Hot Ice (2 page)

August 10

San Cristóbal

South America

Dressed in black, shrouded by the night, T-FLAC operative Huntington St. John melded with the darkness of the fetid alley behind the adobe jail. Night vision glasses made it possible to observe every inch of the inky interior of the cell through a narrow barred window high in the wall.

Empty.

Where in the
hell
was the prisoner?

It had taken six long, bloody months to discover this woman's identity. Six months, and the considerable resources of the counter-terrorist organization Hunt worked for. It hadn't been easy, by God, and he was not leaving without her.

He needed a thief. Someone resourceful, cunning, and unscrupulous. Someone at the top of his game. Hunt wanted the best. Nothing less would do.

Determined to find the right thief, T-FLAC's crack team had scrutinized past burglary victims for the last five years. Limiting their search to individuals, or companies, with collections of fine gems who had the most sophisticated, advanced security systems. They'd compiled lists comprising thousands upon thousands of names. They'd cross-matched friends of the victims, relatives, staff, and lifestyle to find a common denominator.

Three hundred names had cross-matched, and 118 people appeared on more than six lists. A deep background check on those suspects turned up an interesting anomaly. Seventeen of the women had identical, or nearly identical, backgrounds. Or, rather, one woman had seventeen identities.

No one, other than himself and a few select T-FLAC operatives, even knew the thief was a woman. They'd finally connected the dots.

Hunt had his thief.

But where the hell was she?

An hour after ascertaining who she was, and with an educated guess, where she might be, he was wheels up and headed for South America. It was highly suspect that she just
happened
to be in the very city he needed her to be in. San Cristóbal.

In flight he'd knew she'd robbed Jose Morales followed by a quick arrest minutes before he touched down in San Cristóbal.

So, it was
a fait accompli
.

A quick, thorough search of her hotel room revealed nothing. Not a hint, not a clue. No surprise there. She never left clues. Ever. Which is why it had been so fucking hard to discover who she was in the first place.

This woman wasn't merely
extraordinarily
good at what she did, she was a
phenomenon
. And fearless.

She was the one he wanted. And by God, he'd have her. Even if, as he suspected, she'd been hired by someone else.

Despite intel to the contrary, her absence from the cell could be explained by one of three options: she'd been moved to another location, the other party had already extracted her, or she'd been killed.

Now
that
would be bloody inconvenient all around. He'd already invested enough time and energy. He wasn't about to start looking for someone else now.

Suddenly, footsteps echoed down a hallway. Clear, loud, deliberate.

Two pairs—heavy, booted. And the odd, incongruous sound of chains rattling, like something out of a bad horror film.

One of the guards kicked open the cell door. It slammed against the adobe wall and let in muted light from the hallway to illuminate the cramped cell. "
This
time,
bruja
," the jailer threatened in Spanish, "you will
not
get free."

Hunt's mouth flattened into a thin line as he took in the tableau in the doorway.

Trussed up in chains, the woman couldn't brace herself as the guards flung her through the open door and onto the floor with a thud. Her head bounced on the cement and she let out a startled grunt of pain.

Hunt bit back a curse. This was precisely why he disliked women involved in missions. They were vulnerable and easily broken. He hated like hell seeing someone soft and delicate hurt.

The chains wrapped around her sounded almost musical as she rolled across the floor, until, stopped by the opposite wall, she lay still.

The two guards observed their prisoner for a few minutes from the doorway, speculating in rapid-fire Spanish as to whether the woman was a witch. Or worse. So, she'd attempted an escape, had she? He shook his head. Nice try, but no cigar, sweetheart. This prison built on the outskirts of town housed political prisoners, as well as the dregs of humanity. No one, including apparently a pro like her, had ever escaped.

Hunt was about to change that.

Listening to the conversation between the guards, Hunt shook his head. She'd given it her best shot
five
times. 5-0 wasn't a great track record, but it sure took guts. No wonder the men were pissed. No wonder they had a mile of bicycle chain wrapped around her body, and God only knew how many gleaming new padlocks fastened down her back. She'd be lucky to draw in an unrestricted breath, let alone stand.

The metal door clanged shut and the key ground harshly in the lock.
Sorry to disappoint, hombres, but she's mine
. He listened to the guards' footsteps retreat down the hallway toward the front of the jail.

The crunch of tires on gravel drifted between the buildings down the narrow alley where he waited. Headlights strobed over the single-story structures as cars and trucks pulled into the unseen parking lot of the seedy nightclub across the alley behind the jail.

Vehicle doors slammed. Glass clinked. Laughing voices rose. A band tuned up their instruments. The door of the dive opened and slammed. Opened and slammed. Opened, letting out the raucous sounds of the crowd warming up for the evening. All music to Hunt's ears.

