The Warrior

by Sharon Sala

  He was also getting nervous because he hadn’t talked to Dieter since before his surgery. When he’d finally felt well enough to dig out his cell phone, he’d been horrified to see that Dieter had been trying to contact him for more than a week. The only problem was, Dieter had left no messages other than that he needed help. When Richard had returned a call, he’d been put through to voice mail, which pissed him off. He couldn’t leave his name for fear the phone might fall into the wrong hands—or, even worse, that Dieter had been taken into custody, like Jacob. So now he was playing a waiting game of his own, hoping Dieter called him back before long.

  He kept the phone on the small table beside his hospital bed. Following hospital policy, he had it turned to vibrate, and when it started a little dance across the surface, he grabbed it anxiously.

  “Hello?”

  “Thank God,” Dieter said. “I’ve been trying to contact you for days.”

  “So we’re talking now,” Richard said. “What’s happened?”

  “Watkins failed. The Indian took him down and turned him over to the Feds. According to the latest news, he agreed to testify in return for a lighter sentence.”

  “No,” Richard said, and closed his eyes against the news.

  This was bad—very, very bad. Once again, he’d been defeated by this Indian. He was beginning to believe the man was some kind of CIA spook. It was the only thing that made sense. As for Alicia, the fact that she continued to elude his justice was infuriating. Logic told him that this was the moment when he should make the choice to stop, to let it go and live out what was left of his life under his new identity. But he was too wrapped up in the lust for revenge to heed the inner whisper of warning.

  “Watkins gave me up,” Dieter said. “And they immediately linked me to you, so I’ve been in hiding since the arrest. I need money for new papers to get out of the country.”

  Richard cursed.

  Dieter flinched. Did this mean he was becoming collateral damage? “I’m sorry,” he said. “Watkins was the best. Who knew he’d fail?”

  “It’s not your fault,” Richard muttered. “It’s Alicia. It’s that Indian. It’s my fucking life coming apart at the seams.” Then he sighed. “I can’t have money deposited in an account under your real name. They’ll be watching for that.”

  “I know,” Dieter said.

  Richard’s mind was racing as he ran through the names of people who owed him favors. It had to be someone who was already on the wrong side of the law. Suddenly he realized he didn’t even know what city Dieter was in.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Houston.”

  Richard smiled to himself, then winced beneath the bandages on his face. At last, some good news. “I think I have a contact for you there. Keep your phone at the ready. If you’re contacted by a woman calling herself Isis, take the call. Once you’re out of the country, call me again. By that time, I’ll have a task for you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Next time you call, I want good news,” Richard said.

  Dieter struggled not to fire back with the comment that it was Richard’s fault the news was all bad to begin with. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  The line went dead in his ear. He dropped his cell phone in his pocket, then picked up the phone book in his motel room and began leafing through the restaurant pages. Now that there was a plan in motion, he was suddenly starving.

  Richard had disconnected just as his doctor entered the room. “Good morning, Mr. Schloss,” the doctor said. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “Fine,” Richard said.

  “Good! Good! So, are you ready for today?”

  “What’s happening today?” Richard asked.

  “How would you like to get those bandages off?”

  Richard’s pulse skyrocketed. “Yes!”

  “Fine,” the doctor said, then motioned to a nurse, who had come in behind him and was carrying a covered tray. “Set it there,” he said.

  The nurse put the tray down on a small table, then removed the cover, revealing an assortment of small surgical implements.

  “The scissors, please,” the doctor said as he pulled on a pair of surgical gloves, then proceeded to snip away at the outer bandages covering Richard’s face.

  Richard was motionless, anxious to see what the doctor’s skill had wrought, trying to judge by the expression on the man’s face if the surgery had been a success. Layer by layer, the bandages came off, until Richard could tell by the feel of air against his skin that they were finally gone.

  “Let me see!” he demanded.

  “Just a moment,” the doctor said as he swabbed at Richard’s neck with antiseptic-soaked cotton.

  “A mirror. Let me have a mirror,” Richard said.

  The doctor smiled, then nodded to his nurse. “Pass it over, please. Mr. Schloss wants to see his new look. And, Anton, I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised. Keep in mind there is some bruising and, of course, swelling, but all of that is temporary. All in all, I am very pleased with the results.”

  Richard took the mirror, then turned it around. Within seconds, he felt as if he’d stepped into a twilight zone. There was a moment when he wondered if he was in the middle of another one of those crazy dreams. Then he focused on the eyes. Green, with short stubbly lashes. He felt the world return to center. There he was. But the rest…it was like night and day.

  “Amazing,” he mumbled.

  “Yes, isn’t it?” the doctor agreed. “As you can see, the cheek and chin implants changed the rounded shape of your face and created a more chiseled countenance. Of course, the wrinkles and extra flesh are also gone. We removed the bulbous tip from the end of your nose and reshaped the width of your nostrils. The bump on your nose was also removed, as were the bags under your eyes. I know you can’t see that quite yet for the bruising, but I promise you’re going to be very pleased.”

  “I already am,” Richard said as he gingerly felt his face, ears and neck. “My ears are flat to my head now, and my double chin is gone.”

