“Permission To Come Aboard, Captain?”

At Devlin’s question, Liz pulled in another breath. She could think of a hundred reasons to refuse his request. She didn’t really know this man, wasn’t sure she believed everything he’d told her.

Yet she couldn’t deny he acted on her like a damn spark plug. Every time he got this close, he transmitted an electrical energy that made her pulse rev faster and her skin get hotter. Still, she was pretty sure she would have denied his request if the rig had remained stable.

Well, It didn’t pitch much. Just enough to send Liz staggering forward a step, smack into Devlin’s denim-covered chest.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, his voice edged with a husky note that had Liz’s toes curling into the deck.

Devlin and the Deep Blue Sea
Merline Lovelace

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MERLINE LOVELACE

spent twenty-three years in the Air Force, pulling tours in Vietnam, at the Pentagon and at bases all over the world. When she hung up her uniform, she decided to try her hand at writing. She’s since had more than fifty novels published, with over seven million copies of her work in print. Watch for the next book in the Code Name: Danger series, I’ll Walk Alone, coming from Silhouette Intimate Moments.

For the Old Farts gang—thanks for a fun day of war stories and tall tales about life on the patch!

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

Prologue

“You sleazy bucket of slime!”

Fury seared Elizabeth Moore’s veins as she glared at the e-mail she’d printed out less than a half hour ago. In the light of the fat, round Baja moon she could just make out the message her fiancé had zinged her.

Correction.

Ex-fiancé.

Fuming, Liz ripped the e-mail into halves, then quarters, then jagged eighths. Waves, tinted to liquid gold by the moon, lapped at her bare ankles. With May slipping fast toward June, the heat of the Mexican night wrapped around her like a spongy blanket.

Digging her toes into the wet sand, Liz tore the eighths into sixteenths and threw them into the sea. A receding wave carried off the scraps. The soggy bits floated for a few seconds before slowly sinking, drowning Liz’s shattered dreams down with them.

“I can’t believe I fell for such a jerk!”

The truth was only now beginning to register. The man she thought she’d share her life with, the fiancé who’d convinced her to take this job in Mexico while he racked up hours flying as a civilian contract pilot in Singapore had just zapped her an e-mail informing her he’d fallen for another woman. A Malay correspondent for NBC news by the name of Bambang Chawdar.

Bambang, for God’s sake!

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the bastard had also cleaned out their joint bank account.

Liz couldn’t decide which infuriated her more—the fact that she’d convinced herself she was really in love with Donny Carter or that she’d remained faithful to him during their long separation.

“Seven months,” she ground out. “Seven months I’ve lived like a damned nun.”

She’d certainly had plenty of opportunities for sin. The oil crews she choppered to the offshore rig some forty miles off the Baja peninsula generally consisted of prime specimens. And when they came off their month-long rotations, they were hungry for female companionship. In the past seven months Liz had become an expert at dodging propositions from horny roughnecks and roustabouts. Most had required only a breezy smile or a firm “no, thanks.” One or two had required a little more forceful response.

Liz certainly didn’t feel like smiling now. She felt like hitting something. Or releasing her fury in a way that would soothe her battered pride and her pent-up frustration.

“I swear to God I’m going to jump the next halfway-sober male I meet!”

Her fierce vow carried clearly over the murmur of the Pacific. So did the amused drawl that came out of the darkness behind her.

“I’m sober, darlin’. And if you’re looking for someone to jump, I’d be happy to oblige.”

Liz’s heart leapfrogged into her throat. She spun around, searching the dunes, until a dim shadow materialized. The moon was behind him. She couldn’t make out his features, but the rest of him telegraphed a clear message. With each step he took toward her, a marquee inside her head flashed the words tall, rangy and buff.

What the heck was he doing out here on this isolated stretch of beach so late at night?

What was she doing here, alone and weaponless?

Cursing the anger that had made her leave both her cell phone and her collapsible baton in the Jeep parked up by the road, Liz stood her ground. She’d spent four years as an air force pilot. Her survival, evasion, resistance and escape trainers had taught her some pretty brutal moves. She could take this guy down if she needed to, despite his height and the impressive set of muscles she could just make out under his black T-shirt and jeans.

“I appreciate the offer,” she replied with a lift of her chin, “but you might want to rethink it. The mood I’m in, a midnight tussle in the sand might not be a particularly enjoyable experience for you.”

She saw his head angle, felt the prickly heat of his gaze as it traveled from her face to her stretchy white T-shirt to her cutoffs and the bare legs below. His face was a blur in the darkness, but she couldn’t miss the wolfish grin that appeared as he stepped closer.

“I’ll take my chances.”

The slow drawl pegged him as an American. The laughter lacing it stirred an unexpected response from Liz. For an insane moment she was actually tempted to follow through with her rash vow. God knew she could use a little stud service, and this six-foot-plus hunk of hard muscle certainly looked like he could provide it.

Maybe it was the moon, she thought wildly. It had to be the moon exerting some weird gravitational pull, like the riptides so prevalent along the Baja coast. Whatever is was, Liz felt the surge of something dangerous. Powerful.

Caution shouted at her to step back, put a safe distance between her and this broad-shouldered stranger. Anger, singed pride and an uncharacteristic recklessness kept her in place as he moved closer.

She could see his features more clearly now. With the precision of an aviator verifying her course headings, she cataloged each one. Strong, square chin. Nose with a slightly flattened bridge, as if it had taken a punch or two. White squint lines at the corners of his eyes. A grin that was pure sex.

“How about we…?”

A sharp crack split the night. Another followed a heartbeat later. The stranger spit out a curse, lunged forward, and slammed into Liz. She went down hard and landed on her butt in the shallow surf.

He went down with her, but rolled to his feet a second later and sprinted in the direction of the shots.

