No Stranger to Danger (9 page)

Chapter Nine

1400 hours, Wednesday

Caracas, Venezuela

Mara slid from the taxi behind Logan and looked on the
Catia
barrio of Caracas. She could breathe a little easier after leaving the dangers of Africa, and took a deep breath of the Venezuelan air.

Mid-breath, a gunshot ricocheted through the top of the brightly colored, stacked barrio.

Mara choked on that breath, and she gaped as she looked up. The shouting that erupted filled the streets and sent a flock of nesting pigeons cooing out into the bright sky that was equally as colorful as the barrio filling the entire hillside. Homes climbed up one another all the way to the top of the hill, making her wonder just how they stacked so precariously without toppling or caving in.

Mara winced, her brows pulling together as she glanced up to Logan with a worry-filled expression. "You're sure
MacKall
is living in there?" she asked.

The place looked like the slum of slums, a den of corruption. If her memory served correctly,
that
wasn’t a place the classy, well kempt soldier she remembered would live. However, on the flight, Logan had briefed her on
MacKall's
part in the mission in Brazil and his fall from grace. Perhaps,
Connar
MacKall
wasn’t the man she used to know.

It didn’t surprise her, after having met Conyers, that he would stoop to pinning everything on
MacKall
when forced to cover up what the Special Forces team had uncovered.

For such a scumbag, it would be nothing to Conyers to destroy a good man.

And destroy he had.

Her eyes glided over the graffiti painted walls alongside the street as her mind flashed back to the lunatic gripping her hair and putting a gun to her head.

Only a little over two days had passed, but it seemed an eternity.

Logan pulled his head from the cab window and turned to her as the car pulled away. "That's what I've been told."

"By who?" she asked.

He glanced down at her. "I have my sources still. I keep up with everyone, even you. Your little house in the mountains is quite nice, but that boyfriend you had last year—" he squinted his eyes, his lips pinching together "—I didn’t care for him too much."

Mara frowned at his back as he stepped around her, and her lips fell apart. "Thanks," she said, a bit dryly, watching the swagger of his lean hips as he started down the street.

Her heart sank just a little at the thought of her home, but she stepped into the street after him, turning her mind to the incredulous idea of Logan having been close enough all along to snoop on her in his free time. "You’ve been spying on me? That is just weird."

Logan shrugged.

It was totally one thing to look into information about her home, but to spy on her personal relationships deeply enough to have formed an opinion, that was just too much.

Mara followed Logan down the trash littered street with sandy sides and overgrowth hanging over wall barricades that were as tall or taller than she was. The bright, offensive walls were spray-painted with graffiti down the entire length, lining the street as far as she could see.

"How are we going to find him in all this?" she asked, looking doubtfully up the hill.

The reputation of the barrios preceded them. They weren't a nice place to be, and the taxi driver had wasted plenty breath telling them all the way from the airport to the barrios. He'd said the crime rate only skyrocketed the further to the top of the barrio you went, and not even the local police would enter the upper levels of some. However, he couldn’t have known they had no choice but to venture in.

Logan only gave her an exasperated look over his shoulder. They continued on, further down the street, and she glanced at a street sign.
Autopista
Norte-Sur
.

Mara sniffed as they rounded a corner. She smelled the food before the stubby man with a silver vendor's cart came into sight. Logan approached him.

"
Buenas
tardes
,
señor
. Empanadas
?" The man with grey shocks of hair curving around the backside of his head, just above his ears, picked up one of the little pies in a red-checkered wrapper and lifted it toward them.

"
Dos
," Logan said and pulled out cash. He handed the money to the man in exchange for the empanadas and reached back to give one to Mara. "Tell me," Logan said to the man in Spanish, "have you seen another Americano living here in this barrio. Tall—" Logan raised his hand to demonstrate how tall. "Built.
Ex
militares
."

The man narrowed his eyes and began to shake his head, his double chin bouncing with the slow bobble.
"
Sì
,
sì
. Americano."
He turned and pointed to Logan's right, up and across the street, just past where the road made a Y, to a purple building on the corner with an open front and a tall, dark-skinned guard standing outside a cantina.

Mara and Logan glanced to one another.

"Your source was pretty damn accurate, if the
Americano
in there is him," Mara said in an aside whisper.

Logan turned back to the man and gave him a tilt of his head in gratitude. "
Gracias
," he said to him.

The man nodded back, and they started for the building.

Mara bit into her empanada. "This is good," she said around a bite, looking down into the little shell. Damn good for being the only thing she'd eaten since the layover in Paris. Logan had been so tense, expecting trouble, that they'd mostly stayed in hiding at CDG.

