by Anne Stuart
But the Toyota ran smoothly, if bumpily, enough, and the animal smell of it dissipated as the day wore on.
The road was getting worse, far worse, signaling the proximity of a semblance of civilization. Maddy slowed the Toyota to a crawl, edging along the narrow trail, straddling the ruts. Suddenly she jammed the tiny car into a quick, jolting stop that rocked the poor tin creature on its frame. A huge branch lay across the narrow road.
Maddy swore under her breath. The car had stalled, and she switched off the ignition, turning to the door handle. And found herself looking directly into the barrel of a very large, very nasty gun.
CHAPTER TWO
She swallowed, her mouth suddenly very dry, as she stared into the narrow, deadly little barrel. Slowly, carefully she raised her eyes, past a sweat-stained shirt, open to reveal a hairy chest, past a thick neck, stubbled chin, hooked nose, directly into the eyes of a very fierce young man. Those eyes were a cold, merciless brown; like a lizard’s, they stared at her unwinking. Maddy could see the shadow of others behind him, but she didn’t dare move her gaze from his, certain that if she did that lethal-looking gun would explode in her face. She swallowed again, wetting her lips, and tried to summon the distant trace of a smile. She could imagine the ghastly parody that issued forth.
A string of rapid, incomprehensibly idiomatic Spanish issued forth from that grim mouth, directed at Maddy, and there was little doubt that the speech contained both questions and orders.
“No comprendo,” Maddy managed, which wasn’t strictly true. You couldn’t live in Southern California, couldn’t spend the last five years working there without picking up a small amount of Spanish. She’d managed to understand about every fifth word Lizard Eyes had directed at her. Unfortunately they were mostly pronouns.
The man grimaced and spat, the gun never wavering in its attention on her forehead. “Gringa,” he said slowly, furiously, and Maddy noticed with a distant amusement that his voice was high and light, almost like a girl’s. “Who are you and what are you doing here? This province belongs to the Third District of the Patronistas, the Fighters Against the Oppressor—it is not the best area for turistas. Why are you here?”
Maddy steeled herself to ignore the gun, a difficult task considering its proximity. She could smell the hot metal, the gun oil, and she wrinkled her nose, trying to ignore the terrifying certainty that the well cared for gun saw frequent use. “My name is Madelyn Lambert. I’m Samuel Lambert’s daughter, and I’ve come to see my father.”
Lizard Eyes stared at her, unblinking, unbelieving. “A norteamericana,” he said finally in disgust. “I should have known.” He pulled the gun away, and Maddy breathed a sigh of relief. She noticed that her hands were still clenching the steering wheel, and slowly, deliberately she relaxed her deathgrip.
“The Patronistas have no wish to antagonize the United States or any of its citizens who are foolish enough to enter a war zone without protection.”
“I thought the fighting was in the south.”
Lizard Eyes shrugged. “The fighting is all over San Pablo. There is no place that is untouched.” Those eyes narrowed as they swept over her hot, dusty face. “You do not look like El Patrón.”
“El Patrón?” Maddy echoed, mystified for a moment. “Oh, you mean Samuel. No, I’m supposed to take after my great-grandmother. She was French, and I …” Her voice trailed off as she recognized the inanity of the conversation. Why in the world would this guerilla warrior want to know about her French grandmother? “Anyway,” she said lamely, “he is my father, I assure you.”
Lizard Eyes shrugged. “It is of no importance. One lone gringa cannot cause much trouble. You are alone?” Those lizard like eyes swept back into the underbrush from whence the battered little Toyota had come. “I am surprised Ortega didn’t try to stop you.”
Maddy was conscious of a sudden guilty start. “Ortega?”
“Head of el presidente’s Secret Interrogation Squad for the Subjugation of Insurgents.”
“I thought he was Minister of Agriculture,” Maddy said, and then could have taken the gun out of his hand and shot herself for her stupidity.
