Behind the Mask (Undercover Associates Book 4) (28 page)

“An American hobbyist farmer will never protect her from Kabakas,” El Gorrion growled. “More likely, she’ll kill him and leave. We follow. She’ll lead us to Kabakas.”

“Could the farmer himself be Kabakas?” Ruiz asked. “There’s something about him…”

El Gorrion frowned. “With a Kabakas hunter as a maid?” He seemed to ponder this. “Well, then, he’ll kill her—and we’ll have him. One way or another, we’ll find Kabakas and attack him where he lives. He won’t be so formidable without his mask and his swords.”

El Gorrion instructed him to wait until night to unmask her to the village. He would have men in place, watching the road to see who went up to the American’s home after that. Only one way in or out. It was the perfect bait for the trap.

When Dr. Ruiz next opened his computer, his mailbox was full of images: a CIA ID badge, commendations, and photos of an awards ceremony. He drove back to the village, ready to call a meeting.

H
ugo furrowed his
brow at the knock. It was unusual to get visitors at all at the house, but particularly after dark.

It was Julian, wet from the rain. “Dr. Ruiz has called a meeting. He has found the cause of the blight.”

Hugo felt a great weight release from his heart. “And a cure?”

“
No sé.
He’s gathering the farmers at the
cantina
. That is all I know.”

Hugo’s heart lifted. Liza had been about to serve dinner; he’d been looking forward to it, thinking they could repeat the night in front of the fire, but this was excellent news, and he was touched that Julian had made the trek up the mountainside in the dark.

“
Un momento.
” He went in and grabbed his jacket and informed Liza, who seemed more surprised than happy. Well, he was happy enough for both of them. All three of them. He drew her to him and kissed her.

“I’ll be interested to hear,” she said.

Julian played “Color Esperanza” by Diego Torres on the trek down, the perfect music for the cautious hope they both felt. They pulled up in front of the cinder block building that had served as a supply store of sorts. The night air was cool, but the room was lit warmly on the inside, as if it glowed with happiness. The racks and shelves had been pushed to the side and two dozen villagers were gathered around a table; mostly men. People were drinking sodas; a few had beers. A pack of Marlboros got passed around.

Dr. Ruiz looked up, eyes eerie, thanks to the angle of the light. Hugo had never liked him—he’d always seemed condescending toward the villagers—but he might have the cure. He’d seemed to be waiting for them.

There were chairs for maybe half of the people. Julian and Hugo stood.

“It is not good news,” Dr. Ruiz said, opening the lid of his laptop. Hugo’s heart fell. He could feel Julian deflate beside him. “I will try to do all that I can, but this disease is not natural. It is man-made. A poison that moves rapidly through the soil to attack the root.”

The botanist stabbed a few buttons.

Hugo glanced around at the faces. Few looked surprised. They had all suspected there would be no cure. But none had suspected what came next: that this blight was the CIA’s new weapon in the war on drugs.

The men protested. They weren’t growing drugs. They weren’t near the coca fields. Did the CIA believe the
Savinca verde
to be a cover crop? Could they not be made to see?

Dr. Ruiz raised his hands, insisting he didn’t know.

Julian and Hugo exchanged helpless glances.

He typed on his laptop. “This woman is a CIA scientist. A CIA botanist. She is the one responsible.” He turned the laptop to the group.

Hugo’s brain froze, unable to make sense of what he was seeing: A young, dark-haired Liza, wearing a white lab coat, holding a clipboard. She wore glasses and stood grinning next to an impossibly high stalk of corn. She looked like a scientist. His heart slammed inside his chest. “What is this?” he demanded.

Ruiz flipped to the next image: Liza in camo, still with that dark hair, holding a rifle like she knew how to hold a rifle. Mountains in the background. Afghanistan? Another: Liza kneeling on the ground next to a half-buried skeleton, baggie and tweezers clutched in her latex-gloved hands, sidearm visible. A grainy hotel surveillance shot of Liza in a skirt suit, gun down at her thigh, followed. The images didn’t make sense to his mind, but they made sense to his heart. This was her true nature—a hunter, a warrior. She’d fooled him.

Betrayed him.

The photos continued. He felt the men’s gazes on him, but he could not look away. Her name was Zelda, not Liza, Ruiz said. CIA.

Hugo gripped the back of the chair in front of him. “I didn’t know.”

“She’s highly trained,” Ruiz said.

So was he. Supposedly.

There was a shot of Liza—no, Zelda—in a ceremony with a medal on her suit jacket, dark hair pulled into a ponytail, telltale bulge of a holstered gun right there for the world to see. Lastly, an elementary school picture with two dark-haired little girls. Twins.

The room felt too warm. Too smoky.

Her question about his burns:
How long?
The recognition with which she’d first looked at him. Her strange attitude toward the cabinet. The way she’d picked out the Moro wand. He thought he was revealing his heart to the woman he was falling for.

Instead, he was providing clues to an enemy.

She knew who he was. It was only a matter of time before his enemies moved on him…
and Paolo
. That was the worst part of it—the threat to Paolo.

He gripped the wooden chair back, rage coursing through his fingertips.

Ruiz went on about how she was there to kill the savinca. Sent by the CIA or a rogue, perhaps. Experimenting. The men asked angry questions.

Ruiz knew very little. “She is here to conduct experiments on the plants. There may be something special about the savinca that has attracted them. If I can isolate that element, that reason…” He went on. Hugo was no longer listening.

Killing the plants was…what? A taunt? It made no sense. But too many other things did. The fading track marks. The way her story never felt real. Her eyes, her hair.

Rage clouded the edges of his vision as he thought of Paolo, there alone with her. His enemies would hurt Paolo as a way to hurt him—she would know that, of course.

