Mandy closed her eyes, felt the warmth of the sun coming up over the tree tops. He was right, damn him, absolutely right.
Gently, Peter drew Mandy to her feet, enfolded her in the warmth of his arms, flesh to flesh. They were alive, basically unhurt. They might not know where they were or which way was home, but they had each other. Any morning he could feel Mandy skin to skin—the exposed contours of their bodies fitting together like puzzle pieces—couldn’t be all bad.
A shadow flicked over the ribbon of sandy road. Peter tightened his hold on Mandy, looked up. Four ominous black shapes swooped overhead. Vultures. He could only hope Mandy didn’t notice.
Time to move. Carefully, Peter studied the recent tire tracks, choosing to walk north instead of south. If he’d guessed wrong, they were walking deeper into the heart of nowhere.
High above the treetops the vultures, balked of their prey, gave up their vigil and swept away in search of creatures showing less signs of life than the two-legged animals walking with determined, if barefoot, steps down a deserted back road.
Two miles later, after passing from pine forest into open pastureland, the distinct sounds of tires whirring on asphalt reached their ears. Peter and Mandy increased their lagging pace to a near jog. As they arrived, breathless, at the crossroads, Peter’s madly waving arms set his elephant ear leaves swaying alarmingly. The car they had been trying to beat to the intersection swerved to the far side of the road, overcorrected in a squeal of tires and wobbled off, accelerating rapidly as it moved away. Mandy clutched her leaves as the backlash caught her. She gulped back a sob.
The road, one of Florida’s perfectly straight two-lane roads through uninhabited ranchland, was not well traveled. The next vehicle, a van, slowed down long enough to take a good look, then sped away, accelerating even more rapidly than the first. When they saw the next car coming, Peter marched out to the center of the road, raised his hands over his head, and simply stood there. Mandy longed for bushes she could slink into, but only barbed wire was available. So she simply stood there, holding down her leaves, back and front, mentally shrinking into the smallest ball she could imagine.
Naturally, it was a rusty, battered pickup truck that pulled to a halt five feet from Peter’s determined stance. They probably would have stopped anyway, Mandy realized as she wished the ground would open up and swallow her. Lincolns and Cadillacs, probably even Toyotas, passed by on the other side. The occupants of pickup trucks—redneck, cracker, or cowhunter—were left to be the good Samaritans of this world.
Mandy couldn’t hear the conversation, but Peter’s gesticulations were eloquent. In a matter of moments she was enveloped in the shirt belonging to the taller of their two rescuers and Peter was tying the other man’s shirt around his waist. Then, miraculously, they were both huddled inside the cab next to the driver while one of the two rescuers cheerfully joined the hunting dog in the bed of the truck. Mandy turned her head into Peter’s shoulder and shook.
She was still shaking when the pickup came to a stop in front of a cement block house that seemed to have sprouted from the side of an ancient trailer. Also surrounding the dusty clearing were two tin-roofed cement block outbuildings and a straggling collection of rusting farm equipment, all neatly tucked under the only cluster of trees for miles. Apparently, not all ranches and farms in the area were mega enterprises like Wade Whitlaw’s.
A feminine face. Shock. Sympathy. Mandy allowed herself to be led into the house, fussed over, clothed in a T-shirt and jeans only one size too large and three inches short. She was so grateful she felt well-enough dressed to attend a charity ball. A mound of scrambled eggs and bacon miraculously appeared. Coffee. Marvelous, wonderful coffee. The smell alone was enough to revive her frozen spirit.
Peter, who was nearly the same size as the driver of the pickup, looked almost normal as he sat down to eat in his borrowed clothes. “I’ve called the police,” he announced around a mouthful of eggs. “Fortunately, we’re still in Calusa County. They’re sending a deputy right away. But the Sheriff’s Department has to get permission from the Manatee Bay cops to give us a ride back to town.”
“You’re joking, right?” Mandy declared, eyes wide.
“That’s the way it works,” Peter explained patiently. “The city cops are also going to look for our car. If we’re lucky, maybe it’s still around and we can drive ourselves home.”
