Hard Target (19 page)

A woman?

Forget
that
. No way was she going down
that
avenue. His personal life was none of her business and she had enough on her mind. While supper heated, she could be at her computer in her bedroom, finishing some paperwork. She also called the embassy and arranged for an
escolta
to stop by Ramos' apartment.

Ten minutes later, her work completed, she sat back. Supper was probably still cold in the oven, Tay still out on the balcony...

Typing quickly, she logged onto the secure section of her embassy's website.

She typed in the name Miguel Ramos and hit the search button. A scanned copy of his original job application popped up. She scrolled down. At the bottom was the next of kin. A cousin named Manuel Chayo. His address back then, Ottawa, Canada.

Ottawa? She blinked. What took Chayo to Canada's capital? She paused, her forefinger tapped the computer mouse. She should have taken Ramos' file with her this morning, but after the disconcerting talk with Jeff, she'd set that task aside.

Questions now rang through her head. Had Ramos's learned English from his cousin? Why did he have only one relative, in a country where big families were the norm? It was too late to catch Lucy at the embassy and ask her to pull the original paper file, plus all else they had on him.

She exited the website and leaned back.

Everything would have to wait until morning. The waning sunlight streaked in through the window above her. She had the whole evening ahead of her.

Alone with Tay.

Chapter Eleven

Tay snapped shut the cell phone and squinted out at the city ahead of him. The sun was low enough to cast long shadows over the deep gorges of the streets. Still, the traffic seemed unending. He'd lived in Montreal, Paris and Ottawa, and yet, the traffic here in this little South American city was worse than all three put together. Okay, Ottawa was hardly a terrible city to drive in, but nothing beat Cochabamba, he was sure.

Dawna's balcony faced east and lay deep enough in shadows to have him risk standing outside. He needed the privacy to make his call.

What he'd discovered from his contact in Washington was bad. Like Tay, his contact had no idea why Joseph Martin would come to Cochabamba. Was the CIA now tailing its own agents? He'd known the tail was there, but hadn't yet caught more than the swiftest glimpse of the man, not enough to confirm his suspicions. Then when the fool had smashed his rental, he'd turned and stared right at Tay. The guy had to be a rookie.

Tay hated rookies. He put his life on the line too many times as an operative to trust rookies. Now one of them was tailing him? What did the guy hope to learn?

His first assumption focused on the sensitive investigation he'd been a part of, an investigation he couldn't even admit existed. Did he CIA not trust him?

The glass door behind him slid open. Dawna hesitated at the threshold, her expression grim.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

She didn't look at him. Rather, she scanned the building across the busy street. "Nothing, really, I'm just mad at myself for not remembering to pull Ramos' application before I left the embassy."

"Why? Did you find something out?"

She glanced down at his cell phone before her gaze wandered upward to rest on his face. "I checked the info we have at our secure website, just a scanned copy of Ramos' application."

"What did you find out?"

She remained at the patio door, her body tense, her expression uncertain. He longed to pull her into his arms and offer some measure of comfort. "Nothing much, really," she said. "He's worked all around Bolivia." She hesitated. "It also listed his next of kin, a cousin who lived in Ottawa."

"Ottawa?" Tay frowned. "Lived? Where is he now?"

She shrugged. "The form is several years old, and it's only required to be updated every five years. So I can't confirm if the guy is still there. It's possible he's returned. Let's face it, the weather's better here."

"True. Do you think Ramos learned English from this guy?"

She rubbed her arms as if cold. "I don't remember if he ever told me. It may be in the file." Keeping her distance, she walked to the balcony edge and rested her hands on the railing as she inspected the street below. "You're from Ottawa, aren't you?"

"Yeah," he answered cautiously, still watching her, still controlling the urges inside of him, urges to yank her back from the railing. "Yeah, I grew up there."

She turned to him, shifted toward the door again. "What did your father do?"

Tay stiffened. "Didn't I tell you? He was a member of the Ottawa/Charleton police force."

"He had a heart attack, you said."

Tay shifted, looked beyond the buildings. The sun had sunk deeply enough to cool the whole city. "A few years ago. He moved out of Ottawa. He was born in Montreal and went back there. I don't see him anymore."

"Do you see your mother?"

No, but I hear her voice
. He nearly laughed out loud at the stupidity of that internal comment. "She died about five years ago."

Dawna glanced up at him. "I'm sorry. Was she from Montreal, too?"

