by Beth Rhodes
“No.”
“He has an entire team of people who can help you—”
“No.” Tio Antonio remained calm. “Are you so selfish, you forget what it would mean for Jamie to come to our country?”
Her voice fell. “No, but you have sealed his fate. He will come for me.”
When Tio Antonio pulled over to the side of the road, there was nothing to indicate a place where she might use the restroom or even stretch her legs unless she was going to take a walk along the road.
Missy sighed.
“Take a quick break. Relieve yourself. We get back on the road in 5 minutes.”
She wasn’t stupid. “No one to talk to, nowhere to run?”
He grunted.
“I won’t forget this, Tio.”
The open door and light from the car revealed a blush on his cheekbones. He had a conscience, at least.
She left the door open. It was dark as sin out here on the highway just barely inside the border of Mexico.
She wished she had the guts to run.
***
Martinez hung up the phone with barely controlled excitement.
He was closer to putting his world right than he had been in twelve years.
Finally, after all this time, he would have her. And he had Antonio to thank. There would be a great bonus for the man who brought her back. She was both his passion and his demise—the key to his future. He would have her.
And he would kill her.
His plan to win the governor’s election could not fail. He would be one step closer to taking on the presidency. The people were in love with him. They would reap the benefits of financial stability in a country where poverty was like a cancer throughout the countryside. He would finally win.
After all these years, it was his turn to have the power.
Marguerite’s photograph hung on the wall in his office, beautiful and young. Innocence in her smile. Eyes, wide with wonder, as she gazed into the camera. She’d been practically a child then, slim and lean.
He’d seen her around with Diego—before the betrayal. She should have been his daughter, and Carmen should have been his wife.
Martinez sat at his computer and found the video in which Marguerite had revealed herself. He clicked around until he found the short article out of Punta Gorda. She’d saved a child. He touched the image of her face. The same yet different…a spark for life still in her eyes.
Would she remember him, his affections or his hatred?
Longing filled him, hardened him in the most basic way. His second chance. He had to talk to her. Had to have her. This time, he would wrap his hands around her neck, and…
He blew out a breath. No. This time would be different.
He would touch her, love her, adore her with everything she could ever want. She would have no reason to leave him—as Carmen had.
Diego was dead, her past.
Carlos would be her future. And she would be his. The one he had always wanted, Carmen Fuentes, back from the dead. He frowned. Not beloved Carmen. The daughter.
A knock on the door startled him from his thoughts. “Come in,” he said as he clicked out of the video on the computer and opened the spreadsheet of his latest production numbers.
His man came through the door. “Pablo, just the one I need. Please tell Lidia to make a place. We’ll have a guest this evening, a young woman. Tell her to use the best linens and put out the finest soaps. Dolores can do the shopping. A new wardrobe. Size six. Dresses, slacks, tops…a few things for exercising. Whatever she thinks a woman might need. Underwear, bras, pantyhose. Perhaps items for—” He almost stopped at the thought, cleared his throat and continued. She was a full-grown woman now. “Make sure there are items, whatever a woman might need or want, for that time of the month,” he finished with a wave of his hand.
He gave Pablo credit for not flinching. “Si, señor. We will take care of everything.”
“Bien.” His throat tightened on the unexpected swell of excitement. No, gratitude. He was doing something right. God was blessing him, after all these years. It was his turn.
And he wouldn’t let anyone or anything get in his way.
Not even the coming election.
***
Jamie hesitated before opening the door to his home. He’d left her here, like he had dozens of times before. Their home. He rested his hand on the solid, smooth wood surface and took a breath.
The door opened from the inside, and Malcolm stood before him, only to look over Jamie’s shoulder as if he didn’t even see him. Jamie stepped to the side. Marie murmured, and a quick glance showed her wrapped in Malcolm’s arms.
Tan stepped around the couple and came through the door behind Jamie. “Jeez,” he said right away, stopping at the edge of the blood stain on the floor. Everything else was in pristine condition. Not a pillow was out of place. But the pool of blood and the drag marks screamed violence.
Movement from the kitchen drew his attention.
Kiana, a young black woman, with hair neatly secured at the back of her neck in a tight bun, stood in the doorway watching, apprehension on her face. “I’m so sorry,” she said to Jamie before he had a chance to speak.
“What happened,” Jamie asked, running a hand through his hair.
“Someone knocked on the door. I went to answer.” She shrugged. “I got hit by the door first. I remember that. It came at me, knocked me down. And then I got hit from behind. Next thing I know. I’m waking up. Cold body next to me and Missy is gone.”
Jamie nodded and looked around again, as if another sweep would reveal Missy’s whereabouts.
“Malcolm.” He would think about the new girl later when his brain could function at an empathetic level. Right now, he didn’t have time for apologetic or pity.
Malcolm came through the door, turned left, and didn’t stop on his way down to the shop level below. Jamie followed.
Malcolm moved to the back room beyond the scuba and boating gear where Hawk had set up their systems. He opened a clunky looking laptop and turned on the large screened desktop next to it. There was a strip of buttons under the desk that he ran his fingers over, and everything on the desk came to life.
