Wild Orchids

by Karen Robards

  “Ha, ha.” Tunafish did not much appreciate jokes about his name. In fact, he did not much care for the name itself, but it had stuck with him since boot camp days and, among his old friends anyway, he could not shake it. “I don’t much like them greaseballs we sprung. Don’t trust ’em.”

  Max looked over at him again, frowning. “They give you any trouble?”

  “Nah. Only—they ain’t what they’re supposed to be. If they were locked up because they were carryin’ a little grass, then I’m my grandma’s pappy.”

  “Oh?”

  Tunafish nodded slowly. “They’re too slick, too careful what they say. Used to giving orders. And to packing a piece.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “We got stopped by a cop on the way down here. Ran a stop sign, no big deal. When the guy came up to us, Minelli reached for his pistol. He didn’t use it, but he reached. Automatic like.”

  Max digested this information in frowning silence. He should have figured—had figured, in fact, though he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it—that there was something fishy about the two men that he had been hired to break out of the prison at Mazatlán. The money had been too good, for one thing—a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, plus expenses; he was used to working for perhaps a quarter of that, but of course there’d been two of them and that particular prison was a tough nut to crack. To add to his inner disquiet, instead of a distraught wife or parent putting up the cash, there’d been a man in a business suit. Max had learned to distrust men in business suits on general principal. And there had been too damned much security at the prison, which had led to Lowenthal being killed and the rest of them having to separate. He had been the one playing the official from the Red Cross, and he had been the one whose face the guards could identify as part of the band orchestrating the escape. The thing had been a disaster from beginning to end; first, Clemente had timed the blast that was to serve as a distraction too early, and he and Minelli and the other man, DiAngelo, had still been in the company of three armed guards and the warden. He had had to take the warden hostage at gunpoint to get the three of them safely out of the prison, and even then it had been a near thing. He had sweated constantly for fear the guards would decide that the warden’s life was expendable in the cause of stopping an escape from their maximum security institution. Second, outside the prison, Lowenthal, charged with providing cover fire should anything go wrong, had been shot. Max had not seen him fall, but Tunafish had. Tunafish said he had died instantly with a bullet through the brain, and they had had to leave him where he lay.

  Outside the prison, Clemente and Tunafish had waited in one of the two cars that Max always insisted on—two in case one should not start. He had quickly dispatched Minelli and DiAngelo with them, and forcing the blubbering warden to drive him, had taken off in the opposite direction in the other car. There had been no pursuit then. But he did not fool himself that every police officer in the country would not be hard on his tail. He had told the warden to drive east, while Tunafish went south, hoping to throw pursuit off the other car’s tail. In Puerto Juárez, he had freed the prayer-muttering warden and ditched the car, hoping the authorities would think that he had used that port town to leave the country. Instead, he had hopped a bus to Cancun, and seen himself featured on the evening news while he was eating a meager lunch with what was almost the last of his few pesos. (Not having been prepared for the fiasco that had occurred, he had not had much money in his wallet, and the warden had been equally broke. Under the circumstances, it would have been too risky to use credit cards with his name on them; no point in handing them his head on a silver platter.) He had hurried without giving the least appearance of hurrying to the tourists’ market, bought himself a huge sombrero to hide beneath and a cheap Hawaiian print shirt in hopes of blending in with the tourists. Then he had walked back out to the street, wondering what he should do next—and seen a lone woman in an orange Volkswagen stopped at a traffic signal. It had seemed like fate. He had taken full advantage of this manna from heaven and jumped in beside her. Having Lora and her car for cover had worked well to get him—almost—out of the country safely, but it had disadvantages. Namely, the woman herself.

  She turned him on. Why, he couldn’t exactly say. Her smooth, almost blond hair, calm blue eyes, and delicate, regular features were in marked contrast to the luscious shape of her. She tried to disguise her voluptuousness by dressing like a septagenarian old maid, but unless a man was blind her curves were unmistakable. Those full, thrusting breasts and curving hips with the tiny waist between made him think of Dolly Parton. Add long, slim legs and a skin as soft and smooth as a baby’s, and you had a dynamite combination. For him at least.

