Chapter One
The hug was so tight Ariana almost choked. “Papi.” She patted her father’s back frantically. “I can’t breathe! Save me, Elliot!” she appealed laughingly to the head of her security detail.
Elliot only smirked at her, folding thickly muscled arms across his broad chest. “A father only gets to see his daughter graduate from medical school once. Plus, it’s been five months since he saw you at Christmas.”
Ariana rolled her eyes at Elliot over her father’s shoulder.
The hug eased, her father pulling back to rain kisses on her forehead and babble on about how proud he was of her. “My baby girl, a doctor.” Raul Monterro wiped at his eyes with a silk handkerchief plucked from the breast pocket of his bespoke Brioni suit. “How your mother would have loved to see this day.”
The reminder made Ariana tear up too, and Elliot discreetly handed her another handkerchief. Her father embraced her again; this time she welcomed it, leaning into him as they shared a moment of still-aching grief.
“Please, sir,” Elliot said after a few moments, his eyes never lingering in one place for long, “it’s very exposed here. Let’s get you both to the car.”
“Of course,” her father nodded, taking Ariana’s hand in his and squeezing it as they walked together, surrounded by a phalanx of guards. “My baby girl, a doctor,” he kept saying proudly.
Until Ariana laughed. “You know it will be five more years at least before I get board certification, Papi. Right now I’m only an intern.”
“Are you not permitted to sign your name Doctor Ariana Monterro?” her father demanded.
“Well, yes,” she conceded.
“Then you are a doctor,” he declared with an air of finality.
Laughing at his determination to take full pride in her achievement and honestly feeling rather proud of herself in that moment, she slipped into the rear seat of the car beside him. Elliot drove, her father’s own senior agent, Ramón Gutierrez, seated beside him with the others in a small convoy of cars around them. They were headed for the Guàlizean Embassy, of course. While Ariana lived in her own very comfortable apartment in Georgetown, her security team occupying the apartments on either side, having her father stay with her was out of the question. The Minister of Justice for Guàlize was too high-profile a target to risk at such a low-security location.
“Tell me how things are at home, Papi,” Ariana requested as the limousine purred smoothly along. “It’s been such a long time. Eighteen months,” her tone was wistful. Even though her father came to the States three or four times a year and always made sure he carved time out of his busy schedule to spend with her, he always insisted Guàlize was too restless right now for her to come home.
“Good.” He nodded. “You read that we finally captured that idiot who was trying to incite a rebellion? Well, the movement fell apart without Duarte, and the countryside is peaceful again.”
“That’s wonderful, Papi!” She hugged his arm happily then put on her best hopeful look. “So, since my residency at Johns Hopkins doesn’t start for another six weeks, perhaps I can come home to visit for a while?”
He hesitated, shook his head with a regretful purse of his lips. “There are still threats, Ari.”
“There will always be threats. That’s why I have Elliot and my team, isn’t it?” She had long since accepted the necessity for her to live under high security and constant scrutiny. After her mother’s death, she welcomed her team’s devoted protection, but she refused to live in fear.
“You have to arrange the move into your new apartment…” Raul was losing the argument, and he was well aware of it as she gave him a direct look.
“Papi. I’m coming home. Once my residency begins, I’ll be working eighty or hundred-hour weeks, and vacation days will be few and far between. I want to spend some time with you before that begins. It’s been too long since I was home.” She missed Guàlize desperately. While she had long since resigned herself to completing her studies and her residency in the United States, she still dreamed of one day returning home and applying her hard-earned skills as a doctor to improve the lot of her own people.
He sighed. “You’ll let Elliot make the arrangements?”
He’d already acquiesced; she’d expected it to take several more minutes of wheedling. Ariana smiled, victorious, as Elliot glanced into the rear-view mirror and nodded, an assurance to her father that he would always ensure Ariana’s safety.
“Of course, Papi,” she said demurely. “Whatever you say.”
* * *
The travel arrangements included a private jet, as was standard. A commercial flight was out of the question, and certainly nobody outside a very small circle of trusted agents was aware that Ariana was going to Guàlize at all. Raul had arranged for two weeks of vacation from his governmental duties, and they planned to travel to their family’s private estate an hour’s helicopter flight from Guàlize City as soon as her plane arrived to enjoy a pleasant holiday in each other’s company.
Clearly excited, Ariana kicked off her shoes as soon as they boarded the jet and had to be told three times by Elliot to sit down and fasten her seatbelt.
“I’d think you were sixteen, not twenty-six, if I hadn’t seen how much knowledge you’ve crammed into your head in the last few years. Now sit down so we can take off!” He put a firm hand on her shoulder, pressing her down into her seat.
She smiled up at him, her brown eyes alight with excitement. “I’m just so excited to be going home, Ell!”
“I know.” He settled into the seat opposite her and buckled his own belt. “But we’ve still got a five-hour flight to Guàlize City and then another hour in the helicopter, so settle the hell down or you’ll drive me insane.”
She laughed and obeyed, temporarily at least, until the jet had taken off and ascended to cruising altitude. Then she was up again, full of boundless energy to work off. She took long strides up and down the aisle, pausing to chatter excitedly with Emma, the only member of her security detail who hadn’t yet visited Guàlize and was almost as excited about the trip as Ariana herself.
Elliot sighed and settled deeper into his seat, his eyes following Ariana fondly. She was like a younger sister to him, and his wife, Mara, mothered her incessantly, always encouraging her to eat better, get more rest. Thinking of Mara, he smiled quietly to himself. She hadn’t been able to accompany them to Guàlize just now, as she was unable to get the vacation days from work, but she would follow in a week on a commercial flight. Raul was even lending them the Monterro beach house for a week-long getaway that Elliot was looking forward to, knowing he could trust Raul’s own highly-trained security team to protect Ariana just as fervently as he would himself.
“We must have champagne to celebrate!” Ariana declared then. “Tomàs, open a bottle — or two! Everybody should have some!”
Tomàs, a former FBI agent, looked to Elliot for confirmation. He glanced at his watch, smiled, and nodded. “Yes, everyone have a glass. It’ll be long out of our bloodstream by the time we land.”