Her Enemy Protector (2 page)

And then two more things struck her simultaneously: a sensation of wetness on her skin and a metallic smell.

What in the world…

She sat up and took a good look at the other side of her bed. And jumped violently.
There was someone lying there!

The house’s ventilation system kicked on just then, its fan billowing her curtains just enough to cast a thin shaft of moonlight across her bed. She caught a glimpse of a silver crucifix earring in her unexpected companion’s left ear.

“Jeez Louise, Tony,” she whispered. “You scared the daylights out of me! How in the world did you get up here without my father’s men seeing you?” She reached over and nudged his shoulder. She whispered, “Hey, you. Wake up. Don’t snooze through my great escape on me, will you?”

Nothing. A feeling of dread rose from her stomach.

“Tony. Wake up.” She shook him harder.

He was out like a light.

She reached over and turned on the small lamp on the nightstand beside her bed. It cast a circle of yellow light on the room. She turned back to Tony.

Her scream split the night air like the fall of a guillotine.

There was blood
everywhere
. Her white lace bedspread was soaked in red. The sheets, the pillows and now even her clothing were bathed in it. Congealed blood defined a dark gash across Tony’s neck. Frantically, she crouched over him, pressing her hand against the long wound.

“Tony!” she cried. “Oh, God, Tony!”

And then she noticed his eyes, glassy and blank, staring off into space. His mouth was open, pulled back into a rictus of terror. She glanced down at the bed and saw his hand clenched around the sheets. A single thought exploded in her brain.

Her father had slit a man’s throat in his own daughter’s bed.

The horror of it hit her first, sending bile up into her throat. And then the guilt struck. If she hadn’t asked Tony to help her, he wouldn’t be lying here, dead. She felt violently sick to her stomach.

On top of everything else, a wave of utter hopelessness slammed into her. She’d never escape her father.
Never.
And with that thought, despair closed in on her.

She knew her father was a criminal. A cruel, ruthless man. But never, ever, had he turned that violence directly on her. That had been the one constant in her life. Her father loved her in a distant sort of way, and for all his flaws, he’d always protected her from the world he lived in.

But tonight, he’d smashed that silent covenant to smithereens in a pool of blood.

And that was what broke her. Something cracked inside her heart. It was too much to bear. She couldn’t go on any longer. She wasn’t strong enough to keep fighting who and what her father was.

A great black pit of despair yawned before her and, numbly, she stepped into it. She scrambled awkwardly off the bed, backing away, nauseated, from her last hope for freedom. She noticed vaguely that she was leaving bloody footprints on the white carpet.

Clumsy with creeping terror, she pulled out the fire escape ladder stored in the trunk by the French doors and fumbled to hook it onto the balcony ledge. Desperately fleeing the horror behind her, she flung herself over the side of the stone railing.

Joe Rodriguez floated just below the surface of the shallow ocean, gently buffeted by the waves gathering to race ashore. His neoprene scuba suit protected him from the worst of the cold, but even at this equatorial latitude, a night dive in the Atlantic Ocean was vicious.

He peered through his night-vision goggles at his diving watch. He had about two hours of oxygen left. He put the periscope’s eyepiece back to his face mask. Nothing much was happening at the Ferrare estate in front of him.

His target, Carina Ferrare, the younger daughter of international crime lord Eduardo Ferrare, had just come home. Since it was a Friday night and she’d left wearing a tight skirt and a blouse unbuttoned practically to her waist, Joe guessed she’d been out dancing again. She’d done a
lot
of that in the two weeks he’d been watching her. Apparently, it was the only activity her father let her out of the house to engage in.

It almost made a guy sympathize with her. Except he’d spent too many years scraping bodies off the ground or patching back together the victims of her family’s violence to have much sympathy for Carina Ferrare. She lived a life of pampered, luxurious excess paid for in other people’s blood and suffering. And surely, she knew it. Anyone with a shred of conscience would be too embarrassed to show her face in public. But the younger Ferrare flaunted her family’s ill-gotten wealth. She wore outrageously expensive clothing and jewelry, and from what he’d seen, she tossed money around like candy. No matter the horror of its origin.

