Saint (2 page)

Chapter One

Maria shifted in the seat, stretching her
aching muscles. “Tell me again why we’re driving through the hills of Kentucky
and why I’m dressed like Oliver Twist. Ever hear of K-Mart?”

Will smiled wryly. “I’m taking you to a
safe place. And the more pitiful you look, the better our chances of eliciting
a favorable response. Seth’s a sucker for pitiful creatures in need.”

Safe. Right. “There is no safe place. I
know, I’ve been to all of them. You could lock me in Fort Knox and I wouldn’t
feel safe.”

He glanced over his shoulder before
switching lanes. “Lucky for you we’re not going to Fort Knox. At this point I’m
not sure I trust the Marines. Juarez is getting impatient and dangerous.”

“He’s always been dangerous—I was just too
stupid to see it.” Maria gazed out the window at the passing scenery, watching
as the fog set in on the hilltops, their wooded tips barely discernable through
the evening mist. Will Skaggs was the one person she trusted with her life. He
was open, honest and genuinely cared about what she was trying to do. What she
would
do, if she could manage to stay
alive long enough.

“How’s your head?” he asked.

“It hurts.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Thank God you managed
to crawl into one of those vacant houses and keep out of sight ’til I got
there. Jesus, I almost passed a gallstone when I called and…I thought for sure
one of Juarez’s goons had gotten to you first.” He slapped the steering wheel,
lips thinned in anger. “I don’t how that bastard keeps doing it! I was careful,
Maria.”

“Who knew I was there?”

“Just me and my supervisor. He hand-picked
Buck and Ray after the last time.”

The last time. A safehouse in North
Carolina. Simon, the agent assigned to her, shot dead through the window. A
shiver ran through her.

“Cold?” he asked.

“No.”

“I can turn up the heat. It tends to get a
little chilly up in these hills in the evening. We’ll stop and check into a
hotel so you can rest before heading up to Harris’ mountain.”

“Are you sure about this, Will?”

He cast her a sideways glance. “I’m sure. Seth
Harris is the best-trained military man the government ever let loose. I’ve
trusted him with my life a time or two, so yes, I trust him with yours. He was Special
Forces. Did some recon missions for the CIA after that, bodyguard to the
President and various members of the Senate for a couple of years. You name it,
he’s done it. Now he teaches literature at Murray State and takes a hiatus on
his mountain in Western Kentucky for the summer.”

One man was going to solve all her
problems? Didn’t she wish. “You’re hiring Indiana Jones to hide me from Juarez?”

He pursed his lips and thought for a
moment. “Seth has…special skills. He’s dealt with Juarez before. Not Benito, his
father. I’m only telling you this because I want you to understand the, er,
situation will open an old wound for him. These days he’s about as approachable
as a grizzly. But,” he added before she could interrupt, “he’s the only one I
trust at this stage of the game. I swear, Harris is really a good guy on the
inside, you just have to get past the crust to find that out.”

Like she had a lot of choices. “It won’t
hurt to meet with him, I guess. What did he say when you called him?”

She didn’t care for the grimace he just
managed to control. “Seth likes the simple life. No phones, no television, generator
for electricity. You’d think a man who’s crawled through practically every
jungle in the world would crave concrete under his feet. Go figure.”

Maria let her head sink back against the
headrest and closed her eyes. Her skull was pounding. She was stiff and sore,
and all she wanted at the moment was a hot shower and a bed. “So, what you’re
saying is that we might have made the trip for nothing. He could say no.”

“He’s not going to say no. I won’t let him.”

* * * * *

Will checked them into a no-name motel with
sagging mattresses, lime-green carpet that had seen better days and mold
growing in the shower stall. Maria ignored the mold and stripped off her
clothes. The trickle of lukewarm water that drizzled over her would have to
pass for a shower.

“Feel better?” Will asked as she emerged
from the tiny bathroom, buttoning a long-sleeved shirt he’d managed to dig out
of his trunk for her to wear.

She shrugged. “Some.”

“Let me see that cut on your scalp.”

“It’s fine.” She waved off his concern. “Will
you stop hovering over me?”

“Shut up and turn around.” He grasped her
by the shoulders and held her still while he examined the area. “Ouch!”

“Sorry.”

“You’re worse than my mother used to be,”
she muttered.

“Just call me Mother Will.” He probed the
wound until he was satisfied it was clean. “A stop at the hospital would be
just the break Juarez is looking for. If we’re lucky we have one, maybe two
days ’til Benito finds out yours isn’t one of the bodies scattered among the
rubble in Arizona. Okay.” He released her. “Looks fine.”

Will told himself he didn’t have any choice
but to involve Seth Harris. Harris would keep Maria safe. Harris would follow
the rules and the law only as long as they benefited him. Seth Harris could do
what needed to be done because, technically, he didn’t exist.

“Okay let’s get some shuteye.” But Maria
never heard him because she had already fallen asleep on the bed. He pulled the
covers over her and sat down on the opposite bed.

How she had managed to keep it together all
this time, he had no idea. Most people would have given up and gone into
permanent hiding by now. But not Maria Carvania. She had moxie. She might be
small and female, but packed into that petite package was a dynamo—a woman who
loved her family and was fiercely loyal to their memory. She didn’t want revenge—she
wanted justice. And he was going to see that she got it, one way or the other.
On the other hand, bringing down Benito Juarez wouldn’t hurt his career in the
least.

Will liked Maria. She wasn’t afraid to
stand up for what she believed. When she’d first come to him with her story, he
couldn’t believe his luck. What was more amazing was the fact she’d posed as a
nanny in Senator Long’s home and managed to gather enough evidence to put both Benito
Juarez and the shady Senator away for life. At the very least there was enough
to have the Venezuelan bastard arrested and extradited.

