On the Loose by Tara Janzen

to.
    â€œNo.”
    Dammit.
    â€œWhy not? And don’t bother to tap your foot; I expect an answer this time.”
    â€œIt’s my chip,” Honey said after a moment, not sounding any too happy with his ultimatum. “The only chip I’ve got, my bargaining chip to get into El Salvador and up into Morazán.”
    Yeah, he’d figured as much, and the “incriminating” photographs be damned. It probably took a helluva lot more than the CIA and the United States State Department to intimidate Honoria York-Lytton. And she was right about the briefcase. It was her bargaining chip, all hers. He’d asked Dobbs for the combination, but Dobbs hadn’t known it, and the chief of station hadn’t at all liked being reminded of the fact.
    â€œWhatever is inside the briefcase isn’t yours,” Smith said, stating what he was sure was another unpopular fact.
    â€œNo, but the ability to
get
whatever is in it is mine, and this briefcase doesn’t get opened until I get what I want.”
    â€œWhich is?”
    She hesitated.
    â€œHonoria?”
    â€œMy sister,” she snapped. “Face-to-face. So I can see she’s safe.”
    Finally, the truth came out, not that it was exactly a news flash.
    â€œWhere is she?”
    â€œShe was assigned to St. Joseph Orphanage and School near Cristobal, but I’ve been told she spends a lot of time at the CNL camp up on the Torola River.”
    â€œTold by who?”
    Honey’s expression, which hadn’t been happy to begin with, turned even grimmer. “Diego Garcia.”
    â€œThat was the correspondence?”
    â€œYes,” she admitted.
    Well, hell.
    â€œWhen was the last time you heard from her directly?”
    â€œThe last time I saw her. The morning you put me on the plane.”
    Well.
    Hell.
    Smith wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and stared at the pallet.
    The damn guerrilla camp.
    â€œWhat about the priest in San Luis? The one who was in the room with you, and Julia, and Garcia. Father Bartolo? Right? He must be in contact with her.”
    â€œFather Bartolo has washed his hands of the nuns at St. Joseph. They’ve defied the church by continuing to support the CNL. He says he can’t afford to be associated with them. It’s too dangerous, so he’s turned them over to the priest in Cristobal.”
    That rankled. The guy sure hadn’t had any trouble taking the money and handing it over like he’d been the one to come up with a quarter of a million dollars for the “Liberators.”
    â€œYou need to let me go in alone and close the deal. I’ll find Julia and bring her back to Campos’s.”
    â€œThat won’t work.”
    Yes, it would. Smith was very good at finding people and bringing them back, from wherever to wherever, clean deals, every one. He had a dozen of them to his credit.
    â€œWhy not?” he asked, which turned out to be a surprisingly difficult question to answer. After about a minute of watching her mind work without a word coming out of her mouth, he began to wonder if he was going to get an answer. Any answer.
    â€œI have reason to believe,” she started to say, then stopped for another couple of seconds, before beginning again. “It’s possible Julia doesn’t want to leave the CNL camp.”
    â€œBecause?” She needed to help him out a bit on that one.
    But she wasn’t going to help him out on it. He could tell by the silence. It went on, and on, and on.
    Hell. If Honey got hurt, Smith was going to have a hard time living with himself, but had anyone in Washington, D.C., thought of that when they’d gotten this ball rolling? And did they give a damn?
    Finally, two questions he could answer on his own, the first with “It didn’t matter,” and the second with “No,” no one gave a damn if Honey got hurt. Despite her net worth and family connections, he was afraid all the