Ian holstered his weapon slowly then pulled the goggles from his eyes and stared at the man he had called friend eight months before.
He came to attention; the former easy familiarity with his lieutenant commander hadn't necessitated military protocol in such settings, but for some reason, the gesture of respect triggered intuitively.
"Bastard," Clint growled. "At fucking ease, Lieutenant. This isn't a goddamned firing squad."
It sure as hell felt like one though.
Clint was quiet then, watching them both with brooding intensity as Kira holstered her own weapon and removed her own goggles.
"How long have you been set up here?" Ian asked as Clint turned to lead the way through the house.
"Since the night you installed Kira at Fuentes villa," Clint answered, his voice biting. "Of course you already know that. You had one of your men watching this place like a gator watches fresh meat."
Ian's lips quirked. He would have expected to hear that from Kell, not Clint.
"I assumed you would take the hint when I left you the message to stay out of this."
"Killer Secrets?" Clint grunted. "Yeah, we were just going to drop off the face of the earth for you, bro. You forget, 'Killer Secrets' was for personal endeavors only, not drug cartels."
"Family ties don't make it personal then?" Ian snapped.
Goddamn, what the hell had they wanted, a blow-by-blow account of exactly how personal this was to him?
"That about sums it up, Richards," Clint snarled, turning back to him, anger tightening his features. "Drug cartels and unidentified terrorists do not fucking apply. Remember that."
Clint was pissed, there was no doubt. Ian pushed his fingers through his hair and shook his head at the thought.
"Son of a bitch, McIntyre," he cursed. "Why didn't I just drag all of you in on it, since Diego knows your faces so fucking well. I could have watched him kill you like I watched him kill that little maid. Her brains splattering across the wall before she had time to realize she was dead. Hell yeah, I wouldn't be dealing with your stubborn ass now if I had."
Clint rounded on him, his lips flattening, the muscle at his jaw twitching dangerously. Clint wasn't a man to cross, but Ian had learned to cross the most dangerous of them all. The fury in the other man's face didn't have the power it once held.
He met Clint's anger head-on. No apology. He'd be damned if he'd apologize for any of it.
Clint's gaze sliced to Kira then. "You're slacking, Agent Porter. I figured you'd have him in line by now. Teach him a few manners."
"He's still a work in progress," she drawled, the hint of a Southern accent causing Ian's balls to twitch in hunger despite the tension in the room.
When her fingers slid over his arm, and she aligned herself at his side, something shifted within him. Others stood either in front of him, or behind him; he'd be damned if anyone, man or woman, had ever stood at his side in such a way.
The feeling that swept over him had him fighting to hold back, to keep his damned hands to himself. Instead, his arm slid around her, pulling her to his side, desperate to feel her against him.
Clint's lips quirked. "Keep working on him, he might have potential. Come on in here, we have some serious shit going down. We were planning a break into Ian's room tonight. Thankfully, you saved us the trouble."
Ian's eyes narrowed as he followed Clint through the villa. If they had been considering a move that potentially dangerous, then the situation had gone beyond serious shit. They knew the operation, that was evident; moving in on him could have fouled the whole thing.
"There were ways to make contact," Ian reminded him.
"Sure there are," Clint growled. "Ways that information can be leaked too. From what I understand you're under a total blackout until this mission is completed. I talked to your stepfather; even he hasn't heard anything. We weren't about to rock this little boat by going through channels that could possibly include another nasty little spy belonging to Sorrell. Coming straight to the source. I like that angle."
Bitterness filled his voice, the same bitterness that had filled all their guts when they realized how effectively the government channels had been infiltrated by Sorrell's spies.
"I need to get this over with," Ian informed him. "I have men waiting to grab Ascarti if need be. The opportunity is now or never."
"Never." Clint led the way into the sitting room off the more formal living room.
"Ascarti isn't what you want." Reno stepped from the shadows of the room, cradling an M-16 as he gazed at Ian quietly. "It's good to see you again, Ian."
