"I love you," she cried, falling against his chest as involuntary spasms gripped them both. "God help me, Ian. I love you."
"Love you," he groaned, his corded body still tight, his cock jerking inside her. "Ah baby, I love you."
Perspiration melded them together as the tiny aftershocks slowly eased through both their bodies. Exhaustion claimed her, dragging her eyes down, reminding her of the sleep she had lost in the past days.
Just for a minute, she thought, letting it have her as Ian held her safe and warm in his arms. She would give in for just a moment.
* * *
Twenty-nine
THEY MANAGED A FEW HOURS' sleep then a quick shower at the edge of darkness.
"I need you to dress soft," he told her as she walked naked to the closet where her clothes had been placed.
"Soft in what manner?" She looked back at him, considering her options.
"Sorrell will check you for weapons." His expression was heavy, tormented. "I want him to think you're helpless, weak. He knows who you are, so he knows you're smart. But he doesn't know you're deadly. Let's keep him in the dark where that's concerned."
Kira nodded and moved into the closet. She chose a butter-soft bronze sundress and creamy ultrahigh heels.
Four-inch heels were sexy as hell, and these added another element. Each heel contained a three-inch razor-sharp dagger imbedded within it.
She couldn't carry a gun but the stretchy silk of the dress would be easy to move in. It was short enough to allow her legs a measure of freedom but long enough to preserve her modesty.
Her panties were a thong, her bra lacy and comfortable. When she finished dressing, she was the epitome of helpless female.
"You're fucking dangerous," Ian growled as she checked the daggers in the heels of the shoes before sliding them on her feet.
"Smart." She grinned. "It wasn't easy figuring out how to insert those daggers."
"Yeah, I can see that." He swallowed tightly.
Kira let her gaze flicker over his jean-clad thighs and held back her smile at the evidence of the arousal that filled his jeans.
"You need to get a handle on that hard-on, Ian," she murmured, sidling up to him, her hand smoothing down his chest to the bulge in his jeans.
Her hand shaped it lovingly as his palm slid up her side and cupped the undercurve of her breast.
"Be careful," he whispered against her lips again. "Be safe."
"You watch my back, I'll watch yours," she promised, returning the stroke of his lips against her own. "We'll be okay, you'll see."
Her hand slid back up his chest until it pressed over his heart. She felt the hard, steady thump and strengthened herself with it. It was almost over. One way or the other, the danger that stalked him, the life that would have destroyed him, was almost over.
"Don't stand in my way," he warned her then.
Kira froze and looked at him, feeling the heaviness clench her chest.
"What do you mean?"
"With Diego. Don't stand in my way, Kira."
She nodded slowly. It was her job to stand in his way, to protect Diego, but as she gazed at Ian, she knew she couldn't, she wouldn't do it.
Lives had been destroyed because of Diego. He saw the life he lived as a game, an amusing pastime where he made the rules and he directed the players; that would never stop.
Teenagers had died because of whore's dust. He had made millions off the underground rape videos his men had made using the drug. Innocent women had committed suicide, or lived with the knowledge that their greatest pain was being salivated over by distant watchers.
He had tortured Nathan, tortured him, found pleasure in the battle the other man had fought to stay true to his marriage vows.
He was a monster. It didn't matter that the monster loved his son, because even that would be twisted, used, and would ultimately destroy Ian.
Walking away wasn't an option for Ian. He would know he'd had the chance to stop the horror and hadn't taken it and it would destroy him in ways that killing Diego never could.
"I have your back." She finally whispered the promise, the vow. "No matter what you do, Ian. I have your back."
The brooding pain in his gaze slowly eased away, his eyes becoming flat, hard. This was the cartel heir, the man who had proved he was strong enough, merciless enough, to hold the reins of the Fuentes cartel. All she could think was that DHS was damned lucky he was on their side, rather than the enemy's.