The only good news for his mission was that, despite her extravagant lifestyle, he got the distinct impression she was unhappy. The poor little rich girl couldn’t buy love, could she? The corner of his mouth twitched in a momentary sneer.

But he had faith she’d jump at any opportunity to get away from her father. Frankly, she struck him as the type to leap at any new adventure—the wilder, the better.

Such a contrast to the older sister. Julia Ferrare was responsible and thoughtful, a gentle soul who had risked her life to do the right thing and stop her father. Julia was the banker who handled all of Eduardo Ferrare’s finances, and she’d agreed to testify against her crime lord father just as soon as her younger sister was freed from his clutches.

So here Joe was, preparing to rescue Carina Ferrare, whether she liked it or not. He was the advance man, doing tedious, around-the-clock surveillance to nail down the younger Ferrare daughter’s routines and habits. It was his job to figure out the best mode of snatching her, whether to approach her and enlist her cooperation or just throw a bag over her head and grab her. The four other reasonably healthy members of Charlie Squad, a highly classified Air Force Special Forces team, would join him in another week or so to help him run the actual rescue operation.

Charlie Squad had been chasing Eduardo Ferrare for nearly a decade, and they almost had him now. It had been a huge breakthrough when Julia Ferrare had agreed to go before a grand jury and reveal everything she knew about her father’s crime empire. Given that she kept the books for the whole operation, she knew more than enough to put her old man behind bars for the rest of his life. But she’d been adamant. Charlie Squad
had
to pull out her sister before she’d say a word.

He wasn’t all that worried about gaining Carina’s freedom. What charm couldn’t accomplish, coercion could. Surely any daughter of Eduardo’s understood all about force and its myriad applications.

The hard part was going to be keeping her under wraps once the squad had her. A girl with looks like hers wouldn’t be easy to hide until they got her out of Gavarone. Especially since the tiny country was firmly in Eduardo’s back pocket, compliments of the millions of dollars in crime money he injected into Gavarone’s economy while laundering his fortune.

Plus, Carina was a celebrity in her own right. She turned heads everywhere she went with her wavy brunette hair, light green eyes and exotic features. Not to mention she had legs that didn’t quit.

She was a heartbreaker if he’d ever seen one. The kind of self-centered, high-maintenance princess who’d run rough-shod over anyone dumb enough to actually love her.

Something brushed against his leg and Joe glanced down. A grouper fish. Smallish but definitely edible. Had he not been on a mission, he’d have speared the thing and had a tasty supper tomorrow. Thankfully, it wasn’t one of the plentiful sharks that roamed these waters. He plastered his eye to the lens of the periscope, put the shivering cold out of his mind and resumed the thrilling task of underwater night surveillance.

He counted off the minute or so it would take Cari, as he’d overheard her clubbing friends call her, to reach her bedroom from the front door. Any second now, the lights in her room should go on. He watched the appropriate window. No light, but the French doors opened and she stepped out onto her balcony. Right on schedule. She went out there often to gaze out at the ocean. Damn, she was beautiful—and wistful—as she stared out toward the ocean.

Whether he wished her ill or not, he couldn’t help but react to her sad expression. He was a healer, after all. A medic normally in the business of easing pain and suffering. Her melancholy called to him as irresistibly as a siren song.
Aw, hell.
He was a sucker for hard-luck cases, and it didn’t hurt when they came in wrappings like hers.

Good thing the very name Ferrare made him clench his teeth in rage and disgust. It lent him a measure of immunity to her charms. Still, he allowed himself to savor the sight of her breathtaking features as she leaned on the balcony, staring out to sea.

After a while, she rubbed her arms and went back inside.

He was probably done for the night. He’d give it a few more minutes until she was safely asleep, then swim the half mile down the beach to the surveillance post he’d set up for this op.

Normally, all of his teammates on Charlie Squad would be at the base camp, providing backup. But they were tied up in Virginia right now. Julia had fingered an informant inside the squad’s support team and the rest of the guys were still tracking him down.

