Till Death Us Do Part

“Change of plans,” he barked in Spanish.

At the sound of his voice, the men holding Marissa dropped her arms and whirled.

She was thrown off balance. Swaying in the gale, she turned on shaky legs and stared around uncomprehendingly as if she’d suddenly awakened from a nightmare and wasn’t sure she was really conscious or where she was.

He saw her eyes snap into focus and zero in on him. He wasn’t surprised as they widened the way they always did when the two of them first met. Yet this time he knew there was more behind the look than usual. He saw panic, relief and disbelief all warring with each other.

“Jed?” His name was a mere wisp of sound on her trembling lips.

“Come to get you out of this mess, honey bee.” He was surprised to be struggling with the rough quality of his own voice. Momentarily, he was as shaken as she.

Tottering on shaky legs, she took a step toward him. At the same time she made a tiny, muted sound that was half sob, half exclamation.

Chaos swirled around the two of them. But it seemed to fade into the background. Marissa was the sole focus of his attention. And she was looking at him with the same intensity.

Closing the distance between them in a few sure strides, he caught her in his embrace and held her tightly, achingly aware of how small and fragile she felt. Like a fluttering bird he’d freed from a trap.

She slumped against him. He wasn’t sure when she took hold of his shoulders, but he felt her fingers digging into his flesh so hard that he knew he would see the marks when he got undressed that night. Then her whole body began to tremble.

He bent his head and spoke low and urgently in her ear, glad that the wind gave them a measure of privacy. “It’s all right. I’m here. I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he told her, his hands stroking through her hair and up the icy flesh of her arms as he tried to warm her with his touch, tried to project a sense of absolute confidence that he wished he could feel. He’d pictured a dozen harrowing scenarios. But not this. “I’ve got a way to protect you, honey.”

His name sighed out of her once more, drawing his attention to her mouth. It looked so soft, so vulnerable, so exposed that he had to kiss her. Seeing his intent, she stiffened and made a startled exclamation. Afraid she was going to push him away, he tried to hold on to her with his gaze. This was the moment of greatest danger, the moment she could give away the whole shooting match.

“Marci, no.”

She stared up into his eyes, hers so large and questioning that he could have gotten lost in their blue depths. Perhaps he was as dazed as she, because something strange happened. He knew where he was—on the parade ground, surrounded by uniformed soldiers. But the men and their surroundings had faded into the background so that he was conscious only of Marci. He sought something vital from her as his lips moved against her. At the same time he felt his own vulnerability rise to the surface as if he were the one in need of aid and comfort.

In that instant everything changed. The stiffness left her spine, and she went soft and pliant in his arms. In reaction, his emotions changed from protective to hungry. He drank in her sweetness even as she swayed against him, clinging to him like a lost kitten trying to grasp something solid. But he was as lost as she.

Later he realized that it all must have happened in mere seconds. On the field it felt as if they had stepped out of time into a private space of their own. As they clung together, nothing existed for him besides Marissa and the contact of his mouth against hers. His body against hers. The urgent movement of her hands up and down his back.

Her lips opened under his, and he took advantage of the surrender. He tasted passion, heard a low murmur in her throat that made the blood in his veins run hot.

Then in the space of a heartbeat he sensed her change, as he felt her remember who she was and who he was and that there was a reason—whatever it was—that she had never allowed him this close before.

He longed to bring her back to him. Longed to use every lover’s trick he’d ever learned to recapture her heady response, but he realized with a start that they weren’t alone and that a harsh voice had intruded into their reality.

The voice rose above the wind. “Arrest this man.”

Jed’s attention snapped instantly back to the here and now. Marissa went taut in his arms.

Soldiers with guns moved into position around them, cutting off any avenue of escape. But then, Jed had never thought this rescue was going to be easy. Ignoring the troops, he turned and focused on the man who had given the order.

Miguel Sanchez had the grace to look astonished. “Jed?”

“Sé, mi amigo.”

