Ramón started to cry then, his unabashed sobs making Eslin’s throat swell.
“I’ll find them,” she said, her voice thick and trembling.
“For their sakes,” Byrne answered, his smile disappearing, “I hope you do.”
“And then what?” Gage asked tightly.
“And then we will talk again.” He waved his right hand and the two men in Hawaiian shirts moved down the slope to stand on either side of him. “My cousin Alberto will remain to see that you return safely to your hotel. Evening comes, and the streets are not safe after dark.”
Byrne stepped toward Eslin and reached out to take her right hand. Her first instinct was to jerk away from him, but she didn’t, just steeled herself against the shiver of revulsion rippling through her body as he lifted her hand, bent his head, and softly kissed her knuckles.
“Vaya con Dios,” he murmured, smoothing his thumb across her fingers.
He backed away from her with a short bow, turned abruptly, and snapped a word in Spanish. His bodyguards closed tightly on either side of him and escorted him up the slope. On the edge of the paved walkway he turned, touched his fingertips to his lips, and threw Eslin a kiss.
Sick and shaking, she caught a glimpse of garish yellow and electric green moving toward them, and slowly raised her eyes to the Aztec facial features above the man’s gaudy shirt. Alberto, she murmured in her mind. Now she had a name to hate along with the face.
Chapter 24
Three shadows wavered along the sidewalk in front of her as Eslin led the way back to the motel. The longest belonged to Gage, the small, slumped one to Ramón, and the thickest across the shoulders to Alberto, the Aztec with the switchblade. His fell behind her as she started up the walk cut through the whitewashed wall.
“Buenas noches.” He called as he leaned against the arch.
“Go to hell!” Ramón shrieked, his voice breaking as he whirled around.
Alberto roared with laughter. Ramón dropped to his knees and picked up a chunk of volcanic rock. Alberto stopped smiling and reached for his back pocket.
“That’s enough.” Gage hooked his right hand under Ramón’s arm, hauled him to his feet, and towed him around the corner of the glass-walled office. “You made your point.”
As he reached for the metal bar across the door, he saw Eslin walking slowly toward the small rock-walled garden adjacent to the building. She sat down on a black wrought iron bench, leaned her elbows on her knees, and buried her face in her hands. Dragging Ramón with him, Gage followed.
At the sound of their footsteps, Eslin raised her head and leaned against the back of the bench. The black iron felt almost hot against her spine. Small green lizards still warmed themselves in the late golden sun slanting in thick beams over the volcanic rock wall, but the garden seemed suddenly full of shadows. It wasn’t a physical darkness, and for a moment she thought it was nothing more than the unrelenting pain in her head; then Gage dropped into the grass at her feet and she realized, with a shiver up her back, that he was the source of the shadows.
Ramón slid onto the bench beside her.
“Did Byrne mean,” he asked slowly, “what I think he meant when he said we’d never see Ethan again if we don’t find him and Ganymede by Tuesday?”
“ ‘Fraid so.” Gage sighed.
“But why?” Ramón raised his chin, his dark eyes glimmering. “What did Ethan do to him? Or you or me or Eslin?”
Gage glanced up at the boy. “Nothing.”
“Aw, come on, man.” Ramón made a disgusted face at him. “He isn’t threatening to kill your brother for nothing.”
Lines appeared in Gage’s face, lines Eslin had never seen before, deep furrows on both sides of his nose and heavy folds of crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. His neck chain gleamed in the sun and his throat muscles tightened as he dragged his fist down his nose and pressed it so hard against his mouth that his lips turned white. She caught just a flicker of his gray and heavy aura before Ramón went on.
“You owe me, man,” he said. “You owe me for all the times you told me I’ve gotta finish high school before you’ll let me ride your precious horses. Only I haven’t finished high school yet, I haven’t ridden your goddamn horses, but here I am, and I wanna know why.”
A vicious red pulse flaring in his aura, Gage opened his mouth to say something, but pressed his lips tightly shut as another shadow fell across the grass.
Saved by the bell, Eslin thought, glancing up as a tall, thin man strolled absently past them with his nose buried in a guidebook and sat down on a wrought iron bench a few feet away from them. He had on green plaid shorts, a yellow polo shirt, gray sweat socks, and running shoes. The floppy-brimmed golf hat he was wearing, the smear of Noxzema on his nose, and his black horn-rimmed sunglasses obscured most of his face.
“Just keep on talking and don’t look at me,” he said, his mouth barely moving and his head still bent over his book. “My name’s Faber and I’m with the FBI. I apologize for the tourist getup, but you never know who might be watching and listening. I’m also sorry about your brother, Mr. Roundtree.”
“You were there?” Gage threw himself around to face the FBI man. “Why the hell didn’t you do something?”
“Like what?” Faber returned sourly, keeping his head down as he turned a page. “He had a knife at your brother’s throat. If I’d pulled my gun and yelled halt, he might’ve killed him on the spot. I did the best I could, which was to follow him to a brown van, which my partner tailed and unfortunately lost in the mass suicide they call traffic in this country. I’d further like to point out to you that if the four of you hadn’t decided to handle this on your own, your brother would probably never’ve been kidnapped.”