  She liked his looks too, he knew. He’d had enough women to know when one had the hots for him. She’d cast too many sidelong glances at him when she’d thought his eyes were occupied elsewhere for him to have any doubts about that. He turned her on, but she wasn’t easy, wasn’t the kind of woman to indulge in a quick lay just for the fun of it. She was the kind who had to have a relationship—God, he hated that word!—the kind who, before the much-ballyhooed sexual revolution, would have held out for marriage; the kind bitter experience had taught him to run a mile from. Only it was hard to run from a woman you’d kidnapped, and before he knew it his sexual urges were getting the better of his good sense. So far, his good sense had won out—barely. That morning at Ortega’s, when he had awakened to find her cuddled up against him—God, she had been hot, and he had been hot to take her, until it was forcibly borne in on him that she was just using him to get her jollies. Once she got it off, she had no more use for him than a pregnant cow had for a bull. And he hadn’t liked it, not one little bit. As she’d told him—little bitch!—he could have gone ahead, but the sizzle had gone out of it. He wanted her hungry, damn it, hot and wild and sweet, burning up with wanting him. And if he couldn’t have her that way, he’d decided, he didn’t want her at all, which was probably for the best. The last thing he needed was to get mixed up with a lady schoolteacher from the cornfields of Kansas. So what was she doing in the cabin of his airplane?

  “Shit!” The word emerged from his mouth unbidden.

  Tunafish looked over at him, grinning. “Like I said, must be a hell of a woman.”

  Max glared at his friend and told him what he could do with himself in three succinct words. Tunafish chuckled, unperturbed, lacing his huge hands behind his head and leaving the flying to Max.

  “Max, I brought the lady up here. Those two are giving her looks I do not like.” Clemente poked his head through the curtained doorway as he spoke. Then, without waiting for a response, he thrust Lora through the curtain and disappeared. She stood just inside the cockpit, her eyes shadowed as she looked uncertainly from Max to Tunafish.

  “If I’m in the way . . .

  “You’re not.” Max’s reply was clipped.

  Tunafish was grinning widely. “Ain’t you goin’ to introduce us, boss?”

  “Lora, this grinning ape here is Theodore Francis Cassaroli, better known as Tunafish. I’ll leave you to figure out why. Tunafish, meet Lora Harding.”

  “My pleasure.” Tunafish beamed at her, a wicked glint in his eyes as they moved over her.

  “Hello.” Lora’s polite smile was faintly wary. The man was a giant—he dwarfed even Max, which was no easy feat. He was dressed conventionally enough, in sneakers, blue jeans and a light blue windbreaker, but his massive frame was awe inspiring. She recognized him as one of the men who had emerged from the jungle, weapons drawn, to remove Max from the VW. He had frightened her nearly to death then, and she wasn’t much less afraid of him now.

  “You can take the jump seat back there. We won’t be in the air long.”

  “Where are we going?” Lora sat down as she spoke. Tunafish was grinning at her, and she smiled back nervously before shifting her attention to the back of Max’s unruly black head.

  “Guatemala City. We’ve got about forty-five minutes
of flight time left.”

  “Oh.” There was a lot she wanted to ask him—such as who were the two oily looking men in the cabin who had been giving her the kind of looks that made her skin crawl—but she didn’t feel comfortable with Tunafish’s grinning brown eyes on her. The sheer enormity of the man—to say nothing of the memory of him pointing a pistol at her—made her uneasy.

  “It’s a—nice night for flying,” Lora said after a few moments of uncomfortable silence broken only by Tunafish’s cheerful humming. The sound appeared to annoy Max; from where she sat, she watched a muscle grow progressively tighter in his jaw as the off-key rendition of what she thought she recognized as “That Old Black Magic” reached a crescendo and then ended with a flourish.

  “Sure is.” The reply came from Tunafish. Max hadn’t bothered to respond to her inanity, and she didn’t much blame him.

  “That big full moon up there, with them little slips of cloud floatin’ across it and them tiny little stars just a winkin’ and a blinkin’ in the night sky, why, they make a man think of romance. Don’t they, boss?”