“Stay here!”

Like she could move? She was sprawled like a beached porpoise, wheezing from the impact of what had felt like 180 pounds of solid male.

It took Liz several seconds of painful effort to suck air back into her lungs before she, too, was up and running.

One

In the silent hours before dawn, only the occasional set of headlights stabbed through D.C.’s embassy district. The brick town houses lining a side street just off Massachusetts Avenue were shuttered and dark. From the outside, the elegant, three-story town house halfway down the block appeared as somnolent as its neighbors.

Light from a nearby streetlamp glowed dully on the discreet brass plaque mounted beside the front door. The plaque identified the building as housing the offices of the president’s special envoy. Old-time Washingtonians knew the title was meaningless, one of dozens doled out after every election to wealthy campaign contributors itching to be part of the hustle and bustle of the capital. Only a handful of insiders knew the special envoy also doubled as the director of OMEGA, a secret agency that reported directly to the president and was activated as a last resort, when all other measures failed.

One of OMEGA’s operatives was in the field now, and behind the darkened windows of the town house’s third floor a high-tech operations center vibrated with rigidly restrained tension. The agent’s controller sat at an elaborate console, his face tight with concentration.

“I didn’t copy that last transmission, Rigger. Come again, please.”

Joe Devlin, code name Rigger, responded with a heavy dose of disgust. “I said this part of the op just blew all to hell. I’ve got a corpse floating in the surf and I’m following a set of tracks fast getting washed away.”

“Is the corpse our informant?”

“Negative. The contact said to look for someone in a Mazatland Tigres football jersey. The dead guy’s in a Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt. My guess is he followed our pigeon, spooked him and got drilled in the process.”

Everyone in the control center shared the frustration in Devlin’s terse reply. Their first real lead—their only lead so far—to the ring suspected of murdering U.S. citizens and selling their identities to dangerous undesirables was now on the run.

Devlin’s controller flicked a glance at the man listening to the exchange from a few yards away. Nick Jensen, code name Lightning, stood with the jacket of his Armani tux shoved back and his hands buried in the pockets of the hand-tailored trousers. He’d swung by the control center on his way home from one of the endless ceremonial dinners he regularly attended, and stayed for Rigger’s anticipated report.

His wife, Mackenzie, sat perched on the edge of the console, sleek and elegant in a sheath of black silk and matching spike heels. With or without those three-inch stilettos, Mackenzie Blair Jensen was a force to be reckoned with. Formerly OMEGA’s chief of communications, she now directed a team that supplied several agencies, including OMEGA, with equipment that would give any techie wet dreams. She remained as quiet as the others in the control center until Devlin came back on, huffing a little.

“Dammit! The shooter just jumped into a vehicle and took off. He’s heading south on the coast road. Get some surveillance in the air ASAP.”

“Will do. And I’ll—” The controller broke off, eyeing a blinking red light. “Stand by, Rigger. I’m getting a flash override.”

He switched frequencies, listened for a few seconds and switched back.

“We just intercepted a phone call to the Piedras Rojas police. There’s a female on the line, reporting a shooting at approximately your location. Our listener says she sounds like an American.”

“Well, hell! The blonde!”

“Come again?”

“There was a woman on the beach. I was just about to get rid of her when the bullets started flying.”

Frowning, Lightning stepped forward. “What was she doing at the rendezvous point so late at night? Acting as a lookout? A decoy?”

Three thousand miles away, Joe Devlin scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck. He’d spent almost six years as an OMEGA operative and had learned long ago never to take anyone at face value. He’d also learned to trust his instincts. The little he’d overheard suggested the blonde had come out to the beach to conduct a personal exorcism.

“I don’t think she’s part of this op. Sounded like she just got a ‘Dear Jane’ letter and was working off steam.”

Judging by her crack about living like a nun, it also sounded as though she’d built up a bad case of the hungries. Wishing like hell he’d had time to satisfy them, Devlin got back to business.

“We need to run her through the system and see what pops.”

“Did you get a name?” Lightning asked.

“No, but I did tag her Jeep when she drove up.”

Luckily, he’d arrived at the rendezvous site early. He’d seen the woman drive up and had tracked her from her Jeep to the water’s edge. He’d planned to call in her tag and have OMEGA check her out, but matters had moved too fast. Drawing the numbers from his memory bank, Devlin relayed them along with a brief physical description.

“I’d say she’s about twenty-eight or-nine. Five-six or so. Maybe 120 pounds. It was too dark to be sure, but I’m guessing her eyes were brown.”

“We’ll run her,” Lightning advised. “How about the corpse? Did you find anything on him that gave you a clue as to his identity or why he showed up at your rendezvous?”

“I didn’t have time to check. I’ll go back now and do a search.”

“Better do it quick. The locals will arrive on the scene shortly.”

Devlin flipped the lid on what looked like an ordinary cell phone. Despite its innocuous appearance, the device contained enough ultrasonic signals, secure satellite frequencies and encryption capabilities to orchestrate an intergalactic expedition. Mackenzie Blair, bless her state-of-the-art soul, believed an operative couldn’t carry too much in the way of communications into the field.

Keeping an eye out for the blonde, Devlin jogged back to the dark hump in the surf-washed sand. Damn! Whoever this guy was, his untimely demise sure put a kink in the mission.

Dropping to one knee, Devlin dragged out the tail of his T-shirt to use as a glove. A quick search turned up a fat wad of pesos wrapped with a rubber band, the kind of switchblade you could buy in any Mexican market and a container of dental floss.

Flipping the cell phone up again, Devlin punched a single key. “Robbery obviously wasn’t the motive. The guy’s still carrying his stash.”

“Any ID?”

“Negative.”

