Moonlight Lady

by Barbara Faith

  “Well...well, thank you.” Lisa put the stone in the pocket of her cutoffs.

  Sam, already on the Harley, held his hand out to help her onto the back. “Maybe we’ll see you on the way back through here, Mrs. Adams,” he said. “Thanks for everything.”

  “Welcome, sir.” She stepped closer. “You take good care of the missus, yes?”

  “Sure.” He gunned the motor and, with a wave of his hand, turned onto the road.

  Lisa, with one arm around his waist, looked back and waved a a goodbye. But the other woman didn’t wave back. She only stood there in front of her house and, as Lisa watched, quickly made the sign of the cross.

  * * *

  They rode for over an hour before they came to another village. Sam stopped and had the gas tank topped up in front of a store that sold lukewarm beer.

  He bought a beer and then said, “Friends of mine have gone along ahead of us. They were driving a big black car. Did you see them?”

  The man nodded. “They stopped for gas. Maybe one, two in the morning. Wanted to know if there was a place to stay once they got up into the Cockpit Country. I told them there be a place, Orangefield, ‘bout an hour from here.”

  Orangefield. They’d probably stopped there to spend what was left of the night. Sam paid, took a sip of the warm beer and handed the bottle back to the man.

  “Ready?” he asked Lisa, who’d gotten off to have a soda and stretch her legs.

  “I suppose.” With a sigh she climbed back onto the Harley. She hated the motorcycle, but she’d gotten used to it. She leaned into the curves without Sam telling her to now, and though she still kept a firm grip on his waist, she no longer dug her fingernails into him.

  There was something about riding behind him like this, with the wind whipping her hair and the smell of the tropics filling her senses, knowing Sam was in control and that all she could do was hang on. There was an intimacy, an awareness of his body so close to hers that was exciting. Her thighs were around his, pressed close as though in an embrace. And when they leaned into the curves it was as though their bodies were welded together and they moved as one on the big, hot machine.

  The mountains they were driving through held a proliferation of plants and trees: poinciana, banana and papaya and mango, West Indian cedars, mahogany and pimento. Golden trumpet vines added color, along with amaryllis, spider lilies, yellow hibiscus and wild orchids.

  The air was cooler the higher they went and Lisa was glad she’d worn the jeans jacket instead of cramming it into one of the saddlebags. The sky was a clear, clean blue, and though they were far above the sea, it seemed to her that the salt smell mingled with the good rich smells of mountain vegetation.

  She wished she could relax and enjoy the scenery, but how could she when she knew they were going into dangerous country, chasing a murderous drug lord? Maybe Sam had been right when he’d said Montoya and Reitman might double back to look for her, but did he honestly believe she’d be safer with him?

  What would happen when—if—he found Montoya and Reitman? Did Sam really think he could take them on, them and their Jamaican henchmen? One man against four or five? She wasn’t a gambler, but the odds didn’t sound too good from where she stood—or rather, from where she sat.

  They rounded a curve. She leaned into it and gasped at the three-or-four-thousand-foot dropoff. Below lay fertile valleys and rolling plains. And in the distance the line of the sea, turquoise green in the late-morning sun.

  Sam slowed the Harley. “Pretty, isn’t it?” he called back over his shoulder.

  “Yes.”

  “You tired?”

  “No, I’m all right. How much farther?”

  He lifted his shoulders in an I-don’t-know gesture, and she felt the muscles of his back flex against her breasts. “We’ll stop at Orangefield,” he said.

  And then? Lisa wondered. What if Montoya and Reitman were there waiting for them? Involuntarily her arms tightened around Sam’s waist. She knew how badly he wanted to find them, but she wasn’t sure she did. She wasn’t even sure what she was doing here. She wanted to be safely back in Miami having a hot corned beef sandwich at Wolfie’s. This...this riding on the back of a motorcycle, going higher and higher up into the dangerous Jamaican mountains with a man who until only a few days ago had been a stranger, seemed like a bad dream.

  They rounded another curve and over Sam’s shoulder she saw a village, bigger than the one they had passed through an hour before.

