Never Let Go

by Deborah Smith

  He kept his eyes riveted to hers. “After nearly a year, is that all you have to say to me?”

  “Surely you recall that I like everything to be neat. I thought you’d be less wounded if I simply disappeared.” Her voice, full of soft southern intonations that were so much more cultured than his backwoods accent, sounded harsh with strain.

  “So instead you left me wonderin’ if you were hurt, or kidnapped, or dead,” Rucker noted.

  She inhaled softly. “I’m sorry that you have a vivid imagination.”

  He grabbed her forearms and struggled not to shake her. The bodyguards reached for their guns. Dinah looked around anxiously. “No! Por favor.” She pulled away from him. “If you don’t want to cause a worse scene, you’ll control yourself.”

  His hands stayed in the air, clenching into fists. “Where have you been all these months?”

  “With this gentleman.” She nodded toward Valdivia.

  He bowed slightly. “Señor Diego Correles Juan de Valdivia. It’s very interesting to meet you, Señor McClure.”

  Rucker fought to remember the questions Jeopard had given him. He couldn’t help phrasing them his own way. Gesturing toward Valdivia’s white suit, he demanded, “What the hell are you? Ricardo Montalban’s younger brother? South America’s version of Tennessee Williams? An extra from Miami Vice?”

  “Rucker, don’t do this!” Dinah interjected. “Diego, I apologize—”

  “Your husband’s reputation for humor is certainly well earned, querida.”

  Anger made scarlet dots on her cheeks as she glared at Rucker. “Señor Valdivia is a respected businessman. He owns the largest coffee and banana plantations in this country.”

  Rucker jerked a thumb toward the tense bodyguards. “Tell these ugly bean pickers to lay off the caffeine.”

  “You really beg for trouble, Señor,” Valdivia said lightly.

  “No, he just has more pride than sense,” Dinah corrected. She laid a hand on Rucker’s arm.

  His warning came back soft and deadly. “Don’t touch me.”

  She shrugged, her mouth a tight line of control, and placed her hand back on her white eel-skin shoulder bag. “How did you locate me?”

  “I hired people who specialize in finding liars.”

  “I never lied to you. I left before I had to lie to you—about my feelings, about our future together.”

  “Thanks for carin’.”

  “Señor McClure,” Valdivia interjected. “Dinah and I have a flight to catch.”

  “When I want to hear from you, I’ll ask you a question,” Rucker told him curtly. “Where are you going?” he asked Dinah.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  Rucker’s voice was very deep. Now, filled with fury, it was a fierce rumble. “The hell it isn’t.”

  “I want a divorce. Go back to Alabama and take care of the legalities. I don’t want any settlement, so it should be easy.” His response to her words was a lethal tightening of body and face; eyes that went dark, icy green; primitive reactions rising to the surface.

  Her eyes flickered over him with sudden fear. “If you try to drag me out of here, you’ll be killed.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Valdivia added in a pleasant tone.

  Rucker wasn’t certain that he cared. He held Dinah’s gaze, losing his past and future in their cold, unwavering stare.

  “There were things you left behind other than me,” he finally told her. “Things you loved. Your mother’s jewelry. Your trophies.”

  “Trophies?” Valdivia inquired.

  Dinah blinked as if coming back to life and glanced away from Rucker. “Beauty contest trophies,” she said.

  “She was Miss Gum Spirits of 1973,” Rucker noted in a biting tone. He paused, hating himself for this pettiness, hating Valdivia, and wishing he could hate Dinah. “She was Miss Georgia later on, and she could have been Miss America, but she backed out. Something about her personal scruples. Hell, it’s too bad she can’t give it a second try. Now she has no scruples.”

  One of her hands lurched out toward him, wavering as if she were desperately looking for support. He was so shocked that he didn’t stop to think, he simply held his hand out in return.

  “Stop, stop,” she murmured, then turned swiftly and grasped Valdivia’s arm. “We need to leave, Diego.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Where did you meet him?” Rucker demanded, nodding toward Valdivia. “Just tell me that.”

