Intimate Danger Read online

  “Oh God. That’s my jeep.” It was parked on the edge of the shacks.

  “It’s a rental?”

  “No, I bought it.”

  He frowned.

  “It was actually cheaper.” Her brows drew tight. “Fuad, my guide, betrayed me to them. Tried to ransom me or something.” She shrugged, still clueless. “That guy in the jeans, he’s the one who took the jeep. Before someone shot Fuad in the head. The little weasel.”

  “I think you stepped into something you shouldn’t have,” he said, staring at the long-haired man in dirty jeans, then looked at her. “He’s probably Richora’s man.” Which meant he was in on the arms or drugs trafficking. “What happened that he was so hot to jail you?”

  “To experience more of my sparkling personality?”

  Mike grinned. She was adorable.

  “Nothing really, they blindfolded me. Then Richora busted onto the scene.” She told him what happened, leaving out the detail of the tracking chip. That still pissed her off, but giving him too much information wouldn’t be smart. “In jail he kept asking me what I’d seen. Which was nothing.”

  Ransom. It happened a lot here, so much that people had kidnapping insurance. The men took her for another reason, Mike decided, but Richora didn’t like it. Mike didn’t have time or reason to look into Richora’s operation, but an officer on the take wasn’t going to make the government happy since they’d expended half their treasury to try to stop the drug trade inside their own borders.

  Mike’s gaze moved rapidly around the village, the jeep, the position of the men in the camp. “You have the keys?”

  “They took them, but…” She searched her bag. “The spare was under the wheel hub, and I thought with all the mud and debris on the roads I’d lose it.” She held it up like a trophy.

  “Excellent. Hold on to it. Stay hidden, I’ll be a couple minutes.”

  He started to move away and she caught his arm. “Where are you going?”

  He smiled and the excitement in his eyes hit her like a punch to her heart. “Trust me.”

  Before she could say anything, he was gone, melting into the forest. She strained to see him, but it was impossible and she hunched down lower for the longest five minutes of her life. Getting any information on the troops around here was a bust, and she tried to think of a way to regain the ground she lost. Nothing came to mind. Suddenly her skin rippled with awareness and her head snapped to the right. Mike moved in as quietly as he’d left.

  He had a funny smile on his face. “Ready to blow this town?” She nodded. “When I signal, run to the jeep.” He held a small disposable phone, and hit a button. A second later, the ground on the other side of the village exploded.

  “Jesus, Mike, you could hurt someone.”

  His glance was bitter. “I checked. Nothing there except piles of garbage.”

  Even before he finished speaking, the sky rained with rotten food and fish guts. Together, they ran toward the jeep, and climbed in. She slapped the key in his hand and he turned over the engine.

  “Crap, hardly any gas.”

  “Who cares! Drive. We’re getting noticed.” Two men shouted, aiming machine guns at them as Mike threw the jeep into reverse and hit the gas.

  “Mike!” She drew her gun.

  “Shoot something!”

  Clancy fired at their feet, the noise making her ears ring. The men danced back as Mike swerved the jeep, but the guys recovered and sprayed them with bullets. Clancy heard them hit the back of the vehicle.

  “When you said blow this town, I didn’t think you meant blow this town!” She held on to the roll bar as the jeep jolted over the uneven road.

  “Never pass up an opportunity to mystify a woman,” he said.

  “We’re both pissing off the wrong people.” She needed to get lost fast and looked behind. “No one’s coming, yet.”

  Mike didn’t slow down, and kept checking in the mirrors.

  “I don’t know whether to thank you or bean you.”

  He just glanced at her, offering a small smile.

  “What were you doing in the jungle anyway?” she asked.

  “Archaeology on a recent site.”

  What a crock. “Well, now that we’ve both established we’re liars, what’s your sign?”

  He scoffed a laugh, but didn’t comment, and tried working off the rucksack. Clancy helped him. She was still for a moment, tempted to look inside, but he noticed.

  “Don’t even.”

  She made a face and pushed it between the seat to the rear. “They’ll be chasing us for a long time.”

