Warrior Without Rules

by Nancy Gideon

  “Saw it.”

  “Madre mio. Who would do such a thing? And why?”

  “That’s what I mean to find out. How long have you been up here?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a half hour.”

  “Have you seen anyone else?”

  “No one. They are all tending the party. I was not in a festive mood so I came here to sulk, I guess you could say.” His smile was self-deprecating.

  “Who would have access to the tape player?”

  Mateo shrugged helplessly. “Anyone on staff who knew how to program a VCR and use a remote. They could have started the tape from anywhere close by or just set the timer. We use it to show bootlegged American sports events.” His voice softened. “Is Antonia all right?”

  “No.”

  And with that, Zach left the office. There was nothing more he could learn there. The scene was open to anyone. The suspects were limitless. The chance of any fingerprints was incredibly slim, but he handled the tape with care out of habit. He wasn’t a detective. It wasn’t his job to follow up on criminal leads. His job was the fragile woman in the sports bar slowly unraveling at the seams.

  “How’s she doing?”

  His mother looked up from where Toni was still huddled in her embrace. Her expression mirrored her concern. “She’s in shock. Maybe we should call a doctor.”

  “No.” Toni spoke up immediately, the word faint but no less firm. Zach understood. No publicity.

  “I’ll take her upstairs. Thanks, Mum. Get back to your party.”

  Cecilia surrendered the trembling figure with reluctance. “I’ll discreetly ask about and see if anyone slipped away. Perhaps our friend, Premiero.”

  “Low profile, Mum.”

  “You needn’t tell me that. Take care of your young lady. I’ll take care of this old one.”

  While Cecilia headed for the stairs and her contemporaries, Zach lifted a limp and unprotesting Toni to her feet. With his arm about her waist and her head lolling upon his shoulder, a casual observer would think he was assisting a party-goer who’d had too much to drink. Her lack of responsiveness worried him, making him wonder if perhaps he should overrule her request and call in a physician.

  He’d listened to her plea ten years ago. It hadn’t been the right decision then, so why would it be now? He’d give her a little time to come around on her own. Just a little.

  As they rode up in the elevator, Toni began to stir. She gathered her wits about her in gradual degrees, her posture strengthening, her breathing deepening, until he felt her push against him for release. He refused to comply. She wasn’t going anywhere. His arms locked her more tightly into his side. She didn’t struggle. Nor did she succumb to the closeness. She simply stood stiff and still until they reached their floor. When the doors opened, she moved beside him in a rigid autopilot, not speaking, not reacting, just following his lead.

  She headed straight for the bathroom and in seconds, he heard the shower running. He took advantage of her absence to pop the video into the in-room VCR. Though every fiber of his being rebelled against it, he had to watch the tape all the way through in case it contained some clue to her abduction. Something they’d missed. Anything.

  He’d watched the original ransom clip. Short and visceral in impact, it showed a terrified young woman, cut off from light, from safety, from contact with hope. But the entire, unedited tape went beyond mere intimidation, beyond isolation. It encapsulated the horror, graphically, awfully, that Antonia had suffered at the hands of her abductor.

  The monster had put it on film.

  The water was so hot, it reddened her skin but Toni couldn’t feel the warmth. She leaned into the scorching spray and scrubbed at a stain she could never remove. The stain of shame, of guilt, of pain and fear. No amount of cleansing could rinse away that inner blemish.

  When her flesh stung and her knees were trembling, she simply stood under the punishing pulse of the water and let it beat down upon her bowed form. The sobs started from a point deep inside her, from the hidden recess where she’d locked away her sorrow and sense of blame because it was too enormous, too horrible to confront alone. Most of the time, she managed to keep it there, ruthlessly cramped into that cold niche in her soul, where childhood nightmares still roamed seeking a vulnerable moment in which to escape.