  Sam slowed the Harley. There was a scattering of shacklike houses here, an open market, a stand that sold beer and soft drinks, a two-story wooden building with a sign that read Orangefield Hotel. Welcome.

  Sam stopped the motorcycle. There was no sign of the black car. “Wait here,” he said to Lisa.

  He went in. A fat man in a sweat-stained shirt was fanning himself behind the desk. He looked up, surprised, and said, “You be wanting a room? Something to eat?”

  Sam shook his head. “No room, but maybe we’ll eat.” He leaned against the desk. “I think maybe some friends of mine stayed here last night—a Cuban, an American and a couple of Jamaicans.”

  “They were here.”

  “How long ago did they leave?”

  The man glanced at the clock that hung on the wall over the desk. “Maybe two hours ago.”

  “Have you got a phone?”

  “Yes, sir, we have. But it not be working.”

  Sam muttered a curse. Montoya was only two hours ahead; he shouldn’t hang around. On the other hand, Lisa needed something to eat and so did he.

  “What’s for lunch?” he asked.

  “Pepper-pot soup, sir.”

  Sam hesitated. “Okay,” he said. “Tell the cook to heat it up.”

  He went out and motioned to Lisa. “We’ll have lunch as long as we’re here,” he said.

  She climbed off the Harley and, opening the saddlebag, took her purse out and slung it over her shoulder. He watched her come toward him, windblown and sexy. Keep your mind off her and on the job you’ve got to do, he told himself. But when he motioned her ahead of him he made the mistake of looking at her—trim figure, great legs and the sauciest bottom this side of Albania.

  Damn, he thought angrily. A man doesn’t stand a chance against odds like that.

  Chapter 9

  The pepper-pot soup was hot, the bread was crisp, the beer cold.

  “That was all right,” Sam said when they’d finished. “You ready to roll?”

  They’d had little to say while they ate, but ever since they’d left this morning, Lisa had been thinking about what they were doing and what could happen if and when they caught up with Montoya.

  “No, I’m not ready,” she said. “We have to talk about this.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow. “This?”

  “Your going after Montoya alone. Dragging me along with you. Why don’t you notify the police?”

  “Because so far I haven’t been able to find a phone.”

  Lisa lowered her voice. “What you’re doing is too dangerous. You’re one man against Montoya and Reitman and the men who work for them. Suppose you do catch up with them?”

  “I damn well plan to.”

  “On that blasted motorcycle?”

  He allowed himself a smile. “You don’t like the hog?”

  “Let me put it this way, Sam. It’s not exactly a Mercedes.”

  “I’m not a Mercedes kind of guy.” He took the last sip of his beer. “I suppose Philip was.”

  She looked startled.

  “He have a Mercedes?”

  “As a matter of fact he did.”

  “Figures.”

  Her mouth tightened. She tapped impatient fingers on the tabletop. “I think we should go back to Ocho Rios and notify the police.”

  “I’m the police.”

  “Not in Jamaica.”

  “I’m working with them. They know what I’m doing and they’re as anxious to get Montoya as I am.” He leaned forward, his voice seriou
s. “I know it’s dangerous, Lisa, and I’m sorry that you’re along. I’d take you back if I could. I’d get in touch with the police if I could. But I can’t. If I turn back now I’ll lose the trail. Somewhere along the way there’s got to be a phone. As soon as we find one I’ll—”

  “Sam?” The color drained from her cheeks. “Sam. That—that man.”

  “What man?” He swiveled around, didn’t see anybody. “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s here. The—the skinny one with—with almost no—no nose. I saw him in the doorway.”

  “Who? Who’re you talking about?”

  “The waiter, at the restaurant with Howard.” Without thinking, she reached for Sam’s hand. “Maybe they’re here. Maybe Montoya...”

  He shoved his chair back, took off running toward the door and collided with the waiter who had served them. “Where’s the other guy?” Sam roared.

  The man’s eyes grew big and he tried to back away. “I be the only waiter, sir.”

