Hot Intent (Hqn) (9 page)

The driver’s gaze raked down her nearly naked body once and then, blessedly, the man turned away to face the wheel. The boat engine started with a cough. She took the scrap of terry cloth Alex passed her.

Swear to God, the towel was covered with grease stains. But it was that or freeze to death before she got dry. She threw Alex a long-suffering look and used the disgusting towel. He was doing this on purpose, punishing her for not staying at home like he’d wanted her to.

Tough. She might not like the whole idea of him going to Cuba one bit, but if he did insist on going, no way was she letting him go alone. He was her man, and she was protective.

After a few minutes of letting the brisk breeze finish drying her skin, she shivered and shook her way back into her jeans and T-shirt. She added a sweatshirt from her bag and gradually began to feel her fingers and toes once more.

The boat bumped along over waist-high waves that Pedro assured them were wonderfully calm seas after the recent storm. She failed to convince her stomach of that, however, and ended up barfing ignominiously off the back of the boat. She felt better afterward, but the whole experience sucked.

Alex suggested she try to sleep and made her a nest in some piled fishing net, which stunk of raw fish. She was so miserable, though, that she curled up in it and managed to pass out for a couple of hours.

Pedro said something about it being about seventy miles from Inagua to Baracoa, and Alex said something about the trip taking about four or five hours. She didn’t think she was ever going to get off that bobbing little boat and see solid land again. Clearly she was not Navy material like her brother, Mike.

Finally, as a spectacular sunset stained the western sky in a dizzying display of color, a black hump took shape on the horizon below the sunset.

“There it is,” Alex said. “Cuba.”

“How come there aren’t any lights—” She broke off. Because of the hurricane. She supposed coming ashore right after the storm like this would make it a lot easier to sneak onto the island. At least, that was probably the idea.

But as the shore drew near, she saw there would be nothing easy about this at all. Giant waves pounded the rocky crags and cliffs that formed the coastline, sending up massive geysers of white spray in the twilight. If she and Alex tried to swim ashore in that they’d be torn to pieces on the rocks.

“How on earth are we getting from here to there?” she asked him.

“Wind blew us off course. The landing point’s a little farther north along the coast. Pedro says there’s a beach at our rendezvous point.”

She sensed another swim in her near future.
Fantabulous.

The good news was they did, indeed, motor up the coast to a stretch of shoreline without the intimidating cliffs. The bad news was Pedro refused to pull in close to the shore. Apparently, the storm surge was still way up the shoreline and the man didn’t want to risk running aground on the remains of some sort of dock that had stood at this spot a few days ago.

When she slid over the edge of the boat into the water, she was startled to discover that she was only standing in chest-high water. The boat pulled away into the darkness behind her as she started the long swim to shore behind Alex.

It took forever to reach land. She was nearly as chilled as last time when they finally slogged through the wet sand to another thick wall of debris from the storm. This pile contained evidence of humans: sawed lumber, bricks and mangled sheets of rusty aluminum.

“Now what?” she murmured below the sound of the surf behind them. “Are we going to set the coast on fire and send up the mother of all here-we-are beacons?”

“Not hardly. Now we get dry, get warm and get clothed. And then we wait for our contact.”

Perversely, it made her feel better to know he was cold and miserable, too. She reached for her bag of clothing, but Alex stopped her. “The fastest way for us to warm up is to share body heat. Skin to skin. Didn’t you learn that in scouting or from your brothers?”

Crud. She did remember it now that he mentioned it. “I’m not thinking on all cylinders tonight.”

“Symptom of encroaching hypothermia. Most people only associate it with winter cold exposure. They don’t realize hypothermia is a real problem even in a mild climate like this, particularly if a person is wet like we are now.”

“Thank you, professor,” she replied dryly. He opened his arms and she wasted no time accepting the invitation to press herself against him from head to foot.

He wasn’t any warmer than she and was also shivering, but before long, warmth built between their bodies. Still, it was taking them a long time to warm up. She muttered against his chest, “Wouldn’t this go faster if we had sex? The exercise and friction would help warm us up, right?”