Lightning greeted that news with a grunt. “What about the woman? Can she ID you to the police?”

“Not by name, but she can give them a general description.”

“Then I suggest you disappear. We’ll track the locals’ investigation. In the meantime you need to maintain your cover.”

Devlin acknowledged the order but threw a regretful glance along the shoreline. He hated to leave with so many unanswered questions. Not to mention a very curvy, very delectable female who sounded as though she was in dire need of male companionship.

So long, Blondie. Sorry to leave you with this mess.

An hour later Liz wished fervently she’d high-tailed it back to town instead of calling the local gendarmes. They were hardly CSI types.

The first officer on the scene had poked at the body with the toe of his boot, tugged on plastic gloves and shooed away the crabs. After feeling around in the victim’s pockets, he extracted some objects and entered a sort of inventory in a notebook before ambling over to Liz.

She told him what happened. He made a few more notes and asked her if she knew the deceased. She didn’t.

About that time, Subcommandante Carlos Rivera and the crime scene unit arrived. Liz waited while the inspector studied the corpse and conferred with the uniformed officer. Finally he turned his attention to her. Slowly and methodically, he went over every word of her statement. Such as it was.

“You say you do not know the identity of the man who has been shot?”

“No, I don’t.”

“What about this Americano? The one you say appeared out of the darkness?”

“I don’t know his identity, either.”

“Yet you spoke with him.”

Liz had done more than speak with the guy. She’d responded to the laughter in his voice and that damned grin and let the man get close enough to touch her. Worse, she’d wanted him to touch her. Okay, more than touch her. She’d actually entertained notions of rolling around in the surf with him. How stupid was that?

Too stupid to admit to Subcommandante Rivera.

“We only exchanged a few words,” she muttered.

The inspector nodded, his face grave beneath the visor of his cap. “Perhaps you will be so kind as to explain again what brought you to such an isolated spot at this late hour.”

Liz dragged a hand through her cropped hair. She’d gone through this with the first officer on the scene. It didn’t sound any better the second time around.

“I received news that upset me. I needed to vent.”

“And you could not do this in Piedras Rojas, where you live?”

After receiving Donny’s e-mail, Liz had thought about stopping by her favorite cantina in town and drinking herself into a stupor. But she had a flight tomorrow morning. Her training and professionalism went too deep to climb into a cockpit hung over. Since the small, sleepy village of Piedras Rojas offered no other outlet for her anger, she’d headed for the beach some miles south of town.

Piedras rojas. Red stones. When the sun sank toward the sea and set the cliffs along this stretch of coast aflame, there wasn’t a more awesome sight anywhere in the world. The other twenty-three and a half hours of the day, dust swirled, trees drooped, and the locals baked in the unrelenting heat.

For all these months Liz had ignored the dust and the heat and the flies and socked away every peso she earned ferrying crews out to and back from the offshore drill site. She and Donny had talked about purchasing a fleet of helos and starting their own charter service. Anxious to make the dream a reality, Liz had used her savings as collateral and taken out a loan for deposit on their first bird. The sleek little Sikorsky single-pilot craft had a Rolls Royce turbine engine, a 2,000-pound load capacity and the best auto-rotational characteristics of any helicopter flying today.

Now her savings were gone, she’d have to forfeit the nonrefundable deposit and she still had to make good on the damned loan. Pissed all over again, Liz shoved her fists into the pockets of her cutoffs.

“No, I couldn’t work off steam in town. Look, Subcommandante, I’ve told you everything I know. Are we done here?”

“We are done. For now.”

“Fine. I’ll head back to town.”

With a curt nod, she turned and plowed through the dunes. Talk about your all-around crappy nights! This one ranked right up there with the night she’d said goodbye to Donny. Liz had dreaded another long separation. He’d seemed eager to return to Malaysia and finish out his contract. Too eager, she now knew. He wanted to get back to Bambang.

Bambang. God!

Liz shoved her Jeep into gear, slinging mental arrows at her former fiancé. To her surprise, she had trouble putting a face on the target. The tall, lanky American who’d appeared out of the night seemed to have crowded Donny out of her head. No wonder! The man had shaved a good five years off her life popping up like that.

If and when she met up with him again, Mr. No-Name would have to answer a few pointed questions. Like why he’d been out here at the beach so late at night. And why he’d disappeared. And whether he knew who had put a bullet into the dead man’s skull.

As Liz navigated the narrow road that led up from the beach and along the rocky cliffs, the questions buzzed around inside her head like pesky flies.

They were still buzzing the next morning when she pulled into the small regional airport that serviced the resorts springing up along this stretch of the Mexican Riviera.

The temperature was already climbing toward the predicted high of one hundred plus. Liz threw a glance at the wind sock drooping in the heat above the building that served as both terminal and tower and knew she’d be swimming inside her flight suit by the time she returned from her run. Sighing, she retrieved her flyaway bag from the passenger seat.

The corrugated tin Quonset hut that constituted Aero Baja’s hangar and operations center occupied a patch of rock-and cactus-studded red dirt to the left of the terminal. Liz was one of three Aero Baja helicopter pilots under contract to the American-Mexican Petroleum Company to ferry crews and supplies to the giant rig forty miles off the coast. All of the pilots were qualified in a variety of craft, but their platform here at Piedras Rojas was the Bell Ranger 412.

The Ranger sat on the red dirt pad, being prepped by Aero Baja’s chief mechanic. This particular model had been configured for over-water operations by a single pilot, could carry up to fourteen passengers and cruised at 120 knots. The aircraft was almost as old as Liz. Thankfully, it had been updated with two GPS receivers, a new altimeter and a marine band radio in addition to the usual UHF, VHF and HF radios. It looked and handled like a mosquito on a leash after the heavily armed, superpowered choppers Liz had flown in the air force, but she’d gotten used to its aerodynamics and thoroughly enjoyed taking it up.