He knew the bar would soon be packed to the rafters. The band would be loud enough to deafen anyone within a hundred yards, and the secondhand smoke would make a five-pack-a-day smoker look like a piker. This was almost
too
easy.

The night air felt thick and oppressive. Not even a glimmer of a star broke the blackness of the sky overhead. San Cristóbal in midsummer was not for the fainthearted. He'd been here several years ago on another op. The sprawling city on the edge of the rain forest was too damn crowded for his liking. Known for its topless beaches and raunchy night life, it wasn't one of Hunt's favorite places.

The atmosphere was a South American version of spring break—noise, people, skin, and excessive drinking. The combination usually turned things ugly before midnight. It was a quarter till.

In the distance, a dog's barks turned to mournful howls. A car backfired. Lights continued strafing the roofline as more vehicles turned into the parking lot of the club. A steel guitar riffed in a jangle of bad chords, followed by the thump of sticks on the drum as the band continued its warm-up.

The chains wrapped around the woman chinked. Good. If she could move, she wasn't too badly hurt. As far as Hunt was concerned, as long as she could talk and think long enough to tell him what he wanted to know, that was sufficient.

In theory, he had no problem with her captivity.

She was where thieves belonged.

But not where he needed her to be for the moment.

Oblivious to the muggy heat causing his dark shirt to stick to his back, he gave a quick tug to the clamps he'd hooked to the bars earlier, making sure they were secure. A clever T-FLAC invention, the device, small enough to fit in his pocket, it consisted of a complex series of pulleys and thin metal cable, and needed very little pressure to act as a fulcrum.

The band segued into their first number. What the group lacked in talent they made up for in volume. The ruckus from the club would drown out all but an atomic bomb.

"Thanks," Hunt muttered dryly as he exerted the small hand movement necessary to activate the tool. Inside the cell the chinking of the chains abruptly stopped.

He stepped aside as window frame, bars, and chunks of plaster came out of the old adobe wall with a grinding
thunk
.

Chapter Two

San Cristóbal

"What," the icy voice in Theresa Smallwood's ear dripped fury, "do you mean
there was nothing there
? You arranged for the arrest immediately when she got back to her hotel, like I told you, didn't you?"

Sweat pooled in the small of Theresa's back as she pressed the receiver against her ear. The sound of the long-distance-distorted voice crawled over her skin like the tiny feet of a dozen spiders. The cramped phone booth stunk of pee, sweat, and fear. Theresa was responsible for two out of the three.

She shuddered, knuckles white as she clenched the receiver, and forced herself to respond. Forced her voice to remain steady. Competent.

"No more than three seconds," she assured her boss. She prayed she didn't sound as scared as she felt. They both knew how important this assignment was.

How dare that fucking thief put
her
life in danger? Theresa thought, still shaken with anger. She'd asked the girl to work for her.

She'd offered to pay her, and pay her well, to retrieve the contents of Morales's safe. Which, for Christ's sake, she was going to do
anyway
. The girl refused Theresa flat out.

"Smallwood?"

Theresa swallowed fear-thick spit. "She'd barely closed the door when the Federales grabbed her." She hadn't had a
chance
to hide anything. And Christ knew, she was too damn
slick
to have gone to all that trouble to hand it over to the police.

Theresa had waited a few minutes to make sure no one saw her, then tossed the hotel room. Politely. Professionally. No-one-would-suspect carefully. Nothing. Not a fucking thing. Nada. Zip.

"Then you have what I want," the voice said smoothly in her ear. Not a question. Never a question.

Theresa's armpits prickled with dread and her mouth went bone dry. She needed a drink, she needed one bad. "I'll meet with our Rio contact as planned. Tomorrow," she said with utmost conviction, the answer implicit.

The air seemed to vibrate menacingly around Theresa as the silence on the other end of the phone lengthened. When she heard a click instead of the ass-reaming she expected, she let the phone drop and slumped back against the bullet-riddled glass of the phone booth as though she were a puppet with her strings cut.

She'd find the bitch if it was the last thing she did.

She exited the phone booth, then strode across the gravel lot of the abandoned gas station to the rental car.

Oh, she'd find the girl all right. She'd find the girl, retrieve what she'd stolen, and
then
slice her skin from her skinny body in one long ribbon like peeling a fucking apple. Theresa hadn't gotten where she was by letting emotions get in the way of business. Business was brutal.

If she had to screw the brains out of every cop in this godforsaken city to find out where the woman was being held, she vowed she'd do it.

Theresa was proud of the small elegant black rose tattooed on the small of her back. One day soon she would have more petals added, and she'd be
the
Black Rose. Until then she'd do her job, and do it well. And when the time came, she'd carve that full-blown rose tattoo off the current Black Rose's skin.