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  On those less than lady-like words, she stalked out of the room and found her way outside into the sunny square that fronted the Belize Defense Force headquarters. For the most part, she felt good, elated that the whole mess with Ron was behind her. Though there was a slight sense of sadness at leaving her Interpol team. Until Ron had come along, she’d really enjoyed her job and her teammates.

  After putting on her sunglasses against the bright sunshine reflecting off the square, she pulled her cell phone from her huge tote bag and hit a saved number.

  The call was answered by a deeply growled, “Maddox.”

  Maddox’s grumbling tones reminded her of the tall, shaggy-haired, grey-eyed Sam Crocker. Something deep in her core gave a little shimmy. While Crock-of-shit had rubbed her the wrong way, he possessed the kind of yummy voice a woman liked to hear in bed. He also had a very excellent arse and wide shoulders. Large hands. Kissable lips. Abs that could shred—

  Stop it.

  Okay, so the man was extremely attractive. He’d also been bossy and overprotective and—

  A real man… unlike Ron effin’ Lloyd.

  Yeah, there was that. Dammit.

  “Talk to me or I’ll fucking hang up,” Maddox said.

  Get your head in the game, Dawn. You can fantasize about Crocker’s manliness quotient later.

  “It’s Dawn Wilson, Ren. If your offer of employment is still open, I’d like to accept.”

  “It is. Welcome aboard.”

  And there was the difference in working for a private organization—no political haggling. No brown-nosing. No messing around. You’re qualified; you’re in.

  Petriv had told her working for SSI was a dream job for good former intelligence and law enforcement types. Maddox was a straight-shooter. He demanded a lot from his agents on and off the field, gave them a wide spectrum of autonomy in the field, and backed up their decision-making.

  Dawn was happy to know she’d met Maddox’s high standards and would do her best not to let her new employer ever regret hiring her. Plus she’d earn twice what she made at Interpol. The greater autonomy in the field had attracted her far more than the money.

  “You still in Belize?” Maddox asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I have a job for you. I’ll arrange a chartered jet to take you to Cartagena. I’m on my way there now. You’ll arrive first, so hang around the charter terminal until I get there.”

  Ignoring the stares and smiles of those passing by her, Dawn grinned and did a little happy dance. No rest for the wicked. Good, she liked to be busy, and the assignment would keep her mind from wandering and thinking about the bossy, sexy, sarcastic, all-too-attractive-on-all-levels-for-his-own-good-and-so-bad-for-her former U.S. Marine. If Ren hadn’t offered her an immediate op, she just might have tracked down Crocker and discovered exactly how dominant he was—in bed.

  She’d had a long sexual dry spell, and she was thirsty.

  “What’s the job?” Dawn dragged her mind away from images of her in bed with Crocker. She blamed the sudden intense wave of heat that swept over her on the Belizean weather.

  “Did you see Keely’s analysis we sent to Interpol?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t get to read it yet,” she said.

  “Read it,” Ren said. “We’re going after the man you know as Sergio Manuel Lazaro or Oraio. We need to get DNA or other conclusive evidence to prove Lazaro-Oraio is Syd MacLean, U.S. traitor, so the United States can extradite him from Brazil.”

  A Brazilian criminal mastermind was also a U.S. traitor? Intriguing. Sounded as if there would be an interesting story at the bottom of it all. The darker and more twisted the cases, the better she liked them.

  “I’d love to take that fucker down whatever his name is.” Especially since she was bloody sure SSI would get the job done far ahead of Interpol. She had a moment of regret for her former teammates who were good agents—well, with the exception of Ron. But in the long run, everyone—or at least everyone but Ron—was fighting on the same side and only wanted to put Oraio, or whoever in the hell he was, away.

  “See you in Cartagena,” she said.

  “Try to rest on the flight, Dawn. You’ll only be in Cartagena long enough to shop for the right clothes for the op, to be briefed, and to meet your team. See you soon. Out.” Ren disconnected.

