As Lost as I Get Read online

  Zoe shook her head and gave up. “Any chance you can help me get a patient transferred to Puerto Ayacucho?”

  “The Puinave woman in recovery?” She glanced up at Zoe with an apologetic shrug. “I heard them talking when they came in. Her nephew made her come here, you know.” Aside from being Puinave herself, there was little Jacira didn’t know about the other local tribes and languages. With that and her skill at manipulating the various layers of local government, she was an essential part of the staff. If she ever decided to leave, the clinic might keep running for about a week before collapsing into disarray.

  “Yeah. She needs surgery. It’s more than I can manage here.” It was tricky. Technically Colombia had universal health care, but what qualified as “universal” varied wildly from one departmento to another. Like the states in the U.S., departmentos varied in funding and their capacity to provide care. This deep in the rainforest, and this close to the border with Venezuela, it got even trickier.

  “I think we can get her transferred.”

  “Thanks.” Zoe looked around at the boxes. “Is this all we got this week?”

  “The supply routes are thrown off because of the bombing.” Jacira started stocking things onto one of the shelves. “We should get the rest in a few days.”

  Ana, one of the clinic’s best nurses, stuck her head in the room. “Zoe, there’s an American man here to see you. Something about fund-raising?”

  “Ugh. Did you tell him we don’t do any fund-raising here?”

  “Yeah, but he said you’d want to talk to him anyway.”

  Great. A pushy, well-meaning American, probably with a white-savior complex. Exactly what Zoe wanted to deal with this morning. “I thought leaving the States meant I got to leave behind white-boy bullshit, too,” Zoe grumbled.

  Ana laughed but shrugged. “Well, he’s in the waiting room. Says his name is Freeman.”

  “Will Freeman?” Zoe brushed at a smudge on the sleeve of her white coat and tried to remember if she’d put on lipstick that morning. Then she made herself stop being ridiculous.

  “I see you’ve met him,” Ana teased. “Es muy guapo.” He was handsome, and damn her for commenting on it.

  “Well. I still don’t do fund-raising.” Zoe lifted her chin. “I’ll go tell him.”

  The sharp lines and subtle colors of Lee’s American clothes stood in contrast to the warm colors and homespun fabrics of the clinic waiting room, just as his fair skin marked him as an outsider.

  “Zoe, I’m glad I caught you.” He took one of her hands in his and gave it a squeeze. His hands were warm and large enough to swallow her hand completely. She smiled up at him with heat creeping up the back of her neck.

  “Come on into my office. I think you’ve gotten some bad information though.” Even as she said it, she wondered if the fund-raising story was another bit of cover—another lie she’d have to support him in.

  The office she shared with Jacira was piled high with paperwork on both desks, Jacira’s with supply orders and requisitions, Zoe’s with reports for the Bogotá office and beyond. That didn’t even take into account the charts and medical records locked in what had once been the room’s small closet. Zoe shifted a pile of folders from the room’s sole guest chair and offered it to Lee to sit.

  “I won’t keep you long,” he said, and gave her the same brilliant, warm smile that made her forget how her feet worked.

  She sat behind her desk, trying to get the physical and metaphorical distance it provided. “We don’t actually do any fund-raising here, I’m afraid.”

  “I know,” he said.

  Her heart sank. “That’s not why you’re here, is it?”

  “Not really. I’m sorry.” He leaned forward. “Not all of the NGOs affected by the bombing have ties to Guainía, but several do. I’d like to interview your staff, if that’s all right with you. Especially the locals.”

  The words “no, absolutely not” were the first that came to mind, but Zoe bit down on them to think. “Why?”

  She must have given something away, because his expression softened. “Zoe, there’s a small chance that the group behind the bombing has some inside information. I have to rule out staff members from each organization.”

  “You’re saying you think one of my staff might be a terrorist.” She kept her face neutral, but couldn’t resist asking the next question, like poking at a sore tooth. “Is this the first organization you’ve visited?”

