Unmasking the Mercenary (7 page)

“The last thing I want is anything to happen to her,” he said after a while. “It’s the reason I’m taking her with me…I don’t have a choice…believe me, I wanted to get her on that plane as much as you did.”

A longer silence passed. If Haley knew Cullen, he was demanding information from Rem. She watched as Rem relented.

“Yes, his name is Ammar Farid Salloum,” he said at last. “You wondered if Habib Maalouf was into terrorist financing, well, you were right. But it goes a lot deeper than that. Ammar’s the one you want, not Habib. Ammar’s been threatening Habib for years. Holding the lives of his family over his head if he doesn’t do what he wants. Usually that’s laundering money through the purchase of diamonds.” He paused. “That I can’t tell you.”

What had Cullen asked? What couldn’t he tell anyone?

“I’ll get Ammar. That’s all you need to know,” Rem said.

Haley heard Cullen’s raised voice from across the vehicle but couldn’t decipher what he said.

Rem glanced over at her before facing forward again. “I understand your concern, but there’s nothing I can do about it. If you believe nothing else I tell you, believe that Ammar will find Haley no matter where she goes. He’ll find her and he’ll kill her.”

He paused again as Cullen spoke on the other end of the connection. “I know Ammar. Better than I want to know him. He won’t try anything as long as Haley’s with me.”

Was Ammar afraid of Rem? Judging by the long silence, Cullen was wondering the same thing, or else he’d realized he wasn’t going to win the argument. Rem wasn’t budging. And if someone as disreputable as Ammar was afraid of him, he must be more dangerous than any of them imagined.

She was still grappling with that and the notion that he knew more than he was saying when he handed her the phone.

“He asked for you,” he said. “Not too kindly, either.”

She took the phone and Rem faced the road as though nothing unusual had occurred.

“Cullen?”

“I don’t like how personal it is for him. He won’t even tell me why he’s after Ammar.”

The picture of the woman flashed in her mind. “Don’t send anyone, Cullen. Not yet. Let’s see where this leads over the next couple of days.”

“Out of the question.”

“Cullen—”

“I’m not leaving you with a guy like that. I don’t trust him.”

“He isn’t going to hurt me.”

Silence.

“I can gather information.” It was the closest she could come to letting him know she’d picked up on the fact that Rem might be withholding something big from them.

Cullen didn’t say anything. She could tell he still wasn’t convinced, but he was beginning to waver. Haley was his only inside source at the moment. He wanted to maintain that, but he didn’want her at risk.

“I’m safe with him, Cullen. You know that,” she coaxed.

“You’re anything but safe, Haley. I want you back here.”

“Well, I don’t want to come back yet. I want to see what else I can dig up on Ammar and anyone he’s associated with.”

“Precisely why I want you back here. I don’t want you going any further with this.”

“You wouldn’t have sent Travis and I to Monrovia if you didn’t think there was something worth pursuing.”

“You’re alone now. Travis isn’t with you.”

“I’m not a victim anymore. When are you and Travis going to get that?”

Cullen sighed hard, the size of his frustration reaching her from across the miles separating them. “I’m posting some men in Monrovia. They’ll be at the Mamba Point Hotel.”

“Cullen—”

“You have forty-eight hours before I tell them to go after you. And my order is going to be shoot to kill without asking questions. Understand?”

“Yes.” It was the best she’d get from him.

She said goodbye and held the phone in her lap. Beside her, Rem stayed quiet and kept his attention on the road.

“Who is she?” she asked.

As she expected, that brought his head around. The abruptness of it.

“The woman in the picture,” she explained. “It was in the zipper comp—”

“I said get the phone, not snoop around in my things,” he said, cutting her off.

She decided not to mention that her gun didn’t belong to him. “I know she’s the reason you’re doing this.” She hesitated. “Now that you’re dragging me into your mess, I have a right to know who she is.”

“Was.”

Did that mean she was dead? Haley had to push back her sympathy. “Who was she?”

His hand tightened on the wheel.

“You must have loved her,” she pressed.

“She was my sister.”

Haley began to see the resemblance, except for the woman’s dark eyes. “What happened?”

He didn’t respond and she didn’t make him. She could feel his anguish. See it in his profile. “Ammar killed her, didn’t he?”

