Free Your Next Breath by Iris Johansen

her back and tell her that Nagoles had given him a hint where she could find Santos.
    She would not think of what she’d felt when she’d first seen him in that cave. The shock, the erotic sensation that had electrified every muscle, the searing memory of the ways he had touched, probed, rubbed—
    And she was doing exactly what she had sworn she would not do.
    She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Relax. Cameron was being Cameron, and that meant totally his own person, stubborn, and unpredictable. Both his men and the committee under whom he worked regarded him more as crown prince than Guardian of the project. Which also meant he was arrogant as hell.
    But she didn’t have to accept that arrogance. She didn’t have to accept anything about the man.
    She closed her eyes.
    Go away, Cameron. I’m through with you for tonight.
    *   *   *
    “There’s been a problem.” Manuel Dorgal hung up the phone. “The helicopter we sent to get Nagoles crashed as he was attempting the pickup. According to the villagers in the area, they think it was shot down.”
    “What?” Santos’s hand clenched on his glass. “Nagoles?”
    “We don’t know if he was on board or not. There wasn’t much left of anything on the helicopter. Cinders. Nothing but cinders. We know Nagoles hasn’t surfaced anywhere in the area. We haven’t been able to reach him.”
    “And we don’t know who shot it down?”
    Dorgal shook his head. “No word on the grapevine. Nagoles was our only contact in the area, and he’s disappeared. Maybe CIA? We know that Sullivan was taken away by a CIA agent. It would make sense.” He frowned. “Though I don’t know how they’d manage to get more agents there so soon to track Nagoles.”
    “Find out,” Santos said grimly. “And find out whether Nagoles is dead or not. If he’s not, kill him. He’s been targeted, and I can’t afford for him to be forced to answer questions.”
    “He doesn’t know that much. You kept him out of the loop after you went to prison.”
    “Do you think I don’t know that?” he asked harshly. “But Ling is clever. She might be able to tap something, anything, that would give her a hint about where to find me.”
    “There’s a solution. You could take her out right now. All you have to do is toss an explosive through a window of her house, and everyone is dead.”
    “And admit that I had to hurry the bitch’s death because she’s getting closer to me? Would Delores understand that I stopped short of total victory over the woman who killed her? That I stopped before I could wring every bit of mental and physical pain from Ling?”
    “Death is a pretty awesome victory. Delores is dead. You can’t—” Dorgal stopped as he met Santos’s eyes. He forced a smile. “You’re right, of course. We’ll work around the problem. I’ll locate Nagoles or whoever took him down.”
    “Yes, you will.” His gaze lifted to the portrait of Delores over the fireplace. “But this is the second time Ling managed to block me. I have to move quickly to make sure that she gets no satisfaction from it.” He reached for his phone, his gaze still on Delores’s smiling face in the portrait. “Which one shall it be?” he whispered. “Which one, Delores?”
    *   *   *
    “What the hell do you mean by going to Joe and not directly to me?” Eve Duncan demanded when Catherine picked up her call the next morning. “Not good, Catherine.”
    “Sorry. I had to make a decision on how to protect you as quickly as possible. Joe was my answer.”
    “Not a good answer. Though I admit that he’s notified everyone who has a stake in keeping me alive, and they’re rallying around me. But that’s me, not you. This is all about you. You risked your butt to save my life not long ago. Yet you think I’m going hide out in this lake cottage while some drug king tries to kill you?”
    “I’m hoping you will. I’m not first on his agenda. Santos is going to go after the people I