relief that Hannah slipped into the car. What had she done with the keys? Patting pockets proved fruitless. She finally found them stuck in a side pocket of her handbag.
As she bent forward to put the key in the ignition, the passenger door abruptly opened and a man got in beside her. She gasped as impressions struck like stray bullets. Tan skin, long black hair, angular face, straight eyebrows hovering over brilliant blue eyes.
Eyes filled with scathing anger.
She instantly reached for the door handle with one hand and slammed the other down on the horn. He grabbed her hand from the steering wheel and shouted, “Hannah. ¡Parada!“ in the ensuing silence.
With her name and the sound of his voice came recognition. Her hand went limp in his grasp and he released it. Barely able to keep from rubbing her eyes, she whispered, “Jack?”
His eyelids flickered.
“It can’t be you,” she mumbled.
His shoulders lifted in an elegant shrug and she realized why she hadn’t immediately recognized him. He was so much thinner than the last time she’d seen him, so much more weathered. There were a few scars that hadn’t been there before, too, one by his nose, another along his jaw. His hair, which had been military short, was now shoulder length, wavy and wild.
Her impulse was to reach for him. “Jack! I thought you were dead—”
He caught her arms in strong hands, stopping her momentum. She fell back in her own bucket seat and after swallowing her shock, murmured, “What’s going on?”
“That’s what you’re going to tell me,” he said.
“I don’t know what you mean.” But of course Aubrielle popped into her mind. Did he know about her? Was that why he was here?
“I want to know who put you up to it, Hannah. Simple as that. Give me a name and I’m out of here.”
He’d lost her.
There was a rap on Hannah’s window. She looked around to find a very old man with bushy eyebrows peering in at her. She flicked the key to the right and used the switch to power down the window a few inches.
“Everything okay, miss?” he asked, a white handlebar mustache obscuring his lips.
“Everything is fine,” she said. She wasn’t sure what was going on with Jack, but surely it didn’t require outside assistance. “I accidentally hit the horn.”
“You positive?” he persisted, his gaze sliding past Hannah to look more closely at Jack. She doubted he was reassured by what he saw.
With more conviction than she felt, she said, “Yes. Thanks.”
“If you say so,” the old guy said and, leaning his weight on an old wooden cane, shuffled off toward a green sedan, his long raincoat almost dragging on the pavement. Hannah turned back to Jack. “Should I have asked him to call the cops?”
“I’ll call the cops myself just as soon as I find out who helped you.”
“You’ll call the cops? Why would you call the cops?”
“I’ve had months to think,” he said with deadly calm. “Months to realize I was conned and you did the conning. Oh, I know you didn’t actually kill anyone yourself, but the blood of innocent men is on your hands and you know it.”
The relief of realizing his demeanor had nothing to do with Aubrielle quickly gave way to shock as she realized what he was insinuating. “You have to be talking about the ambush down in Tierra Montañosa,” she said, stunned he would think—“Are you saying I had something to do with it?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” he growled.
She took the keys out of the ignition and without consciously deciding to do so, looped a few fingers through the door handle. “I heard you were dead, killed with several other men, buried in a mass grave. How did you get here?”
“I escaped. They butchered the others. As for identifying me—they threw my watch in with the corpses and set the whole thing on fire.” He looked away as though catching his breath. Her own seemed to come in short gasps as her imagination provided images of what he’d just described.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured.
His nod was barely perceptible.
She didn’t know him well, had only spent one night of her life with him, but he’d helped her that night more than he’d ever, ever know, and now she sincerely wanted to return the kindness. He looked as though he needed it.
On the other hand, it was clear he didn’t want anything from her but confirmation of some terrible, ill-conceived suspicion.
“Let me tell you what the Tierra Montañosa government told the Staar Foundation,” she said. “The rebel group who carried out the attack call themselves the Guerrilleros de Tierra Montañosa although they deny they had anything to do with it. I guess they always do that. Their rhetoric is freedom from tyranny, but the truth is they’re a Marxist group. I’ve read about them since, well, since the ambush. They’re terrible people.
They—”
He waved away her dialogue. “You think I don’t know who they are? I was down there to protect people like you from groups like the GTM. It was my job as a bodyguard to know all the organizations and their goals, so don’t try to tell me about them. What I want to know is who gave them the inside information to carry out the ambush at Costa del Rio. They had to have inside help to pull that off. They knew where we were going to be and when we were going to be there. You’re the one who made the arrangements.”
“Yes, I am.”
“So who else knew what they were?”
“Until a few minutes before the convoy left, no one knew but you. There’d been threats, we’d been warned to keep it secret.”
“What about the founder’s son, what’s his name, Hugo Correa?”
“What about him?” “Did he know?”
“No, of course not. You’re not suggesting Hugo Correa had anything to do with the rebels, are you?”
“What’s wrong? Is it politically incorrect to point a finger at a dead man?”
“Mr. Correa isn’t dead.”
Jack’s brow furrowed. “Run that by me again.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, damn it. I’ve been back in the States two weeks. My first thought was to enlist the aid of my sister. I found she was in the middle of her own drama and needed my help. When that was over, I discovered she’s pregnant so I left her out of it. As far as Hugo Correa goes, the last I saw of him, he and a couple of the others were being driven away in a truck with about three dozen guerillas pointing assault rifles at their heads. Later we heard they were killed.”
“The foundation had kidnap insurance for its officers so they paid
