Shattered Lullaby

by Rebecca York

  Biting back a denial, she handed over the glass, watching the contents spill down the sides as he tried to hold it steady. Neither of them spoke. After a small pool of water had splashed onto his chest, she lifted the vessel from his grasp again and set it on the rickety nightstand.

  “Sometimes it’s a sign of strength to accept help,” she said mildly.

  He made a low sound in his throat as he tried and failed to sit up.

  She had never dealt with anyone as proud, stubborn and arrogant—to name a few choice traits. Figuring she didn’t have anything left to lose, she sat on the bed and wrapped her free arm around his shoulder. When he didn’t reject her overture, she lifted him, cradling his body against her chest so that she could bring the glass to his lips. He leaned heavily against her as he drank, swallowing quickly, greedily, as if he’d been caught out in the hot desert sun. She hadn’t considered that giving someone a drink of water could be such an intimate act, but holding him like this while he drank was very intimate.

  “Have you had enough?” she asked softly, when he’d downed half the liquid.

  “More, please.”

  She allowed him to drink his fill as she cradled him in her arms. When he was finished, he sank back heavily against her and sighed, the effort to simply quench his thirst having been almost too much for him.

  She let him rest for a moment, then eased away, leaving him propped against the wall.

  “Gracias,” he finally said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  When he turned his head and looked at her, she asked, “Do you know what’s wrong with you?”

  “Malaria,” he answered in a hoarse whisper.

  “In Baltimore?”

  “A relapse. I got it in San Marcos. In the hill country.”

  She knew that could happen. One of her clients had had a boyfriend from El Salvador with the same problem. The man had gone into a coma and died.

  “You should be in the hospital,” she said quickly as she inspected the dark streaks marring the skin under his eyes. He looked almost as if a couple of goons had pummeled his face with their fists.

  He regarded her steadily. “Impossible.”

  “Why not?”

  “I do not have...the energy to explain,” he replied with profound weariness. It wasn’t just from his illness, she thought. This man was worn-out from some heavy burden he had been carrying around for a long time.

  Or was she reading too much into his ragged voice and haggard expression? All she could tell for certain was that the brief conversation was rapidly sapping his strength.

  “If you can get me mefloquine I will be okay.” He paused for breath. “Or maybe pyrmethamine,” he added, reeling off the names of the medicines with a physician’s precision.

  And where was she supposed to get either of those drugs without a prescription? Maybe from her friend Dr. Katie Martin McQuade, who was married to medical researcher Mac McQuade. They owned Medizone Labs, which specialized in developing the medical potential of plants from around the world. “I may be able to get you what you need.”

  “Without disclosing the name of the patient?” he asked, apparently following her train of thought. Avoiding her gaze, he stared into the darkness beyond the circle of light from the lamp.

  “Yes.”

  “You would do that for me?”

  She nodded, shifting on the bed so that she was facing him.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “My job is helping people,” she said evasively, knowing he was more likely to accept her offer if she kept the transaction impersonal.

  She sensed he was making a decision about whether or not to trust her. Sick as he was, he held on to the balance of power in this encounter. As she waited for his approval, time stretched like wire pulled taut. She wanted to say all sorts of things that would push him in the right direction, but she knew that nothing she could say would matter to him. He would keep his own counsel.

  “Come back in the morning,” he said after several tense, silent moments.

  “I don’t think that’s smart,” she answered quickly.

  “You can’t stay. It is...dangerous.”

  The word hung in the air between them like the sound of a bomb ticking.

  “Luis said that you were on the run—” She hesitated for a fraction of a second. “From the INS?”

  His gaze held steady. “Worse than the INS.”

  “Who?”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed. “The less you know about me, the better. For your own sake.”

  She wanted to push him for explanations, make him give her more information. At the same time, she felt a little bud of hope unfurl inside her. The night they’d gotten close, he’d made her think the two of them could eventually mean something to each other. The next day, he’d ruthlessly turned away from her. Was he finally giving her a valid reason? Had he been afraid that her getting close to him would put her in danger?

  It was all she could do not to grab him by the shoulders and shake the truth out of him. But she could see every word he uttered was stealing more of his strength. Even so, his eyes locked with hers in silent defiance. God, this man was something else. Too sick to get out of bed, yet fighting like a raging bull every step of the way.

  “But you’ll let me get you the medicine?” she asked, pushing for clarification.

  He ignored the challenge. “From whom?”

  “Katie and Mac.”

  “Who are they?” he asked, the hard edge of suspicion back in his voice—along with a little tremor as he tried and failed to keep his teeth from chattering.

  “They’re good friends.” If she’d had more time for pleasantries, she would have explained that they were part of the group that someone had dubbed the Light Street Irregulars—friends who rallied around when one of their own was in trouble. They were there if you needed them and didn’t press for inconvenient explanations when it was better to leave the details vague.

  “You trust them?” he asked, cutting to the bottom line with the precision of a surgeon.

  “Implicitly,” she answered, as she scooped up the covers and draped them around his shoulders. He was starting to have chills. Not good. Before he could come up with any more objections, she said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  HEARING THE SOFT CLICK of the door behind her, Miguel sighed and leaned his head heavily against the wall, conserving his strength.

