“Are you sure this is the right place?” Ellie asked, peering through the film of dust on the taxi’s window.
The driver pointed toward a jumble of scrap lumber and tin on the opposite side of the rutted dirt road and muttered something Ellie couldn’t understand.
With a sigh-really, the crash course in Spanish she’d been given in preparation for this assignment was proving worse than useless-she opened the door and stuck one foot out. Then for a moment she hesitated. She could still call this off. Go back to the ship, notify General Reyes and let him take it from there.
But…no. A sense of failure washed over her and when it receded she felt more determined than ever. Her parents hadn’t raised her to be either a coward or a quitter. She’d worked too long and hard on this mission-cared about it too much-to let everything fall apart now. Resolute once more, she got out of the taxi.
She’d barely slammed the door behind her when she heard a terrible sound: the roar of an engine and the gnashing of gears.
“Oh-wait! Please-I wanted you to wait for me!” She grabbed for the door handle, but it was too late; the taxi jounced off, leaving her sputtering in its dust cloud.
For a few moments, then, she just stood there, too stunned to think. Fear came slowly, creeping insidiously into her consciousness disguised first as anger, then as a cold little sense of shame. How could I have done something so stupid? And after what Mama said about me having such a good head on my shoulders. She and Dad will be so disappointed in me.
Keep your wits about you, Rose Ellen Lanagan.
Take a deep breath. Think, Ellie. Think.
First things first. She’d come here to do a job. She’d come here to make contact with some people. And that was what she was bound and determined to do. She’d worry about how she was going to get back to the plaza later.
Maybe I should have left a trail of bread crumbs, she thought.
And for some reason, remembering that, remembering last night and the artist named McCall, made her smile. She even caught herself looking around, squinting in the noonday glare, with the thought in the back of her mind that he might magically turn up again, just in the nick of time. And then she laughed at herself for the twinge of disappointment she felt when she didn’t see a slightly disreputable and untidy form shuffling toward her, wearing a loud shirt and a Panama hat, sandals slapping dust and teeth clamped on the butt of an ever-present cigarette.
But…it was siesta time; except for a skinny brown dog that growled at her from between the slats of a fence that looked far too fragile to contain it, the street-using that term loosely-was deserted. There’d be no miraculous rescue today.
Well. So be it. Resolutely, she straightened her sun visor, took a good wrap-grip on the strap of her shoulder bag and started toward the ramshackle building indicated by the taxi driver.
She could see now that it was actually a cantina, of sorts-at least that was the indication of the cardboard signs advertising beer tacked to the walls on either side of a door opening, some so sun-faded they were all but unreadable. That made her feel a little better, actually. At least it appeared to be a legitimate place of business. They’ll have a phone, Ellie told herself, ever the optimist. Yes, surely they would. She could call for a cab after her business was concluded.
If… If they show up at all. If they’ll even talk to me, a woman…
Roused by that thought, she snorted defiantly and stepped through the doorway.
The dimness and the smell inside the cantina hit her like a physical blow. It smelled like old outhouses. New vomit. And a sweet smokiness she remembered from her college days that was either incense or hashish-she never had been certain which. Fortunately, Ellie wasn’t squeamish; between her farm upbringing, her crusades on behalf of endangered wildlife and a chosen profession that involved animals at all stages of life and death, she was accustomed to sights and smells some would probably consider revolting.
After that reflexive pause and another moment to let her senses adjust, she crossed the room to a wooden bar that was leaning drunkenly against the back wall. A man sat there on a high, three-legged stool, elbows propped on the bar, drinking a milky liquid from a bottle and lazily smoking a brownish, handrolled cigarette. Perhaps the source of that cloyingly sweet smell? Ellie decided she’d rather not know.
“Señor Avila?” she asked, placing the note with her handwritten instructions on the bar.
The man regarded it with silent disdain, one eye closed against curling smoke.
Ellie was about to resort to her extremely limited knowledge of Spanish when inspiration struck. Feeling quite astute, she reached into her handbag and found the crumpled bills she’d thrust there after paying the taxi driver. She pulled one out and laid it on top of the note-paper. A ten, she noticed with some chagrin; probably a five would have been more than enough. Oh well.
The man slowly picked it up and stuffed it into the pocket of his sweat-stained blue shirt, then jerked his head toward the front of the cantina.
Turning, Ellie saw for the first time that there were three men sitting silently at the table in the corner, half hidden in the shadows behind the shaft of sunlight slanting in through the open doorway. A little chill shivered down her back as two of the men rose and moved unhurriedly to form a silhouetted phalanx across the entrance, blocking her only escape.
McCall drove slowly down the deserted road, squinting into the midday glare and mentally gnashing his teeth. Not a creature was stirring, save for one evil-looking dog shambling idly from one disgusting discovery to another, pausing to sniff them all and occasionally eating one. On the one hand, McCall figured that was a good sign; at least, all things being equal, he thought he could probably handle the dog. On the other, it was obvious the taxi had departed for safer pastures, with or without its passenger, it was impossible to know for certain.
Or rather, there was only one way to know for certain.
