On the Loose Read Online Free Page A

Ms. York’s itinerary.”
    Okay, it was worse than crazy. It was dangerously crazy—Honey heading into Salvadoran guerrilla territory, and the idiot in charge of the embassy in Panama facilitating the trip.
    â€œYou know this is wrong,” Smith said. Anybody could see how wrong it was, allowing her anywhere near the Torola, coffee plantations or no coffee plantations, and he wasn’t buying for a minute that the damn fiasco had anything to do with coffee, not with Diego Garcia in the area.
    No. This disaster had Sister Julia’s fingerprints all over it.
    Jenkins’s jaw firmed up even more. “What I know, Mr. Rydell, and what you apparently still need to learn, is that it is in everyone’s best interests to follow the orders they are given. Mine are to turn Ms. York over to you, and yours are to guarantee her safety while she is in your care, at the sacrifice of your own life, if necessary.”
    The tight little smile Jenkins gave with his summation of the situation made it clear that, for his money, the quicker Smith could arrange to sacrifice his life, the better. Unfortunately, given the situation, Smith could see the odds on that were heading exactly where Jenkins wanted them to head.
    Or not.
    He glanced at Honey again, and this time, she was looking back. A frisson of something or another skittered through him, hitting places he was trained to ignore, and ignore them was what he did. Steeling himself, he stepped past Jenkins and headed for the swimming pool. He was the professional here, the guy they’d called for help. Taking charge was what he did for a living, and he was damn good at it.
    He crossed the pool deck with long, sure strides. If the State Department pencil pusher didn’t have the brains to stop this thing before it blew up in his face, or the guts to stand up to a five-foot-and-next-to-nothing blonde, Smith was going to do it for him.
    Kee-rist.
Irena Polchenko was alive and on the loose, running drugs for the Cali cartel. That was about all the bad news Smith could handle this week. Honey York needed to get her butt back home—and he was just the guy to tell her.

CHAPTER TWO

    Smith didn’t look happy.
    Honey took another long sip of her piña colada, then slowly stirred the drink with her straw, watching Mr. Determination and Coolness Under Pressure bear down on her from behind the safety of her sunglasses. Oh, no, he didn’t look happy at all.
    She didn’t blame him. She wasn’t very damn happy with the situation, either.
    Lifting the glass to her lips, she licked a bit of sugar off the rim and let it melt on her tongue.
    He did look good in a suit, though.
    Damn good.
    Dove gray, tailored to perfection, crisp white shirt, robin’s egg blue tie striped in pink and gold, the Windsor knot a little loose around his neck. He looked very
GQ,
very tropical...and cold, even in this heat. Cold, calculating, and in control, she noted; hard, unforgiving, and dangerous.
    Good.
She needed him to be all those things and more, and despite how determined he looked, she didn’t give a damn what he needed, or wanted, or what he had to say. This was a done deal. He was hers for as long as it took, and it had better not take a minute longer than the forty-eight hours she’d been given to contact the
Cuerpo Nacional de Libertad
troop making their base near the Torola River.
    Seven, eight, zero, four, four, two.
    Forty-eight hours.
    Six numbers.
    Five suitcases.
    And one bodyguard built like the Rock of Gibraltar—that’s what she was taking into the mountains of El Salvador with her, and she’d be damned if she came back out empty-handed. He was her ace in the hole, even if he hadn’t called her, not once in four months, not even to see if she’d made it home okay, the jerk.
    A one-night stand—that’s all she’d been to him, but that was about to change, big-time.
Dammit.
    She reached up and clasped the pendant