has things locked down so tightly—and obviously has someone

pretty powerful behind him, I just didn’t know where to turn. Finally I told my boss I wanted out. He suggested I take a leave of absence and get back to him in a couple of weeks.” He shook his heads. “Like that was really going to help. But at least it gave me the chance to come here on my own.”

“And save my ass. So it seems our lives intersect on the pinpoint occupied by Felix Calderon.”

“You got it.”

“All right. What we need to do is figure out who helped Calderon get his men onto

the grounds of this resort. Maybe that will lead us to whoever is covering his ass in the distribution of the drug.”

Adam stopped pacing in front of her. “The first order of business is to keep you

safe. That means staying right in this bungalow for the moment. I don’t intend to let one damn thing happen to you. Not one.”

He placed his gun on the table beside the chair, reached down and hauled her to

her feet. Before she could realize what he was doing, his mouth had come down on

hers. Hard and demanding, his tongue swiping across her lips until they opened for him. When he pushed inside her mouth, her insides melted and cream gushed into the crotch of her thong.

32

Until Midnight

The kiss was the most predatory she’d ever experienced, lust exploding within her

and rushing through her body like a runaway train. Adam shifted his hands so one

cupped her head and held it in place while the other pressed her hard against him. She felt the thick outline of his cock against the softness of her belly and shivers skittered along her spine. His hand cupped her ass, kneading the soft yet firm flesh and his long fingers pressed the thin fabric of her shorts into the cleft between the globes.

Nicki moaned, the sound vibrating in her throat as Adam’s tongue swept the inner