Don't Let Go

by Marliss Melton

  Jordan noted that Ellie looked slightly more rested than yesterday, her hair loose and tumbling down her back as she held the door open. Eyeing the box in Jordan’s arms, she stiffened suspiciously.

  “This comes with a price,” Jordan quickly emphasized, not wanting to offend her. “I have to ask you a favor.”

  “Come on in,” Ellie offered. “What’s in it?”

  “Dishes,” said Jordan.

  “Kitchen’s back here.” Ellie preceded Jordan through a big, empty living area toward a small kitchen, updated with new appliances.

  As Jordan slid the box on the brand-new counter, she breathed the smell of fresh-cut lumber and new linoleum. “This place is perfect,” she offered, taking it in.

  “Sure is,” Ellie agreed with a fervent nod. “So what’s the favor?” she prompted.

  Jordan stepped closer and pitched her voice low. “I need you to watch Silas for me,” she admitted, swallowing down her jitters. “But you can’t tell Solomon or even Silas. I’m leaving for Venezuela tomorrow to pick up the little boy I’m adopting.”

  Ellie gave her a long, searching look. “He’s going to be mad at both of us,” she guessed, referring to Solomon.

  Jordan winced. “I know. I’m sorry, but I really have no choice, and I can’t tell him, or he’ll try to stop me. Don’t worry,” she added, reassuringly, “he won’t blame you. I’m the one he’ll be mad at.”

  “I’m happy to watch Silas,” said Ellie, with a grave look that saw more than Jordan wanted to show. “Just be careful,” she added with concern. “I’ve heard about Venezuela on the radio.”

  Jordan’s heart palpitated at the reminder of the dangers awaiting her. “I will,” she promised. “Let me get the other boxes from my car.”

  Jordan couldn’t sleep. Thoughts of her impending departure kept her mind churning, evoking terrifying visions of being detained by soldiers, questioned, incarcerated, and locked in a dark dungeon forever. She snuggled closer to Solomon, seeking solace in his warmth and strength.

  With a sleepy murmur, he hooked an arm around her and pulled her closer. “Forgot to tell you,” he said, rousing for a moment. “I found a woman at the embassy in Caracas who says she can fetch Miguel for you.”

  Jordan’s heart stopped, then resumed an erratic beat. “What? She will? When?”

  “Don’t know. But she says he can leave the country with the remaining Americans if and when the embassy’s evacuated.”

  Jordan pictured Miguel’s terror at finding himself with a total stranger while being evacuated at the last, harrowing hour.

  She turned her head to make out Solomon’s shadowed features. His rugged, handsome face tugged at her heartstrings. With a sharp stab of regret, she realized she would miss him—more thoroughly than she ever would have guessed. “Thank you,” she whispered, lifting a hand to his cheek and then his chest, burrowing her fingers into the crisp hair there. Thank you, but it’s too late, she wanted to add. I’m leaving tomorrow. This has got to be done right, and I’m the only one to do it.

  Had there really been a time when she considered Solomon unfeeling? His love for Silas and his generosity with Ellie made it plainly clear that beneath his tough facade, he was every bit as romantic as his mother. No wonder Candace had so easily crushed his faith in love.

  She, too, had sworn never to harbor tender feelings for a man, to give another human being power over her heart. And yet, this emotion that made her chest hurt felt an awful lot like love.

  The other night he’d called her sweetheart. Did that mean he reciprocated her feelings? Or did it even matter? She didn’t have the leisure to dream beyond the next harrowing days. Miguel was her priority, first and foremost. If she managed to bring him home, and Solomon deigned to speak to her again, then she would know what sweetheart really meant to him.

  A sudden yearning to connect physically with him, just one more time, overcame her.

  Her palm drifted downward, over the hair-roughened plane of his abdomen, lower still to cup and stroke him. They’d made love earlier that day, but it had been a race to abate the tension that crackled the minute Solomon walked through the door. And with Silas dawdling in the kitchen over his pudding, they hadn’t had much time.

  But given the possibility that she might never make love to Solomon again, Jordan wanted one more memory to carry with her. She pushed to her knees and ducked her head beneath the covers, noting that he’d slit his eyes open. His low growl was all the encouragement she needed.

