Safe in his mother’s arms—or he would be once she got the hell out of there.
Josh puffed out of the side of his mouth to dislodge a bug crawling on his face. He’d become part of the dense foliage on the hillside in this southeast corner of Colombia, not far from the Amazon. If this mission took any longer, the plants would grow right over and through him.
The woman dipped next to a chaise longue to grab a towel and tucked it around her child’s body. She gave a curt nod to the men gathered at the other end of the pool, and then headed for the house via the sliding glass doors. Josh released a long breath.
A voice crackled in his ear seconds later. “Go time, boys.”
Josh swept his M91 away from the retreating figure of the mother and her child and zeroed in on his intended target—her husband.
Ricky Rojas folded his arms, his expensive jacket tightening across his shoulders, as he cocked his head in the direction of the three men seated at the table. What Josh wouldn’t give to hear their conversation right now—their plots, their plans—but his SEAL team’s assignment didn’t include capture and interrogation.
It only included death.
These men had already killed and would kill again. In the crack of two seconds, his team would be responsible for bringing down a high-ranking member of a vicious terrorist cell and the mastermind of a brutal drug cartel...and a few of his associates.
And the father of that child.
Josh swallowed. The kid would get over it, especially after he learned what a scumbag his old man had been. The wife? That might be another story.
A muscle ticked in Josh’s jaw. They’d been told to keep the woman out of the range of fire. More senior people than he had made the determination that Gina Rojas had nothing to do with the Los Santos drug cartel.
If they believed the daughter of Hector De Santos, the kingpin of Los Santos, and the wife of Ricky Rojas was an innocent bystander while her father and husband traded arms and passage to the United States for terrorists in exchange for drugs, who was he to question their common sense?
A pretty face could still buy wiggle room out of anything—and Gina Rojas had a pretty face and a body that could bring a grown man to his knees.
Once the kills were accomplished, the CIA would be descending on the De Santos compound to search for leads and evidence, but he and his teammates would be long gone, swallowed up into the Amazon.
A maid scurried from the palatial house to deliver a tray of drinks to the men on the patio. When she disappeared inside, the crackling in his ear resumed.
“All clear. And five, four, three, two...”
At the conclusion of the countdown, Josh dropped his target, and all the other men fell with him courtesy of the other navy SEAL snipers positioned in trees and dug into the hillsides ringing the compound.
The maid rushed from the house and threw her hands in the air. She must’ve been screaming because several other servants joined her on the patio.
Josh shifted his scope to encompass Gina Rojas emerging from the house, without her son, thank God. While the domestic staff flailed and scurried about or dashed off for parts unknown, Gina stood still like a statue amid a battering sea. She put her arm around the hysterical maid and surveyed the carnage, her head held high, her gaze sweeping the hillside.
“Josh. Josh, you on the move?”
“Copy that.”
He lowered his sniper rifle from the intriguing sight of Gina Rojas’s unflinching demeanor and began to break down his weapon.
Either this hit was no surprise to Gina...or she didn’t give a damn.
Thirteen months later.
RJ raised a chubby hand before spinning around and grabbing his new friend by the arm to drag him to the slide.
Gina sniffed as she waved to her son’s back.
“It’s better than having him cling to your leg, isn’t it?” Denise Reynolds, the owner of Sunny Days Daycare, winked.
Gina rubbed the back of her hand across her nose. “Much better, but did he have to get over that stage so quickly?”
“RJ’s an outgoing boy. He makes friends quickly, very adaptable.”
“He’s had to be.” Gina hoisted her purse onto her shoulder and shrugged. “There’s been a lot of upheaval in his young life.”
“I saw from your application that you’re relatively new to Miami.” Denise bit her lip. “And I’m sorry about his father, your husband. That he’s deceased, I mean.”
“Yes, just over a year ago.” Gina sniffed again for good measure. “We’re still...adjusting.”
“Well, I think Sunny Days is just the place for him to adjust. One month and he already has a best friend, who started just a few days after he did.”
“He already talks about Diego nonstop. His mother introduced herself to me right away. The boys already had one playdate and we’ll be arranging another for them in the next few days.” Gina’s cell phone buzzed in her pocket, and her heart skipped a beat.
“Everything okay?” Denise tilted her head to one side, her perky blond ponytail swinging behind her.
“Just a pesky client.” Gina patted the pocket of her light jacket. “Thanks for everything, Denise.”
Gina whipped out her phone as she walked back to her car. She couldn’t go into cardiac arrest every time someone sent her a text. Wedging her hip against the cinder block barrier between the daycare’s parking lot and the walkway to the center, she swiped her fingertip across her phone’s display.
Then her heart skipped two beats as she read the familiar words. Where are the drugs? Where are the weapons, paloma?
The same two questions, along with the endearment, texted to her every day for almost a week now, from the same unknown number. She’d responded to the text in several different ways already.
Wrong number.
Wrong person.
I’m calling the police.
It didn’t seem to matter what she texted back. The same two questions came back at her each day as if on autopilot—with the same endearment. Only Ricky had called her paloma...when things were good, but that was impossible. Wasn’t it?
She could call the police. She snorted and dropped her cell phone in her pocket as she opened her car door. Then she’d have to go through the whole process of explaining who she was and watch the officers’ faces change from expressions of concern to scowls of suspicion. They might even call in her old pals at the Drug Enforcement Administration, and they could start grilling her again.
She’d take a pass. In the meantime, she’d continue to ignore the texts. The person texting her wouldn’t try to make contact...would he? And that person couldn’t be Ricky. Ricky was dead...wasn’t he?
Glancing over her shoulder, she pulled out of the daycare’s parking lot and checked her rearview mirror as she joined the stream of traffic. She had nothing to tell anyone who made contact with her, at least not about any drugs or weapons.
On her way to the realty office, she turned up the music to drown out her own thoughts and the memories of that day at her father’s compound in Colombia. The CIA agents who’d swarmed the place after the carnage had interrogated everyone on the property, including