Dangerous Liaisons Read Online Free Page A

her.
    “What is it?” Tom demanded.
    Jesse shook her head. “I could have gone in for her. I left her behind to be butchered by those animals.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I’ll kill the mother-fucker.” She started to stand.
    Tom seized her shoulders. “You didn’t kill her.”
    “The hell I didn’t.”
    “Jesse, she—”
    Jesse tried to pull free.
    He held fast. “You didn’t kill her. She was sighted in southern Colombia, Florencia, an hour after Green Team went in.”
    Jesse stared.
    “Wasn’t that about the time you were at the village?” he asked.
    She wanted to believe. “You’re lying, that’s too easy.”
    “I’ve never lied to you.”
    He hadn’t.
    “You couldn’t save her any more than you could have saved Green Team.”
    She pulled free. “Don’t lecture me about Green Team, Tom.”
    He leaned back against the cushion. “All right. How about Amanda, then?”
    Jesse hadn’t forgotten Amanda. For the thousandth time she wondered how she could get her autistic sister underground and keep her there unnoticed. Amanda couldn’t live just anywhere. She needed medical and behavioral specialists, and around-the-clock care.
    She’d checked with Harris that morning and he’d reported she was fine at Houghton House. If anyone could take care of Amanda, Harris could. For the thousandth time, Jesse sent a prayer of thanks for the night she’d saved Harris’ ass in that Boston bar. The Vietnam vet was the best thing that had ever happened to Amanda.
    “How did it happen?” she asked in a quiet voice.
    “You don’t want to know.”
    “Don’t fuck with me, Tom.”
    She winced, then steeled herself as he said, “They delivered her to the Senator in pieces.” Jesse gasped, but he went on. “OIA didn’t want to give FARC any more ammunition, so they kept it out of the papers.”
    “FARC,” Jesse sneered. “The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. What a fucking joke. They’re nothing but a terrorist group selling to the highest bidder, and right now that’s Perez and the cocaine trade.”
    “Too bad the Senator didn’t keep out of it,” Tom said. “Nothing’s changed as a result of his efforts to curtail the cocaine trade. The only reason the U. S. government set up Plan Colombia in the first place was to pacify the bleeding hearts here in the States. They had no intention of burning the cocoa fields, and the Colombian government's efforts to fumigate the fields have done more harm to legal crops than to the Colombian drug trade.”
    Jesse frowned. She liked Senator Hamilton. Last year, he brought to the attention of Congress the Colombian cartels’ construction of a submarine more sophisticated that of the supersub discovered in Ecuador. She’d expected the U. S.  to step up efforts to stop the drugs flowing into elementary schools.
    She recalled the day her father died of a drug dealer’s bullet in the schoolyard where he taught seventh grade history, and said, “Senator Hamilton's discovery of the cartel’s submarine is what told us that the cartels are aggressively selling more drugs in the U.S.”
    Tom’s eyes hardened. “The Senator might as well have handed the Colombians the knife that killed his daughter.”
    Jesse stared. “No good deed goes unpunished?” He shrugged, and she said, “What happened to Nielson? I can’t figure out why he was out of communication range when I called from Colombia.”
    The Professor reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a package of Chesterfields and a gold lighter. “Blue Leader is on extended leave.”
    Jesse started. “What does that mean?”
    He shook out a cigarette, lit it, then slipped the pack and lighter back into his pocket. “He and his wife are out of the country.”
    “That’s it?”
    He nodded and took a drag on his cigarette. “Which means you won't get any help here in the States. I wish you’d contacted me from Colombia—which is where you need to be.”
    “Lanton is holding all the