“Why?” Jake asked in a hoarse whisper. “Why didn’t you come back to me?”

“Because I don’t know you,” she cried.

“You believe that stuff in the envelope about me? Even after that kiss?”

“No. Jake, I don’t remember anything before waking up in a hospital six years ago.”

“You don’t still believe you’re Isabella Montenegro?”

“How can I after everything that’s happened? After—” The kiss. She unconsciously ran her tongue over her upper lip, the memory still fresh, the feeling still intoxicating.

“But you’re afraid of me because of what you found in the envelope.”

“I don’t know who or what to believe at this point,” she said, looking away.

“If you could remember what you and I had, you’d know the truth,” Jake said softly. “I loved Abby Diaz. We were going to get married. We were going to have a child.”

“We did have a child….”

The Agent’s Secret Child
B.J. Daniels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Houston, B.J. Daniels is a former Southern girl who grew up on the smell of Gulf sea air and Southern cooking. But her home is now in Montana, not far from Big Sky, where she snowboards in the winters and boats in the summers with her husband and daughters. She does miss gumbo and Texas barbecue, though! Her first Harlequin Intrigue novel was nominated for the Romantic Times Magazine Reviewer’s Choice Award for best first book and best Harlequin Intrigue. She is a member of Romance Writers of America, Heart of Montana and Bozeman Writers Group. B.J. loves to hear from readers. Write to her at: P.O. Box 183, Bozeman, MT 59771.

The Confidential Agent’s Pledge

I hereby swear to uphold the law to the best of my ability; to maintain the level of integrity of this agency by my compassion for victims, loyalty to my brothers and courage under fire.

And above all, to hold all information and identities in the strictest confidence….

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Isabella Montenegro/Abby Diaz—Was she the former FBI agent who everyone believed was dead? Then why couldn’t she remember who’d tried to kill her? Worse, why couldn’t she remember the man she’d supposedly loved?

Jake Cantrell—His job as an agent for Texas Confidential was to find a woman and child. But he found a lot more.

Elena Montenegro—All the five-year-old had ever wanted was a father.

Julio Montenegro—He knew the truth, but he got greedy and it cost him his life.

Tomaso Calderone—The drug lord thought he’d found his chance to get Jake Cantrell.

Dell Harper—He’d been like a little brother to Abby. But how well had she known him?

Ramon Hernandez—As Calderone’s right-hand man, he had to stop Abby and Jake—or die trying.

Frank Jordan—The past had come back to haunt him. And now it was just a matter of time before the truth got out.

Tommy Barnett—He’d do anything for a friend. Even kill.

Reese Ramsey—He was the only agent from the past who Jake could trust. But was that trust misplaced?

Crystal Winfrey Jordan—She had a very good reason to be jealous of Abby Diaz. But what was that reason?

This book is dedicated to my aunt,

Lenore Collmorgen Bateman (1912-1999).

I never think of Texas without thinking of her.

Some of my fondest memories are of her making

pancakes over a Coleman, joking and laughing.

She was a great cook and one of the strong women

in my life I have tried to emulate.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Prologue

She smelled smoke. Just moments before, she’d been helping her daughter Elena look for her lost doll. Now, she stopped, alarmed. Her hand went to the small scars at her temple, memory of the fire and the pain sending panic racing through her. Why would Julio build a fire on such a hot spring day in Mexico?

Then she heard the raised voices below her in the kitchen and the heavy, unfamiliar tread on the stairs.

The feeling came in a rush. Strong, sure, knowing, like only one she’d ever felt before. And yet she trusted this one. Whoever was coming up the stairs intended to harm her and her five-year-old daughter.

Fear paralyzed her as she realized she and Elena were trapped on the second floor. The only way out was the stairs the man now climbed. Her husband had barred the windows and he had the only key. She’d often wondered: what if there was another house fire and Julio wasn’t home?

But Julio always left someone to watch over them when he was gone.

The lumbering footsteps reached the second-floor landing. She shot her daughter a silent warning as she scooped the child into her arms and hurried to the attic stairs at the back of the house.

Her heart lunged in her chest as she moved through the hot cluttered attic, frantically searching for a place to hide. She found the only space large enough for the two of them in a dark corner behind an old bureau where the roof pitched out over the eave and a pile of old lumber formed a small partition.

She could hear the men ransacking the house, their voices raised in angry Spanish she couldn’t make out.

When she heard the plodding tread on the attic stairs, she’d motioned to Elena to keep silent but the child’s wide-eyed look told her that she understood their danger, just as she always had.

The man was in the attic now, moving slowly, carefully. The other men called to him, their feet thumping on the steps as they hurried up to him.

“Where is Isabella and the child?” one of the men demanded in Spanish. He had a quick, nervous voice like the brightly colored hummingbirds flickering in the bougainvillea outside the window.

“I don’t know,” a deeper voice answered. “Montenegro must have gotten them out before we arrived.”

“Damn Julio. Find the money. Tear the place apart if you have to, but find the money.”

“What if he gave it to her?” one of them asked, only to be answered with a curse.

As the men searched the house, she hugged her daughter tightly, determined to protect her child as she had since Elena’s birth, feeling as defenseless and trapped as she always had.

The men eventually searched the attic, including the bureau drawers, while she’d held her breath and prayed they wouldn’t find her and Elena crouched in the darkness and dust.

She took hope when she sensed the men were losing momentum, their movements less frantic but no less angry and frustrated.

“He wouldn’t hide it in the house,” one of the men snapped in Spanish. “He was too smart for that. So why are we wasting our time? He gave it to the woman and kid to hide somewhere for him.”

“Shut up!” the nervous one growled. “Keep searching.” But he said it as he tromped back down the stairs and soon the others followed.

