Hot Intent (Hqn) Read online

  It was disorienting and more than a little nauseating to be tucked into this tiny, windowless cabin that rolled very faintly but continuously. She barfed into the sink and then downed a packet of antiseasickness pills she’d spotted in a drawer earlier. Too miserable to sleep, she browsed through some sort of medical reference book she found in the desk drawer. Lord, how did Alex learn all this stuff? It was dry as dust and half in Latin.

  She had no idea how late it was when a quiet knock sounded on her door. She cracked it open to reveal the big Aussie. “It’s toime, lassie. Oi’ve got the conn for the next hour.”

  “Um, okay.”

  “Grab yer loife jacket and c’mon.”

  Donning the bulky orange flotation device, she followed him down the passageway, which was lit only at long intervals by single lightbulbs. It was creepy as heck. He led her into the stairwell and headed up. She jogged after him and emerged onto the open deck of the ship with a gasp of surprise. It was raining. Ribbons of gray streaked downward in the glow of the ship’s running lights.

  “Are we meeting up with someone out here?” she asked doubtfully. It was pitch-black beyond the ship’s rails. She couldn’t even see where the ocean ended and the sky began. It was just blackness and more blackness stretching beyond the rusty metal deck. How on earth was another vessel going to find them and rendezvous with them in this mess?

  “A ship’ll be along to scoop ye up afore long. ’Ere’s yer dinghy.” He shoved a bulky, heavy pack into her arms.

  Her dinghy? “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Pull the orange tab and climb aboard. She’s got a transponder. Salt water activated. Yer roide’ll pick up the signal and come along.”

  Stunned, she let him take her by the upper arm and lead her over to the railing at the edge of the ship. Holy crap, it was a long way down. No way was she jumping off that. There’d better be a ladder around here somewhere for her to climb down. Although even that was a daunting prospect.

  “Be sure to jump well clear of the ship. ’Twould be a shame if ye got sucked into the Caelum’s propellers and minced to bits.”

  “Has anyone ever told you you’ve got quite a way with words?” she asked dryly.

  He tied some sort of line coming from the dinghy around her waist as he replied, “Sheilas call me a silver-tongued devil all the toime.”

  Emphasis on devil.

  “Ship’s watch’ll be makin’ rounds soon. Off ye go, then.” The Aussie grabbed her around the waist and had the gall to actually grin as he bodily hauled her to the rail.

  “No! You can’t do this!” She fought with all her might but was no match for the burly sailor. He picked her up off her feet and threw her out into space.

  *

  ALEX PAWNED THE solid gold bracelet operatives like him wore for emergencies just like this one. He got a fraction of its value but he wasn’t concerned. A casino was open just down the street.

  He walked down the Havana beachfront to the hotel and its attached casino, keeping careful watch for tails. He knew he’d been clean when he entered the city, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t picked him up in the past hour. Watchers were everywhere in this town.

  The all-consuming panic from before had settled down enough for him to function with caution and discretion. A lifetime’s worth of training came down to this moment. He was a spy, fully in his element and at the peak of his abilities.

  At the casino, he traded his meager stack of cash for chips and headed for the blackjack tables. It was the easiest game to cheat at and the fastest to accumulate winnings at. Of course, the blackjack tables were closely watched for card counting and other illegal behaviors. But he had at least an hour to play before anyone got suspicious enough to detain him. He glanced at the dealer’s watch and got to work.

  *

  A HORRIBLE, GASPING scream escaped Katie on the heart-stopping fall thirty or more feet down to the water. What breath she had left was ripped out of her by the fricking freezing temperature of the water as she slammed into it.

  Panic clawed at her as the black water closed over her head. Bubbles tickled her face as the life jacket did its work and carried her back up to the surface. She popped up like one of the little red-and-white plastic float balls her dad attached to her fishing line as a kid.