He finally nodded in turn before walking to the dresser. Drawing the Glock from the upper drawer, he pushed it into the back of his jeans then collected the extra clips of ammo.
"He and his bodyguard will be armed," he told her. "Handguns only. Tehya's weapon will be Velcroed to the small of her back, and Antoli will be carrying several weapons. When things go to hell make certain you're in position to either take the weapon from Sorrell's bodyguard or to collect one from Antoli. His job is to protect Tehya above everything else; that leaves me and you to watch each other's backs.
"Durango team and teams four and eight will converge on the estate after Sorrell is inside. They have to take out any forces that follow behind Sorrell before they can move in to help us. We'll be on our own in that room, Kira, don't kid yourself about that." His gaze bored into hers. "We have to keep Tehya safe, as well as ourselves, until Reno and the team can get to us. Understood?"
She nodded sharply.
"Let's go then." He breathed in roughly. "Reno and Macey will have Tehya here within minutes and we're only hours from Sorrell's arrival. We can expect him—"
"—to be either late or early but never on time," Kira finished for him. "When he shows the birthmark, check it closely, then check his bodyguard for one. He's not above a switch. Make him speak to Tehya to confirm voice identification and pay attention to the bodyguard's body language as well as Sorrell's. Above all things, remember Sorrell has stayed unidentified to this point for a reason. How did I do?" She flashed him a knowing smile.
"Dangerously efficient." The smile he gave in turn was easier, more confident. "Let's get this done. I think I've had enough of Aruba. I'm eager to get home."
"Ian." She caught his arm as he moved to turn toward the door. "There's something you don't know."
His expression closed. As though he did know, as though he had been waiting, watching. She felt her throat tighten, knowing she had to tell him the truth about Diego and DHS. She didn't have a choice. She couldn't let him kill without the facts.
"About Diego?" he asked harshly.
"There's more to this than you know."
"Don't." His voice cut like a knife. "I don't want to know."
She stared at him in surprise. "Ian, you have to hear this."
"Later."
"There won't be time later. It'll be too late," she gritted out.
She could see the suspicion in his eyes, and knew he was aware that things weren't as they seemed. That Diego had escaped justice all these years for a reason.
"You know," she whispered.
"That Diego plays games with DHS?" he asked, a bitter, mocking curve curling his lips. "I know."
"And you didn't say anything to me?"
"You didn't say anything to me either, Kira," he reminded her as she loosened her hold on him. "I've always suspected it. We were pulled out of the game when Nathan went missing, given strict orders not to kill Diego when we went after the senator's girls. Every time we've struck against him, we were hampered, our hands tied. I knew he was in bed with those bastards."
"There's a reason." She licked her lips nervously. "It's not just a game with DHS."
"Of course it is." Bitterness filled his voice. "Doesn't matter the reason for it, it's still a game."
He reached out and touched her cheek, running the backs of his fingers over it. "That's why you came here, wasn't it? To protect Diego."
"No." She shook her head. "It was never about Diego. I came here because of you. I used Diego as the excuse."
He lea
ned forward and kissed her lips. "Thank you for that, Kira. But this isn't about DHS or what they want. This is about letting a monster roam free because politicians and paper pushers believe the information he gives is more important. The needs of the many outweigh the pain of the few. I can't see it that way. I won't see it that way."
"He's still your father," she whispered. "No one would blame you for walking away."
He inhaled deeply, staring over her shoulder for long seconds before his gaze came back to hers. The sadness, the somber acceptance of responsibility, darkened the fire in his eyes and dug creases of pain into his face.
"Because he is my father, the blame would be more mine than DHS's," he told her. "He's my responsibility, because I'm here, in place, with the means and the chance."
"DHS won't let you forget it."
"I have their agreement signed, sealed, and protected. It releases to the major newspapers across the world the minute Sorrell's death is announced. I'm not stupid. I know how that game works too. Now let's go. We'll argue over it later. Later."
