Though, unpleasant as he tried to be, he seemed like anything but an enemy. Could he possibly be another undercover agent? One of General Reyes’s men, perhaps? He was certainly fluent enough in Spanish.

She blurted out before she could stop herself. “Who are you?”

Her rescuer seemed startled by the question at first, then more like…uncomfortable with it. “Just a guy,” he growled, shifting his shoulders against the back of the seat as if they itched. “A guy trying to mind his own business. And make a living-” he jabbed a finger angrily in her direction “-which you aren’t making easy to do, sister.”

Ellie sat back with an exhalation, suddenly feeling deflated, flattened by the weight of guilt. “I’m sorry about the paintings,” she said, her eyes on the beach, crowded at this hour with sunbathers. “I really am. I-I’ll pay you for them.” Well, the government would, probably. But she would feel better knowing they had. “It’s the least-”

“No. That’s not the least, sister, not by a long shot. The least you can do is tell me what the hell’s-”

But at that point Ellie jerked straight up in her seat, her brain belatedly registering what she’d been staring at. “Is this-” she croaked, “-is this beach topless?”

The man beside her turned his head to glare wickedly at her, lips stretched in a mirthless grin around the cigarette clamped between his teeth. “Yeah, it is-why?” Before she could answer he gave a bark of laughter and tossed the cigarette out the window in a gesture of pure frustration. “Lady, I can’t figure you out, I really can’t. One minute there you are, involved in business transactions with thugs in a slum dive I wouldn’t take my worst enemy-or my ex-wife-to, and the next you’re doing this little Miss-Goody-Two-Shoes-from-Iowa number and expecting me to buy it.”

“I’m not expecting you to buy anything,” she shot back, both stung and embarrassed. It had been a long time since she’d felt like such a little hick. “It’s just that-I thought-well, isn’t it illegal here?”

Staring straight ahead, he lifted an indifferent shoulder. “Technically, I suppose. This is a pretty laid-back town. Who’s going to file a complaint?” He shot her a glance that was half challenge, half contempt. “You?”

“Of course not.” Ooh, she was really starting to dislike this guy-rescuer or not. Temper simmered, then exploded. “Oh wait-I get it. You brought me here on purpose, didn’t you? Just to make me uncomfortable. To get me to talk, I suppose. What-I’m supposed to get so flustered I’ll spill all my dirty little secrets?”

He let his gaze drop slowly, appraisingly to her chest. Inexplicably and in spite of her anger, she felt her nipples contract. Then he looked away again, with that shrug of indifference that to Ellie was more incendiary than a slap. “Never occurred to me. Frankly, my dear, I didn’t even think about it. It was just a good place to park.”

“Well, it’s not going to work,” Ellie snapped, ignoring that. “I grew up on a farm. I’ve lived on fishing boats and in tents. You think I’m going to go all wimpy at the sight of a few bare boobs? Listen, I’ve probably seen more stuff than you have, buster.”

He was looking at her again, this time with eyebrows raised and blue eyes glinting in what appeared, unbelievably, to be amusement. A fan of laugh lines had deepened at their corners. Something about those eyes made Ellie’s anger evaporate as quickly as it had come, like the rain puddles back home on a hot summer’s day.

“Besides,” she said on a grudging exhalation, settling back in her seat, “it wouldn’t have been necessary. I was going to explain.”

“So…explain,” he said softly.

So…explain. But it came back to the same question: How much could she say? How far could she trust him? She couldn’t possibly tell him everything. Where should she begin?

It was getting warm in the car. She pulled off her sun visor and laid it carefully in her lap, lifted her arms and raked her fingers through her hair, then rolled down her window and closed her eyes as a damp ocean breeze stirred the hair on her temples. She could feel it tightening into corkscrew curls. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that the man-beach bum, artist, rescuer, whoever he was-was gazing in fascination at her hair, at those very same curls.

What was the matter with the man, she wondered? With all those naked bodies out there, right in front of him, he was looking at her…at her hair, yet? A moment ago he’d been gazing at her breasts, erect nipples and all, with complete boredom. Just now, the look in his eyes had been that of a starving man at a banquet-hall window.

It suddenly struck her how small the car was…how close to him she was sitting. She felt much too warm. Claustrophobic. Her heart was beating much too fast-faster even than in the cantina, facing those three smugglers.

She half turned in her seat and pulled up a knee, making a little more space between them. “First,” she said, clearing her throat, “I just want to remind you that I did not ask you to show up in that cantina today.” She narrowed her eyes and fired the question, much like a cat pouncing. “Why did you, by the way?” He didn’t answer immediately, just shifted his gaze slightly to meet hers. Uncomfortable again, she mumbled, “Not that I’m sorry you did, you understand. I’d just like to know what you were doing there. It is kind of odd…”

He waved that off with a grimmace. “Coincidence. Heard you talking to the taxi driver.” And now it was he who seemed uncomfortable.

“And you just…decided to follow me?”

He muttered defensively under his breath, shifting in that irritable way he had. “Well, hell, I thought I’d better. You were heading for a dangerous part of town.” He halted to stare fixedly through the windshield, eyes narrowed in an angry squint.

But for some reason Ellie found herself remembering how blue those eyes were…how clear and clean. Remembering a look she’d caught in them once or twice. Now she wondered if the look could possibly have been…compassion.

What a strange man he is, she thought. So rude and cranky, determined to seem crude and cynical, and yet…

“Do you really have a husband?” he asked suddenly, turning his head to look at her.