  Now that she was gone, there was no longer a reason to keep his body from shaking, so he let the tremors take him. God, he hated Jessie Douglas seeing him like this, weak as a newborn baby and almost as helpless. He was certain she knew how he felt, too. Hiding his emotions had simply been too much effort.

  His eyes squeezed closed and his face contorted as he struggled to blot out the images of her in this wretched place—and the feel of her body as she held him while he drank a glass of water.

  Desperately, his mind scrambled for a refuge. He succeeded only in calling forth another vivid scene—the first time he’d seen her. He had been talking to one of the boys in the big room with the Ping-Pong tables when he’d been distracted by a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. Lifting his head, he’d turned and seen what looked like an angelic image in a Renaissance painting. He’d told himself she couldn’t be real. But when he’d blinked to clear his vision, she was still there, blond and lovely and serene—in the midst of grubby chaos.

  As soon as he could breathe again, he’d started weaving his way across the crowded room so he could get her into a conversation that would lead to the two of them ending up alone together in some quiet, comfortable place.

  He’d stopped himself before he’d reached her and spent the rest of the afternoon fighting the impulse to learn more about her.

  He’d kept on fighting the compulsion for weeks. Finally, he’d come to her with a story about a boy who needed glasses. The story was true enough, as far as it went. He had delivered his message and ordered himself to leave. Instead, they’d s
tarted talking, and he’d found himself dropping his guard for the first time since the fiasco in Mexico.

  Perhaps he’d been hoping she wouldn’t be as charming as she looked or that he could find something about her to dislike. But she’d been everything he’d imagined and more. They had liked each other at once; had found so much to talk about, even though he was careful not to reveal his background. While they had shared a meal, he had drawn her out, fallen deeper under her spell.

  His mind had flashed him images of dark, hot fire igniting between them as he kissed her good-night Somehow, though, while he’d walked her to her car, he’d ordered himself back to his senses. The next day he had found the strength to coldly cut off any chance of a relationship with her. Still, the craving for her had grown like an addictive drug spreading a seductive warmth through his system. Long after he should have gone underground, he had found himself drifting over to the recreation center so he could at least feast his eyes on her. And to his secret gratification, he’d seen her watching him with the same intense interest he felt toward her. He even knew she’d asked some questions about him.

  All she’d found out was the standard story. He was Miguel Diego, a man who didn’t want to talk much about his background and who supported himself by wielding a mop and a broom at night. He hadn’t told her or anybody else that he was really Dr. Miguel Valero, fugitive from the law, in danger of being sent back to San Marcos to face murder charges.

  His hands clenched convulsively at the corners of the blanket she had draped over his shoulders. He was so worn down that the idea of simply closing his eyes and going to sleep forever had a seductive appeal. But he hadn’t sunk to quite that cowardly level. He had to stay alive. As long as he drew breath, there was still a chance he could get the men who had turned his clinic into a slaughterhouse and made it look as if he were the one who was responsible.

  He’d read about it in the papers as he’d traveled north, hiding like an escaped criminal. The story was that the greedy Dr. Valero had gotten into a drug deal and then turned up short on cash. So the cartel had come gunning for him. Only he’d been out of the clinic when they’d stormed inside. Unable to find him, the gunmen had taken out their vengeance on innocent people.

  It sounded plausible in a country like San Marcos where the allure of making a fortune in the drug trade was all too tempting. If he died now, no one would ever hear the real story. He’d simply be another statistic. Along with Anna and Margarita, Tony and Paco, and the rest of his staff. And the patients—five innocent women who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time; women whose haunted eyes he saw in his nightmares. One of them had been a charity case from a village near the coast. The great plastic surgeon Miguel Valero was going to fix the ugly birthmark that covered half her face. Instead, she’d been executed in a hail of machinegun bullets.

  Soon there could be another woman on his conscience—sweet, innocent Jessie Douglas, who had shown up in his miserable basement room and wanted to help him.

  It was wrong to let her get this close to him. If she was an angel of light bathed in reflected radiance from heaven, then he was the angel of death, slipping out of the shadows of darkness. He could bring her harm if she was caught anywhere near him. Yet he only needed her for a little while, he rationalized. Then he could leave Baltimore, go on to the next city. And Jessie would be safe.

  As SHE REACHED THE sidewalk, Jessie stopped for a moment, wondering where to find a phone so she could call Katie. Then she saw a flicker of movement near a flight of steps to her left. Someone was watching her from the shadows.

  Goose bumps rose on the skin of her arms as she quickened her pace. She’d be safe in the van, she told herself, unwilling to give in to panic. But it was already too late for escape.

  “There she is. I told you,” a voice hissed from behind her, and she realized there was more than one watcher.

  A hand grabbed her arm, pulling her to a stop. “What’s your hurry, sweet face?”

  From the darkness, a group of shadows swarmed, then circled around her, imprisoning her with a wall of bodies as surely as if they had enclosed her with iron bars.

