“I’m impressed. Very impressed, actually.” He made a tsking sound. “You went to a lot of trouble to find me. Maybe it’s time you tell me why.”
“I told you—I need your help.”
He raised one large hand and rubbed the razor-sharp stubble coating his strong chin.
A tiny thrill shot through her as she watched the oddly seductive gesture and imagined how it would feel to have those callused fingers stroking her own skin, but that thrill promptly fizzled when she realized her thoughts had drifted off course again. What was it about this man that made her so darn aware of his masculinity?
She shook her head, hoping to clear her foggy brain, and met Tate’s expectant expression. “Your help,” she repeated.
“Oh, really?” he drawled. “My help to do what?”
Her throat tightened. God, could she do this? How did one even begin to approach something like—
“For Chrissake, sweetheart, spit it out. I don’t have all night.”
She swallowed. Twice.
He started to push back his chair. “Screw it. I don’t have time for—”
“I want you to kill Hector Cruz,” she blurted out.
Chapter 2
He was normally quite skilled at reading people, but for the life of him, Tate couldn’t decide if the woman sitting across from him was for real. He also couldn’t stop the blood in his veins from turning into pure ice the second she uttered those three pesky little syllables.
Hector Cruz.
Tate didn’t bother interpreting the “I want you to kill” part. All it took was the sound of Cruz’s name and a dose of bloodlust flooded his body, making him want to reach for the gun in his waistband and start shooting.
Before he could stop them, a barrage of grisly images burned a path across his brain. The charred woman in the brown dress. The heat of the fire. Dead rebels strewn on the ground. Cruz’s coal-black glare. Will’s eyes rolling to the back of his head.
Bad call.
Tate’s hands curled into fists as rage consumed his body like poison. He’d been agonizing about the botched mission for eight months now. He dreamed it. Breathed it. Fed off it. The one thing that kept him going was the thought of slashing a blade across Hector Cruz’s throat and watching the bastard die.
And now this woman, this stranger who’d showed up out of the blue, was asking him to do just that.
But as tempting as it sounded, one look at Eva Dolce—if that was really her name—and all he could think was trap.
“I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m not a hit man.”
“I know that.” Her voice wobbled. “But I also know that you want Cruz dead.”
He shot her a bored look. “Says who?”
“You’ve been asking questions about Cruz for the past eight months, inquiring about his whereabouts, attempting to bribe the rebels who follow him. You’ve made no secret that you want to rid Cruz from this earth.” She arched one eyebrow. “Do you deny that?”
Her matter-of-fact tone unnerved him a bit. Who the hell was this woman? And had she really tracked him down using nothing but a damn computer? She sure didn’t look like some hacker extraordinaire. With her long black hair, sapphire-blue eyes and smooth golden skin, she belonged on the silver screen rather than in front of a computer screen. And that body … Forget movie star—those long legs and the firm breasts practically pouring out of the bodice of her yellow dress were better suited for a lingerie model.
Who exactly are you, Eva Dolce?
“I don’t deny or confirm anything,” Tate replied with a shrug.
She seemed annoyed. “You want Cruz eliminated, Tate. So do I.”
All right. Now, that he might be able to believe. The anger and disgust that entered her big blue eyes each time Cruz’s name escaped her lush lips was unmistakable. But what was her connection to Cruz? Did she even have one?
Or perhaps she’d been sent here to lure Tate out of hiding. The people who were after him must be tired of slamming into the brick walls he kept placing in their paths, and he wouldn’t put it past them to send in someone like Eva, a sexpot agent to seduce their favorite target into slipping up.
But … if they truly had found him, why send anyone at all? And one woman, to boot. Why not order an entire platoon to storm this craphole bar and riddle the place—and Tate—with bullets?
He pursed his lips, suddenly second-guessing every damn thought that fluttered into his head. Maybe they were toying with him? No, that seemed unlikely. If the people hunting him knew where he was, they’d have been here by now.
Which meant this raven-haired beauty might actually be telling the truth.
“Why do you want him dead?” Tate asked sharply.
A cloud floated across her expression. He saw more anger swirling there, but it was now mingled with … fear?
“You’re scared,” he said before he could stop it. He wrinkled his brow. “What are you scared of, Eva?”
“Hector,” she whispered. Her chest heaved as she drew a deep breath. “That’s why I want him dead. Because as long as he’s alive, I’ll be scared for the rest of my life.” She exhaled in a rush. “He’s hunting me, Tate. For three years now. I can’t … God, I can’t keep running anymore.”
Her word choice—hunting—raised his hackles once more. Oh, he knew precisely what it felt like to be hunted. Was this a blatant attempt on her part to form some sort of camaraderie with him? To find common ground with the man she’d been ordered to … to what? Kill?
Battling his distrust, he pinned her down with a harsh glare. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
She nodded, her delicate throat working as she swallowed. “Like I said, I was raised in New York, but I was actually born in San Marquez.”
Tate swiftly masked his surprise. So she hailed from the same South American island nation as Cruz. Interesting.
“After I graduated from college, I decided to return to my birthplace and do some good.”
When Tate laughed, her eyes narrowed. “My parents reacted the same way,” she muttered. “They called me a bleeding heart. But they couldn’t stop me from going. I kept seeing all this terrible stuff on the news—people dying, starving, suffering, and the government doing nothing to help them—so I joined a relief organization and began volunteering at a hospital in the mountains.” She took another breath. “That’s where I met Hector. Idiot that I was, I actually believed in his cause for a time.”
Tate stifled a sigh. Yeah, no surprise there. According to his sources, a