Resigned to the inevitable, he parked the Beetle next to a more-or-less vacant lot, arousing the immediate interest of the dog, who shuffled over to investigate and wasted no time in marking this new addition to his territory. With a sigh that was more like a growl, McCall locked up the VW-aware that it was probably going to be futile-and crossed the road to the cantina.
When he stepped through the doorway, he really believed he was ready for anything. A nice little tickle of adrenaline was making his skin tingle in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant; probably if he’d been of a species possessed of hackles, they’d have been rising. He felt like Clint Eastwood walking into one of those dusty desert bars looking for bad guys to shoot-except that the way he remembered it, Clint never had to contend with the effects of that glare, which made the inside of the cantina black as a cave and McCall consequently blind as a bat for as long as it took his eyes to adjust.
But as it turned out, there was probably nothing that could have prepared him for what did happen.
His first warning was a little rush of air, a whiff of a sweet flowery scent that jolted him with a memory he couldn’t place. He threw up his arms reflexively, but instead of a fist or a knife, they met with soft, yielding flesh.
There was a gasp, then a cry, breathless with joy and relief. “Darling-thank God you’re here!”
A pair of arms, small but strong, hooked around his neck. A pair of lips, soft but firm, pressed against his. Pressed, not brushed. And for a heady, heart-stopping moment, clung. He tasted moisture and warmth, and sweet, clean woman.
Adrenaline hit him, big-time. Response was automatic; his mind had become incapable of thought. Clutching reflexively, his hands found and closed around a small, firm waist covered in something soft and clingy, but that was as far as he got before the lips peeled themselves from his and he felt instead the skin-shivering brush of breath on his cheek. And then a whisper in his ear, along with enough of that breath to blast the shivers clear through his body.
“You’re my husband. You’ve been sick. Please play along…”
Now that his eyes had adjusted to the gloom, McCall could see that he and Cinnamon-the owner of the lips and source of that delicious scent-were not alone in that corner of the cantina. Two men wearing jungle camouflage khakis and a faintly military air stood flanking the woman and a little behind, arms folded across outthrust chests, legs planted firmly and apart. Behind them a third man, obviously the one in charge, half sat, half leaned against a rickety wooden table, smoking a cigar. The aura of menace in the room was as unmistakable as the cloud of sweetish smoke that hung in the air like ground fog.
“¿Quien este?” The smoker spat the words into a tense and ringing silence.
The woman’s golden eyes, bright with fear and pleading, were fastened on McCall’s face. What could he do?
So-though with a mental shrug and a familiar sense of foreboding-he hooked his arm around the woman’s waist and pulled her against his side.
“I am her husband,” he said in Spanish, and added in silent afterthought, Just, please God, don’t let him ask me what our last name is.
The cigar smoker watched him with narrowed eyes through the swirling golden fog. “She told us you were sick. You look very healthy to me.”
McCall glanced down at Cinnamon-okay, she’d told him her name but he’d forgotten it, dammit-who was either frozen with fear or not very fluent in Spanish. In either case oblivious, and no help to him at all. “I’m feeling much better now,” he ventured, and taking a chance that the malady afflicting the absent husband was the one most common to tourists in that region, added with a wan smile, “Something I ate.”
The smoker’s narrow-eyed stare didn’t alter, but around the cigar his lips lifted in a sneer. “So…a little turista and you send your woman to do your business for you?”
“I did not send her. She came without my knowledge or permission.” McCall added a snort that gave the words a definite ring of sincerity.
“You do not seem to have much control over your woman, señor.”
“She has a mind of her own.” McCall shrugged. “What is a man to do?”
“I would know what to do with her if she were my woman.” The smoker made a gesture, one even Cinnamon had no trouble understanding. She sucked in air in an incensed gasp. The two men flanking them laughed, and McCall, recognizing a male-bonding moment when he saw it, joined in.
“Unfortunately, such things are illegal in my country,” he said dryly, as Cinnamon squirmed in his arm to give him a dirty look. Under his breath he snarled at her in English, “Not a word. You’re my wife. Play along.”
The smoker placed his cigar on the tabletop with an air of getting down to business. “Enough. We have important matters to discuss. You have brought the money?”
Money? This just keeps getting better and better, thought McCall. But while his hackles were perking up, preparing for the worst, the woman was already pulling a fat envelope out of her handbag.
She held it out to the smoker. “It’s all there.”
The smoker regarded the envelope with hooded eyes. Recovering his senses, McCall snatched it out of his “wife’s” hand and took a quick peek inside. Yikes. American bills-hundreds, it looked like-lots of them. Now his hackles not only perked, they positively crawled. What was this he’d gotten himself mixed up in? A drug deal of some kind? Surely not-Lord, the girl might be a little bit loco, but she looked wholesome as cornflakes.
“Your woman handles your financial affairs, too, señor?” The smoker’s voice, like his eyes, oozed contempt.
“Like I told you-not with my permission,” McCall said with what he hoped was unconcern, lifting a shoulder as he handed over the envelope. The smoker took it and like McCall before him, glanced inside.
“You-” That was as far as Cinnamon got before McCall got his hand clamped across her mouth.
“Shut up,” he growled, “for the love of God.” He was watching Smoker’s face, which had darkened ominously.
