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Julia’s jaw tightened. She’d been out of college for a month when she’d met Miguel at a Fourth of July party at a hotel in Atlanta. Her father had argued stridently against the relationship and her mother’s disapproval had been just as vehement, if less vocal. But tired of watching her friends pair off one by one, and lonely as well, Julia had ignored what she thought of as her father’s overprotectiveness and her mother’s snobbery. She’d married Miguel within weeks of their introduction.
Julia had come to think the impulsive act—so out of character for her—had been an unconscious effort to spite her parents and their restrictive nature. If it had been, the trick had backfired. She’d hurt no one but herself.
She shook her head. “I haven’t heard from Mother and Daddy in months and frankly, even if I did, it wouldn’t make any difference. All the money in the world wouldn’t keep us safe. Miguel would find us and when he did…”
“When he did…what? There are laws that protect people like you and Tomas.”
“Laws mean nothing to Miguel, Meredith. You don’t understand—”
“He’s a diplomat, for God’s sake, not a hit man. He may have more than a few privileges, but that doesn’t mean he can do what he likes.”
Julia stepped closer to her friend and dropped her voice. “He’s not what you think, Meredith. He has the ability and the power to do anything he wants, and he has a virtual army at his beck and call. He’s a dangerous man and—”
She broke off abruptly, her pulse going wild as a sudden breeze rippled over the garden. Meredith started to speak, but Julia held a finger to her lips and the other woman went silent. Julia exhaled a moment later, the wind brushing past them with a quiet exhalation that matched her own.
Meredith raised an eyebrow.
“I th-thought I smelled Miguel’s aftershave.” Julia shook her head then rubbed her temples, the rush of adrenaline waking her up to the danger of her indiscretion. What did she think she was doing, telling Meredith these things? If Miguel were to overhear, Julia didn’t have to imagine what he’d do. She knew.
Meredith stepped closer and put her hand on Julia’s arm. Her breath was warm, her expression concerned. “What can I do to help, Julia? You can’t go on like this. There’s got to be a way—”
“There’s nothing anyone can do. Miguel will never let me go without Tomas and I’m not leaving my son behind.”
AFTER THAT Julia said nothing. There was too much at stake for her to be talking like this and she was a fool for sharing what she already had. She shook off the rest of Meredith’s questions and the two women went back inside to find the party beginning to break up, a few people already drifting outside to their cars. Standing in the entryway, Miguel was telling everyone good-night, his second in command, Jorge Guillermo, beside him as usual. Half bodyguard, half counselor, he watched Miguel’s back as well as his bank account. On occasion, Julia thought she saw sympathy in his eyes when he glanced at her, but deep down, she knew that was only wishful thinking. Guillermo was Miguel’s shadow and loyal to a fault.
Both men looked up as Meredith and Julia walked into the living room, and Julia’s stomach turned over when Miguel caught her eye. No one else would have seen his displeasure, but she had learned to read the subtleties behind his every expression. He was angry because she’d been in the garden and not at his side.
She walked swiftly to where he waited and began to bid her guests good-night. Meredith was near the end of the line. Miguel extended his hand to Julia’s friend, but when she took it, he leaned forward and brushed both her cheeks with a kiss.
“I’m so glad you could come this evening. I know you and Julia had a lot to talk about. I hope she said kind things about me.”
Julia held her breath and watched as Meredith smiled warmly at Miguel. “Kind things? She bragged relentlessly and made me envious of her good fortune. Great husband, wonderful home, beautiful child…she has it all. You’re both very lucky.”
Miguel put his arm around Julia’s waist and drew her close. “We make our own luck in San Isidro.” He looked at Julia and smiled slowly. “Julia would be the first to tell you that, yes?”
“Of course,” she murmured.
Meredith kissed Julia’s cheek. “I’ll be in touch,” she whispered.
As the front door closed behind Meredith, exhaustion swept through Julia. She hid it until the last of the stragglers were gone, then she turned and headed for the stairs to check on Tomas. His bedroom and the nanny’s room were on the second floor along with Miguel’s office. Miguel’s bedroom, just like Julia’s, was in a building by itself off a patio on the lower level. She didn’t like being separated from Tomas, but Miguel had insisted.