Still, no response.

“Why?”

“Enough questions, Haley.” He drove to a stop in front of a shack of a building.

She didn’t force the issue. Little by little his puzzle was unraveling, and it contradicted his character. He seemed so trustworthy, yet his past was far from redeeming. And he clearly had something to hide. He didn’t pretend to deny that fact, either. He didn’t care who knew he wasn’t revealing everything. He wasn’t going to bend.

Well, she wasn’t leaving his side until she uncovered whatever made him feel so threatened. She just hoped that when all was said and done he’d be standing on the right side. Her side. She didn’t think her gut was wrong about him, but then, why was he guarding his secrets so well?

Getting out of the SUV, she looked closer at the run-down building. If one could call it a building. It didn’t even look like it could keep out the rain. “What’s this?”

“Our new accommodations.” He turned a wry grin her way. “It’s a step down from the last one.”

She took in the chipping blue paint and cracking concrete, and moved on up to the rusting metal roof. “Welcome to Liberia.” She stepped into the place behind him. “Why are we here? In Robertstown, I mean.”

“Habib comes here to meet his diamond contact.”

“So after he gets the diamonds we…what? Follow him?” She saw the two single beds and ramshackle chair and grimaced. “Is there running water?”

“If I hadn’t met you, Haley, I’d have never believed a woman like you existed. No, there’s no running water, but we’ll only be here one night.”

What did he mean by that? What kind of woman did he think she was? “In other words, yes.” Did he think she was smart for figuring out what he intended? Or was there something else about her that struck him?

He sent her a questioning look.

“We’re going to follow Habib?”

Rem broke his gaze from hers and went back to the SUV. He returned with a box and put it on a counter in the open kitchen area. She leaned over the box. Lantern. Freeze-dried food. A bottle of booze.

“Are you always this prepared?” She’d let him evade her questions for now.

He pulled the bottle of whiskey from the box. She lifted one brow. Just like a true-to-form gunslinger, he removed the cap and swigged. Then slouched onto the only chair in the dirty place.

The last of daylight had all but faded to darkness. Around here, only the stars and moon provided light. Removing the lantern from the box, she put it at the end of the counter and lit it, all the while feeling Rem watch her.

She took out the freeze-dried food and began to prepare a package of beef stroganoff. Yuck.

“At least we won’t starve,” she quipped.

“Haven’t you ever eaten like that before?”

She nodded. “Yes. In the Army.”

He was quiet for a while.

“Why’d you quit?” he finally asked.

A little zap of a shock bit her. She never talked about this. She stopped opening the package and glanced at him. Was he asking because she’d questioned him about his sister? Did he feel he could now? That he was allowed? No one had ever asked her about Iraq. Not directly and not since she had to when Army officials questioned her.

“What happened to you?” he asked. And when she still didn’t reply, he added, “Is it the reason you do what you do?”

“Look, I don’t bug you on your issues, so do me a favor and don’t bug me on mine.”

His mouth closed and he just met her gaze. Then he said, “Angie was killed because of me.”

She abandoned the package of freeze-dried food and gave him her full attention. “Why?”

Again, he just met her gaze.

“What happened?”

“I interfered with the wrong people.”

“Ammar?”

“He was one of them.”

“So, your sister was killed because you tried to do something good? Something right?”

“You don’t know me,” he said, annoyance giving his tone an edge.

“Terrorists deserve to die.” This time it was her who couldn’t keep the emotion out of her voice.

“It doesn’t matter what they are to me.”

She searched his face for a lie and didn’t find one. He wasn’t discriminating about who he killed. If they crossed his path…

It sent a shiver of foreboding through her. She turned back to the package of freeze-dried food and dumped it into a bowl. Maybe she was wrong about him. Maybe this feeling she had—that he’d been thrown into circumstances that had gotten out of control—was off.

“What did you do in the Army? Before you went to work for the great and honorable Cullen McQueen?” he asked.

“What’s wrong with being great and honorable?”

“Nothing, so long as we don’t confuse controversial with honor. I’ve never understood why men like me get the bad reputation while men like McQueen get all the good press. We do the same thing, really. Kill people for shady causes. My missions may not have always been for the governing side, but I always knew who the innocents were.”

