by Olivia Gates
“I don’t want you, or your friend here.” His bored gaze swept from Javier to the fidgeting Alonso. “The last thing I need is more hostages. I need cash.”
“So what’s wrong with the cash I brought along?”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for her release and another on yours isn’t bad, but I was hoping for more. You have to understand we’re financing the fight for freedom, for social reform. We have great expenses. Still…”
Would his skull burst with rage and outrage? Keep it to yourself, don’t antagonize him. He’s wavering.
Javier started to stress the advantages of taking his offer now, and General Mendoza’s cell phone rang.
The man sauntered out of earshot, returned after ten minutes of involved conversation, all smiles. “God is on our cause’s side. I just got a better offer from her people. After five days of failure to reach them, I’d almost given up hope.”
Javier closed his eyes. Would that help? Or would it only complicate matters now? Would the Richardsons just hand over the money, or would they play some trick that would leave Savannah open to retaliation? Every gruesome possibility swamped his mind. He forced his jaw open to deliver the question. “What’s their offer?”
“Five million dollars. Tomorrow.”
“Who made the offer?”
“Her husband.”
Javier almost doubled over with shock.
Her husband.
Mark.
He still called himself that. Did he know what he was talking about? Was she going back to him?
Just get her out now. Worry about who she’ll return to when she’s safe.
“And you are going to take their offer? You will let her go tomorrow?”
Mendoza looked at him for a long moment. “I’ll get back to you. Now, I’ll take your contribution to our cause, Doctor, if you don’t mind.”
Javier released his hold on the briefcase, turned and got back into the Jeep, his every muscle quivering with hope and fury and dread. Esteban waited only for Alonso to get in before he roared away from the rendezvous Mendoza had picked to discuss Javier’s offer in person.
The last person Javier expected or wanted to see was waiting for them at the MSU.
Mark.
Alonso and Esteban had been silent all the way back. The way they disappeared, leaving him alone with Mark, said they’d already guessed he was that husband General Mendoza had talked about.
Javier stepped down from the Jeep slowly, trying to harness his aggression and despair.
“Dr. Sandoval, I’m Dr. Mark Atkinson, Savannah’s—”
“Ex-husband.” Javier ignored the extended hand. He was damned if he’d shake the man’s hand. He wasn’t that civilized. “I know. I hope you don’t have the ransom with you.”
Mark raised his eyebrows, answering aggression in his eyes. “I hope I’m not so stupid as to walk around the Colombian wilderness with five million dollars in cash. How did your meeting with Mendoza go?”
“It was going well, until you stepped in and flashed the big bucks at him.”
The man straightened, almost matching Javier’s six feet three, returning his assessing glance. Class and wealth oozed out of his every super-groomed pore. But Mark Atkinson was no soft yuppie. Tough, good-looking, his cool grey eyes radiated intelligence and determination. He had everything. Damn him.
That man had known Savannah in total intimacy. He wanted her still. Would he get her? Could Javier bring his jealousy under control long enough to talk to the man without tackling him to the ground and pummeling his handsome face to a pulp?
“You think he was going to let her go for a quarter of a million dollars?”
“He was about to buckle and settle for my money. Now, with five million dollars involved, anything can happen.”
“He’ll take it. And tomorrow Savannah will be free.”
“Now you’ve offered that much money, he’s liable to hang on to her, to milk more money from you. With me, he knew I offered all I could ever get—with you, the sky’s the limit.”
“He’ll only get the money once we’re certain she’s in the clear. Savannah’s father is back in Bogotá, orchestrating everything, and I’ve got Washington’s top hostage negotiator with me…”
“No! You and your mercenaries keep out of this. I’ll negotiate, I’ll set up the meeting place, deliver the ransom and bring her back. I’m not letting you try anything that may jeopardize her in any way.”
“I wouldn’t jeopardize Savannah. I love her…”
“Not as much as I do! Not a fraction as much as I do! I would die for her. Or worse. I went today to do just that. I’ll do it again and again. Would you?”