  “Damn, woman,” he said on a ragged whisper, sifting his fingers through her hair.

  Eventually, she climbed over the top of him and filled herself, slowly and steadily, savoring the heady fullness, the thrill of him inside of her. His hands branded her hips, her breasts, her neck and lips as she undulated around him, lingeringly, tenderly, in no hurry to seek completion.

  What if he won’t forgive me? she wondered, drawing a breath at the feeling of loss that enveloped her. What if he refuses to see me again? Tears pressured her eyes even as the pleasure in her womb approached crisis.

  A sob escaped her, and Solomon mistook it for a plea for intervention. He stroked his hands up her thighs and delved his thumbs into the moist alcove between, impelling Jordan into the current of her release.

  She resisted for as long as she was able, putting off good-bye, but it tugged her under, smothering her in poignant rapture for the last time. Solomon was with her, clutching her fiercely, shuddering as his pleasure spilled into hers.

  With their bodies still joined, they fell together, limply intertwined. Jordan buried her face into his neck so he wouldn’t see the tears brimming her eyes. She was certain he could sense the fullness in her chest.

  “If I knew you’d thank me like that,” he murmured, stroking her hair, “I’d have told you earlier,” he said, mistaking the reason for her expressiveness.

  She had to smile at his self-satisfaction. “You’re awfully thoughtful for a cold-blooded shark,” she replied.

  “Makos are warm-blooded, remember?”

  “Oh, that’s right,” she murmured, recalling what she’d learned at the aquarium. She’d misjudged him entirely. But would he be warm-hearted enough to forgive her, she wondered, when he discovered that she’d left despite his efforts?

  Solomon’s sixth sense had given him hell all day. Something was wrong; he didn’t know what. At the office, all his business was in order. The men had passed their physical readiness tests. All weapons and ammunition were operational and accounted for. Lucy Donovan had even advised him via e-mail that she would undertake her objective sometime this week. Everything at Spec Ops was shipshape.

  It had to be something at the home front that had his antennae twitching, though he couldn’t imagine what. Silas had learned over one hundred fifty sight words. He couldn’t be any happier with his cousins now living in close proximity. And then there was Jordan . . .

  Solomon savored the memory of her sweet, passionate nature. He’d never had a lover who satisfied him so thoroughly, so honestly. Perhaps she was just grateful for his help in securing Miguel, but there’d been a suggestion of desperation in her touch last night.

  He’d mulled over it all day, unable to shake the feeling that he’d overlooked something.

  The first thing he noted as he parked his truck beneath the carport by the big house was that Jordan’s car was missing. He shrugged his concern aside with the reassurance that she’d soon be back and headed down the dappled hill toward the houseboat. A breeze ruffled the leaves overhead. A distant roll of thunder stirred the uneasiness in his gut. His sixth sense was at it again.

  He stalked on board and let himself inside, greeted by deafening quiet. Five steps into the houseboat, he spied the note stuck with a magnet to the refrigerator.

  Premonition chilled his blood as he approached to read it.

  Dear Solomon, I hope you will eventually forgive me but I left for Venezuela this morning. Silas is with Ellie, who has agreed to watch him in my
place. I’ll be back in five days with Miguel.

  Take care,

  Jordan

  “No!” Solomon shouted, yanking the note off the fridge and crumpling it in his hands. He swiveled in fury and helplessness and pounded his fist on the counter. “Damn it, Jordan!” he railed, unwrinkling the message to read it one more time. How could she do this to him? He’d made it perfectly clear that her life could be at stake, that others could bring Miguel stateside, and Jordan wouldn’t have to step foot outside the country.

  She hadn’t listened to a word he’d said. Like Candace, all she’d thought about was herself, leaving without any word of her intentions. An awful but familiar betrayal bubbled within him.

  Snatching up his keys, he stalked back outside, into the impossibly muggy heat to fetch his son. He drove like a demon toward Ellie’s cottage, cutting off cars, blaring his horn. He roared into the driveway and braked abruptly.