She was halfway up the stairs when Miguel’s voice stopped her progress.
“I’d like to see you in my office, Julia. Please change your clothes and meet me there.”
She pivoted slowly, her mouth suddenly dry. Had he heard her talking to Meredith? “I’m really tired. Can it wait until tomorrow?”
He seemed to consider her request but both of them knew it was an act. “I’d prefer to discuss this tonight,” he said thoughtfully. “The only time I have open tomorrow is when you’re supposed to see Tomasito. Would you rather we talk then?”
She fumed but silently. “If those are my choices, then I pick tonight.”
He nodded and smiled. “Good.”
Thirty minutes later, she was in his office, but Miguel was nowhere to be found. He often made her wait so she wasn’t surprised, but his inconsideration bothered her more tonight than usual. She wasn’t sure if that was because she’d shared her situation with Meredith or because the headache she’d faked was now becoming real. She crossed his office to stand beside the window and stare at the mountains.
In the valley below, the lights of San Isidro twinkled romantically. When Miguel had brought her to the tiny Colombian village, she’d been enchanted. Quaint streets, red-tiled roofs, charming children… That first day, they’d strolled the twisting sidewalks and Julia had been so happy. She’d thought she’d found true love and was looking forward to starting a family. Everything had seemed so perfect.
A normal woman would have closed her mind to the memories that rose inside her, but Julia no longer considered herself normal. She’d become something else, something that had no name. Miguel had taken away the person she’d been and replaced her with this new being who wanted to remember what had happened because the details fueled her fire.
Closing her eyes, she let the pain roll over her and relished it, the haunting images as fresh now as they’d been four years ago. They’d had a wonderful meal, then Miguel had pulled her into his luxurious bedroom. She’d been looking forward to making love with her husband and she’d moved eagerly into his arms. What had followed was something she did blank out.
Stunned and in shock, Julia hadn’t known what to do except run. The first time she’d gotten to the gates of the compound. The second time she’d made it to the village. The third time…she couldn’t remember how far she made it the third time. Miguel had caught her and locked her in a room somewhere. She still didn’t know where it was. He’d kept her there and visited until she’d gotten pregnant.
Tomas had been born the following March.
Julia had begged for her freedom.
Miguel’s answer had dumbfounded her. “Go ahead,” he’d said. “Leave whenever you like.”
For a second, she’d let herself think about it, then he’d gotten up from behind his desk and come to where she waited. “If you do go, however, you will go alone. Don’t even consider taking Tomasito with you. Should you try, I will hunt you down and bring my son back. I want to raise him here, in San Isidro, to follow in my footsteps.”
“But he’s my son, too,” she’d argued foolishly. “What if I don’t want him brought up that way?”
The look in his eyes had been merciless. “What you want or do not want is irrelevant to this discussion. My son will grow up as I desire. You have no say in this matter.”
“You can’t do that to me,” she’d said.
His reply had been simple and irrefutable. “I already have.”
Despite the warning, she’d taken Tomas and tried one more time. The punishment for her foolishness had been so painful and humiliating she knew the scars—figuratively and literally—would not disappear. Miguel was a master at abasement and she would never be the same. In the end, though, he’d be the one to pay. Her rage and impotence had had nowhere to go, so she’d turned it inward and forged a determination, the likes of which she’d never felt before.
She would escape and she would take Tomas with her. Miguel would burn in hell before she’d allow her son to become his father’s victim, too.
But explaining all this to Meredith would have been impossible. To begin with, it would have taken more time than they’d had but secondly, Meredith would never have understood how Julia could have gotten herself into this predicament, because Meredith would have never allowed it to happen to herself. Meredith was incredibly strong and assertive and smart. She’d joined the CIA right out of college—the CIA, for goodness’ sakes!—then left three years later to start a business with her father, a firm that specialized in international finance. Meredith would have somehow dealt with Miguel and ended the nightmare much sooner. Julia couldn’t risk taking her offer of help, though. She’d be damned if she would put anyone else in jeopardy because of her own foolishness.