  The doctor laughed. “That’s a good thing, yes?”

  “Yes,” Richard echoed.

  “So…now we remove the bandages from your chest and arms,” the doctor said.

  Richard handed over the mirror and leaned back as they cut away the bandages from his torso, as well. The implants in his chest and biceps were remarkable.

  “Looks good,” the doctor muttered as he checked incisions and drain tubes. “Nurse…come closer with that pan. I’m going to remove the drain tubes now.”

  She scooted closer, holding out a small, shallow pan.

  A few places ended up rewrapped, but with lighter bandages. The rest were left open to the air. Richard felt as if he were a good twenty pounds lighter. The mental stress he’d been under was almost over. Now that the doctor was gone, he was free to finish his quest to get Dieter out of trouble.

  The call to Isis was going to take finesse, but that was something Richard had plenty of. He picked up his cell phone and punched in the number.

  “Isis, phone for you.”

  “Get the fuck out of my face. Can’t you see I’m busy, boy?”

  The man standing with the phone in his hand didn’t budge. Given that he was seven inches over six feet tall, only a woman like Isis could get away with calling him boy. That and the fact that she liked the way he made her feel in bed.

  “You’re gonna wanna take this call,” he said, then took a step backward, just in case.

  Isis rolled her head from one side to the other, then took a deep breath to calm herself. Her shrink kept telling her she was going to burst a blood vessel if she didn’t learn how to let off steam without hurting someone. But for a six-foot-tall black woman who’d been born into a world where standing out could get a person noticed by all the right people or get her killed, she’d decided to be the one in charge of choosing which it was going to be.

  She could have been a model, with her rail-thin body an
d the stunning Egyptian cast of her features. But no one had told her she was pretty enough or smart enough, so she’d learned how to be mean enough to do what she needed to do to get respect. Now she ran all the prostitutes between Houston and Galveston, controlled most of the drugs, ran guns into Colombia and wasn’t above anything else that might net her a profit.

  It was through guns that she and Richard Ponte had become acquaintances. But Richard had wanted more from her than the sale of a cache or two of the newest automatic weapons or a truckload of hollow-point ammo for one of her drug cartels. He’d been somewhat mesmerized by her beauty, but more so by the power she wielded. She didn’t consider him her lover, but when he was in the area, she did take to the way he treated her. The wining and dining, the jewelry, the flowers, the elegant style with which he chose their food, and their wines—it was all part of a world where she would never belong. She’d heard about his recent misfortunes, but she wasn’t one to judge. She had plenty of her own sins to worry about. Still, she’d been somewhat uneasy that their prior “moments” together might have garnered the notice of the Feds, who seemed to be hauling all the skeletons out of Richard Ponte’s closet. When it seemed their attention wasn’t going to turn her way, she’d begun breathing easy.

  Now she was giving the evil eye to the man on the other side of her desk.

  “Are you still here, fool?”

  He handed her the phone and walked out.

  She hit Save on her laptop, then slapped the phone to her ear.

  “Yeah?”

  “Isis.”

  Her breath caught at the back of her throat as her gut knotted. Then she exhaled slowly.

  “You are one gutsy fucker,” she said softly.

  “Miss you, too,” Richard said.

  “Why are you calling me?”

  “I need a favor.”

  “Hell no.”

  Richard flinched. He’d been afraid this would happen, but he was desperate.

  “It’s not for me…exactly.”

  “Exactly who is it for?”

  “Dieter.”

  She snorted beneath her breath. “That gay pretty boy? I can’t give him what he needs. I don’t swing that way.”

  Richard frowned. It was the first time he’d ever given a thought to Dieter’s sexual preferences, and while it was somewhat startling to hear her say it, it also didn’t surprise him.

  “He needs money and a new identity to leave the country.”

  “I’ll just bet he does,” she said. “Why you think I’d go and mix myself up in your messed-up business? I’m not some stupid cunt you can pay to do your dirty work.”

  “That’s not fair,” Richard said softly. “I never called you that. I never treated you like that. I treated you with honor and respect…because I honor and respect you. No one will ever know you helped.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not the way the justice system works. It’s called aiding and abetting, and I’m not going to prison for aiding and abetting anyone accused of treason. You get me?”

  “I get you, my beauty. I’ve always gotten you. And I never intended to play this card, but you’ve given me no choice.”

  Isis stiffened, then stood abruptly and started to pace.

  “Damn you. Damn you. You swore you’d never talk about that.”

  “I’m still not talking about it. But I’m asking you to reconsider my request.”

  Isis was so mad she was shaking. The one time—the only time—she’d ever shown the chink in her armor had been to this man. Yes, he’d been good to her in the past, but that was because it suited him. She’d never been deceived into believing he cared about her. He’d used her just as much as she’d used him. He’d wanted to fuck a black woman, and she’d known it. And she’d let it happen for the glimpses he’d given her into a world in which she would never belong.

