by Anne Stuart
Helplessly Maddy turned back to Richard. “Tell Jake—”
Richard put a hand across her mouth, gently, silencing her. “Jake knows,” he said. “Believe me, he knows.”
There was nothing more she could do. She looked up for a moment at the crumbling hacienda, wondering if Jake was up there, watching her. There was no way she could tell.
“Get in the jeep, gringa, or be left behind,” Soledad said in a chilly voice.
“Don’t give her that choice, mi amor,” Carlos said. “She’d much prefer to die in the jungle than find her way safely back to California. Wouldn’t you?”
Maddy didn’t bother to answer him. She took Ramon’s hand and climbed into the back of the ancient jeep. The last thing she saw as they drove away was El Nabo’s sympathetic, apologetic smile beneath the haunted eyes of a murderer.
Sam Lambert’s bedroom was dark and musty, the early-morning sunlight barely making an inroad in the murky stillness. Jake stood at the far window, looking down into the overgrown courtyard, at the jeep that was already packed to overflowing with Soledad’s trunks.
Maddy came out, following Carlos with that spurious docility, and Jake knew a moment’s wry amusement. With Ramon there to back her up, she wasn’t about to take any crap from the Jackal. He would have liked to hear how she put Carlos in his place.
He would have liked to have been in Carlos’s place. But that was out of the question. There was no way he could leave, no way he could abandon the people who’d depended on him for so long, not even when things were so close to the end. So he had to watch her leave, unable to stop her, not even daring to say good-bye. Because he knew damned well that if he’d stayed in bed that morning, if he’d told her himself that she was leaving, he wouldn’t have been able to let her go. She’d been in his soul, his blood for fourteen years now and last night had only put the seal on it. He’d left her once, and now he was forcing her to leave him and there was nothing he could do about it.
He stared down the three flights at Maddy’s proud, elegant carriage, at the long legs and the elegant tilt of her head, and he felt the customary tightening in his gut, combined with something a little more spiritual. He’d betrayed her, of course. There was no way he was going to let Sam Lambert use her any more than he already had. He’d kept her away from Sam at the end, and he knew Maddy would never forgive him for that.
And she might never forgive him for sending her away. Last night had been a mistake, of course, but one that was predestined since the beginning of time. But God knew, it only made the parting worse.
The jeep started up, and he watched it rumble down the narrow track into the northern, denser part of the jungle. She looked up then, and for a moment he thought she was looking directly at him, and the clear brown eyes behind the thin glasses were shining with tears. Then he realized she was looking at her father’s bedroom, not at him at all, and he swore, softly, fluently, feeling helpless for the first time in years.
Then they were gone, out of sight in the murky undergrowth. He watched for a moment longer and then turned on his heel, walking out of the room, past the empty hospital bed, down the shell-shattered staircase.
It seemed to Maddy as if they’d been traveling for days. The morning sun had seared through the mist, scorching down on them in the uncovered jeep, strong enough to give Maddy a blinding headache, not strong enough to evaporate the suffocating humidity that made every breath a torture.
No one had said a word about food, and despite the empty gnawing in her stomach, Maddy didn’t bother to ask. Leaning back against the uncomfortable seat, she shut her eyes to the blinding glare, thinking back to the night before.
“Did Jake show you a good time?” Soledad asked suddenly from the front seat, swiveling around to bestow a sunny, malicious smile on her stepdaughter.
“Go to hell,” Maddy said, not bothering to open her eyes.
“I’m only asking out of concern for you,” Soledad persisted. “After all, coming on top of such a shock, I’m surprised you felt in the mood for Jake’s brutish charms.”
Jake’s charms had been anything but brutish, Maddy thought with a familiar tightening in the pit of her stomach. Then the rest of Soledad’s speech sank in, and Maddy’s eyes flew open.
