Freedom's Price

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Stop,” she said. “Just stop.”

  Liam looked up at her then. She didn’t look happy. As he watched she stood and moved to shut her office door. He caught an enticing whiff of her delicate and extremely expensive trademark perfume and heard the soft whisper of silk as she moved past him. As usual, Lauren Stuart was impeccably dressed in an elegant designer suit. She was wearing her jacket despite the heat of the late-summer day and still managed to look as cool and crisp as ever.

  There was no doubt about it. Beautiful, sophisticated, elegant, and intelligent, with a body to die for and a brain and quick wit that was sharp as a sword, Lauren Stuart was a knockout. They’d been fast friends from the first moment they’d met, after his San Salustiano reports had aired on CNN.

  Liam had been presumed dead for more than two years, falsely listed among the casualties in the deadly bombing of a civilian bus that occurred outside of the capital city of Puerto Norte in San Salustiano. His staff position at the Globe had long since been filled when he returned, but Lauren had quickly made room for him, giving him the cushy job of Sunday columnist, then offering him a chance to syndicate his extremely popular issues-oriented articles in other papers across the country.

  There had once been a time when Liam would have pursued Lauren simply because she was bright and beautiful. He would have attempted to get her into bed as a matter of course. And odds were he would have succeeded.

  But he’d come back from the hell he’d endured on San Salustiano with an ability to see beyond the instant gratification he’d always gone after in the past. And when he’d looked at Lauren, he got a clear glimpse of their two possible futures. One involved a love affair gone far too quickly stale because neither of their hearts would have been in it. The other was based instead on a strong and healthy platonic friendship.

  He’d chosen friendship, and he’d never regretted it once.

  “What’s the deal, Lee?” Lauren asked quietly as she sat back behind her desk. “I thought you were jazzed about investigating the strengths and weaknesses of the sex-offender registry.”

  He gestured to the sign on her desk. “I thought the editor was out.”

  She leaned forward, impaling him with the no-nonsense crystal blueness of her eyes. “I’m asking you this as your friend, cowboy. I thought you told me this story was going to be the one to pull you out of your slump.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not.” He rubbed his eyes, applying pressure to what was promising to be one hell of a headache.

  Lauren was silent for a solid thirty seconds. It had to be some kind of a record for her.

  “So it’s finally happened, hasn’t it?” she finally said. “You’re thoroughly, totally, absolutely blocked.”

  He looked up. “No! I said, I have this obligation and—”

  The language she used was extraordinarily pungent. “You couldn’t write this piece on the registry to save your life.”

  “I sure as hell could—”

  “Then do it,” she challenged him. “Four years ago you could write an award-winning article on any compelling social issue in twenty minutes. Less. Today, you’re taking two and a half weeks and coming up with articles about…what was last week’s gem? Little stuffed animal toys called Beanie Babies?”

  “It’s an outrageous phenomenon,” Liam said defensively. “Every kid in America has half a dozen of ’em.”

  “And you believe this information rates right up there with your reports on that Boston soup kitchen that lost its funding, or on the possibility of reinstating the death penalty in Massachusetts? Or how about that little exposé you did on that local right-to-life group that openly condoned violence, even murder, as a means to stop abortion? Oh, and then there was that piece you did on the resurgence of heroin as a recreational drug? Heroin. Beanie Babies. Sure, I can see the similarities.”

  “You’re a real stand-up comic today. A barrel of laughs.”

  “I’m not laughing. And you’re not either. As a matter of fact, you haven’t laughed out loud in at least a year. Longer.”

  It was true. Everything she was saying was absolutely true. The depression that had caught hold of him upon his return home from San Salustiano had sunk its teeth into him again. He couldn’t deny it. He couldn’t explain it. But he could try to sidestep it. “I need some aspirin.”

  “I have everything but aspirin.” Lauren reached into her desk drawer and took out four bottles of different over-the-counter pain remedies and lined them up on the edge of her desk. “Take your pick. But I doubt it’s what you really need.”

  She opened the compact refrigerator that was positioned within reach of her chair and pulled out two bottles of sparkling water. She set one on her desk and handed the other to Liam.

  “Thanks.” He took the nearest plastic container of painkiller and popped the top open, dashing two colorful little pills into the palm of his hand. “I should get going.” He couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes.

  “What, without telling me about this annoying obligation that’s suddenly sprung up out of nowhere?”

  “It’s—she’s not annoying. And I thought you weren’t interested.”

  “Aha. It’s a she.” Lauren opened her own bottle of water and poured it into an elegantly shaped glass. “Now I am interested. Especially since you haven’t been interested in much of anything—female or otherwise—since last summer. What was the name of that last obligation? Janice?…”

  “Janessa.” Liam shook his head. “And she wasn’t an obligation. She was…” He closed his eyes briefly. “I don’t know what she was. A mistake, I guess.” He tossed the pills into his mouth and washed them down with the bubbling water, drinking directly from his bottle. “Still, this obligation isn’t what you think.”

