Michael couldn’t promise that. He just told Rex to get out there as soon as possible. And then he turned the Jeep around and headed back for the little town and the Italian restaurant where Leah had been seen last, and thought back to the last time he’d seen Juan Carlo.
It had been a few years ago, at a party Juan Carlo had thrown for his sister at his Costa del Sol mansion. Juan Carlo loved a good party and that night had been amazing—the pool had been filled with floating candles. Girls in skimpy bathing suits, high on coke, had walked around sharing liquor and cocaine with all the male guests.
Juan Carlo had been in fine form that night, dancing with his wife, Maribel (who complained to Michael in private that she couldn’t bear his touch), flirting with all the girls, and clapping all the men on the back, sharing a joke, a cigar, or a drink. He’d told Michael that night that they were compadres, the closest of friends. “One day,” he had said in English, “you will work with me. I will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.”
At the time, Michael had thought that was slightly amusing, because he knew the Spanish authorities would be paying an early morning call to Juan Carlo and that he likely would never see his mansion in Costa del Sol again. Juan Carlo—jovial, fun-loving, generous Juan Carlo—had made his millions from trading arms to terrorists who intended to use those arms against the United States. He was a ruthless arms supplier, crooked as the day was long . . . but he was nonetheless an affable, likable guy, and in a weird way, it had pained Michael a little to put him away for the rest of his life.
“You know how it is out there,” Rex had waxed philosophically when he had told Michael that Juan Carlo was, surprisingly, out of prison and had been to see Maribel, roughing her up badly enough to put her in the hospital. “Money is a powerful corrupter.”
Michael supposed so, and while he could have guessed Juan Carlo had wanted to kill him from the moment the federal agents had shown up and taken him down—there was no question in Michael’s mind that Juan Carlo hadn’t known immediately who set him up—he never would have guessed he would come to the United States to do it.
Frankly, he was a little blown away by it.
But the man had made a grave error when he’d touched Leah. Michael felt a fury boiling in his veins like he’d never felt in his life, a palpable energy coursing through him and dredging up every single drop of testosterone in his body.
He was seeing red, all right. And lucky him, he’d get to kill Juan Carlo with his bare hands, because he didn’t have a gun on him, and Michael was honestly looking forward to breaking Juan Carlo’s fucking neck.
Chapter Twenty-Five
LEAH woke up once again, her head pounding and her mouth dry, lying on her stomach across the bed. She was still wearing the ruined dress, but Adolfo had taken his shirt back, the bastard.
With a groan, she pushed herself up and looked around through a curtain of hair. Adolfo was lounging in the old chair, the gun on his lap as he watched a small black-and-white TV. An old sitcom from the sound of it.
“You’re an asshole, Adolfo,” she said hoarsely.
He lazily turned his head toward her and smiled. “I have been called far worse.”
She pushed her hair over her shoulder, rolled onto her back, and stared up at the ceiling, trying to focus. “It’s the orange juice, isn’t it? There was something in the orange juice.”
“Si,” he answered readily, as if she was asking the ingredient in his special brownie recipe. “The same as was in the wine.”
“What was it?” she asked in a near whimper. “Is it poison? Am I going to die?”
Adolfo clucked his tongue. “Not from poison. I do not want to kill you, Leah, I merely want to . . . how do I say it . . . make you not move.”
“Incapacitate me,” she said.
“Si, si!” he sang out, pleased that she knew the word.
“But why?” she cried. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“What are these tears?” he scoffed. “I have explained why, no? I need you so that the bastard will come to me.”
Man, she had the distinct memory of having witnessed this very scene in a soap opera she’d watched between jobs once. A woman inexplicably captured and held in a remote mountain cabin—only it had gone on for months, and the woman had fallen in love with her captor. That was definitely not going to happen here, although Leah might fall in love with the men in white coats who came to get Adolfo.
“The bastard is not going to come,” Leah said, swiping at a single tear from beneath her eye. “He’s never going to find you here, and even if he does, he is so much smarter than you are. He won’t walk into a stupid trap.”
Adolfo chuckled. “First you despise him. Then you defend him. Which do you want, mi amor? To love him or to hate him?”
“Oh . . . just shut up,” she said irritably.
“He will come. I left many clues, so even a man as estúpido as he will find us. And because I have you, he will arrive very soon, for he will be very afraid.”