She waited until she thought they’d left before she crept from the hiding place and stole with her daughter down one floor to her bedroom. With a chilling calm that frightened her more than the men had, she packed a bag with a few belongings.

She started at a noise behind her. Click, click, click. Someone was still downstairs, she thought, glancing at the phone beside her bed. It was making that faint clicking sound as the extension downstairs was being dialed.

With that same cold calm, she carefully picked up the extension. Two voices. One coarse as sand. The other nervous and quick and now familiar.

“I want my money, Ramon,” the coarse one snarled.

“The woman must have taken it and the child with her.”

“Find them. Make them tell you where Julio hid the money he stole from me. Then bring them and the money to me. Comprende?”

“Si, Señor Calderone, I understand.” The man named Ramon promised on his dead mother’s grave.

She hung up the phone and finished packing. Since the day she’d awakened in the hospital after the house fire to find Julio beside her bed, she’d suspected her husband was involved with drug lord Tomaso Calderone.

She’d awakened in pain. From her injuries and the surgeries. From the confusion in her mind.

But it was awakening to find herself pregnant that made her close her eyes and ears to Julio’s dealings, thinking only of her baby, her sweet precious daughter. Julio had never shown any interest in either of them, leaving her alone to cook and clean and raise the child he wanted nothing to do with.

Once she got some of her strength back physically and Elena was old enough to travel, she’d tried to leave her marriage. But Julio had caught her and brought her back, warning her that she and Elena could never leave. They were his and he would rather see them both dead than ever let them go.

She had looked into Julio Montenegro’s eyes and known then that he felt nothing for her or Elena, something she had long suspected. She and Elena were his prisoners for reasons she could not understand. But for Elena’s sake, she’d never tried to escape again.

Instead, without realizing it, she’d been biding her time, waiting. She hadn’t known what she’d been waiting for. Until today.

With the bag in one hand and Elena’s small hand in the other, she crept down the stairs as soon as the lower floor grew silent again.

Julio lay sprawled on the white tile floor of the kitchen in a pool of blood, his eyes blank, his body lifeless.

Shielding Elena from the sight, Isabella moved to him, her gaze not on his face, but on the knife sticking out of his chest.

With a cold, calculating detachment she hadn’t known she possessed, she grasped the knife handle in both hands, and pulled it from her husband’s chest. Then she calmly wiped the knife clean on his shirt and slipped the slim blade into her bag.

She looked down at his face for a moment, wishing she felt something. Then, like a sleepwalker, she knelt and searched his pockets, lifting him enough to remove the small wad of pesos his business associates had obviously passed up as too trivial to bother with from his hip pocket.

It wasn’t much money. Not nearly enough to get her and Elena out of Mexico, let alone to some place safe in the States. But was there any place safe from Calderone and his men?

She started to rise, then noticed that when she’d lifted Julio, she’d also lifted the edge of the rug under him. The corner of a manila envelope was now visible beneath the rug.

With that same chilling calm, she raised Julio enough to free the parcel from beneath him and the rug. She stared at the large envelope, then the fire he’d built in the stove. Had he been planning to burn the envelope? Why else would he have built a fire in a room already unbearably hot?

She looked again at the envelope. She knew it didn’t contain the missing money. It was too lightweight, too thin, to hold the amount of money she feared Julio had stolen. But maybe it had information about where he’d hidden the drug money. Why else would he try to burn it just before he’d been killed, if not to protect his ill-gotten gains?

She grasped the hope. If she had the location of the stolen money, then maybe she could buy her freedom and her daughter’s from Calderone.

As she lifted the parcel to look inside, something fell out and tinkled to the tiles. The tiny object rolled to a stop and as she stopped to pick it up, she saw that it was a silver heart-shaped locket. It had no chain and the silver was tarnished and scratched, making it hard at first to read the name engraved on it.

Abby.

She stared at the locket. Should that name mean something to her? Was it one of her husband’s mistresses? One of her lost relatives?

She pried the two halves open and stared down at a man’s photo inside, her fingers trembling. Not Julio. Not any man she’d ever seen before. She felt Elena beside her and tried to shield her from the body on the floor, but saw that her daughter was more interested in the locket—and the photo inside.

“Papacito,” Elena whispered, eyes wide as she stared down at the photo of the stranger.

“No, my little bright angel,” she said softly, sick inside. For the first time, she let herself hate Julio. She’d never wanted him as a husband, but he could have been a father to Elena, who desperately needed a father’s love.

Instead their daughter preferred to believe a total stranger in a small black-and-white photograph was her father rather than Julio Montenegro, the unfeeling man who’d given her life.

A car backfired outside, making her jump. Hurriedly, she shoved the locket back into the envelope with the official-looking papers. Like the weapon she’d taken from Julio’s chest, she put the parcel into her bag. As she turned to leave, she saw her daughter’s lost rag doll and, wondering absently how it had gotten there, she scooped it up from the floor, took her daughter’s small hand, and ran.

JAKE CANTRELL stood back, sipping his beer, watching the wedding reception as if through binoculars. The Smoking Barrel Ranch had taken on a sound and feel and level of gaiety that seemed surreal, as if it had an alternate personality—one he didn’t recognize.

He hadn’t been brought here for this and right now, he just wanted it to be over. Not that he wasn’t happy for Brady and Grace…now Catherine. He was. He just didn’t believe in happy-ever-after anymore. Mostly, he told himself, he was just anxious to get back to work.

But that was a lie. All day he’d felt an uneasiness he couldn’t shake. Like when he felt someone following him or waiting for him in a dark alley. The feeling hummed like a low-pitched vibration inside him, making him anxious and irritable and wary.

Mitchell had called a meeting later tonight. Jake wanted a new assignment, something that would take him away from the ranch for a while. Away from everything. Work kept him sane—relatively sane. It was also the only thing that kept him from dwelling on the past.