  “Yes.” His easy demeanor had faded, his expression going from puzzled to professional. Good. Easier to think straight when he wasn’t smiling at her.

  “I assume because we hire more locals than the other organizations?”

  “Well, yes. Our intelligence suggests that foreigners aren’t the likely culprits.”

  She couldn’t fault his logic. How could she explain to him that the notion of him coming in as a rich white American man to demand answers from her staff, who—with the exception of Susan—were in varying shades of brown, set her teeth on edge? But what if someone was involved with the bombing? The very idea was a fist around her heart. “You can ask them to talk to you,” she said finally. “But if they tell you no, that’s it. How are you going to explain it? I mean, you can’t very well tell them you’re looking for a bomber.”

  Lee’s smile returned and she hated him a little for being so perfect, even as she helplessly smiled in return. “Well, since my company wants to support your work here in Colombia, they’ve asked me to present them profiles of the staff, so they can really get a feel for who you are here.”

  “Clever. Are you going to profile me?”

  “I don’t need to. I know you, Doctor Rodriguez.”

  Warmth flooded her as his smile softened again, and she stood to hide her confusion. “Well. We don’t have much space, but I can give you my office while I’m with patients. I’ll send in the first victim, shall I?”

  He grinned. “I promise to keep it short and painless. I doubt all of your patients can get the same from you.”

  Zoe laughed in spite of herself and left the office, trying hard not to be aware of his eyes on her as she walked away.

  ***

  Zoe stepped out of the exam room and as soon as the door closed behind her she caught herself glancing around for Lee. Their paths had crossed once or twice during the day, while she was between patients and he was between interviews. He smiled every time, and she worried like a teenager about how her hair and makeup looked. Now every time she wasn’t with a patient, the self-conscious awareness that she might see him at any minute broke her concentration to bits.

  Having Lee in the clinic all day was proving to be a major distraction. She’d had no word how the interviews were going, but the staff seemed unfazed.

  All of them except for her.

  She’d heard Susan and Maria talking about how much the extra money from IFI might help, and she gritted her teeth. There was never going to be any IFI money, and she was the only one who knew it. Lying outright to her staff wasn’t a thing she ever thought she’d do, and it made her skin crawl.

  It would be so much easier if she could hate Lee for putting her in this position. Instead she couldn’t stop looking for opportunities to flirt.

  Damn it, what had she left the exam room to do? That was the fourth time today.

  By the end of the day she was so drained she’d almost managed to forget that Lee was in her office until she went to finish up for the day and found him there.

  He was seated at her desk, but stood as soon as he saw her. “I’m just wrapping up.”

  “No hurry,” she said. “How did it go?”

  “You have some amazing people here. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, considering who their boss is.”

  Zoe gave a laughing snort. “That’s flattering, but I can’t take credit for that. MI hired everyone before I got he
re.”

  “So it’s just an organization that pulls in quality people, then?” His eyes were warm as he smiled, stacking paperwork and shoving it into a satchel.

  “Most of us. So, no one who seems to be a terrorist?” She meant to reach for her own stack of paperwork on the desk, but instead wound up knocking it over, a day’s worth of charts spilling from both sides of the desk. She barely managed to keep back a curse and knelt to pick them up, and Lee did the same on his side of the desk.

  He brought them around and handed them to her. “No, I think we’re clear here.” Their hands brushed as she took the files and set them back on the desk, and when she was done, he was still standing close. When their eyes met, both of them seemed to get caught there. It was a natural thing for him to take her by the hand and pull her a little closer, and more natural still when he leaned down and kissed her, like he’d done it a hundred times before instead of for the first time.