  “What I thought was that you might’ve been working on an article about celibacy in this age of STDs, but since it’s been nearly a full calendar year since Janessa took her sweet little pout and walked out of your life, I’ve changed my mind. I seriously doubt you’re researching the lifestyle of a Franciscan monk.” Lauren narrowed her eyes. “However, it’s occurred to me that whatever’s bugging you, getting laid sure couldn’t make it any worse. So maybe you should stop and buy a nice bottle of wine on your way to meet that new little obligation and—”

  “Stuart! God! My obligation happens to be Santiago Bolivar’s niece!”

  “Bolivar. Bolivar…Isn’t that the name of your friend in San Salustiano?”

  Liam jiggled his foot in a burst of nervous energy. “Yeah.”

  “And the niece…Wait—what was her name?”

  “Marisala.” God, he couldn’t even say her name without feeling a flash of heat.

  “She was the one who helped your brother and his wife get you off the island.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The teenager. The seventeen-year-old guerrilla Amazon.”

  “She’s not an Amazon. She’s a tiny little…girl.”

  “I was speaking figuratively. Amazon as in female warrior.”

  Liam couldn’t sit still any longer. He got to his feet and started to pace. “Santiago’s sending her to college here in Boston. He’s asked me to give her any help she needs. And she does need help. There’s been a mix-up with the campus housing, and I’m going to have to help her find an apartment near mine.”

  “An apartment in the Back Bay in September?” Lauren laughed. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks, Stuart. Your encouragement is greatly appreciated.”

  “So where’s she staying until…” Lauren laughed again. “Oh, my. She’s staying at your place, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, Lee, don’t fight it. This girl could be exactly what you n—”

  “No. No way.”

  “What is that they always say about protesting too much?…”

  Liam turned toward the door. “Look, I have to go—”

  “Maybe, at the very least, you can talk to her.”

  “I’ll give you a call ove
r the next few days.”

  Lauren stood up. “She was there, too, Lee….”

  “In the meantime I’ll work on that article and—”

  “…and you’ve got to talk to someone!”

  He stopped then, turning to look back at her. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “Obviously. Especially since you’ve never so much as mentioned what happened to you in that San Salustiano prison. You know, at first I thought you weren’t talking about it because you were writing a book about your experiences. But it’s been five years and there’s been no book.”

  “I started one. I couldn’t…” Liam shook his head. “I couldn’t do it.” Writing down what he’d been through had been too painful. It was easier to lock his hellish experience deep inside of him and just try to go on with his life, pretending it never happened.

  “All I know is that you went down there to report on the political situation and the government stuck you in some prison and told your family you were dead.”

  Liam stared across the room at his friend. He’d always been grateful that Lauren had never asked about his experience in San Salustiano before. And she still wasn’t asking him to tell her about it now. He knew she’d never do that, but she was giving him a clear invitation to volunteer the information.

  With a sigh, he sat back down. Lauren Stuart was his friend. She deserved to know at least the basic facts. But that was all he could tell her. He’d told no one more than that. Even his good friend Kayla, his brother Cal’s wife, had heard only an extremely edited version of the horrors he’d endured in that hell-hole of a prison.

  “I went to San Salustiano seven years ago, to meet with Santiago Bolivar,” Liam recited. It helped to tell this story as if it had happened to someone else and not to him. “At the time Santiago had run for president against the incumbent, and lost despite a large showing of public support. He was convinced the results had been tampered with, and that the entire election had been a sham. When I went down to talk to him, little pockets of violence and resistance to the special police force had already sprung up, all over the island.”

  He paused, remembering that evening he’d spent, sharing dinner with Santiago Bolivar and his family. Marisala had been there, sitting quietly in the background as the men had talked about the possibility of an all-out war, of a political coup to regain control of their beloved country. And when Liam had finally gone out to his battered rental car, to head back to the hotel in the city of Puerto Norte, she had followed him.

  “I met Marisala that first night,” he told Lauren, trying to keep his voice devoid of emotion. But he couldn’t. Where Marisala was concerned, he simply couldn’t help himself at all. “She was fifteen years old, and…”

  So beautiful. So young and innocent and pure. He could still see her coming out of the shadows beside Santiago’s house to introduce herself. She’d had something to say to the Americano, and despite the fact that she was a mere girl, she was determined to say it.

  “She begged me to talk sense into the men,” he continued, “to keep them from turning this political disagreement into a war. We talked for a long time—she knew a little English, and I knew a bit of Spanish, and I swear, Stu, I’d never met anyone like her before, but she was just a child. Anyway, she told me she was afraid for her uncle’s safety.

  “And rightly so,” he added, feeling the familiar queasiness in his stomach. He tried to step back, to push his feelings aside. He was a journalist. It helped if he remembered that—if he focused on the facts alone. “Two days later I met Santiago at a Puerto Norte café, and somehow the special police found out about it. They came to arrest us both. I knew as soon as they realized I was an American reporter, they’d make me disappear—probably permanently—so I ran.”

  He couldn’t look at Lauren, couldn’t look anywhere but out the window at the skyline of Boston. He didn’t want to think about the force of that bullet that had hit him in the back, throwing him forward and down into the dirt.