If they didn’t catch the informant soon, the squad would have to sneak away under other pretexts and make their way down to Gavarone without tipping off the informant—and Eduardo. Colonel Folly, the team’s commander, would be coming as well to supplement their depleted ranks.

It had been a rough winter on the team, with several serious injuries among them, but the result had been worth it—their number one enemy was dead center in their sights. Eduardo Ferrare was going down. Soon. The only hitch was that all their hard work and sacrifices weren’t going to be worth a hill of beans if Joe didn’t figure out a way to get at Carina.

He stowed his periscope and surfaced for the swim back to a hot shower. Suddenly, surprisingly, a light snapped on in Cari’s room. That was odd. She ought to be in bed by now.

A high-pitched scream drifted faintly across the water.

His senses jolted to full alert.
Something was wrong.
Cari was in trouble. He swam for shore and the mansion. He didn’t have the slightest idea what he was going to do when he got there, but every nerve in his body shrieked for him to get to her. Now.

The tide was going out and he fought against the currents dragging him back out to sea. A hefty little riptide had set itself up. Dammit. He didn’t have time to mess around with drifting down the beach and then coming ashore. He kicked harder.

And then he saw her. Out on her balcony.
What in the hell was she doing?
He lifted his head, treading water while he watched her toss a rope ladder over the edge of her balcony and shimmy down it awkwardly. She wore only a skimpy tank top and a pair of bikini panties that were dark-colored and plastered wetly to her skin.

She ran barefoot as fast as her long legs would take her toward the high fence that separated the beach from the grounds of the estate. She paused only long enough to punch in a number on a keypad by the gate and then she was tearing down the beach toward the water. She looked completely out of her mind with fear.

Joe’s adrenaline roared and, abruptly, he wasn’t the slightest bit cold. Stunned, he watched as she kept right on running, straight into the cold surf.
What was she doing?
She wasn’t dressed for this kind of water!

She was headed straight at him. Had her older sister told Cari he’d be out here? Couldn’t be. Julia Ferrare didn’t know the details of the plan to rescue her sister. She was still recovering from her own injuries, suffered while escaping her father.

But here came Cari, splashing right at him. She was a strong swimmer, and her slender arms pulled her rapidly toward deep water. He knew the exact spot where the beach shelf gave way to a steep drop-off. She was almost there. And then the riptide would snag her and push her out to sea. No matter how good a swimmer she was, she’d be in serious trouble then.

He put his mouthpiece back in and submerged. He’d reach her faster that way than if he tried to fight the currents on the surface. With powerful kicks of his rubber fins, he propelled himself toward her.

The visibility stunk this close to shore. The waves stirred up sand and sediment, and he could hardly see his hand in front of his face. Only the slightest hint of moonlight penetrated the water. Were it not for his night-vision goggles, he’d be as blind as a bat. He surfaced long enough to get another fix on Cari’s position. Slightly to his left. He corrected course, ducked under water again and kicked like crazy.

She had to be getting damned cold. Hypothermia was going to do her in faster than exhaustion or the riptide. He surfaced again to look for her. Just ahead of him. Maybe thirty feet away. Her stroke was faltering. Damn!
She was in trouble.

He put on a last burst of speed. He couldn’t see a blessed thing under the water. She had to be right in front of him. He looked around for any sign of her.

And then he caught a glimpse of her pale body off to his right. Her arms were barely moving. As he watched, her limbs went still. She kicked spasmodically for a second or two and then stopped moving again. He watched in horror as she sank slowly beneath the surface of the water.

What in the hell was she doing?
Don’t give up, Cari,
he begged as he surged upward beneath her.
Hang on, just a few more seconds!

She spiraled downward toward him, a pale, lissome shape, her hair swirling gently around her head. She looked like a mermaid descending into the ocean’s black depths.

Except Carina Ferrare was no mermaid. She was a flesh-and-blood woman who needed to
breathe
.

Joe kicked with all his strength and shot up beside her. He yanked the mouthpiece out of his own mouth and shoved it into hers. She started violently as it touched her. He remembered belatedly that she wasn’t wearing night-vision goggles and couldn’t see him in the water’s blackness.