by Sharon Sala
John winced, then shifted the weight from his right leg to his left. “Thanks. I’ve got it under control, but I want to press charges. Could you send someone out to pick him up? Oh…you’ll also need a wrecker for his vehicle. I’ll be needing a wrecker, too, but I’ll call Shelby’s Garage down in Justice.”
“Consider it done,” Carl said, and then added, “You sure seem to be havin’ yourself a run of interesting moments.”
“I guess you could say that,” John said, and then hung up.
As soon as he disconnected, he dialed Information and was quickly connected to Shelby’s Garage. After a quick conversation he hung up, then dropped the phone back in his pocket. He spoke without looking at Alicia.
“I need to change clothes before the police arrive, and you need to go back to the house. Keeping you out of the equation means keeping your location secret a little while longer.”
Alicia hadn’t moved. She couldn’t quit staring at John, and for some strange reason, she felt a horrible sense of loss. This time yesterday, she hadn’t known this man existed, but now he’d managed to become an integral part of her safety, which made no sense. Why was he willing to involve himself to this degree in a stranger’s plight?
“John…”
He paused, sighed, then turned to face her.
“Yes?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m just a man,” he said, but the weariness in his voice told a different tale.
“No…that’s not what I mean,” she said. “Let me put this a different way. Why are you willing to put your life in danger for a total stranger?”
Now it was John’s turn to feel a little off center. Whatever he said next would have to be a lie. He couldn’t let it matter.
“Let’s just say I live my life the way I do for a reason.”
He didn’t elaborate, but Alicia wasn’t willing to let it go. She thought of all the scars on his body and wondered if they had anything to do with his lifestyle.
“Like what? What in God’s name happened to you, and how does your body do what it does?”
For this, he didn’t have to lie. “Life is what happened to me. As for your other question, the honest truth is…I have no idea. Now let it go.”
At that point, Dieter groaned.
“He’s waking up!” Alicia cried, her fear obvious.
“He’s not going anywhere,” John said, then turned away and headed for his Jeep. He came back carrying a length of rope, bent over, grunting slightly as the muscles flexed in his shoulder, and quickly tied Dieter up.
When he stepped back and realized Alicia was still standing there, watching, he pointed up the road.
“The house. Hustle. I’ll be right behind you.”
Before she could move, John began taking off his shirt. She turned on her heel and started walking. When she heard the sound of his footsteps close behind her, she began moving faster, then faster again, until she was running. She didn’t look back until she reached the house, only to discover that John was no longer following her. She stood in the doorway, trying to figure out where he’d gone, when he suddenly appeared in the front yard in clean clothes and began jogging back down the driveway. He’d obviously taken a different route and gone in the back way.
As she watched, she heard the sound of sirens in the distance. She remembered John’s warning and stepped inside, quickly closing the door behind her.
The quiet inside the house was balm to her shaken senses. She turned, taking in the serenity of what she saw and felt, but her thoughts wouldn’t turn off.
God in heaven, what did I just see? She put her hands over her face, stifling the urge to scream. What is John Nightwalker? Is he real, or is he an angel who appeared in my life to help me out of this mess?
The sirens were louder; then suddenly they stopped, shifting reality to the here and now. John Nightwalker was not an angel, and she was out of her mind. Curious as to what was going on down the drive, she moved to the window, pushed a curtain aside and peered out.
A police car was there, and Dieter was on his feet and in handcuffs. She felt a spurt of satisfaction in watching him climbing into the back of the cruiser. John was still talking to the police when a wrecker arrived, soon followed by a second. She watched both cars being towed away; then the police car followed, leaving John alone in the middle of the drive.
Then he turned around and looked toward the house.
Alicia shivered. Now what?
When he started walking back, she knew she wouldn’t have long to wait.
Four
John told the authorities the truth, up to a point. Yes, Dieter Bahn was a stranger to him. No, he didn’t know why the man was on his property other than to take stuff that didn’t belong to him. All true, in a way. What had surprised John was that when Dieter came to, he didn’t explain himself or deny anything John said.
To John, that said a lot about Richard Ponte’s power. A flunky working for some average businessman would want to clear his name quickly and would claim he was only following orders. But Dieter not only took the blame for being on John’s property unlawfully, he didn’t deny trying to kill him.
And neither man mentioned Alicia Ponte’s name, even though she was the only reason he’d been there at all.
John’s attitude toward his enemy was taking on new ramifications. Richard Ponte had to be a fearsome man in his own right to demand and obtain such total allegiance. Dieter’s behavior also gave further credence to Alicia’s fear that her father would be willing to kill her to shut her up. It remained to be seen if Ponte’s power reached far enough to get Dieter out of jail. The law didn’t take kindly to attempted murder.
John watched the wreckers leave, then headed back toward the house. He needed to get some tools and repair the lock at the gates. And then there was Alicia. She’d seen his “abilities” firsthand. Would she let it go as he’d asked, or would he have to face another round of questions? He wasn’t all that optimistic, but telling her the truth was not an option.