  This nightmare had refused to go tamely, to rest quietly. It roared to life at unpredictable intervals, shaking her confidence, crushing her sense of self-worth, humbling and reducing her to the lowest, most fragile state a woman’s spirit could know. Usually, she fought it, battling to stuff the feelings, the remembrances, the sensations back into that corner of her being where she could pretend it was under control. But tonight she let the beast burst free, let it ravage and howl while she sagged against the slick, unsupportive tiles and weep as if her heart was breaking.

  She knew Zach was watching the tape. She knew what he’d be seeing.

  Smile for the camera, sweet thing. This is one show your daddy will never forget. I’m going to make you a star.

  She sank down to her knees, her shoulders quaking, her arms wrapped about herself to provide a protection she hadn’t had in that cold, brutal darkness. Pain, humiliation, horror. Those things rose bitter and vile in her throat, strangling her sobs the way that tape and wadding of cloth had muffled her screams. Her body convulsed, recalling every ruthless detail of what it had suffered in that black hollow of time that seemed to go on forever, that void of hope and helplessness from which her soul still recoiled, until finally, feebly at first and then with increasing intensity, it cried Enough! Stop! I’m not that helpless, hopeless creature anymore! I survived and I will not go back to that place again!

  Then there was only the cooling jet of the water and the quiet after an emotional storm.

  She remained cramped and huddling for a long, anxious moment, waiting for the rush of memories to return, but there was only a quiet whisper, a faint residue of fear. She took a cautious breath and then another, deeper one as the water continued to swirl down the drain. Gradually, she was able to stand, to turn off the shower and dry off as tremors of delayed shock and stress rippled through her. But she managed. Slowly, shakily, she managed. And within her, a seed of inner strength took root and began to grow with tenacity.

  Clad in a hotel robe, her hair turbaned in a towel, Toni emerged from the bathroom to a darkened main area. The only light was from the swollen moon hanging low in the sky beyond their balcony.

  Zach sat on the couch, motionless. Knowing what he’d witnessed, that he now understood her degradation, she worried how he would react to her. With pity or repulsion? A cowardly part of her urged that she slink to her bed and burrow under covers of shame and isolation. But a strong voice spoke louder, demanding that she face her fears head on.

  It was the longest walk of her life from the bathroom door to the couch where Zach sat impassive in his opinions. With anguish thickening in her throat, she forced a faint smile and a tone not quite as barren as her spirit.

  “Not exactly my best work for television.”

  Odd emotions cramped his expression. When he looked up at her, unable to speak, she knew with an awful desolation that she’d lost him to the horror of a past he’d never be able to get over.

  Then, as that paralyzing ache settled around her heart, Toni began to turn away.

  His hand on her wrist stopped her.

  She couldn’t make herself look at him again. Her courage had fled. She couldn’t face the knowing in his eyes now that he knew it all.

  “Toni.”

  The compelling way he said her name coaxed her attention back to him.

  In the darkness, his gaze glittered.

  “You are the bravest woman I’ve ever known.”

  A choking sound escaped her as he gently pulled her down to him.

  For a long while, he simply held her. From that strong, steady circle of support, Toni relinquished the burdens that scarred her soul. And only then did a near miraculou
s sense of self-forgiveness banish all traces of the guilt and shame she’d carried since that van pulled up beside a reckless teenager ten years ago. She sighed as his lips touched her brow. Then his next words threatened her newfound serenity.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask for more of that courage from you.”

  Warned by the somber currents in his voice, Toni drew a deep breath to steel herself as she leaned away. “What could be worse than what you’ve just seen?”

  “Telling me about it.”

  A lump of ice dropped to the pit of her belly. Seeing her distress, Zach cupped her cheek in his hand, his thumb riding the lush curves of her lips as they trembled slightly.

  “What do you need to know?”

  “Everything. Every detail you can remember from the afternoon when we…talked to the instant I pulled the tape from your eyes in that cellar. Everything. What you heard, what you smelled, what you felt.”