No. He wouldn’t. He’d never dream of endangering himself in the least for her, his image-completing partner. Mark’s eyes made the confession, flashed hostility at Javier for forcing the admission from him. Then he drew in a deep inhalation, relaxed with a visible effort. “The money will be available to you as soon as you set up a release time with Mendoza.”
Javier nodded, turned away, unable to look at Mark any more. Mark’s agitated words hit him in the back in one vicious blow. “When you get her out, you won’t really get her. She isn’t here for you. She’s here to teach me and her father a lesson. She’ll go to any lengths to get back at us, to spite us, to break all our rules and expectations. Nothing is extreme enough to achieve her point—leaving her job, her country, sleeping with you—even getting herself killed.”
It would kill him. One more hour like the last beyond desperate six days, not knowing, imagining the worst, prey to every incapacitating, mind-destroying emotion he had no name for.
Die later. Get her out first. And he would, as soon as that damned bastard Mendoza phoned.
Javier jumped, imagining his cell phone was ringing again—but this time it was ringing for real!
He had no breath, no voice to answer with. Dios, please!
General Mendoza’s voice crackled over the bad connection. “Dr. Sandoval, I’ve decided to take your offer.”
The world seemed to stop. He couldn’t be hearing what he wanted to hear, could he?
“My research says you’re right. Whatever I get from the Richardsons now, they’ll spend far more just to get even. And also I can’t wait to get your Dr. Richardson off my hands. So I’ll consider your offering to be a fellow patriot’s generous donation to our cause, and that will be the end of it. Your people will be returned at sunset, where we met before.”
Elation, trepidation and disbelief muted Javier. General Mendoza went on. “No surprises, Sandoval. Just take your woman and forget about us.”
“What about us? We want to be there too.”
Javier brushed aside Luis’s demand. “Only Alonso and Esteban are coming. You be prepared for anything. We don’t know in what condition they’ll be in.”
That was the last thing anyone said as they left the camp, drove for three hours to the pick-up site then waited there for an extra two hours. It was already dark when they heard approaching cars. They’d kept their headlights on and were now standing in the glare, showing the guerrillas they were alone and unarmed.
Then the hostages were coming out of the second Jeep. A man, a woman, two boys, Caridad, then at last—Savannah.
Javier knew nothing more. Nothing but that she was in his arms and there were tears. Hers? His? Both? Everything vanished as she flooded his senses. Mi amor, mi amor was a litany as he raised his head and moved slightly away, frantic to check she was OK.
She threw herself back into his arms and clung. “I’m OK, darling.”
It was only then he remembered. Caridad. The others.
Caridad was in Alonso’s arms. They were both weeping, too. So were the others. Javier let out the pent-up breath he’d been holding since he’d heard Savannah inform him of their kidnapping. “Let’s get you out of here!”
As he rushed her back to the Jeep, Savannah turned and waved. Waved? His incredulous gaze panned to her former
captors, found them all waving back, especially one young guerrilla.
All right. He’d wake up any moment, suffocating and nowhere nearer rescuing Savannah. What else explained this bizarre farewell?
“Thanks for the happy-release party, guys.” Savannah stood up, dragged Javier up with her. “I’ll tell you more stories later. Now, if you’ll excuse me and Javier…!”
Savannah ran all the way up to their hotel room, unable to wait to get him alone at last. It had been seven hours since they’d been released. Once Javier had made sure they were all OK, he’d insisted they drive back to Neiva where he’d checked them all into the same hotel. Considering her agitation, she’d been grateful he hadn’t taken her back home.
Her agitation had nothing to do with surviving her kidnapping, though. She’d stopped fearing the guerrillas after Gomes and Diaz had helped her during Herrera’s surgery, then she’d become a favorite after she’d saved two of their own after an almost fatal assault by a rival faction. All her tension and jitters were accounted for by being back with Javier, wanting to ask him what she hadn’t the day she’d been kidnapped.