  Right clothes for the op? Hmmm. Could the SSI boss possibly want her to use the eons-old, but highly successful, sexual approach on the operation? Wouldn’t be the first time she’d used her feminine attributes for the greater good; probably wouldn’t be the last. She wasn’t averse to using her sexuality. She’d found that bad men thought with their cocks just as often as good men did.

  “Dawn!”

  Her arm was grabbed and she was pulled around to face an angry Ron.

  “Let go of me.” Furious she was caught off guard, she pulled against his hold, but the arsehole merely tightened his grip, tight enough that she’d have bruises.

  “No.” He dragged her along the sidewalk in the direction of the hotel the Interpol team had used. “We’re going to sit down and discuss our future.”

  “Our future? You nutter, there is no we or our future.” Dawn dug in her heels, slowing him down.

  Ron stopped and shook her. “Come along or I’ll throw you over my shoulder. I’ve had enough of you ignoring me, ignoring our relationship.”

  The man was a stark raving looby.

  “Relationship?” she snarled. “There’s no relationship, you arse. I can not stand you. I would sooner date the devil himself than you.”

  Ron’s breaths were rapid and harsh as he pulled her toward him. She couldn’t get to her gun in her tote bag since he held her dominant arm. With bared teeth, he muttered, “Listen, you bloody, over-privileged bitch…”

  Dawn had had enough. She didn’t care that a crowd had gathered to watch them. She kneed him in the balls, putting every ounce of force and every bit of training behind the move.

  Pain suffused Ron’s face as he released her arm and fell to his knees, heaving and gasping as he tried to catch his breath. To make sure she had enough time to get well away from him, she followed up with a knee to his chin, now within easy reach.

  “Way to go, dearie,” a little white-haired woman shouted. “Bastard deserved it. My hubby went to get a cop. We saw the man assault you.”

  With Ron on the ground, now rolling and moaning, Dawn made the decision to go straight to the airport and avoid the hotel altogether. She hadn’t left anything important in her room, just a change of clothes and some toiletries—all of which were expendable. She had her passport and other I.D., her weapon, and her computer tablet and phone in her tote bag. Plus, Ren had said she’d be shopping for the mission; she could buy whatever else she needed in Cartagena.

  Ignoring the crowd that had moved to surround Ron and the little tourist who patted Dawn on the arm, she looked around and spied a taxi dropping off a man at an office building across the square. She turned and smiled at the nice woman. “Thanks, doll, but I’ve got to run.”

  Dawn whistled, waved a hand, and shouted, “Taxi.”

  The cab made a U-turn and pulled up next to the crowd. She got in the back. “Airport, please.”

  Chapter 3

  March 1st, MacLean’s private island, off the coast of Brazil

  “What the fuck happened in Belize?” Syd MacLean addressed Armando Rossi, one of his enforcers. While Armando, a Peruvian, was not as much of a hulking brute as his older brother Alberto a.k.a The Albatross, he was still an intimidating presence with his prominent Cro-Magnon brow, swarthy skin, and shoulders so wide that he’d had to angle his way through the observation room’s doorway.

  Syd turned his back on Rossi and stared through the one-way mirror at the action in the training room. One of his men was disciplining a sex slave who’d made the grievous error of biting her trainer during fellatio training. Syd should probably stop the man from damaging the merchandise, but he was pissed and had far more important thin
gs to worry about. Besides, there were hundreds more homeless young girls on the streets of Rio; he could easily replace one or two.

  “I am not exactly sure,” Rossi replied, his voice rough from damage done to his larynx during a short sojourn in a Peruvian prison.

  Syd turned away from the discipline session and glared at the man. “You’re not exactly sure?” he murmured. He raised his hand to rub his face, a nervous habit from his youth, and stopped just in time. He was still healing after major plastic surgery and rubbing the still tender tissue was not a smart idea. The last bandages had been removed less than a month ago. He still had light bruising and swelling.

  The surgeon had done a remarkable job. Syd’s own mother wouldn’t recognize him. Hell, most days he didn’t even recognize himself. His cheekbones were higher and sharper. His jaw wider. He now had a cleft on his chin. His eyes were more open, and brown contact lenses covered the light blue-gray of his eyes. He kept his dark hair, but had it styled differently. His genetics had given his skin olive undertones and lots of sun had bronzed him to perfection.