He felt eyes on him. Not just watching him. But staring at him. He shifted his gaze and saw Penny Archer across the room, standing with her back to the library door she’d just closed behind her. Earlier he’d noticed when she’d gotten a beep on the priority line. Noticing was something he was good at. That and finding people who didn’t want to be found.

It had to have been a business call. That was the only kind that would make the administrative assistant leave the wedding reception and the boisterous crowd, and disappear into the library. From there the hidden elevator would take her to the basement and the secret office of Texas Confidential. The true heart of the ranch. Its aberrant split personality.

Now he met Penny’s intent gaze and felt a jolt. She was as tough as they came. It took a lot to upset her. And right now, she was visibly upset.

He made his way across the room, knowing it had been the priority call that had upset her. Just as he knew the call had to do with him.

“What?” he asked, never one to mince words.

She motioned for him to follow and led him away from the crowd and the noise of the party, outside to a corner of the porch. In the distance, mesquite stood dark-limbed against the horizon, shadows piled cool and deep beneath them. The land beyond was as vast and open as the night sky.

“I just got the strangest call,” she said the moment they were alone and out of earshot of the others. Her gaze came up to his. “It was from a little girl. A child. No more than three or four. She spoke Spanish and—” Penny’s voice broke. “She was crying. She sounded really scared, Jake.”

“What did she want?” he asked, wondering what this could possibly have to do with him.

“She said her mommy was in trouble and needed help. She asked for her daddy.” Penny seemed to hesitate. “Her daddy Jake.”

He felt a chill even as a warm Texas wind whispered through the May night. He shook his head. A mistake. A wrong number. An odd coincidence.

“Jake, she called through your old FBI contact number.”

He stared, his heart now a sledgehammer. Only three people in the world had ever known that number and two of them were dead. “What did she say? Exactly.” Not that he had to add that. Penny could remember conversations verbatim. That was part of her charm—and the reason the thirty-four-year-old was Mitchell Forbes’s right-hand woman.

She repeated the Spanish words. “Then I heard a woman’s voice in the background. The woman cried, ‘No, chica suena.’ Then the line went dead. Of course, I put a trace on the call immediately. It came from a small motel on the other side of the Mexican border.”

Chica suena. The light in the trees seemed to shift. Lighter to darker. The porch under him no longer felt solid, became a swampland of deadly potholes. His world, the fragile one he’d made for himself here, spun on the edge of out of control. Just as it had six years ago. Before Mitchell had saved him.

From far off, he heard Penny ask, “Jake, are you all right? Jake?”

Chica suena. He hadn’t heard the unusual Spanish endearment in years. Six long years. Nor was it one he’d ever heard before he’d met Abby Diaz. It was something her grandmother had called her. It meant “my little dream girl.” And it suited Abby.

Abby Diaz had been everything to him. The woman he was to marry. His FBI partner. His most trusted friend.

His chica suena.

He bounded off the porch, his long legs carrying him away from the party and the faint sound of music and laughter. Away from the pain and anger and memory of the death of his dreams of love ever after. Away. But he knew, gut-deep, that running wouldn’t help. It never had.

Someone had found out about him and Abby. Had found out their most intimate secret. Daddy Jake. Chica suena. Someone wanted him running scared again. And they’d succeeded.

Chapter One

Isabella Montenegro lay on the bed, her body drenched in sweat, fear choking off her breath. Dark shadows shifted in the shabby motel room, one image refusing to fade—the image of her husband Julio sprawled in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. But it was the knife sticking out of his chest, rather than his blank eyes, that she saw so clearly.

She shuddered, watching herself pull the knife from his chest. She watched it in her mind’s eye, watched the unfeeling woman wipe the blade clean on his shirt, then slip the weapon into her bag.

She closed her eyes. Who was that unfeeling woman? Or had she always been this cold, this uncaring?

Yes, she thought, unable to recall the other feeling, the only other strong, sure, knowing one she’d ever had, one she hadn’t trusted. A feeling that she’d known earth-shaking passion.

A lie, she thought. She’d never known passion. Not with Julio, who’d never been a husband to her. Not with anyone. She couldn’t even call up the feeling.

She closed her eyes to the horrible image of her moving his body to retrieve the envelope. But the image danced in the darkness behind her eyelids, taunting her. What kind of woman was she?

She opened her eyes and snapped on the lamp beside her bed, chasing the shadows from the cramped room and illuminating the tiny body sleeping next to her.

Elena was curled in a fetal position, her small, warm back against her mother’s side, her dark hair hiding her face.

She had done it for Elena, she told herself now as she sat up, careful not to wake her daughter. Everything she’d done, she’d done for Elena.

Only now they were running for their lives. Scared, with no one to turn to and nowhere to go. Her sleepless hours filled her with nightmares. Not of the men chasing her and her daughter, but of the memory of the emotionless woman who’d pulled the knife from her husband’s chest, then calmly picked up her daughter’s doll and left without looking back.

What had she planned to do with the knife? Surely not use it as a weapon. What had she been thinking? And where did she think the two of them would go? What would they do?

She glanced at the envelope beside her on the nightstand, still upset and confused by what she’d found inside it. Nothing about the drug money Julio had stolen from Calderone. Nothing to help her.

She picked up the envelope. It still had some of Julio’s blood dried into one corner. She felt nothing. Not a twinge at the sight of the blood, nor anything for the cold distant man who’d been her husband. What kind of woman was she? she wondered again. How could she feel nothing for the man who’d given her Elena?

She opened the envelope as if the contents might explode, slipping the papers out onto her lap, quietly, cautiously, not wanting to wake Elena, still stunned by what she’d found.

A passport and Texas driver’s license tumbled out, the accusing eyes staring up at her from the photo on the license. The woman’s name, it read, was Abby Diaz. Abby, like the name engraved on the silver heart-shaped locket. Abby Diaz, an FBI agent.