“So, she jumped in with a bunch of sharks, huh?” Marie said as she moved to the other side of the room, her hand lightly brushing Malcolm’s shoulder as she passed his chair.
“Yeah. She rescued a girl who fell in.” And as he said it, pride crept up and wrapped around the guilt that had settled in his gut. He was incredibly proud of her. He’d been pretty pissed at the time, that she would put herself in danger. “I didn’t tell her good job.”
“She probably knows.”
“Anything yet, Malcolm?” he asked.
“Almost.”
“Maybe,” he said, responding to Marie. She was probably right. Missy had this amazing capacity to understand his bullshit. “She thinks she’s timid, even shy. But then she does something crazy.” Like jump in with sharks. Like go up against the cartel, and then escape them by tracking through miles of Mexico wilderness. “She doesn’t know it, but she’s always been a risk taker.”
The thought didn’t sit well, so he shoved it aside. He needed her back at home, where she was safe.
“And she’s been happy?” Marie again, with a question that touched on the impossible.
She wouldn’t leave him. She wouldn’t leave him with a dead body to deal with, wouldn’t leave him in the dark. God, he thought of all those horrible stories where people just disappeared, never to be seen again. “She’s happy,” he growled.
Marie laughed. “She likes the teaching, I guess. Been doing it long enough now.”
He rubbed a hand over his heart. “Yes. It’s the kids. Always the kids. She has a soft spot for them.”
“I would be a horrible teacher.”
“Not if you were teaching them how to pull a heist.”
“Ha,” Malcom said, with a quick glance up. “Just one more minute.”
Why did Marie’s question make him doubt his answer? Did Missy like to teach? What if this was the reason she hadn’t married him? Maybe she was waiting for a way out? He blew out a breath. “She went through a lot before coming to Belize,” he said, arguing with himself. “She likes teaching.”
“You talking to me?”
Heat rose on his neck. “Yes. No… I don’t know.”
“She loves you, you know.”
“I know,” he answered, plain and simple. “That’s why I’m going to marry her.”
“You’ve been living together for years,” Marie said, as if that meant the legal document didn’t matter.
Maybe it didn’t, but…he wanted it. He shrugged.
“Why do you want it so bad?”
He’d never pressure Missy. They trusted each other; they were exclusive, a team. “I guess I want permanence for her. I want her to have everything. All of it. Even if I die.”
“Aww, that’s…not what I expected you to say.”
He narrowed his eyes in her direction. “What?”
“Most guys would want more—for themselves, would want to take more, have everything, be the center of their woman’s life. You want her to have it all. Sweet.”
Jamie ran a hand through his hair. “Well, it does go both ways, of course.”
“Yes, but your gut instinct said otherwise.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I watched Oprah this week.” Embarrassed by her reaction to something he’d never voiced before, he turned back to Malcolm. “Your minute’s up.”
She snickered.
The only person Jamie ever felt the need to make excuses to was his mother. Poor Mom. She wanted grandkids. She worried about his safety. She worried about his soul. She was typical mom material, and he wished he could give her all the assurances she needed.
But he couldn’t.
Not when he spent random trips, traveling to all corners of the world, not when he loved Missy so much, living without her might kill him. If couldn’t marry him—yet, he was happy to not marry her—usually.
“I’m tracking both phones—Missy’s and Kiana’s.”
Jamie went around and stood behind Malcolm, tension filling every fiber of his being.
“In Mexico.” Malcolm hesitated. “Sorry man. I was hoping for better, or different.”
“He got to her.” Jamie’s stomach hurt as he turned, paced to the other end of the room, and came back. “How did he know where she was?”
“There was the video, the plea she made that ended up online.”
Jamie shook his head. “I watched it on the flight back from Colombia. She didn’t reveal her location in that. Belize is small, but not that small. And to this very spot? To the Shack? We don’t have our internet through a local IP address. It’s secure. Even if Martinez had figured out it was Punta Gorda—
“Her grandmother.” He took out his phone and scrolled through his contacts. Fuentes. He called the number listed under Grandma. But that familiar sound of an incomplete call came through the line. “Missy had friends…”
Marie laid a hand on his shoulder, the warmth of it offered an unexpected comfort. “Can you contact them?”
His stomach felt hollow, but he nodded. “Yeah. I think I can.”
It took a few minutes, but he rooted through the box in the back of their bedroom closet and found the small book with a list of contacts. From twelve years ago. This was a shot in the dark, but he didn’t care.
Malcolm would work on the GPS angle. He wasn’t going to sit around and do nothing.
He opened his balcony door and stepped out, the afternoon sun piercing his gaze and heating his skin. He soaked in the sun and found her. The scent of her in the flowers, the reminder of her in the coffee ring on the glass table in the corner. Her shoes peeked out from under the canvas lounge chair she’d insisted on fitting into the corner, even though it was a sight too big for that spot.
And she’d fall asleep there.
He turned away and faced the sea as he dialed the first number on the list.
“Hola,” a strong, female voice answered.
