“Agreed,” Callie said, realizing that this would be her last night with Jammer.

“THAT IS A SPECIAL WOMAN,” Fuentes said as the door closed behind them. He moved behind a large desk. He opened an intricately scrolled box and took out a cigar, neatly clipped the end and lit it. Taking a puff, he grinned.

Jammer wished he could wipe the smirk off Fuentes’s face with his fist. It took all his willpower not to react. “She’s quite a spitfire and keeps me on my toes. But we don’t need to talk about her. We have more pressing matters to discuss.”

“Indeed, we do. The Ghost will be here when?”

“Tomorrow, exactly as I promised. Is everything set?”

“Yes, yes. Everything is ready at my end. It is fortuitous that you were able to secure my shipment. The consequences of your failure would have been severe. I’m afraid that your boss, the Ghost, would have lost his right-hand man.”

“Then it’s a good thing that I’m resourceful.”

“Yes, it is. I have heard quite a bit about your friend Gina Callahan. She has quite a reputation. Is all of it true?”

“All that and more.”

“That is good. It is satisfying to spar with a woman with spunk, makes the taming of her all the better. Don’t you agree?”

Jammer clenched his fist behind his back, tamping down his need to protect Callie. Fuentes would learn soon enough what it meant to fuck with the United States in general and the DEA in particular.

He used the memory of his dead colleagues to keep himself in check. This wasn’t about him or Callie. It was about them, and he would see that justice was served. He would put Fuentes behind bars and make sure it was his testimony that kept him there.

Fuentes indicated that Jammer should sit down. From a crystal decanter, he poured out a snifter of brandy for each of them.

Jammer forced himself to move, shoving the tension out of his body. He reached for the glass and settled into the chair.

“I haven’t made any progress in finding that bitch of a DEA agent and her bodyguard. She had the gall to spy on my compound and the nerve to escape me before I was finished with her. Damn DEA, they will never learn. I kill their agents as fast as they send them.”

“So she’s the one that got away, eh?”

“Yes, she made a mockery of me and that I cannot tolerate. After this deal is complete, I want you to find them for me. When you do, I want them eliminated and I want them to suffer. You will do this for me?”

“Eduardo, the Ghost keeps me busy with other jobs.”

“But murder is something you’ve done in the past. You surely do as the Ghost tells you.”

“I am at his service.”

“I will speak with him tomorrow. If he orders you to, then will you kill them?”

“I will complete whatever task the Ghost puts in front of me, Eduardo.”

The man nodded and slammed away from his desk. “I can’t believe that little bitch got away from me twice. In the meantime, I’ve had to keep my guard up. A smashed phone was found near where she was held captive. I fear that there may be a traitor in my compound.”

“We’ll have to ferret him out,” Jammer said with a slight smile, thinking that the phone he’d left had effectively made Eduardo paranoid. Taken the focus off Rio and Max.

“Yes, and when we do, I’ll cut his heart out.”

“Sounds like a fitting end for a traitor.”

“It is.”

“I will say buenos noches, Eduardo.”

Jammer rose and set the snifter of brandy on the edge of the desk, then walked to the door. He reached for the handle just as Eduardo said, “I will have your woman.”

JAMMER WENT RED-HOT inside. He almost lost control and leaped across the desk to pummel Fuentes. But he tamped the urge down. Eduardo wouldn’t ever touch Callie.

“You are welcome to her,” Jammer said, “once this buy is over and I am done with her.”

Eduardo chuckled. “I now have even more to look forward to.”

Jammer made sure that he shut the door in an easy and controlled way. He stalked down the hall and met up with a guard, who took him to his room.

He went inside, but Callie wasn’t there. Then he saw the open French doors and thought he caught voices. He made his way to the balcony, where he found her.

Callie turned. “Oh, hi. I didn’t hear you come in.”

Jammer looked around. “Were you talking to someone out here?”

“No. How did it go?”

“Eduardo wants to make you his love slave.”

“Like hell he does. He even tries and I’ll make him a soprano. Then I’ll really get mean.”

Jammer chuckled, releasing the last of the tension in his body. He pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her to hold her tight. She slipped her arms around his neck. “Everything will work out just fine,” Jammer said into her sweet-smelling hair.

Deep down he knew that it wouldn’t be fine. He would nab Fuentes and Callie would go back to Watchdog with the satisfaction that she had helped put away a dangerous and ruthless drug lord. But the fact that they couldn’t be together weighed heavily on him. He knew it had to be done, but every time he tried to put distance between them, they became closer than ever.

“Your indifference out there when Fuentes was ogling me…That was an act, right?”

He hugged her tighter. “Of course. I don’t want him to sense how much you mean to me.”

“I knew that, but I just needed to hear you say it.”

He let her go and met her eyes. “I’m the one who said you shouldn’t be here. You remember that? I wanted you as far away from Fuentes as you could get, but circumstances dictated that I bring you along.”

“Yes, I remember, and now I see why, but I had to be here. I had to see it through.”

“I know why you had to come.” He knew her dedication to her job and the need to carry out her goal of arresting the Ghost and bringing him to justice were all that mattered. He also knew that she was torn by the discovery. He liked to think it was because she cared for him on a deeper level. But he wasn’t going to be a fool. She’d never shown any indication that she cared for him.

“We’d better get some sleep. We’ll need to be fresh for tomorrow when the buy goes down.”

“All right,” she said, her eyes dark with her own secrets and her own agenda.

He went inside, but Callie didn’t immediately follow. He turned to find her watching him. Her eyes went over every inch of him, from his hair down to his feet.

“Jammer, this is our last night together, isn’t it?

Tomorrow will change everything.”

“Don’t…don’t talk about it.”

“It will change, and we can’t get away from it no matter how much we want to.” She said it quietly and, if he wasn’t mistaken, with real regret.

“No, I guess we can’t.”

She reached over and picked an exotic flower off a vine growing close to the house. She came into the room but left the French doors open. Dimming the lights, she walked up to Jammer and slipped her hands under his shirt. Her palms were cool, and the petals of the flower whispered over his skin like butterfly wings. He shuddered as she lifted off his shirt.

She slid her hands up over his pectoral muscles and back down to his waistband, unbuckling, unbuttoning and unzipping.

With her palm in the middle of his chest, she pushed him onto the chaise longue.

“You look like a Greek god lying there.”

“I’m just a flesh-and-blood man and I need you.”

“I need you, too. I need you so much.”

She leaned across him, still fully clothed. As she began to kiss his chest, he started to undress her. When she opened her mouth over his flat nipple, he moaned and jerked her toward him. She gasped and he rid her of the rest of her clothes.

She kissed him then and her mouth was warm and soft against his. He poured himself into the kiss, knowing that their time grew short. His hands found her breasts and he cupped them, rubbing his palms over her engorged nipples, jerking her up until he could suck first one, then the other into his mouth. She cried out softly, lowered herself farther and farther down his body until she took him into her mouth.