But what made Isabella’s fingers tremble and her heart pound was that the woman looked like her.

She reached up to touch her face, running her fingers along the tiny scars left from her surgery. What had she looked like before the fire? She couldn’t remember. Worse, why did she suspect she’d been made to look like this Abby Diaz?

She didn’t want to think about that. Nor about the other papers she’d found in the envelope. She looked down at her daughter. Elena still had the locket clutched in her fist.

The sight tugged at Isabella’s heart and concerned her more than she wanted to admit. Her daughter had cried until she’d been given the locket to hold. The battered heart-shaped silver locket with a stranger’s face inside it.

Then Isabella had awakened to find Elena on the phone and the envelope’s contents on the floor beside her, the silver locket open and empty, the photo in Elena’s small hand.

“Why did you call the number inside the envelope?” Isabella had demanded after she’d hurriedly hung up.

She didn’t ask how the little girl had realized it was a phone number or how she’d known to make a call. Elena had taught herself to read at three. She was smart. Too smart, Julio used to say. Gifted. Precocious. Frightening even to Isabella sometimes. Her grandmother would have called Elena an Old Soul.

Elena had shown her the phone number and explained it was like ones Julio had called in the States. Isabella wondered who Julio had called.

“But why would you call this number?” she’d asked, growing more afraid for her daughter.

Elena had handed her the tiny photograph of the stranger from the locket. On the back was printed: “Love, Jake.” When Elena had found the name Jake Cantrell in the envelope with a telephone number, she’d called it.

“Daddy will help us,” Elena had declared stubbornly.

“Julio was your father,” she’d said, “And he cannot help us.”

Elena’s lower lip had begun to tremble. Tears welled in the child’s eyes. “Daddy Jake will help us, though.” She’d cried inconsolably until Isabella had put the picture back into the locket and given it to the child to hold again.

What disturbed her most was that Elena was convinced Jake Cantrell was her father. Why was that? Had Julio planted this seed? The same way the hospital surgeons might have been told to make Isabella look like another woman? A former FBI agent named Abby Diaz?

She felt sick now as she watched her daughter sleep. Elena expected some stranger to come and save them from Calderone’s men.

But what the child didn’t know was that if Jake Cantrell found them, it wouldn’t be to save them. In the envelope, Isabella had found evidence that former FBI agent Jake Cantrell had set up his partner Abby Diaz to die in a drug raid six years ago. What scared her was that she looked enough like this woman that he might think she was Abby Diaz.

Isabella now feared that Elena’s call for help had only given away their location and set an even more dangerous man after them.

Chapter Two

Everything from the wedding reception had been cleared away by the time Jake returned. The ranch house felt cool and dark and blessedly normal again. He regretted that he hadn’t got to tell Brady goodbye before he took off on his honeymoon, but he knew Brady would understand.

He could hear Rosa and Slim in the kitchen, Slim trying to flatter the short, round, good-natured cook, but Rosa resisting the crusty old ranch hand’s charm to the clatter of dishes and Mexican music on the radio.

He breathed it in, wishing he could get back some of the tranquillity he’d found over the last five years here at the Smoking Barrel. Usually riding his horse Majesty under the vast Texas sky brought him some peace. But not tonight.

He couldn’t get the call off his mind. Still, he felt a little better after his long ride and regretted snapping at Penny earlier when she’d followed him down to the stables. She’d only been concerned, but he’d wanted to be alone. He’d felt like a powder keg ready to blow and needed to feel the wind in his face and a good fast horse beneath him.

Hat in hand, he now tapped lightly at Penny’s door, hoping to catch her before she went down to the meeting.

She opened her door and looked surprised, the air around her sweet with the scent of perfume, her hair pulled up into a style he’d never seen on her before and a hairbrush in her hand. No, not surprised. Embarrassed to be caught primping. He wondered if the carefully applied makeup and new hairdo had something to do with the date he’d heard discussed over coffee this morning in the kitchen.

“These are for you,” he said, drawing the fistful of wildflowers he’d picked from behind his back. They seemed too small a gesture, but her eyes lit at the sight of them and her face softened as she gazed up at him.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she said, too much understanding in her voice.

The last thing he wanted was sympathy right now. He wanted even less to discuss the call.

“I’m just sorry I barked at you in the stables before,” he said, turning away quickly.

Before she could reply, he walked away. Downstairs, he took the hidden elevator to the basement, to find the three men already waiting for him. He realized Penny wouldn’t be joining them. Cody and Rafe were discussing the recent cattle-rustling and new evidence that someone had been camping on the ranch. For once, the young and cocky Rafael Alvarez wasn’t clowning around, but then Penny wasn’t here. Half Spanish, half Irish, Rafe had a way with women and he loved to tease Penny mercilessly.

Cody Gannon, a former rodeo bronc rider and the youngest of the bunch, was insisting what should be done about the rustling. Mitchell Forbes seemed only to listen at the head of the table.

Wondering why a meeting had been called, especially without Penny present, Jake took his place, his gaze on Mitchell. The older man didn’t look sixty-five, not even with his head of white hair. The ex-Texas Ranger and Vietnam vet owned the Smoking Barrel, a pretty impressive spread, even by Texas standards. On the surface, the widower seemed exactly what he was, a wealthy rancher.

Few people knew that the ranch was headquarters for Mitchell’s ragtag group of misfits known as the Texas Confidentials—an offshoot of the Federal Department of Public Safety. The confidentials were secret agents who handled cases that required a bit more sensitivity and stealth. When they weren’t on assignment, they worked the huge ranch just like the cowboys they were.

Jake knew he’d been handpicked for the job by Mitchell. He’d just never understood why. But he was grateful. Not only had Mitchell given him something to do that mattered, he’d given him a home and a family.