  Sam shoved him aside and, gun in hand, started toward the kitchen. Two steps behind him, Lisa cried, “There he is!”

  Sam turned just as Tall-and-skinny sprinted through the lobby and made for the steps. Sam ran after him, gun drawn.

  The man dashed into the bushes. A motor roared and a motorcycle came out, going fast, straight at Sam. He jumped to the side and raised his gun, but the Jamaican turned and fired first. Sam heard the whomp of the blast, felt the heat of the bullet graze his thigh. The force of the shot spun him around and drove him to his knees. He fired and missed.

  “Come on!” he yelled, scrambling up, limping, holding one hand around his leg.

  “Wait!” Lisa cried. “You’ve been hit. Let me—”

  He grabbed for her arm and hauled her onto the Harley behind him, gunned the motor and swept out onto the road in time to see the other motorcycle disappear around a curve.

  Sam took the same curve at a forty-five-degree angle. Lisa cried out and tightened her arms around him. There was a straight stretch of road ahead. He gave it all he had and watched the speedometer climb to eighty, ninety. A hundred and ten. Her face pressed hard into his back.

  Had to catch the son of a bitch. Make him talk, make him lead them to Montoya. He slowed for a curve, barely managed to balance the Harley, heard Lisa’s muffled scream, righted the cycle and pressed down on the accelerator. The man ahead of them slowed, swung back, raised his gun and fired. Sam swerved hard to the right and kept going. He saw another curve ahead, the sheer dropoff to maybe five thousand feet of empty air, and slowed down. The man in front didn’t. Keeping the same fast speed, he swung around to take another shot.

  Sam veered the cycle, this time to the left. The Jamaican fired again, turned back just as he rounded the crest of the curve and tried to slow. But it was too late. He spun out of control, skidded toward the edge of the road, lost it and went over, arms flailing, screaming, the motorcycle cartwheeling after him.

  Sam slowed and stopped.

  “Oh my God!” Lisa cried.

  He swung his leg over the seat, shouted, “Wait here!” and ran to the edge of the road. He looked down. Below him a thousand feet or so he saw the motorcycle smashed against a pile of rocks, wheels still spinning. And the sprawled body of the man he’d been chasing.

  He turned away and walked back to Lisa. She stood beside the Harley. “Is he—is he dead?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Keep going.”

  “But...” She swallowed hard. “Shouldn’t you do something?”

  “Like what? The man’s dead, Lisa. There isn’t anything I can do.”

  He started to get back on the cycle. She saw the blood on his leg. “You’ve been hit,” she said. “I forgot.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  The jeans were torn; the skin had been grazed. “Have you got a first-aid kit?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Get it,” she said, suddenly sounding like a top sergeant.

  He got it out of the saddlebag. She took the small scissors and cut away enough of his jeans so that she could see the wound. She cleaned her hands with a towelette from her purse, then spread ointment into the cut, put a square of no-stick gauze over the wound and adhesive to hold it in place.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “You’re welcome.” She handed the kit back to him and they climbed onto the motorcycle.

  They rode higher and higher into the mountains. The air grew cooler, the shadows lengthened and it was as though they were enclosed in a tunnel of trees. This was Cockpit Country, and Lisa knew from the brochures in her room and the things she’d read before she made the trip, that it was here in this wild and impenetrable terrain that the runaway slaves had come so long ago.

  They called it the Land of Look Behind because the soldiers who had tried to capture the runaways had had to keep an eye in all directions against unexpected attacks from the slaves, who had vowed to fight to the death.

  The descendants of the Maroons, who mingled their blood with the surviving Arawak Indians, still lived in the small towns and settlements that were scattered through this strange, wild country. As Lisa looked at the lengthening shadows of encroaching night, she thought about how it had been, and of the slaves, so brave and defiant, ready to fight to the death for their freedom. This had become their homeland, their “Island in the Sun.” Here in this Land of Look Behind they had taken the step to freedom.

  Lisa leaned her head against Sam’s back and closed her eyes. In this tired, drowsy state, with her arms around his waist, her body close to his and his thighs pressed against the inside of hers, she became a part of him. Their two bodies were welded together in an intimate embrace as they moved as one on this big, black machine.