  “Okay.” Her firm response belied the bleakness seeping into her system. Everything. She didn’t know if she could be that brave.

  “Toni, someone is out there capitalizing on your pain. Someone who knows just how to hurt you, who knows facts only someone on the inside could have. Someone who had your blouse and this tape and access to your fears. Until we find out who that is, they’re not going to stop.”

  The enormity of that sank in deep and cold.

  “Then we’ll have to stop them, won’t we, because I’m through living in fear. I am not going to let this thing hold me hostage any longer.”

  Zach nodded but his gaze reflected his pride in her. That heat reached to places that hadn’t known warmth for far too long.

  “Start anywhere you feel comfortable.”

  “None of it makes me comfortable.” Her laugh was rusty and raw. “But I guess I should start with a silly girl propositioning her bodyguard.”

  The telling of her tale went on into the early hours of the morning beginning with the kiss that almost happened and concluding with the warmth of his arms and the solidity of his promise. I won’t tell anyone. I swear upon my life. Neither of them had guessed at the importance of those two events in the shaping of their futures until they heard them brought back to life in the quiet security of a Mexican hotel room a world away from the source of the original hurt. But somehow, that much closer to the original feelings ignited between them. In hearing the event played out again, moment by moment, emotion by emotion, they were also putting it behind them.

  When she’d finished purging her memories and cleansing her soul, Toni was drained of all but a feeling of relief. It was over at last. The sense of closure she’d been denied when begging her secret not be told was finally granted as she sat with her head resting on his broad shoulder, with her words resting heavy upon his heart.

  It should have been you.

  Zach closed his eyes and absorbed the agony of that claim. All his anger, all his zealous insistence upon his rules, none of it meant a thing when compared to that soul-rendingly simple statement. Had he thought more of her heart than the rigid dictates of his duty, how different things might have been.

  “It’s time for you to put it behind you, Toni. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

  And if that meant closing him out because of the part he played in her misery, he would accept that in exchange for her chance at the normal life she craved.

  How inadequate that sounded compared to what she’d endured but apparently, it was enough.

  She lifted her head so she could meet his gaze. “I know you would. You’ve done too much already.”

  If he hadn’t been lost in the drowning pools of her eyes, he might have heard the hint of dismissal in her words. But he was sinking fast and not fighting against the sensations as they closed over his head.

  He sealed the moment with a tender kiss. To him, her response carried them from closing a chapter of the past to exploring new avenues for a potential future.

  But waking not too many hours later in the tangled sheets of their lovers’ bed, Zach felt his sense of satisfaction flee when one other fact came to the forefront.

  He was wrong in his assumptions.

  And he was alone in the room.

  Antonia was gone.

  Chapter 16

  Toni and the crew were gone, had pulled out lock, stock and camera lens at dawn. He tried to contact Tomas on his cell, but the call wouldn’t go through. No signal. At least she wasn’t out there without any help available. Small consolation as his guilt kicked in.

  Arrangements had to have been made to move so many so fast and only one name came to mind. Zach asked at the desk and, after slipping some extra pesos across the counter, was directed to the beach.

  The ocean was restless, roaring to the sand with white caps and seething foam. A black flag had been posted once again to warn of treacherous waters. As treacherous as Zach’s mood as he approached the thatched palapa. The occupant sprawled in a chaise still wore last night’s clothing and dark glasses.

  “Where’s Toni and her crew?” Zach didn’t bother with polite banter.

  “If she wanted you to know, she would have told you,” came the surly reply.

  Having no patience with the sullen attitude, Zach gripped Mateo Chavez by the sloppy shirt and hauled him upright into a sagging seated position. “She’s in danger, you fool. Tell me where she is.”

  He knocked back the sunglasses so he could effect some eye-to-eye intimidation.

  Someone had apparently beaten him to the intimidation part. Literally.

  Mateo blinked up at him through eyes swollen by drink and someone’s enthusiastic fists. “You don’t have to worry about Premiero bothering her. We’ve already talked. He knows the deal’s off and there’s no way Toni’s going to change her mind about it. He’s not happy but he’s not homicidal, either.”