  It was hesitant, tentative, and nothing like Zoe had fantasized of back when she’d allowed herself the occasional harmless daydream about him. He pulled again, and rested their joined hands against his chest. His heart thumped hard and fast beneath her hand, and some of the hesitance started to fall away. The kiss stayed gentle, his lips moving against hers without ever growing too bold. Her skin prickled into goose bumps and her own heart was racing as fast as his, as if it were a competition. When he pulled away, she nearly followed after.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He let go of her hand. “That was out of line. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “No, it’s fine.” It was more than fine. Before she thought too much, she curled her fingers into the pressed white cotton of his shirt, rumpling it all to hell, and pulled him back for another kiss. All of the leftover adrenaline of two years’ worth of panic attacks and nightmares went into that kiss. She wanted to crawl inside him, to wrap up in the memory of him cradling her in his arms.

  He did put his arms around her, and stole back control of the kiss. His tongue slid against hers and she made an embarrassing whimper. It had been fine, she had been fine, until he showed up here in Inírida, smooth and a little dangerous and looking at her the way he did. Maybe kissing him was inevitable; he was the last person who had made her feel safe.

  It wasn’t just about safety now though. Now she could only think about being here alone with him, how easy it would be to—to keep going.

  He broke the kiss long before she was ready for him to, reaching up to cradle her cheek with one strong hand, as if easing the separation. “Zoe, I’m sorry. I never should have—I swore I wouldn’t—” Then as if he couldn’t help himself, he moved back in for another kiss, this one entirely too short before he backed off again for good.

  “It’s all right. Really.” She tried to smile, although her lips felt like they were made of the same rubber as her knees.

  “I should go, let you have your office back.” He moved with quick, almost urgent movements, as if he needed to be away from her as fast as possible. “I’ll keep you posted on what I find.” And then he was gone.

  Chapter Three

  Lee left the clinic with a headache from the smell of disinfectant, a strong sense of regret, and a reasonable certainty that no one working at the clinic was involved with Autodefensas de Colombia. He climbed into the waiting cab and slumped against the seat, barely aware when it started moving. What the hell had he been thinking, kissing her like that?

  He knew what he’d been thinking. Seeing her in her element for the first time had threatened to take his breath away. He would gladly give up every memory he had of her as a dirty, frightened victim for the vision of her standing straight and self-assured in her clinic, the clean white of her doctor’s coat gleaming against the warm brown of her skin and hair. He wanted nothing more than to savor the spark in her clear gray eyes. If he was honest, he wanted a hell of a lot more than that, but he’d had no business kissing her, much less anything else. She should be out of bounds, still fixed in his mind as part of a mission.

  Why had she been so upset about his interviews initially? As frightened as she’d been, he thought she’d have been grateful to confirm that her staff was safe.

  His reverie was interrupted by a man climbing into his cab, carrying a duffel bag and smiling. Lee instructed the driver to take a meandering route. The driver was well paid to ignore what conversations happened in his cab.

  It was, Lee had found, easier to find and recruit potential agents in enemy countries than in friendly ones. With the former, you looked for the malcontents, the ones bitching about their jobs (or lack thereof), about the government. You looked for the ones with a grudge and not much to lose. People like that were thick on the ground; the hard part was finding someone who had access to anything worth knowing.

  In allied countries, you had to find the idealists, the ones who wanted to help, to make things better. They were quieter, harder to spot. And then you had to convince them that passing information to a friendly country was in everyone’s best interests.

  First Corporal Timo Montemayor was a find so perfect he could have come from a recruiting instruction manual. He wore his ENC uniform with pride, buttons burnished and ready to pop. He was tall and rawboned, skin the color of cedar, and when he smiled, he looked like a boy more than a man.

  “Will, it is good to see you,” Timo said in his clear but accented English. Layers on layers of identity and plausible deniability: Timo knew “Will Freeman” was a low-level CIA analyst with a cover as an advance man for IFI—he didn’t know that “Will Freeman” was also a cover.

  “You too, Corporal.” A quick check as the cab started to move reassured Lee they weren’t being followed.

  “I have the photographs.” Timo produced a manila folder from his bag.

