Page 48 of Hot Soldier's Rescue

He pulled into a motel that was part of a major chain and got them three rooms connected by interior doors. At his suggestion, Grandma and the kids took the middle room, and he and Elise took the rooms on either side. He said it was for safety, but she suspected it had more to do with avoiding her and her inconvenient questions.

The children jumped on the beds and took baths and gleefully settled in to watch a children’s movie on pay-per-view. Elise left Grandma dozing in the other double bed and tiptoed back to her room after the children nodded off, their faces untroubled and angelic in sleep.

Elise tossed and turned in her own bed for perhaps an hour when a quiet knock on her door brought her flying out of bed in alarm. She moved over to the door and spied Drago’s distorted form through the peephole.

She opened the door a crack and whispered, “What do you want?”

“I want to talk.”

Huh? She threw the door open and stepped back, confused. Her room had one large bed in it, and she sat down gingerly on its edge. Drago seated himself beside her, their knees disturbingly close. Sheesh. Since when had knees become an irresistibly erogenous zone?

He asked without preamble, “Do you believe in God?”

She stared at him. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Do you ever think about hell?”

What on earth prompted that line of reasoning? Had her continuous criticisms of his profession finally gotten through to him? Maybe she didn’t make such a bad nun after all. And maybe that was why she felt compelled to answer him with brutal honesty. “I don’t think about hell now as much as I used to. There was a time when I thought about it a lot.”

She stopped, but the almost desperate look he sent her spurred her to take a deep breath and plunge on. “I was in a pretty bad place emotionally right after my parents died. I considered coming down here to kill Garza, and I briefly considered killing myself. Either way, I figured I was going to end up in hell. Why do you ask?”

“Seeing Mia and Emanuel and what they’ve been through, I guess it messed with my head a little.”

Surprise coursed through her. He’d given no indication earlier that the children made him uncomfortable. Quite the opposite, in fact. Given how macho a guy he usually was, the admission that two little kids had gotten under his skin had to have cost him a lot.

“Messed with your head how?” she asked cautiously.

“In my line of work, I do the job and move on. I don’t stick around to see the consequences of what I do. I’ve never really thought much about making orphans and widows.” He shrugged. “I always put it down to collateral damage of what had to be done.”

She nodded slowly. “I know the feeling.”

His gaze jerked up to hers.

“After Valdiron Garza murdered my parents, I moved heaven and earth to see him brought to justice. I worked for years to expose his dirty activities and force the Colombian government to do something about him. I never dreamed they’d shoot him down in cold blood, though. In my own way, I’m as responsible for making orphans out of Mia and Emanuel as you are.”

He nodded slowly. “Is that why you’re here to rescue them?”

“I didn’t know it when I agreed to come down here to get them, but yes, it’s why I’m here.”

Silence fell between them.

Eventually, she asked quietly, “Why do you do what you do? Is it for the money?”

He snorted. “Hell, no. Nobody gets rich doing what I do unless they go—”

They go what? As far as she knew, arms dealers were usually rolling in cash. Given that he struck her as being very good at what he did, she had to assume, then, that if he wasn’t rich, it wasn’t because he sucked at being an arms dealer. It had to be something else. Was he, in fact, a soldier of some kind? A spy, maybe?

Right. Like he’d ever tell her something like that. Rather than confronting him with it again and getting yet another denial from him, she chose a different tack. “What would you die for, Drago?”

He looked up at her sharply. “Excuse me?”

“What’s worth dying for to you?”

He opened his mouth as if an answer came readily to him, but no words came out. Finally, he said lamely, “Family and friends, I suppose.”

That wasn’t what he’d been about to say. She’d lay odds that something like God and country was what leaped to his tongue first. “Look. I know you don’t want to tell me who you really are. Maybe you can’t tell me. I get that. But I have a pretty good idea who you might be. Which makes me wonder why you’re out here all by yourself messing around with people like the Army of Freedom. Shouldn’t you have some sort of backup? Someone waiting nearby to pull you out if things go to hell?”

His answer was slow in coming. Reluctant. “I’m on my own. No backup.”

---