Chorizo and cheese.
Gawd
, Mara thought around another bite. "I can't believe you have nothing to say about this," she mumbled to Logan as he ate quickly, too. "We have to go back there." She pointed over her shoulder.

Sounds of cheering and loud talk spilled into the street as they crossed one side of the Y and paused on a median for a rusty, little, blue car to pass. Logan pressed at her lower back to guide her to cross with him.

She finished the empanada about the same time they came to a stop in front of the dark-skinned man, and she dusted her hands on the drab dress, swaying the ends around her feet as she did.

Logan looked around the doorman, and his stare hitched on the back of a man standing at the bar, his fists in the air, chorusing in with the rhythmic cheer of the other patrons. There was a stint of silence and then a heavy “
aagh
!”

Mara glanced around Logan at the TV hanging over liqueur bottles behind the short brown-skinned man with an empty glass in one hand and a towel in the other.

Soccer.

Of course.

"
Mi amigo
," Logan said to the bouncer and pointed at the back of
MacKall
.

Mara's stare followed the same line as the dark-skinned man's.

It had been a long several years, but at one time
Connar
MacKall
used to come over on weekends to their house to have supper and play cards. He would bring a girlfriend they would only see once and have a few beers, a few laughs. His youth, candor, and inability to form a lasting relationship used to make them feel settled and married even more. Once upon a time, he had been a welcomed, common sight in the happy farce she had called a marriage.

But now, seeing them all together in the same vicinity once again only made her feel bitter.

And the thirty-something at the bar also reminded her how long ago that had been.

****

"Never thought I'd be happy to see your pretty-boy face," Logan said as he clasped his old friend's hand tightly.

The reunion had been as expected. Their sudden appearance had obviously staggered
Connar
for quite a few moments, and, Logan would suspect, their presence had sobered him, too. He could only wish it would lift the smell of Jameson from his friend's clothing.

Connar
feigned a wince and squeezed Logan's arm all the harder. "Same here, bro. Only your face isn’t so pretty." His eyes roamed the plum-colored bruises on Logan's cheeks and at the corner of his eye. "What the hell brings you to this part of the world, and who did that?"

Logan locked his gaze on
MacKall's
and gave him a hard stare, one which he hoped would sober the man the rest of the way. "Conyers's friends," he said, lowering his voice.

MacKall's
face twitched with a snarl. "Conyers? John Conyers? The same son of a bitch who ruined my career?
That
Conyers?"

"That's why we are here," Logan said.

It was only then
MacKall
looked down past Logan's shoulder to Mara. There was a moment of uncertainty as he looked between the two. He shook his head and rubbed the back of his arm across his forehead, a beer bottle still gripped in his fist.

"Mara?"

A look of warning filled
MacKall's
stare then, meant for Logan alone. It clearly said Mara did not belong in this mess.

Logan scoffed to himself. Like he didn’t know that.

"What is she doing here?"
MacKall
asked slowly, cautiously, his stare still riveting between the two.

"Is there somewhere else we can go to talk?" Logan asked, glancing over his shoulder at the others in the cantina, though none seemed to notice them. Their stares were on his ex-wife's ass, tits, or the soccer game—in that order. Logan clenched his fist and moved to meet one of the Venezuelan's crass stares. The glare he gave the man forcefully turned the other man's attention back to the TV.

Not even a long-sleeved plain dress could hide Mara's attractive curves. He should have made her keep the hijab on. His eyes fell to where she had tied it fashionably around her neck, and his fingers itched to see it back over her head.

"Sure, man,"
Connar
said.

His voice jerked Logan's attention back to him.

"Let's go back to my place."
MacKall
turned to pay his tab, speaking in Spanish to the man behind the counter, and tossed money down before he turned back to Logan. "Just tell me what I need to do. If it involves that piece of shit traitor, I'll do anything. He cost me everything I cared about, and I wouldn't be standing here if it wasn't for you."

Logan looked on the other man with remorse. He had been the one to drag
MacKall
out of the compound—he had also been the one that had gotten his friend in there to begin with.

"Likewise. That's why you were the first person I thought of." Logan shook off regrets. "Also, Jericho is a bit distracted with a new family right now."

After Brazil, the suspicions placed on
MacKall
had been great. Although proven innocent of the charges Conyers had heaped on him,
MacKall
had not escaped unscathed. Once suspicion was placed on a man in his position, it was a hard thing to get away from. And Logan knew better than anyone, once your brothers in arms turn on you, once they believe you could be a traitor, it's hard to trust them again, too.

MacKall's
face fell a little at the mention of Jericho.

Though his team hadn't wanted him to, Jericho had done what Logan would have done. He left the military after thirteen years of service to his country, and hadn't looked back.