  She heard the roar before she felt the pull of the Caelum. Turning in the water, she recoiled, backpedaling hard with hands and feet as the massive hull of the ship loomed shockingly close. A terrible, churning turbulence tried to suck her forward. She kicked with all her might, scared out of her mind, certain that she was about to be minced to bits, after all.

  As quickly as the awful suction started, it stopped. The ocean settled into blackness around her once more, and she bobbed, tiny and helpless on the not-inconsiderable swells as the Caelum quickly retreated into the night. The dinghy. Where was it? Had she lost it in that damned fall?

  She felt at her waist and found the line. She reeled it in and spotted the black bundle floating in the water beside her. She fumbled around on its slick surface and found what felt like a T-handle. She gave it a tug, and the damned thing practically exploded in her face. If she ever saw that Aussie again, she was going to have to hurt him.

  The dinghy turned out to be a tiny little circle of black rubber tubing with a membrane suspended in the middle. And it was a pain in the butt to climb aboard. She tipped it over twice before she managed to heave herself across it far enough to grab the far side and scramble into the middle. She flopped on her face and got a mouthful of foul seawater, but managed to right herself, cursing. She didn’t know whether she was more eager to kill Alex or the Aussie for getting her into this predicament.

  She scouted out the tiny vessel and found a small cone made out of heavy plastic. She used it to scoop most of the water out of the bottom of the boat. Attached to a nylon cord, she found the emergency locator beacon. An orange light flashed on one end of it, so she presumed it was activated and calling in her supposed ride. The beacon turned out to have a flashlight built into it, not that the thing did her a lick of good. All it showed her was rain falling from above and scary big swells below. She turned the light off. Ignorance was bliss right about now.

  She was delighted to discover some sort of waterproof cover rolled up and tied to one side of the raft. She unfurled it over herself. Wet, cold and miserable, she huddled beneath it and listened to the rain pattering off her meager protection. The thin rubber floor of the raft did little to insulate her from the heat-leeching chill of the sea beneath her, and she curled into a ball of misery on her knees in a failed effort to conserve body warmth.

  She held the cone outside the tarp and caught a few ounces of rainwater at a time in it, which she drank. Up and down, up and down, the dinghy went. She barfed over the edge of the raft enough times that her stomach finally was completely empty and she only dry heaved now and then.

  Once her clothes dried out, she warmed up a little. Just enough to make the mistake of peeking out from under the tarp. She was a tiny speck in the middle of a giant, yawning blackness. There was no way anyone would ever find her out here.

  This was so not how she’d imagined dying. Her thoughts turned to Dawn and she grieved for the little girl who’d lost one mother at birth and now was going to lose another one to sheer stupidity. What had she been thinking to follow Alex to Cuba? Had she been so besotted with the man that she’d been willing to throw away everything, even her responsibility as a parent, for him?

  She argued with herself that the purpose in going to Cuba had been to make sure Dawn had two parents to raise her. But now she saw it for the insanity it had been. Funny how, now that she was dying, so much became clear to her.

  One fact stood clear of all the rest. She’d been a damned fool to love Alex Peters.

  *

  IN FORTY-FIVE MINUTES, Alex had enough chips to buy his way off the island even if he had to take less than legal means of transportation. He tossed a hefty chip to the deal
er and took the rest of his stack to the cashier’s window. No sense getting greedy and attracting too much attention to himself.

  The hour was late, but he still caught a taxi downtown to the establishment of a jeweler who ran a lucrative side business forging international travel documents. The man was grumpy when Alex pounded on the back door at this hour, but let him in when he saw the wad of cash in Alex’s fist.

  It would take the forger overnight to work up a throwaway passport and fake visa, so Alex headed back to the beach to hit up a couple more casinos for the funds to pay for the documents. Prices had gone up since the last time he’d been down here.

  He made drive-by hits on three casinos before he figured he had better not press his luck any further. He took his winnings and retreated to a hotel room to clean up and sleep off the past two days.

