Behind the Mask (Undercover Associates Book 4) Read Online Free PDF

grabbed the small suitcase. She couldn’t leave that equipment behind, dammit. She couldn’t leave at all—she hadn’t gotten the files.
    She was hustled out of the mansion and put in the back of a Jeep. She wanted to scream, thinking about the standoff, about the pirates holding that tanker off Costa Amarrilla. People would die if they blew that thing up. The ecosystem up and down the coast would be destroyed. She had to get back into that mansion.
    Two guards with fully automatic weaponry sat up front. There were Jeeps in front and behind her, also full of guards. A convoy of five. The seat covering was rough and warm on her bare ass, which the thong did nothing to cover. At least she had the apron to cover her in front. And the top.
    Her blood raced. Why the heavy guard? “Where are we going?” she asked.
    Nobody answered, not that she expected it. She really just wanted to remind them that she spoke only English, so that they’d feel free to speak in front of her.
    One thing was clear: they weren’t guarding her. Something larger was going on.
    Headlights were flipped on and the small motorcade rumbled to life in a cloud of diesel. She strained to listen to the chat in the front seat, but got nothing of importance. Deep down, she knew they weren’t going back to that mansion, or at least she wasn’t.
    She eyed the suitcase. Wherever they were going, the stuff in there could give her away. Put Liza in danger. She eased open the lid and pretended to be searching for something, but really she pulled out the vibrator, unscrewing the top and dumping the drive. She quickly crushed it under her heel and shoved it out a rust hole in the bottom of the vehicle, and then she ripped that remaining parabolic mic out of the lining.
    “No!” the man in the passenger seat said, tension in his voice.
    She held up a shirt. “I’m getting a shirt to wear.” She pressed it to her front.
    He grabbed it and threw it out onto the shadowy wayside.
    “Hey!”
    He shook his head, pointing to her barely covered breasts. “No more.” He clapped his hands together and pointed to the suitcase. A sign to shut it.
    She complied, and once he turned, she got rid of the parabolic mic. Clean now. But where were they going?
    She’d done enough time in hot spots around the world to know when soldiers were tense. These men were on high alert. Beyond high alert. It wasn’t so evident in their banter with each other, quips and jeers in Spanish over the screaming muffler, putting on brave, macho faces, but you could tell it in the way they held themselves in the silent moments. They expected trouble.
    Damn.
    She looked down at her feet. She wanted to take the shoes off—she could run and move better in bare feet, yet she still felt protective of them. She always had, ever since Friar Hovde.
    The convoy of armed Jeeps turned onto a dark side street and rumbled past barren cantinas strung with lights. They parked in front of a dark strip of restaurants. Zelda surveyed the area. She could make a run for it, but her odds of surviving wouldn’t be good—running could turn into hunting practice with men who were tense like this. The question was, what would her odds be of surviving where they were going? And what was happening?
    Bottom line, the mission had failed.
    She thought miserably about the standoff. All the lives threatened. It had begun two weeks back, when South American pirates had seized an oil tanker off the South American coast, demanding the release of certain prisoners, mostly in Valencian prisons. The Valencian delegation had refused to negotiate. The pirates were threatening to let the oil run out into the bay and set it all on fire. It was bad.
    It had been Dax’s idea to slide the pirates something to trade. Brujos’s legendary files would have been perfect—the files would’ve enabled officials across the region to move on cartel collaborators, taking prisoners far more valuable than the pirates’ friends.
    Now they were