In the end, it didn’t really matter anyway. Julia would rather her friend think she was some kind of helpless idiot than to jeopardize the plans she’d begun to lay.
From behind her, Miguel’s voice broke the silence. Her heart pounding painfully, she trembled as she turned.
“Why the shivering? Are you cold? Would you like me to close the window?”
She recovered quickly. “What I would like is to go to bed.”
Something shifted in his eyes.
He hadn’t touched her since before Tomas’s birth, but she worried relentlessly about him coming to her bedroom. She pulled the lapels of the robe she wore closer to her throat.
“Just tell me what you want, Miguel.” Her voice stayed steady. “I’m exhausted and my headache is getting worse.”
He waited a moment and she held her breath, then he spoke. “I’m leaving town tomorrow. I’ll be gone for several weeks and I’m taking Tomasito.”
Surprised as she was, she still realized what he’d done. He’d obviously had these plans in place, yet at the party he’d threatened to prevent her from visiting with Tomas. He must really enjoy torturing her.
She hid her anger, the taste of disgust mixing with a flood of fear. There were worse things Miguel could do than toy with her, she reminded herself, and taking Tomas was one of them.
“Where are you going?” The words were hard to get past the knot growing in her throat.
“Where isn’t important. All you need to know is that I expect you to remember whose wife you are. You may go into town to visit Portia, if you wish, but not alone.”
Portia Lauer was an older woman with whom Julia had developed a friendship. Miguel saw her as harmless and therefore he’d allowed the relationship to continue. His generosity went unnoted; all Julia could think of was her son. “I assume you’re taking Mari?”
“No, Mari will not be going. You coddle the boy too much. He can do without his nanny for two weeks.”
“Miguel! He’s only three—”
“I will handle him.”
The words cost her dearly, but Julia said them without reserve. “Then take me with you. I’ll watch Tomas for you and you can do whatever it is you need to do.”
He seemed to weigh her words, then he dismissed them without even answering, heading for the door instead. At the last minute, he turned. His profile looked like stone in the lamplight. “We’re leaving early. If you want to say goodbye, I suggest you keep that in mind.”
CHAPTER TWO
JONATHAN CRUZ HAD WORKED with the woman standing in front of him for five years. He felt as if he knew her but now, all at once, he wasn’t so sure. Meredith Santera wore an expression he’d never seen on her before.
“It’s better than we thought.” She paused then appeared to rethink her answer. “Or maybe it’s worse,” she said. “I guess it depends on your perspective.”
“I don’t want perspective,” he said. “I want the facts.”
She walked past the desk where he sitting, toward the couch. The third member of the Operatives team, Armando Torres, sat at one end of it, nursing a beer. There had been a fourth man in their organization, Stratton O’Neil, but he’d left several years ago under terrible circumstances. He’d cleaned himself up and solved his problems, but had chosen not to return, a decision his new wife had helped him make.
His loss had been a tough one. They were a tight group. Meredith and her father, a Navy Intel guy, had started the company and recruited the team right after she’d left the CIA. Cruz had heard all sorts of rumors about why she’d moved on, but he hadn’t asked. In their business, questions like that were frowned upon. She assigned the jobs, the team did them and that was that. Their clients came recommended or Meredith wouldn’t even talk to them, and the operations were solitary ones, completed with stealth and speed. They had no office and rarely saw one another, but all three of them had happened to be in Bogota at the same time, so they’d met to discuss this job. Cruz had wondered if Meredith had engineered the coincidence, though. The toughest of all of them, she usually made her decisions quickly and acted with confidence, but she was worried about her friend. In a way, her concern made him feel better about her. He’d wondered at times if she had any feelings left.
She kicked off her shoes then took the chair to Cruz’s left.
