Page 32 of Hot Intent

One day at a time, Katie. One day at a time.

6

Alex hurried away from their hiding spot, worried that Katie would do something stupid like try to tail him. She’d done crazier things, before.

Where had all those soldiers last night come from, and why the hell hadn’t the contact met them at either of the rendezvous points?

There was only one logical answer. Their arrival had been a set-up. The Cuban Army had been there with the intent to ambush the two of them.

Something wasverywrong with this mission. He felt it in his bones.

Of course, it was possible their guide had been injured or killed in the storm. Or he could be busy helping out his own family and decided to skip fetching two Americans illegally in his country. Or maybe travel conditions after the storm were so bad he couldn’t get to either of their meeting locations.

But none of those reasons rang true with Alex’s instincts. His gut shouted that someone had tipped off the Cubans. Told them where to find him and Katie.

He had a hard time believing his father would betray his son—the son he was still trying to recruit to work for him in the FSB—but then, maybe it wasn’t so hard to believe if he stopped to think about it.

His father’s brand of love had long included putting his children in mortal danger if that was what it took to get his way with them. Roman would most certainly employ a scorched earth strategy if he thought Alex was being stubborn and needed a reminder of his father’s power and reach.

He made a wide circle around their camp, climbing over and around the unbelievable destruction wrought by the hurricane. What would have been lush forest a scant day ago was now a twisted mass of trees snapped off like matchsticks.

Every noise out here was a potential threat to her, every snapping twig a potential disaster that could cost him the woman he loved. His nerves were frayed and they hadn’t even been here a full day, yet.

It might still be morning, but Cuba’s August sun already beat down on him fiercely. Thankfully, he was blessed with skin that tanned readily. In a few days, he would be dark enough that, with his dark hair, he would blend in easily with the locals.

Although Katie’s hair was also dark, her fair skin was going to burn to approximately the color of boiled lobster, loudly announcing her non-Cuban heritage to anyone who cared to look at her. He had to get her tucked away somewhere remote and safe. Soon.

Baracoa sat at the eastern tip of Cuba, in the most isolated part of the island. In fact, many people called Baracoa the Siberia of Cuba. For decades, political dissidents had been sent there because it was so completely cut off from the rest of the island.

After Giselle, the only major road into or out of this region was undoubtedly closed, cutting off the area from help.

Which, of course, brought up the question of why the CIA had felt such a burning need to insert him and Katie at exactlythis place on the island. What in the hell were the two of them supposed to see out here?

He made his way up the hill toward a now relatively clear mountaintop. If his maps weren’t wrong, a decent-sized village laid in the valley just beyond this ridge.

He topped the ridge and stopped cold as the destroyed remains of a village sprawled, flattened, in the valley below. Here and there a stone structure appeared intact. Concrete block buildings were more or less standing.

But the rest of the village and most of the surrounding forest were trashed. A bomb might as well have blown up. Hell, a bomb might have caused less damage than this.

The main street through the village was flooded. The locals had no doubt built their homes near a stream that ran along the valley floor. They would’ve backed their homes up the hill a bit from the water to avoid routine floods from heavy rain. But the two feet of rain Giselle had dumped in less than twenty-four hours was in another class altogether.

A woman plodded slowly through thigh-deep water, her skirt hiked up around her hips. Even from here, he could see shock and despair in the set of her shoulders.

He knew exactly what it was like to be living normal life one day and wake up the next to find everything you knew and loved totally destroyed. Except for him it hadn’t been an act of nature; it had been his father’s arrest for espionage against the United States and Roman’s subsequent expulsion from America that imploded his son’s world.

Alex’s two older brothers had already left home, Sergei, the oldest, had joined the U.S. Army, and Mikhail, the middle brother, was in college. They were less affected by his father’s arrest and went on with their lives, living off their trust funds and keeping their heads down.

But he, the child prodigy, the son his father pinned all his hopes and pressures on, had been cast adrift. The headmaster of the private boarding school he attended had taken pity and arranged an interview for him with the Dean of Admissions at Harvard. Alex had already blown through his school’s entire high school curriculum anyway, and he was glad to leave behind the sneers and slurs his classmates flung at him. Harvard was a good fit for him. He finally got challenged academically, and everyone else was so much older and so busy staying afloat they had no time to harass him.

Alex found a comfortable hide and settled in to watch the village. He peered through his binoculars for a long time and saw nothing that aroused suspicion. Most of the villagers appeared to have left the area, and only a few moved along the high ground. More to the point, no army patrols passed through the area. All seemed quiet.

Nonetheless, his instincts yelled at him to get the hell out of Cuba. Of course, his whole past year of training had been a giant exercise in going against his instincts to get a job done.

And that job was to discover what Roman Koronov had to do with this place and why the CIA had sent one of its more lethal operatives out here. He and Katie would scout out the area as quickly as possible, figure out what was up, and then the two of them were getting the hell out of Dodge.

His orders were for him and Katie to set up shop as aid workers and establish a solid cover before they started poking around. He was inclined to let Katie do the mundane aid work while he skipped straight to the poking around part. Anything to get them out of here faster.

He made his way carefully back to his and Katie’s hiding spot. They ate the last of the papayas he’d salvaged from the downed tree and packed up the last of their gear. They shouldered their packs and headed for the ruined village.

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