  “We’ll be gone.”

  “I don’t think that will matter.” Mike glanced to the side and she tossed a thumb to the backseat. “We just became drug smugglers.” There were several well-packaged blocks of something in the rear.

  Mike looked. “Fuck.”

  “Fitting, since we’re screwed.”

  “We have to ditch that.”

  “And you don’t think they’ll come looking for this jeep, me, and the stash?” She scoffed, then glanced at the kilos of drugs, thinking Phil would have an orgasm over that. “We have to leave the jeep, just as it is.”

  “That would be possible if they weren’t there.” He nodded and Clancy saw the line of federal police, Richora in the road. Soaked to the bone and steaming mad.

  “This guy is so screwing with my chi.”

  Dr. Eduardo Valez watched the machine sweep over the urn several times and thought archaeology had progressed a great deal. The scans would give him slivers of the urn and its contents without breaking the seal. While his colleagues wanted to push ahead to open it, Eduardo wasn’t as eager to ruin the find just yet. Carbon dating put it pre-Inca, 450 B.C. A group of graduate students had copied the etchings on the urn by photo and hand, and were just beginning the painstaking process of accurately deciphering them. It had become a teaching tool, since Eduardo understood the iconology that depicted the fierce Moche warriors who were equal to the gods.

  A complete contradiction to their beliefs.

  He looked at the screen as the images blinked up, each one the same, except for the design on the urn itself and the gold and wax seal. It was real gold, of course, and despite its age and purity, it was nearly perfectly intact. The room was kept chilled to preserve the seal, but other than that, the urn was nearly flawless.

  The Moche didn’t have a written language. Only pictographs on pottery and cave walls. They did have numbers, deduced from the grouped sets of artifacts found in tombs. But these icon etchings were neatly formed and spaced, yet ones he’d never seen before in his thirty years of archaeology. Deciphering them would be a challenge, yet the gold and waxlike seal was highly unusual for a simple jar, and bespoke of something precious. Or something deadly.

  Either way, it was a warning he would heed.

  The surgeon removed the bandages slowly.

  Nuat Salache felt the drugs lace through his bloodstream and soften his body. He didn’t fear pain but he suspected the doctor feared him. He felt the wrappings lift off his skin, his eyes closed. He was alone, his preference at this moment. No one saw the results before him. Yet when the cool air-conditioned air spread over his warm skin, he felt the anticipation come alive in him.

  The doctor did not speak. He knew the routine by now.

  For weeks, he’d worn the silken mask of gauze. It was replaced daily, and between stitches removal and cream treatments, no one, not even himself, would see the final result. This was his sixth surgery in four years. The doctors had warned him that he could take no more, but Salache knew better. Improvement was always to be had somewhere. He simply found a surgeon willing to do the work.

  When the last of the cloths were removed and all that remained was the final thin hood, the doctor stepped back.

  “I will leave you now.”

  Salache nodded and waited till he heard the door close. Behind the thin veil of gauze, he opened his eyes, making certain he was alone. Salache pushed
the button on the reclining chair, and it brought him upright with a slow hum. He grasped the silver-handled mirror and lifted it, then pulled the remaining fabric from his face. For a moment he recognized nothing of the man in the mirror. Perfect.

  He inspected and studied the face in the mirror. The reflection showed a handsome man, a dignified nose instead of the bulbous one birth had given him. A square strong jaw instead of the pointed receding jaw that had made him so horribly ugly that people turned away. No one had listened to the man he was, no one respected his innovations, his ideas.

  He smiled slowly, perfectly aligned teeth flashing in the space where crooked and broken ones once mangled his smile.

  This was only one portion of his new life. He was a visionary, and had already achieved what others had dismissed as impossible. As madness. The true achievement was that no one knew. No one. And this new face would keep it secret for as long as he needed. To the time of his choosing. To let loose the deadly repercussions on those who treated him as worthless.

  Six

  “Give me one of those things.”