Those lizardlike eyes narrowed and a sudden, alarmingly affable smile split his darkly tanned face. It was then that Maddy realized how very young her fierce young soldier was—probably no more than twenty-one or twenty-two. And all the more deadly because of his extreme youth. “General Ortega is a friend of yours, eh? And I suppose he’s accompanied you, at a safe distance.”
“He—he met me at the airport,” Maddy stammered, flustered. “He offered me a car and driver but I told him no.”
“Doubtless you promised to let him know once you safely arrived,” Lizard Eyes offered smoothly.
“He knows how to get here on his own, I have no doubt. He doesn’t need my help.”
Her captor shrugged. “Who is to say? General Ortega has a reputation for making the most of his opportunities. He also has a reputation for the ladies.” The sweep of those cold brown eyes was insultingly direct. “Well, gringa, you are not my problem. Whether El Patrón is your father or not is none of my concern. Though he has never once mentioned a family back in the United States. But it will be up to Murphy to decide what to do with you.”
The name crackled along Maddy’s nerve endings like static electricity, and it was all she could do to remain passive in the face of Lizard Eyes’s attention. She hadn’t heard his name spoken in years and had almost convinced herself that he had never existed. And suddenly, with the sound of his name, he was alive, and the past fourteen years might never have passed.
“Murphy?” She managed a creditable question in her voice.
“El Patrón’s protector.” Lizard Eyes shot a stream of rapid Spanish over his shoulder to one of his compatriots and was answered with a coarse laugh. “And it is to be wondered what Soledad will think of you.”
“Soledad?”
“Your stepmother. I somehow doubt she will welcome you with open arms.” Lizard Eyes laughed again, unpleasantly, and the gun slowly withdrew several inches and waved her onward. “Vamanos, gringa. We will no doubt meet again.”
She sat there, unmoving, her eyes never wavering as he slowly moved back, the gun at a seemingly relaxed angle. She had no doubt it could snap back up to aim at her face once more at an instant’s notice. One of the men accompanying Lizard Eyes was moving the log that had blocked the road, and he called out something to his boss. It was quite clearly something obscene, an area of the Spanish language that had so far eluded Maddy, but she could make out Murphy’s name and the easily identified gringa.
She sat there a long time after her captors melted into the jungle, breathing deeply. Her hands were shaking as she turned the key. The gears ground, screaming in pain, the car bucked, and she was off, down the narrow track that would lead her to her father—and to Jake Murphy.
Puente del Norte was a beaten little town, its tumbled-down mansions and overgrown parks attesting to a once more glorious lot in life. The now-familiar poverty was rampant, the fading pink and pastel adobe walls scrawled with graffiti exhorting the benumbed inhabitants to die for freedom. As Maddy limped her battered car into the village she kept her eyes alert for signs of her father’s presence. She could see obvious signs of General Ortega and President Morosa’s recent visits, in the bombed-out church, the shattered walls, the wary looks on the inhabitants’ faces. They were all carrying weapons.
From the sturdy, black-garbed women industriously washing in the stream that ran along the side of the narrow village road, to the swaggering young men dressed in the international uniform of blue jeans and T-shirts and Nikes, they were carrying pistols and handguns and machine guns and shotguns, knives and machetes and even a sword or two. She was driving into an armed camp, and in retrospect General Ortega was looking more and more attractive. If she made it out of there, out of this miserable country alive, she would never again go any farther south than San Diego.
No one made a move toward h
er as she edged her way down the narrow village street, the car bouncing and lurching over the potholes. But every eye was trained on her sporadic progress, and not a word was spoken.
Maddy’s hands were numb as they gripped the steering wheel. These were her father’s people, she told herself staunchly, not believing a word. The people he’d devoted his life to helping. They wouldn’t hurt El Patrón’s daughter, they would be more likely to welcome her with parades and flowers. Wouldn’t they? She was only thankful that she had no need to stop to ask for directions.
Her stepfather’s sources had been very clear. Samuel Eddison Lambert was living in an abandoned villa-turned-fortress two miles past the tiny town of Puente del Norte, surrounded by a small army of followers. Max hadn’t told her who led that army, and Maddy hadn’t asked. Lizard Eyes had answered that unspoken question. Jake Murphy, the man who had abandoned his career in the Secret Service and his life as an American citizen to follow a crazy old dreamer, would be there, still guarding the man who’d shaped his destiny.
