The Mercenary. Allison Leigh

flown to this bit of nothing in Guatemala and had been on the ground less than two hours. Still, Tyler did a quick walk around the plane. He climbed up and took a last look in the fuel tanks because every pilot worth his wings knew that fuel gauges were notoriously inaccurate, even in as sweet a honey as his Pilatus. When he was satisfied that all was as it should be, he looked beyond the wings of the plane and wondered how a runway could be so damn bad and still be called a runway.

      He climbed inside the plane and watched Marisa haul her suitcase over the hard-packed ground toward the plane. She had to lean back against the weight of it, and he could only imagine what she’d packed. Hair stuff. Makeup. Every single useless thing imaginable, he figured, considering the place they were headed.

      She was still grumbling under her breath when she hefted the case through the passenger door and climbed in after it. Tyler wasn’t so language-challenged not to know that she was seriously besmirching his ancestry in Spanish. Frankly, as far as he was concerned, she was pretty much on target.

      Amused despite himself, he looked back through the opened cockpit door to watch her settle in one of the four passenger seats. Behind the seats, the rest of the cabin was used for cargo, of which Tyler had plenty. For anyone curious enough to look, Tyler would appear to be an American very anxious to get lost in another country.

      Marisa was wiggling in the spacious leather seat, and her cheeks turned pink when she realized he was watching her. “It’s a nicer plane than I’d expected,” she admitted.

      “My plane isn’t run-of-the-mill enough for the casual drug-runner?” It was spacious, but he still had to bend over to move around as he secured the passenger door. He’d already checked the cargo door.

      “Is that what we’re supposed to be? Drug runners?” Her eyes had gone wide, making her look every bit as young as the twenty-five her license had divulged.

      “The only thing we’re supposed to be is inconspicuous,” he said as he belted himself back into his seat and cranked up the engine.

      “And being dismissed as a drug-runner is safer than being suspected of something else,” she concluded, raising her voice to be heard above the engine.

      “It’s Mezcaya.” What else was there to say? The particularly turbulent little Central American country was torn between a terrorist group known as El Jefe, and the rebellious natives who neither honored El Jefe’s rule nor the ineffectual leaders who governed the land. It would be better to be mistaken for drug-runners than what they really were.

      Which was one of the reasons he was using his private plane. Made it even more removed from military operations.

      Marisa swallowed the unease that ran through her as Tyler donned a pair of headphones and set the plane rolling slowly across the rutted runway.

      Mezcaya. Her homeland. Would it even welcome her back?

      Don’t think about that.

      The plane was gathering speed, admirably skimming over the ruts, but still it was rough going. She leaned over and slid her briefcase more firmly under the seat, then sat back and closed her eyes. She’d never been terribly fond of flying but had learned to tolerate it, first for her duties with the Embassy, then later because of Gerald.

      Still, this plane, as nice as it was, was considerably smaller than the jets she was accustomed to, and her fingers curled anxiously around the armrests when the nose lifted from the ground and the sharp ascent pressed her back into her seat.

      There were a dozen questions she wanted to ask Tyler Murdoch. But through the narrow cockpit opening she could see that he still wore his headphones, and even if not for them, she knew he wouldn’t welcome any questions or comments from her.

      His attitude couldn’t be clearer. He didn’t want her to accompany him to Mezcaya. The only thing she wasn’t sure of was whether he’d heard about her, and his lack of welcome was because of that, or whether he had other reasons.

      She knew he was part of some special unit with the military. The former ambassador had told her that, along with a few other, scarce details. Though unlikely, she supposed it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he might have met Gerald and heard the rumors surrounding her.

      It had been four years, yet even now, Marisa had to consciously release her anger over Gerald’s lies. He’d claimed to love her. But he’d ruined her. Left her career in tatters. And her family—

      Don’t think about that.

      It was a much too frequent mantra.

      The plane leveled off, and Marisa’s ears stopped popping. She reached for her briefcase and drew out a file. Among other things since she’d “left” embassy service, she’d found work as a freelance translator for a few small-press publishers. The latest project was a paper on the long-term effects of video game usage by myopic users. She was translating it from English to Italian.

      A few hours later, she’d made little progress on the dry project, because her eyes kept straying to the oval windows on the other side of the empty seat beside her. She sighed and put the file back in her briefcase, unclipped her safety belt and slid into the window seat to look out.

      The landscape below was lush, green…and surprisingly close. Startled, she jerked back and stared at the cockpit. Surely they weren’t supposed to be flying so close to the ground. The treetops looked so close that it was a wonder they weren’t hitting the wings!

      All the nervousness that she’d ever felt about flying climbed into her throat, leaving one choking knot. She slid out of the seat and hurriedly made her way forward to duck into the cockpit.

      Tyler knew she was there before she could say a word. He pulled off the headset that held little more than static. “Head’s behind that door there.”

      She blinked. “What? Oh. No, no, I don’t—I—” Her lips firmed and she leaned closer. “What are you doing flying so low? Surely that’s dangerous.”

      “Everything’s been dangerous since takeoff.” He didn’t want her up here in the cockpit. It was close enough without adding her shapely self to the mix. If he moved his arm two inches, he’d be brushing against the curves contained within that scoop-necked jacket. It buttoned all the way up the front, but still exposed the hollow at her throat, the golden creamy neck—

      His head filled with curses that some forgotten sense of decency kept him from mouthing. “Either sit down here, or go back to your seat and buckle in.” He sounded like a grouchy old man, and he didn’t much care. Better that than a red-blooded male way too aware of a female he didn’t want around, anyway.

      She confounded him by taking the seat beside him. And he couldn’t help but appreciate the view when she arched her back a little, reaching for, then fastening, the safety harness. Her knuckles were nearly white as she clenched them together in her lap.

      “Don’t touch anything.”

      Her nose went up in the air. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

      His jaw ached. He focused on the view beyond the nose of the plane.

      He was flying low for a reason, but he had no intention of explaining himself. And when they got Westin to safety, he was going to have a talk with TPTB of Alpha Force. Apparently they didn’t take his no-women rule quite seriously enough.

      He tuned out his companion and her white knuckles, and focused on the heavy forest below. This corner of Mezcaya near the border of Belize was mostly uninhabited. He wanted to make sure he didn’t show up on any radar and he wanted another look at the terrain while he had the chance. His last foray into Mezcaya had been too brief to suit him.

      He’d studied the maps, of course, well enough to memorize them. But maps were one thing; seeing the land for himself was another. Soon enough, they’d exchange the plane at a designated place just across the border in Belize for a less conspicuous mode of transportation, and he wanted every advantage he could get before then.

      Her knuckles were still