  Sean Harlan looked up from the bricks he was laying to make front steps. As Solomon jumped out of his truck and slammed the door shut, Sean put his trowel down and stood up, blocking his trajectory to the door.

  “The boy’s inside,” he said, in his low easygoing lilt, “and he’s fine.”

  Solomon met Harley’s watchful blue gaze with disbelief. “You know about this?” he demanded.

  “All I know,” said the chief in that same calming voice, “is that Miz Stuart is watching Silas for you now. She’s concerned that you would be upset about that.”

  “Damn right, I’m upset. Do you realize where the fuck Jordan went?”

  “Back to Venezuela,” Sean replied. “Take a deep breath, Mako, and don’t even think about taking that tone with Miz Stuart. You know this wouldn’t be happening if you’d let Jordan bring that little boy back.”

  Solomon heard something in his head pop. He turned around and walked away. It was either that or plow his fist into Sean Harlan’s belly. With a pulse thrumming at his temple, he dropped the tailgate on his truck and planted his butt on it. He ground his teeth together and willed himself to calm down.

  Sean approached him, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited.

  “Women,” Solomon said, choking out the word with venom, “are senseless. Does she really think she’s going to waltz into a hot zone and pick up that boy and fly out with him again?”

  “She’ll do anything to get him back. You should’ve realized that.”

  Solomon glared at him. “Fuck you. Instead of taking her side, why don’t you help me think of a way to protect her?” he growled.

  “Okay,” Sean conceded, with a shrug. He stroked his square, shaven jaw. “Who do we know that would help?”

  “No one,” Solomon growled. “Because the soldiers we trained are now backing the fucking Populists.”

  “Someone at our embassy, then.”

  Solomon thought of Lucy Donovan. Sending one woman to help another was, in Solomon’s mind, like asking the blind to lead the blind, but Lucy was bound to have contacts. “I know where to start,” he said, slipping off his tailgate and shutting it. “Now. Let me get my boy. I promise to be nice,” he added with a snarl.

  Three hours later, Solomon stepped aboard his houseboat all alone. With Jordan’s protest echoing in his ears—You can’t wake up a child at four in the morning!—he’d ended up asking Ellie to watch Silas in his stead. No doubt that was what Jordan had intended all along.

  Shutting himself inside, Solomon listened to the downpour that had left him wet and chilled. Silence coiled around him, surrounding him in solitude and loneliness, reminding him of the night he’d returned from Iraq to find his wife and son missing.

  Jordan had betrayed him. She’d left.

  But not the way Candace had, he admitted. She’d left him a note. She hadn’t stolen Silas away. She’d even said good-bye, he realized belatedly. That was what his intuition had been trying to tell him all day long—that Jordan’s sweet possession of him last night had been her farewell.

  “Damn me for being a blind idiot,” he growled, his back to the door, his face in his hands. If something happened to her, he had only himself to blame. With a shuddering breath, he dropped his hands, squared his shoulders and pushed away from the door.

  He needed to contact Lucy Donovan, ASAP.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jordan eased out of the taxi on knees that jittered. A wind-tossed, two-seater plane piloted by an amateur had been the only transportation she could find from Maiquetía International to the rebel-occupied state of Las Amazonas. From the tiny airstrip outside of Puerto Ayacucho, she’d been lucky to find a taxi. And, now, by the grace of God, she was here, closer to Miguel than she’d been in weeks.

  She was tempted to pinch herself. She had dreamed so many times that she was back. Yet the scent of the soil was distinct enough to assure her this was real.

  This city had sprung out of a trading post set beneath the rapids of the Orinoco River. Built on black granite, surrounded by jungle-shrouded, flat-topped mountains called tepuis, it now housed more than seventy thousand souls, including those of mixed race, but also tribal natives who, fifty years ago, had never seen a white face.

  The city looked just as it had earlier this summer: a sprawling and unwieldy conglomerate of buildings, from ramshackle huts to skyscrapers lost in the mist that seeped out of the surrounding jungle. There was only one difference: the presence of armed soldiers standing on every street corner and armored vehicles parked everywhere she looked.