She had taken a big chance, but her gamble
paid off.

And if Juarez ever found her, there wouldn’t
be enough left to identify.

His main problem was going to be getting
Seth onboard. And what if, after all these years, that crazy-ass group of his
was scattered to the four winds and unreachable? Seth was good, but he wasn’t
loony enough to take on the situation without backup.

He was sorry it had come to this, not just
for Maria’s sake, but because of what Seth had endured at the hands of Juarez
family. But he just didn’t see any other way.

Handling Seth Harris was going to take
cunning and finesse. You didn’t simply walk up to a man like Seth and demand he
help you. Not if you wanted to live.

So if that was the plan, then keep it
simple. Go with the unexpected. Catch Seth off guard and play on his
sympathies.

Chapter Two

Texas

“Get your boots off the coffee table,” she
called from the kitchen. “This isn’t some two-bit saloon.”

“Can’t a man put his feet up after a hard
day’s work?”

She entered the living room, wiping her
hands on a towel. “You run an oil company, sugar. A hard day’s work to you is
taking the check to the bank.”

“You’re a real smartass, you know that?”
His grin took the sting out of the comment.

“I know, but you love me anyway.” She sat
down beside him and cuddled close.

“That’s a fact.” Elliott Galen put his arm
around his wife’s shoulders and pulled her down with him on the cushions. “I’ll
give you your own oil well if you put on that sexy outfit I bought you last
week.”

“You already gave me an oil well,” she
reminded him dryly. “And I’m not putting on that outfit again. Grown men
shouldn’t need white dresses and patent leather shoes to turn them on.”

“I don’t need it,” he insisted sullenly. “I
just like looking at you in it.”

She ruffled his white-blond hair playfully.
“Liar,” she teased. “I saw fire in your eyes and that thing stood straight up.”

“That’s what it’s supposed to do.” He
loosened his tie and slipped it around her wrists, binding them together.

“Why can’t we just have normal sex?” she
complained, half serious.

“Because I’m not normal.”

“I wish you’d talk to someone about it.”

“A shrink,” he spat derisively. “Yeah, that’s
what I want to do, lay on an overused couch and pay two-hundred-fifty bucks a
session to tell some jackass my life story.”

“I mean it, Elliot. It’s not that I don’t
like fantasizing sometimes, but lately it’s the only way you really get
aroused. If you won’t talk to me about it, talk to somebody.”

“Are we going to have sex or not?” He
peeled off his shirt.

“Not.”

“Shit.” Elliott loosened the tie around her
wrists, tossing the silk neckpiece to the floor. “I need a beer.”

“That won’t solve the problem either.”

“The hell it won’t. If I drink enough.” He
left to go in search of something to kill the images in his head.

She was still sitting there, waiting for
him when he returned from the kitchen with the whole six-pack. “Talk to me,
sugar.”

“I told you before, it’s just a quirk,” he
snapped irritably. “Can’t a person have a quirk? Do I hurt you? Do I slap you
around?”

“No. You wouldn’t do that.”

“Damn right I wouldn’t.” He popped the top
and guzzled half the can.

“It was that mission to China, wasn’t it?
You started acting strange after that.”

The memory started to come back to him.

The old Chinese man.

The four girls.

The ecstasy.

Too young. They were too young.

It was wrong.

The saint had saved him, but by then it was
too late. He had already acquired a taste for it.

* * * * *

Mexico

“I said tequila, not this watered-down
piss!” Frank Vaducci leaned across the scuffed bar, grabbed a handful of shirt
and yanked the bartender to him. “You do understand English, eh
, amigo?
”

“That is the best tequila available in all
of Mexico. There is nothing better!”

“That so?” He let loose of the bartender’s
shirt. “I guess I must be immune then.”

“Keep it down over there,” someone called
from across the cantina. “Can’t you see the rest of us are trying to have a
drink?”

Frank turned and surveyed the small room,
trying to gauge which one of the rough-looking bunch had the balls to tell him
to keep it down. “You.” He pointed to the biggest
hombre
in the place, a strapping,
well-muscled man who picked the wrong day to mind someone else’s business. “Are
you trying to aggravate me?”

“We just want to have a drink in peace, if
you don’t mind,” the man answered gruffly.

“I don’t like drinking in peaceable places.
Makes me nervous.” Frank made his way toward the table, shoving aside the
slouches that didn’t have sense enough to get out of his way.

“Maybe you should take a pill,” the man
suggested, shoving his own chair backward to stand.

“I tried that. Doesn’t work.”

Bystanders, most of them as disreputable as
the place itself, readied themselves for a fight.

The peaceable drinker drew a long
switchblade, waving it back and forth. “Then maybe this will.”

“Ya think?” Frank moved swiftly, caught the
man’s hand and twisted. The switchblade fell to the floor and the peacemaker dropped
to his knees, howling in pain as Frank twisted his wrist at an unnatural angle.
A knee to the face and the
hombre
was flat on his back on the dirty floor between the tables, out
cold. “Now then,” he straightened, leveling a narrow gaze around the room. “Anybody
else want to take a crack at aggravating me?”

Eyes lowered, heads shook negatively.
Putting down the biggest asshole in the place usually did the trick. “Good.
Then let’s all play nice and have a little noise around here. Bartender! The
rowdiest table gets drinks on me.”

“Now look what you do,” the bartender
complained. “My cantina is a mess.”

Frank turned to look down at the mess. “Get
up.” A foot to the ribs brought the peacemaker out of his stupor. “And don’t go
spreading rumors that I broke your wrist or your ribs,” he warned. “I hate liars.”

Now he could drink. There was noise.