He was less than a hundred yards from the house when the cell phone in his pocket began to ring. He was about to answer it when he realized it was Dieter’s cell, not his own.
His first instinct was to ignore it, and then he saw the caller ID. The opportunity to talk to his nemesis was almost irresistible, even though it would alert Ponte to the fact that, once again, his plans to take care of his daughter had failed. But John would know when he heard the voice if this was the man he sought, and the urge to confirm his beliefs was strong.
The phone kept ringing.
If he answered it, he would reveal the fact that Alicia was still in motion, still able to turn on her father, not to mention where she was.
The phone rang again.
He flashed on White Fawn’s throat, gaping wider than her mouth, itself frozen in a death scream.
The next ring broke him.
His instinct to protect lost out to his need for revenge.
“Yes?”
The deep, angry voice was not the subservient tone Richard Ponte expected from Dieter, but the thought that someone else might have answered the phone never entered his mind.
“With a tone like that, you better have a positive report to turn in,” he growled.
The moment John heard the voice, his ears began to roar, as if he were standing in the middle of a hurricane. He felt the blood draining from his face, leaving him disoriented and light-headed. Afraid he was going to be sick where he stood, he bent double, trying frantically to clear his mind.
“Answer me!” Ponte shouted. “By God…I need to know. Do you have Alicia?”
It was the shout that brought John out of his fugue. He straightened slowly, battling the weakness with all his strength. His fingers clenched around the phone as the muscles in his jaw tensed. The same fury was in him now that he’d felt the day he stood in his village amid the carnage of all those he knew and loved. His voice was dark, loud, angry.
“Yes, I have Alicia,�
�� he said. “And your flunky is on his way to jail for attempted murder.”
Ponte gasped. “What do you mean…you have Alicia? Who are you? A kidnapper? Name your ransom. I want my daughter back.”
“You aren’t listening to me,” John said. “Dieter is on his way to jail for trying to kill me. The authorities are already getting involved in your business, as am I.”
“Where? What do you want? Name your price and—”
John interrupted, his voice softening to a frightening whisper. “You want answers? Then shut up and listen. I know who you are. I know what you did. And I’ve waited more than five hundred years to make you pay.”
Something floated in and out of Ponte’s mind so fast it didn’t have time to register. It wasn’t anything tangible—just a feeling that he’d heard this voice before. But the timeline was a joke.
“I don’t know who you are, but you’re obviously a lunatic. Five hundred years? I wasn’t alive five hundred years ago, so whatever you think I did, I didn’t. Got it?”
“Richard Ponte might not have been there, but you have a soul, and it was there. It’s been recycling for centuries, and I’ve been chasing it for just as long. Now I’ve found you, and I intend to make you pay.”
Richard was staggered by the venom in the other man’s voice, and a little frightened of the crazy talk. Insanity was impossible to fight.
“Pay how? By claiming my soul? Who do you fancy yourself to be? The devil?”
“The devil wouldn’t want you—but I do. Look over your shoulder, woman killer. I’m coming for you.”
Ponte’s belly rolled. Woman killer? This must have to do with the guns he was running. “Who are you? Some loony Afghan? Some pissed-off Iraqi? If so, don’t blame me. Blame your crazy leaders and your ancient religions. This is the twenty-first century. Get with the program.”
By now John was shouting. “The twenty-first century, the seventeenth century, the thirteenth century…they’re all the same to men like you. You take what you want without thought for anyone else and leave death in your wake. You brought your men to my land in your ship, looking for gold. When you didn’t find it, you killed them. You killed all my people. You killed my wife. You cut her throat as she screamed for mercy. You took her necklace. When I found you, you were clutching it like a trophy. You tried to kill me, but I didn’t die. I can’t die—not until I watch you take your last fucking breath.”
When the man began to shout at Ponte in some foreign language, the skin on Ponte’s face began to tighten and burn, and though he had no idea what he was hearing, he wanted to throw up.
John was out of control. Almost six hundred years of frustration—of waiting—were boiling up in him. Richard Ponte had been a killer then, and from what John could tell, his enemy was repeating the cycle again and again. John kept reciting the curse in his native language, the same one he’d invoked centuries earlier, cursing his enemy’s soul through eternity until his demand for retribution had been met.
Richard Ponte could hear the stranger screaming at him, although he still didn’t understand what the man was saying. The longer he stood with the phone frozen to his ear, the more certain he became that he was experiencing something entirely outside his frame of reference.
There was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, and his muscles were beginning to give way. He staggered across the room, then dropped into the chair behind his desk to keep from falling. All the while, the stranger’s words drummed through his mind, accusing him of something he didn’t understand but couldn’t find the words to deny.
He felt his throat tightening—closing—as if he were being choked, then a burning sensation in his chest. He tried to turn loose of the phone, but he couldn’t feel his fingers. He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there before he realized the line was dead.
He stared at the phone, then dropped it suddenly, as if he’d been holding a snake, and jumped up from his chair. He strode to the window, desperate to center himself. The view was the same view he’d had of Miami ever since he’d set up offices here. The skyline was familiar. Outside, the traffic in the streets was no better and no worse than usual.