  Pulling down the brim of her baseball cap, Jordan darted from the taxi to the cathedral across the street. Ignoring the curious gazes of two soldiers standing nearby, she darted up the cathedral steps and tugged on the cathedral doors. They were locked. With her heart jumping up her throat, she knocked briskly on the dense wood. “Hurry, please!” she begged, as the soldiers started to approach her.

  They were almost upon her when a window set into the bigger door slid open, revealing the face of Father Benedict. “Jordan!” he exclaimed, glancing behind her. With a scrape, the big door swung open. The priest yanked her inside and slammed the door shut, sliding a bar across the threshold.

  “Jordan,” he said again, “What are you doing here?” His face struck her as pale in the gloomy antechamber.

  “I’ve come for Miguel, of course.”

  “Miguel? But—”

  “But, what?” Her pitch rose with alarm.

  “A woman from the American embassy was just here this morning,” he announced in bewilderment. “She showed me a note explaining that she was having Miguel escorted home to you.”

  The floor of the musty space seemed to perform a slow turn. The woman in question had to be Solomon’s contact, the one who’d said she would have Miguel evacuated with the embassy workers. “No,” Jordan cried, so profoundly disappointed that she would have collapsed if the priest hadn’t caught her.

  A rapping at the door startled them both. “They won’t dare breach the door,” he whispered with confidence, drawing her deeper into the nave. “Come inside, and we’ll talk about this situation.”

  “But I have to go after Miguel,” Jordan protested.

  “That may not be possible,” he retorted grimly.

  The pounding at the door had ceased. The light of the stained-glass windows bathed the priest’s robes as they paused in the sanctuary.

  “The woman who came this morning—Lucy Donovan—didn’t know if she could get back into the city. The Populists are marching on Caracas as we speak.”

  More bad news. “But I have to get Miguel. I have forms that need to be signed in his presence. I have the money to pay for him!”

  The priest startled her by pulling her into his embrace. “Peace, Jordan,” he murmured, fiercely. “We must think prayerfully about your next move. God got you this far. He’ll see you through,” he promised.

  Jordan swallowed heavily. Okay, she thought, but does God know that I only have four days left on my visa?

  Within the next six hours, Father Benedi
ct summoned Señor Lorenzo, the lawyer, to the cathedral to receive Jordan’s payment. The lawyer secured a seat for her on a public bus bound for Caracas. He even agreed to escort her to the bus terminal.

  Jordan bid a sorrowful farewell to the priest, not knowing if she would ever see him again.

  “I’m sorry I can’t go with you to the terminal,” he apologized. “I’m a wanted man out there,” he added with a mocking smile.

  “Thank you for everything and for taking care of Miguel.”

  “The pleasure was all mine, Jordan. Now, go. Be safe.”

  At the bus terminal, Jordan waited in the lawyer’s car until the last possible moment. As a result, she got the only seat remaining, between an open window and a woman holding a pig. She took it gratefully, pulled her cap down over her eyes, and tried to sleep. She had many long hours ahead of her.

  But the pig squirmed continuously, and the bus hit potholes that slammed Jordan’s temple against the window, startling her from shallow slumber. The occasional volley of gunfire in the distance had her snatching the hat out of her eyes in fear.

  It was just as Solomon had predicted, Jordan thought with a frozen heart: Venezuela’s bid for democracy was doomed. Would she even be able to get Miguel out before the Populists took complete control?

  Afternoon dragged into evening. A tangerine sunset drew Jordan’s gaze to the rolling western plains. The wild rugged beauty of untamed land made her think of Solomon. Regret lanced her heart, followed by an aching emptiness. He and Silas seemed so far away.

  Her consolation was Miguel—if she found him. If she got him out in time.

  The sun dropped from sight, drawing darkness behind it. Exhausted, Jordan closed her eyes and lost herself to dreams in which Solomon held her close, murmuring assurances that Miguel would be all right.

  The realization that the bus had stopped awakened her abruptly. It was past midnight, she saw, pressing the light on her wristwatch. The low murmuring of passengers infused the idling bus with tension. “What’s going on?” she asked the woman beside her.