  She saw young men—teenagers—their faces bright with the excitement of the hunt. They were all dressed in baggy pants and orange shirts or jackets with black stripes. Gang colors. The colors of Los Tigres, to be exact Although she’d heard nasty rumors about the gang’s exploits, she’d never seen them up close and personal like this.

  They must have spotted the van, seen her park and get out. Then they’d hung around, waiting for her to come back. At least she should be grateful that they hadn’t barged into Miguel’s apartment and caught both of them.

  She tried toughing it out. “Let me go,” she said in a tight voice. “I don’t have time for this. I have work to do.”

  Several of the group laughed. “Work. Yeah.”

  “There’s only one kind of work a woman does at night,” another voice observed. It belonged to a guy who shouldered his way forward, the crowd parting deferentially for him as he approached. He was taller than the rest, meaner looking, with rank orange hair and a safety pin piercing the skin over one eyebrow.

  “No,” was all she could manage.

  “Then what are you doing down here at this time of night, blondie?” he asked. “Slumming?”

  “You give it to her straight, Georgie,” one of his cohorts approved.

  The rest of them snickered at the brilliant witticism, and Jessie fought not to cringe as their leader took a menacing step toward her.

  Chapter Three

  The guy called Georgie formed his lips into a smile that made her insides curdle.

  Her eyes darted to the windows of the houses across the street. A few still showed yellow lights behind closed blinds. People were awake, but even if she screamed bloody murder, probably no one would want to get involved.

  The creep’s eyes swept up and down her body, lingering on her breasts as his tongue flicked out to lick his lips. “We’re going to have some fun,” he said in a voice that made her skin crawl.

  She tried not to let him see her fear, for all the good that would do her.

  Behind him some of the others murmured their approval—and she caught a note of gathering excitement.

  “You’ll like spending some time with us, caramelo,” the spokesman continued, playing to his audience, calling her “caramel”—in this case, a mocking Spanish endearment. “We have a nice safe place where we can all take turns getting to know you real well.”

  “No,” she said, fighting to control the terror in her voice, fighting to pretend that she wasn’t so scared she could barely keep her knees from buckling.

  Georgie’s lips quirked into a parody of a smile, his expression telling her that she wasn’t fooling anyone. “You don’t have much choice,” he told her. “You’re pretty stupid to come down here all by yourself in the dark, so I figure you’re getting what you deserve.”

  She stood facing him, her knees locked, her skin clammy.

  “What’s in that expensive purse of yours?” he asked.

  Her gaze dropped to the pocketbook slung over her shoulder, and the answer to the question leaped into her brain. Not just a wallet and keys, she thought as her hand reached into the partially unzipped opening.

  Swallowing to moisten her dry throat, again she tried to sound tough. “I’m not as stupid as you think.” As she spoke, she pulled out the shiny little revolver Luis had brought to her office. He’d said it wasn’t loaded. Maybe he’d been lying, she told herself. Or maybe it didn’t matter—if she acted like she was going to scatter this flock of turkeys.

  A collective gasp issued from the flock, and her confidence leaped. Obviously, they hadn’t expected any kind of defense on her part.

  Georgie’s eyes fastened on the gun.

  “Back off, or I’ll spatter your guts all over the sidewalk,” she hissed, hardly recognizing her own voice. With deliberate care, she leveled the weapon at his midsection.

&nb
sp; Several gang members backed away. Those on the fringes of the group began to fade into the shadows.

  When Georgie didn’t move, she spoke again, “Get the hell out of here.”

  For endless heartbeats, he stood his ground, his eyes filling with hatred. Too late, she wished she hadn’t stooped to using such ugly language.

  “I’ll get you for this,” he snarled.

  “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  He gave her one more deadly look, then spun on his heel and sauntered down the block, probably trying to create the illusion that the decision to disengage had been his.

  A violent tremor shook Jessie as she stared down at the gun—the gun that probably wasn’t even loaded, she reminded herself. To keep herself from whimpering, she crammed her fist against her mouth and backed toward the van. When she felt the cold metal touch her hips, she whirled and shoved the key into the lock. Opening the door, she sprang inside, jammed her hand on the automatic lock, and started the engine with a grinding noise that seared her nerve endings. After laying the weapon on the seat beside her, she yanked at the wheel with both hands. Somehow she managed not to mow down the car in front of her as the van leaped out of the parking space like a bronco from the chute. She sped down the silent block, ran a stop sign, and didn’t slow down to below the speed limit until she was several blocks from Miguel’s.

  Pulling around the corner, she nosed behind a stop sign and quietly began to cry. They had intended to rape her. There was no doubt about that. But would they have let her out of their clutches alive?

  Several minutes passed before she felt enough in control to drive again. Fumbling in her purse, she brought out a tissue and blew her nose. Lord, now what? Since she’d left the office with Luis, she’d been taking this one step at a time. She’d planned to call Katie, go back to Miguel’s with medication, and then check on him in the morning—if it was reasonable to leave him alone. Los Tigres had changed those plans. It was no longer safe for her to pop in and out of Miguel’s apartment. If she was going to help him, she’d have to take him someplace else as quickly as possible.