true love and was looking forward to starting a family. Everything had seemed so perfect.
A normal woman would have closed her mind to the memories that rose inside her, but Julia no longer considered herself normal. She’d become something else, something that had no name. Miguel had taken away the person she’d been and replaced her with this new being who wanted to remember what had happened because the details fueled her fire.
Closing her eyes, she let the pain roll over her and relished it, the haunting images as fresh now as they’d been four years ago. They’d had a wonderful meal, then Miguel had pulled her into his luxurious bedroom. She’d been looking forward to making love with her husband and she’d moved eagerly into his arms. What had followed was something she did blank out.
Stunned and in shock, Julia hadn’t known what to do except run. The first time she’d gotten to the gates of the compound. The second time she’d made it to the village. The third time…she couldn’t remember how far she made it the third time. Miguel had caught her and locked her in a room somewhere. She still didn’t know where it was. He’d kept her there and visited until she’d gotten pregnant.
Tomas had been born the following March.
Julia had begged for her freedom.
Miguel’s answer had dumbfounded her. “Go ahead,” he’d said. “Leave whenever you like.”
For a second, she’d let herself think about it, then he’d gotten up from behind his desk and come to where she waited. “If you do go, however, you will go alone. Don’t even consider taking Tomasito with you. Should you try, I will hunt you down and bring my son back. I want to raise him here, in San Isidro, to follow in my footsteps.”
“But he’s my son, too,” she’d argued foolishly. “What if I don’t want him brought up that way?”
The look in his eyes had been merciless. “What you want or do not want is irrelevant to this discussion. My son will grow up as I desire. You have no say in this matter.”
“You can’t do that to me,” she’d said.
His reply had been simple and irrefutable. “I already have.”
Despite the warning, she’d taken Tomas and tried one more time. The punishment for her foolishness had been so painful and humiliating she knew the scars—figuratively and literally—would not disappear. Miguel was a master at abasement and she would never be the same. In the end, though, he’d be the one to pay. Her rage and impotence had had nowhere to go, so she’d turned it inward and forged a determination, the likes of which she’d never felt before.
She would escape and she would take Tomas with her. Miguel would burn in hell before she’d allow her son to become his father’s victim, too.
But explaining all this to Meredith would have been impossible. To begin with, it would have taken more time than they’d had but secondly, Meredith would never have understood how Julia could have gotten herself into this predicament, because Meredith would have never allowed it to happen to herself. Meredith was incredibly strong and assertive and smart. She’d joined the CIA right out of college—the CIA, for goodness’ sakes!—then left three years later to start a business with her father, a firm that specialized in international finance. Meredith would have somehow dealt with Miguel and ended the nightmare much sooner. Julia couldn’t risk taking her offer of help, though. She’d be damned if she would put anyone else in jeopardy because of her own foolishness.
In the end, it didn’t really matter anyway. Julia would rather her friend think she was some kind of helpless idiot than to jeopardize the plans she’d begun to lay.
From behind her, Miguel’s voice broke the silence. Her heart pounding painfully, she trembled as she turned.
“Why the shivering? Are you cold? Would you like me to close the window?”
She recovered quickly. “What I would like is to go to bed.”
Something shifted in his eyes.
He hadn’t touched her since before Tomas’s birth, but she worried relentlessly about him coming to her bedroom. She pulled the lapels of the robe she wore closer to her throat.
“Just tell me what you want, Miguel.” Her voice stayed steady. “I’m exhausted and my headache is getting worse.”
He waited a moment and she held her breath, then he spoke. “I’m leaving town tomorrow. I’ll be gone for several weeks and I’m taking Tomasito.”
Surprised as she was, she still realized what he’d done. He’d obviously had these plans in place, yet at the party he’d threatened to prevent her from visiting with Tomas. He must really enjoy torturing her.
She hid her anger, the taste of disgust mixing with a flood of fear. There were worse things Miguel could do than toy with her, she reminded herself, and taking Tomas was one of them.
“Where are you going?” The words were hard to get past the knot growing in her throat.
“Where isn’t important. All you need to know is that I expect you to remember whose wife you are. You may go into town to visit Portia, if you wish, but not alone.”
Portia Lauer was an older woman with whom Julia had developed a friendship. Miguel saw her as harmless and therefore he’d allowed the relationship to continue. His generosity went unnoted; all Julia could think of was her son. “I assume you’re taking Mari?”
“No, Mari will not be going. You coddle the boy too much. He can do without his nanny for two weeks.”
“Miguel! He’s only three—”
“I will handle him.”
The words cost her dearly, but Julia said them without reserve. “Then take me with you. I’ll watch Tomas for you and you can do whatever it is you need to do.”
He seemed to weigh her words, then he dismissed them without even answering, heading for the door instead. At the last minute, he turned. His profile looked like stone in the lamplight. “We’re leaving early. If you want to say goodbye, I suggest you keep that in mind.”
CHAPTER TWO
JONATHAN CRUZ HAD WORKED with the woman standing in front of him for five years. He felt as if he knew her but now, all at once, he wasn’t so sure. Meredith Santera wore an expression he’d never seen on her before.
“It’s better than we thought.” She paused then appeared to rethink her answer. “Or maybe it’s worse,” she said. “I guess it depends on your perspective.”
“I don’t want perspective,” he said. “I want the facts.”
She walked past the desk where he sitting, toward the couch. The third member of the Operatives team, Armando Torres, sat at one end of it, nursing a beer. There had been a fourth man in their organization, Stratton O’Neil, but he’d left several years ago under terrible circumstances. He’d cleaned himself up and solved his problems, but had chosen not to return, a decision his new wife had helped him make.
His loss had been a tough one. They were a tight group. Meredith and her father, a Navy Intel guy, had started the company and recruited the team right