The mechanic prepping the Ranger had seen as much service as the aircraft itself. Retired after thirty-plus years with the Mexican air force, Jorge Garcia could take the Ranger apart and put it back together in his sleep.

Liz had formed a close friendship with the affable, mustachioed mechanic during her months in Mexico. She couldn’t count the number of beers they’d shared after work or the meals his wife, Maria, had fed her. Hefting her flight bag, Liz joined him on the pad.

“Buenos días, Jorge.”

“Buenos días, Lizetta.”

His pet name for her usually produced a smile. Liz had to work to dredge one up this morning. She was gritty-eyed after the late-night session on the beach and still steaming over Donny’s betrayal.

“Is the Ranger ready to fly?”

Grinning, Jorge patted the helicopter’s fuselage with a callused palm. “She is.”

Stowing her bag in the cockpit, Liz did a careful walk-around. The American-Mexican Petroleum Company was paying her serious bucks to ferry its cargo and crews. She took her responsibilities to AmMex and to her passengers seriously. Before transporting anything or anyone out to the patch, as they referred to the monster rising up out of the sea, she made sure her craft was airworthy.

Jorge followed, marking off the checklist items as Liz completed them. They had worked their way from the rear rotor to the main-engine driveshaft before Liz dropped a casual question.

“Did you hear any rumors about some trouble last night?”

There hadn’t been any mention of a shooting in Piedras Rojas’ morning newspaper. Probably because Piedras Rojas didn’t have a newspaper, morning or otherwise.

“What kind of trouble?”

“Gunshots down at the beach just after midnight. A dead body, maybe.”

The mechanic’s eyes rounded above his bushy black mustache. “Are you saying you go to the beach after midnight?

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“It started out that way.”

“Ayyyy, Lizetta, that is not wise!”

She certainly couldn’t argue the point. Last night’s misadventure had driven home just how unwise.

Despite its slow pace and mañana approach to just about everything, Piedras Rojas was only a half-hour drive from La Paz, situated at the very tip of the Baja California peninsula. The city had become a major crime center since antidrug operations in the Caribbean had forced Colombian drug lords to shift their operations to the Pacific coast.

The cartels’ vehicle of choice for their smuggling trade was the Mexican tuna fleet that operated out of ports all along the coast. The tuna boats were fast, long-range clippers that could spend months at sea. In a good year the fleet generated approximately a hundred million dollars in tuna revenue. A single boat could carry a load of cocaine worth twice that. As a result, drugs, corruption and violence had become a part of life in this corner of the world.

“Then why do you go to the beach so late?” Jorge wanted to know.

“Donny sent me an e-mail.” The words tasted as sour as three-day-old frijoles. “He’s dumped me. Seems he’s fallen for a foreign news correspondent.”

The mechanic fired off a string of highly colorful Spanish. Liz caught only a few of the more exotic phrases, but they were enough to produce a reluctant smile.

“That was pretty much my reaction, too.”

Spitting out a final curse, Jorge squinted at her through the iridescent waves of heat rising from the dirt pad.

“Will you go back to the States now?”

“Maybe. I haven’t decided.”

“But the helo you have saved every peso to buy! The charter service you plan to start! You do not need this pig, this Donny. You can start your own company without him.”

Liz didn’t tell him about her now-empty bank account. No sense broadcasting her monumental stupidity in making Donny joint on her account when he’d somehow never got around to putting her on his.

Nor did she care to reveal that she didn’t have enough cash left to cover her rent, due tomorrow. She’d have to swallow her pride and ask the smarmy AmMex on-site rep for an advance on next month’s salary. Trying not to wince at the prospect, Liz repeated her often made promise.

“When I do open my own charter service, you will most definitely be my chief mechanic.”

“Bueno! We make a good team, yes?”

“That we do.”

Satisfied, Jorge returned his attention to the pre-flight checklist. While he inspected the main driveshaft forward coupling for grease leakage, Liz checked the engine inlet and plenum to make sure they were clear of obstructions. The rumble of an approaching vehicle announced the arrival of their passengers.

The bus pulled up at the terminal and a half-dozen men filed into the building. Liz went back to the pre-flight inspection, knowing it would take the sleepy-eyed terminal official a good half hour to search the crew members’ bags for drugs and alcohol, weigh both men and luggage and show them a video explaining the safe boarding and ditching of a helicopter at sea. The video would play twice, once in English, once in Spanish. Hopefully, the non-English-, non-Spanish-speaking crewmen would get the idea from the video.

When the crew filed out of the terminal, Liz pasted on a smile and went to double-check their IDs against the manifest provided by AmMex. Like most of the men working the big rigs, these were a mixed bag of nationalities and skills.

A big, beefy Irish driller led the pack. A Filipino welder followed, then a Mexican radio operator and two Venezuelan cooks. When the last passenger stepped forward, Liz read off his name from the manifest.

“Devlin, Joe.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The slow drawl brought her head whipping up. “It’s you!”

He responded to that with the same wolfish grin he’d given her last night. “Yes, ma’am.”

Two

Devlin waited while a variety of expressions flickered across the face of the woman OMEGA had ID’d as Elizabeth Moore. He’d spent most of what was left of the night after the fiasco on the beach assimilating the background data headquarters had assembled on her.

He had to admit the info was pretty impressive. After completing USAF flight school at the top of her class, Moore had opted to fly rotary wing aircraft because that’s what her father had flown during his long and distinguished military career. Brigadier General Moore had died of a massive coronary less than a year after his daughter pinned on her wings, but she’d lived up to both his name and his reputation as a crack pilot. She’d spent four years inserting special-ops teams into particularly nasty spots all over the globe before leaving the military with the announced intention of opening her own charter service.

