Never Let Go

by Deborah Smith

  Dinah lay there in silent misery, and he shared it. Finally Katie made a series of soft, funny sounds. “Nobody can hurt you now, sweetpea,” Rucker said, his voice low and gruff. “We’re goin’ home.” His next words were meant for Dinah. “At least I feel sure that she’s my daughter. She couldn’t have gotten this color hair from Valdivia.”

  Dinah nodded stiffly. Her neck ached from the uncomfortable position and the small of her back felt as tight as a bow. Perspiration streamed down her sides. Her breasts hurt from being mashed against the ground.

  Rucker must have sensed her discomfort. He grasped her shoulders and pulled her to a sitting position with her back to him. She twisted to look at him over her shoulder.

  He was gazing at Katie. The baby flailed her arms and held one hand up, curling her fingers at him. He put his little finger within her reach and she wrapped her hand around the tip. He gently tickled her stomach. “What a smile,” he whispered in a tormented voice.

  Dinah sighed. Katie had her smile.

  He looked up sharply and caught her watching them. His expression darkened. “Face the other way.”

  Wearily, she did so. He spoke again, his tone cold. “You won’t get to see her grow up. You’ll go to prison. You’ll get old in prison. And all that time you’ll be thinkin’ about Katie, wonderin’ how she is, what she’s doing, what she looks like. She’ll never think of you as her mother.”

  All of what he was saying was entirely possible. She and the Scarboroughs had no proof that they weren’t willing participants in Valdivia’s work. Dinah threw her head back and groaned against the binding tape.

  “Good,” Rucker said harshly. “I’m glad you’re upset. I don’t know how in the hell you can justify what you were doin’ for Valdivia. A deadly herbicide—that’s the sickest kind of war.”

  Before he could say anything else rain began to cascade down on them. The sky had been sunny minutes earlier, but unexpected downpours were a daily event in the Amazon. Even the huge trees above them offered little protection.

  Katie let out a wail of pure distress. Rucker put her on the ground and lay down on his stomach with his torso braced over her as a shield. Still she cried, and her angry bawling resonated through the jungle.

  Dinah looked around frantically, afraid that one of Valdivia’s workers might be roaming within earshot. She lay down on her back and wormed her way under Rucker.

  His eyes glittered with warning and he started to protest. But when Dinah turned her face toward Katie’s and rested her forehead against her cheek, the baby’s wails subsided. Dinah felt one tiny hand grab a strand of her hair as if it were a pacifier.

  Warm rain continued to pour down on them. Above her, Rucker was oblivious to it. Shocked by her actions to help him, he stared down at her and Katie, his eyes moving over the visible evidence of their loving bond. Dinah’s eyes glistened like blue crystals, and the quiet plea he saw in them was too tormenting.

  His hand shaking, he fumbled with the tape over her mouth.

  Don’t do it Look away from her.

  But she helped me—she knew I’d be in danger if somebody heard Katie crying.

  Don’t be stupid. It doesn’t mean anything.

  It has to.

  He carefully pulled the tape away. Dinah drew several deep breaths and looked up at him with apparent adoration. “I can tell you everything now,” she called against the loud background of pounding rain. “Whatever you want to know.” As he gazed at her warily she laughed with joyful relief that bordered on crying. “My darling, I’ve waited for this moment for so long …”

  “Atención! Ya ha terminado!”

  Their world exploded in movement as Valdivia’s men surrounded them.

  Ten

  His guards had discovered Jeopard and Drake just as they were carrying Sara Scarborough into the jungle, Dinah learned later. After capturing them, the guards began searching for her and Rucker.

  “I kicked the blond guy in the groin and he barely flinched,” Sara whispered as she and Dinah stood on the gallery that overlooked one of the hacienda’s small courtyards. “If I’d known that he was here to rescue us, I would have wrapped myself around him like a hungry anaconda. But he and the other one caught me as I was coming out of the lab. No explanation. They just grabbed me.”

  Sara, whose small size made her look deceptively delicate, shook back a long mane of red hair and added, “Dinah, they might be worth something to Valdivia as hostages. He won’t hurt them.”