“I think that covers it.” Mitchell’s deep voice pulled Jake back from his thoughts. “We’ll step up security and see what happens.”

Jake realized he hadn’t been paying attention. Cody and Rafe got to their feet to leave, arguing over whose turn it was to ride lookout tonight. Jake started to rise, but Mitchell motioned for him to wait.

Once they were alone, Mitchell studied the tip of his cigar, taking his time to light it with an elaborate silver lighter, then he turned the lighter in his hand. Over and over, as if he didn’t know quite how to begin. That wasn’t like Mitchell.

Nor was he supposed to be smoking. Maddie would throw a fit if she knew. Maddie Wells, a neighboring rancher, was in love with Mitchell. His health was one of the things they squabbled about. That, and why Mitchell hadn’t gotten around to popping the question.

For Mitchell to be smoking again— Jake watched him through a haze of cigar smoke, his earlier anxiety growing with each passing moment.

“Penny told me about the call from the little girl,” Mitchell said at last.

Jake felt a wave of annoyance. Nothing that happened on the ranch escaped Mitchell’s attention. Penny saw to that. “It was just a prank call. Penny shouldn’t have worried you with it.”

Mitchell studied him, the lighter suddenly motionless. “Jake, I got a call from Frank Jordan, over at the FBI. I believe you worked for him when you were with the Bureau.”

Jake nodded warily.

“Julio Montenegro, a high-ranking distributor for Tomaso Calderone, has been killed. His wife and child are missing, along with a very large amount of Calderone’s drug money. The FBI wants us to find the woman and child before Calderone’s men do. Frank asked for you.”

Jake stared at his boss in disbelief. For the last six years he’d wanted nothing more than to nail Calderone, but it had been Mitchell who refused to give him any assignment that had anything to do with the drug lord.

“Excuse me?” he said now, getting to his feet. “You’re giving me this assignment? After all the years of telling me to forget what happened, to forget Calderone?”

Mitchell started to speak but Jake cut him off.

“Now, just because Frank asks, you’re going to let me go after the wife and child of Calderone’s top Mexican distributor? Would you like to tell me just what the hell is really going on?” he demanded, angry and not sure exactly why. Maybe because he didn’t want to dig up the past again. Not now. Not when he’d finally accepted what Mitchell had for years been trying to convince him of. Getting Calderone wouldn’t bring Abby back.

“Sit down, Jake,” Mitchell said quietly. He puffed on his cigar for a moment. Tension stretched as taut as a hangman’s noose between them.

Slowly, Jake sat back down. “Dammit, Mitchell, why now?”

“Jake, I’ve always told you that personal vendettas have no place in this business. That hasn’t changed.”

“If you think I can go into this and not be part of taking down Calderone—”

“This isn’t about Calderone,” Mitchell snapped. “This woman, Julio Montenegro’s wife…Frank has reason to believe she might be Abby Diaz.”

The words dropped into the quiet room like boulders. He was too stunned to breathe, let alone speak.

“Abby is dead,” he whispered at last. He ought to know. He’d been one of the six-member FBI team that had gone into that building on a routine investigation, not knowing Tomaso Calderone was waiting for them. They’d walked into the trap and Abby had died in the explosion and fire that followed, along with two other FBI agents.

Mitchell took a puff on his cigar and continued as if Jake hadn’t spoken. “Julio Montenegro recently contacted the FBI with a deal. He said he had proof that Abby Diaz was alive. He had rescued her from the fire that night. She was burned, but survived.”

“No.” Jake shook his head adamantly. “I saw her body after the fire.”

“You saw a body. What if the charred remains found after the explosion weren’t Abby’s? Julio claims the body was that of woman who worked for him. Three bodies were found in that fire. We just assumed the female was Abby.”

“Abby, Buster McNorton and Dell Harper,” Jake said, more to himself, than Mitchell. He could never forget.

“As we understand it, Julio kept Abby under wraps, hiding her as his wife in the small town where he lived in Mexico, until he was ready to make a deal. That deal was a trade. The FBI would help him get citizenship and into a witness-protection program in the States in exchange for FBI agent Abby Diaz.”

“Why would he keep her six years?”

“Maybe he needed time to build himself a nest egg,” Mitchell suggested. “He must have gotten greedy, though, and finally got caught.”

He shook his head. “This woman can’t possibly be Abby.”

“Jake, if there is any chance that Abby might still be alive, you owe it to yourself to find out. Frank has already ordered that the body in Abby Diaz’s grave be exhumed for identification.”

He swore, pulling off his Stetson to rake a hand through this hair. “Dammit, Mitchell, I don’t want this. I don’t want Abby dug up. I don’t want—” Cold fury filled him. “I don’t want to relive Abby’s death all over again. Nor do I want to do Frank’s bidding for him. This feels like a trap. Or something Frank dreamed up to advance his career.”

Mitchell puffed on the cigar for a moment, studying him. “They knew about the two of you.”

Jake’s gaze jerked up. He didn’t have to ask who knew.

“They’ve always known.”

Jake wanted to laugh. He and Abby had thought they were being so discreet. Hell, they were FBI agents, trained in deception. But it seemed they hadn’t fooled anyone. Especially the people they worked for.

“Because of the affair you had—”

“It was a hell of a lot more than an affair,” Jake snapped.

“—Frank wants you on this case. As her former FBI partner and lover, you are the one person who’ll know whether or not this Isabella Montenegro is Abby Diaz or an imposter.”

“Of course she’s an imposter. I can tell you that without even seeing her.”

“Jake, we have confirmation that Isabella Montenegro was burned in a fire and had to have plastic surgery. She’s the right size, about the right age—”

“Come on, Mitchell. You aren’t buying into this, are you? Someone wants me to think Abby is alive, that this is my…kid.”

