Free The Maze (ATCOM) by Jennifer Lowery

up in Cartagena. A shady-looking fellow despite his
designer clothes. Attie lounged in a chair, hands folded under her chin, dark
glasses shading her eyes. The gold chain around her neck clung heavily to her
damp skin. Although the salty breeze was cool, she was hot and miserable. She
wasn’t adjusting to the heavy, oppressive heat of the tropics and longed for
the thinner, cleaner air of the mountains.
    Pretending
to be asleep, she watched Carlos speak to his guest with a calm, pleasant
expression, but Attie knew better. There was nothing pleasant about this man.
    Then
he smiled and Attie’s heart stopped. It went against everything she was to
pretend to be asleep as Carlos looped a homemade noose around his guest’s neck
and, with a nod, had two of his guards toss the man overboard into the churning
sea.
    Attie
stifled a gasp, fighting to remain still. This wasn’t the first time she’d
witnessed Carlos’s cruelties, but it was the first murder. The agent in her
wanted to go after the man being towed beside the yacht, but she remained in
her chair, knowing that if she did Carlos would kill her too. She couldn’t risk
blowing her cover this far into the game. Without backup she would surely lose
the battle so she focused on her breathing, said a prayer for the unlucky guest
and willed her muscles to relax.
    The
murder couldn’t be pinned on him. The body would be shark food, never to be
recovered. Clever on Carlos’s part. No evidence. No trail. And a witness
without proof.
    Carlos
turned to her.
    She
stiffened, cursing her reaction and pretending to still be asleep, sighed and
tilted her head to the side.
    “Mi
amor,” Carlos called out.
    Attie
remained motionless.
    “Roll
over, before you burn that lovely skin of yours.”
    Attie
murmured her thanks and rolled sleepily onto her back, settling quickly into a
relaxed position.
    Carlos
must have been satisfied with her performance, because he left her alone. Attie
wanted to sigh with relief, but due to close observation, refrained. She
resisted the urge to touch the necklace resting uncomfortably around her neck.
She hated it more than anything Carlos had given her this far. It fed her fear
and challenged her restraint on a regular basis…
    Attie’s
hand lifted involuntarily to her throat and met nothing but bare skin. She let
out a long, sharp breath. No necklace. Thank God. Unwillingly, her shoulders
sagged. At one time she’d been ready to dismember her own head in order to get
the damn thing off. To this day she wasn’t able to wear a necklace of any kind.
    Her
skin tingled in remembrance of the device she’d grown to hate. And fear.
    Realizing
what she was doing she jerked her hand away and dropped down to her hands and
feet in a push-up position. It was the only way she knew to release the tension
she felt. One way or another, she would remove Carlos from her thoughts.
    * * * *
    Noah
was waiting when the door slid open. Two armed guards waited for him to step
out of the room. When he did, they herded him toward the next door.
    Attie
came striding into the hallway, heels clicking on the floor.
    Noah
blinked.
    Stunning
in a dress as green as her eyes that molded her curves like a second skin and
left nothing to the imagination, she was beautiful, confident and sexy. He had
never seen Attie dressed like a woman. He’d only seen her at the academy
or in the field in combat gear.
    But,
something was wrong with this picture. His eyes narrowed slightly. She met his
eyes with a look that dared him to comment. He didn’t, but he saw the demons
lingering in her eyes, the residual of time gone by and the pain of things she
never spoke of.
    The
self-confident set of her shoulders betrayed her emotions as they walked toward
the door at the end of the hall. He watched the feminine sway of her hips as
she walked, as comfortable in heels as she was in combat boots and for a moment
he got a glimpse of the woman she’d pretended to be in South America. American
beauty.