  KATIE JOLTED AWAKE when something bumped the side of her dinghy. Crap. Was that a shark? She’d heard they rammed stuff they were curious about.

  “Anyone home?” a voice called.

  “Yes! I’m here!” She tore back the tarp and reeled back at the sight of a fat rubber bulge right in her face. A man peered over the edge of it. “Who are you?” she asked cautiously.

  “The United States Navy at your service, ma’am.”

  “Omigod, am I glad to see you.”

  “Folks usually are, ma’am. If you’d give me your hand, I’ll help you into our vessel.”

  She clambered over the edge of the bigger inflatable boat and envied the guy his wetsuit. A second man was seated in the back of the craft at the controls of an outboard motor. This fellow tossed her a wool blanket, which she eagerly wrapped around herself.

  “You wanna save your dinghy?” the first guy asked.

  “Not particularly.” She flinched at the speed with which he whipped out a huge knife and slashed her little lifeboat to ribbons. God. Had her life depended on something so fragile? After-the-fact terror rattled through her.

  As her raft disappeared into the murky depths, the rescue craft made a sharp turn and accelerated toward another vessel. A honking huge gray ship. She recognized the lines of a destroyer. Wow. André had sent the U.S. Navy after her, huh? Cool.

  Not surprisingly, the crew aboard the destroyer gave her plenty of curious looks as they opened a waterline hatch and helped her aboard. She was hustled up to an infirmary not unlike the one on the Caelum, but many times larger. The corpsman who examined her declared her unharmed by her adventure. She was given a dark blue hoodie sweatshirt and matching sweatpants and led to a small cabin somewhere in the belly of the ship.

  The sailor who escorted her to her room informed her that a helicopter would airlift her to Miami in the morning. Thank God. She was ready to be done with boats and water for a good long time. A sailor she was not.

  *

  ALEX GAVE A mental sigh of relief as the customs agent handed his passport and visa back to him. Normally, he would never travel on such hasty documents, but he was in a hurry to eliminate the last obstacles to a clean break with his past life.

  He’d lost two days to travel: one to waiting for the passport to be made, and then another one flying south to Caracas. There were no direct flights between Cuba and the United States, which had necessitated the intermediate stop. He’d had to spend the night in Venezuela before he caught a morning flight to Miami. He would go on to Washington in a few hours.

  The sharp knives of his paranoia were dulling slightly, but the certainty that he was being watched and that his watchers meant him harm remained. Soon. Soon all the loose ends would be tied up, and Alex Peters would be no more.

  He supposed it was a little extreme, but what choice did he have? Until everyone stopped chasing him, he would never be safe. He dawdled in a bar until his flight was ready to board. He sat down, buckled in and closed his eyes.

  Katie. How was he going to deal with Katie? His initial plan had been to kill her. But now he wasn’t so sure about that. It would draw a lot of attention to him. And her brothers could be a problem if they decided to come after him. There were a lot of McCloud boys, and they were a dangerous bunch. He would hate to have to kill them all.

  And what about Dawn? He could snatch her and take her with him now, but it would make establishing a cover exponentially harder with a toddler in tow. Better to run alone, set up a new life and retrieve her later.

  But that left the question of Katie still looming. Katie, who had betrayed him and handed him over to the government without a second thought. She really did deserve the worst he could do to her. Not to mention it would be immensely satisfying to hurt her as deeply as she had hurt him. Which left only one burning question in need of an answer.

  To kill her or not to kill her?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  KATIE LET HERSELF into the penthouse apartment cautiously. The interior was dark and cool. Silent. She let out the breath she was holding. That was relief deflating her lungs like that, right? She was furious at him. No disappointment whatsoever, darn it.

  André had been adamantly opposed to her coming back here when he’d debriefed her earlier. She still couldn’t believe that Alex had turned out to be so unstable. And selfish. What a bastard. But André had regretfully informed her that the CIA assessment of him was that he had snapped. He could not be trusted. They’d declared him a rogue agent, armed and extremely dangerous.

