Her Enemy Protector (18 page)

Joe’s glare skewered the object of his wrath. The pompous, arrogant, sociopathic—

Something moved behind him.
Someone.
He froze, his years of training taking over by reflex. No matter how riled up he was, survival took precedence. Stay invisible. Stay still. Avoid discovery at all costs.

A flashlight swept back and forth on the other side of the bushes. Its beam pierced the foliage of the oleander like a sword, then swept away, then back. Crap! It flashed across his feet. At least his jungle boots were olive nylon and black leather.

Whoever was wielding the flashlight didn’t notice his feet because the shadowy figure moved on. The guard turned his head and Joe caught the silhouette: Rico. Joe stayed frozen in place until Rico had circled the pool and gone back into the house via the dining room doors.

He turned his attention back to the meeting. Eduardo was talking and all the guests were listening intently. He couldn’t hear a blessed word of it. They were too far away from the open window, and Eduardo was speaking too quietly. Joe willed Cari to use the others’ distraction to leave.
Get out, baby! Ease over to that door and slip out while no one’s watching.
But she didn’t move. Desperately, abjectly, he begged her to go.

Instead, she glided away from the bar under the guise of collecting a couple of abandoned drinks. She picked them up and drifted back to the bar to set them down. She lifted one of the plates of hors d’oeuvres and moved forward with it in hand. She set it beside one of the heretofore silent guests who hadn’t manhandled her.

She had to be hearing every detail of what her father said. Joe jolted. Here he was, flipping out in the bushes, while she was in there keeping her wits about her and collecting information. Nerves of steel, she had. He owed her no less. He reached for his camera. And heard another sound behind him.

He froze.

Not Rico again. Irritated beyond belief, he shifted into full-stealth mode—where he should have been all along, dammit!—and eased his head to the side far enough to have a look around the backyard. Freddie and Neddie were walking a slow circuit around the pool this time.

Damn. They might actually be alert enough to spot him. Worse, in a dozen more steps, they’d be in position to glance over and see the ladder hanging in the shadows of Cari’s balcony. Frantically, he cast his gaze around at his feet. There. He picked up a golf-ball-size stone and, extending his arm above the top of the oleander fronds, pitched the stone across the yard.

The rock swished through some bushes and hit the ground with a muffled clatter. The cacophony of cicadas, crickets and frogs went silent. And that was almost more noticeable than the rock itself. The two guards jerked, reacting in unison to the intrusion of silence on the tropical night. They hustled off toward the other side of the pool.

Working fast, Joe stood up just far enough to peer between the leaves of his hiding spot. He pulled the digital low-light camera out of his pocket and aimed it at Eduardo’s office, quickly capturing the faces of the four men with Ferrare from several different angles.

Cari picked up an armful of empty plates and glided toward the back of the room as unobtrusively as the finest of waiters. Joe kept one eye on her and the other on Freddie and Neddie as they poked around in the bushes on the other side of the pool like a couple of hogs rooting around in the mud for a truffle.

Okay. Cari was clear of the room. She’d just slipped out so subtly he’d nearly missed it. A move worthy of Charlie Squad. But then, she’d grown up having to make herself invisible if she didn’t want her life to become very unpleasant. Why was it that he suddenly felt a burning compulsion to make that up to her?

Joe slithered on his belly under the oleander, inching along the long stucco wall toward the balcony. Past the dining room. Alongside the TV room and its French doors leading out to the pool.

And then he stopped. Right at ground level, a long, flat metal grate interrupted the line of the house’s concrete foundation. It looked like a vent of some kind. The faintest light shone from between its narrow slats. Was there a
basement
in this house of horrors? It certainly wasn’t indicated on any blueprints he’d ever seen of the place.

He had no more time to think about it. He had to get back upstairs before his absence was discovered. He crawled a few feet past the mysterious vent. He’d have to leave the cover of the bushes to cross an open stretch of lawn now, but the shadows were good. He hugged the ground, following the curves of the shadows, his entire body plastered against the cool grass. In another couple of hours, this area would be covered with dew and his passage would leave a telltale track as visible as snail slime across a sidewalk. But for now, he was okay.