He’d actually believed that no one had known about Abby’s pregnancy. But obviously someone had. And now they were trying to use it against him.

“It explains the fake phone call from the little girl. Don’t you think if Abby were alive she’d have gotten in touch with me?”

His boss worried the lighter in his hand like a stone for a moment before he spoke. “Abby might have defected.”

“Bull,” Jake growled, getting to his feet again. “You didn’t know her. You don’t know what we had together. We were getting married. Dammit, Mitchell, we were going to have a baby.” The words were out before he could call them back.

Mitchell nodded and frowned. “That’s what I was afraid of. Jake, this child with Isabella Montenegro, she’s about five years old and—”

“No, dammit. If Abby was alive, she’d have contacted me,” he said adamantly. “Especially if she’d given birth to our baby.”

“She might have reason to believe you betrayed her,” Mitchell said, the words seeming to come hard to him.

Jake looked at the man, speechless.

“Abby might believe you set her up to die in that explosion,” his boss said. “She might have been given some sort of evidence—”

“No!” Jake cried. “She’d have never taken the word of a man like Calderone.”

“What if the evidence came from the FBI?”

Jake stared at him. “What are you saying?”

“Part of the deal with Julio was proof not only that Isabella Montenegro was Abby, but that she’d been the target the night of the explosion. Julio said he knew who’d tried to kill her and why. According to Frank, that evidence points to you.”

“You don’t really believe—”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Mitchell said, cutting him off. “The point is, this woman might believe that you’re a killer. A man who set up his partner and lover six years ago to die. That could explain why, if she is Abby, she didn’t contact you.”

“That’s crazy,” Jake said. Abby was the target? It didn’t make any sense. Two other agents had died that night as well and another was injured. “Why? Why would someone want to kill Abby?”

Mitchell squinted through the cigar smoke. “Maybe only Abby knows that.”

He shook his head. “Wait a minute. If Frank really believes that I was the one who set up Abby, then why would he want me on this case?”

“Frank doesn’t believe you had anything to do with Abby Diaz’s death. Or alleged death. You’re the obvious person to send. Like I said, you, of all people, will know if this woman is Abby.”

Mitchell slid a sheet of paper across the desk.

Jake watched him, his mouth suddenly dry.

“This is the faxed photo Julio sent Frank,” Mitchell said. “It’s the Montenegro child and her mother. I think you’d better take a look, Jake.”

The black and white copy of the photograph was blurry, the resolution poor and the paper even worse. But Jake felt his heart lurch, his breath catching in his throat, the pain sharp and bright, blinding.

He stared down at the woman. Frank was right. Isabella Montenegro looked enough like Abby Diaz to make him ache. But that was the point, wasn’t it? To make him hurt. To make him doubt himself. To make him desperately want to believe Abby was alive.

But was it possible? Could this woman really be Abby? Or an imposter, designed to draw him back into something he’d spent six years trying to forget?

He shifted his gaze from the woman to the child in the photograph. His pulse pounded just at the sight of the little girl. He felt his eyes burn, his heart slamming against his ribs. Oh God, could it be possible? He couldn’t take his eyes from the child’s face. There was something about her. So small, so sweet. And so scared. He could see it in her expression.

He crumpled the sheet of paper in his fist and closed his eyes, his throat tight, the pain unbearable. He told himself she wasn’t his daughter, but she was someone’s, and damned if he’d let whoever was behind this use an innocent child to get to him.

But he knew he was lying to himself. As much as he fought it, he wanted it to be true. He wanted Abby to be alive. He wanted their lost child more than he wanted life itself. And knew he wouldn’t rest until he found out the truth. He just feared he was walking into a trap, one that even if it didn’t get him killed, would destroy him.

“I’ll understand if you don’t want this case,” Mitchell said softly.

Jake did laugh then. He opened his eyes and looked across the table at his boss, his friend, the man who’d saved him from his obsession to destroy Calderone, from his need to destroy himself. “You know damned well you couldn’t keep me off this case now.”

“Then you think there is a chance this woman is Abby?”

Jake shook his head, his words belying the battle going on inside him. “Abby is dead. The woman is an imposter. So is the kid. And I’ll prove it.”

Mitchell let out a long sigh. “I thought you might feel that way.” He regarded Jake for a long moment, his gaze sad, worried. Then he continued as if this was just another assignment. “One of Calderone’s henchmen is already on her trail. Ramon Hernandez.”

Jake knew of Ramon. A crazy, ferret-faced man with a thirst for blood. Calderone’s kind of man.

“Frank is hoping you can find her before Ramon does and keep her alive until you can turn her over to the FBI back in the States,” Mitchell said.

Jake only nodded. He wasn’t worried about finding Isabella Montenegro. After all, finding people was his specialty.

What worried him was what he’d do when he found her. He’d thought he’d buried the past, but one look at the woman in the photo brought it all back. He swore a silent oath. If this woman was part of a ploy to make him believe Abby Diaz was still alive, she would rue the day she ever laid eyes on him.

And if she was Abby?

He wouldn’t let himself think about that now. He had to get to her and the kid before Calderone’s men did.

Chapter Three

Isabella Montenegro cracked the curtains to peer out into the dirt street. This time of the morning the plaza was still empty, the sun barely peeking through the adobe buildings. A dog barked in the distance. Coyotes howled, the sound echoing from the hills surrounding the small Mexican town.

She closed the curtain and glanced back at Elena sitting, half-asleep, on the edge of the bed. Her daughter looked as worried as Isabella felt. They both knew that Calderone’s men were out there and they couldn’t keep evading them much longer.

So why keep running? Why not just give up now? They couldn’t possibly get away from Calderone, one of the most powerful, influential men in Mexico. Not a woman and a child with very little money, no defenses— Other than the knife she’d taken from Julio’s chest, she reminded herself.