His Spanish had gotten rusty. Just another betrayal of her heritage, of who she was? He wished he knew. “Hola, Andrea. Estoy buscando a Marguerite Fuentes.”
There was a slight hesitation. “Who is this?”
“My name is Jamie Nash. I work with an agency out of the United States, and we believe Miss—Marguerite has been abducted.” He went with full truth, talking to her classmate from the university. The two girls had been at school together those last five months before he’d come for her, before she’d left.
It had taken Missy a long time to let those connections go, but he’d insisted. Yet another betrayal? He wasn’t sure, but the more he thought about it, the more he doubted everything he—they—had worked for all these years. Her absence now left him uncertain. When she was here, she never complained about the path her life had taken.
Had he done the right thing, bringing her to Belize? She came here a scared girl.
She wasn’t that young girl anymore. Maybe she wasn’t that scared either.
Which terrified him.
“I heard a rumor, recently,” Andrea began. “Talk at the water cooler. Rumors until someone proves otherwise and makes it fact so that we can put it in writing. Martinez finally located the woman he was looking for. Something about a woman named Carmen. I wasn’t sure, except…I knew. I saw the footage, like everyone else did.” She cleared her throat. “I saw her face, and I knew, Señor Nash. That was our Marguerite, daughter of Carmen Fuentes.”
A cold fear formed in his gut. “But Carmen died in childbirth having Missy thirty years ago,” Jamie argued. That was the story, told by Missy and her grandmother. Her family had been forced to flee the cartel. With no doctors, Carmen had died.
“Some say the two men fought over her, that Diego won her hand in marriage, and Martinez never got over it.”
“Do you know where Missy is?”
She hesitated.
“Marguerite,” he corrected himself.
“If she is here, we have not seen her yet.” Background noise on Andrea’s end cut her off. She called out in Spanish before coming back to his call. “There is a meeting of the Patriot Union in four nights’ time. Perhaps she will be there. To finish what her father started.”
“I have to find her first,” Jamie exclaimed in mild disbelief, annoyed by the woman’s single-minded focus on putting Martinez down. “When I do find her, I am getting her as far away from here as I can.”
“The meeting changes locations fairly often. I will text you when I hear of the next one.”
“Graci—”
“Don’t thank me.” Andrea interrupted him. “Once, Marguerite would have done anything to help her people. She was one of us.”
“She was just a girl.”
“She was daughter to Carmen, one of the most revered names in this region, whose paintings still grace many of our public buildings. She might not have asked for it, but Marguerite made us believers in something better, something good.” She paused. “I guess you changed that as well.”
She hung up.
Jamie stared at the phone, stunned by the accusation. But hadn’t he been thinking those thoughts? Had he killed her passion? Maybe this was why Missy hadn’t agreed to marry him in all these years. Maybe this was why she had left with her uncle.
Maybe she hadn’t been abducted at all.
A text came in with the address, distracting him from the depressing thought.
Hell, it wasn’t just depressing; it was fucking aggravating and head-splitting and…and made him so damn mad, if he was completely honest. Because, no matter why she left, if Martinez touched even a hair on her head, Jamie was going to have to kill him.
As he turned to go back inside, he stopped to pick up the shawl draped over the chair in the corner. He lifted it to his nose and breathed in the scent of her. He wasn’t alone. Hadn’t been in twelve years.
And when he
went inside, he found his team waiting for him.
They would find her.
He would find her and bring her home.
Chapter Ten
Her uncle seemed hellbent on using her to fix the problems in Mexico. Like she was going to be able to fix the long-standing reputation of the Martinez Cartel.
But instead of going straight to Martinez, he pulled down a dirt road. Maybe she should have been scared out here in the middle of nowhere…in the middle of where bodies disappeared.
There was something about this place, though—familiar…the swerving length, the trees. Her heart pounded in excitement. “Nina?” she breathed.
As soon as he stopped, she jumped from the vehicle, snatched her bag from the floor, and ran up the familiar steps. When her foot stumbled at the top, she slowed. The deteriorated state was new, and unsettling. “Aren’t you taking care of things?” she asked as her uncle followed her.
Her dad had always been the one to take care of Nina and the home he’d grown up in. Tio Antonio had big visions for himself—from the start, and he’d spent many years leaving home and travelling the world.
Tio Antonio shrugged and started up the porch steps. “She is taken care of.”
“There are holes in the porch floor.” But it was swept. And there were pretty planters with flowers in the corner and a table and chair off to the side. Nina was taking care of the place. “She’s ninety-two years old, Tio.”
He ignored her as he walked by and entered the house.
She followed him in, nerves hitting her, the uncertainty and excitement making her hands shake.
“Marguerite.”
Missy turned to the soft voice, to the woman who had saved her life, and she swallowed hard in order to stem the rush of emotions. “Nina.”
Nina opened her arms, and Missy found herself wrapped in the past. She squeezed her eyes shut against the surge of happiness and tears, breathing deeply of the essence that was her grandmother. “I missed you so much.”
And she hadn’t known how much. How had she forgotten?