He said it as though he had said it to himself often. Later. Now was the time to face Sorrell, to face the decisions he had made over the course of years. Kira only prayed that both of them could live with those choices.
* * *
Thirty
KIRA STOOD CONFIDENTLY, AMUSEMENT GLITTERING deliberately in her eyes, when the limousine entered the gates of the Fuentes estate and pulled up to the sheltered entrance to the house.
She stood at the bottom of the steps, but didn't deign to open the door to the luxury vehicle. The chauffeur moved from the front, irritation lining his face as he glanced at her.
She gave him a jaunty smile and stepped back as he swung the door open.
Sorrell and his associate, she presumed. They stepped from the vehicle, exuding arrogance and superiority despite the black masks that covered their faces.
"Kira Porter." A flash of a smile, familiar and faintly disarming, touched his mouth.
She arched a brow and glanced at his companion, instantly knowing who Sorrell was, and it wasn't the charming, smiling masked man facing her.
She turned back to the charmer though. "Sorrell?" She peered at him as though uncertain, unknowing.
His smile was condescending. "You will take us to Mr. Fuentes, I presume?" His hand wrapped around her arm, the thin leather gloves doing nothing to disguise the strength in the grip.
"You presume right." She flipped him another smile. "We'll just go through the door here."
The doors were open wide, showing the deserted foyer that awaited inside. "Ian's waiting in the study, as well as his father and your daughter. She's a beautiful young woman. A shame she was raised without her father."
A blessing was more like it.
The fingers tightened on her arm.
"Let's not bruise the skin." She tapped at his wrist with her opposite hand. "Ian gets upset when I get bruised. Mars the skin. He's funny about that."
As was Sorrell. Rumor was that he would kill if merchandise was bruised or in any way broken. He liked giving pain himself, and he knew how to do it without leaving a mark. She restrained her shiver and moved into the house, very aware of the hand holding on to her.
The grip was strong—the bodyguard, she presumed—and he was heavily armed. Beneath the long jacket he wore was a harnessed automatic weapon, most likely Uzi-type. A backup at his ankle and she was betting on another at his back.
The broader, stouter figure who walked on the other side of her wasn't as heavily armed. He was dressed casually in dark slacks and jacket. A weapon at his back would be expected, most likely another handgun harnessed beneath his arm from what she had glimpsed of his jacket.
To come here unarmed would have been idiocy. But it made the upcoming meeting and the plans that were in place harder to execute. She wasn't armed. Ian would be. Teyha and Antoli would be.
Not for the first time, Kira wondered at the plan they had in place. In theory, she agreed with Ian. If they arrested Sorrell, he would soon escape, one way or the other. The only thing they would gain would be his identity and his wrath, and Nathan Malone would never be same. On the other side of the coin, the imminent bloodshed raked at her conscience.
They were monsters. They were evil. They were killers of the worst sort. But how did that make her, Ian, and Durango team any better?
"In here, gentlemen." She stopped before the door, well aware that Deke and Trevor were watching from the upper landing, well hidden from the two visitors.
The door opened wide, revealing Tehya, for all intents and purposes bound to the high-backed chair across the room. The chair had been placed in front of the wide windows, the drawn shades lending a creamy backdrop to the brilliant, bloodred waves of hair that flowed around her.
Antoli stood behind her, a Glock held in the hand resting comfortably by his side.
"My daughter." There was a sigh from behind Kira as Tehya's gaze clashed with the men behind her.
That voice was soft, almost reverent.
"What a beauty you have become," Sorrell whispered.
Tehya sneered back at him. "Perfect breeder, am I?"
A long sigh whispered through the silence. "You are my child. You would have been adored. You will be adored. Treasured."
"And bred in an incestuous relationship." Her expression contorted in fury.
"I would have loved you."
"You would have destroyed me as you destroyed my mother and everyone else you've ever touched. You bastard!"
At that moment, Kira felt the barrel that pressed against her forehead and the tightening of the fingers on her arm.