He made it across the grass without incident. Grateful for the renewed cover, he eased under the next stand of oleander. Another fifteen feet and he’d be at the ladder. A short pause for the cameras to line back up and he’d be safely back where he belonged. Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, Cari would already be waiting for him in the room.

He reached for the bottom rung of the ladder. One more sweep of the camera directly over his head and all the lenses would be aligned away from the balcony. Five…four…three…

He dived flat as lights abruptly illuminated overhead and shouts erupted from inside Cari’s room.

He translated the Spanish in his head. Rico had somehow figured out that Cari and Joe were not in the room. Her absence from the meeting must have been noted and someone had gone looking for her. Obviously, she hadn’t made it back to her room. She hadn’t been found where she was hiding, either, or there wouldn’t be all the commotion above.

He gave the ladder a yank. Hooked solid. It wasn’t coming down off that balustrade anytime soon. The evidence of their little outing would be discovered in a few seconds.

He was so dead. Maybe he could draw them off. Make them think Cari had nothing to do with all this. He’d take the fall, but maybe she’d live. And just maybe Charlie Squad could find another way to get her to safety. His demise was so going to suck. He had confidence that Eduardo’s thugs would torture him within an inch of his life before they finally killed him.

Crap. He had to ditch the camera, too. Maybe Cari would find it later and get the pictures out to Colonel Folly somehow. He scrabbled with his fingernails in the mulch and soft earth around the base of the landscaping, burying the camera beneath a shallow layer of dirt and pine chips. The moisture and dirt were probably going to ruin the expensive piece of equipment, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

Time to face the music. He pulled his knees under him and braced his hands in preparation for standing up and surrendering to whomever stuck a gun against the back of his head first. Any second now, someone would come tearing outside to see where the trail led away from the telltale ladder.

He shoved to a half crouch and prepared to stand up and show himself. Men were slamming around the room above now, calling loudly to each other as they searched the space. It wasn’t like there were a whole lot of possible hiding spots. The search would take them a matter of seconds and then they’d burst out onto the porch, find the ladder and point their AK-47s down it, directly at him.

The French doors beside him burst open and he whirled reflexively, his hands reaching for the stars.

“Hurry!” Cari whispered frantically. “To the pool!”

The swimming pool? What in the world did she have in mind? He stared at her stupidly, stunned that she wasn’t Gunter or one of the others come to kill him.

“Come
on.
And strip while you’re at it!”

That jolted him into motion. “Say again?” he managed to say as he sprinted beside her in a crouch toward the open space of the swimming pool.

Ahead of him, she fumbled with the knot at the back of her neck as she ran. The halter top of her dress sagged and she paused by the pool just long enough to let the fine silk drop to the ground. All she had beneath it was a black thong. A flipping unbelievably skimpy thong.

He gaped in open disbelief.

She reached for his pants and tore down the zipper fly. “We used the fire rescue ladder to sneak down here for a skinny dip. But you’ll have to be naked for them to believe it.”

And then it dawned on him what she was up to. She’d realized they had to have a cover story for the ladder and had come up with a
brilliant
one. He tore off his shirt and flung it down. He unzipped his boots, kicking awkwardly out of them while Cari fumbled with his belt. She pulled it free as he stepped on the toes of one sock, yanking his foot free of it. She shoved the pants down around his knees while he staggered and managed to yank his foot clear of the other sock. The French doors on her balcony burst open.

The men up there wouldn’t have full night vision, having just come out of a brightly lit room. But their eyes would adapt in a few seconds.

Joe sat down on the edge of the pool, pulling Cari down beside him. He slipped carefully into the water, doing his damndest to make as little noise as possible. Cari slipped in beside him.

“Can you get your shorts off?” she muttered.

“I dunno,” he mumbled back. “Spandex gets real clingy when it’s wet.” He forced the fabric off his skin, treading water while he kicked the shorts free. He set them on the edge of the pool and gulped as Cari put a tiny scrap of black fabric beside them.

She grinned beside him. “Having fun yet?”

How in the bloody hell could she be so relaxed at a time like this? His nerves were balanced on a razor’s edge.