Some of the squad had recognized him, and he heard his name whispered in the circle of startled faces as he shifted Marissa to his side.

“What is the meaning of this?” El Jefe demanded. “What are you doing here interfering in my private business?”

“I apologize for arriving unannounced. But I can’t allow you to execute an innocent woman. Particularly when she’s my fiancée.”

“Your what?” Sanchez bellowed, any pretense of calm vanishing.

Marissa’s reaction was no less violent. Her body jerked in Jed’s arms. Raising her head, she searched his face, her eyes wide and startled. And so tantalizingly beautiful that he was almost undone. But he managed to remember why he was here and why it was so important to hang on to his wits.

“My fiancée. The woman I’m going to marry.” He repeated the words very slowly and very evenly, and not only for Sanchez’s benefit. Marissa needed time to take in the information.

“That’s impossible. She’s a spy!” the general growled. “She escaped into the jungle, and my men had to recapture her.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Do you know who sent her?”

“Nobody sent her. There’s obviously been some kind of mistake,” Jed countered. He’d been acting on pure instinct when he’d driven headlong in front of the troops. Now he looked at the stake that had been waiting for Marissa and was unable to keep from shuddering. “This is no place for a civilized discussion. Why don’t we go back to the hacienda and talk about it before we all get drenched.”

Sanchez nodded—a single, curt movement of his head—and began striding toward his jeep. Jed started to lead Marissa to the Land Rover, but the general’s voice stopped him. “No.” El Jefe spoke over the wind, his voice raised so the assembled troops could hear. “I insist you ride with me, amigo. One of my men will bring your vehicle and put it in the garage.”

Jed didn’t bother to argue. His life and Marissa’s depended on their getting a chance to communicate. But defying Sanchez at this moment was an even surer ticket to destruction.

Marissa still looked dazed as he helped her into the jeep’s back seat. At first she nestled against him like an injured animal. But he felt her coming back to life as El Jefe barked orders to the squad. He sensed her struggling to pull herself together, but there was only so much he could do to help without giving away the story line to their attentive audience. When the jeep lurched forward she sat up straighter and squirmed in the seat, trying to put some distance between them. Jed suspected that his leg pressed to hers was making it difficult for her to think. But he held her firmly, aware that Sanchez kept shifting his gaze from the road to glance with interest in the rearview mirror at the engaged couple in the back seat.

“I was worried about you, honey,” Jed murmured, keeping Marissa close to him and stroking his lips against her temple.

The caress made her shiver, and he wondered if the melting moment in his arms had been a figment of his imagination. No, for a few incredible seconds she’d kissed him like a lover. But he could put that down to disorientation—and a spontaneous reaction to the man who’d snatched her from the jaws of death.

He ached to find out if her surge of emotions had come from more than fear and gratitude. But that discovery would have to wait for another time and place. “I hope you’re feeling more like yourself,” he murmured, knowing the statement was only partly true. Lord, what he wouldn’t give for a few hours with the woman who had come alive in his arms.

She swallowed. “Yes.”

“Good girl.” He patted her knee, anticipating her response to the intimate gesture. She jumped, and he knew he had gotten her full attention. As much for Miguel’s benefit as hers, he began to speak in a half amused, half worried voice. “So I leave you alone for a couple of hours and you get yourself in a real mess again. Cassie and Abby and Sabrina and everybody else are going to be worried sick when they hear about this. Or maybe we shouldn’t even tell them.”

Her head whipped toward him. “How do you know—?”

His hand tightened on hers, and he clamped down on her sentence before she could give anything away. “How did I know you were here, honey bee? A combination of detective work and luck.” He raised his voice and addressed Sanchez. “You weren’t really going to shoot my lady love, were you, you old devil?”

“I was still weighing the pros and cons.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“There was always the chance that a last-minute reprieve might loosen her tongue.”

Marissa made a strangled sound.