He chuckled into her hair. “True. But our contact could show up at any second. I didn’t think you’d appreciate being discovered
in flagrante delicto.
”

“Is that fancy Latin for humping like bunnies?”

“It is.”

“I’m so glad I fell for a Harvard-educated genius. Life will be nothing if not educational around you.”

“You have no idea,” he murmured back, a distinctly sexual edge in his voice.

He had yet to show her most of the dark sexual tastes he claimed to have. One of these days, though, she was going to get him to really cut loose with her and take her there. A shiver of anticipation rattled down her spine. If only danger wasn’t such sexy stuff.

“Still chilled?” he asked.

“I wasn’t shivering from cold,” she grumbled.

He laughed low in her ear. “Ahh, one of these days, little innocent, we’ll appease your curiosity.”

“Promises, promises.”

His arms tightened lightly around her, pressing her a little closer to his muscular body. His hands roamed up her bare back while her hands roamed down his. His buttocks were firm and imminently gripable. They made her think of athletic sex.

“You have the best ass ever,” she whispered.

“You have the best—”

A noise behind them made him shove away from her, whirling into a defensive crouch.

A motorboat was coming around an outcropping of rock at the end of the tiny beach.

“Get down,” Alex bit out.

Katie threw herself down to the sand. Crap. That looked like a military patrol boat of some kind. The half dozen men on board wore military uniforms and were using binoculars to stare at the shore.

“Don’t move,” Alex muttered. “As long as we don’t call attention to ourselves, they won’t see us here in the shadows.”

She made like a lump of driftwood to the best of her ability as the vessel cruised slowly, ominously, past. Was this a routine patrol? Or had these guys spotted Pedro’s fishing boat on radar, maybe?

The military vessel rounded the point at the north end of the beach and disappeared from view. Alex scrambled to his feet, dressing fast. She followed suit, too terrified to pause even to brush the sand off herself. Alex eased down the beach, sticking to the shadows, and she followed close on his heels. Tension vibrated in his movements, which alarmed her mightily. Why was he so on edge after seeing that boat?

Without warning, he plunged into the pile of debris. What the heck?

She followed after him, surprised to come into a tunnel of sorts. It looked to have been hacked out by humans. It was barely wide enough for her to pass through, and in the middle she had to turn sideways to slip through. But in a few seconds, she popped out the other side.

“Now what?” she whispered at Alex.

“We’re going to have to head for the alternate rendezvous point,” he whispered back.

“Let me guess. More hiking.”

He shrugged and gave her a hand signal to be silent followed by the signal to move out.
Oh, joy.

They crossed what might at one time have been a paved road, but now it was a smooth drift of sand. Alex hugged the edges of the drift, sticking to the patches of exposed asphalt wherever he could for perhaps a quarter mile when he threw up a fist abruptly, signaling a halt.

She stopped, listening intently. Only the swish and crash of the nearby surf were audible at first. But then she heard voices.
Crap.

Alex plunged into the brush at the side of the ruined road and she followed suit. Her T-shirt caught on something and she gave it frantic jerk. It tore with a sound of rending cloth, and she froze, horrified. Alex grabbed her arm with his left hand and yanked her down beside him. She mouthed a silent apology and he nodded tersely as he quickly tied a piece of dark cloth in a makeshift do-rag over her blond hair. A pistol appeared in his right hand.

Were they really in so much danger? She thought the whole point of sending him down here was that the Cubans would think he was on their side. Why was he so freaked out at the prospect of running into Cuban soldiers? Shouldn’t he wave hello to them, introduce himself and let them know he was going to be rendering first aid to locals for a while?

Waiting breathlessly, she crouched a dozen feet into the tangle of brush. Who was out there? More soldiers? Locals? Looters? A line of uniformed men on foot drew even with their position, six across, all wielding automatic weapons. They looked like they were expecting trouble.