  Lora missed the glint in the sideways look Max cast at Tunafish, but she heard—and puzzled at—the faint suggestion of gritted teeth in his response.

  “Everything makes you think of romance, buddy. We should’ve nicknamed you Salmon instead of Tunafish. You’ve got nothing but spawning on your mind.”

  “That’s right.” Tunafish tipped his head back in easy agreement. “Ain’t nothin’ more important than . . . Be-Jesus, Max, would you look at that!”

  The sudden change from easygoing humor to alarm in Tunafish’s voice brought Lora’s as well as Max’s eyes swinging around to where Tunafish was pointing at a gauge with a long, thick-knuckled forefinger. “We must have caught a bullet in the tank.”

  “Sweet Mother Mary.” Max expelled his breath in a long, slow whistle. “Here we are flying over the deadliest range of mountains on the continent of North America, and we’re about to run out of gas!”

  XII

  Lora came around slowly, her eyes blinking groggily open once or twice before realization set in. The plane had crashed and—wonder of wonders!—she had survived. Strapped into a cabin seat, her head pillowed on her knees and a fervent prayer on her lips—funny how, in that time of crisis, the only one that came to mind was, “Now I lay me down to sleep”—she had winced as first one engine and then both had died, leaving them hurtling down toward the treacherous mountains in an ominous silence broken only by the tinny wail of automatic alarms and Clemente’s muttered, “Hail Marys” as he sat with eyes closed tight in the seat right across the aisle. Behind her, Minelli had kept up a steady stream of profanity. How he could face death with words like that on his lips she didn’t know. She had tuned them out, repeating her own childhood prayer over and over again until she heard Max shout, “This is it!” and braced herself, her mind blank with terror. She waited to discover what it felt like to die. . . .

  There had been a terrible grinding noise as the vulnerable underbelly of the plane made tearing contact with the treetops. The plane lurched violently, rolling onto its side and losing both wings as it continued to crash through the jungle. Quick, terrified upward glances had shown her branches thrusting through the hole left by the shearing off of one of the wings, shedding swirls of tattered foliage as they had been torn off and left behind, then followed by more . . . Clemente—she thought it had been Clemente—screamed; there was a gurgling, followed by an ear-shattering, grinding noise as the plane had slammed into solid earth with a scream of crunching metal. Then something slammed into her head, silencing her own scream as the world went black. She had thought, in that last, horror-filled instant, that that was what it felt like to die. She had expected more pain. . . .

  Only she hadn’t died. She didn’t even seem to be much hurt. Lora sat up cautiously, almost afraid to move in case she discovered some mortal wound she hadn’t been aware of. But she seemed to be in one piece, limbs intact. . . . Her head hurt a little, but that was all.

  Soft gray daylight filtered through the hole torn in the opposite side of the plane. She looked toward it and saw Clemente, still dressed in his dapper business suit, white shirt strangely dark as he sat with his head thrown back and eyes open and staring. . . . Lora felt nausea rise in her throat and averted her eyes, fumbling with her seat belt. It took her a few minutes to recall how the release catch worked and to actually open it. Her fingers shook as she took in the unearthly silence and tried to work out what it meant. Was she alone—Dear God, was she the only survivor? Clemente looked dead. The men behind her, strapped into seats on either side of the aisle, sagged limply forward in their seats. They looked dead, too. . . .

  What about Max? The thought brought Lora staggering to her feet. She had to see . . . She lurched forward, at first thinking that her sideways gait was due to some injury she hadn’t yet discovered and then realizing that the plane lay at a crazy angle, nose down and almost on its side. She brushed through the curtains, slowing her forward impetus by catching the side of the cabin door as her breath caught on a painful sob.

  Max sat with his shoulders slumped forward, head resting against the control panel, hands hanging limply at his sides. He was not moving, and in that dim light did not seem to be breathing. Beside him, Tunafish was in a similar position, but Lora had eyes for no one but Max.