Carlos had a leering grin on his face as he maneuvered the jeep down the narrow trail that led them farther and farther away from Puente del Norte, and Ramon looked exceedingly uncomfortable as he avoided her gaze. She turned to Soledad, and her expression of spurious concern made her stepdaughter’s strong hands clench into fists.
“What do you mean, such a shock?” she asked in a quiet tone of voice.
Soledad’s mouth dropped in a disconsolate bow, as her black eyes glittered with cheerful mischief. “Why, the death of your father, of course. Not that it was unexpected, but still, these things are always painful.”
Maddy said nothing, and Soledad continued in an airy voice. “Of course I don’t blame you for drowning your pain in the arms of a handsome man. It is, in fact, exactly what I would have done.” The flirting, sidelong glance at Carlos made it more than clear that it had been his task to comfort the grieving widow. “But I don’t know if, in your case, I would have picked the man who kept me from my dying father’s bedside when he was calling for me. But then, we Latins have stronger feelings about family, do we not?”
Maddy sat forward, clutching the back of Soledad’s seat, her clenched fingers only inches away from the silky black hair. She chose her words very carefully through the white-hot haze of fury that surrounded her. “If you don’t explain yourself, clearly, and in detail, Soledad, I will rip out every hair on your head and stuff them down your throat. And that would only be a beginning.”
The violence in her words and feelings shocked her even more than Soledad. Never before had Maddy wanted to hurt another human being like that. It had to be the pervasive effect of the San Pablo revolution, the cheapness of human life, that was destroying her last claims on civilized behavior.
Soledad had paled, pulling forward, but there was no way she could escape Maddy’s reach. “Carlos wouldn’t let you touch me,” she spat back.
“You think not? Look at the grin on his face. I think nothing would entertain him more.”
Soledad slid a sideways glance at the driver, and her self-assured expression faltered. “Surely you don’t mean to tell me that you didn’t know?” she stalled.
“I mean to tell you nothing. What happened? When did my father die?” The heavy gold medallion lay like a stone against her breasts.
“Your father died last night. Surely Jake—”
“When last night?” Maddy interrupted ruthlessly. “Did he die in the shelling?”
“He died a few hours before the shelling began. He was slipping fast all day. We were all there, of course. All except you. He kept calling for you all afternoon, begging Jake to bring you to him. He didn’t care about the rest of us and our deathwatch,” Soledad said with a bitter smile. “He only wanted you.”
“But why wasn’t I called?” Pain and bewilderment had taken the place of rage.
“Because Jake refused. No matter how much the old man begged, Jake wouldn’t let you come to him. Dios, at the end even I was ready to fetch you. But he wouldn’t hear of it.”
“But … why?”
Soledad shrugged her thin shoulders. “Who can say? Jake Murphy is a very complicated man. Maybe he was jealous, or maybe he didn’t trust you after all.” With that Soledad turned back to face the front, pleased with her good deed for the day.
Maddy sat very still in the backseat. She could feel Ramon’s moist, sympathetic eyes on her, but she didn’t turn her gaze to meet them. She sat there, huddled in a cocoon of pain and betrayal, her father’s medallion heavy on her chest, the feel of her lover’s hands still imprinted on her flesh.
Grief combined with a raw fury threatened to tear her apart. Never, never would she forgive Jake for robbing her of her last moments with her father. He’d wanted to t
ell her he loved her, the medallion was proof of that, and Jake had kept her from him. Somehow, someday, she’d repay him for that.
They stopped an hour later, for cold tortillas and the doubtful amenity of the bushes, and then they were on their way again. Maddy spoke not one word, and Soledad seemed content to leave her in peace. In fifteen minutes they were back on the road again, with the full force of the midday sun beating down on them.
It seemed to get no cooler as the day wore on. The steamy heat and bumpy ride put a strain on the three other passengers, so that even Carlos lost his grin. The mosquitoes became worse, and the narrow track precluded the option of outrunning them. They bumped along the miserable track in silence, only the desultory swatting of bugs competing with the uneven chug chug of the jeep’s engine.