The two on the end closest to her and Alex were muttering something about footprints in the sand and she caught the fractional wince that crossed Alex’s face. Was that why he’d been avoiding the smooth sand and making her stumble along on the torn-up asphalt?

Someone called out an order low in Spanish. Something about fanning out. She glanced over at Alex in panic. Shouldn’t they run or something? He shook his head in the negative so infinitesimally that she nearly missed the gesture. Instead, he sank lower by extremely slow degrees. She mimicked the sinking movement until she lay flat on her belly beside him. By inches, his arm came over her shoulder blades. Whether it was meant to protect her or hold her down if she panicked, she had no idea.

Crashing noises shockingly close to them indicated that the soldiers were pushing out into the bush. Not good. Not good at all. She tensed, and Alex’s arm went iron hard across her back. The message was clear.
Don’t move.

She’d heard her brothers talk about close calls when hostiles walked right by them in the dark, but none of them had ever described the throat-paralyzing terror of it, the roaring helplessness of having to just wait and hope you weren’t spotted while the bad guys crashed past your position.

A soldier passed maybe four feet from them, moving left to right. But at the exact moment when the guy had a clear sight line down to where they lay between two dead logs, a spiderweb or something similar brushed against his face. The guy sputtered and waved his right arm impatiently while he used his left hand to wipe his face. The soldier took the next step, disappeared from a direct sight line and the threat was past.

Alex held her down while the line of soldiers gradually drew away from them, moving south down the road and beating their way through the brush beside it.

After a few minutes, Alex’s arm lifted away from her and he rose to a crouch beside her. She scrambled upright somewhat less quietly than he did in spite of her best efforts to be stealthy. He gave her a hand signal to hold her position, and then he rose slowly to his feet.

Her thighs were killing her before he finally held a hand down to help her rise. He eased back down toward the road, which shocked her. Maybe it was more important for them to leave the area quickly than it was for them to remain unseen. Either way, she noted that Alex was careful to stay off the sweep of sand covering most of the roadway.

They’d been walking maybe five minutes when Alex swore low under his breath and dived for the brush again. Echoing his sentiment, she followed him again. With the exception of the chorus of insects, the night sounded completely normal to her.

She was ready to stand up and let some circulation back into her legs, but still Alex crouched there. What was he waiting for? She sent him the hand signal questioningly for moving out, and he shook his head sharply in the negative. Confused and uncomfortable, she held her position. In a few minutes, the sound of a vehicle approaching became audible.

It was a jeep picking its way slowly along the remains of the road. Four soldiers sat in the vehicle, and the passengers were scanning the shore and jungle carefully. The two in the back had automatic weapons in their laps. The two in front were armed most notably with gigantic machetes attached to their belts.

The vehicle did not stop and rumbled on by their hiding place. It retreated in the same direction the walking men had gone.

What the hell was going on? How was it the Cuban military had converged on nearly their exact position within minutes of their arriving here and appeared to be searching for them? Had Pedro turned them in? Although she disliked that idea, she disliked the alternative more. Surely, they hadn’t been betrayed from within Doctors Unlimited. Or worse, the CIA.

As soon as the jeep passed out of sight, Alex eased out of the brush and continued in the direction the men and vehicle had come from. She knew it was a good thing to have slipped through the search line like they’d managed to do. But it didn’t mean they’d seen the last of waves of incoming Cubans, nor did it mean the soldiers wouldn’t head back this way at some point.

She followed Alex for maybe ten minutes in cautious silence before she ventured to whisper, “How did you know the jeep was coming?”

“The men on foot were talking about their district commander being headed this way.”

“At this time of night? Why?”

“No idea. But given that all this activity is taking place in the exact spot, at the exact time, we arrived on the island, one has to wonder if we’re the cause of it.” Alex stopped and pulled out his cell phone. He fiddled with the GPS function for a moment. “Another quarter mile or so should bring us to the backup rendezvous point.”

Funny, but a quarter mile of walking on sand felt like a lot farther. Her calves ached like big dogs before a roofless stone shell of a small building came into view ahead. It sat high above the road on a rocky crag overlooking the ocean.