  But he knew about Gabriel. He knew about her son—her beautiful, ten-year-old son. She’d known from the moment she’d gotten pregnant that she wasn’t going to abort the fetus, and she’d known on the day she’d felt the first kick that she would not bring the child up in this world in which she’d chosen to live. And she’d known the moment she’d seen his innocent little face that he must never know where he came from or who his mother was.

  At the least, it would ruin his life. At the most, it could get him killed. So she’d hand-picked his parents from an ad in a newspaper, an African-American couple unable to have children of their own and anxious to adopt a same-race child of one year or younger.

  She’d considered it a sign from God. He was an up-and-coming young lawyer, his wife a pediatrician at Houston General. The kind of parents she wished had been hers. So she’d hardened her heart and given away her baby boy. But she knew where he was and what he looked like, and what kind of grades he made in school. She knew he was into Star Wars and liked computer games. She knew he was afraid of the dark and that his favorite flavor of ice cream was strawberry. It didn’t matter how she knew all that, but it did matter that he never know about her.

  If Richard Ponte had been standing before her right now, she would have killed him herself. But he wasn’t, and he could bring down her carefully built house of cards.

  “If I could, I would slit your throat for this,” she growled.

  “I know. I’m sorry. Really.”

  “You lie. You lie. You lie.” Then she drew a deep, shaky breath, and grabbed a pen and paper. “Give me the damned phone number. I’ll do this one thing—and then I swear to God, if you ever threaten me like this again, I’ll find you. And I’ll cut off your balls and stuff them down your miserable throat.”

  Richard shuddered. He knew her well enough to know she meant it. He read off Dieter’s phone number, repeated it again, and was rewarded with a dial tone humming in his ear.

  Dieter was in the mall looking for some laborer’s clothing when his cell phone rang. He glanced at caller ID, then frowned. All the screen said was Private Caller, but it had to be her. Besides Richard, she was the only person who would have this number.

  “Hello?”

  “Listen to me, you little worm, because I will not repeat myself. There is a Mexican restaurant down near the water called Mamacita’s. Be there at eleven o’clock tonight. You’ll get what you need. And when you see your boss again, tell him for me if he ever shows his face back in Houston again, he’s a dead man.”

  Dieter stiffened. Was this the woman who was going to help, or was this a warning that everything was getting worse?

  “Mamacita’s. Right,” Dieter repeated.

  Like Richard, he, too, was rewarded with a dial tone. But he didn’t care. He was out of options. He had to take a chance that this would work out. He paid for the three pairs of denim pants he’d picked out and left the store on the run. He needed to get back to his motel, pack and find that Mexican restaurant. The worst thing that could happen right now was being too late and missing his chance to escape.

  Fourteen

  John was in his office, running through e-mail and talking to his broker, when Alicia walked past the doorway. He saw the slump in her shoulders. When she didn’t even look his way, he knew he needed to do something to get her out of her depression.

  He’d been considering a trip into Sedona for a couple of days, and now seemed like a good time. He was going to put a smile on Alicia’s face today or know the reason why.

  Alicia was standing in the hallway outside what she called John’s “memorial room,” staring at the painting of White Fawn, when she heard footsteps behind her. She sighed. Damn. He’d caught her.

  “Hey, baby…come away from there.”

  Alicia wouldn’t turn around. She didn’t want him to know she was jealous, and she figured he would see it on her face.

  “I was just…uh…”

  “Wanna go for a ride?”

  She turned before she thought. “In the helicopter?”

  “No. There is a Jeep out back. We can drive.”

  “Really? Is it safe
?”

  He scooped her up in his arms and kissed her soundly on the lips before he set her back down.

  “Yes, really. And who the hell knows?” he said as he gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze. “We need some groceries, and I want to show you my favorite art gallery while we’re there.”

  “Fantastic!” Alicia said as she clapped her hands. “You know what? This will be our first real date.”

  The right corner of his mouth tilted slightly.

  “I’d say it was about time to show you a good time.”

  She grinned. “You’ll have to work hard to surpass your own benchmark, Nightwalker.”

  “How so?”

  “The best times I’ve ever had in my life were in bed with you. I can’t think of anything you can do to top that, but I’m all for giving it a go.”

  A smile broke across John’s face, then spread all the way to his eyes. Alicia saw them glitter and knew he was pleased by what she’d said. When he took her into his arms and kissed her again, this time slower and longer, she shivered with sudden longing.

  He heard her sigh. The temptation to take her to bed and forget the trip to Sedona was strong, but he’d promised. Besides, there was always tonight.

  “So put on your going-to-town duds and some comfortable shoes. I’ll be in the kitchen making a list of things we need.”

  “I won’t be long,” Alicia said, and hurried away.

  John watched her go, then hesitated before glancing into the room—straight to the woman in the painting. He stood for a long, silent moment, waiting for a sound to come out of that beautiful smiling mouth, even though he knew better.

  “You would like her,” he said softly, then turned and walked away.

  John drove with the windows down, letting the hot wind blow in and out at will, a smile on his face and the accelerator all the way to the floor. If he had a vice, it was speed. Alicia glanced over at him as they drove, eyeing his silver earring bouncing and swaying with the airflow, and thought to herself that, at that moment, he looked every inch an untamed male.