Unfortunately for her, Captain Moore’s smarts didn’t extend to her choice in men. According to OMEGA’s hastily assembled dossier, she’d fallen for a jerk by the name of Donald Carter and let him talk her into taking this boring, if highly lucrative, job as a contract pilot in Mexico while he did his thing in Malaysia. In recent months said jerk had reportedly been getting his rocks off with a Malaysian newswoman.

It didn’t take a NASA engineer to fit the pieces together. Obviously, Moore had just found out about her fiancé’s affair. Just as obviously, she’d gone to the beach last night determined to flush the bastard out of her system.

Devlin wished to hell he’d been able to help with the flushing. The woman looked even better in the bright light of day than she had in the glow of the moon, and she’d looked damned good then! Her zippered flight suit didn’t display her long, sexy legs the way her cutoffs had, but the tan fabric hugged her curves very nicely. Very nicely indeed. Devlin almost hated to depart for the oil rig.

Assuming he did depart. The issue looked doubtful at the moment, judging by the suspicion in Moore’s brown eyes.

“Jorge!” Her face tight, she called to a mechanic in grease-stained overalls. “Get our passengers briefed and strapped in. Devlin, you come with me.”

She shoved the clipboard at the crew chief and stalked toward the corrugated tin hangar. Devlin followed, eyeing her trim behind with real appreciation.

“In here.”

She led the way into an office with a beat-up metal desk, a single file cabinet and an ancient air conditioner rattling in the window. The walls were decorated with the usual clutter seen in operations shacks around the world. Weather updates. Flight schedules. Area NOTAMs. A fly-specked calendar depicting a luscious Miss May falling out of a blouse unbuttoned almost to her navel.

Devlin spared Miss May only a passing glance. Ms. Moore held his full attention. Her blunt-cut hair swirled in a silky arc as she slammed the door behind them and spun around.

The woman didn’t waste time. Spearing him with a narrow-eyed stare, she launched a direct attack. “What were you doing on the beach last night?”

Devlin had anticipated this meeting since learning Moore’s identity and had his cover ready. Luckily, it fit him like a second skin. Born and raised amid the oil fields of Oklahoma, he’d worked his way up from mud man to pipe handler to site supervisor. Along the way he’d accumulated undergraduate and graduate degrees in petroleum engineering and drilled holes in every ocean floor from the Gulf of Aden to the Bering Strait.

He’d also racked up a brief marriage and quick divorce. Candace had insisted his pay and benefits compensated for the long separations, but had soon gone looking for other distractions. Devlin didn’t blame her. Divorce was an occupational hazard in his line of work.

His life had become even more erratic after he’d joined the OMEGA team. Nick Jensen, aka Lightning, had recruited him just months after terrorists blew up an American-operated rig in international waters off the coast of Kuwait. Devlin had lost friends in that explosion and had jumped at the chance to use his civilian cover as a means of bringing the murdering bastards to justice.

Now another friend had disappeared. A close friend. And a real badass who specialized in transporting underage aliens across the border to sell into sexual slavery had been picked up while using Harry Johnson’s passport and ID. Law enforcement officials from a dozen different agencies had grilled the imposter but didn’t get much. Turned out he’d never met the man who’d supplied the stolen documents. They’d been left at a designated drop site after the recipient had deposited a hefty sum in the same location.

Nor had Harry’s body ever been recovered. All his fiancée knew, all anyone knew, was that Harry had disappeared after rotating off an AmMex oil rig, and someone using his passport had popped up on U.S. customs screens a few weeks later. What little intelligence OMEGA had been able to gather indicated the brains behind the ring supplying stolen passports operated out of this general vicinity. Devlin fully intended to nail the bastard. He wouldn’t let anyone—Captain Moore included—jeopardize this mission.

Hitching a hip on the desk, he responded to her sharp question with a deliberate combination of fact and fiction. “I went to the beach last night to meet someone.”

That part was true. What came next wasn’t.

“He said he had a onetime good deal for me on personal gear for use on the rig.”

“Why didn’t he come to your hotel in to conduct this sale?”

“My guess is he lifted the equipment from a roustabout, either on the rig or after he came off.”

That didn’t happen often, but it did happen. Rig crews hailed from just about every country on the planet. That made communication a distinct challenge. Their staggered rotations also presented opportunities for high-dollar tools and unsecured personal items to disappear.

Still suspicious, Moore tapped a booted toe. “So who fired the shots? This light-fingered entrepreneur?”

“Maybe. Or maybe the man he stole from. The shooter had departed the scene when I reached his victim.”

“This victim. Was he dead when you got to him?”

“He took a bullet between the eyes. You don’t get much deader than that.”

Her foot tapped the floor again. Once. Twice.

“You didn’t kill him,” she said, scowling. “I could have vouched for that. So why did you disappear?”

“I only arrived in Mexico with the replacement crew yesterday.” Another lie, followed by another truth. “But I’ve been around enough to know you don’t get mixed up in an incident like this unless you want to spend some not-so-quality time with the federales.”

“So you left me to do the explaining?”

The disdain in her eyes stung. Devlin deflected it with a shrug. “I went back to look for you. You had departed the scene, too.”

“Wrong! I ran up to my car to get my cell phone and call the police.”

He hooked an incredulous brow. “And you hung around to wait for them?”

“Someone had to.”

He let that pointed barb hang on the air for a moment before giving her a smile of genuine regret. “I have to admit, I had to think twice about leaving. If I’d stuck around, I might have gotten real lucky.”

The ploy worked. The reminder of her rash vow brought her chin up and a flush to her cheeks.

“Not hardly, Devlin. You’re not my type.”