“The facts?” As she repeated his words, her voice was tight and angry with no sign of the drawl she could turn off and on. “The facts are very simple. Miguel Ramirez is a monster. He keeps his wife a virtual hostage by controlling her through their child. He beats her. She hates his guts and would like to see him dead.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “But she’ll never leave him because, to do that, she’d have to abandon her child. I can guarantee you she won’t leave the country that way. Not without her son.”
Meredith made a visible effort to control herself. After a moment, she scrubbed her face with her hands, then she looked up at Cruz. “Julia Vandamme is the only friend I have. It killed me to see her tonight. I wanted to stick a blade right into that bastard’s black heart then grab her and get the hell out.”
“You would have ended up dead, along with your friend.”
She blinked, her eyes colder than Cruz had ever seen them. “Maybe, maybe not, but if I hadn’t known you guys were waiting for me, that’s exactly what I would have done.”
Cruz didn’t doubt a word of what she said, because Meredith Santera was a killer. Then again, so was Armando. And so was he. Killing was what the Operatives did.
They were assassins and Miguel Ramirez was their next target.
Cruz rose from his desk and walked to the bar. He took out three fresh beers, uncapped them and handed them out. Meredith’s was almost empty when he spoke again.
“Tell me more about the setup.”
She stared out the window. “The villa’s huge. It’s made up of one central building that contains everything but the bedrooms, which are in small casitas on either side. There are half a dozen smaller buildings scattered around the property and several patios. Needless to say, Ramirez has excellent security. There are guards around the fenced perimeter and dogs, too. Not to mention electronic sensors—motion, heat, noise detectors. You might get in, but you wouldn’t get out.”
“What about his people?”
“Very small inner circle. Has one guy who’s always close. His name is Jorge Guillermo. Hard to get a handle on him.”
Cruz nodded then switched topics. “Do you think she knows who her husband really is?”
Meredith’s expression twisted again, this time with such disgust that Cruz knew if he somehow failed to kill the man, the deed would be done regardless by the woman in front of him. For free. And with a cheerful heart.
“You told me what he did to her when she tried to escape. She has to be suspicious at the very least. She told me she knows he isn’t a diplomat, but before she could say more, she got spooked.”
“Did she say anything about her last attempt?”
“No.” Meredith shook her head slowly. “Julia’s a very private person and always has been. I was shocked she even told me what she did.”
By the time Meredith finished, an hour later, Cruz felt he’d been inside the Ramirez compound himself. Then Meredith looked at him and he knew trouble was coming.
“I know I handed this one over to you, Cruz, but I’m changing my mind. It doesn’t make sense for you to go in when I already know the situation. I’m taking this son of a bitch out myself.”
“No.”
“But Cruz—”
“You gave me the job for a very good reason, Meredith, and that reason hasn’t changed in the past twenty-four hours.”
“I understand,” she said evenly. “But Julia and I have been close for—”
“And that is exactly why you can’t do it. Personal involvement is too risky, for you and for the other party.”
“‘The other party’? She’s my friend, Cruz.” At her side, Meredith’s hands clenched. “If something goes wrong—”
“Nothing will go wrong,” Cruz promised. “But you won’t be the one doing the job and that’s for the best. You and your dad made that rule yourselves and it’s a good one.”
A stormy expression came into her eyes, but a minute later, her shoulders slumped in defeat. She and her father had made the rules, and she was too smart to let her emotions outweigh common sense.
“All right,” she conceded, “but you have to tell me what you’re going to do.”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“There’s no figuring to it.” From the depths of the couch, Armando finally spoke.
His silences could stretch for days, so Cruz wasn’t surprised it’d taken him this long to join the conversation. Cruz looked at the Argentinian physician and raised an eyebrow.
“She gave you the answer already.” Armando tilted his beer bottle in Meredith’s direction, but his gaze stayed on Cruz. “You don’t have enough time to go about this your usual way. Ramirez is going to start his killing in a matter of weeks, maybe even days. When he’s done, he’ll go underground and you will have an even harder time finding the man. You need to do this one quick.”
“What’s your point, Armando?” Cruz’s impatience was clear, Meredith’s attitude making him unusually edgy.
