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Her mind had changed direction a hundred and eighty degrees. Alex was watching intently, standing far enough away from the blind so as not to be detected by any onlookers below. The apartment was dark, except for the light slicing through the blinds from the town below them. They had weapons here. She spotted her Glock 19 on the coffee table. Alex had put a magazine in it earlier, and it was ready for use. Lauren began to shed her clothes as she hurried down the hall to climb into her cargo pants, hiking boots and t-shirt.
Her mouth tingled wildly in the wake of Alex’s life-affirming kiss. Her heart was pounding, not from fear, but from that delicious and unexpected kiss. Lauren understood he’d used it as a ploy to hide his identity from the advancing Russian man. These kinds of things came with undercover work. Use what was available. Don’t run. Stay, and blend in. And he had. He’d kissed her, efficiently hiding his face so that he could not be recognized. But, did Alex realize just how much the kiss had affected her?
CHAPTER 7
“Iam goingto recon,” Alex told Lauren. He turned from the venetian blind and faced her. She stood tensely in the living room and was all business now.
“Check out who has arrived? How many?”
Alex nodded. Going to his gear bag, he pulled out some clothes. “Exactly.”
“I’ll go with you.”
He shook his head, sitting down and removing his boots. “No. It will be bad enough for me. I cannot just stroll down the street to the hotel where they always stay and recon. I am too tall.” He gave her a wry look. “The Indian population here is about five foot three inches tall. I am six feet four inches tall. Too obvious. I will slip behind this apartment building and move into the wall of the jungle and make my way down to where I know they are staying.”
“But I could blend in. I could—”
“No.” Alex gave her a frown. “They will possibly see you soon enough when we go into the jungle for orchid hunting. They will know you are American. It will be dangerous enough. I cannot risk you in a situation like this. I will do the recon and come back and let you know what I have discovered.”
Lauren felt him being overly protective toward her. She worried that Alex would be recognized by his old colleagues who, she knew, probably wouldn’t take him suddenly showing back up here all that kindly. Or would they? She didn’t know. He had to keep a low profile in Aguas Calientes. “Do ALL Russian mafia groups know you on sight?”
“No. The five different teams all operated in specific areas. We did not meet with one another. I know this team because they operated parallel to our area.” He dropped his boots aside and stood up, pulling off his polo shirt.
Lauren saw the power implicit in his naked chest, and the light sprinkling of dark hair across it. She didn’t want to be affected by the masculine beauty of his upper body, but she was. There were several old, and some newer, scars fanned across it and she felt her heart contract with pain for him. He reached into his gear and drew out a black, long-sleeved skin-fitting shirt, swiftly pulling it on. His hands went to his belt and he looked over at her.
“I don’t mind undressing in front of you, but you might,” he said, giving her a crooked grin.
Lauren quickly turned her back, feeling heat fly into her cheeks. It was a good thing the room was gray and shadowed, because she doubted he could see her blush. She heard him sit down and heard the chinos he wore fall to the floor. He had chosen a pair of black cargo pants from his suitcase that would blend well into the night.
“You can look now.”
She slowly turned; mouth thinned. Alex was sitting down once again, pulling on his combat boots, his fingers flying over the thick, black leather laces, tightening them up. He was all hard, massive muscle and she was mesmerized by his male grace. “What else do you need?”
“Get me my knife sheath? My pistol?”
Crouching down, Lauren dug through his gear, locating both weapons. She stood and handed him the sheath. He quickly strapped it onto his left, lower calf. The way he pulled the blackened blade from its nylon sheath, and tested the blade’s edge with his thumb, impressed her but she said nothing. He was an operator. Alex knew how to kill in a hundred different ways. He seemed satisfied with the blade’s sharpness and sheathed it. She handed him the MP-445 pistol. It was a sleek .40 caliber weapon that had a helluva stopping power to it. Alex stood up, and she handed him the drop holster that went with it. He quickly belted up, tugging the strapped Velcro into place around his lower thigh. She’d never seen him prepare for stealth before, but knew he would be lethal. There were no wasted movements with him. His game face was now firmly in place. Lamenting that all-too-recent time together when he had still been vulnerable to her, Lauren stepped around the canvas gear bag on the floor.
“What else do you need?”
“My camouflage paint.”
She found it. He sat down and quickly smeared black, dark green and gray over his face and neck. White skin would stand out on a dark night like a sore thumb, and Alex needed to completely blend into the environment.
“What’s next?”
“My camera.”
She found a small, square digital camera and handed it to him.
“What else?”
He tucked the camera into a leg pocket.
“Nothing else.” He smiled grimly. “Just my eyes and ears.”
“Do the groups go to a specific hotel when they come here?”
“Yes.” Alex took a black baseball cap from the bag and settled it on his head, along with a pair of NVGs, night vision goggles, which he hung around his neck.