“That’s not the word I’d choose, no. But for the record, this was pure genius.”

She smiled briefly, acknowledging the compliment. “C’mon,” she said. “We may as well get out in the middle of the pool so there’ll be no doubt as to what we’re up to when they turn on the underwater lights.”

He shoved off from the side. “Do me a favor. When the lights go on, move your arms around a lot and make a lot of waves.”

“Why?” she murmured as she commenced treading water with a slow, rhythmic motion of her limbs. Good idea. They’d be able to keep that up for a while. Although he doubted they’d be out here more than a few more seconds by themselves.

He answered wryly, “That way, the surface of the water will be good and disturbed and nobody will be able to make out any details below the waterline.”

Cari grinned at him, a flash of white in her shadowed face. “You’re worried about your modesty at a time like this?”

“Hell, no. I’m worried about yours!”

She was saved from having to reply by a phalanx of armed men bursting into the backyard, followed by a blinding flash of light as the house’s exterior floodlights were thrown on. The entire yard was lit up nearly as bright as day.

“Hell’s bells,” he complained loudly into the blackness beyond the spotlights. “Can’t a guy and his girl have a little privacy around here?”

Cari paddled over to where he treaded water and draped herself around his neck, giggling. “Poor baby. You’ve been trying all day to have your way with me and nothing’s working out!”

Gunter glared. Freddie and Neddie gaped. And Rico looked so mad, his head could explode. Must have a crush on Cari or something.

“Uh-oh,” Cari mumbled against his neck. “Here comes trouble.”

Joe glanced up. And looked squarely at the tailored knees of Eduardo Ferrare’s suit.
Trouble, indeed.

Chapter 11

C
ari flinched as Eduardo bellowed, “What’s the meaning of this?”

“What’s the meaning of what?” she asked innocently. “You were busy with your meeting so we decided to take a swim.”

Rico growled, “With no clothes on.”

Jerk. She took Joe’s advice and moved her arms vigorously, stirring up the surface of the water as much as possible. And, sure enough, the underwater spotlights popped on just then and the pool lit up like a brilliant blue topaz. It was acutely uncomfortable having a half dozen of her father’s armed guards standing around, staring down at the two of them like goldfish in a bowl.

Joe groused, “What do we have to do to keep the whole student body from crashing the party?”

“Stay in your room,” Eduardo snapped.

“Yeah, well that’s hard to do when my wife’s father is ordering her to go to his business meetings to serve drinks,” Joe snapped back.

Cari froze. Nobody talked to her father like that.

“Jeez, dude,” Joe continued. “If you needed me to spot you a little cash to hire a waiter, all you had to do was ask. I mean, we’re family now. I’d have helped you out.”

Cari inhaled and got a mouthful of water instead. She coughed and sputtered and Joe was there instantly, his strong arms around her and his incredibly powerful kicks supporting the two of them easily.

And then the rest of it registered. Joe’s body—all of it— was plastered against hers. He was warm and hard in the cool water, as lithe and muscular as a dolphin. What little breath she had was stolen from her by the feel of him. She’d love nothing more than to lose herself in the sensations bombarding her from head to toe.

She glanced up at him and their gazes locked in mutual shock. He was as aware of her as she was of him! For an instant, the rest of the world disappeared and it was just the two of them, floating weightless as one. This was exactly how it would be when they made love. They would create a world all their own where nothing and no one could come between them. She’d be safe and loved and would joyfully give every bit of herself, body and soul, to him.

Then Eduardo snapped, “Enough shilly-shallying around. Out of the water, you two.”

The spell was broken. She closed her eyes briefly as the pain of what could have been speared through her.

And then something equally delightful—
not
—occurred to her. She was going to have to climb out of the swimming pool, naked, in front of a crowd that had now swelled to over a dozen. It would put the cherry on top of a totally humiliating evening. First, that pervert sticking his fingers where he had no right to put them, and now this. She had no doubt Eduardo knew exactly how embarrassing this would be for her. And he didn’t care one bit. It was all about power. Control. Having the ability to order people to do things that were odious to them.