"No, Ottawa. My parents married after he moved there." "You don't like your father, do you?" she asked. One of her strongest points as a cop was her calm, direct questioning tactic that, because of her soft, feminine voice, held little confrontation. It was an excellent skill he'd admired as her instructor. "Nor his job, either," she added.

He swallowed. "Why do you say that?"

"The tone of your voice. So why did you become a Mountie, then, if you don't like cops?"

"It's not that I don't like cops. I am one. It was the only thing I figured I could do." He turned quickly, struggling inwardly to suppress the unusual aggression bubbling inside. "Or maybe it was the fact that my father was such a prick, that I wanted to prove cops could be normal, nice guys. Yeah." He felt himself seethe. "I wanted to be a normal, nice-guy cop who helped kids and did some good in the world."

"Because your father didn't?"

"That's right," he snapped. "He was tough and mean and brought all his problems home with him. When he came home, that is, which wasn't often, thank God." He stopped himself with a deep, restorative breath. "He loved his job more than everything else." Tay shook his head in disgust.

"More than his family?"

"You got it."

Dawna sighed beside him and he watched her body relax against the glass of the sliding door. It shifted, wobbling the reflection of the city.

He straightened. "We shouldn't be out here." He'd only come out here to make his call. "If Cabanelos wasn't the sniper, we're too easy a target up here. I don't like the idea that Martin is out there somewhere. He could be our sniper, for all we know."

"We should have stayed at the accident site for the police. I could have told them his name."

"We were two of hundreds, and we don't speak the language. The police will track him down. They had this truck. Besides, with his coloring, Martin will stand out like a sore thumb. Let's have some supper."

He caught Dawna's far arm to spin her around.

She stopped him, pressing her palm onto his forearm. "Tay, I was honest with you when you asked me who Martin was." She paused a moment. "But I don't think you were honest back. Is Martin tailing us, or just you?"

He couldn't answer her. He practically had his arms around her as the sounds of the city below faded. All he could hear was her breathing as she waited for his answer, a soft, rhythmic brush of warm air against his skin.

But he couldn't answer her. For so many reasons.

"Let's go inside," she told him, her voice low and slurred.

Feeling suddenly frustrated, he shoved the sliding door to the right. Dawna stepped over the metal threshold. As soon as he followed her inside, she folded her arms. "You didn't answer my question. How are we supposed to work together, if we aren't honest with each other?"

He focused on her face, not on the churning attraction inside of him. Should he tell her everything? Even the parts that suggested he was going nuts? Yet, she did deserve to be told something. "I don't think Martin isn't following you. I think he's following me."

"Why?"

His gut tightened until it ached. "Let's eat supper first. Then I'll tell you what I can."

Dawna set her knife and fork on her empty plate. The lasagna could have been hotter, but she'd been too hungry to care. And judging by Tay's cleaned plate, he felt much the same way.

In the middle of the meal, the
escolta
she'd sent to Ramos' home called to say he wasn't there, and the neighbors claimed they hadn't seen him in a while. She related the news to Tay as she returned to the table. Silence reigned again.

"So why is the CIA following you?" She finally asked.

"I tried to find out, but my contacts couldn't tell me," Tay said. "They were as surprised as I was."

Dawna frowned. "Your contacts?"

"Friends I have in high places." He offered her a short smile. "I've made a few who owe me a favor or two."

He had friends in high places who owed him? And he called them contacts?
Give me a break
. He would have had to cash in a few
big
favors to get that kind of information, if he was telling her the truth. "Really?" she asked innocently.

He looked straight into her eyes. "Martin's a rookie, Dawna. Forget him."

Exasperated, she folded her arms and rolled her eyes. "I know he's a rookie. I picked him out of the crowd several times. And he's left a trail wide enough to drive a tank through." She didn't feel like playing games with Tay. "What makes a military police instructor interesting enough for the CIA to follow? The truth, Tay. I don't want you lying anymore. Or lie by omission."

He picked up his plate and took it to the sink. Dawna swiveled in her chair. "Well?"

"Don't ask, Dawna. You don't need to know." He kept his back to her.

She shoved the chair away from the table, its legs scratching over the dull tile floor. "I don't need to know? My embassy's been attacked. We've been attacked, ourselves! The prime suspect has been murdered and my best
vigilante
has been accused of not being who he says he is. And interestingly enough, that
vigilante's
cousin was last seen in Ottawa, where you happen to come from." She shook her head. "Then some wet-behind-the-ears kid from the CIA starts following us, but you say he's tailing you, the person who's supposed to be checking up on me? Now you say I don't need to know why?"