  Dinah clasped trembling hands in front of her and glanced at the guards posted near them. “The way he didn’t hurt Kyle?”

  Sara started to say something else, but Valdivia strode onto the gallery, smiling wolfishly at them. Dressed in white tennis clothes he faked a wholesome appearance. He stopped by Sara and looked from her to Dinah.

  “Some excitement, eh? I see you’ve both changed and cleaned up. Admirable, the way you’ve recuperated from such an ordeal.”

  He touched the sleeve of Sara’s breezy red-print dress and waved an approving hand at Dinah’s elegant blue silk. “We should have a lawn party.”

  Sara laughed sweetly. “You could chain Dinah and me to some croquet wickets and hit balls at us. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  Valdivia flashed her a smiling, slit-eyed warning. “Possibly.” His mocking eyes rose to Dinah’s. “But I wouldn’t want to provoke Dinah’s husband. Anger makes him foolish.”

  Dinah suppressed a furious desire to put her hands around his throat. Her back rigid, she said softly, “My husband knows virtually nothing about you. He’s no danger to you. What do you intend to do with him?”

  “I’m not certain, querida. Let’s have a closer look at our catch.”

  He leaned over an ornate white railing and motioned to a guard below. A door opened. Several armed men shoved Rucker, Jeopard, and Drake into the courtyard.

  Dinah’s knees went weak when she saw the stiff way they moved. She grasped the railing tightly. “You had them beaten, you bastard,” she accused Valdivia in a low, dangerous voice.

  Sara exclaimed hoarsely then adopted the poker face that had protected her all these months.

  Valdivia laughed. “Not badly. Not so that it would show. I didn’t want to upset you.”

  The three prisoners raised their eyes to the gallery. Dinah met Rucker’s gaze and nearly sank to the gallery floor in horror. His eyes held physical pain and something much worse—fierce loathing.

  Valdivia must have seen her hand flex as if to reach out to Rucker. “Don’t, querida,” he warned in a soft, lethal voice. “Play your part or he won’t have any chance at all. No protests. No bothersome attempts to defend yourself or condemn me. If you expose your true circumstances, hell become reckless.”

  Dinah dug her fingernails into the gallery railing and trained her gaze on a magnificent flowering tree across the courtyard. Its serene beauty was an ironic contrast that helped to focus her anguish.

  “You gentlemen will be staying with us a few days,” Valdivia called cheerfully. He stepped between Dinah and Sara, then put an arm around each of them. “I can’t tell you how much it concerns me that you attempted to kidnap my beautiful ladies. They serve me well. I can’t permit people to whisk them away, can I? So I must decide what to do with you.”

  Dinah started when Rucker’s voice pierced her stoic facade. His deep, melodic drawl would have done justice to a master orator. He spent several seconds calmly giving Valdivia a lesson in colloquial southern obscenities.

  “That about sums it up,” Jeopard agreed.

  Drake stood silent, but the murderous smile on his face and the slow flexing of his enormous hands spoke volumes. Valdivia applauded merrily then gave a command to the guards. They herded Rucker and the others out of the courtyard.

  Dinah leaned against one of the gallery’s columns and gazed at Valdivia with undisguised hatred. Sara turned numbly away. He bowed to them both.

  “Smile, ladies. Tomorrow is National Founders’ Day. The biggest h
oliday in Surador. Even rumors of revolution can’t stop the festivities. It will be such fun.”

  “I’m going to hurt you somehow,” Dinah told him.

  Laughing and nodding, Valdivia strode away.

  Rucker stood in the center of the small, square room that served as his cell and quietly told her to get out.

  Dinah shook her head. She knew that she couldn’t fight his anger or his distrust right now, but she could force him to accept the care he so badly needed.

  She nodded to the small camera high in one corner of the room. “The guards are watching and listening. If you don’t do what I tell you to do, they’ll just come in and chain you to the bed. And then I’ll do what I came to do.”

  He wanted to rage at her, she could tell. A muscle flexed in his jaw and his whole body was a study in resistance. She had seen the fierce, proud way he straightened his back when she came into the room, and she knew that he would never display either his physical or emotional pain.

  “What did you come to do?” he asked grimly.