She’d been seventeen when she’d last seen Jake Murphy. Seventeen, and as deeply, overwhelmingly in love as any seventeen-year-old girl could be. If nothing had ever quite come close to that astonishingly powerful adolescent passion, Maddy accepted that fact with wry humor. After all, that was what being a teenager was all about. Falling in love with unsuitable older men and filling diaries about the stark tragedy of it all. She had no doubt that Murphy now possessed a notable paunch, a plump wife and four or five bambinos, and a shared affectionate remembrance of her passionate crush.
It was little wonder she’d fallen so hard. Jake Murphy was the stuff dreams were made of. Samuel Eddison Lambert had run for President that year, had even been considered a fairly good contender for the highest office in the land. And Jake Murphy was the Secret Service man assigned to protect the candidate as he had stumped around the country in search of that elusive nomination, a suavely smiling Helen by his side.
Twenty-six years old, just out of Vietnam, Jake Murphy had seemed the epitome of romance to Maddy, who was rapidly tiring of her teenage peers. Even the stigma of being involved in that dirty little war hadn’t tarnished Murphy, it had only made him more mysterious in her eyes. That he had hated it was more than clear, that there was some dark secret attached to his involvement also became clear as the months passed. It had taken an inquisitive sixteen- almost seventeen-year-old a long time to ferret it out, and by the time she had it was too late. And even that secret in all its horror wasn’t enough to shatter the threads of longing that tied her to Jake.
She was almost through the tiny town, heading out toward her father’s villa, and the staring faces were now watching her exhaust. Her fingers loosened slightly on the steering wheel as she thought back again to Jake, trying to dredge him up from her memory. She could remember the specifics, the close-cropped regulation haircut that she’d hated, the hazel eyes that watched constantly and never gave anything away, his tall, lean body in the dark suits that were a uniform in themselves. But she couldn’t summon forth a picture of him in her mind.
Not that it mattered. She would either recognize him or not when she saw him, and they’d laugh about the past, and then he’d take her to see her father. And Samuel Eddison Lambert would smile at her out of those dreamy blue eyes of his that only saw the larger scale of things, that had never noticed when his daughter was hurting, that only concentrated on the inequities of the Third World. And reassured, Maddy would turn around and head back to L.A., secure in the knowledge that her father was safe and well.
It was a lovely fantasy, one that sustained her through the last two miles of underbrush that seemed to have more eyes than the little town of Puente del Norte. She knew as well as anyone that the chances of it bearing any resemblance to reality were tenuous indeed, but one could always hope. A hope that wavered and began to shatter when the car finally cleared the mountain forest and pulled up in front of a high-walled structure.
It had once been a villa, all right, but now it resembled nothing so much as an armed fortress. The pink walls were topped with barbed wire, scrawled with inevitable black graffiti, this time recommending long life to El Patrón. The once-neat landscaping was a tangle of encroaching jungle, the ornamental iron gates were tightly shut and guarded by a young man in jeans, Nikes, an ET T-shirt, and a machine gun. A machine gun that was pointed straight at her.
She could pride herself on being a little cooler this time in the face of danger. Her sweaty hands slipped only once as she opened the car door, and she raised them over her head with as much aplomb as possible as she moved slowly toward the young guard. Even younger than Lizard Eyes, she noticed. Where were all the men of San Pablo?
And why the hell did San Pablo Spanish have to be so far removed from Mexican Spanish? Granted there were several Central American countries in between, but you’d still think there would be more than a few similarities. The demands of the young soldier guarding El Patrón were abrupt, hostile, and nonnegotiable. Once more she summoned her best smile and her most-oft used Spanish phrase.
“No comprendo. Habla usted inglés?”
Her winning smile got her exactly nowhere, as did her tourist’s Spanish. The question was repeated, and this time Maddy could begin to comprehend a few words. She took a step toward him, and the gun remained stationary.