They were approaching the stretch of jungle that separated the hacienda from the military complex. Miguel turned onto a hard-packed dirt road that wound past banana trees, tall ferns and countless jungle plants Jed couldn’t name. They were all swaying wildly, raining leaves down on the jeep. And the sky was black as midnight. Jed expected the rain to begin pelting them any second.

When Sanchez leaned forward and picked up a portable phone, Jed pressed his fingers tightly over Marissa’s.

She looked at him and nodded. And he knew she was functioning on a higher level. She understood that while the other man’s attention was focused on giving orders for their reception, they had partial privacy. Still, Jed took the precaution of keeping his tone light and garrulous. “Don’t let him fool you into thinking he’s harmless.”

She glanced toward the front seat. “I won’t.”

In the dim light he turned her face toward him. “Did he hurt you?” he whispered.

“Not physically.”

He let out the breath he’d been holding. “You were in the prison complex in Santa Isabella?”

“Yes. In solitary confinement. I didn’t see a living soul until two men brought me here yesterday.”

Jed glanced up to see that Miguel was staring at them intently in the mirror again. Probably he’d only used the phone call to see what they would do when they thought his attention was elsewhere.

Just then they emerged from the forest. The wind suddenly died and the sun came out again. A good omen, Jed told himself, wishing he believed in omens.

They headed for a high adobe wall softened with festoons of blooming purple and orange bougainvillea. But the metal gate was all business. Jed watched as Sanchez pressed a remote control that slid the barrier open, interested to find that security had become more automated since his time. The modernization could be helpful if they had to make an unexpected getaway. Electronic devices could be disabled.

However, when they passed the dog kennel, his hopeful thoughts turned gloomy. Electronics were one thing. The pack of Dobermans that patrolled the grounds at night was another thing altogether.

The barking of the Dobermans stabbed through the last of the fog shrouding Marissa’s brain. She gave Jed a quick sideways glance, marveling that he could appear so calm. Trying to follow his example, she sat up straighter and looked around, aware of her surroundings with a sudden aching clarity. The sun had come out from behind the clouds, and the whitewashed walls of the hacienda were bathed in the warm afternoon light. The wind had died to a gentle whisper. And she wasn’t dead.

When she shuddered, Jed’s arm tightened around her, and she had the uncanny sensation that he understood what she was feeling.

She looked down, hoping he wasn’t reading everything in her mind. For her own equanimity she struggled to rationalize what had happened between them out there on the field—or more specifically what had happened to her. His part was easy enough to grasp. He was a normal man. She’d tumbled into his embrace, and he’d taken advantage of the situation.

But she’d behaved in a manner that was so totally alien that she could only explain it one way: she’d been living in a nightmare that would end with her own death, and just when she’d lost all hope, Jed had come charging to her rescue. She’d been so off balance that she’d let herself feel things she’d been afraid of for years. Particularly with him. Convulsively, she knit her hands together. Perhaps holding tight to her own flesh could bring back the perfect control she’d relied on for so long.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, and she wondered if he was still following her thoughts.

“Umm.” With Jed’s thigh pressed against hers and his grip firmly on her shoulder, it was impossible to think clearly, but she clamped down hard on her instinctive urge to pull away. She knew Sanchez was watching, and they had to keep playing by the script Jed had tossed her.

He’d told the general that they were engaged! How were they ever going to pull it off? How could they possibly act as if they were madly in love? As if they were lovers? Contemplating that led to memories of his kiss, which made her heart lurch inside her chest. Perhaps the most disturbing thing of all was that she still felt a tingle of awareness between them like a humming electric current. It had started when he’d kissed her, and she wanted to pretend it wasn’t there. But she was coming to realize she couldn’t wish it away.

Jed’s arm was around her shoulder, but he was leaning forward responding to a question from the general. As she switched her focus to the conversation flowing so easily in Spanish, she realized for the first time how close the two men must have been.

“So why didn’t you come to me when Marissa was first apprehended?” Sanchez asked.

“I tried. Ask that undercover man who took her into custody on the patio. He wasn’t letting anyone through to you.”