  She sighed, and he felt the whisper of her breath against his back. Felt her breasts brushing against him like a soft, hot caress when she moved. He raised his head and felt the wind against his face. He wished there had never been a Juan Montoya, that he wasn’t a cop on an assignment, but simply a man, a tourist, riding through the fading afternoon with a beautiful woman who had her arms around his waist. He wished they had all the time in the world, that the only urgency was the urgency to lie together in the shelter of the trees, to hold and be held, to share long, lazy kisses.

  But that was a dream. A man had died today; other men would die before this was over. That was the reality. He had to think tough and act tough. This wasn’t a time for daydreaming.

  He slowed the Harley and turned back to Lisa. “It’s getting dark,” he said. “We’d better stop.”

  “There’s a town up here,” she said. “Accom—? Accom something. Maybe there’s a hotel there, or a guest house.”

  “Accompong,” he said. “But we’re not going to stay there. Montoya knows we’re looking for him, Lisa. He’s waiting for us—that’s why he left one of his men behind. If we’d decided to stay at the hotel in Orangefield tonight, Tall-and-skinny would have sent word. We’d have been sitting ducks.” He shook his head. “We’re better off camping out in the forest.”

  She’d never camped out in her life, but apparently she didn’t have anything to say about it. Sam stopped and climbed off the Harley, and giving her his hand, helped her off.

  He wheeled the machine off the road, up a small embankment and into the trees. An overwhelming assortment of ferns grew here, along with wild orchids, Jamaican ackee and sweet-scented frangipani and Indian cedar.

  “This’ll do,” Sam said when he found a place under the trees. He took a blanket out of one of the saddlebags and spread it out. “Hungry?” he asked.

  Yes. Hungry and so tired her bones ached. She wanted to sit in a tub of warm soapy water, soak her poor bruised-from-riding bottom, ease the strained muscles in her arms, wash her windblown hair, sip a glass of cool white wine.

  “Lisa?”

  She sighed. “Yes, I’m hungry.”

  She didn’t sit down. When he took a knife out of his pock
et, opened it and cut a mango in half and handed part of it to her, she ate standing up. He didn’t. He sprawled out on the ground and leaned his back against the trunk of a tree. “Glad you bought ‘em,” he said when he took a bite. “Guess it wouldn’t have occurred to me to bring any food.”

  “I always travel with food, even when I know there’s probably going to be a restaurant somewhere along the way.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Any particular reason?”

  “No, I—I just like to know that I’ve got something to eat if I want it.” Then, though she didn’t know why, she said, “My father used to punish me when I was a little girl by taking food away from me. He’d make me sit at the table, most of the time through supper and the next morning’s breakfast. I had to sit there while they ate and I couldn’t touch anything because I knew if I did...” She lowered her head, ashamed now, wondering why she’d told him. “I didn’t mean to say all that,” she said in a voice so low he could barely hear. “I don’t know why I did. I’ve never told anyone else.”

  For a moment or two Sam didn’t say anything, but finally he said, “Last night and a couple of other times you acted as if I was going to hit you, as though you expected me to hit you. I knew somebody had probably abused you. I thought maybe it was Philip.”

  “No, it wasn’t Philip.” She wet her lips. “It was my father. He...” Her voice started shaking and the sickness of remembered fear rose in her throat. “The—the strap hung on the back of the kitchen door. If I did something bad...” She stopped, unable to go on.

  “He beat you.”

  “Yes,” she said, not looking at him.

  He stood. “Come here,” he said, and there was an expression on his face she’d never seen before, a look of pain, of compassion and understanding. “Lisa,” he said, holding his hands out to her.

  She hesitated, then like a sleepwalker went to him. He put his arms around her and she leaned her head against his shoulder.

  He held her without speaking, and thought of the child she had been. Sickness and fury tightened his body. He wanted to go after the man who had hurt her, to beat him with his bare hands, pound him until he was senseless and bloody so that he’d never be able to hurt anyone again.