  “Two years ago, when I went to the Conference of the Americas, in New Orleans.”

  “I had an interest in the political systems of small towns in your country,” Valdivia added with a predatory show of teeth that could have been mistaken for a smile. “Dinah, as mayor of that village—what was the name, querida?”

  “Mount Pleasant.”

  “Yes. She fascinated me. Step out of the way, Señor McClure.”

  “Give me an address,” Rucker told her. “So I can have my lawyer contact you.”

  She shook her head. “I have your address. Assuming that you still live in Mount Pleasant.”

  “Yes.” It’s my home, he added silently, and your home.

  “I’ll send you something—whatever the court needs—that absolves you from a divorce settlement.”

  “Step back, Señor,” Valdivia said. The unpleasant edge in his voice caused the bodyguards to inch closer.

  “Please,” Dinah added. Her eyes begged Rucker. “It’s over. I couldn’t take anymore. We’re too different. We always were. Now go home and forget about me.”

  A long, harsh breath shattered inside his lungs. “You hid those feeling’s well,” he said gruffly. “You’d make a great actress … or a great prostitute.”

  “Step back,” Valdivia said one more time. “People have a way of walking into the jungle here and never returning. I would hate for you to have such a fate, Señor.”

  Rucker snatched the man’s pristine white lapels into his fist. “Don’t threaten me—”

  “Stop it!” Dinah interjected. She pried Rucker’s fingers off her companion’s coat. “Get away from us, Rucker. Leave me alone. Do I have to put it cruelly? All right. You were an embarrassing redneck, but I stayed with you because I had a certain amount of prestige as the wife of a well-known writer—even if all you write are simpleminded books of southern humor.”

  She continued rapidly, her voice rising. “I left without a word because I was pregnant—and I knew that if you found out you’d never let me go.”

  Rucker stared at her with horror. “We have a baby and you didn’t tell me?”

  “There’s no baby. I … fixed the problem.”

  Her words numbed him and left nothing—not anger, not shock, not grief. He was dying. It might be years before he stopped breathing, but he could feel himself dying now.

  “I came here to find out what happened to you,” he said finally. “To see if you were really alive.” He paused. When had everything gotten so quiet, and so cold? Or was it just the emptiness growing inside him? “Now I’m not sure you ever existed.”

  “As far as you’re concerned, I didn’t.”

  She stared straight ahead, no longer acknowledging his presence. The bodyguards blocked him as Valdivia guided her past. Rucker’s gaze followed her until she disappeared in the crowd, and then he remained still, staring at nothing, aware of nothing until Jeopard’s sympathetic grip on his arm forced him to walk away.

  March had been steamy in Surador, but here in Alabama, wintertime had not yielded to spring and drizzling rain accompanied near-freezing temperatures. Dinah shivered by the window of her Montgomery hotel room. The night absorbed her with its bleakness. She quickly pulled the curtains closed, then, moving woodenly, began to strip off her clothes.

  Why had Valdivia detoured to this small southern city? They’d arrived a week ago; the mission was barely begun, and she had hoped to be headed back to Surador by now. Who were they hiding from?

  She thought he enjoyed torturing her
this way, keeping her within a few hours’ drive of her old life, her old home, and the husband she had so nearly destroyed.

  Dinah stepped into a hot shower and leaned against the tiled wall, her shoulders hunched and her face buried in her hands. She sobbed loudly, glad for the freedom to let anguish draw hard shudders through her body. She could only cry like this in the shower; Valdivia’s room was next door, and the walls were thin. Any hint of weakness on her part only strengthened his position.

  Here in the shower she could call Rucker’s name and say that she loved him. Here she could promise that everything would be all right someday. Here she could grieve over the devastation she’d seen in his eyes.

  After nearly an hour she forced herself to leave the shower’s private haven. Valdivia would be coming by with dinner soon. Probably more hamburgers. His craving for American junk food would have been funny, under different circumstances.

  Dinah wrapped her dark hair in a towel. She reluctantly donned a lacy black robe and black bedroom shoes that resembled ballet slippers. Valdivia chose all her clothes, so there was nothing else to wear. This sexy outfit was one more way in which he tested her resistance to intimacy. He was unwilling to force her because he sensed that it would make her less cooperative.