  Dinah nodded toward the large wicker basket in her arms. “I have some liniment. And some food. Plus I brought you a comb and some clean clothes.”

  “Why?”

  Because I love you, she wanted to say, but with the guards listening she could only mutter, “You’re the father of my child. I owe you.”

  “Leave the stuff and get out. An alley cat has more loyalty to its mate than you do.”

  Dinah ignored his bitterness. “You have two choices, Rucker. Voluntary cooperation or forced cooperation. The former is much less humiliating.”

  He was seething, but trapped. Her heart went out to him in ways he could never know.

  “What do you want me to do?” he demanded.

  “Take your shirt off and lay down on the cot.”

  She winced as he whipped the green military T-shirt off his torso. The stiff movements of his arms announced his injuries despite his gallant effort to hide them. He stood before her, feet braced, chest moving rapidly, eyes full of anger. Dinah swept a cool gaze over the bruises on his torso and willed the pit of her stomach to relax.

  She couldn’t indulge her great need to take him in her arms and soothe every mark with a kiss.

  “To the cot,” she instructed. “I haven’t got all day.”

  Lines of sarcasm bracketed his mouth. “Face up or face down?”

  “Face up, please.”

  He stretched out, his booted feet hanging off the end of the bed, and put his hands behind his head. She noted that the past week’s traumas had honed a few more pounds from his body.

  The khaki fatigue pants gaped over the flat surface of his belly, which was terraced with muscle. His face was more angular than ever, and his untrimmed mustache had developed a dramatic droop on either side of his mouth. It made him look like some sort of handsome desperado from the wild west.

  She gasped softly. He was a stranger—a tall, rangy package full of anger and pain, which was entirely directed toward her. She was afraid to touch him.

  Dinah took several steadying breaths as she put her basket on a narrow tabletop. “You were very foolish today,” she told him. “You can’t beat Valdivia. You can only antagonize him.”

  “Is that what happened to Kyle Surprise? Did you help trap Kyle so Valdivia could turn a pack of rottweilers loose on him?”

  Dinah busied herself getting liniment from her basket. The memory of Kyle’s bravery would stay with her the rest of her life. He had been her and Sara’s only hope, and he died because he tried to help them.

  “No,” she retorted. “I couldn’t do something like that, no matter what you think. Don’t ask me anymore. Ignorance is bliss, Rucker. And it’s your only defense, as far as Valdivia is concerned.”

  Dinah went to the bed and knelt beside it. Rucker stared resolutely at the room’s beamed ceiling. Tension radiated off him like heat on hot pavement. His broad chest rose and fell swiftly.

  She cleared her throat anxiously. He looked as if he might explode with violence. Dinah covered her fingers with liniment and slid them over his bruised ribs. Her touch sent a quiver through them both. Dinah shut her eyes, and the fear left her senses as quickly as it had come. Memories flooded her mind.

  “What is it?” she had asked. “An ear muff with legs?”

  “A baby fox.” He opened his cupped hands a bit and revealed a quivering little head with charcoal eyes. One of the fox’s ears was torn and bleeding. “He was out behind the garage. I think a dog chewed him.”

  “I’ll get some antiseptic and a washcloth. But I warn you—Jethro and Nureyev have trouble adjusting to your never-ending parade of furry patients. The raccoon drove them nuts. Are you going to keep the fox very long?”

  “Till he’s healed.” He crooned ridiculous things to the tiny animal.

  “You’re a wonderful softy, Mr. McClure.”

  He frowned with grand dismay. “I’m tough as a board and twice as splintery.”

  She smiled. “Well, Wood Head, what are you going to name the fox?”

  “Knothole … hey, hmmm, what did I do to deserve a kiss?”

  No, there was nothing brutal in the soul of the man who trembled under her hands now and cursed his reaction.

  “Sssh,” she soothed. “I’m not trying to upset you.”

  “What did you drug me with at Anna Scarborough’s?”

  Dinah bowed her head. “I didn’t drug you. Anna did it. I had no idea she was going to. I woke up beside you and was frightened when I realized what she’d done.”

  His large hands gripped the iron railing at the head of the bed. “But you walked out and left me laying there.”

