Page 22 of Killer Secrets (Tempting SEALs 5)

Ian snorted at that thought. Oh yeah, she was a woman. She was all woman. And Ian couldn't push back the thought that it was his responsibility to protect her, to shelter her. He didn't want her involved in this mess, and yet she seemed determined to immerse herself in it.

So determined that no more than a few months after her own brush with death during that Atlanta assignment, she had been in Nathan's hospital bathroom, lying in wait, eavesdropping on their conversation.

A mocking grin shaped his lips. She had known his visit to Nathan had been arranged. She had said as much. She had guessed all along that this was an operation. But how much of that operation had she guessed?

And now, here she was, poking her nose into the most dangerous assignment he had ever undertaken, for whatever reason.

He needed to know that reason, he realized. He needed to know why she was here and what she wanted. And he needed one more taste of her. Just to see if she was as hot, as sweet, as mind-numbing as he remembered.

He needed his head examined was what he needed.

Ian grimaced as he threw himself into the cushioned chair in the sitting area of his room and stared broodingly at the window that looked out over her villa.

Propping his hand on the arm of the chair, he rubbed at his lips with his finger and glared at the window. That damned woman was nothing but trouble. She was going to make him crazy.

Going to? Hell, she already had made him crazy. He should be in his study going over the supply routes the cartel soldiers used to transport the drugs from the warehouses to the transport ships and cargo planes flying them out.

He had a million different details to see to. If Diego Fuentes had been decent enough to apply his genius to a legitimate business then he could have enjoyed a far healthier lifestyle. And perhaps Ian could have respected the man whose blood he shared.

And though he hated admitting it, Ian knew they were possibly too much alike. They were just on wrong sides of a war and the fine line between decency and immorality.

He had to deal with Fuentes and Sorrell, Ian told himself, he couldn't afford to worry about Kira in the mix. Pushing himself out of the chair, he stalked to the door of his bedroom suite and jerked it open, intent on doing the job he had set for himself that night.

The supply lines had to be changed and the product insured. Until he caught Sorrell, he had to show the bastard that the Fuentes cartel had the best supply lines, the best underground network, and most efficient men in the business. That was the reason Sorrell had pinpointed Fuentes to begin with. Because the cartel moved its drugs with the least amount of difficulty or interference.

Ian had caught on quickly after entering the business to how Diego and his father before him had set up the cartel's vast network. They didn't just have drugs going into every nation of the world, but they transported weapons, information, and a vast array of other illegal products. Pirated software and music, clothing and accessories. Even, at odd times, criminal figures looking for escape.

The cartel had it all, except terrorism. Diego Fuentes had never allowed himself to be infected with the fanatical beliefs that drove such men. He'd supply them with arms; after all, according to Diego, that was business. But he would not allow the network he had worked a lifetime to build to be threatened by the infiltration of terrorism.

At least he had a line in the sand, Ian thought mockingly. He could infect babies with drugs, murder his own people, make whores out of runaways, and kidnap helpless young women, but he wasn't a terrorist.

Breathing out roughly at the thought, he flicked his fingers at his bodyguards—Deke, Mendez, Cristo, and Trevor—and headed to the study.

The four men had been working on suggestions for the new supply routes as well as security for the warehouses and transportation.

He stood in the middle of the study as the others entered. Cristo, shorter than the others but no less dangerous, closed the heavy door as Trevor Mandrake moved to the safe in the wall, coded in the combination, and pulled free a hand-sized electronic box and flipped it on.

Trevor moved around the room, watching the digital and analog displays before giving Ian a short nod that everything was okay.

The first three months he had been with Diego, he'd had to sweep his study as well as his bedroom each time he entered it. The son of a bitch had been determined to spy on him. They would fight over it, agree that Diego wouldn't spy on him, then Ian would find more bugs. Diego had finally begun realizing the futility of it in the last few months.

"We haven't found a bug in a while," Deke said. "The old man giving up?"

Ian shot him a chiding look. Diego Fuentes didn't give up, he just waited until a person was suitably comfortable.

"The villa next door was leased today," Trevor announced, moving to the desk as Ian sat down in the sinfully soft leather and stared across the gleaming cherry top. "Kira Porter and her uncle Jason McClane moved in this evening. I did some preliminary background checks. They're coming up clean."

Trevor powered up his laptop, coded in the security passes, and brought up the file he had pulled together on Kira Porter. It was amazingly in-depth.

Ian leaned back in his chair and stared at the file Trevor was currently scrolling through. There was nothing about her work as an unofficial agent for the DHS, and nothing in there concerning her code name, Chameleon.

"This woman is no one to fuck with," Trevor said, his voice unaccountably serious. "She has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, training in heavy weapons and hand-to-hand combat. Her cousin managed to buy her a six-month training session with a team of off-duty SEALs ten years ago. She goes back for four weeks once a year to renew that training. Her bodyguard, Daniel Calloway, is one of the original SEAL team members that trained her. They train almost daily from what I understand. And the few times anyone attempted to kidnap McClane's darling niece, they turned up dead within weeks. He doesn't take prisoners, he makes examples."

"Makes sense to train her," Deke mused. "McClane is protective of her. She's the only family he has left."

"Enough about Ms. Porter." Ian leaned forward and hit the command key, closing the file Trevor had been scrolling through. "She's an interesting event in our otherwise dull lives, I realize, but we have our own business to conduct." He flicked his fingers from the laptop to Trevor, an indication to use the equipment for the reasons they were there rather than going over information that, as far as they were concerned, had nothing to do with the business at hand.

"Okay, delivery routes and points of transport." Trevor pulled up the satellite map on the laptop. "Here's the current routes." He highlighted the mountain passes and broken roads that led to several makeshift airfields and shipping ports. "We've had reports that Sorrell has men watching two of those routes, here and here." Trevor pointed out the routes into the U.S. "This could be the line he's wanting to use to transport the explosives and men for the strike rumored to be in progress against America."

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