“Best I recall, you didn’t specify a type last night.”

The pink in her cheeks deepened to brick. “Yeah, well, that was last night.”

He pushed off the desk and moved closer. She wasn’t wearing a speck of makeup that he could see, but her gold-flecked brown eyes didn’t need any goopy mascara to emphasize either their depth or their intelligence. And he had to admit the light dusting of freckles across her nose turned him on. That, and her unique scent. It drifted on an air-conditioned breeze, a tantalizing combination of soap and perspiration and aviation fuel.

He needed to keep her off balance, he reminded himself. Prevent her from probing too deeply. Throwing himself into the task, he gave her a wicked grin.

“How about this morning? Nothing says we can’t take up where we left off.”

“Oh, sure! With a rotation crew waiting outside in the heat?”

“I’m game if you are.”

Liz shook her head, suspended between suspicion and disbelief. “You’re something else, cowboy.”

“Yes, ma’am. I do believe I’ve been told that once or twice.”

She was damned if she could figure this guy out. He certainly looked like the roustabout he claimed to be. The sun had bleached his close-cut hair to golden brown. The white squint lines she’d noticed last night cut into skin tanned to dark oak by wind and sun. A couple days’ stubble darkened his cheeks and chin, as if he was getting a head start on the bushy beard most of the crews sprouted while on the rig. Then there was the palm he slid under her hair to circle her nape. It was callused and leather tough.

Liz stiffened at the touch of his skin against hers. Her eyes met his and telegraphed an unmistakable warning, which he ignored.

“If we can’t finish what we started,” he murmured, his gaze sliding downward to fix on her mouth, “how about we just settle for a kiss?”

Holding her in place with that thorny palm, he bent and brushed her lips with his.

Liz stood stiff, debating whether to whip up a knee or ream out his gut with her elbow. Devlin took full advantage of the hesitation, as brief as it was. Shifting his stance, he brought his mouth came down on hers with a hunger Liz hadn’t tasted in seven months.

Or longer, she realized with a jolt as his lips molded hers. To her chagrin, she couldn’t remember the last time a man had kissed her as if he meant it. Donny’s affectionate pecks hadn’t come close to packing this powerful a charge.

She savored the sizzle for a moment, maybe two, before breaking the contact. Feeling the loss of warmth immediately, she buried it in biting sarcasm.

“Finished flexing your masculinity, cowboy?”

“Guess so.”

“Then I’ll chalk this little interlude up to my stupid remark last night and let you walk out of here.” She looked him square in the eye. “Touch me again without my permission, however, and you’ll be drilling for something besides Mexican crude.”

Spinning on her heel, she strode out into the smothering heat. Jorge was waiting beside the pad with a question in his eyes. Liz answered it with a small shake of her head and brisk order tossed over her shoulder to the man who’d followed her from the operations shack.

“Get aboard and buckle up.”

Devlin joined his companions in the passenger compartment. Only after Liz had climbed into the cockpit and buckled her seat harness did she realize she’d bought his story about the supposed thief he’d gone to meet last night.

Frowning, she strapped on her kneeboard and forced herself to concentrate on the power-up sequence checklist. The engines whined. The forty-four feet of main rotor blades churned up dust, slowly at first, then in a reddish whirlwind. The aircraft began to shimmy as Liz radioed the tower.

Once she received clearance to taxi, her years of training and experience kicked in. Flying an aircraft that operated in both horizontal and vertical planes required a level of coordination not all pilots possessed. As always, getting her bird in the air and shifting smoothly from one plane to the other produced an adrenaline rush.

Her second in less than twenty minutes, Liz thought as she banked and aimed for the blue, sparkling Pacific. Her mouth still tingled from the kiss Devlin had laid on her.

Scowling behind her mirrored sunglasses, she set a course for floating the platform designated American-Mexican Petroleum Company Drill Site 237.

She must have made the run to AM-237 forty or fifty times in the past seven months. Every time, the sheer immensity of the ultradeepwater semisubmersible rig inspired awe. It was as big as a city block—a floating platform spiked by two giant cranes and a derrick that rose to impossible heights.

Anchored to the ocean floor by chains and 45,000-pound anchors, the superstructure sat on massive pontoons and four corner columns. Once the platform was positioned over a drill site, the columns were flooded with seawater. This caused the pontoons to sink to a predetermined depth and lessened the platform’s surface movement, making it relatively stable.

Relative being the key word. To a pilot aiming for the helideck that jutted out over the rig’s bow some seven stories above the water, even slight up and down movement had to be taken into consideration. The trick was to contact the helideck at its highest point and ride it down. Slamming into it on the way up stressed the landing gear and made the passengers just a tad nervous.

Liz chose a leeward approach and put the helo into a descending spiral a quarter of a mile out. The fat orange flanges for pumping the crude into tankers stood out like beacons on the east side. She lined up on the flanges to begin her final approach.

“AM-237, this is Aero Baja 214 on final.”

“Roger, 214. We have you on the scope. We’re putting out the welcome mat.”

While the rig’s two crane operators lowered the booms to clear the airspace, a support ship maneuvered into position at the pontoon closest to the helideck. The ship’s mission was to pick up survivors if the incoming aircraft hit the drink instead of the deck.

“The LO is standing by.”

The rig’s landing officer climbed onto the pad, clearly visible in his bright yellow vest.

“I see him,” Liz acknowledged.

Although this was only a secondary duty for him, she knew he’d been doing it a long time and trusted him to guide her in. Keeping one eye on his arm signals and another on the instrument panel, she put her aircraft into a hover above the deck and brought her down.

The skids touched, lifted and settled with a small thump. While the red-vested tie-down crew ducked under the blades to anchor the helicopter to the deck, Liz powered down. Once the blades had chugged to a halt, she keyed her mike.