“Hey, gringa.” Carlos’s voice broke the silence, and Maddy pulled herself out of her shattered abstraction for a moment to look up. “Does this look any different?”
She gave a cursory glance around her. Some of the tangled undergrowth had thinned, and the narrow track had widened into something more like a road. There was a different smell in the air, fresher, less of decaying vegetation and more of something familiar that she couldn’t quite place. “As a matter of fact, it does. Why?”
“We left San Pablo an hour ago.”
He had her full attention now. “We did? I thought—”
“You thought we were going to have to run for the border, under a blaze of bullets, did you not, gringa?” Carlos looked pleased himself. “This road is not well known, not well traveled.”
“Obviously,” Maddy said.
“That is one reason why I was the one to bring you out.”
“And Ramon?” She cast a look at her silent companion.
“He was Jake’s idea. To make sure I brought you out safely. He’s a very careful man, Jake Murphy.”
“I’m indebted to him,” Maddy said in a low voice, and Soledad chuckled happily.
“We’ll be at the coast in another hour,” Carlos continued. “I’ll be meeting with a friend. He’ll arrange transportation back to the States. There’s a small airport in Puerta Pelota. If you are lucky you may be back in California by tomorrow.”
“It couldn’t,” she said icily, “be too soon.”
“You will not mind me accompanying you, my little daughter?” Soledad purred. “The daughter of El Patrón will receive more attention than his widow. I was never well liked.”
“I wonder why?” Maddy muttered.
“You don’t mind?” Soledad ignored the crack.
“No, I don’t mind,” Maddy said with a sigh. “Just so long as you don’t talk to me. If you do, I’ll do my best to push you out of the airplane.”
“And you always seemed like such a sweet, shy young giant,” Soledad said.
“That one, she’s a tigress,” Carlos announced. “A worthy mate for Jake, whether you like it or not, Soledad.”
Soledad’s smile faded, and she sent a flashing glare in Carlos’s direction. He drove on, unchastened, down the widening track to the ocean.
Puerta Pelota was a larger, and far more prosperous village than Puente del Norte, in a clearly more prosperous country. The clean fresh smell of the ocean, the cool breeze wafting over her face was sheer heaven to Maddy, enough to lift her tortured thoughts from the morass of pain and despair that Soledad’s carefully chosen words had plummeted her into. When Carlos finally pulled up outside of a neat, large residence, she climbed out of the jeep with at least a modicum of determination. The airport that Carlos had promised lay in sight, beyond the building, and if the small, twin-engine airplanes had clearly seen better days, Maddy no longer cared. She would have jumped off the roof in a pair of wax wings if she thought it would take her home faster.
“Señorita,” Ramon whispered next to her. “Don’t listen to everything that one says. There were reasons. …”
Soledad and Carlos had already disappeared into the whitewashed building, and at that moment a loud scream split the late-afternoon air. A woman screamed no over and over again, until the sound of a slap, sharp like the crack of a gunshot, silenced her.
Maddy and Ramon raced into the building. Soledad was huddled on her knees in the middle of the floor, a hand to her cheek, her huge eyes brimming with tears. Carlos stood deep in conversation with a large, balding man, and they were both grim and pale as death.
“What’s happened?” It was Maddy’s voice, sounding strained and not her own, that asked the question.
Carlos looked up at her. There was no trace of a grin on his face, and his lizard eyes were cold and grieving. “Esteban has just had word. The villa was shelled an hour after we left. It took a direct hit. Everyone left inside was killed.”
Maddy could hear Soledad weeping in the background. Ramon stumbled out of the house, away from them, and Maddy felt him leave with a moment of regret. “Are they certain?”
“Absolutely. They’ve identified El Nabo already.” Was that sympathy on the Jackal’s swarthy face? Surely a man with his past was incapable of such emotions. “Esteban has a pilot who’ll be ready within the hour. The sooner you’re gone the better. Both of you.”