  “Please, God!” she whispered as she let go her hold and lurched forward again, catching herself on the back of his seat which she saw had torn partially out of its moorings. She bent over him, her hand on his shoulder, his neck, his head as she checked for signs of injury. There was blood on his face. . . . She felt it, warm and sticky on her hand, and shuddered. The windshield was shattered. The left side of his face was uppermost, and it seemed to be intact. The blood was on the right, covering part of his right eye and cheekbone and then trickling onto the control panel and from there to the floor, where it formed a puddle. Dear God, was he dead? Her hands were shaking so that she could not trust herself to determine that he had no pulse. Perhaps she simply couldn’t find it. Was she feeling in the right places? Beneath his ear—the inside of his wrist—she was afraid to move him to lay her hand against his heart. He showed no signs of life, but she couldn’t believe that he could be dead. Dear God, what should she do?

  “Max?” She called his name, whispered it really, right into his ear. There was no response. She called him again, going crazy with fear. Then, to her overwhelming relief, he moved. It was just a tiny move, a slight shake of his head, but it showed he was alive. Lora sucked in a deep breath of air, steadying herself as she leaned over him again. Her hands didn’t shake quite so much this time as she lightly grasped his shoulder.

  “Max!”

  He groaned. Lora gently shook his shoulder, urgently needing him to regain consciousness. She would not feel at ease until he looked at her, spoke—just because he was not dead did not mean he could not die. Perhaps he was gravely injured. . . . There was no medical help for maybe hundreds of miles. The plane had crashed in the middle of the rugged, montana jungle in one of the remotest areas of continental North America. But, of course, Max would have radioed for help before they crashed, so a rescue party was probably on its way at that very moment. They should be found soon. . . .

  “God!” The barely audible murmur made her lean over him again, a profound relief filling her as his eyes flickered open. Injured or not, at least he was alive.

  Those obsidian eyes fixed on her for a moment, and she wondered if he remembered who she was. Then he said, “Lora?”

  “Yes.” His hands moved to the control panel as he spoke, and he used them to try to push himself upright. It must have hurt, because he winced and faltered.

  “Don’t try to move,” she told him, but he persevered.

  “Are you all right?” His question was thick, and Lora wondered again if he was seriously injured. He was sitting upright now, and she could see that the whole right side of his face was smeared with blo
od. Most of it seemed to come from a jagged cut high on the right side of his forehead. At least his right eye seemed to be all right. It was regarding her rather groggily, but no more so than its fellow.

  “Yes. I think so. What about you? Your head is bleeding badly—do you hurt anywhere else?”

  “My head—” He lifted a hand to his head and, on coming into contact with the still oozing blood, withdrew it, looking down at his smeared hand. “I remember hitting it on the windscreen. It hurts like hell, but the rest of me seems to be okay. God, look at Tunafish!”

  Max half rose out of his seat, but the still-fastened seat belt restrained him and he fell back. Lora’s eyes went from him to Tunafish, for whom she had barely spared a thought until that moment.

  “I’ll see to him,” she said, but before she could move in that direction, Tunafish stirred and sat up with a groan.

  “Jesus, my leg!” He leaned his head back against the seat as his hand clutched his left leg. Lora saw that it had already swollen to perhaps three times its normal girth, and that, from halfway down the thigh, it jutted out at an odd angle. Stricken with concern and guilt, she moved to his side, looking down at the hulking figure slumped in the seat. Before she could say anything, Max was at her side, his face alarmingly pale and deep lines of what could have been pain bracketing that mustachioed mouth.

  “You shouldn’t move—”

  “I’m okay.” Max brushed her protest aside with an impatient shake of his head as he knelt to examine the swollen leg. Lora looked down at Max’s bloodied face and knew that it was very far from being true, but she also saw that it would be useless to protest further. All his concern was centered on the sweating figure of his friend, who was looking at him with a twisted grimace as Max rendered his verdict.

  “It’s broken.”

  “Hell, I know that. Nothin’ could hurt this bad if it weren’t broke.” Tunafish tried a grin, but it quickly turned into another grimace of pain. “If that’s all that ails me, I’ll live. At least the plane didn’t blow up, not with no gas in it. What about the rest of them?”