“What about fingerprints?” Mandy mumbled as she licked bacon crumbs from her fingertips.
“Oh, shit!” Peter groaned, swiftly turning to apologize to their hostess, who was hovering between the stove and the table, anxious to keep her guests fed yet not miss a word. “You’re right. If the car isn’t at the club, then it will have to be dusted for prints and God knows what else.” Peter winced. “Can’t you just see the look on Brad’s face if we arrive back at his precious Amber Run in a patrol car?”
Mandy choked on her coffee. When she could talk, she shook her head. “It’s worse than that. My car is at the campground. Can’t you just picture it? Ed, Glenda, every last one of the senior citizens who have nothing better to do than sit around and watch their neighbors. They’ll be lined up like spectators at the Roman coliseum waiting for the lions to munch out on the Christians.” Mandy put down her coffee, head sinking into her hands. “Maybe we should just get on the next plane out.”
“Fine,” Peter agreed with remarkably restrained sarcasm. “If we had any money, credit cards, identification . . .”
But humiliation and poverty were only the beginning of their day.
“So what were you doing at the Club Nautico, Mr. Pennington?”
“I told you, it was right there on the road home after the ballet. We stopped for a drink.”
“Oh . . . yeah.”
“Had you ever been to the Club Nautico before, Ms. Armitage?”
“Okay, Pennington, if it was a mugging—like you told County—how come your cash and credit cards were still in your wallet? All neatly laid out on the front seat of your car?”
“As I said, I thought it was a mugging—that’s what I told the Sheriff’s Department—until we got back here and found out you’d discovered everything intact. We’re extremely grateful . . .”
“So you don’t have any idea why . . .”
In the end, of course—after realizing they were in imminent danger of being considered suspects in a drug deal gone sour—they were forced to invoke the name of Special Agent Doug Chalmers and the possibility the Manatee Bay police were endangering an on-going FBI investigation.
So they all sat in glum silence—the two Manatee Bay detectives audibly grinding their teeth—until Chalmers came and rescued the bedraggled and beleaguered kidnapping victims.
It was, Mandy decided later, a good example of that old expression about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Although, after getting a good look at them, Doug Chalmers toned down his sharp lecture, clearly he was not a happy man. They had been exceedingly stupid, he told them, bringing their troubles on themselves. They were damn lucky they weren’t dead.
Amen, Mandy breathed.
Fortunately, Doug was gentleman enough to drive Mandy home first and allow her to change her clothes before launching into a full interrogation. And, to Mandy’s consummate relief, his car was an anonymous tan sedan, which raised no eyebrows at Calusa Campground.
Yet everything had changed. She no longer felt safe in her wonderful house on wheels. Her great gesture of independence. Her defiance of all those years of being cocooned, protected . . .
Stupid, stupid, stupid! One little glitch and she was toast. But last night was a warning. She had seen Karim Shirazi, and he’d seen her. Here, in a campground of sleeping seniors, she was a sitting duck. Not being scared was the stupid reaction.
Okay, so that last trip upriver was a screw-up. The Iranian had spotted them. And so had the FBI. Chalmers had a right to be angry. He’d told her not to go back, and she’d defied him. With a heartfelt sigh Mandy stepped into a pair
of comfortable old jeans.
It was nearly supper time when they finally arrived at Amber Run. Peter disappeared into his room to change, leaving Mandy to phone for pizza. She fixed scotch on the rocks for the men, scotch and water for herself, then slumped into a heap on the French blue leather of the family room sofa, managing a wry grin as Doug Chalmers’s murmured that he was “off the clock” as he accepted his drink.
He took a long swallow, fisted both hands around his glass and bent his head. Still furious? Mandy wondered. Or simmering down to resignation? Not that she could blame him. He was just trying to do his job. She could scarcely deny they’d gone back to see Nadya one last time.
It was all her fault, of course. She’d insisted on seeing Nadya, and Peter wouldn’t let her go alone.
At the time the trip across the river seemed worth the risk. Why should Nadya suffer, not knowing that the vast power of the federal government was being organized to come to her aid? One short trip by rowboat, that’s all it was.
