Chapter 33
Rocco inhaled a sharp breath and gazed at the dark beauty.
Jemma leaned against the side of the Jeep, a cute frown between her eyebrows as she gazed at a GPS map on the tablet. The Samana Peninsula was breathtaking, but it didn’t hold a candle to the woman standing before him.
Dressed in a white t-shirt and khaki cargo shorts, Jemma crossed one long leg over the other. Her deep brown skin shimmered under the noon sun. Less than twelve hours ago, he’d been balls deep inside of her, having the best sex of his life. Not how he’d envisioned their first time together, but he sure as fuck wasn’t complaining. Three years ago, he’d thought having sex with her would free him of the strings that tethered them. Prove that she was no different from other women.
Problem was … Jemma was different.
They’d long since crossed an emotional intimacy line with each other. It had only been a matter of time before the physical intimacy followed. And he liked the effect it had on Jemma. She was more relaxed with him, accepting and open to the idea that maybe they could be … something.
A single ground rule had been made clear and reiterated between them this morning—whatever was going on between them was to be kept a secret. The Proteus team could never discover that the fake relationship had taken on some very real relationship activities.
Jemma gazed up at him. “Stop staring and help me.”
“You’re too beautiful, I couldn’t help myself.”
“Focus, Forrester,” Jemma said, ignoring his attempts to flirt. She was in full Proteus supervisor mode, unable to be distracted.
“The only thing of value that Proteus found on Eddie’s cell phone was a cryptic text with these coordinates,” Jemma said, then turned the tablet toward him.
The cell phone had been Eddie’s personal burner. Phone logs and text messages were tracked and traced to known people in his life—friends, lovers, local businesses in San Juan. Nothing interesting in the text messages, mainly sexting and casual conversations, except for the one text message with the coordinates.
Whatever phone he used for drug operations, it wasn’t this one.
Jemma continued, “Based on the satellite images, it’s a spot in the middle of a dense jungle. There are a few trails that could get us close, then we’d need to make our own way to the spot from there.”
Rocco glanced at the screen, noting the three trails Jemma had found. Growing up traversing the El Yunque mountains in Puerto Rico, he was skilled at identifying which trails would present the least challenges. The most important thing was to get to the coordinates quickly to determine what was there. He pointed to the screen and said, “That’s the trail we want. It’s closer to the streams and will avoid the extreme elevation changes on the other routes.”
Jemma looked impressed. “Works for me.” She grabbed two backpacks from the Jeep, tossed one at him, and put the other on. “Looks like we have a three-hour hike ahead of us, so let’s get going.”
Rocco fell into step next to her as they entered the trail, leaving the crashing waves and sandy beach behind for the coolness of the rainforest jungle.
They walked along, debating possibilities for Eddie’s role within the cartel and what they might find when they reached the coordinates. Eddie had established a powerful connection that was likely out of reach to El Sombro for some reason. It was the only logical explanation for why El Sombro would be willing to do business with the leader of a small drug gang from San Juan.
But Rocco had to admit Eddie had changed in the three years since he’d left Puerto Rico. He wasn’t the same brash, selfish, and risky informant Rocco remembered. The man had grown in age and experience, becoming more savvy and well-connected.
Rocco said, “Eddie was smug with Dante last night. He emphasized that he has a special relationship with El Sombro that he wants others to respect. You’ve spent most of your career monitoring the players in the global drug trade. Any ideas on who Eddie could know that El Sombro doesn’t?”
“No,” Jemma snapped. “If I did, I would’ve shared the information.”
“Hey,” Rocco grabbed her arm to stop her from walking away. “I didn’t mean it like that. I know you wouldn’t withhold anything from the investigation. But I also know that some ideas are such long shots that it may not be worth sending the team down a rabbit hole to look into. That’s all I meant.”
Jemma relaxed. “Sorry. I’m anxious for us to get a real break in this op. Something we can dig into and use to take El Sombro down.”
“These coordinates could be it,” Rocco said. “Any evidence that Eddie went to this location?”
She shook her head. “He has elite-level encryption and security protection. Location tracking is masked and diverted through thousands of points, making it impossible to use his phone to find his location.”
“Unless a tracker app was loaded onto it,” Rocco said. “Wish we’d thought of doing that before I got the phone back to him last night.”
“Yeah, too bad we didn’t think to do that,” Jemma said, looking away. “We can’t put all of our eggs in Eddie’s basket. This connection angle could be a dead end. We still have the shipments to the clinic, which could be a faster way of getting the evidence.”
“Faster …” Rocco said. “I don’t know about that.”
