Barefoot with a Stranger (Barefoot Bay Undercover #2)(22)

Mal followed Gabe into a small office, the front area desks peppered with a few muscular guys who probably worked as freelance bodyguards or resort security, two women on computers, and, tucked in the back, Uncle Nino in his bright pink shirt, a phone to his ear.

“My office is back there,” Gabe said. “Don’t pinch my sexy assistant, or he’ll sauté you in hot garlic oil.”

Mal smiled as he nodded to the old man and followed Gabe into an unremarkable space that consisted of little more than a desk and chair, a bookshelf, and a straight-backed and rather uninviting guest chair. The only thing of visual interest in the room was a glass jar stuffed with cash on top of the shelves.

“Speaking of what’s wrong with this picture…” Mal said, a little stunned at the sparse surroundings. “Is that how you pay people?”

Gabe threw a dirty look at the money jar. “I got a woman on staff who charges me every time I swear.”

Mal let out a hoot. “Bet she’s rich.”

Gabe fell into the chair behind his desk, no humor on his face. “I don’t want to be here in this particular hellhole, and yet, here I am. My own private Micronesia.”

Mal frowned. “The private wit-sec program isn’t going well?”

“It’s fine. It’s actually a brilliant idea, and I could stay busy and rich, but…” He huffed out a breath and looked out a small window that faced a building similar to this one, probably housing another service for the resort. “I came here to be close to where I hoped Isadora would be.”


Mal’s gut tightened at the admission. “Cuba.”

Gabe nodded slowly. “And now she’s…”

Dead. Fuck. “I’m really sorry, Gabe,” he said, not for the first time. “I know…I know what she meant to you.”

“You better than anyone,” Gabe said.

“The glory days at Gitmo…” Mal could still smell the back room at Abbey Road where they’d worked together. Mal, armed to the nines, pretending to be a guard but really trying to get the detainees to trust him so he could get inside information. Meanwhile, Gabe used his extraordinary skills to persuade the “borderline terrorists,” as they used to call the ones who weren’t totally hard-core, to help the United States. And Isadora, the talented and beautiful CIA translator who managed to take Gabe’s mostly off-color words and make them work in Pakistani, Arabic, and Kurdish.

“They weren’t exactly glory days,” Gabe said. “But I was really happy. Proving you can be happy in any shithole if you’re with the right person.”

Mal couldn’t help smiling, just remembering how good Gabe and Isa were together. “She brought out a side in you I don’t think many people see. Tender Gabe.”

“Shut the f*ck up.”

Mal leaned forward. “Love-Note-Leaving Gabe.”

His friend laughed, shaking his head. “Stuck them in our secret cubbyhole in the Country Club like a couple of teenagers.”

“In the benches along the wall.” Mal remembered everything about where they’d done their best work. Dubbed the Country Club, it was more like a lounge, a spacious area where a few particularly talented CIA consultants worked under the relentless watch of Roger Drummand on his pet project of turning detainees into US spies in their own countries. “We used to stash porn in there for when you really needed to make one of those scum-suckers switch sides. Yeah, I remember.”

“That’s not all I stashed,” Gabe said, laughing at a memory. “There’s a beauty of a Beretta Nano in there.”

“What?” Mal choked a laugh. “How the hell did you do that and I didn’t know?”

“I did a lot of things you didn’t know. I was scared something could happen. A riot or uprising. Something that would trap Isadora in that room with a detainee, so I used our note cubby to hide the pistol.”

Mal shook his head. “Ballsy.”

“Those morons couldn’t find a gun if it was stuck up their ass. That pistol is probably still there.” He shifted his gaze to the small window, his smile fading. “And so’s Isadora’s kid, Mal. Somewhere on that f*cking rock. And I know he’s mine.”

He’d never heard Gabe sound so…beaten.

“I’ll help you,” Mal promised. “I won’t be able to bring him back myself, but we’ll find him. We’ll make sure he’s yours. And then we’ll come up with a way to get him to you.”

Gabe gave a tight smile. “And find out what happened to Isadora.”

“Do you know anything at all about how she died?”

“Nothing,” Gabe admitted. “Not one of my few contacts down there knows a thing. Just that she was last living with this Ramos family on a farm. Surely they’ll know what happened to her. Was it natural causes? An accident? Or…retribution against me.”

“No one knew about you two,” Mal said, wanting to take the look of abject pain off Gabe’s face. “Only me.”

“But after she got pregnant?” Gabe shook his head. “If I hadn’t had to leave Gitmo and take down those pricks in Miami, everything would have been different.”

“You were doing your job,” Mal reminded him. “And you saved a lot of lives and stopped a lot of trouble by identifying Cuban spies.”