  “The sight of your face doesn’t make a strong case for that, mate.”

  “That’s because of a different matter.”

  “What had you promised him?”

  Mateo laughed. The sound was as raw as his features. “Toni’s compliance. He was going to forgive a rather large debt if I helped things go smoothly with the merger.”

  Zach was very close to adding a few contusions of his own to Mateo’s colorful collection. “And how were you going to do that?” he growled. “By scaring her into submission?”

  “What?” He looked comically blank for a moment, then his expression puckered with revulsion. “You mean with the video? I would never do anything to bring Antonia distress. I care more about her than my own worthless life.”

  “How were you planning to earn Premiero’s forgiveness?”

  “Silly me, I thought to romance her into being agreeable.” He laughed in hindsight. “I’d forgotten how opinionated Toni can be on most any subject. But dear, sweet Toni. She offered me a loan instead of her affection. I guess we know where that was already engaged.”

  Zach scowled at the sourly spoken reference. “So you took her money.”

  Mateo gestured to his face. “Does it look like it? I’ve taken without remorse or regret from the two women who loved me all my life, letting them bail me out of every careless situation I’ve gotten myself into. This time, my pride would not allow it. I thought Premiero could be persuaded, mano a mano, to give me more time. But, as you see, he was not in the mood to be charitable.” Mateo gave a helpless gesture. “No good deed goes unpunished.” He glanced up at the soaring white tower, his expression bleak.

  “I could have made something of this place. I had a real talent for it, you know. What a thing to discover that your ship has come in as it’s sinking beneath you.”

  “You couldn’t bring Toni to the negotiation table, so he’s calling his loan?”

  “That’s about it. And that’s all folks. I have no way to meet his demand. I’ll have to sell. And he’ll pick up the pieces for next to nothing and profit off all my hard work.”

  Zach regarded the young man whose first attempt at
genuine chivalry had cost him all. And he was reminded of another who’d made a choice that had nearly ruined him. They had the same taste in headstrong women, so how could Zach abandon him?

  “Perhaps not.”

  Mateo perked up cautiously.

  “Perhaps another investor might be convinced to step in before Premiero starts breaking legs.”

  “Who would go against Premiero? I know no man with that kind of death wish.”

  “It’s not a man. And it’s time someone besides Toni told Premiero no.”

  “That would be the best news I’ve had this morning, other than waking up alive.”

  It probably was.

  “Call Cecilia Roberts. Tell her I said she should listen to your proposal.”

  He could see the perplexity in the younger man’s face, but Mateo Chavez was not one to let an opportunity pass. “I will.” He nodded to himself then regarded Zach with a new directness. “Toni’s gone into the jungle to get the zipline shots. She didn’t feel there was any need to disturb you since Premiero is no longer a threat.”

  Zach’s features tightened. “I need to know where they are, exactly.”

  “She’ll be perfectly safe. I set her up with a reputable guide. Veta’s with her. And Premiero’s yacht left the marina this morning.”

  Zach’s stance didn’t loosen as he said, “Premiero wasn’t the threat.”

  It was like riding straight down on a bullet train with your head out the window.

  Toni cannonballed through the jungle canopy with knees tucked, her shriek of exhilaration trailing behind her. Greenery flashed by the way one’s life would if this was a free fall. But Toni wasn’t hurtling to a sudden death. She was flying toward a new life.

  And she was loving every minute of it.

  The morning’s exhausting work was done. Bryce had his cavern shots of her rock climbing and rappelling. She looked great, he assured her. The shoes looked great. This was the final sequence for the campaign, this wild, free wheeling ride through the exotic scenery, rocketing into her future with abandon.

  Nothing had ever given her such a rush, such a sensation of total satisfaction. Or so she thought until she was being unhooked from her harness and saw Zach Russell standing there.