She shuddered at the thought. What had she been thinking?

And now she had not only Calderone and his men after her but possibly Jake Cantrell and the FBI.

That all-too-familiar feeling of defenselessness threatened to paralyze her. She ached from it and the fear. Not for herself but Elena. She had to protect her daughter. But how?

She had no idea. Yesterday, she’d felt as if she’d been on automatic pilot. Not thinking. Just moving. She hadn’t taken Julio’s car. Too conspicuous. Instead she’d stopped the first bus she’d seen and boarded, having no idea where she was headed. Did it matter?

The bus had been going northwest, along the U.S. border. She realized that she was headed for the States and that was where she wanted to go. She wasn’t sure how she’d get the two of them across the border, but she knew that once they were across, it might be the one place she could escape Tomaso Calderone.

She and Elena wouldn’t last long in Mexico. Not with Calderone’s connections. She tried not to think past getting to the border, because she feared they’d never get that far.

Right now Ramon and the rest were probably outside waiting for her to open the door of the motel room knowing they had her trapped. No reason not to wait and take her peacefully. Quietly. Calderone would prefer that they not cause a commotion if possible. Not that anyone would help a strange woman and her child. Especially if told she had run away from her husband. From her responsibilities. Isn’t that what had happened the last time?

But what could she do?

She looked around the motel room. It was small, with a makeshift kitchenette complete with cockroaches and beat-up cookware. She opened the cupboards, searching for something, she had no idea what. Just something to buy them a little time. Enough time to escape again. To be free just a little longer.

FINDING ISABELLA MONTENEGRO and her daughter had been child’s play for Jake. Penny had traced the call from the kid to a rundown Mexican motel southeast of Del Rio, Texas. He figured she’d head for the States and try to cross the border at Piedras Negras, since that was the direction she was headed and it was closer than Ciudad Acuna across from Del Rio.

But he also knew that Calderone’s men would figure the same thing. That’s why he decided following Ramon Hernandez and his pack of javelinas would be the easiest, fastest way to get to Montenegro and the kid.

That was how he’d found himself in a tiny Mexican town about seventy miles from the border, watching Ramon’s men wait for the sun to come up and Isabella and Elena Montenegro to come out of a dilapidated motel.

The narrow, one-story strip of five motel rooms faced the square and the church. Jake spotted two of Ramon’s men hiding behind the rock wall of the church, another behind the motel. The men didn’t look too concerned. It seemed pretty obvious that Isabella and her daughter would be coming out at some point and the men would be waiting.

A desert-dust-colored van was parked behind the church, the driver dozing. Ramon was down the street at the cantina having breakfast.

Jake had taken a room in the aging hotel. His window looked out over the square. He had a view of the church, the motel and the cantina. At this distance, he’d be able to take out Ramon’s men easily—and Ramon as well, if it came to that. Then, by way of the balcony and fire escape directly outside his hotel-room window, he could grab the woman and kid.

He preferred not to kill Ramon and his men if possible but no matter what he did, he knew Calderone would hear about it and set an army of men after him. He just hoped to get out of Mexico before they caught up to him. But he wasn’t going without the woman and kid.

Like Ramon’s men, he waited without much concern. He’d checked out the small town and had convinced himself he hadn’t walked into a trap. If it’d been a trap, Ramon’s men would be wired with a bad case of the jitters, looking around anxiously, worried about the former FBI agent.

Instead, they seemed half-asleep and bored. They probably were. How hard could it be to catch a woman and a little kid?

He looked over the desert-hued adobe buildings, the sun grazing the tile rooftops, wondering if his instincts were trustworthy when it came to Calderone. He didn’t want to end up like Daniel Austin, the Texas Confidential agent who was missing and presumed dead. Daniel probably hadn’t thought he was walking into a trap, either. Nor had Abby.

Jake was thinking how Abby Diaz would have been too smart though to get caught in a motel like the one below his window. Nor would she have slept in this late with killers after her. The sun crested, bathing the dusty little town in gold.

He was thinking how Isabella Montenegro might have been made to look like Abby, but she couldn’t be made to think like her, when suddenly, the pace picked up.

No more sleepy little Mexican town. No dozing, waiting for something to happen. In a matter of seconds, the motel-room doors began to fly open followed by loud curses as patrons stumbled out into the square.

Jake stared down at the commotion. Smoke rolled out of the doors of the rooms as if the entire motel was on fire.

He let out a curse, staring in disbelief as he came fully awake himself. Four of the five motel-room doors stood open, smoke pouring out. Couples stood in skimpy clothing or nothing at all, coughing and cursing, several of the men trying to hide their faces.

The motel was a brothel!

The noisy excitement brought onlookers from the cantina and the church and the motel office. Ramon Hernandez was one of the people who rushed out into the square. And the man he’d had watching the back of the motel ran around to see what was happening, as well.

Instantly, Jake saw that he had two big problems. Ramon’s men had blended in with the small crowd gathering outside the motel. Shooting into this bunch was out of the question. So was getting to Isabella Montenegro and the kid without having to confront Ramon and his men. The odds had suddenly changed.

The second problem was that Isabella and Elena Montenegro weren’t among the guests who’d tumbled out of the rooms. In fact, only the one motel-room door was still closed and he could see smoke curling from around its edges.

Where there is smoke there’s—

He swore again and dove for the balcony and fire escape. Either Isabella and the kid were still in the motel room, dying of smoke inhalation or—

He rounded the back corner of the motel in time to see a woman and a small child scurrying down the alley, their heads draped with wet bath towels like veils, smoke trailing after them.

As he passed the small open bathroom window that the pair had just come out of, he realized he hadn’t given the woman enough credit. He shook his head as he took off after her. Who was this woman?