  “Yes. I had to. Anna was supposed to tell you what happened.”

  She circled her fingers over his stomach for a moment then put more liniment on them and rubbed his chest again. The liniment’s spicy eucalyptus scent filled her nose. “Lower your arms by your sides, please,” she told him.

  “Yes, of course. I want to be thoroughly relaxed when Valdivia sics the killer hounds on me.”

  Her chin snapped up. Dinah angrily rubbed liniment into the smooth hollows around his collar bones. “I’m doing my best to get you released.”

  “Oh?” His sardonic tone of voice made it clear that he didn’t believe her. “What about Jeopard and Drake? I’m not goin’ to leave them here.”

  “You talk as if you had choices.”

  He chuckled harshly. “We’re like the Three Stooges, you know. I’m Larry, Jeopard’s Mo, and Drake’s the biggest damned Curly you’ve ever—”

  “I’m doing what I can for them, too. But you’re an American civilian. They’re agents.”

  “What are you doing? Earnin’ more sable coats?”

  Her hand froze over his left nipple, where she had been distractedly caressing its brown nub. Almost of their own volition her fingers pinched him soundly.

  Amazed, he turned his head and looked at her. “Is this some sort of torture? The ‘Beauty Queen Fingernail Technique’ or something like that?”

  Dinah looked at him miserably. “Why don’t you just keep quiet and let me finish this?”

  His mouth thinned. “You’re finished.” He started to sit up, and every inch of movement produced a corresponding expression of pain on his face.

  Dinah flattened a hand over his navel and commanded, “Lay down or you’ll be chained down.”

  Cursing, he sank back on the bed. She slid her fingers down his belly and just slightly under the waistband of his pants.

  “Nobody hit me there.”

  Dinah tossed her head sardonically. “Too bad. I had other horrors in mind for below the waist.” She moved her attention to his arms and began massaging the corded biceps. “Did Jeopard say anything about his being injured below the waist? From Sara Scarborough’s well-aimed foot, I mean.”

  “Yeah. He said he was ready to sing soprano for a minute.”

  “Jeopard has a sense of humor. Amazing.”

  “And he
loved his brother. The Iceman is very human, after all.”

  Silence descended. The skin of his arm was hot and smooth beneath her palm; his muscles felt like strips of hard rubber. She dabbed liniment onto her other hand and kneaded the thick cords on the tops of his shoulders.

  They relaxed slowly. Dinah knew that her touch was a powerful weapon that diffused his anger. He shut his eyes and whispered wearily, “I hate this.”

  “Don’t fight me. You’re stuck here and you need my help. You’ve been beaten up, you’re exhausted, you need to sleep. You can barely hold your eyes open now.”

  “Your concern is real suspicious.” Despite his hard words, the rhythm of his chest began to slow. Dinah spent the next few minutes quietly stroking his arms from shoulder to wrist. Finally, he gave up.

  She watched his facial muscles relax and her heart twisted at the vulnerability they revealed. Dinah bent over him and said softly, “I’ll be back tonight, and I’ll bring Katie.”

  Those words bridged the barrier of his defenses. He nodded groggily, and seconds later he was asleep.

  Valdivia raised a heavy crystal goblet in salute. It caught the candlelight and scattered flecks of it over the lavish table settings. The shadowy room was a perfect backdrop for his black hair and midnight eyes. Dinah couldn’t shake the feeling that darkness emanated from Valdivia like the outpouring of a sun in negative.

  “To bargains, querida.”

  She raised her goblet and clinked it to his. “To honoring bargains.” He sipped his wine and shook his head as if in self-rebuke.

  Dinah’s heartbeat began a thready patter. “It’s time to be honorable, Diego,” she insisted firmly. “You promised that we could leave when the project was finished. You have your herbicide. You’ve tested it, and you know that it works. Let Sara and Katie and me go. Let me take my husband and his companions with us. They were here on their own, not as representatives of the United States. Send them home. As long as you stay outside the U.S. they can’t bother you.”

  The corners of his mouth turned down in teasing melancholy. “Oh, yes, they have much potential for causing me more trouble. And it would be so easy to make them disappear.”