Forced Disappearance

by Marton, Dana

  “Strong,” he said. “Self-assured. All grown up. You look like an interesting woman.”

  She flashed a brilliant smile that reached all the way to his heart. “Smooth talker.”

  Oh, for love’s sake. Miranda pushed forward. She remembered now why she’d fallen for him in the first place. Glenn never said what you’d expect from a guy. He was the type who’d keep a woman on her toes, and that was a good thing.

  They kept walking south. When a police car turned onto the street, coming toward them, Glenn pulled her into the open courtyard of an abandoned house.

  The ten-by-twenty-foot tiled space was strewn with dead potted plants and garbage. Two smaller doors opened from the courtyard, both of them boarded.

  As the police car passed, Glenn threw her a questioning look. “We need someplace to spend the night.”

  She nodded. They’d spent more time hidden on the bus than she’d expected. A small town like this would probably have only one flight to Caracas per day. Chances were, they’d missed it today. Their best bet was to get off the streets for the night. The police might step up patrols after dark. She didn’t want to run into them. She didn’t want to run into the criminal element either.

  The abandoned home looked like decent shelter. They had no guarantee that they’d find better.

  She helped Glenn pry the boards off the nearest door. A little pushing, a little heaving, and they were soon in a narrow hallway, laid with the same white and blue tiles as the courtyard.

  The masonry walls were peeling, a bare light bulb hung from the ceiling. She flipped on the light switch. Nothing happened. “No electricity.”

  For now, enough late-day sunlight filtered through the windows that they could see even when she pulled the door closed behind them. No sense in advertising that there were squatters here.

  The downstairs consisted of only two rooms, one littered with broken furniture, the other—which might have been a kitchen before everything got ripped out—with more trash plus two dead pigeons. Way beyond the stage where they could be eaten, unfortunately.

  Miranda ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. “Looks better up here.”

  In the first room, an old mattress leaned against the far wall. Other than that, the room was empty and clean save for some dust. The single window looked to the street, its glass unbroken, a plus.

  “At least we’ll be able to see if the cops or the guardsmen are coming, doing a house-to-house search,” she told Glenn when he came up behind her.

  “I doubt they’ll do that. I have a feeling they’d prefer to catch us quietly, without causing a scene inside the city.” He opened the window a crack to let in fresh air. “There are too many tourists here. Must keep up appearances.”

  They walked across the hall to a smaller room, also empty, then to the bathroom in the back. She could have danced with joy at the sight of the single sink, beat-up cast-iron tub, and toilet.

  “And now the moment of truth.” She reached for the tap, turned it on. Nothing. “Oh well. It would have been too easy.”

  But even as she said the last word, the pipe began to creak. And, after a moment, water dripped from the faucet, dirty and rusty at first, but then the flow became better and the water cleaner.

  She whipped around to look at Glenn, both of them grinning like idiots, from ear to ear. Who needed money to be happy?

  She danced over to the tub and turned on the water there. “Oh my God, and we have soap!” She danced a little more. “We have soap!” She grinned wider, beyond-words happy for the pink little toiletry kit she’d lifted in the forest, possibly the best decision she’d made lately.

  Glenn moved a few steps closer. “Wish the tub was bigger.”

  She put on her soldier look, eyes narrowed, chin out. “Step away from my bathtub.”

  “Oh, it’s yours, all yours, is it?”

  “I’m willing to arm wrestle for it.” She rinsed the dirt out of the tub, then pushed the black rubber plug into place. She turned off the cold water and turned on the hot. She was so ready for this.

  Nothing happened. No water.

  She frowned. “This doesn’t look promising.”

  He scoffed. “What’s a faulty hot water heater against two engineer geniuses like us?”

  “I’ll make you a deal. You fix the hot water heater, you get first turn.”

  He headed for the door. “Prepare for a long wait while I soak my troubles away.”

  She turned off the water, checked the small window that opened to the back, and assessed how easy it’d be to climb out and get up on the roof if they needed to make a hasty exit. Not easy, but possible.

  Up to the roof, over to the next house, down to the next courtyard. She planned for contingencies. She felt semi-comfortable with her emergency evacuation plan by the time Glenn returned.

  The morose look on his face prepared her for the bad news. “Somebody ripped out the hot water heater.”

  “Cripes.” She turned on the working tap again. “I suppose cold is better than nothing.”

  On the positive side, the water wasn’t really any colder than the streams in the forest. On the negative side, it ran out before the tub filled even halfway.

  The pipes groaned and moaned, but they wouldn’t cough up another drop.

  He rolled up his sleeves, a decidedly wicked gleam coming into his steel-gray eyes. “How about you stand in the tub, and I’ll quickly wash you down?”

  The visual the suggestion brought sent tingles through her. She fought back by glibly saying, “If you want to cop a feel again, say so.”

  He grinned. “I want to cop a feel.”

  His engineering brain worked as logically as a well-designed machine. He was straightforward, no subterfuge, which she’d always liked about him.

  “I’ve already seen you naked,” he pointed out.

  “Not recently,” she recounted.