“Why are you trying my patience, señor?” McCall stared at him blankly. The smoker smacked the envelope down hard on the tabletop, making the cigar jump. “Where is the rest?”
The woman was squirming frantically against McCall’s side, causing his hand to shift just enough. He sucked in air as he felt the sharp sting of her teeth in the fleshy base of his thumb. Stifling shameful urges, he eased the pressure of his hand enough to allow her furious whisper, “Tell him he’ll get the rest when we meet his boss.”
McCall delivered that message in a carefully neutral voice. Mentally he was grinding his teeth and vowing that if he got out of this mess in one piece and without committing manslaughter, he was going to be faithful and true to his live and let live creed for the rest of his days.
The smoker picked up his cigar and mouthed it while he thought things over-while tension sang like locusts in McCall’s ears, and Cinnamon’s heart thumped against his side. For some reason that made McCall feel a little less ticked off at her. Maybe even a little bit soft-hearted. Damn his Sir Galahad tendencies all to hell.
Apparently satisfied, for the moment, at least, the smoker gave a little shrug and tucked the envelope full of cash inside his shirt. At the same time he pulled out another, smaller envelope, which he passed to McCall. It felt unpleasantly damp, and McCall had to stifle a fastidious urge to handle it with a thumb and forefinger.
“My boss will speak with you,” Smoker said in staccato Spanish, “but not here. Those are your instructions. Be at the designated location tomorrow evening. Come alone, just you two. If you do not…” He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at the woman huddled against McCall’s side. “Perhaps…I should take your wife with me, eh? To insure that you follow these instructions.”
The thug closest to Cinnamon grinned in anticipation, showing missing teeth. She didn’t make a sound, but McCall felt her shrinking. He jerked her around and thrust her behind him, beyond the reach of either thug. Without going through McCall first, anyway.
“That won’t be necessary,” he said easily, though his heart was pounding so hard he could hear it himself. “I will follow your instructions-I am not stupid.”
There was another tense pause, and then unexpectedly the smoker laughed. “Keep your wife, señor. I do not envy you. But take my advice, eh? A woman needs a firm hand.”
“Yeah,” said McCall, “I’ll consider it.” With a firm hand on his “wife’s” upper arm, he was already steering her toward the door of the cantina. After a nod from their boss, the two soldier bees stepped reluctantly aside to let them pass.
Outside the door he paused, cringing in the light, once again momentarily blinded, lungs in a state of shock from their first contact in a while with nontoxic air. The arm he still held had gone slack and quiescent-for the moment.
And then… “Thank you,” Cinnamon said, in a voice so clipped and prim he’d have found it comical, maybe, if he hadn’t been so damned angry.
“Thank you?” he muttered under his breath as he towed her across the sunbaked street. “She says, ‘Thank you’?” McCall couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this angry.
“You can let go of my arm now,” she breathed. She sounded winded, but he ignored that as well as the suggestion.
No longer the least bit quiescent, she struggled and tugged against his grip. “I said, let go of me.”
“I will let go of you when I’m damn good and ready. Which is when and if we get out of this hellhole with our hides intact, and you’ve told me exactly what in the hell you’ve got me mixed up in.”
She hissed at him like an angry cat. “What if they’re watching? They’ll think we’re quarreling.”
“Quarreling?” He didn’t know whether to laugh at her or yell. “We’re married, remember? I’m your husband. That’s what married people do, isn’t it? They fight.” They’d reached the car, so he figured it was safe to let go of her arm.
She eyed him sideways while he pulled his crumpled pack of cigarettes out
of his shirt pocket. She kept rubbing sullenly at the marks his fingers had left on her upper arm, and since he didn’t much like looking at those marks, himself, McCall shifted his gaze away from her and fixed a narrow-eyed stare on the door of the cantina instead.
“Don’t you think we should be leaving?” she asked after a moment, sounding nervous as her gaze followed his.
He deliberately waited until he’d finished lighting up, taking his time about it, then glanced at her, eyebrows raised. “We?”
Behind the cinnamon sprinkle of freckles her skin looked flushed, though he conceded that might have been from the sun. “You wouldn’t just…leave me here.” Her voice was flat, certain.
Which naturally made him contrary. He inhaled and held it, counting pulsebeats, then blew smoke. “Don’t tempt me.”
“But…they could come out of there any minute. If they see this car-”
He pretended to be affronted. “What’s wrong with my car?”
“Well, it’s not a tourist’s car, that’s for sure,” she snapped in that crusty voice of hers. “My God, how old is this thing?”
“Ancient-probably about as old as I am,” McCall muttered, and then, bristling, “Hey-it got me here, didn’t it? Good thing for you. And it’ll get us both out of here. That’s what counts.” He planted the cigarette between his teeth and hauled out his keys.
But she was staring at the Beetle as if seeing it for the first time. “How, exactly?” she asked in a fascinated tone.
McCall didn’t think that required a reply. He threw her a withering look as he opened the door. Then for a while he stood in silence, considering the piles of paintings wedged into the VW’s every nook and cranny, including the front passenger seat.
The Seduction of Goody Two-Shoes Page 5