  And as long as he needed her cooperation, she had a chance.

  She was startled by the sound of running feet in the hallway outside. Dinah jumped when someone slammed against her door. A heavy fist pounded it.

  “Let me in!” Valdivia ordered.

  He kept a key to her room and didn’t have to ask for admittance. Dinah looked quickly for something to cover her flimsy robe. “Just a second—”

  “Immediately, damn you!”

  Dinah jerked the door open and hugged her arms over her chest. She staggered back, gasping, as Valdivia hurled himself into the room and banged the door shut.

  He was disheveled and panting. His heavy cashmere overcoat hung open, revealing a conservative gray suit with pinstripes. Dinah’s gaze went to the red stain widening on the top of one thigh.

  Valdivia sank to the bed, his face so ashen that his slender black brows seemed unnatural. “I’ve been discovered,” he rasped in Spanish. “You have to go on alone.”

  “But—”

  “There’s no time! They may find us at any moment! I’ll have to distract them while you complete our job.” He lurched to his feet, staggered to the sliding glass door that opened onto a balcony, and slid it open. “Get your coat!” Stunned, she didn’t move. He swung about and stabbed a finger at her viciously. “If you don’t do this, you know what will happen! Do you understand?”

  Dinah ran for the closet and snatched a coat off a hanger. Swinging the coat over her shoulders, she went to the balcony. Valdivia stood there, surveying the rain-soaked bushes one floor below. They both heard running footsteps far down the hotel corridor.

  “I need money, credit cards, something,” she protested, as he grabbed her wrist and urged her over the balcony railing.

  Cursing, he reached into a coat pocket and retrieved a wad of American money, which he thrust into her hand. “Either I or someone else will meet you in New Orleans five days from now. The usual place.”

  “What if I’m caught?”

  He grabbed the front of her coat. Dinah clung to the railing, feeling the towel slide off her head. Icy rain began to pepper her scalp. Valdivia’s handsome face was twisted with cruelty.

  “Then you lose everything you love,” he warned. “Do not fail. And do not tell anyone anything about your situation, unless you want to be responsible for their safety.”

  Dinah drew back one hand and slapped him, hard. A year ago she would have been incapable of striking another human being. She’d learned to fight. “Keep your part of the bargain, Diego, and I’ll keep mine.”

  With a muffled laugh, Valdivia shoved her off the balcony.

  “Lady, did you have a quarrel with your boyfriend?”

  Dinah wrapped herself tighter inside the thick sable coat and, for once, blessed Valdivia’s penchant for giving her expensive gifts. She huddled in the cab’s backseat and tried to keep her teeth from chattering. Her legs stung badly where the bushes had scraped them. One hip ached from the fall.

  “Yes. A q-quarrel,” she told the driver.

  “When I saw you on the sidewalk outside that cheap hotel, I could tell you were desperate to get away. Did he hit you?”

  “He wouldn’t d-dare.”

  “Good. What’s wrong with him?”

  It would take a textbook on sadistic personalities to answer that one, Dinah thought. “He’s jealous.”

  “Where to, now?”

  Dinah took several deep breaths and considered that question for the first time. “Just … take the interstate and head north. I have to think.”

  Her destination was the mountains of eastern Kentucky, at least a nine-hour drive. Dinah rapidly unfolded the wet, crumpled bills in her fist. He’d given her fifty-four dollars.

  She almost groaned out loud. Only fifty-four dollars. No credit cards, no ID, no checks, and no clothes, she added grimly. She had learned to live with fear, but not with defeat. Now she leaned her head against the cab’s seat and shut her eyes wearily.

  Think, think, she told herself. When she did, shivers ran through her, this time from anxiety. She spent several minutes trying to find options, but couldn’t. “Do you think a bus ticket to Mount Pleasant would cost less than fifty-four dollars?” she asked raggedly.

  The cab driver chuckled. “Where is that?”