  “We already had sex in the bus.”

  She wouldn’t have thought that at this stage of her life she could still blush, but she did. “I wouldn’t count that as sex.”

  He held her gaze. “I apologize. I must have done something wrong. Next time, I’ll try harder.”

  Heat punched through her. “There won’t be a next time.” This was pure insanity. They had to find their way back to the friend thing.

  He shook his head, as if he didn’t understand why she would even waste time and breath denying the obvious. “If you want to play it that way.”

  Yes, yes she did. She flashed him a look that she meant to be apologetic, but probably looked constipated.

  With a slow nod, he turned on his heels and walked out with a couple of long-legged strides, closing the door behind him.

  She let out a pent-up breath. Okay, danger averted. Temptation faced, and resisted. Yay for her.

  She stripped, then kneeled by the tub and washed her face and hair first. In situations like this, having short hair was a definite advantage.

  When she was done with her hair, she stepped into the tub. The water reached only about mid-calf. She washed herself quickly and couldn’t shake the thought of how different this would feel with Glenn’s hands on her, gliding over her body.

  Glenn’s long fingers on her nipples, drawing a slow trail downward, low on her belly—

  “Are you sure I can’t help?” His voice, coming from the other side of the door, made her jump.

  “Almost done.” She quickly finished rinsing off and stepped out of the tub.

  The cleanest things she owned were the shirt and pants from the mission, so she put those back on. No underwear. She left her pile of dirty clothes by the tub, hoping to wash them later.

  “Your turn.” She opened the door and found him sitting in the hallway, his arms resting on his pulled-up knees, his head against the wall, his eyes closed.

  H
e looked drained. Tonight would be the first night in a while that he would spend indoors, in relative safety and comfort. He’d been on the run for too long. And before that, the weeks of torture at Guri . . .

  She wanted to sit down next to him and put her arms around him, but she was pretty sure she knew where physical contact would lead, so she didn’t. She’d been sent to protect and return him. Her focus had to be on the job, not on the way he made her feel. She had to prove, to herself and to the general, that she could accomplish her mission without letting personal emotions get in the way. “Hey. Your bath is ready.”

  He opened his eyes and pushed to his feet, looked at her as she passed by him. “You can come in if you want to help.”

  She nearly choked on her own spit from the image that leaped into her mind. She hurried away without looking back. “I can hear the mattress calling my name.”

  He called a single word softly after her, “Chicken.”

  She preferred to think of herself as smart, and refused to rise to the bait.

  He didn’t take any longer with his bath than she had with hers. The water temperature didn’t encourage lingering. By the time he appeared in the bedroom’s doorway, she had most of the dust beaten out of the mattress and had it set up in the middle of the room.

  “I washed the clothes,” he said as he walked in, his dark hair glistening. “Hung everything on the staircase railing inside. Didn’t want to hang it in the window and have someone who knows the apartment’s supposed to be empty see it.”

  Uh . . . “Thanks.”

  “What?” Of course, he caught her momentary hesitation.

  “I don’t think I ever had a guy wash my underwear before.”

  “At the risk of sounding repetitive, I’ve already handled what’s inside your underwear.” A slow grin spread on his face.

  “We accidentally rubbed against each other in the bus’s storage compartment. Could have happened to anyone. Blame the insufficient space.”

  “Whatever you want to tell yourself.” He humped down onto the mattress next to her and pulled over her sisal bag. “Dinner?”

  “Rosemary chicken with roast potatoes and a glass of red wine, please. I’m thinking chocolate cheesecake for dessert.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He split the remaining stale bread and hard cheese between them. “I think you’ll find the chicken especially tender tonight.”

  She bit into the cheese and made a show of enjoying it. “Seasoned to perfection.”

  “I’ll pass on your compliments to the chef.”

  She swallowed the last bite of cheese and grinned at him. She hadn’t goofed around like this in a long time. Back in the day, she’d let him take her out from time to time to some fancy restaurant. But only if he let her cook dinner for him in turn. Which mostly happened after hours in the engineering lab with a propane torch. She became an expert at shish kabobs.

  “The marinade is simply sublime.” He popped the last chunk of bread into his mouth.

  “Secret family recipe?”

  “So secret, it’s forbidden to write it down.” He meaningfully wiggled his eyebrows. “On his deathbed, the old chef passed it to the new chef.”

  He said the words with so much drama she laughed out loud. Abby would have liked him; the thought hit her out of the blue. Abby could be a total clown, or be completely serious when she wanted to be. She never wanted to play princess. She wanted to play Amelia Earhart, or Madame Curie, or Ann E. Dunwoody, the first female officer to be promoted to the rank of four-star general in the US military.

  Abby would put on Miranda’s uniform coat—the hem of which would reach the floor, stick star stickers on the shoulders—then march her mother and father up and down the living room with unbridled glee. The kid loved to be in charge. She probably would have ended up being a general or—

  The staggering sense of grief and longing caught Miranda so hard it knocked the air out of her. She lay back on the mattress and stared at the ceiling, blinking back a sudden rush of tears.