She had a fair idea what she looked like to him. She was a tall woman, just over five feet nine, and her lean body with its meager curves lay hidden beneath the loose cotton shirt that now clung wetly to her back. Her long legs were encased in rumpled jeans, her own Nikes were dusty and muddy, and her close-cropped dark-brown hair swept back from a narrow, delicate face that doubtless was sweat-stained, exhausted, and scared. She hadn’t bothered with makeup, having discovered that it melted off her face by noon in the damp climate, and her pale mouth and wary brown eyes that filled her face would scarcely entice the young man into any acts of conspicuous gallantry. She would have to rely on her minimal Spanish and her father’s intervention. After all these years he ought to be good for something.
But after five minutes the conversation had gotten no further. Maddy’s conversational Spanish made no dent on the soldier’s mountain dialect, and the machine gun stayed trained on her stomach. Her arms were getting tired, but every time she tried to drop them the machine gun clicked warningly.
Once more she tried. “Mi padre,” she said again. “Mi padre es El Patrón.”
The boy shook his head stubbornly, his mouth curling in contemptuous disbelief, all his responses consisting of negatives as far as Maddy could tell. At some sound beyond Maddy’s hearing he turned his head, directing his attention into the compound. A moment later he turned back to her, gesturing with the gun for her to approach. As she passed him, sliding through the narrow opening in the iron gates, she tried to drop her hands. She was rewarded with the barrel of the gun jabbing her sharply in the ribs, and it was all she could do to keep from slapping the little punk. She contented herself with glaring at him and continued on into the courtyard of the tumbled-down villa.
There was no one in sight. The guard had shut the iron gate after her and was now concentrating his attention on the outer world once more. Slowly she began to lower her hands, half of her expecting the bully from the front gate to shoot her in the back. But he had clearly dismissed her, and she pressed a shaking hand to her side. The blow had hurt, her rib was throbbing, but that was the least of her worries. The courtyard was a mass of fragrant flowers, a tangled jungle of scent and beauty in the midst of an armed camp. Maddy stood very still, breathing in the damp smell of the garden, every nerve tightly strung. She could feel the eyes on her, eyes that had watched her since she arrived in San Pablo, different eyes along each step of the journey to her father. And suddenly she didn’t want to wait any more.
She took a decisive step toward the massive stone structure, then stopped as the short, sharp click of a gun being cocked stilled her every movement, even the beat of her heart
.
She could feel him behind her, though she couldn’t imagine how he could have gotten so close without her having been aware of his approach. She could feel the barrel of the gun in the middle of her back, and for a moment she felt like screaming. Three times in the last hour she had had guns pulled on her. That was three times too many for her thirty years, it was scarcely the sort of thing she was used to, and for a brief moment she struggled with the sudden urge to burst into tears of exhaustion and fright. She bit her lip, hard, and stood very still.
“That’s right,” a deep, scratchy voice came from directly behind her. “Don’t make any sudden moves, lady, and no one will get hurt.”
With the barrel of the gun still planted firmly in her back, she felt a heavy hand drop down on her shoulder, gripping her hard and propelling her against the nearby garden wall. She went up against it with a resounding thud.
“Spread your arms and legs,” he drawled, and immediately she complied. A rough hand moved up and down her sides and over her back. “We don’t take much to strangers showing up here,” the voice said as he searched her. “Particularly friends of General Ortega’s. Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in Puente del Norte?”
Maddy was getting tired of those questions, almost as tired as she was of having guns pointed at her. “If you’ll get your hands off me,” she said through clenched teeth, “and remove the gun from my back, maybe I’ll tell you.”
The gun didn’t move for a moment. Then it pulled away and his large hand clamped down on her shoulder once more, spinning her around with an abruptness that made her teeth rattle. “Lady, this isn’t a game,” he snapped, and his hands were roughly impersonal as they searched the front of her body, her breasts, even between her legs. She stood rigid with shock and fury, and then finally his hands left her, and he stood back with the gun trained on her.