  Clancy offered the kilo, and Mike put it on his lap, then pulled a knife from inside his boot.

  She flinched when the blade popped out and said, “Don’t cut that!”

  He stabbed the kilo. White powder puffed in the air.

  “Oh, jeez.” She covered her mouth and nose, and he held it out the window, then shook it on the ground. “He’s already pissed!”

  “Hold on.” He hit the gas, speeding toward Richora.

  Oh my God. Clancy braced for impact. Bullets hit the jeep and cracked the windshield. Mike dropped the kilo to punch the glass and Clancy covered her face as the wind blew glass back inside. He was either the most clever man on earth or the craziest.

  “Toss it out. The dope, toss it out as we get close, but save me a couple.”

  She plopped a kilo on his lap, then pitched the others out the window. The men scrambled to retrieve them and Mike headed toward Richora standing in the middle of the road, defiant, aiming a big gun.

  Clancy’s eyes widened and she thought one of those bullets was going to hit them or the engine. Then one did, the jeep’s engine smoking and filling the air around them. She coughed and choked on oily black smoke, and Mike cut the kilo on his lap, this time nearly in half. He never let up on the gas, the damaged engine grinding as he headed right for Richora. The man refused to move, almost daring them to hit him.

  “He’s insane!”

  “That makes it easy.” Mike never stopped and leaned long out the window and threw hard. The kilo shot through the air like a football, spilling chalky dust. Around him, men scattered, some getting hit with pure drugs and falling instantly to their knees, but Richora saw it coming and bolted.

  “It was a good try.”

  “Yeah, damn it. Stay low.”

  He gunned it, the black smoke of burning rubber boiling through any space in the jeep, and Clancy bent over as gunfire plinked on the jeep’s metal shell. Flames burst through the dash and he slammed on the brakes.

  “Bug out!” He grabbed his pack and bailed.

  Clancy leaped, hitting the ground for the second time today. The pain was the same, ripping up her shoulder. Mike rolled into a ditch, then was up, looking for Clancy, and found her on the side of the dirt road. He hurried to her, pulling her from the ground. They ran, veering off the road to another. Mike paused for a moment, listened, then pushed farther. The forest thinned and he moved laterally. They hit a barrier.

  Traffic. Everywhere, buses and cars, horns beeping. People walked on the side of the road. It was all at a standstill. Mike urged her along.

  “Too fast, slow down, damn it.”

  He didn’t. “We need to keep going.”

  She didn’t look back, but when he pressured her in another direction, she put on the brakes. “Wait a second, why are we going this way? What is this?”

  “A random checkpoint.”

  “Are we crossing the border?”

  Mike frowned at her. “Sorry to break it to you, but we’re thirty miles from the border. We’re in Peru.”

  Clancy’s gaze shot to the kiosk, the line of people passing through. The only reason they weren’t spotted was the crowd of people sitting on their cars while they waited in line. Some had radios going, and kicky Latin music filled the air. Kids sat on the ground playing games, still close to wary parents. They kept walking and she glanced back and saw the sign behind and to the left. It hung over the road. Forty kilometers to Ecuador.

  They’d manage to slip around the first sentry.

  “Oh, hell, we crossed the border without a passport check.”

  “So you do get it.” Mike walked briskly along the edge of the road.

  “We can’t go back.” Richora would be looking, and far away from him was a good thing.

  “Looks that way.” It didn’t make a difference to Mike. He’d planned to cross the border, just not right now.

  Clancy felt him fidgeting. “Mike?”

  “Smile, laugh, just don’t look confused and scared.”

  She plastered on a smile, and Mike used her body to block whatever he was doing as they headed to the final checkpoint.

  “The only way we won’t get arrested is if we don’t pass this checkpoint.”

  She inhaled when he touched her bare spine.

  “Are we dating now? Because I’m really expecting dinner first.”

  Mike smiled, enjoying her dry sense of humor. “Want to get caught with a weapon?”

