Page 52 of Wicked Ambition

She interrupted him again. “You used to work for a drug lord who lives around here somewhere, right?”

Scowling, Oz said, “Señor Vargas. His hacienda isn’t that far from town.”

“A drug lord would have access to the kind of narcotics that would leave Io unconscious.”

Fuck, he needed to cut this off at the pass. “Pollita, anyone in any country in the world can get their hands on drugs. I knowyou want to find your sister, but it’s unlikely Vargas is your primary suspect.”

“I told you that the connection to my sister is enhanced by proximity. If we’re close to Vargas’s?—”

“No.” Her expression turned mulish, so he added an explanation. “We’re not that far from Trujillo. You could just as easily be picking up something from the city.Ifyou’re actually getting anything at all and didn’t just have a bad dream.”

“All right,” Ayla said easily. Too easily as far as Oz was concerned. “You said this is the only inn in San Isidro?”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “Just so you know, I’m going to tell the innkeeper you’re my wife. He won’t let us share a room otherwise, and I don’t want you down the hall. Don’t look shocked or start arguing with me. Keeping you close is the only way I can ensure your safety.”

“Okay.”

Her quick agreement should reassure him, but it made Oz tense. They were going to need to discuss safety precautions further. He could feel it. He turned off the car. “Come on, Pollita. Let’s get a room.” Without waiting for agreement, he got out, rounded the hood, and helped Ayla out.

“Our bags?” she asked as he guided her up the steps.

“I’ll get them after I have you settled.” Oz opened the door to the inn. Instead of a lobby with a check-in desk, they walked into a large room that was a combination of restaurant and tavern. At this time of the morning, it was empty.

They were nearly to the bar when Señora Alvarez appeared. She smiled when she recognized him. Her gaze shifted to Ayla and her smile became quizzical. “Señorita Desmond, you’re back so quickly. Why did you change your hair color?”

Ayla turned and grabbed his forearm. “I told you Io came here. I told you!”

Chapter 21

Oz strolled down a sidewalk on the edge of town and counted his blessings. After checking into their room and buying lunch at the inn, Ayla had gotten sleepy enough to agree to take a nap while he searched for her sister. She even promised to remain inside. That had taken a little more convincing, but he swung that with the suggestion that she could question Señora Alvarez more thoroughly about Iona’s stay.

There probably wasn’t much more to be learned, but Oz sure as fuck wasn’t going to point that out. Not when it kept his Pollita out of trouble and out of sight.

A woman up ahead saw him coming, gathered her children, and went indoors. He wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to that, no matter how many times he went undercover as a mercenary. At least he wasn’t working for Vargas anymore. Not that it made a difference.

The street had a mix of one and two-story houses. Some were adobe, others cinderblock. Some had thatched roofs, others were made of shingles or tin. Most of the tin roofs were heavily rusted and in need of replacement, but San Isidro wasn’t a wealthy town. From what he heard, things had been betterbefore the civil war. It was almost hard to believe, except that the yards, bushes, and trees remained meticulously maintained.

The residents cared about their town.

A man gave him a side-eyed look as he swept the sidewalk in front of his house. If Ayla was with him, they’d be arguing by now. She wouldn’t like how he was handling the search. She would expect him to talk to person after person, asking questions about her twin. That was a great way to endanger both women. Oz didn’t want to imagine trying to explain this to her.

His plan accomplished the same thing with a hell of a lot less risk to Ayla and Iona.

He found Señor Alvarez, Señor Garcia, and Señor Otero in a secluded clearing. It was a park-like oasis he imagined few people took advantage of. That didn’t stop the three old men from maintaining it. There was a wheelbarrow filled with trimmings and lying atop was a hedge clipper, a rake, and a shovel.

They’d finished their work for the day and were sitting on two benches shaded by trees. Nearby were flowering bushes, and in the distance, Oz heard birdsong. The men looked tired but satisfied and all three of them sipped at flasks of water.

They stopped talking when they saw him and waited. If they didn’t know he was Special Forces, Oz might have been uneasy about approaching them uninvited. These three gentlemen were adamant about keeping the criminal elements out of San Isidro. So far, they were successful, but two were in their seventies and the other was in his eighties. How much longer could they manage?

“Señor Alvarez, Señor Otero, Señor Garcia,” Oz said, greeting each one in turn with a small incline of his head. There was nothing that happened in San Isidro and the surrounding area that these men didn’t know about. They were the safest conduit for any information about Iona Desmond.

“I did not expect to see you here again, not so quickly,” Señor Alvarez said in Spanish. “From all accounts, Vargas was furious at your incompetence.”

His so-called incompetence had gotten Lurch and his woman out of the drug lord’s compound without getting killed. It had cost him his job, and his team their eyes and ears on Vargas, but the captain considered that a small price to pay for the safety of two people, one a civilian and the other the linchpin in the team’s mission to stop arms dealer Jorge Torres.

Oz shrugged. “I didn’t expect to be back this quickly either, but circumstances changed.”

“What circumstances?” Señor Otero asked, suspicion clear in his voice.

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