Reckless. Linda Howard

the tantalizing possibility that she could know the location of the microfilm, seemed to have blunted the intensity of the search for Luis. Her captivity could give him the edge he needed by attracting attention away from him.

      Finally, desperate with worry and enraged by the lack of response he’d been getting from the government, James Hamilton had decided to take matters into his own hands. He’d spent a small fortune ferreting out his daughter’s location, and then had been stymied by the inaccessibility of the well-guarded plantation. If he sent in enough men to take over the plantation, he realized, there was a strong possibility that his daughter would be killed in the fight. Then someone had mentioned Grant Sullivan’s name.

      A man as wealthy as James Hamilton could find someone who didn’t want to be found, even a wary, burnt-out ex-government agent who had buried himself in the Tennessee mountains. Within twenty-four hours, Grant had been sitting across from Hamilton, in the library of a huge estate house that shouted of old money. Hamilton had made an offer that would pay off the mortgage on Grant’s farm completely. All the man wanted was to have his daughter back, safe and sound. His face had been lined and taut with worry, and there had been a desperation about him that, even more than the money, made Grant reluctantly accept the job.

      The difficulty of rescuing her had seemed enormous, perhaps even insurmountable; if he were able to penetrate the security of the plantation—something he didn’t really doubt—getting her out would be something else entirely. Not only that, but Grant had his own personal experiences to remind him that, even if he found her, the odds were greatly against her being alive or recognizably human. He hadn’t let himself think about what could have happened to her since the day she’d been kidnapped.

      But getting to her had been made ridiculously easy; as soon as he left Hamilton’s house, a new wrinkle had developed. Not a mile down the highway from Hamilton’s estate, he’d glanced in the rearview mirror and found a plain blue sedan on his tail. He’d lifted one eyebrow sardonically and pulled over to the shoulder of the road.

      He lit a cigarette and inhaled leisurely as he waited for the two men to approach his car. “Hiya, Curtis.”

      Ted Curtis leaned down and peered in the open window, grinning. “Guess who wants to see you?”

      “Hell,” Grant swore irritably. “All right, lead the way. I don’t have to drive all the way to Virginia, do I?”

      “Naw, just to the next town. He’s waiting in a motel.”

      The fact that Sabin had felt it necessary to leave headquarters at all told Grant a lot. He knew Kell Sabin from the old days; the man didn’t have a nerve in his body, and ice water ran in his veins. He wasn’t a comfortable man to be around, but Grant knew that the same had been said about himself. They were both men to whom no rules applied, men who had intimate knowledge of hell, who had lived and hunted in that gray jungle where no laws existed. The difference between them was that Sabin was comfortable in that cold grayness; it was his life—but Grant wanted no more of it. Things had gone too far; he had felt himself becoming less than human. He had begun to lose his sense of who he was and why he was there. Nothing seemed to matter any longer. The only time he’d felt alive was during the chase, when adrenaline pumped through his veins and fired all his senses into acute awareness. The bullet that had almost killed him had instead saved him, because it had stopped him long enough to let him begin thinking again. That was when he’d decided to get out.

      Twenty-five minutes later, with his hand curled around a mug of strong, hot coffee, his booted feet propped comfortably on the genuine, wood-grained plastic coffee table that was standard issue for motels, Grant had murmured, “Well, I’m here. Talk.”

      Kell Sabin was an even six feet tall, an inch shorter than Grant, and the hard musculature of his frame revealed that he made it a point to stay in shape, even though he was no longer in the field. He was dark—black-haired, black-eyed, with an olive complexion—and the cold fire of his energy generated a force field around him. He was impossible to read, and was as canny as a stalking panther, but Grant trusted him. He couldn’t say that he liked Sabin; Sabin wasn’t a man to be friendly. Yet for twenty years their lives had been intertwined until they were virtually a part of each other. In his mind, Grant saw a red-orange flash of gunfire, and abruptly he felt the thick, moist heat of the jungle, smelled the rotting vegetation, saw the flash of weapons being discharged...and felt, at his back, so close that each had braced his shoulders against the other, the same man who sat across from him now. Things like that stayed in a man’s memory.

      A dangerous man, Kell Sabin. Hostile governments would gladly have paid a fortune to get to him, but Sabin was nothing more than a shadow slipping away from the sunshine, as he directed his troops from the gray mists.

      Without a flicker of expression in his black eyes, Sabin studied the man who sat across from him in a lazy sprawl—a deceptively lazy sprawl, he knew. Grant was, if anything, even leaner and harder than he had been in the field. Hibernating for a year hadn’t made him go soft. There was still something wild about Grant Sullivan, something dangerous and untamed. It was in the wary, restless glitter of his amber eyes, eyes that glowed as fierce and golden as an eagle’s under the dark, level brows. His dark blond hair was shaggy, curling down over his collar in back, emphasizing that he wasn’t quite civilized. He was darkly tanned; the small scar on his chin wasn’t very noticeable, but the thin line that slashed across his left cheekbone was silver against his bronzed skin. They weren’t disfiguring scars, but reminders of battles.

      If Sabin had had to pick anyone to go after Hamilton’s daughter, he’d have picked this man. In the jungle Sullivan was as stealthy as a cat; he could become part of the jungle, blending into it, using it. He’d been useful in the concrete jungles, too, but it was in the green hells of the world that no one could equal him.

      “Are you going after her?” Sabin finally asked in a quiet tone.

      “Yeah.”

      “Then let me fill you in.” Totally disregarding the fact that Grant no longer had security clearance, Sabin told him about the missing microfilm. He told him about George Persall, Luis Marcel, the whole deadly cat-and-mouse game, and dumb little Priscilla sitting in the middle of it. She was being used as a smoke screen for Luis, but Kell was more than a little worried about Luis. It wasn’t like the man to disappear, and Costa Rica wasn’t the most tranquil place on earth. Anything could have happened to him. Yet, wherever he was, he wasn’t in the hands of any government or political faction, because everyone was still searching for him, and everyone except Manuel Turego and the American government was searching for Priscilla. Not even the Costa Rican government knew that Turego had the woman; he was operating on his own.

      “Persall was a dark horse,” Kell admitted irritably. “He wasn’t a professional. I don’t even have a file on him.”

      If Sabin didn’t have a file on him, Persall had been more than a dark horse; he’d been totally invisible. “How did this thing blow open?” Grant drawled, closing his eyes until they were little more than slits. He looked as if he were going to fall asleep, but Sabin knew differently.

      “Our man was being followed. They were closing in on him. He was out of his mind with fever. He couldn’t find Luis, but he remembered how to contact Persall. No one knew Persall’s name, until then, or how to find him if they needed him. Our man just barely got the film to Persall before all hell broke loose. Persall got away.”

      “What about our man?”

      “He’s alive. We got him out, but not before Turego got his hands on him.”

      Grant grunted. “So Turego knows our guy didn’t tell Persall to destroy the film.”

      Kell looked completely disgusted. “Everyone knows. There’s no security down there. Too many people will sell any scrap of information they can find. Turego has a leak in his organization, so by morning it was common knowledge. Also by morning, Persall had died of a heart attack, in Priscilla’s room. Before we could move in, Turego took the girl.”

      Dark brown lashes veiled the golden glitter of Grant’s eyes almost completely. He looked as if he would begin snoring