Her Enemy Protector (25 page)

He was joking?
Joking?
He’d just about killed a man a few minutes ago. Appalled, she stood up and walked across the room. Joe had pushed the bathroom door closed but hadn’t locked it. That was all the invitation she needed to barge in.

He spun around fast, his hands out in front of him like he was going to grab her. Some reflexes he had, there. The reflexes of a killer. Normally, she’d be riveted by the sight of him wearing nothing. But now, visions of him circling Rico, toying with her father’s guard, delivering blow after punishing blow to the man, danced through her head. And then the final moment. She’d never forget the sight of Joe grabbing Rico’s fist, twisting that knife up and back into Rico’s gut. The mere thought of it now made her sick.

Joe straightened. Relaxed. “What’s up?” he asked casually. As if he hadn’t a care in the world.

“You almost killed Rico,” she accused.

He shrugged. “What do you want me to say? I tried to talk him out of it, but he jumped me. It’s no crime to defend myself.”

“You didn’t defend yourself. You crushed him.”

Joe frowned. “If you mean that I beat him soundly, yes, I did. I’ve studied armed and unarmed combat practically since I was a kid. If you mean that I crushed Rico’s feelings, that’s too damn bad.”

Her eyes narrowed. Anger stirred in her belly. “You knew you’d make mincemeat out of him, but you still got into a fight with him.”

“
He
got into a fight with me. All I did was make the point to every wanna-be hero in the house not to come sneaking into your room late at night with the bright idea of taking me out.”

“Nobody would sneak into my room to kill you.”

“Oh, yeah? Then how in the hell did Tony die in your bed?”

The air whooshed out of her like he’d just buried a fist in her stomach. She gasped a couple of times, but no air went into her lungs. Finally, she managed to draw a shaky breath. “That was a low blow.”

“That’s the truth, Cari. Wake up and look around you. This is a house full of killers working for a killer. One of them got froggy and decided to test me and I had to prove that I’m not someone who can be trampled all over. I did no more than I absolutely had to out there.”

His voice was sharp as a whip, cutting into her skin and flaying her heart. She heard the truth of his words, knew in her head that he was right, but she just couldn’t accept the idea that he’d turned out to be no better than her father. Both men lashed out in violence whenever their dominance was challenged.

“How can you measure violence so precisely? What differentiates I-had-to-do-it violence from It-felt-good-to-show-how-strong-I-am violence?”

Joe snorted. “You don’t know the first thing about measuring violence.”

“Oh, but you do, don’t you?” she snapped.

He took an aggressive step forward and she backed up fast, slamming her shoulder blades against the tiled wall at her back.

“Yes, honey, I do. I’ve forgotten more about violence than you’ll ever begin to know.”

And she could see it in his eyes. The knife fights he’d been in before. The men he
hadn’t
stopped fighting with to treat their wounds. The men he’d
killed
.

“How many men?” she whispered in horror.

“How many men what?” he repeated.

“How many have you killed?”

“I have no idea. I don’t keep count. More than I’d like and less than you think.”

“You’re just like him,” she accused.

“Like who?”

“My father,” she spit out, turning her back on him in fury.

Joe’s hand, powerful and angry, grabbed her upper arm and spun her around. His voice was cold. Flat. Furious. “I’ve got plenty of flaws, and I’ve done stuff that would curl your toes, but don’t
ever
compare me to that bastard again.”

She’d compare him to whomever she wanted to, dammit. And if she saw her father in him, tough. The thought arrested her. Was that why she was falling for Joe? Was he just a younger version of her father? Was she repeating the same mistake she’d made her whole life of trusting a man to whom everyone—including her—and everything was merely a tool to be used and discarded at his convenience? “What do you want, Joe? Why are you here?”

He scowled. “You know why I’m here. I’m getting you out of here. Away from your father.”

“Yeah, and you’ve really made huge progress in that direction, haven’t you?” Cari snapped. “You’ve learned all kinds of things about my father and his organization and haven’t done a damn thing to spring us out of here.”