“Welcome to AM-237, gentlemen.”

Swinging a leg over the stick, she clambered into the cargo compartment.

“Claim your gear and pass it to the deckhands,” she instructed the new arrivals. “Make sure you hang on to the lifelines when you climb out onto the pad.”

The old-timers knew the drill, but there were questions in the eyes of a couple of obvious newcomers. Liz repeated the instructions in Spanish, then in elaborate pantomime. Looking both doubtful and nervous, the newbies poked their heads outside the hatch. Liz saw several Adam’s apples bounce and knuckles turn white as the crewmen measured the distance from the pad to the ocean below.

“Don’t piss yourself,” the beefy Irishman advised one of the Venezuelans. “Just hang on to that strap. Out you go now, there’s a good lad.”

Since the brawny oilman supplemented his friendly words of encouragement with a solid thump between the shoulder blades, the cargo compartment soon emptied of everyone but Liz and Devlin. Passing his gear bag to a waiting deckhand, he turned back to her.

“How often do you make this run?”

“Five maybe six times a month. Depends on whether they need supplies or there’s a crew rotating off.”

“Maybe I’ll see you on your next run.”

“Maybe.”

He took a step toward her, his sun-streaked hair ruffled by the wind whistling through the open hatch. “Do I have your permission?”

“My permission? For…? Oh! No, as a matter of fact, you don’t. No touching, Devlin, and definitely no kissing.”

“Sure you won’t reconsider? It’s going to be a long twenty-eight days out here.”

“Just grin and bear it.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Tipping her a two-fingered salute, he exited the aircraft and made his way to the stairs leading to the main deck.

Liz saw to the unloading of the replenishment supplies and accepted the sealed outgoing mail pouch, but instructed the landing officer to wait before bringing up the departing crew members.

“I need to talk to the company rep,” she informed him, holding back her wind-whipped hair with one hand. “Do you know where he is?”

“Try the galley. Conrad is usually there this time of morning, swilling coffee and shooting off his…Er, shooting the breeze.”

She gave the LO a wry smile. She’d dealt with AmMex Petroleum’s on-site representative before. She had no doubt she would find him pontificating to anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck in his immediate vicinity.

She took the stairs, crossed the deck to the main superstructure and entered a world like none other. The ever-present reek of fresh paint and diesel fuel flavored the air. Machinery constantly in motion thumped out the rig’s steady heartbeat. Metal creaked as the massive platform rode the waves.

The giant anchors and stabilizers minimized the motion until it was almost imperceptible, but Liz had to lay a palm against the bulkhead once or twice as she followed the scent of fried onions to the galley. Sure enough, the AmMex on-site rep was sprawled in a mess chair at the officers’ table, holding forth.

Big and amiable and impervious to all attempts to shut him up, Conrad Wallace never seemed to tire of the sound of his own voice. Today’s topic appeared to be a crew Ping-Pong tournament that evidently didn’t come off to Wallace’s satisfaction. The rig’s Pakistani-born doctor sat across from him with a glazed expression on her face. When she spotted Liz, relief sprang into her eyes.

“Hello, Elizabeth. Did you bring the waterproof cast liners I ordered?”

“Sure did.”

“What about the metronidazole tablets?”

“They’re on back order, but marked priority. I’ll fly them out as soon as they arrive.”

“Thank you. I need them. Excuse me, Conrad. I must go inventory the new supplies.”

She hurried out, leaving Liz to help herself to the coffee before joining Wallace at the gleaming teak table reserved for the rig’s officers. The officers lived well out here on the patch, as did the hundred-plus crew members. Accommodations included hotel-class rooms, a galley that served international cuisine, a cinema showing satellite TV and movies and a gym that would get a gold stamp of approval from Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oil companies had to provide such facilities along with high-dollar salaries to induce men and women to live surrounded by miles of empty water for months at a time.

Cradling her coffee, Liz sank into a padded captain’s chair. The company man shifted his bulk in her direction and picked up almost where he’d left off.

“We were talking about the fluke shot that won the crew Ping-Pong tournament last night. Did anyone tell you about it?”

“No, I just got down.”

“It was crazy. The ball ricocheted off a steam pipe, hit the forehead of one of the watchers and slammed back on the table. No way the referee should have allowed that shot, but you know how these foreigners are. They make up their own rules as they go.”

Liz started to remind the man the rig sat in Mexican territorial waters and he was the foreigner here but didn’t want to set him off on a new tangent. Instead, she cut straight to the point.

“I need an advance on next month’s salary.”

Wallace blinked at the abrupt change of topic and pursed his lips. Liz recognized his pinched expression. She categorized it as his company face.

“Payday was last week,” he pontificated, as if she weren’t well aware of that basic fact. “Don’t tell me you’ve already run through the exorbitant flight pay AmMex shells out to you.”

Her supposedly “exorbitant” flight pay was an old issue, one that came up every time Liz renewed her contract.

“What I did with my pay is my business, Conrad.”

Frowning at the cool reply, Wallace shifted in his seat. He was a big man, but soft around the middle. Not lean and hard like the roughnecks who wrestled pipe or the roustabouts who performed general maintenance work.

Not like Joe Devlin.

Irritated at the way the man kept popping into her head, Liz laid out her requirement. “I need six hundred.”

Living was considerably cheaper in Mexico than in the States, thank goodness. That amount would cover the payment due on the loan and get her though to the next payday with no problem.

“Six hundred?” Wallace echoed, looking as horrified as a man asked to sacrifice his firstborn child.

Liz should have known he’d balk. The man managed a multimillion-dollar operating budget, yet was so tight he squeaked when he walked.

“You know, Conrad, you’re the perfect company man. You think every cent you dole out comes out of your own pocket.”

