Chapter Three
The day Mom took me to my great-aunt's house (a real aunt, not like 'Uncle' Oscar), she told me it was only for a little while. I might've only been ten, but I could tell that even she didn't believe that. I begged her not to leave me there, promised to be good and to never hit anyone ever again - you get the picture. She told me I was a good girl and it wasn't because of me at all; she and Dad had an important job to do overseas, helping people. Then she hugged me, and she was gone.
God, I hated her - and Dad - for that! "Helping people"? Who were these faceless people and why did they matter more than I did? It took me far too long to realize that the person they were helping and protecting was me. It cost them dearly, cut them both clear to the core, but it was the most loving and unselfish decision they could have made.
Jaime did follow her husband overseas. Within a matter of days, they were both deep under cover, with Jaime inside one of the tightest, least visible and cruelest terror cells then in existence. Their name, loosely translated, meant 'Blood and Death'. It would be nearly a year before Jenna saw her father again, and almost 18 months before the whole family of three was reunited.
While Steve was able to slip right into his role with the terrorists, it was much more difficult - and more dangerous - for Jaime. In order to get even a toe in the door of the men-only death faction in a male dominant society, she had to play it smarter, faster and stronger than any of the men she aimed to join. Her role became that of a fierce female leader, as evil and ugly on the inside as she was beautiful on the outside, and she played it masterfully. What she couldn't have known was that her mission was doomed before it began and she never even had a chance.
Jaime had been double-crossed: her information and identity sold by a traitor from her own country for a very high price. While she believed she was spending the first few weeks building a rock-solid cover, she was already being offered for sale to the highest bidder. It had been decided that, while Jaime held innumerable government secrets in her head, she was too great a danger to her comrades/captors if she decided to resist, so she was to be put to death and her body, with bionics intact, delivered to the purchasers.
Steve was aware of none of this; he didn't even know his wife was in the country. It was only through sheer luck and coincidence that he was passing through her base city on the night before she was to be killed. He was now firmly established in the area's underground intelligence network and thus heard rumblings about the woman who would soon make the group she'd joined very, very rich. The little voice in his head that Steve had learned to listen to screamed out, loud and clear: JAIME!