“Did she say anything about her last attempt?”
“No.” Meredith shook her head slowly. “Julia’s a very private person and always has been. I was shocked she even told me what she did.”
By the time Meredith finished, an hour later, Cruz felt he’d been inside the Ramirez compound himself. Then Meredith looked at him and he knew trouble was coming.
“I know I handed this one over to you, Cruz, but I’m changing my mind. It doesn’t make sense for you to go in when I already know the situation. I’m taking this son of a bitch out myself.”
“No.”
“But Cruz—”
“You gave me the job for a very good reason, Meredith, and that reason hasn’t changed in the past twenty-four hours.”
“I understand,” she said evenly. “But Julia and I have been close for—”
“And that is exactly why you can’t do it. Personal involvement is too risky, for you and for the other party.”
“‘The other party’? She’s my friend, Cruz.” At her side, Meredith’s hands clenched. “If something goes wrong—”
“Nothing will go wrong,” Cruz promised. “But you won’t be the one doing the job and that’s for the best. You and your dad made that rule yourselves and it’s a good one.”
A stormy expression came into her eyes, but a minute later, her shoulders slumped in defeat. She and her father had made the rules, and she was too smart to let her emotions outweigh common sense.
“All right,” she conceded, “but you have to tell me what you’re going to do.”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“There’s no figuring to it.” From the depths of the couch, Armando finally spoke.
His silences could stretch for days, so Cruz wasn’t surprised it’d taken him this long to join the conversation. Cruz looked at the Argentinian physician and raised an eyebrow.
“She gave you the answer already.” Armando tilted his beer bottle in Meredith’s direction, but his gaze stayed on Cruz. “You don’t have enough time to go about this your usual way. Ramirez is going to start his killing in a matter of weeks, maybe even days. When he’s done, he’ll go underground and you will have an even harder time finding the man. You need to do this one quick.”
“What’s your point, Armando?” Cruz’s impatience was clear, Meredith’s attitude making him unusually edgy.
“Let the wife kill him for you.”
Meredith was standing before Cruz even saw her move. “No! That’s not a possibility, Armando. Julia couldn’t handle anything like that.”
“But you said—”
“I know what I said. But that’s not what I meant. She can’t kill him—”
“How do you know that?”
“Dammit, Armando, I know, all right? I just know. Julia is different. She’s too fragile for that kind of thing—”
“That’s enough.” Cruz’s deep voice cut through the argument. “You’ve already done what I couldn’t and that’s get inside tonight. That’s all you’re going to do, though. This is my job and I’ll plan it myself.”
TWO HOURS LATER, Cruz was still thinking.
Sitting alone in his dark hotel room, he sipped his Club Colombia and stared at the newspaper article Meredith had left him. His only illumination came from the streetlamp outside the barely parted draperies, but he didn’t need more to see the small photo that accompanied the write-up.
Blond hair. Blue eyes. Straight nose. Full lips.
He emptied his beer then let the bottle slide from his fingertips to the floor beside his chair. Cruz knew her type inside and out because he’d seen them in every country he’d ever been in. From the plazas of Mexico City where he’d spent his childhood to the sandy deserts of the Middle East that he’d just left, they turned up. Women who owned the world, that’s how he always thought of them. Wealthy, self-confident, gorgeous. Meredith had implied that Julia wasn’t that way but Cruz had drawn his own conclusions. From experience.
Women like Julia Vandamme needed men like him to do jobs like this, but those kinds of women seldom allowed his kind of man to get too close. When the deed was done, so were they. Because men like Cruz weren’t pliable. And women who owned the world wanted men who did their bidding.
He stared into the darkness and considered his options. Because he was short on time, they weren’t as varied as he would have liked, but he’d been successful in tougher situations. Armando’s point could not be ignored, however. Miguel Ramirez was the largest drug dealer in Colombia and he was about to launch a bloody war to eliminate his remaining rivals. That roster included half a dozen carefully placed DEA men from the United States who’d been deep undercover for more than five years. They couldn’t be pulled or all the progress they’d made would be compromised. But they couldn’t be protected, either. Once the shooting started, their positions would be revealed. Getting rid of Ramirez was the only way to take care of the problem and keep their Intel network intact.
It was, to say the least, a touchy situation.
Armando’s words echoed inside Cruz’s head once more. Let the wife kill him for you.
Followed by Meredith’s fierce rejection of the idea. Julia is different. She’s too fragile for that kind of thing.
Julia Vandamme had gotten herself into a bad situation that could only get worse, but Meredith didn’t suffer fools. For that reason alone, Cruz knew there had to be more to the woman than what he assumed.
Still…
Cruz rose from his chair and parted the curtains to look outside. The lights of Bogota shimmered at his feet as brightly as the stars overhead. Somewhere out there, beyond the mountains that ringed the city, Miguel Ramirez and his beautiful blond wife slept. They had no idea their lives were about to be shattered.
Cruz stared out at the lights and pondered the best way to do so.
JULIA SET her alarm an hour earlier than usual, but something woke her before it had a chance to ring. Rolling over, she heard the sound again and realized it was a car’s engine revving. Immediately suspicious, she jumped from the bed, grabbed her robe and thrust her feet into her slippers. Running to her bedroom door, she jerked it open. The main house was lit up brightly, including the upstairs.
She hurried to the end of the walkway and walked quickly into the entry.
Miguel stood at the bottom of the stairs, holding Tomas in his arms as he spoke with Guillermo. All three of them turned as she came inside, Miguel’s surprised expression making it obvious that he hadn’t planned on her seeing them before they left.
She felt her whole body go tight with anger. He’d deliberately wanted her to miss saying goodbye to her son. In the beginning, she’d wondered what she’d done to deserve a man like him, but she’d come to realize she’d done nothing—he was simply a cruel son of a bitch.
Tomas began to squirm, but Miguel held on, returning to his conversation with Guillermo. As Julia got closer, however, Tomas took matters into his own hands. Wiggling away, the little boy half jumped, half fell from his father’s hold to race toward his mother. Her heart began to swell with love. She had to get her son out of San Isidro. He adored Miguel and mimicked everything he did. She couldn’t allow that to continue.
She swooped him up and he immediately began to talk excitedly. The words made little sense, except for “airplane” and “dog.”
Miguel dismissed Jorge and came to where they stood. Julia started to confront him about the early hour then she checked herself.