  “I got away, but I was badly wounded. I knew I couldn’t make it off the island the conventional way because the police were looking for me. I didn’t know where else to turn, so I went to Marisala. She hid me.”

  Lauren nodded. “Go on.”

  “I was hurt pretty bad, and it was about six months before I could even walk again—before I was strong enough to survive the boat ride that would take me off San Salustiano.” Liam massaged his temples.

  “What happened to Santiago?”

  “He was in prison all that time. But we didn’t even know if he was still alive.”

  “This wasn’t when your brother went down there looking for you, was it?”

  Liam shook his head. “No. This was more than a year before that. The special police found out about the boat Marisala’s father had rented, and figured correctly that it was for me, since I was still at large. The government wanted to make damn sure that I didn’t get off the island. I knew too much. So they searched the entire village, and when they couldn’t find me, Tomás Vásquez, the captain of the special police, threatened to burn it. He threatened to kill all of the men and boys if I didn’t come forward.”

  He tried to make his voice more matter-of-fact, tried to feel as detached as he sounded, tried to report only the facts. But the facts were brutal and his voice cracked. “So I turned myself in, but Vásquez burned the village and killed the men and boys anyway. Marisala’s father and brother were among the murdered.”

  Lauren drew in a breath, and Liam tried to fight the memories. He’d been there. He’d watched as that monster had given the order to gun down those innocent people. Marisala had been there too. He couldn’t help but remember the sheer horror in her eyes. He couldn’t erase the image of her fighting to free herself from the other women who held her, fighting to run to her father and brother, even though they were already dead, even though she herself would then be in range of those deadly machine guns.

  “That’s when Marisala joined the guerrilla forces. I went to prison,” he stated, “and Marisala took up her father’s gun and went to war.”

  It was amazing. With a few sentences, Liam could simplify and describe eighteen months of sheer hell.

  “Since Marisala was Santiago’s niece, it didn’t take her long to win the respect and following she needed to become a leader in the rebel movement. By the time she was seventeen, she was making command decisions and leading from the front lines.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?” Lauren asked, uncrossing and recrossing her legs with another whisper of silk. “Aren’t women considered second-class citizens in that country?”

  Liam nodded. “Yeah. It was unusual. She’s unusual.”

  “That’s obvious.”

  “Eventually, the rebel army attacked the prison where I was being held, and I was freed. Sort of. Everyone and their brother, including Tomás Vásquez himself, was after me. And after all those months in prison, I wasn’t in real good shape.”

  Another massive understatement.

  “That was when my brother and his wife came to the island,” Liam continued. “And with their help, Marisala got me to safety.”

  Lauren took a delicate sip from her glass of water. “So now this Marisala is in Boston.”

  “She’s a freshman at the university, but someone screwed up, and she doesn’t have a dorm room.”

  “So she’s staying with you.”

  “Only for a few nights.” Please God, let them find a safe, clean apartment first thing in the morning.

  “Lee, I hate to suddenly turn editor on you, but do you think Marisala would consent to an interview for the paper? This story is incredible and—”

  “No.” He glared at her. “Absolutely not. No way. Santiago made me her guardian, and I won’t consent. She doesn’t need to be reminded of that hell all over again. And God knows she doesn’t need the notoriety. Santiago wants her to have a normal, quiet, civilized life now.”

  Lauren took another sip of her sparkling water, gazing a
t him over the top of the glass. “Maybe so. But what does Marisala want?”

  Marisala wanted to go into Liam’s room.

  She’d been standing in the doorway for several long minutes, trying to decide whether Liam’s casual “make yourself at home” included exploring his bedchamber.

  Across the room, his bed was an unmade jumble of brightly patterned sheets and pillows. It was bigger than a normal double bed, perfect for two lovers to sleep comfortably—stretched out yet still touching, replete after making deliciously passionate, pulse-pounding love.

  Against the other wall was a dresser, its wood stain a deep, rich brown. And several exercise machines were set up and ready for use in front of the windows.

  The curtains were still closed, keeping all but a single red-orange ray from the setting sun out of the room.

  Make yourself at home.

  Marisala knew quite well that Liam hadn’t meant for her to go into his bedroom and lie down on his bed, but she didn’t care. She did it anyway. His sheets smelled like him and she lay back against his pillows, breathing in his masculine scent.

  His bedroom looked even nicer from this angle.

  There was a small clock radio sitting on an elegantly simple bedside table, and Marisala reached for it, switching it on.

  She’d been looking for a radio for the entire hour that Liam had been gone.

  His condo was much too quiet.

  There was a complicated home electronics system down in Liam’s enormous living room, but the only thing she’d managed to turn on was the television. But TV bored her. She’d wanted music to help fill the empty rooms of this ridiculously huge condominium that Liam called home. How many rooms did one man need? Liam had eight, not counting the three bathrooms. Three! What a decadent, luxurious, incredible waste of space for a man living alone.

  And he did live alone. There was nothing in any of the other rooms that even remotely suggested that another person—that a woman—lived with him.

  As the sound of jazz filled the room Marisala turned the radio’s dial, searching for a Spanish station. She found a familiar merengue beat and lay back against the pillows.