“Then you aren’t any different than other men who fight for humanity.”

He grunted and sipped more whiskey.

“What happened with your sister?” she asked.

“What happened to make you work for a secret counterterror outfit?”

She wasn’t hungry anymore. “You want to eat, make your own dinner.” She went over to one of the single beds and debated whether she wanted to lie on it. When was the last time it was washed? Who’d lain on it last?

“Answer my question, I’ll answer yours,” he said.

A familiar, ugly sensation filled her. What scared her most was she felt compelled to tell him. That connection thing again. That feeling they had something important in common, no matter how grim its source. Would telling him help her let go? Why him? Why couldn’t it have been Travis?

Travis had never pushed her. He was always too careful with her. Rem was…different. He didn’t coddle her. Didn’t treat her like a victim.

“I don’t remember all of it,” she finally said, unable to stop whatever drew her. “I was a field artillery surveyor in the Army when our convoy was attacked.” What came next was a lot harder to say. She turned and sat on the bed, looking down at the floor. The last time she’d told anyone this was after her rescue. She’d never repeated it to anyone. “Our vehicle was trapped by debris after an explosion. We were overtaken by insurgents while we were stopped. Everyone was killed but me.” She hesitated. “Two of the insurgents captured me.”

Rem leaned his head back on the chair and didn’t interrupt her.

Images of the two insurgents coming after her were forever emblazoned in her mind. “They took me to an abandoned building and used their guns to beat me. I don’t remember what happened after that.” But that was where patches of the terror haunted her. “The next thing I do remember is a group of soldiers coming into the building and carrying me out on a stretcher. I was flown to a German hospital where I was treated, then sent home.” She couldn’t speak about what the doctors had told her. About the horrific abuses her body had suffered and that her mind had blocked out.

Rem didn’t ask if she was raped and that relieved her. She didn’t think she’d be able to answer, anyway. It was still too painful to face.

She was glad for the dim lighting in the small but open dwelling. Rem hadn’t moved. He still leaned his head back on the chair, bottle of whiskey in his hand and resting on one thigh.

“I was on assignment in Argentina about three months ago,” he said. The sound of his voice was low and gruff but a little vulnerable. Odd for a man his size and with his demeanor. “We were supposed to be guarding a cattle ranch that was having trouble with rebels. At least, that’s what I was told. I never did see any sign of rebel activity while I was there.”

He paused and she wondered if he’d continue. “It sounds dangerous,” she said.

“Dane made it worth my while.”

“You made a lot of money?”

He sipped some whiskey and put the bottle back on his thigh. Of course, she knew he had. His villa proved it.

“Who is Dane?”

“One night I was on patrol when I caught one of the ranch workers raping a woman,” he said without answering. “When the guy fought me, I shot and killed him. Dane Charter, the one behind Charter Security, reprimanded me for it. He said whatever the ranch workers did was none of our business. That’s when I started to get suspicious about him. It wasn’t the first time I’d noticed something odd on assignments. When I got back to the States, I stopped working for him.”

“You stopped working for him because you were suspicious?” It didn’t seem like enough of a reason.

“He was into drug dealing. Cocaine.”

She searched his face. Why did she get the feeling he wasn’t telling her something? “Is that what the ranchers were doing?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw the drugs.”

“Where? When?”

“On that last assignment.”

Was he being deliberately vague? “What did you do?”

“What was I supposed to do?”

Not walk away. She hadn’t known him long, but Rem walking away from anything didn’t wash.

“How does your sister fit into all this?” she asked.

“The man raping the woman in Argentina was someone Ammar knew, a business partner. In retaliation, he had a couple of his friends pay a visit to my sister.” He hesitated. “They killed her.”

Haley closed her eyes to the horror she could so imagine. He didn’t have to tell her details. She knew them. When she opened her eyes, she saw Rem had put the bottle of booze aside. He stood with that fluid movement of his and came over to the bed. Sitting down on the other side of it, he lay on his back. When he opened his arm in silent invitation, she hesitated. If he was withholding information from her, should she trust him? If she wasn’t so tired, maybe not. But she was, and thinking about Iraq had her dreading the night. Putting her questions aside for now, she lay against him.