“It’s been less than forty-eight hours since I slipped that ring on your finger, Cari. But I’ll be ready to leave tonight. And don’t bother packing. We’ll be traveling light.”

“You got me away from my father’s men once so we could get married. Why did we come back here? What is it you want so badly in this house?”

He stared at her, his gaze blazing hot. “I’ll say it one more time,” he ground out. “I’m here to get you out.” And with that, he stepped into the shower.

She so wanted to scream! To rage against what he’d done. To force him to allay her doubts about him. To swear to her that he was different from her father. To convince her that his brand of violence was somehow better. Noble.

But at the end of the day, it was all the same thing. He’d harmed a weaker opponent in cold blood because it helped establish his macho reputation. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was trying to worm his way into her father’s good graces and leapfrog to the top of her father’s crime empire, just like Eduardo had accused him of doing yesterday.

She slid down the cool wall at her back as the room slowly filled with steam. Hugging her knees close to her chest, she finally let the tears flow. Tears of the abject terror she’d felt, standing there watching Joe fight for his life against a much larger, much stronger opponent. Tears of frustration that he wasn’t being forthcoming with her and that she had no way of knowing for sure if he
was
telling the truth.

And for once, she shed tears of sorrow for herself. Just for once, she wanted to be a normal person and have normal problems and live a normal life and love a normal guy.

A normal guy—her personal misery derailed as yet another distressing thought burst into her head. Speaking of normal guys, surely it was against Charlie Squad’s rules of engagement to attack and knife bystanders for the hell of it. Was Joe really a member of Charlie Squad, after all? Had he hoodwinked Julia into believing he was a good guy when he really wasn’t? Had Cari seen a heroic soldier in Joe because she so desperately wanted him to be one?

He’d steadfastly denied being in Charlie Squad from the very beginning. Even last night, when she’d told him her father was out to kill every member of the team, he’d denied being one of them.

Her whole life was unraveling around her, and no matter what she did, she couldn’t seem to hold it all together. The threads were slipping through her fingers faster than she could gather them back up. She just wanted Joe to be who he said he was, needed him to be a good guy, to love her back.

Was that too much to ask?

Chapter 15

C
ari was gone when Joe got out of the shower. He dried off quickly, wrapped the towel around his hips and walked out into the bedroom to get some clothes. Cari wasn’t in the bedroom, either. Probably just as well. She was still pretty freaked out by the knife fight.

He had a fair bit of damage control to do with her. He needed to track her down and talk with her. Calmly. When he wasn’t so on edge. The shower helped release a lot of the pent-up violence still racing through his blood. He was still mad as hell at Rico for picking the damned fight in the first place, but his gut-pounding anger had receded to manageable proportions. Unfortunately, her father was waiting for him right now. First, Eduardo, then Cari.

He dressed, toweled his hair dry and combed it into place. Time to go beard the lion in his den. He walked downstairs and headed for Eduardo’s office, keeping an eye out for Cari. He didn’t see her out and about. He knocked on the office door and Eduardo called for him to enter. As he stepped inside, all his attention zeroed in on the man seated at the desk across the room. A person didn’t deal with Eduardo Ferrare without every brain cell on high alert. Not if he wanted to live for long.

As he approached the desk, Eduardo waved at a chair and said, “Have a seat, Joe.”

That was the first time Eduardo had ever used his name. And he was inviting Joe to actually sit down? Whoa. What was up with that? He took the proffered seat.

“Did you see Gunter on your way down here?” Eduardo snapped.

“No.”

Eduardo stood up impatiently. “He’s not answering his cell phone. I’ll be back in a minute.”

The second Eduardo left the room, Joe stood up and went around to the far side of Eduardo’s desk. A thin stack of file folders sat on the glass desktop. They hadn’t been there the last time Joe was in this office. Could these be the files that Eduardo had paid his informants so handsomely for?

He didn’t have much time. Joe flipped open the first file folder. And stared in complete and utter horror…
at his own military personnel file.

Shock exploded in his brain, nearly blinding him. He struggled to focus, to make out the words blurring together on the page. His job qualifications, physical description, home address, for God’s sake! At least there wasn’t a freaking picture in there, too!