He turned to Julian. “I have to get back. I have to get Paolo away from her.”

“Shall I take him for the night?”

“Please,” Hugo said, pulling on his jacket. He would kill her. He would not be merciful.

One of the men spoke up: he’d seen a light bobbing down the side of the mountain six days back, heading downward from the direction of Hugo’s home. Another chimed in: he, too, had seen it.

“Perhaps she released an airborne agent,” Ruiz said smugly. “Or she seeded the ground. She’s here to study, to perform tests at different altitudes, or perhaps studying the half-life of her poison.”

The light bobbing down the mountainside—that was the first night. The night she’d come to him in his opium stupor.

The villagers asked Ruiz about a cure, an antidote. Would the spy know it? Could she be forced to reveal it?

“No, the CIA is not in the business of plant rehabilitation,” Ruiz said. “That’s my job.” Ruiz seemed to be setting up teams. They were to monitor things. He would return to his lab and work on a solution with the help of the data the men collected.

“I will make this right,” Hugo grated out. “I’ll pay for the ruined crops. Any expense to save them, I will pay it.”

The men couldn’t even look at him. It wouldn’t be enough: the savinca plants were dying, and centuries of tradition along with them. Some of the men wanted to go to confront Liza—Zelda—but Hugo shook his head. “I will deal with her,” he said, grimly. “I will make this right.”

They assumed he was talking about money, programs. They assumed wrong.

She wanted Kabakas.

She would have Kabakas.

He turned to Julian. “Now.”

Ruiz waylaid them on the way out to the Jeep. “What will you do?” he asked. “She could be dangerous.”

“
Yo me encargaré
,” he said.
I’ll handle it.

Ruiz regarded him with an intensity Hugo did not like. “What will you do?”

“I’ll
handle
it.”

Hugo and Julian got into the Jeep and sped back up the mountainside in the dark.

His mind raced. Why poison the crop? How had she obtained the poison? Or had she made it? Had she made a report to the CIA on him yet, or was she collecting evidence first? How much time did he and Paolo have until a team descended?

The CIA would turn him over to the vice president, the man who’d put the bounty on his head so many years ago. The Vice President blamed Hugo for the death of his son at the Yacon fields.

They would kill him, of course, but it wasn’t death he feared—it was the sound of Paolo suffering. They would force Hugo to listen. They would also hurt the village he’d tried to help. Could that be the motivation behind poisoning the crops?

His heart twisted as he imagined that night with Liza and Paolo in front of the fire. They’d felt like a family.

How thoroughly and deeply she had fooled him!

No more. She was at the door when he arrived. “What is it?” she asked.

“Hopeless.” He brushed past her to find the boy, hoping she hadn’t recognized the anger roaring through him.

“What did he say?” she called after him.

He pointed at the dining room table. “The food is not yet out.” An accurate observation, but none of them would eat tonight.

He found Paolo in his room with his books. Paolo looked up at him, trustingly. He picked Paolo up and held him tight. He needed to find out what kind of reports she’d made. If she’d circulated photos of him. And then he’d kill her. They would survive this; he and Paolo would survive together, just as they always had. “Rodolfo wants you to sleep over,” he whispered roughly. Rodolfo was Julian’s boy.

Paolo’s face brightened. More fake currency.

Hugo stuffed some of Paolo’s favorite things into bag and then, impulsively, he clapped his palms onto both sides of the boy’s head and kissed him on the forehead.

The boy looked stunned.

“Hurry,” Hugo said gruffly. He guided him out through the home and out to the dark drive. He stood there until Julian’s taillights disappeared. Then he turned toward the house.

And met her eyes through the kitchen window.

And he knew that she knew.

He burst in and stormed down the tile hall to the kitchen as though he were carried on a boiling tide of rage. He always visualized the kill before he did it, but he could not visualize this one, not even what he would use.

She’d be ready for him, of course. She might even attack him. He hoped that she would. He would tear her apart.

She stood in the middle of the kitchen as he entered, body erect, arms down at her sides, knives in each hand, no doubt, concealed in the folds of the white apron. Maybe something extra in her apron pocket.

He had underestimated her for the last time.

“What’s up?” She searched his face. “What did he say?” If she decided there was no danger, she’d likely turn and bustle at the counter, discreetly ridding herself of the knives.

He said nothing; he simply advanced on her as he had the night of the game, only he was coming in for the kill, fully who he was.

It was then that her face changed. It was nearly imperceptible—a minute relaxation—a shift from the bright, blank expression to what she was. Her true face. This was a woman who saw the world as it was. She was beautiful like this.

“Why?” he rasped, blood racing.

To her credit, she didn’t make excuses or try to talk her way out of things; she just raised her knives.

She knew all about him.

He was on her like a flash. He trapped and deflected, taking an unexpected knee to his thigh and an expected cut to his forearm in order to get in close enough to control her arms. She slammed a foot into his knee, wobbling him.

He swore and twisted the weapons from her, and then he spun her around, holding her back against his big body. He held her wrists in one hand, pressed to her breastbone. With the other hand he held her wooden-handled kitchen knife to her jugular.

He could feel her heart beating against his, even through her back. He pulled her in more tightly, and even now he wanted her, this woman who’d burrowed so deeply into his home, his heart.

Her breath sounded ragged. “Hugo—”

“CIA. You hoped to cash in on the vice president’s bounty, but why poison the fields?” Angrily, he jerked her closer. “You know who I am, but to
poison the fields
?”

“It wasn’t me—it’s Ruiz.”

“Ruiz is here to help.”

“He’s not—I swear it.”

“And I should believe you?” He wanted to, and he hated himself for it.

“Think how we felt out there—we were united in saving the plants. We shared that. You felt it.”

“Like we were united in helping Paolo? You know what they’ll do to him, do you not?”