“This mission has dragged on for over three years.” Jemma turned to face him, her hands resting against the sexy curves of her hips. “We need to find a way to wrap this up. Now.”
Rocco bit back a smile. “What’s with the sudden urgency?”
“What do you mean?” Jemma’s eyes grew wide.
“You’ve preached patience for this op, defending it, and me, to your boss for the past three years, which I appreciate. Getting them to go along with putting me on the undercover assignment wasn”t easy. Tank told me the lengths you went through to make it happen, despite what …” he inhaled a deep breath but surprisingly felt none of the usual tension when he thought about his dad’s murder.
“The police files in the brown envelope,” Jemma said, her features softening as she stepped closer to him. “I shouldn’t have tried to push you to talk about your dad.”
“My dad’s murder is the single hardest thing I’ve gone through in my entire life,” Rocco said, a peace settling over him at sharing this part of himself with Jemma. He didn’t just want to. He needed to.
The connection building between them wasn’t a fling or temporary thing for him. He wanted to explore a future with her, however that might look. Letting Jemma into his life, the good and the bad, was a necessary first step.
One he hoped would also help her open up more to him.
“You don’t have to talk about it.”
“No one had ever called me out on the statement I’d given the police back then. The lies I told.”
“You saw him being murdered, didn’t you. You didn’t just find his body. You saw it happen,” Jemma said.
“Yeah, I did,” Rocco admitted. “I didn’t see his killer. The guy was in the shadows. There’s no way I could’ve identified him for the police, but I knew he was a big-time drug dealer, and he’d been putting pressure on my dad to allow drugs to be sold out of the clinic. My dad stood up to them and got his head blown off for it.”
“Rocco, I’m so sorry.”
“In my head, I know an eleven-year-old kid couldn’t have done a damn thing to stop it from happening,” Rocco said, then dragged his hands down his face. “But in my heart, I can’t help but play out thousands of scenarios of things I could’ve done differently that might have kept my dad alive.”
“You can’t torture yourself that way,” Jemma said, slipping her hands around his waist.
He was instantly soothed and comforted by her touch. Rocco pulled her closer, their bodies pressed against each other.
“I have no doubts that your dad’s only concern was for your safety. He wouldn’t change a damn thing because he’s looking down on you from heaven and is so proud of the man you’ve become. How you’ve dedicated your life to fighting men like the bastard who took his life.”
“That’s why it doesn’t bother me that I’ve spent three years on this op. I’ve helped the DEA piece together details of El Sombro’s operation that we didn’t have before. I’ll spend another three years, if that’s what it takes, to ensure we put him behind bars,” Rocco said.
Jemma bit her bottom lip. “Even if that means putting the rest of your life on hold?”
“The rest of my life? Or my life with you?” Rocco asked.
“Always straight to the point, aren’t you?” Jemma said, a nervous laugh escaping her lips. “This thing between us, this … “ Jemma huffed.
He swore he could see a blush creeping across her soft brown skin.
“Relationship is the word you’re searching for,” Rocco said, taking another opportunity to emphasize how serious his feelings were becoming for her.
A flash of panic crossed her face.
“Jemma—”
“No, get down,” Jemma whispered, pulling him to the ground. She pointed through a dense copse of trees, then yanked binoculars from her backpack.
Rocco grabbed his and pointed them in the direction Jemma was focused on. Twisting the binoculars to get a better focus, he understood what had gotten her attention.
Through the fauna, there was a distinct clearing of land that hadn’t shown up on any of the satellite images they’d obtained. Dust rose in the air as a convoy of black luxury SUVs pulled to a stop. The doors opened, and armed bodyguards exited, followed by three men.
“Well, look at what we have here,” Rocco muttered as Vance Neville and Eddie Baez came into view. There was a third man with them, one who looked familiar to Rocco, but he couldn’t place from where. “Do you recognize the guy with Vance and Eddie?”
“No, I don’t,” Jemma whispered back. “But I’ll get some photos and see if Proteus can identify him.”
Rocco lowered his binoculars and glanced at Jemma. “What do you think this place is?”
“If I had one guess, it’s a future staging area for drug trafficking,” Jemma said, lowering her binoculars. “The image feeds are being hacked to make it look like the jungle is still here when it’s not. Maybe the connection El Sombro wanted from Eddie was a place, not a person.”
Rocco said, “An area that El Sombro thinks is off the radar of any law enforcement. All we’d need is a schedule of when drugs will flow through here, and we could bust his operations wide open.”
Jemma said, “Perhaps the shipments moving through the clinic are the key to getting that intel.”