"Reno." Ian nodded, then glanced at the weapon in his arms questioningly.
"Security." Reno shrugged. "Macey and Kell are on their way back in; until then, there are things to protect."
"There are?" Besides their own sorry asses? But why the hell they thought he was a risk at this point, he wasn't certain.
"There's a reason we've been busting our asses to contact you for a week, Ian," Clint snarled. "You have your head up your ass? Since when did you think we'd jeopardize an op?"
"Since the general information that went out on it said I was a deserter and traitor," Ian snapped back, feeling Kira's hand rub against his back warningly.
Hell, why did that ease the anger beginning to rise inside him? What the fucking hell kind of hold did she have on him anyway? Whatever it was, it eased the violent tension rising inside him and had the other two men watching him with knowing grins.
"Would you believe I had betrayed my country, Ian?" Reno asked then. "Better yet, would you have believed it of Nathan, no matter the evidence?"
"I built the evidence," Ian reminded them. "It was pretty damning."
"A little too damning," Reno agreed. "I'll kick your ass for taking me away from my wife and son after we're finished here. Until then, we have details to attend to."
Macey and Kell stepped into the room.
"Fucktard," Macey muttered as he passed him. "Dumb shit. The least you could have done was let us have some fun too."
Kell chuckled and moved across the room to plop into the heavily cushioned couch that sat along the wall.
"All clear. We have monitors in place as well as motion sensors. We're safe for the time being."
"Jammers are in place," Macey reported. "The villa seems pretty quiet. Old man Fuentes retired to the basement from what I could see. He likes his solitude?" Macey glanced at Ian.
"He likes his playroom down there," Ian snapped. "And the pretty young woman willing to play with him."
The others grimaced.
"You're all here, now what the hell is going on? I put off a grab against Ascarti for what?"
"For me, Lieutenant Richards."
Ian had his weapon out, swinging around to the shadowed opening that led to another room and the petite young woman that stepped through it.
He recognized her. A regular at some of the clubs in the past few months. Red hair, haunted green eyes, and wariness.
"Tehya?" Surprise colored Kira's voice as she touched Ian's arm, indicating that he could holster his weapon.
The others sat and stood comfortably, obviously well aware of her presence before she stepped into the room.
"You know her?" Ian questioned tightly.
"Tehya Talamosi," she stated. "I'm just not certain why she's here."
"It's good to see you again, Kira." Tehya nodded almost regally in Kira's direction. "It's been a few years."
"Tehya."
Ian could feel the tension in Kira's voice now; she was as off balance as he felt.
"Why is she here?" Ian lowered his weapon carefully. "And it better be good, Reno, because I'm ready to kick all your asses for jeopardizing this mission in this way."
Tehya's lips curved with an edge of bitterness. "It wasn't their fault, Lieutenant Richards. Once they learned why I was here, they really had no other choice. We have a mutual goal, and I can help."
She couldn't be more than twenty-two, twenty-three a
t the most. She was so damned delicate it was hard to picture her as an adult.
"And how can you help?" Ian growled. "Unless you can identify Sorrell for us."
"I can do better than that. I can bring Sorrell to you. I'm his daughter, you see. There is no better bait on the face of this earth."
Ian couldn't believe it. It couldn't be this simple.
"You can identify him?"
Her lips turned down. "Unfortunately, not his face. If it were that simple I would have made the information available to your terrorist enforcement agencies years ago. I don't know his face, but I know his voice and I know the single identifying mark he carries. I can give you that much, and you can kill him for me."
Anticipation rippled through Ian. He felt Kira tense beside him, saw the satisfaction reflected in the other men's eyes.
This was what they had been waiting for. Years of investigations, of planning. They had heard about the wife and daughter who had escaped Sorrell years before. The wife had turned up dead in Nicaragua, but the daughter was rumored to be a figment of the imagination. An urban legend created by the agents desperate to identify Sorrell.
