Maybe, after she was married, she could find a way to escape the younger Henry Thomas. She could run away in the dark of night and catch a plane to Colombia. Alexa might still be alive, and if she was, Eliza would find her and they would be roommates like they had dreamed of being. It could still happen.
And if she couldn’t find Alexa, then Eliza would move to the South of France or somewhere in Sweden. An unassuming place, cold and clean. But one thing was certain. If Eliza could escape her forced marriage, if she couldn’t reunite with her friend, then she would live alone all the days of her life. She would never fall in love, never give herself willingly to a man as long as she drew breath. Her life would be hers and hers alone. And she would certainly never have a baby.
Not in a world that cared so little for children.
If she could escape her groom, she would get a job waiting tables, so she could make enough money to survive. And she would spend the rest of her life reveling in the one thing she desperately wanted. The thing she hadn’t had since her mama brought her and Daniel to Belize City.
Freedom.
Her swimming time was over. Eliza lifted her eyes to the blue sky. Whatever happened to the teenage boy? The one who had rescued her? Couldn’t he tell she didn’t want to be dragged from the ocean that day? The water was her sanctuary. Beneath the water would’ve been even better.
Eliza wiped the water from her eyes. She could see the guards on the hillside, getting restless, watching her, adjusting their heavy black rifles. “I’m coming,” she whispered. She made her way onto the shore and pulled her wet blond hair into a knot at the back of her head.
The future of her father’s dynasty depended on her obedience.
Eliza slipped into her cover-up, and climbed the path built into the edge of the mountain. Halfway up on a narrow plateau she met the guards, and without saying a word, they fell in behind her and followed her to the biggest of the Palace bedrooms.
Top dollar deserved top accommodations. That’s what her father always told her. And even though she’d never been with a man, her time was coming. Nine days from now.
Once Eliza was inside her room, when the door was shut, she thought of Alexa again. What if her father did have her killed and what if he’d gotten his money back? What if Henry Thomas was even meaner than her father? If that was the case, Eliza was ready.
She opened the top drawer of her armoire and sifted through her silk underclothes. Wrapped in a camisole at the bottom was a butcher knife. One she’d stolen from the kitchen late at night a week ago.
When she got married and left this place, the knife would be tucked into her suitcase, next to the cash her father was going to give her. If Henry Thomas tried to harm her or sell her… if his guards did anything to her, she would kill them.
Then she’d be on the next flight out of Belize.
CHAPTER FOUR
At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail.
—Job 14:7
Jack Ryder didn’t care if he died.
That was why he was the best special agent in the San Antonio FBI. Jack took chances where other agents were careful. He was bold where the rest shrank back. He lived for the mission. At twenty-six, his superiors all told him the same thing.
They’d never had an agent like him.
Jack was a chameleon. He could grow out his beard and get intel on a Middle Eastern weapons cache. Cut his hair and shave and work undercover drug busts at a high school. Wear tennis shoes and ripped-up jeans and fit in on any college campus.
Since his twenty-third birthday, Jack had been working for the FBI, and in the past few years he’d moved to undercover missions, one after another. Oliver had told him that agents who joined the bureau younger than age twenty-five rarely lasted, and that typically an agent had to be at least thirty to succeed at undercover work.
At every point, Jack was the exception.
Lately his missions were focused on international drug and sex-trafficking rings that also did business in the United States. The missions were getting more dangerous. That was okay with Jack. If there was a God, He had intended Jack for this job alone.
He gripped the wheel of his black Ford Explorer and stared at the road. To get to the FBI office in San Antonio, Jack had to drive past a cemetery. He made it a practice not to look. Better to keep his attention on the living, the ones who needed rescuing.
Cemeteries made him feel. And according to his personal rules, feelings were a sign of weakness, a waste of constructive time and energy, forbidden. Period.
It was Thursday, the first of July, and his meeting was on the fourth floor, where the most sensitive missions came together. Jack wore dark pants and a black belt, the white button-down shirt and navy tie and jacket—a size up to conceal his pistol.
FBI standard fare when Jack wasn’t on a mission.
Martha Lou Henderson sat at the desk by the elevator. She’d worked there a hundred years at least, and trustworthy didn’t begin to describe her. The woman didn’t blink as Jack swept his badge beneath the sensor. Only when the light flashed blue did she smile. “Morning, Jack.”
“You’re still not sure it’s me.”
“Nope.” She grinned. “And I feel that way about your boss. And his boss.” She pressed four