Maddy looked down at Soledad’s weeping figure. She felt numb, blessedly removed from the pain and horror that surrounded them. “What about you? Are you coming with us?”
He did smile then. “Why, gringa, one would almost think you liked me after all. No, Ramon and I will go back to Puente del Norte.” He reached out a rough hand and chucked Maddy under the chin. It was a painful gesture, and just what she needed. “We will bury our dead. I’ll say a few words over Murphy for you, shall I?”
It was impossible, Maddy thought, but the sense of inevitability was washing over her, weighing her down. The whole thing had been impossible—the guns, the shelling, the threats. The most impossible of all had been the night she’d spent in Jake’s arms.
The medallion was weighing down around her neck, and for a moment she considered handing it over to Carlos. It had been her father’s most treasured possession and now was hers. But it wasn’t the right thing. She’d held it for too short a time for it to matter.
Reaching down, she pulled the thin silver ring off her grubby hand and gave it to Carlos. Stephen had given it to her a week before he died, and it had never left her hand. It was the only thing she had that connected her to a love that died, and now it was going to another one. “Bury this with him,” she said, her voice raw and quiet.
Carlos nodded. “I will. Go with God, gringa. And if you can help it, never come near my cursed country again.”
Maddy met his gaze with achingly dry eyes. “I won’t. I promise you, I won’t.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Maddy Lambert ran down the last few steps, onto the heat-soaked pavement of Hollywood Boulevard, and moved swiftly up the street toward the parking lot. Her sandaled feet were light on the burning pavement, her sunglasses firmly in place on her small nose, her loose cotton shirt dress wilting under the pressure of the heat and humidity of Los Angeles in late October.
She climbed into her car, a 1966 Alfa Romeo whose eccentricities only made it more lovable, rolled down the windows, and pulled out into the traffic. For a moment she looked down at her slim, tanned hands lightly holding the steering wheel. She could never look at them without remembering Stephen’s ring and where it lay. The weight of the gold medallion couldn’t even begin to compensate.
It had taken six months, she thought, running a hand through her mop of hair. Six months to regain the semblance of a rational, level-headed woman, six months to get past the danger of tears at unexpected moments. The flashes of panic still assailed her, when she was sitting at her desk at the Greater Hollywood Help Network, struggling through the tangled mess of paperwork all grants seemed to require, or sometimes when she walked along the strand, the wide boardwalk running along the ocean, a few short blocks from her little house in Hermosa Beach. She’d feel a shadow behind her and be ready to run, a comple
te, unashamed coward.
But there had been no running from the fact that Jake Murphy was dead. The papers, the television networks, the news magazines, were full of it.
She’d been a fool to run to her mother. When had her mother ever provided her the solace she’d needed? But when she and Soledad finally arrived back in the U.S.—in Houston’s Hobby Airport of all places—she hadn’t been able to face the thought of her small, deserted house. Things had been difficult enough, with Soledad lacking anything as useful as a passport or money. It had taken Maxfield Henderson’s considerable influence to ease their welcome into the United States and Maddy’s tidy credit resources to get Soledad safely on her way. By the end of their ordeal Soledad had softened considerably, becoming positively warm toward her wary stepdaughter. Maddy had little doubt that the comfortable sum of money Max wired them helped mellow her father’s widow, but she also knew that the trauma of the last twenty-four hours also accounted for the cessation of hostilities. Whatever was more influential, Maddy didn’t care. She saw Soledad off on a plane to visit friends in Miami and then finally turned her weary attention to her own problems.
And problems there were, problems too immense to face.
Torn with grief, all Maddy could think was that she needed help. So she’d taken the next plane to Washington, a limousine to her mother’s house in McLean, and walked the last few feet to collapse on her mother’s chintz sofa while the latest in a succession of proper German maids went to find Helen.
“You look like hell,” her mother had greeted her. “Couldn’t you have stopped long enough for a shower and a change of clothes?”