Sorrell's twenty-year rise within the underground terrorist community had been subtle. The power shifts had been carried by men working directly beneath him, yet never seeing him. Somehow, Sorrell had managed to finance and build an empire within the white slave market before sliding into terrorism, and he had done it all without ever being identified. There hadn't even been a strong suspect in the years since his name had popped up. He was an anomaly, a shadow.
"I know Tehya, Ian," Kira murmured. "I knew she was running from something, I just didn't know what."
Tehya's pert little nose wrinkled as her lips tightened.
"When my mother escaped Sorrell, I was only three. She had me placed in a convent while she continued to run. The good sisters there knew I was in danger. They protected me. It took Sorrell only months to find her and kill her. One of the nuns awakened me one night and we slipped from the convent. It was burned to the ground at dawn that morning with six nuns inside. The coroner's report stated that at least one of the bodies had been tortured before the convent was burned. I've been on the run ever since. Always just a few steps ahead of him, always fighting for survival."
"So why move against him now?" Ian wasn't the trusting sort and he didn't believe in a gift horse.
Teyha sighed before glancing behind her at Reno. "When you deserted and took the reins on the cartel in time to keep Sorrell from taking over I knew it was time. He's been gaining on me, tracking me. He found the nun who raised me about ten years ago. She had known Sorrell was close to finding us. She put me in the care of a priest that she knew well and did the same thing Mother had done. She kept running. I have no doubt she gave them a reliable description of me before his men murdered her because within months the priest and I were on the run as well. We ran for years before he found someone he thought could protect me better than he. My life has been filled with blood, Lieutenant. After the priest was killed, I ran away from the retired marine he had placed me with. Within months the marine was dead, and I was alone. I've been alone since I was seventeen, fighting to stay out of Sorrell's hands, always aware of the future that awaits me if he catches me. The only way I'll be safe is if he's dead."
As she spoke, her voice thickened with unshed tears, with the horror of the life she had lived. Kira moved from his side and walked to her, her arms going around the younger girl as she stood in the center of that room, her head lifted, her lips trembling, taking on her own slender shoulders responsibility for the lives her father had destroyed.
"She came to Aruba to ask for your help." Reno stepped forward then. "Macey saw her at Coronado's several times, watching you, trying to get close to you. Kell caught her trying to slip into the Fuentes estate a week ago. He convinced her to let us cover her until we could form a plan."
"Why not let her come to me?" Ian snapped.
"Because one of Fuentes's most trusted soldiers is reporting to Ascarti, Ian. His cousin Muriel. She would have been walking into an ambush if she had entered Diego's villa."
Ian froze inside. Muriel was one of the few within the Fuentes organization that Ian had handpicked himself to protect the villa and Diego.
"Do we have proof?" He was aware of Kira's gaze jerking to him as she slowly released Teyha.
Reno moved to the small table at the side of the room and picked up a file. He handed it to Ian slowly.
In living color the digitally printed photos showed Muriel and Ascarti meeting. The exchange of an envelope and Muriel handing the other man photos. Photos of the inside of the villa and the grounds as well as photos of Ian with various suppliers and transporters.
"Ian." Kira stepped back to him.
"He'll be at the villa in the morning with Diego," Ian said coldly. "We'll take him then and have Antoli question him."
"Antoli's good at what he does. You know he's a plant from within Russia's Federal Security Service, don't you?"
"I'm aware of that." Ian continued to stare at the photos as he fought against the knowledge that this betrayal by his cousin would be a shock to Diego. Diego discussed everything with Muriel and Saul. And why the fuck he should care, Ian didn't know.
Antoli had been a very low-level soldier within the Fuentes organization when Ian came in. Ian had promoted him to security not long after recognizing him. He had known Antoli was a plant from the start. The man had been quietly putting together his escape when Ian waylaid him late one night in Colombia just after reading the file Diego had on him. Which was a hell of a lot different from the truth. Just as it appeared Muriel was different from what he had been perceived as.
He pushed his fingers through his hair as he focused on Tehya once again.