"Mr. Fuentes." The stouter, barrel-chested man at her side snapped at Ian and Diego as angry tension filled the room then. "There will be no negotiations. Release my daughter and send her this way, and the lovely Miss Porter might live to see another day."
She hated it when men went back on their word. It just pissed her off.
Her gaze sliced to Ian as he leaned back comfortably in his chair, his legs lifted and resting on the corner of his desk as he watched Sorrell with no small amount of amusement.
Antoli's gun lifted to Tehya's forehead and Diego sipped at his whisky from where he sat beside Ian's desk in a comfortable leather chair.
"You know, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way," Ian said.
The gun at her head said.
"Perhaps the easy way then." He muttered his cue to Kira.
Kira dropped. She simply bent her legs, pulling them up, and let herself fall and roll as Ian's bodyguards swarmed around the two men.
There was a curse, a grunt, and as she rolled to her feet in a crouch, it was to see the two men unmasked. And she couldn't believe what she was seeing. There had to be a mistake.
She had known there was something familiar about the two men, known that she should have recognized something about them, but the French accents had thrown her off. The supposedly natural accents, the arrogance in the tone that she hadn't heard before.
It wasn't any of the men they had suspected. The associate he had brought with him wasn't Gregor Ascarti as they had assumed it would be.
The men, unmasked, were friends, associates of hers and Jason's, European but not French, and so well respected that she knew the knowledge of this would rock the world.
"Kenneth," she whispered, staring at the younger man, seeing the familiar brown eyes, the thinning brown hair.
He inclined his head regally as she turned her gaze to his father.
"You killed my parents," she whispered. "Then cried at their funeral."
Joseph Fitzhugh, distantly related to royalty, and friends with the current president of the United States. Good friends. Hunting-and-fishing-type friends.
"The loss of your parents was regrettable, but necessary," Joseph informed her in frosty tones. "That was a nice move you performed in breaking Kenneth's hold," he complimented her. "I will assume you have had more training than I suspected?"
/>
"Much more," she whispered faintly, coming to her feet as Ian stood at his desk.
Tehya was free, now placed behind Antoli who stood ready, arms outstretched and braced, as he covered the bodyguards. Tehya held the backup weapon Ian had given her, covering the two men as well.
"Quite interesting." Joseph's lips twisted in disgust. "I must admit, Mr. Fuentes, I expected you to keep your word. One man apiece, was that not the agreement?"
"I lied." Ian shrugged easily. "As, it appears, you did as well."
Joseph frowned. "My profile for you did not take into account the influence of your father, perhaps. The conclusions I drew suggested you would keep to your bargain, as your word has always held true. Until now."
"Extreme situations, extreme measures." Ian smiled. "Some things are just worth lying for. Check his back, Deke, let's make sure we have Sorrell before this goes any further."
Trevor jerked the terrorist's arms behind his back, flattening him against the wall beside them as Deke jerked his jacket up. They relieved him of his weapons first, then tugged the edge of his belted slacks down just enough to glimpse the incriminating birthmark. The form of a crude scythe could be seen, perhaps two inches tall, from across the room.
"It's natural," Deke snapped. "We have him."
At that moment the lights snapped off, gunfire erupted outside, and all hell broke loose inside.
Kira scrambled across the room, kicking her shoes off and going low to reach Tehya.
"Weapon," she snapped, reaching for Antoli as gunfire blazed in the room.
A handgun slapped into her hand as Antoli threw Tehya her way.
"Get her the hell out of here," he snarled.
"Kira." Ian's voice yelled through the chaos.
"Clear," she yelled back, pulling Tehya across the floor as bullets ripped into the area they had just been in.
"Stay put!" Ian reached Kira, jerking Kira behind the heavy desk that had been reinforced along the insides with thick metal that evening. Once securing her, Ian crouched and made his way through the darkened room.
The war zone outside and inside blasted through Kira's head as she reached out to grab Tehya and shoved her beneath the desk.