Last Spy Standing. Dana Marton

      He stole forward step by slow step. At last he spotted her figure emerging out of the darkness. She faced him head-on, her legs slightly apart, with her gun in both hands, aimed directly at him. A movie poster combination of dangerous and sexy. She made a fine-looking enemy, he had to give her that.

      But he was done letting that affect him. He pointed his own gun right back at her. “Now what?”

      “One of us shoots the other and gets what she wants.” Everything about her was cocky, from her stance to her voice.

      It turned him on, God help him. But he was a professional. “Juarez will kill Zak if he gets him back,” he said, deciding to reason with her instead of using brute force and threats. He could always fall back on those. Maybe he could appeal to her feminine compassion. “He’s just a kid.”

      For a moment she wavered. But only for a moment. “That’s between the two of them.”

      All right, so she wasn’t interested in compassion—not that big a surprise. Maybe she was interested in money. “I’ll pay you for him.”

      “I’m not after money,” she snapped, as if offended. “Why do you want the two-bit crook? You two business partners? He screwed the big boss over. He’s going to do the same with you.”

      He thought for a long moment, trying to figure her out, then decided to take a calculated gamble. “He’s not a two-bit crook, exactly. He’s the son of a U.S. governor.”

      That gave her pause. “Which one?”

      He told her, and again she wavered.

      “The reward would be substantial.” He pushed.

      She didn’t even bother to acknowledge that. “So you’re U.S. law enforcement or something.”

      He calculated how far they’d come from Zak. Far enough. The kid should be out of hearing distance. “Or something.”

      For a second she took her eyes off him to scan the black jungle behind him. Her gun never moved, however. “Where is the rest of your team?”

      “Where I come from, we don’t waste a whole team’s time on a quick little job like rescuing a politician’s idiot son.”

      She considered him for a long time. “Are you one of Colonel Wilson’s men?”

      He went still. Now that was a question he hadn’t expected. Who the hell was she? “How do you know Colonel Wilson?”

      The Colonel headed the Special Designation Defense Unit, SDDU, a top secret team of commando soldiers who ran various secret missions around the globe without anyone knowing. So how did she know?

      “You’re not CIA. The FBI never sends just one man. If you were a mercenary, you wouldn’t have helped me. There was no money in it,” she added. “So that didn’t leave much.”

      Sound logic. But it didn’t explain how she’d come to know about his team. Very few people knew about the SDDU. A handful of top government officials, and the few FBI and CIA agents who’d done joint missions. Had she?

      “Who do you work for?”

      She pressed her generous lips into a tight line as she glared at him without saying anything.

      “Have you infiltrated Juarez’s band of criminals?” He couldn’t help being a little impressed.

      “You’re ruining an undercover op a full year in the making,” she snapped at him. “I need Zak.”

      He reported to the Colonel, not to anyone else. “You can’t have him.”

      “There’ll be a meeting between Juarez and the big boss, Don Pedro, next week. No outsider has ever been to the Don’s secret stronghold before. We know he deals weapons to terrorists from there. I need to know what kind and how much. I need to uncover his connections. These are weapons that could march straight north, across Mexico and then through the U.S. border.”

      She was hunting terrorist connections abroad. A CIA spook then. He should have guessed. She’d ruled out the CIA for him first, because that was her outfit and if he was with them, she would have known it.

      He was beginning to understand her better now. She was trusted at Juarez’s camp, but not enough for Juarez to include her in his personal retinue. Except, if she did something his other men couldn’t accomplish, like bringing back the kid who’d killed his brother-in-law …

      Her plan wasn’t bad. She was working on an important mission. But his orders weren’t to accommodate other important missions he came across. He only had one order from the Colonel: to bring the governor’s son back.

      “I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it. “You’ll find another way.”

      But instead of accepting defeat, she shot at his foot, apparently not done with this way yet. A miracle that she hadn’t maimed him. He had no choice but to shoot the gun out of her hand. He did just that, then lunged forward, and they went rolling on the ground again.

      “This doesn’t feel like progress.” She had the presence of mind to joke with him, even though her hand must have smarted.

      It might not have felt like progress, but it sure felt like one hundred percent pure, curvy female to Mitch. He wouldn’t have minded the prolonged body contact so much if the ground wasn’t full of danger. He couldn’t afford to get injured, and he didn’t want her hurt, either.

      “Could we have a civilized discussion about this?” he suggested between a flip and a roll.

      “Worried that you can’t win by sheer force alone?” She grunted and heaved.

      “Stop.” He pinned her down at last. “You roll into a sharp branch and your mission goes nowhere.”

      She gave it another try before she stilled. “Fine. A civilized conversation it is. In the morning.” She blew out a breath. “So you’re an extractor.”

      “The extractor. When someone needs a target removed unseen from an impossible situation, I’m the go-to guy.” She might as well know that he wasn’t going to give up or give in to her.

      “Do you always get them?”

      “Always.” He didn’t compromise.

      “It’s that important to you. Interesting.” She gave him a calculating look. “I’m guessing you lost someone close to you at one point?”

      A discussion they weren’t going to have. He moved back slowly and let her go, then offered her a hand.

      She sprang up on her own and dusted off her clothes. “Just for the record, you called truce first.”

      She sauntered off toward her makeshift camp without looking back at him. Unfortunately, not enough moonlight filtered through the canopy for him to fully enjoy that tempting image.

      “Take a picture. It’ll last longer,” she called over her shoulder.

      She must have attended some CIA training on how to be thoroughly irritating. But if she thought she was going to be the last spy standing here, she was sadly mistaken.

      He headed after her, hoping Zak hadn’t done anything stupid like untying himself and running off into the jungle. They’d had enough excitement for one night.

      As luck would have it, the kid was where they’d left him. Mitch checked his restraints and, despite loud demands, left them in place.

      “Up,” he ordered next, nudging Megan onto the platform and tying her wrist to the other end the same way she’d tied up Zak. Then he lay between them, snug, his gun resting on his chest, finger on the trigger.

      He didn’t like the idea of the other two guns, plus the machete, scattered out there, but he’d have to wait for daylight to look for them and secure them.

      “You can’t be serious about this.”