  If Alex was as crazy as they said he was, no way would he come back here. Right? It was the one place people knew to look for him. He would avoid his home like the plague.

  Part of her wished he would show up here. That he would come looking for her to explain himself and to apologize. There must have been a reason he’d ditched her in Cuba not once but twice. Her initial fury had given way to grief. She’d really loved him. But he’d made his lack of return feelings crystal clear to her. Strange how love could transform to hatred like this. She really, actively despised him for up and leaving her.

  Wiped out after all the travel and long hours of debriefing in exhaustive detail with André, she crawled into the master bed.

  Fortinay had been deeply disappointed when she failed to produce any proof of chemical weapons stockpiles in Cuba. But all of the samples had ended up with Alex. At this point, she expected he’d destroyed them all.

  At least she was able to describe in exact detail where the bunker was located. They’d even pulled up a live satellite feed and had her zoom in on the spot. It had been creepy to look at the Zacara factory, the dirt road and that innocuous grassy mound. It was all so vivid in her mind, but it was starting to take on a dreamlike quality as it slipped into the past.

  She supposed the CIA would send more operatives down to check the place out since she and Alex had failed. At least they’d brought out intel that the chemicals were there. That was something. If Alex were here, he’d call her a Pollyanna for thinking like that. The loss of him was a sharp pain in her chest.

  As exhausted as she was, she tossed and turned, her thoughts churning around in her head. Maybe that was why she heard the front door locks disengaging. She rolled out of bed and to her feet in one fluid move.

  No lights came on in the condo, and her internal threat sensors went on high alert. Alex or someone here innocently would have turned on the lights. Wait. It was after midnight; no one innocent was here.

  A dark figure moved stealthily through the bedroom door. She slipped out of her hiding place behind the door and jammed her pistol against the man’s spine. She ordered, “Freeze.”

  The intruder froze, and at the same moment, recognition of his height, silhouette and the scent of his aftershave registered. Alex. “Gotcha. I win,” she said dryly.

  Except she didn’t win. He simultaneously dropped to his knees, spun around and surged up from below, ripping the pistol out of her hand and slamming her backward against the wall with a forearm across her neck. She glared at him disbelievingly. He’d just attacked her. Oh, no, he didn’t.

  Oh, yes, he did.

  Her fury
blazed and she let it. “What the hell are you doing here?” she snarled past his forearm.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded. “This is my home.”

  “Not for much longer, it isn’t. The entire CIA is looking for you. You’re done, Alex.”

  He snorted. In the darkness, his teeth flashed momentarily in a hint of sardonic amusement.

  She supposed he had a right to be amused. She doubted they would catch him if he didn’t want to be caught, either. “What are you doing here?” she challenged.

  “Taking care of a few loose ends before I disappear.”

  “Is that what I am? A loose end?” Her voice rose. “Why did you abandon me in Cuba?”

  “They sent you down there to spy on me. And then you betrayed me.”

  “I never betrayed you!” she exclaimed. She reached out to activate the light switch. She wanted to look him in the eye when he spouted that crap at her. Small halogen spotlights created strategic pools of light around the room. Alex, who happened to be near one of the bright circles of light thrown down by the halogen spotlights, looked like hell. It wasn’t so much that he needed a shave or that his clothes looked like he’d slept in them. It was his eyes that staggered her.

  They were chock-full of barely restrained violence. He looked like his usual tight control was on the verge of failing catastrophically. He was a man on a bridge. But he wasn’t there to jump. He had an Uzi and was about to start shooting everything and everyone who crossed his path. Her Alex was nowhere to be seen in the hot stare of this operative.

  Funny, she’d thought his cold stare and icy focus were scary. But this volatile version of Alex was a hundred times scarier.

  She ground out more unconvincingly than she’d hoped for, “I would never betray you, Alex.” She would have added that she had loved him before she hated him, but there was no telling how Alex in this furious frame of mind would react.