It seemed two could play the cat-and-mouse game. Caught by surprise, she answered quickly, “Yes, of course.” Too quickly. Too breathlessly. She could feel the heat of the lie in her cheeks, and looked away, fighting for composure. “He…he was supposed to go with me, you see-yesterday evening, too. We both thought it was just a stomach upset-you know, the turista thing? But then last night they had to fly him to Florida for emergency surgery. Appendicitis.”

“So, you decided you’d go it alone.” He spoke very quietly, staring straight ahead again, only his staccato fingers on the steering wheel betraying inner turmoil. “Jeez. Must have been some important business.”

Ellie nodded eagerly. “Oh, it was. We’d been working for months to set up a meeting. That’s why I couldn’t just let it all be for nothing.”

“Uh-huh.” He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a battered pack of cigarettes, tapped one out, put it in his mouth and lit it. When he had everything stored away in his pocket again, he settled back, blew smoke carefully out the window and said in a gravelly voice, “So tell me-what was it you were buying with that wad of cash?”

“I told you-it’s not drugs,” Ellie said stiffly.

“Not drugs?”

“That I promise you.” But he held her eyes, refusing to let it go at that, and after a tense few moments more she folded. “Animals,” she said on a gust of released breath.

“Animals?” He repeated the word as if he’d never heard it before.

She nodded. “Birds…reptiles…you know. Some of them are very rare, and worth a lot of money. A lot.” She paused, and when he continued to stare at her in frowning incomprehension, added lamely, “I told you last night, remember? We own a pet shop. In Portland, Oregon.”

“Rare…” he said slowly, as if he hadn’t heard that. “As in…endangered?”

“Well, some maybe, but-”

“As in…illegal?”

She could feel the warmth in her cheeks again. “Oh, I wouldn’t know about that,” she hurriedly said. “The important thing is that these animals are being shipped regardless-”

“Smuggled, you mean.”

“-and most of them die en route. Because the people who do the…shipping…don’t know anything about animals, you see? My husband and I do know about animals. So, we thought, if we could go directly to the source-”

“The source.”

She really wished he’d stop repeating everything she said. “That’s right-the man in charge of shipping-”

“The head smuggler, you mean.”

Ellie just looked at him, fighting hard to hold on to her temper. “That envelope he gave you back there in the cantina,” she said, speaking slowly and carefully. “It should have the instructions-directions, I mean-for the meeting. Maybe a map. If we’re supposed to be at the meeting place by day after tomorrow… By the way, can I see it, please?”

Her rescuer parked his cigarette between his teeth and pulled the envelope from his shirt pocket. “You mean this one?” But instead of handing it over he just went on holding the envelope and looking at her, an odd, wary look in his eyes.

Almost as if he was waiting for something.

She held out her hand. “Yes-can I see it? We have to-” And that was when it hit her.

“Oh…no…” she whispered. She felt herself go cold.

Her companion took a long drag from his cigarette and said mildly, “Just who in the hell is this we, Kemo Sabe? You and your husband?” His lips had a sardonic tilt, but the glint in his eyes was anything but amused. “Ah-that’s right.” He snapped his fingers. “According to you, he’s in a hospital somewhere in Florida. Man, I hope he heals fast. But then…”

He’d been wondering when it was going to occur to her.

She’d clamped a hand over her mouth. Now she peeled it away, leaving a white, pinched look around her lips and the imprint of fingers on her flaming cheeks. Her voice was uneven, hushed with dismay. “As far as those guys are concerned, you’re my husband.”

“Uh-uh,” said McCall flatly, shaking his head. “Don’t even think about it, sister.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again without saying anything. Just went on looking at him. Looked at him for so long those golden eyes of hers seemed to shimmer. It struck him suddenly that begging and pleading weren’t in this woman’s repertoire. That asking for-even needing-help would never be easy for her.

It also struck him that the fact she’d had to accept his help, not once but three times, meant that he was probably never going to make it on to her top ten list of favorite people. He didn’t know why he minded that, but he did.

“What are you looking for?”

She’d dragged her handbag onto her lap and was rummaging around in it like a hungry dog digging for a bone.

“Chocolate,” she said shortly, without looking up. “I don’t suppose…ah!” She fished a small plastic bag with several foil-wrapped lumps in it out of the depths of the purse and held it up with an air of triumph that reminded him of himself, out of smokes and discovering a lost pack with a couple of bent and crumpled cigarettes still left in it.

He watched with a kind of revolted fascination as she unwrapped one of the lumps.

“Damn-melted…” She made a face at the brown goo that had oozed out of the foil, but managed to suck the mess into her mouth-most of it, anyway. She carefully licked her fingers, then her lips, and crumpled the foil into a tiny ball before diving back into the bag for another lump. She repeated the whole process for the second chocolate, then a third, each time returning the foil wrapper to the plastic bag after it had been licked clean of chocolate. Then she briefly closed her eyes, took a deep breath and paused, before finally dropping the plastic bag back into her purse.

“So? Some people smoke,” she said pointedly when she looked over and saw him staring at her. “I eat chocolate-so what?”

“Hey,” he said with a shrug, “whatever works.” But he hoped she hadn’t noticed the way he kept swallowing. He for sure hoped she never guessed how the sight of those ripe-cherry lips of hers drenched in melted chocolate was making his mouth water.

He had his hand on the ignition key when she said quietly, “I’d pay you. Very well. There’s a lot at stake…”

“A lot of money, you mean.”

She jerked her head to give him a sharp, almost guilty look. “Of course, what did you think I meant? Yes, there’s a lot of money involved. I-my husband and I-would be willing to split it with you-” she paused, and he could see her thinking it over “-three ways.”