Page 57 of Wicked Ambition

There didn’t appear to be one available near the dining room.

The crackers came up to her throat, and Ayla swallowed hard. She needed a bathroom, and she needed one now. If there was nothing down here, that meant the communal bath upstairs. She scrambled to her feet.

“You look familiar,” the Russian said to her, still in Spanish.

It was too much. Ayla threw up all over the floor.

So much for remaining inconspicuous.

Chapter 23

Oz kept his expression even by sheer dint of will. He wanted to scowl as he stalked back to the inn. He wasn’t sure what he disliked most—that the old men didn’t know what was going on, or that the situation was more volatile than usual. Given the normal level of chaos in Puerto Jardin,thatwas saying something.

It had to involve the fucking treasure.

He was jumping to conclusions, but Oz felt it in his gut. Look at what happened a couple of weeks ago with Lurch and his woman. Three-quarters of the team needed to launch a full-scale rescue to get her out of the hands of a group of men who’d been kicked out of the rebel forces because of the war crimes they’d been committing.

Okay, so Lurch’s cover as a gunrunner had been the primary reason Nyx had been held hostage. They’d been after the high-tech rifle the team was using as bait to get to Jorge Torres. But while they had her in their camp, their leader decided she might as well help them find the treasure.

That was after Vargas, the friendly neighborhood drug lord, also used her to research the Treasure of Trujillo. What hadLurch said? Something about how the treasure and the arms dealing were becoming more and more entwined.

No fucking joke.

Torres had his men surrounding the convent, probably because a brooch from the treasure had been located there, although the team didn’t know for sure if this was the reason. Even Cardozo, the damn president of the country, was interested in the cache.

A pair of children playing on the sidewalk took one look at him and ran inside their house. He hated that his cover as a mercenary was enough to scare kids.

If he was right about the treasure causing the uneasiness the old men had told him about, Ayla’s sister could have picked something up as well. She left on Tuesday after visiting the ruins and they reported her demeanor had been relaxed, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t discovered a clue.

Maybe a clue that needed to be investigated in Trujillo.

The captain’s woman believed the ruins were involved with the treasure. Lurch’s woman went to the ruins. Ayla’s sister went to the ruins. Coincidence or pattern?

Oz continued to mull over that question as he turned the corner to the inn. His step faltered momentarily. There was a pricy SUV parked next to the vehicle he and Ayla had arrived in, and it was a sure bet it didn’t belong to anyone in town. Unless Vargas had gone shopping since Oz was fired, it didn’t belong to the drug lord either. He didn’t know who the fuck rolled into town, and he didn’t like it.

It took more self-control than he expected not to hurry, to continue at the same pace at which he’d been walking, but it was necessary. If someone was watching the outside of the inn, the last thing Oz wanted to do was show his uneasiness.

And he was past uneasy.

Ayla was in there, and the odds she was still napping were slim and none. About the same odds as her remaining inside their room, waiting for him to return before venturing out to talk to Señora Alvarez.

By the time he reached the inn, Oz was tense. There was nothing he could do about that. His woman was in there. He pushed open the door and scanned.

Petrova. Along with two of his assholes.

Oz took in the rest of the scene in a flash. As far as diversions went, it wasn’t one he would have picked, but it was effective. No one even glanced at Ayla. Petrova glared at Señora Alvarez, disgusted by the vomit on the floor. One of the henchmen appeared ready to puke himself, and the other looked as if he wanted to escape. His Pollita was white as a sheet of paper, and he thought she was on the verge of tears.

“I’ll clean it up, Señora Alvarez,” Ayla offered. He heard the embarrassment in her voice.

“You will not,” the older woman said.

“I’m the one who?—”

“Let the help take care of it,” Petrova interrupted, disdain dripping from each word. He made a dismissive motion with one hand, and Oz recognized his watch. The day he’d brought Ayla to Palacio Monasterio, there’d been a man in the lobby, reading a newspaper wearing the same brand. It was European and it cost the fucking moon.

There was no chance in hell that was a coincidence.

Two flags of red blossomed on Ayla’s cheeks and Oz moved. She was about to go off, and that was the last thing he needed. “Sweetheart,” he said, as he reached her side, carefully avoiding the mess on the floor. “You should go up to our room and relax. As pale as you are, your stomach must still be unsettled.”

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