“He had his orders. But you should have let me know she was your woman.”

Jed laughed. “I remember how you close ranks when you think you’ve been crossed. For all I know, you were going to assume I was part of a plot against you. Then you would have arrested me as well as her. And we’d both be up the creek without a paddle.”

“You’ve got a point,” El Jefe conceded.

The give-and-take between the men continued. Marissa missed a number of allusions that must have referred to events they both remembered well. She didn’t much like being excluded, but she had enough sense to keep her mouth shut and let Jed remind the general of their old bond. She’d rather have the State Department on the job. But Victor Kirkland wasn’t the one who had shown up to win her freedom. It seemed that Victor had tossed her to the wolves, and Jed had stepped in. Perhaps his friendship with the general might be the only thing that would get her out of here.

Or was that what was really going on, she wondered with a sudden little jolt. Jed had appeared out of nowhere like a knight in shining armor. But the rescue could have been staged, too. And he could be counting heavily on her vulnerability.

She swallowed painfully. Were Jed and Sanchez putting on a performance for her? Was this all part of some diabolical plan to get her to talk about what she’d found in the general’s office? Did they think that if she wouldn’t tell Sanchez anything, she’d spill the beans to Jed?

But if he was here to trick her, what about the familiar way he’d mentioned Cassie and Abby and Sabrina? He’d met her sister when they’d all been on an assignment together in Colombia. But he’d never met any of the other women from 43 Light Street. He’d made it sound as if they were all working together to get her out of here. Yet that could be faked, as well—when there was no way to get in touch with anyone whose name he’d mentioned so casually.

She had sense enough to know she was too off balance to make any coherent judgments. Her head swam with plots and counterplots as the jeep pulled up in front of the hacienda, where two guards in dress uniforms snapped to attention. She saw the curtains move at one of the windows and wondered who was watching. Jed helped her out of the jeep and kept his arm around her, guiding her toward the house.

Before they reached the front door, it opened. A teenage girl with long dark hair and liquid brown eyes came hurrying out. She had Miguel’s features, and Marissa remembered that his dossier had mentioned a daughter and a long-dead wife. But there had been hardly any information about either one.

The girl stopped a few feet from the group.

“Clarita, you’re not supposed to be out here,” Sanchez said in a voice that raised the hairs on the back of Marissa’s neck. If he could speak that way to his daughter, what might he do to a female prisoner?

The girl merely shrugged, clearly accustomed to his intimidating manner. “I’m not one of your soldiers. I don’t have to follow orders.”

“Everyone in this house follows my orders.”

“Yes. And unfortunately everyone in San Marcos, too.”

It was a dangerous response, Marissa thought as she waited to see what El Jefe would do. She couldn’t imagine he was enjoying this little scene. His face contorted. “We’ll discuss it later.”

The girl looked as if she were about to say something more. At the last moment she turned toward Jed, her expression softening. “You came back to us. I knew you would after I saw you the other night.”

“I have business with your father.”

As the girl’s gaze swung from Jed to Marissa and back again, she went through another rapid change of mood. This time her eyes held a mixture of bewilderment and hurt. “I’m sorry I ran away from you on the patio. I thought you came to see me, and we’d have fun together again. Like in the old days.”

Jed seemed perplexed, no more equipped for this scene than Sanchez. “I do want to see you.”

“Then why do you have your arm around the woman prisoner? Why are you protecting her from my father?”

“Marissa is my fiancée.”

The girl’s expression went from questioning to fury in the space of a heartbeat. “She can’t be.”

“I fell in love with her. And I came here to bring her home.”

“Oh.” Several seconds of silence ticked by before Clarita tipped her head toward Marissa. “Are you good in bed? Is that what he likes about you?”

“That’s enough,” Sanchez roared. “Go to your room this instant before you embarrass yourself further.”

Marissa stood with her cheeks burning while the girl turned and flounced away. Before she reached the house she pulled a hibiscus blossom off a nearby bush, crushed it in her hand and tossed it onto the pavement.

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