Or so she’d thought. Until she found herself stark naked, face to face with a lizard. She’d let sentiment override reality, and screwed up. Big time. She’d thought she was so clever, sneaking around a hornet’s nest at the crack of dawn. Until it exploded into a nasty, dangerous place. One that stung, but had not killed.
So far.
At the moment she and Peter might be fully clothed, warm, comfortable, and safe. But what Doug Chalmers was going to tell them, grind into them, yell at their thick skulls, was that it wasn’t going to last. He was going to repeat, “Stand back and let the feds handle it.”
But Mandy could feel the shadows closing in. It was already too late.
They were in trouble. Peter closed the door on Doug Chalmers, leaned back against the cool etched glass and shut his eyes. He had never intended to get quite this close to his book’s subject matter. Bangkok had been bad enough. But tonight—after Chalmers had vented more steam than Vesuvius—they’d rehashed every nuance of the situation for two solid hours, and come to the conclusion there was only one reasonable explanation for such a startling attack. The Club Nautico, Chalmers said, was a hub of the local drug trade. That its owners were involved in other kinds of trafficking was scarcely a surprise. He and Mandy must have been seen, an investigation begun, their identities and residences located. It was possible the Iranian had followed them to the club but, more likely, it had been coincidence. Karim Shirazi was there for a conference with his cohorts, had seen them and taken advantage of the moment. He was angry, they were vulnerable . . .
Damn!
It could have been worse, Peter knew. Much worse.
He walked back into the family room, collapsed onto the blue leather couch on the opposite end from his wife. How to tell her he wasn’t going to let her go home to an RV in the midst of a bunch of decrepit seniors?
Easy.
“Uh, Mandy?”
“Our only transportation just drove off.”
Mandy went very still, probably more upset over realizing her usually steel-trap brain had let Doug get away without taking her home than with relief she didn’t have to return to the vulnerability of her RV. “There’s no way around it, Mouse. You can’t go back to the trailer.”
“RV.” Her chin jutted out in defiance. He could see her searching for an argument. Any argument.
And then she found it.
“What a chameleon you are,” Mandy hissed. “Peter the Great offering me bed and board when once upon a time you couldn’t wait to leave me. You were practically dancing on tippy toes.”
“Sure I wanted to go. If I had to put up with Eleanor another day, I was going to kill her.”
“I seem to recall some rather devastating remarks about dirty tricks and industrial espionage, not to mention the danger of starting World War III.”
“Yeah, well, if I impugned the reputation of the country’s cleverest little private spy business, I’m sure I beg your pardon. I told you then, and I tell you now, it’s all yours, baby. I still don’t want any damn part of it.”
“And what about your pert little editor? You surely wanted part of her.”
Peter’s grabbed his head in both hands. “That was a lethal mix of heady success and hormones. I was a damn fool, but I’m fresh out of ways to apologize. The only thing I can add is that it will never happen again.”
“The basic problem remains,” Mandy pointed out, unrelenting. “Our goals in life are incompatible.”
Shit! “Now look, Mouse . . .”
“I’m too tired to look at anything,” Mandy wailed.
“Oh, God, Mouse, I’m sorry. It’s been a hell of a day. We’re sniping at each other over ancient grievances when we’ve got the Russian mob on our necks.”
“Crying tired. Stupid tired. Lucky to be alive tired. How we got from the FBI and Nadya to the Armitage-Pennington conflict I have no idea.”
“We’ll solve that one too, Mouse. Just not tonight.”
Mandy’s response was a vague mumble.
“O-kay.” Peter lowered his hands to his knees, eyed his wife with something between wariness and hope. “Since you’re stranded here, may I offer the commodious accommodations of my kingsize bed, Mrs. P?”
“Do you have enough strength to get me off this couch? I think I’m embedded.”
Peter levered himself to his feet, held out his hand. “You grasp, I’ll pull. First step toward making this marriage a mutual effort.”
“Sneaked that one in, didn’t you?” Mandy peeked at him from under her lashes, making no effort to repress a lascivious smirk. “What about strength for another kind of mutual effort, or should we stop for a little blue pill on the way to bed?”