Ask him now! “Javier…” He took her words, her lips, her soul in silence, with burning intensity.
Then he took her, against the door, then on the floor, then on the bed. That last time she took him as fiercely, at last telling him everything. “I love you, Javier, love you. I can’t live without you. You’re my life—my life, darling…”
Her confessions sent a shudder through him, provoking both shock and his most powerful climax, but no reciprocation. Not even the usual endearments. Her heart shriveled even as her body was caught up in the conflagration, convulsing in transfiguring ecstasy with him, beneath him.
When they lay still merged, still shuddering, it wasn’t his beloved weight that suffocated her but his silence. Then he was withdrawing. It felt like the end.
She clung to him. “Javier. Marry me.”
She’d laughed when he’d asked her. But now he was wrenching himself out of her arms. That wasn’t fair retaliation. Her rejection had hurt his ego, his extinguished her soul.
He got up and started dressing. Déjà vu. The night he’d walked out on her was replaying almost frame for frame.
“So now we’re even?”
“Even?” He swung around at her hoarse whisper, in his unbuttoned jeans, his formidable body bunched, just as it had been when she’d begged him to come back to bed more than three years ago. “Even?”
“It didn’t cross your mind? I don’t care if it did. I love you, Javier. I know you don’t think I’m capable of love, and I don’t blame you. I don’t have any example of lasting relationships in my family or in my own life. But I love you, I’ve always loved you. I just didn’t know what it was, wasn’t ready to handle it or equipped to do it justice. But now I am. I am, Javier.”
His face clenched in a horrible grimace as if he was about to cry. Then he closed his eyes, exhaled. When he opened them, an artificial almost-smile hovered around their edges. “I’ve already said marriage would have been a huge mistake, and it still would be. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be together somehow. Your time in Colombia is over, but we don’t have to be, even if we only manage to meet a couple of weeks out of each year.”
A couple of weeks? After all they’d been through, she was still only good for temporary sex in his eyes? What would he do for the rest of the year—settle down with someone he didn’t consider it a mistake to marry? What would she be? His annual marital vacation? Had she been so wrong about him, about everything? Was that it, her final, fatal miscalculation?
Lying there naked, needy, waiting for him to take pity on her was too much. Dragging herself to her knees, putting on her clothes under his burning gaze, was like nothing she’d ever felt. Not even when she’d thought she’d be murdered, after heaven only knew how much abuse. So this was despair.
“Savannah…”
Her eyes went to his, still hoping, still praying. This intensity. Was he finding it hard to walk away from her this time? Would he change his mind?
No.
His stilted smile made her sick. “What do you say? I’ll come to you, every available day.”
So he was offering her what she’d once offered him. Was he really getting even?
End this. Just get out of here. “Forget it, Javier. Forget everything I said tonight. I must have lost my head after my ordeal. When I leave, as soon as the MSU’s mission is over, we won’t—”
“You don’t have to!”
“Don’t have to what?”
“Stay until the mission is over.”
Oh.
Did he have to sound so eager to get rid of her? Did he have to wipe out all her delusions of usefulness and purpose, of her value to him? Tonight of all nights, when she’d almost become certain? During their release, she’d felt as if he’d been dying without her, fearing for her. His lovemaking had felt like the breath he’d been suffocating for. But that had only been what she’d wanted to see and feel.
Here was the truth. Cheap, ugly…nightmarish. Would he have cared if her captors had killed her? Had he been more than a convenient local to convey the ransom money and collect her? Had she been more than a convenient body to slake his lust with during the hard, harsh toil? Could she live on if she lost her faith in him?
She was dressed now, covered, lifeless. “I’ll call my father. I may as well make use of his presence and private jet.”