“Well, it does! Anything that impacts the company’s bottom line affects its profit margin, which in turn affects its stock value. Since I receive a large portion of my compensation and retirement in stock options, I’m obligated—”

“I know the spiel,” Liz interrupted ruthlessly. It was the only way to get through to the man. “You’re obligated to act as a responsible guardian of company funds. Are you going to give me the six hundred or not?”

“All right. All right. I will. But you’ll have to sign a voucher. Let’s go down to my office.”

Liz lifted her bird off the patch a half hour later with a check for the six hundred zippered into her jumpsuit pocket and an exuberant crew strapped into the passenger compartment.

Ahead stretched forty minutes of open sea. Liz had flown the route so many times she could put her conscious mind on autopilot and switch her thoughts to the mess Donny had landed her in.

She thought briefly of hiring a lawyer and going after him. Pride and utter disgust at her own stupidity quashed that idea. She’d just have to tough it out down here in Mexico for a while longer. If she watched her pennies, she should be able to repay the loan she’d taken out for that blasted nonrefundable deposit and get back on her feet within a few months.

Which meant she’d probably ferry Devlin back to shore when he rotated off the patch.

Hell, there he was again! Bouncing around inside her head like a damned yo-yo. She couldn’t seem to get him out. Or his outrageous offer of stud service.

What the heck. If Liz did ferry him back to shore a few weeks from now, maybe she should take him up on the offer. She didn’t quite trust the man. And she wasn’t sure she bought his story about last night’s events. Yet she had to admit the kiss he’d laid on her this morning had curled her toes inside her boots.

Like a DVD played in digital high definition, she saw again the glint in Devlin’s eyes as he bent toward her, felt the heat of his mouth on hers and cursed herself for being a fool.

Dumped less than ten hours ago by one man and here she was, fantasizing about another! How many kinds of an idiot did that make her?

Thoroughly disgusted, Liz skimmed her bird toward the postcard-perfect shoreline.

The men poured out as soon as the skids touched down and Jorge set the chocks. Most clutched e-tickets and were eager to get through customs and onto the bus to La Paz. Once there, they’d board the jets that would carry them to homes scattered from the Azores to the Strait of Malacca. A few intended to head for town and the women who would soon relieve them of a healthy portion of their accumulated pay. First they had to be cleared by the Mexican official who routinely met Liz’s incoming flight.

Today there were two officials. She recognized the bored-looking bureaucrat who usually rubber-stamped the crew’s papers. The other she hadn’t seen before.

“What’s up?” she asked Jorge as she hefted the mail pouch from the empty copilot’s seat. “Why the extra funcionario?

“I do not know.”

Interesting. Maybe Devlin’s story had basis in fact. Maybe a deckhand had stolen some valuable equipment and authorities were now shaking down all crews coming off the rig. Funny Wallace didn’t mention the theft to her, though. The company rep was such a motormouth about everything else.

“Perhaps it has something to do with this,” Jorge said.

He dragged a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his overalls. It was a flier with a Xerox photo of a man Liz didn’t recognize. Her eyes widened as she translated the Spanish under the picture.

“Does this say what I think it does?”

“¡Sí! There is a reward. Fifty thousand pesos for information about whoever shot this man last night.”

“Last night, huh?”

Liz licked suddenly dry lips. The image of a body floating in the surf jumped into her head.

“This is Martín Alvarez,” Jorge said grimly.

The name didn’t register. Her expression must have indicated as much, as Jorge clicked his tongue like a hyperactive cricket.

“Ayyyyy, Lizetta! You do not know him?”

“No.”

“He is the nephew of Eduardo Alvarez. The one known as El Tiburón.”

El Tiburón. The Shark. That registered.

Goose bumps prickled Liz’s skin. Gulping, she stared at the grainy photo of the nephew of one of the biggest, baddest members of the Mexican mafia.

Three

El Tiburón. The nickname echoed in Liz’s head all day. She’d heard about the man from various sources during her months in Mexico, and what she’d heard was not good.

She drove home after work to peel off her sweat-soaked flight suit and to shower. Cool and comfortable in flip-flops, jeans and sleeveless cotton blouse, she got back in the Jeep and navigated the narrow streets to her favorite cantina for dinner. A few tourists wandered through the shops, but most had retreated to the luxury resorts strung along the cliffs for cocktails by the pool.

El Poco Lobo was crowded with shop owners, street vendors and boatmen back from fishing charters and swim or snorkeling tours. The locals jammed elbow to elbow at the smoky bar. Empty Corona bottles filled with red pebbles formed a pyramid against the flyspecked mirror backing the bar. Liz usually ate at one of the rickety tables outside, but the cantina owner waved her inside.

“Hola, Elizabeth.”

“Hola, Anita.”

Avid interest filled the woman’s black eyes. “Is it true what we hear? You were at the beach last night?”

“Yes. What’s the special this evening?”

“Beans and roast pork. I will get you a dish and you will tell us what happens, yes?”

Hunching over her heaping plate of succulent carne asada, Liz did her best to play down her role in the night’s events. Yes, she’d heard the shots, she said in a reprise of her conversation with Subcommandante Rivera. No, she didn’t see who fired them. And no, she didn’t know who’d been shot until Jorge told her this morning.

She managed to dodge most of the more persistent of her questioners. Unfortunately, she couldn’t dodge the two men who were waiting for her when she parked her Jeep in its usual place under the droopy jacaranda tree that shaded the stairs to her apartment.

The two tough-looking strangers stepped from behind the massive, twisted trunk. One was short and squat and walked with a limp. The other wore a lavender shirt, pleated black slacks and black-and-white wingtip shoes. The wingtips were bad enough. The shoulder holster he didn’t bother to conceal was worse.

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