He jerked her to her feet, bent his head, nose to nose. “Just what I like,” he murmured, “an insatiable woman.”
“Just nuts,” Mandy sighed, “but what a way to go.”
Chapter Sixteen
Nadya and three of the other girls in the old house in the woods—Tama, Anya, and Kai—huddled in front of the television, frowning at the rapid spate of English pouring over them from a late afternoon talk show. Kai muttered something in her native Thai, threw up her hands, and stalked out.
“Stay!” Nadya ordered the remaining two. “Learn English or stay a whore. Tell me, which life do you want?”
Tears rose in Anya’s eyes. Tama gulped, shuddered, and turned back toward the television screen. Toward a world so foreign, so far away, it might as well have been on the moon. Nadya continued to glare at Anya until she, too, turned her attention back to Oprah.
Nadya sighed, the runaway flow of English drifting over her head. Could she really believe that Mandy and her friends would rescue them? And even if she did, was being free just another futile dream? A few moments of relief, followed by deportation and disgrace?
A hand clamped around her arm, tight enough to leave a bruise. She gasped as her body flew off the sofa. As Tama and Anya cowered in their chairs, eyes wide. Karim’s anger was so great, his speed so fast, Nadya stumbled, tripping over her own feet, as he dragged her down the hall, pushed open the door to her room and flung her toward the bed. She sprawled on the bedspread, bounced back to a sitting position, hands braced at her sides. This was not good. Defiantly, she lifted her chin and stared straight into black eyes lit by a fury worse than any she’d seen before.
“I should kill you. It is my job to kill you,” Karim hissed. With the stiff movements of an automaton, he began to unbuckle his belt. “What have you told your fine American friends, Nadyenka? Do they know all about our operation here? Are we about to be raided? Come, come, speak up.” He wound the end of his leather belt around his hand. “Well? Have you betrayed us all? Should we expect visitors any minute?”
Crack! The belt buckle hit the old dresser with a vicious snap, digging a gouge in the wood. Nadya shivered, but didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
“Do you know what I have done . . . because of you?” Karim asked through slitted teeth. “I have lost my touch, gone sof
t like a jellyfish. Did I tell Misha why I wished to play a joke on the rich Americans? Ah, no. I said they were neighbors I did not like. Arrogant American pigs who needed to be taught a lesson in humility. I lied, Nadyenka. I seized on the futile hope of scaring them off, and I lied. When I should have instantly chopped off your head, and moved the rest of us to a new and more hospitable place.”
Bozhe moi! Shivers engulfed her. Nadya’s teeth chattered. Karim had seen Mandy and her friend. No other explanation was possible. But what did he really know? Only that she had spoken with them. Briefly.
Struggling past the bile in her throat, Nadya managed, “They were just people passing by in a boat, being friendly. If you saw them, you know our meeting was brief. I told them nothing.”
“And I am to believe this until the FBI sends a battering ram through our gate?”
“Surely you know I would not risk the girls, my true friends? Or you?” Nadya added on a whisper. She slid to her knees, clasped him tight about the legs, laying her head between his thighs. “How could I ever betray you?” May God strike me dead! The reality of what she had done was like a stab to the heart. She wanted to curl up in a ball and fade into oblivion.
Instead, she reached for Karim’s zipper. She had learned a great many lessons since becoming a whore.
“Fuck!” Delilah’s dark eyes filled with anguish, her hands clenched into fists. Fawn, who had not cried since she was twelve, ducked her head, the drink Peter had ordered blurring before her suddenly misted eyes.
Ignoring Peter’s protests, Mandy had accompanied him to Max’s strip club. She leaned toward the girls, torn between the sorrow and guilt of bearing bad news and hoping the message would be clear enough to save these two from a similar fate. “We were afraid you might not have recognized Jade from the newspaper article, that’s why we came,” Mandy said, settling for the simple truth. “And we wanted to make sure everything was all right with you both.” She summoned a genuine smile. “It was great to see you up there dancing, Delilah. You’ve really got the moves.”
Paradise Burning Page 22