  “Any more word on Arcangel?” When the Autodefensas de Colombia had finally released a statement about the Bogotá bombing, it was signed “Arcangel.”

  “Nothing. He is a ghost. He may not be a single man leading the AC, our commanders think, but several.”

  Lee made a noncommittal sound and flipped through the file. The first set of photos, satellite shots of one of the ranches out on the river plains, confirmed what he already knew. They showed a group of armed men meeting at the ranch, and to judge by the date and time stamps, it was a regular meeting. He spread the photos on the seat between them, pulling one out with a good shot of the faces. He snapped a photo of it with his phone and sent it via secure connection to Bogotá. Wishnevsky’s analysts could run the faces. He’d bet his salary at least one of them had connections to a drug cartel.

  A new player on the scene like the AC couldn’t have managed an operation like Bogotá without money behind them, and in Colombia, that kind of money still meant drug cartels.

  “We think they’re starting to take protection money from the llaneros,” Timo volunteered. The kid was good. If he knew what was going on with the llaneros—the ranchers out on the river plains, or llanos—he was paying close attention to everything.

  Lee glanced up at him with a wry smile. “I was just thinking they had to have some decent funding. Not the cartels?” The cartels weren’t particular about who they sided with. Leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitary groups; the cartels played them off each other for as much money and power as they could get.

  Timo shook his head. “Maybe, but I do not think so. The cartels have been getting weaker for a generation.”

  Spoken like a true idealist. Timo’s bosses wanted to project the notion that the cartels were under control, and maybe out west where the cities and population were more concentrated that was true. Out here, where the tiny town of Inírida was the only population center for miles, unreachable by road, things were different.

  It was a three-way war out here in the jungle—the leftists, the paramilitary groups, and the drug cartels—four if you counted the Colombian government. Uncountable, if
you considered that each of the dozens of paramilitary groups had their own agendas. Some were nothing more than a rich man’s army formed for self-protection, others had an agenda of government takeover and a rise to power.

  A move this bold from a new player like the AC, allying with the wealthiest rancher in the area and one of the cartels, that was a slap in the face that the other groups wouldn’t be able to ignore. If someone couldn’t break up the alliance, the war in the jungle could spill over most of Colombia.

  “It is helpful?” Timo asked, reminding Lee of an eager puppy.

  “This could save a lot of lives.” That was nothing but the truth. Lee snapped a few more shots of the photos, then closed the folder and gave it back to Timo. “Thank you.”

  Lee motioned for the driver to pull over near the market, and Timo got out, feigning paying the driver before walking away. “Take me back to base.” Lee sat back in the seat.

  He had one more potential recruit to see, but she wouldn’t be available for hours yet, after she got off work. In the meantime, he had work of his own to do. And he was resolved to try not to think about Zoe. He was playing a dangerous game by seeing her.

  ***

  It was shaping up to be a hell of a day. Zoe had three patients in a row complaining of vomiting, most of them demonstrating as well. The smell drifted out into the waiting room, already crowded with women holding children dressed lightly against the mid-morning heat. Zoe just prayed there wouldn’t be another run of sympathetic vomiting. Ana took the latest basin away to wash it.

  The child in Zoe’s exam room was thin, but not dangerously so, and only mildly dehydrated. She was listless, normal for a seven-year-old who didn’t feel well. She didn’t present with a fever—and that was worrisome. A fever would have suggested an ordinary run of viral gastroenteritis. No fever . . . that suggested some worse possibilities.

  “How long has she been sick?” Zoe asked in Spanish.

  “Three days. She can’t keep anything down.” The girl’s mother re-tucked the blanket around the infant in her arms. Child, mother, and infant were all dressed in clean, if ragged, clothes. They had the bronzed skin and flat features of one of the local native tribes, mixed with the same hints of Spanish conquistador and African slave that Zoe’s own features had, and that she had grown up around in New York. These were, in an almost literal sense, her people, and they were terribly sick.