  Reining in the need to kill the messenger, he took a few deep breaths. None of the clusterfuck in Belize, however it happened, was Rossi’s fault. He needed Rossi. The man was one of the few left in his inner circle who knew Syd’s history, from his days in the Defense Intelligence Agency to his role as respectable Brazilian businessman Sergio Manuel Lazaro and as the trafficker Oraio. “What can you tell me?”

  Whatever had happened, had to be bad news. Syd hadn’t heard a word from his right-hand-man O’Riley since February 25th. O’Riley’s mission had not only been to choose a new chief hacker for Syd’s illicit businesses, but also to have expedited a shipment of cocaine to their Mexican cartel contacts. Those same contacts had called him earlier today and were very displeased at not receiving their drugs. They had clients waiting for the product; a lot of money and loss of face weighed in the balance. Syd had had to arrange for a replacement load of cocaine from one of his contacts in Colombia, at a loss for him.

  “There was no sign of O’Riley. My brother and Salazar are dead.” Rossi’s face darkened and anger flashed in his dark brown eyes. “Your resort has been taken over by the Belizean Defense Forces.”

  Rossi’s anger was understandable—the man had lost a brother, the last of his family— but he had it under control… for now.

  Syd was furious and perplexed; he’d lost valuable men during what should’ve been a low risk, in-and-out operation.

  “Jefe,” Rossi continued, “there were armed guards all over your resort. The Belizean government has posted signs. They’ve seized the hotel and the land as spoils of the drug trade.”

  “Fuck.” Syd fisted his hands and turned away from Rossi. He picked up a chair and threw it at the wall beside the one-way mirror. The resounding crash had the man wielding the whip halting and looking back at the one-way mirror, then he shrugged and resumed whipping the young girl. Her piercing screams exacerbated Syd’s already raw nerves, so he turned down the sound.

  “Where’s my cocaine?” he gritted out, a muscle along his jaw pulsing.

  “Interpol has it.” Rossi swallowed hard. “There was an Interpol team in the village, assisting the Belizeans with the investigation and inventorying the cocaine.”

  “Fuck!” Syd kicked the chair he’d thrown. Rossi winced, but to his credit, didn’t move away. Losing a large shipment of quality cocaine, three of his top men, and a complete fucking resort were problems of epic proportions. “Fucking Interpol. They’ve been fucking with my businesses for far too long. But how in the hell did they single out that resort to investigate at that particular time?”

  Rossi shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Of course, he didn’t.

  Had his former employer, the Defense Intelligence Agency, gotten a line on him?

  When Syd had run from D.C. months ago, he’d lost his NSA contacts. He’d been relying on the labyrinth of shell companies to cover the true ownership and nature of his illegal business activities as Oraio. That was why he’d had O’Riley set up the hacking competition at his Belizean resort property. A man couldn’t play in the shadow world of illegal trafficking without good intelligence. And for that, Syd had needed a top notch hacker.

  “What happened to the hackers there for the competition?” Syd asked.

  “They were gone.”

  “Gone where? Did Interpol detain them?”

  Rossi shrugged.

  Syd shook his head. The man was clueless. While Rossi was a loyal employee, he was muscle just like his brother. Muscle was easy to replace, but, damn, replacing the intelligent, IRA-hardened O’Riley and the wily negotiator Salazar would be more difficult.

  He eyed Rossi, who swallowed hard. “Did Interpol take O’Riley into custody? What about the rest of the security team your brother had with him? And my hotel security guards—what have they told the authorities?”

  Not that the hotel security personnel knew anything other than their employer was a rich Brazilian businessman, but they might’ve seen or heard something that would make it necessary to eliminate them as witnesses.

  “The rest of my brother’s team were also dead.” Rossi looked even more grim, if that were possible. “O’Riley hasn’t been seen since the night of the 25th when the hacking competition was held.”