So why did he feel like a stranger in his own skin?
Why this overwhelming sense of despair?
Was it because Alicia had eluded his capture and was about to bring him down, or was there another older—darker—sin that was about to do him in?
He shuddered. Impossible. This whole scenario was ridiculous. Why had he let the ravings of a lunatic bother him for even a moment? He had to put a spin on Alicia’s disappearance, and he thought he knew how. If he let it leak that she’d had a mental breakdown and had been kidnapped on the way to treatment, then Dieter’s transgressions could be explained. Shooting at a kidnaper to get the boss’s daughter back was definitely justified. A satisfied smile broke across his face just as there was a knock on the door.
He turned, grateful for the interruption, just as Charlotte, his secretary, walked in with an armful of mail.
“It’s sorted as usual, Mr. Ponte. The small stack on top is your personal mail, and remember, you have an early lunch appointment with Mr. Carruthers at eleven before his flight back to D.C. this afternoon.”
Something inside Richard shifted again as his composure strengthened.
“Thank you, Charlotte,” he said, then strode to his desk and began to go through the mail. “Before you leave, would you please bring me a fresh cup of coffee…and some painkillers. I have the beginnings of a headache.”
“Yes, sir…right away, sir.”
By the time Charlotte shut the door, Richard’s emotions were completely under control again. The longer he sat, the more he convinced himself that what he’d experienced was a momentary panic resulting from Dieter’s failure. It was time to implement the backup plan.
First thing was to leak a story to the media that his daughter had suffered a mental breakdown and that he’d received a ransom demand. He knew she had no proof for what she’d heard, and maybe, if he destroyed her plausibility before she spilled her guts, he could effect some successful damage control. It would also put an end to whoever it was he’d just talked to on the phone. If the man was identified as a kidnaper, then he, too, would be neutralized.
Ponte grinned, pleased with his plan, and began flipping through his Rolodex as his secretary returned with the requested painkillers and a fresh cup of coffee. By the time his call was answered, he had his story in place.
“Federal Bureau of Investigation. How may I direct your call?”
“This is Richard Ponte. I want to report a kidnapping.”
Once Alicia saw the sheriff driving away with Dieter Bahn in handcuffs, she began to relax. She was still watching John’s approach when she saw him pause, then take a phone out of his pocket to answer a call. That in itself was of no consequence. Cell phones were a part of everyday existence. It meant nothing—until she witnessed what came next.
He was some distance from the house, but close enough that she could see his expression change from calm to enraged. She couldn’t hear anything he was saying, but she could see that he was shouting. She ran to the door and out onto the landing, not sure what she could do, but fearing the trouble might involve her.
Once outside, she heard him shouting. The tone of his voice was frightening—filled with a rage she’d never seen. But it was when he shifted from English to a language she didn’t understand that she saw something in him that made her afraid. Afraid of him. Afraid for her life.
She watched until he suddenly disconnected in anger, dropped the phone onto the ground and stomped it to pieces. When he looked up, she panicked. What if she was next?
His body language alone was frightening. His hands were curled into fists. His shoulders stiff with tension. When he threw his head back and screamed, she bolted. Going back into the house would be like shutting herself in with a mad dog. She headed for the bluff.
John didn’t know Alicia was anywhere around un
til he saw her leap from the landing and realized she must have seen everything, or at least enough to scare her. He could only imagine what she was thinking, seeing him lose control as he’d just done. He would like nothing better than to be rid of her, but he needed her. She was bait—bait he needed to get to Ponte. Ponte had to want her silenced, and he wouldn’t stop until she was, which meant he, or some of his minions, would come after her, and when they did, then John’s quest would be over. He knew how to get information out of an unwilling man. He’d had an eternity to learn from the best. Someone would tell him where Ponte was. At that point, Alicia Ponte would be on her own. Until that happened, he couldn’t let her go.
When he started after her, his healing muscles protested. She was all the way down the bluff and on the shore, running for all she was worth, when he caught her.
The pounding rhythm of Alicia’s heartbeat was so loud in her ears that she didn’t hear anything, not the roar of the surf, not the jarring thud of her own footsteps as she ran. She didn’t know John Nightwalker was right behind her until he grabbed her arm and yanked her off her feet, then hauled her against his chest.
At the moment of contact, she screamed, then began pummeling him with her fists.
Instead of fighting her, John just held on, letting her fear run its course until she was weak from fighting. Only after she collapsed against him, weak and weeping, did he begin to talk. The tone of his voice revealed his anger, as well as confusion.
“What the hell is the matter with you? Why were you running from me? I’m the one who’s been helping you, damn it. I took two bullets to keep you from winding up back in your father’s grasp, and this is how you behave? Explain that to me, lady…because I can promise you, I have a lot better things I could be doing.”
Alicia pulled away, and the moment she did, her legs gave way. She sank to her knees, aware of the wet sand and the lapping surf washing at her feet and legs. She reached for the water, then cupped her hands to catch the inflow and sluiced her face over and over until her long dark hair was stuck to the sides of her cheeks and she could feel sanity returning.