  Grief could be like that sometimes, a knife to the heart you didn’t see coming.

  “Hey. Are you okay?” Glenn bent closer to search her face, his eyes worried.

  “Fine.” Nothing anybody could fix.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  She scooted higher up on the mattress and lay down with her back to him.

  He lay down next to her and, after a moment, pulled her into his arms. She let him, but she didn’t turn.

  The heat of his body soothed muscles she hadn’t been aware were still tight. She accepted the comfort he offered, even if it made her feel guilty. She didn’t deserve comfort. She wasn’t a good person. Glenn just didn’t know it.

  Chapter 11

  EVEN IN HIS sleep, Glenn knew the woman in his arms. He kept dreaming of her all night. In some of the dreams they were back in college, in others they were running through the jungle, then, just before he woke up, he dreamt of making love to her. Over and over.

  She was soft yet strong at the same time, no inhibitions, completely open, filled with curiosity. Back in college, she would pop up on her elbow next to him in bed, narrow her eyes, and say, “Let’s try an experiment.” And his body would be fully charged again because he knew something mind-blowing was about to happen.

  His dreams brought back the past in finely detailed Technicolor images.

  Predictably, he woke with an uncomfortable boner nestled against her soft bottom.

  The dim light of morning filtered through the window. Still half-asleep, he nuzzled her neck.

  She turned in his arms to lay her head on his shoulder.

  “Good morning.”

  “Not yet,” she protested.

  All right. He stayed still so she could settle back into her dreams. He seriously hoped she was dreaming about him. He liked the idea of him swaggering around in her dreams like a stud muffin.

  But she stirred a few minutes later. She blinked the sleep from her eyes. “Today’s the day. We’re going home.”

  “I’m glad you came for me,” he admitted.

  She got up and looked back at him, her gaze catching his raging hard-on before she quickly turned away.

  He was a man. She was a hell of a woman. He wasn’t going to apologize. He sat up instead. “How soon do you want to get going?”

  “As soon as we can get ready. I want to be on the street around the time people go to work. It’ll be easier to get lost in a crowd.”

  He nodded, impressed with her strategic thinking first thing in the morning, before coffee. His brain clamored for java as insistently as his body clamored for sex. He didn’t expect either craving to be satisfied this morning. A terrible shame.

  She grabbed the toiletry kit and headed out of the room, in the direction of the bathroom, returned a few minutes later and tossed him the pink bag. “We have water again.”

  So he cleaned up, brushed his teeth. By the time he came out, her clothes were gone from the staircase. He grabbed his own and went back to the bedroom, walked in on her as she was changing.

  He stepped back. “Sorry.”

  But she didn’t even look at him as she stared outside, her hands deathly still on the edges of her unbuttoned shirt, a stricken look on her face.

  He hurried over and looked out, expecting soldiers. Instead, all he could see was a little girl, about six or seven, wearing a bright red dress, playing with a black puppy on the sidewalk. The game seemed to consist of who could love the other one more, the puppy wiggling to snuggle as close to her as possible and licking her face as the girl giggled and petted him.

  “Abby wanted a dog,” Miranda said quietly, her voice rusty. “God, she wanted a puppy so much. I promised to take her to the shelter for her birthday so she could pick one out.”

  Glenn silently drew her into his arms. He wanted to protect her from the p
ain he could hear in her voice, but he couldn’t do a damn thing, not with all his power and all his millions and all the people at his disposal.

  Being helpless sucked like a tornado, he decided. He hated feeling this way. He wanted to punch something, but that wasn’t what she needed.

  She turned in the circle of his arms, away from the window.

  He kissed the top of her head. When she stayed where she was, without pulling away, he kissed her forehead. Then her left eyebrow, followed by the right.

  And then she tilted her face up to his, blinked hard. Grief reflected in her eyes. He couldn’t take that away. But he could distract her for a while. The streets were still empty. They had a little time.

  So he kissed the tip of her nose, and then her mouth next. She only hesitated a moment before her hands slipped around his waist.

  He didn’t need more encouragement than that. He tasted her mouth from corner to corner, played with her full bottom lip. Then he moved over to her ear and did that little thing that used to make her go weak in the knees.

  He grinned when she sagged against him.

  God, he’d missed this. He scooped her up and carried her to the mattress, lay her down, and stretched out next to her.

  She opened her eyes and looked into his. “Major déjà vu.”

  “Yeah.” He placed a hand flat on her abdomen.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Distracting you.”

  She swallowed hard and closed her eyes. “Losing a child is not something a mother can be distracted from. Ever.”

  The pain in her voice cut him as effectively as a machete.

  He wished he could invent a way to take her losses onto himself somehow. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Try anyway.”

  He dipped his head to hers again, dragging his lips over hers as he ran a hand up her abdomen, pausing below her breast.

  Her breath hitched. Her voice was a ragged whisper. “It can’t possibly be as good as we remember, right?”

  “Let’s find out.” But he held still.

  Was he actually hesitating? He’d long grown out of his nerdy inhibitions. He hesitated about little these days, and certainly not about taking a beautiful woman to bed.