"How will you recognize his voice? If you've never seen him, if you've been on the run all your life, how could you recognize anything about him?"
A bitter smile twisted her lips. "He left me a phone number once. Unfortunately, it's untraceable. Reno has the number. Sometimes, when I want to remember how much I hate him, I call him. He always answers. And it's him, trust me. As bad as he wants me back he would never let anyone else answer that phone. He's assured me, time and again, that he's my father and he wants only to protect me. It's Sorrell, Mr. Richards. I remember that voice from my nightmares. As a child, I heard him rape my mother, his voice so calm, so reasonable, and demonic. I'm staking my life on the fact that it is him."
She was indeed betting her life if what she was saying was true. Ian let his gaze connect with Kira's, saw the concern in it. She knew Tehya, and evidently, she trusted the other girl.
So young. Twenty-three and yet the haunted pain in her eyes made her appear so much older. He'd lived on gut instinct too long to discount her, but that didn't mean he trusted her.
"And I have an ace, one he's unaware I possess." She stared at him intently then, tears glittering in her wild green eyes.
"What ace would that be?" he asked carefully.
"I carry his birthmark. It resembles a scythe. Sorrell's personal mark, the same birthmark he carries."
She turned then, lifted the thin T-shirt she wore, and revealed the mark low in the center of her back, below her hips. In the exact center, perhaps two inches above the cleft of her rear, was the small birthmark resembling the scythe Sorrell used as his own personal mark.
Kira moved her gaze from the mark low on Tehya's back, to Ian. He hadn't tightened, hadn't moved, his expression hadn't altered in the least, but the tension suddenly emanating from him was electric.
"No one knows about the birthmark," Ian murmured. There had been no rumors, not so much as a whiff of information regarding it, Kira knew.
"No one knew about this except myself and my mother. She warned me, before she left me with the nun, to never reveal it. To never let anyone know of it. And I never have."
"Does Sorrell carry the mark in the same area?" Ian asked, moving closer as she stared ov
er her shoulder at him.
Kira watched Ian. He was no longer suspicious; it was as though something had fallen in to place for him, some source of information that only he knew.
Ian bent to sit on his heels, staring at the mark closely.
"We have a chance to get him here, Ian." Reno spoke softly from the other side of the girl. "She's willing to help us and we have enough to identify him."
"He dies," Ian said, his eyes locked on the mark. "I don't care how much information he could have." He rose slowly, straightening to stare at Reno over Tehya's shoulder. "He doesn't leave alive."
"You'll have to set up protection for her. Something away from the villa," Kira stated as Tehya pulled the hem of her shirt back into place. "You'll have to give him visual proof that you have her. You'll have to threaten to mark her, scar her. If she's scarred, then her value to him is diminished. Sorrell doesn't deal in damaged goods. And his daughter would be an asset. An extension of his ability to create perfection."
"Antoli." Ian nodded slowly. "We'll set up a vid, an interrogation of her, make it look good. Give her the appearance of bruising . . ."
"It will only work if you actually bruise her." Kira shook her head. "Bruising does more than discolor the flesh. To convince Sorrell, you're going to have to go further."
"She's right." Tehya held Kira's hand as several male heads shook instinctively. "It won't be the first time I've been bruised. And if your Antoli is as good with interrogation techniques as I've heard, then he'll know how to do it right."
Courage. The woman had more courage than she should have at her age. To even consider allowing a man as brutal as Antoli to touch her.
Ian let his gaze drift to Kira then. He saw the pain in her eyes, the shadows, and knew she was reliving the loss of her own family to the murderous bastard. She had been ten, but she had escaped the horror Tehya had lived through. Thank God.
"We don't need to beat her up to convince Sorrell." Ian shook his head as he turned his gaze back to the small redhead with the wild green eyes. Eyes that saw too much, that knew too much. Eyes that broke Kira's heart with the pain and rage inside them. "All we need is the visual proof that we have her. He's chased her this long. Make her accessible and he'll mess up. He won't be able to help it. He'll be desperate to secure her."