ISABELLA HAD FOUND the flammable kitchen cleaner under the sink. Her gaze had leapt to the bathroom window, then to the metal grate in the ceiling. Standing on the night table with a kitchen knife, she’d been able to pry the grate open. Sure enough, it was an air vent and she suspected it ran the length of the motel. At least she hoped so.

She climbed down and, taking the assortment of threadbare towels from the bathroom, she soaked all but the two largest and thickest with the cheap cleaning fluid. From beside the two-burner gas stove, she’d taken the box of matches and a candle she’d found next to the stove.

“I’m going to need your help,” she’d said to her daughter.

Elena had nodded solemnly and looked up at the open metal grate as if she already knew what her mother needed her to do.

JAKE FOUND the discarded wet towels still reeking of smoke a few blocks from the motel.

But just when he was starting to think Isabella might not be as dumb as he’d first thought, she disappointed him. She made a serious mistake. She tried to flag down a bus.

Didn’t she realize Ramon’s men would stop and search the bus as soon as they realized she wasn’t in the motel room? Apparently not. Either that, or the bus was the best plan she could come up with on short notice.

He wondered how she’d gotten this far as he watched her from a distance, debating what to do. He didn’t have to debate long.

The roar of an engine preceded the dust-colored van he’d seen parked behind the church earlier. One of Ramon’s men was driving, another riding shotgun. Jake guessed the others were in the back. He wondered where Ramon was.

He looked back at the bus and the two figures running to catch up with the slowing vehicle. Dust churned up under the wheels, the tiny sun-soaked particles sparkling against the desolate background.

Jake swore as the van careened around the corner, headed straight for him and the bus. Isabella Montenegro and the kid had just run out of luck.

He lifted the rifle from under the serape he wore and, taking careful aim, squeezed off a shot. Boom. The right front tire blew. The van began to rock and reel out of control. One of the men hurled himself out the passenger side of the van just before it hit a low rock wall with a resounding crash. Steam billowed up from the badly crumpled front end and the engine died with a final groan.

Jake turned. The bus had stopped, the door open. But Isabella and the child were no longer next to it. Had she foolishly gotten in, thinking there was safety in numbers? Surely not.

Off to his right, he caught a glimpse of movement and saw a woman running with a child in her arms. He had to give the woman her due. She could move flat-out when she had to.

He ducked into an alley. He’d cut her off and get her to hell out of this town before she got herself and the kid killed. Or worse, got him killed as well.

ISABELLA ROUNDED a corner at a run, the sound of the gunshots and the crash still ringing in her ears, and skidded to a stop at the sight of the man blocking the alley.

He stood in the middle of the narrow alleyway, boots apart, arms at his side, just yards from her. He wore a serape. She could make out enough of the short-barreled rifle’s shape under the thick woven cloth to know he was armed. She knew he was dangerous because she recognized him.

He wore a hat pulled down low. It shaded his face, as did the sunless alley. But she didn’t need to see his face clearly to know who he was.

Right now, he looked like one of those gunfighter heroes from an old spaghetti western. But she didn’t fool herself that this man was any kind of hero.

From the instant she saw him, it happened within seconds. She stopped running and shot a look over her shoulder. She could hear curses and running footfalls and knew Calderone’s men were close behind her.

She hugged Elena to her and swung her gaze back to the man blocking the alley. FBI agent Jake Cantrell.

He hadn’t moved, but he looked like he could in an instant. And would. She heard Calderone’s men, close now. Any moment they’d come around the corner of the building but suddenly they seemed less dangerous than the man facing her.

She started to turn and run back toward Calderone’s men, but didn’t get two strides before strong fingers closed over her arm and jerked her and Elena into a recessed doorway.

“Don’t make a sound,” Jake Cantrell warned as he flattened them against the wall with his body.

She could feel the solid steel of the rifle barrel pressed against one breast, the business end tucked up under her chin, cold and deadly. “Silencio,” she whispered to Elena.

She couldn’t see Jake’s face because of the way he had her pinned to the wall with his body and his weapon. But she could feel the coarse fabric of the serape against her cheek and the stark incongruity of the cold rifle barrel and the warmth where his body pressed against hers. She could also smell him. Dust. Sweat. Cedar. Soap. And an undentifiable dangerous male scent that filled her senses like an admonition.

The running footfalls stopped at the mouth of the alley. She could hear just enough of the hurried discussion among Calderone’s men to know that they were desperate to find her and Elena. Ramon was furious, and if they came back without the woman and child—

Jake lifted her chin a little with the end of the rifle barrel.

Her fear made enough room for a pulse of anger. Why did he feel he had to threaten her further? Wasn’t holding her at gunpoint sufficient? Holding her against a rough rock wall with his body and his weapon?

But she concealed the anger quickly, just as she’d learned to do with Julio.

Calderone’s men moved on, running again, the sound of their retreat finally drowned out by the pounding of her heart and the terror and repressed rage thrumming through her bloodstream.

Jake Cantrell had them now. From the frying pan into the fire. Calderone’s men had frightened her, but nothing like this cold, calculating man. A man who’d betrayed his partner. His country. A man who had no mercy. No honor.

The anger tried to surface again, but she held it at bay. How wonderful it would have been to let it out. Like releasing a wild beast that had been caged too long. To finally not feel defenseless.

He leaned back a little as if to listen, his body easing off hers and Elena’s, but the rifle barrel still against her throat, his body still hard and unyielding.

She let her gaze rise to his face, getting her first good look at him.

She let out a gasp, feeling as if she’d been struck. It was the same visage as the one in the locket. But it wasn’t his face that turned her blood to ice water, leaving her shocked and scared to her very bones.

It was his eyes.

He shifted his gaze to hers. Her heart thundered in her ears and her mouth went dry as she looked into the deep green depths of Jake Cantrell’s eyes. The most unusual green she’d ever seen. But not unfamiliar. Dear God, no.

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