Quickly, he flipped through the other folders. Mac, Tex, Howdy, Dutch and even the colonel. They were all here. All the important details of their training and personal lives were sitting on their archenemy’s desk.

As he understood it, these personnel files were classified at roughly the same level as U. S. nuclear information. How had anybody sneaked this information out of Charlie Squad headquarters? To his knowledge, there were only a handful of places in the entire armed forces where any record of their existence was kept, let alone all these details.

Had Eduardo figured out who he was? Was that the purpose of this little tête-à-tête with his father-in-law?

Every nerve in his body screamed at him to run.
Now.
As far away and as fast as he could go. Except he couldn’t leave Cari behind. He’d promised Julia and, more importantly, he’d promised Cari. He
wouldn’t
abandon her to her father’s tender mercies, under any circumstances. He’d sneak out of this office. Go upstairs and get her right now. They’d have to press ahead with the escape plan immediately. It would be a hundred times more dangerous in daylight, but what choice did they have?

Voices spoke on the other side of the office door. Joe scuttled out from behind the desk and flopped down in one of the chairs in front, just as Eduardo opened the door and walked in. He watched in silence as the older man crossed the room and sat down at his desk.

“You said you wanted to talk to me?” Joe said cautiously.

Eduardo leaned back in his chair and swiveled to face the ocean before answering. He gazed out the wall of windows for a minute before saying, “I caught the little sideshow out by the pool.”

Joe sighed. “I’m sorry about that. I swear, I didn’t start it. I tried to talk him out of it—”

Eduardo interrupted. “I heard you.”

“Oh.” Joe sat there in silence. Okay, then. Why he wasn’t dead already, he hadn’t the foggiest idea. Was it possible that Eduardo hadn’t made the connection between him and Joe Rodriguez? Ferrare wasn’t stupid.

Guilty people had a tendency to babble. He had to keep his cool. Continue to act like he had nothing to hide. As if he had not a care in the world.

He sat back, telegraphing to Eduardo that he’d have to initiate the conversation. After all, he’d called this little meeting in the first place. Joe wasn’t going to carry the ball, here.

Eduardo read the signal and picked up the ball right on cue. “You handled yourself well out there today. Where’d you learn to fight like that?”

Joe shrugged. “There are places in the States where the streets are still pretty tough. I grew up in one of them.”

“And the medical stuff?”

“I learned that in firefighter school. I thought I told you before that I’m an EMT. I’ve been scraping people off concrete for a while now.”

“Is that why you were so calm under pressure?”

Joe laughed. “You didn’t see the part where I went upstairs and cleaned out my shorts.”

Eduardo leaned back in his chair. He steepled his fingers together under his chin and studied Joe intently. “I may have underestimated you.”

Joe leaned back, as well, sprawling casually, his feet outstretched and his arms hanging loosely over the sides of the chair. But his mind was racing a mile a minute. Where was Ferrare going with this conversation?

It could not possibly be good to have drawn the man’s attention in this way, particularly by displaying some of the extremely specialized skills he’d acquired as a member of Charlie Squad. He had to get out of here. The sooner the better.

“The only thing you may have underestimated was how much I truly love your daughter. And even though I’m really digging this father-son bonding bit, I gotta split, man. If you don’t mind, I really need to get back to Cari and calm her down a little bit. She’s still pretty freaked out.”

“She’ll get over it,” Eduardo replied carelessly. “If you see Gunter on your way out, send him in here.”

Joe did his damndest not to clench his jaw at the callous tone from Cari’s own father. He stepped into the hallway and practically ran into Gunter, who looked to be heading for Ferrare’s office already.

“Hey! Just the guy I was looking for,” Joe said jovially. “The boss man wants to talk to you.” He didn’t stop to chat but rather headed straight for the stairs and his overwrought wife.

Gunter watched Joe go.
Good-looking young man. A lot smarter than he acted.
He could see why Cari was head over heels for him. The good news was, Joe seemed to feel the same way about her, too. Lord knows, she deserved a little happiness after growing up in this hellhole.