  “Oh God.” Clancy felt the gun slip free, then his body tense against her side as he threw it. It shot like a bullet into the forest and she breathed in relief as they walked straight to the border officer to show their passports. Mike dropped his passport, and when he picked it up Clancy realized he used the moment to look behind them. But his expression didn’t give her an answer.

  One shout from Richora and it would be over. He kept her close in front of him. “Give them the real one,” he said in her ear, “and try to behave like a tourist.”

  Clancy smiled up at him. “Honey, think we can make a trip to Machu Pichu?” She poured on a twangy southern accent that made him cringe.

  “Jesus,” he muttered, then glanced back to see Richora pulling up in a four-by-four truck. Damn. He looked a little doped up, but clearly giving orders.

  Mike nudged Clancy, and she spotted him. Then to avoid notice, she instantly turned toward the person in front of her and introduced herself. He was German, young and blond, looking like a cast-off from a youth hostel. She kept the conversation going, asking him questions about what he’d done and seen. People liked to talk about themselves, and he was no exception.

  They approached the final guard. He studied their faces and passports for a couple of seconds, then handed them back. She sagged against him till they were far enough away, beyond to a grouping of tour buses.

  Clancy slowed her breathing as she ran her fingers through her hair, pulling bits of leaves, then did her best to look presentable. There wasn’t much to work with. She held out her shaking hands, flexed her fingers, then shoved them into her pockets.

  I was better at this when I was a kid. Fearless.

  She looked at Mike. “It’s been real. This is where I’ll get out of your hair.” As much as hanging around with him was a wild ride, she had to ditch him. She didn’t want him asking more questions, and Clancy had a feeling Mike was a bit of a buttinski.

  Mike scrubbed his hand over his head, his lips quirking. He was about to say the same thing and his gaze slid to the busload of tourists. Safer in numbers, he thought. He couldn’t be near her. He had a job to do and a short time to do it.

  “If luck holds, Richora won’t look too hard. It’s not a Communist blockade. People pass these borders all the time without seeing a soul.”

  “Only if he can explain away a body and kidnapping. Of course, there were no witnesses, not any who’d testify, if it ever went that far.” Richora killed her guide jus
t for bringing her into his business. Her life would be meaningless. It was a scary thing to know.

  Mike listened to her rattle on, talking more to herself than him.

  “I guess my one advantage was I was hooded and didn’t witness anything.”

  Mike’s look said that wouldn’t matter much.

  Behind them, people boarded the bus and Clancy stopped the German. “Save me a seat, will you, Gus?”

  The young man looked between them, frowning a bit, then nodded and climbed the bus steps.

  “Gus?”

  She shrugged. “Gustave something or other. He’s been traveling for weeks, rather talkative for a guy.”

  Mike pulled her away from earshot and jotted something on a slip of paper, then slipped it into her bag. “If you’re in trouble.” Though he shouldn’t care, or get involved, this little Irish thing wasn’t a woman he could forget easily.

  “I’d feel better with the gun. We’re both unarmed.”

  His gaze traveled down her body. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  She laughed, tension sliding from her body. “Oh, Mike, whoever you are, you’re something else. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Though he probably just made it worse for her.

  She held out her hand for a shake.

  Mike’s gaze flicked to it, then zeroed in on her pretty eyes. “We’ve exchanged gunfire together, I think a kiss is in order.” Her lush mouth looked made for it and was already driving him crazy for a taste.

  She blinked, grinning. “So you ask? If you were really heroic you’d just sweep me—”

  He was there, his arms around her, his mouth on hers, and Clancy felt the hot explosion inside her, her skin tightened on her bones. His mouth slid wondrously over hers, and she gripped his big shoulders, felt him bend her slightly back and mesh his hips to hers. Oh God, this is a real man kiss, she thought. Nothing like her ex or the geeks she’d dated since. Nothing.

  He was huge and muscular, and for a guy who pulled a trigger easily, she felt almost fragile in his arms, his kiss tender, as if waiting for her to give him more. And she did, deepening it and savoring the hard feel of his—oh, man. Her fingers swept up his chest and she moaned a plea for more.