  “North Alabama. In the mountains near the Tennessee line.”

  “Yeah, you can get there. Whew! When you run from a man, you run a long way.”

  Dinah winced. She wasn’t running from a man. She was running to one, the only one who could help her—but the one with the least reason to care.

  Two

  Rucker slammed his Land Rover into park by the small clapboard house he and Dinah had shared. All evening he’d been driving the mountain roads, just driving, wishing he could think of someplace to go and a reason for wanting to go there.

  The darkness of the cloudy March night surrounded him as soon as he turned the headlights off. He put his head back on the truck seat, shoved the door open, and listened to the pine forest rustle in the wind. Rain pattered softly on the truck’s roof. The night smelled wet, cold, and lonely.

  He hadn’t slept in the house since his return from Surador a few days ago. He knew abruptly that he couldn’t sleep in it tonight, either. It had been Dinah’s home before they married; he’d sold his sprawling house in Birmingham and moved up here. Everything about the remodeled farmhouse spoke of her warmth and class.

  It was all a lie.

  He gritted his teeth as he climbed out of the Land Rover and pulled the collar up on his aviator’s jacket. He’d get a change of clothes and go back to the motel. He kept wondering when Jeopard’s agents would locate Dinah and Valdivia.

  His booted feet made hollow sounds on the porch’s wide-plank floor. He swung the screen door open, unlocked the main door, reached inside, and flicked on the porch light.

  “R-Rucker.”

  He whirled toward the unmistakable voice. Dinah sat on the floor by a window. Her teeth chattered and her wet hair clung to the collar of a black fur coat that cascaded around her like a luxurious tent. One hand grasped the window ledge. She looked frail and exhausted.

  After a stunned moment, Rucker drew a pained breath and forced himself to recall the razor-sharp words she’d spoken to him in Surador. He moved slowly across the porch, then dropped to his boot heels in front of her.

  “Lose your Latin meal ticket?” he asked bitterly.

  “Yes. I need your help.”

  Disgust crept into his expression. He ducked his head and rammed a hand through his hair. “Lady, you’ve got a helluva lot of gall.”

  “I know.” All that mattered was that she was home, where she had dreamed of being for so long, and that she loved him d
early, regardless of what he might do or say because she’d hurt him.

  Dinah gazed hungrily at him—at the wavy auburn hair that feathered upward at the ends now that he’d ruffled it, at the width of his shoulders and at the way the faded jeans stretched over his long, powerful legs. She closed her eyes and cherished his scent—the leather of his jacket, traces of rich cigar smoke, the smell of masculine hair and skin.

  His deep voice broke her reverie. “Where’s Surador’s poster boy for sewage control?”

  “I don’t know.” That was true. She licked her chapped lips and his eyes went to the movement. He cursed viciously and looked away.

  “Don’t jerk me around. What happened to him?”

  Fear for Rucker’s safety made her very cautious. She pretended to study the sable coat pooled around her on the porch floor and said stubbornly, “You don’t need to know. Look, I can’t get up. My feet are n-numb. The bus station is two miles from h-here, and I didn’t have any money left for cab fare. So I walked.”

  “What were you doin’ broke and on a bus? Did good old Diego lose all his dough? Did the banana market go rotten?”

  “I’m on my own now. That’s all I can tell you.”

  Rucker’s face was rugged. The dimples of his younger years had become creases on either side of his mouth. Stress and weight loss had deepened them in the months since she left him, giving his face an aged, angular harshness that tore at her heart. It was still, however, the kind of masculine face that hypnotized women. Dinah studied every nuance of his expression, aching to caress the sadness out of it.

  “So what do you want from me?”

  “I need …” Dinah bent her head forward as bright pinpoints of light danced in front of her eyes.

  “What? I thought you didn’t need anything from me.”

  She hadn’t eaten all day, she’d spent the past hour walking nearly barefoot in freezing temperatures, and her nerves were shot. But she’d learned to hide physical and emotional discomfort so well over the past months that it was a habit now.

  “I just need some money,” she finally managed. “I have to go somewhere.”

  “Where?”