  “Hell.” Syd leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the one-way mirror and worked on centering himself. No one in the Belizean government—or Interpol—had yet contacted the agent for the shell company which, on paper, owned the resort. The ownership trail was purposely Byzantine and would take weeks to unravel.

  But eventually someone would.

  Normally, Salazar would’ve handled dealing with the questions and issuing statements denying all knowledge of illicit activities.

  Whatever had happened to cause the debacle in Belize, the timing sucked. Syd would have to handle the fallout now. It was fucking inconvenient, but what could he do?

  But the Belize situation, the missing O’Riley, and Interpol’s nuisance investigations would have to wait until he could devote his full attention to them. Right now, he had other business, highly profitable business, that couldn’t wait. He was due to leave in two days to meet and complete a transaction with Sheikh Benrabi, an important tribal leader from Yemen, who was buying a shipment of sex slaves.

  Besides having sex with very young women, Benrabi liked to gamble. Since Brazil had no casinos, he and Benrabi had agreed to meet in Aruba to finalize the sale and make the exchange. This worked out well for both men since Aruba had banking laws which would allow the money to be transferred to Syd without the scrutiny his Brazilian accounts had drawn from Interpol.

  Syd had looked forward to the trip. He deserved a little R&R after all the surgeries and excruciating recovery time. He wanted to fuck women who were attracted to him as a man and not merely to please him in order to escape punishment.

  And, like Benrabi, he also liked gambling. For years, Aruba had been one of his favorite places to visit when he wanted to relax, put aside all his deceptions, and just be himself. He’d enjoyed Aruba so much he’d even bought a huge estate there under his Lazaro identity, complete with a yacht and private dock.

  “Are you still going to Aruba?” Rossi asked. “Salazar was supposed to go with you.”

  “Yes. I can’t have another business deal go south on top of the Belize fiasco.” Bad news spread fast in the shadow world, and until Belize, Oraio’s reputation as a reliable provider of drugs, weapons, and slaves had been platinum. “The container ship with the merchandise is already en route to Aruba. Benrabi will want his slaves. He has promised them to his men.”

  “Jefe… Interpol also seized the computer server O’Riley took with him.” Rossi frowned. “This could lead to very bad things, yes?”

  Well, well, the muscle wasn’t as dumb as Syd thought.

  “As soon as O’Riley didn’t report in on the 25th, I had the techs shut down all connections to
that server and had them start to cover our tracks,” Syd said.

  Even if Interpol, or worse, the NSA, tracked the data back to his legitimate businesses in Brazil, his response would be the same. Rogue employees. No one could prove Sergio Manuel Lazaro had explicit knowledge of what O’Riley and the others had been doing in Belize.

  Until he was assured his ass was covered on the computer end, he’d conduct business the old-fashioned way: meeting face-to-face when possible and using untraceable burner phones when not.

  “Rossi, you’re now my chief enforcer. I want you with me in Aruba. Tell Montero”—Javier Montero, also a member of his inner circle, was normally in charge on the island if Syd, O’Riley, or Salazar weren’t around—“he’s in charge while I’m gone.”

  “Si, jefe.” Rossi inclined his head.

  “Good.” Syd angled his head toward the training room where the man cut down the girl’s limp, bloody body. “Get rid of the damaged merchandise, but make sure the other slaves-in-training see what happens when they don’t apply their lessons properly.”

  “Si, jefe.” Rossi left the room.

  Syd exited the observation room and entered another training room. Waiting for his pleasure was his bound, blindfolded, and gagged mistress suspended from the ceiling in a leather swing.

  After taking his clothes off, Syd picked up a quirt from a side table and then walked toward the woman. He really needed to release some of his anger over what had happened in Belize.

  “Hello, my dove,” he said in Brazilian Portuguese, “time to play.”

  Chapter 4

  March 2nd, SSI Safe House, Cartagena, Colombia

  Conn’s right-hand-man Berto strode into the kitchen of the mansion which acted as SSI’s base for South and Central America. It also served as a safe house for various allies’ intelligence operatives acting in the region.