The jet was already moving, gliding towards the runway. Javier’s feet pounded the tarmac harder, outstripping the pursuing airport security by hundreds of meters now. They hadn’t already fired at him only because they’d made sure he was unarmed at the gates. They just thought he was suicidal.
And they weren’t far from the truth. If he couldn’t stop Savannah…No. That wasn’t an option.
He was now in the jet’s path. The pilot dodged him but Javier just intercepted him once more.
He’d tried to contact Savannah a hundred times, but her cell phone was turned off. When he’d contacted the jet, Jacob Richardson had ordered the pilot to ignore him. But he couldn’t let her leave without telling her what he’d been too stunned to say last night, the answer to everything that he’d been unable to see till he’d seen her walking out of his life. He had to do it now, even if it was the last thing he ever did.
Which it might be. The jet wasn’t stopping.
Suddenly Savannah appeared in the cockpit.
Savannah.
Too much to say, to feel. He just opened his arms, silently begging her to fill them.
The jet stopped. In seconds its door opened and she was framed there, just a couple of meters above him, her heavenly eyes tinged with the same hell he was going through. Could it be true—did she really love him? Every unbelievable thing she’d said last night hadn’t been said on the rebound, a reaction to survival? But even if it was and she didn’t truly feel like that, he’d take it, would make it real, would make her love him, eventually.
“Savannah…” Just tell her. “Te amo tanto—demasiado mi alma! Eres mi vida, mi todo!”
The pain in her eyes broke loose in tears that brought his own flowing over his numb cheeks. “You love me, I’m your soul, your life, your everything—for two weeks each year?”
“For every second, as long as I live and beyond.”
“You mean you want me to stay?”
“No!”
She jerked, a new rush of tears deluging her cheeks as she turned on her heel.
Stop her. Tell her. “Savannah, I’ll come with you!”
That froze her. She turned to him, her streaming eyes incredulous. “You can’t! You have responsibilities, duties, the MSU, your other projects, your people, your family…”
There was one simple truth to it all. “You come first.”
He barely caught her. Her hurtling mass as she jumped out of the jet and into his arms drove him to his knees, in every way.
They remained there, kneeling
on the tarmac, locked in total surrender to each other. Then she fought out of his hold, her eyes clearing, everything his imagination had never conjured filling them. Love, devotion, belief, selflessness, determination and desire—like he’d never believed existed. “And you come first with me. But you can’t leave here. And I don’t want to leave either. I want to be here with you, working with you, sharing every unique, magnificent, worthwhile moment with you.”
“No, Savannah, I’m not putting you in jeopardy again. Why do you think I couldn’t wait for you to leave? There’s no way to describe the depth of desperation I felt when you were in danger…”
“I wasn’t in any real danger!”
“Only because circumstances helped you and had your captors awed by you and indebted to you. Next time—”
“There won’t be a next time!”
“I can’t take that chance, amor. A chunk of my sanity is gone, there’s constant fear for ever constricting my soul. I can’t exist this way. I must know you’re safe, and I can’t exist without you any more. All this time I’ve been looking for ways for you to be with me here, never realizing that the only way to be with you is to go home with you.”
“The only home I have is in your arms, whether it’s on the road or in your house here.”
“I don’t even have that house any more, Savannah.”
“What?”
Demonios. Why had he said that? Now he had to explain. “I sold it.”
“Why?”
Only a full explanation would satisfy her now. He gritted his teeth and gave it to her. How he’d found the ransom money, his offer to Mendoza, and how her hostage situation had been resolved.
Her dazed gaze roamed his face. “You got me out? Everyone gave you all their money to get me out?”
She surged into him, racked by sobs that escalated into uncontrollable weeping. “Oh, my love—my love! You offered yourself for me and you think I’ll let you sacrifice any more?”
He soothed her. “The only sacrifice is being without you. I’ll find a way to continue my work from the US. I don’t have to be hands-on to be of use. And with your help, our work will reach even more people. If I need to be here in person, I’ll come back, do what needs to be done, then run home to you.”