The red subsided from Gage’s aura and Eslin felt relieved. Infinitely relieved.
“We’re perfectly safe here,” she said. “Alberto’s outside the gate.”
“Who’s Alberto?” Faber asked, putting his book down beside him.
“Marco Byrne’s cousin,” Eslin answered. “He had two others with him in the park.”
“Plus the guy who grabbed Ethan makes four.” Faber confirmed thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose you caught Alberto’s last name?”
“It wasn’t given.”
“So what do we do now?” Gage asked heavily.
“You tell me,” Faber said. “You talked to Byrne.”
“He gave us until midnight Tuesday night to find Ethan,” Eslin explained. “He said if we didn’t we’d never see either of them again. The only clue he gave us was that he and Ganymede would be in the same place.”
“Then how the hell,” Faber asked incredulously, as he looked at Gage, “does he expect you to find them?”
“He expects me to,” Eslin said quietly. “I’m clairvoyant.”
“Oh, yeah.” Faber, or rather his green-lensed sunglasses, glanced at her speculatively. “You’re the psychic.”
Just what I need, Eslin thought wearily, as she pressed her fingertips to the throbbing bridge of her nose. Another skeptic.
“My partner and I took some pictures of Alberto and his buddies in the park.” Faber picked up his book, shut it, and rose. “They’re being developed now, then we’ll run them by the locals and our computer. In the meantime you do whatever it is you’re supposed to do.” He glanced again, briefly, at Eslin. “There’s a two-way radio in your brother’s luggage. It’s tuned to one my partner carries. If you run into any more trouble, just turn it on and yell for help. You won’t see us but we’ll be around. Any questions?”
Eslin wasn’t sure that Gage, who stared unblinking at the trees on the far end of the garden, even heard the question. She shook her head no, and Faber sighed.
“Okay, that’s it. Except next time, leave stuff like this to the professionals, will you?”
He walked out of the garden, and Ramón, mumbling he was going to his room, followed.
“You know, don’t you,” Gage said tightly, “that Byrne doesn’t think
you have a plowhorse’s chance in the Derby of finding Ethan and Ganymede by Tuesday midnight, don’t you?”
“Of course I know it,” Eslin snapped at him; then bit her lip and sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s this headache.”
“Can you do it?”
“Maybe,” Eslin answered with a heavy sigh, “if my head will stop splitting.”
“Can I do anything to help you?”
Oh, yes, she wanted to tell him, oh, yes hold me, I’m so frightened—but she didn’t, just blinked back the tears burning behind her eyelids and cleared the lump out of her throat.
“Keep an eye on Ramón for me. Maybe if I sleep awhile this goddamn headache will go away.”
“Did you know what was going to happen?”
“Not exactly.” Eslin opened her eyes and saw Gage looking at her intently. “I only knew we had to meet Marco to change the dream I had on Wednesday night.”
“What dream?”
She opened her mouth to tell him, but the pain roared so suddenly and so fiercely inside her head that her stomach churned ominously.
“I can’t tell you right now.” She pushed herself unsteadily off the bench. “If I don’t lie down I’m going to be sick.”
“Let me help you.” Gage jumped to his feet, slipped his left arm around her waist, and walked with her across the garden and the parking lot, through the office, and down the corridor to her room. He took her key out of her shaky fingers, unlocked her door, and gave it back to her once she’d stepped inside her room. “Sleep well.” He smiled.
I’ll settle for sleeping period, Eslin thought, as she murmured a thank-you and shut her door.
She went into the bathroom, put the plug in the tub, turned on the taps, and undressed while it filled. She sighed as she slipped wearily into the warm water, leaned against the cold white porcelain back of the tub, closed her eyes, and tried to think of nothing but sleep.
Instead she thought about the shiny, ebony-hard eyes that withered the beauty in Marco Byrne’s flawless face. She thought about his cruel smile, his cousin Alberto, and his game of hide-and-seek. Some game. She had slightly over forty-eight hours to find a man and a horse hidden somewhere in a country roughly seven hundred thousand miles square. Dear God. A plowhorse’s chance indeed.
The harder Eslin thought, the lower she sank in the tub, unconsciously, until the water lapped at her bottom lip and she blinked at her hair floating like seaweed around her face. Jerking herself upright with a splash that sent a wave over the side to soak the bath mat, she pulled the plug with her right hand and stood up.
Shivering with a towel around her, she left the bathroom and put on her white nightgown with the blue drawstring. She drew back the bedspread and slid beneath the sheets. Closing her eyes, Eslin burrowed her cheek into the pillow and willed herself to sleep. Twice she almost made it, but jerked awake at the last second. The nightmare no longer fought her, but the pain in her head did.
During her two brief naps Gage looked in on her through a crack in the door she’d forgotten to lock. Eslin lay on her stomach, one cheek buried in her pillow, her thick dark hair curling in waves around her face and over her shoulder, her forehead smooth, her right hand hanging limp and unmoving over the side of the mattress.
Her nightgown was wadded up above her knees and the sunset’s coppery light sliced through the blinds and fell in thin bars across the back of her bare right leg. Leaning against the tiled molding of the door on his left shoulder, Gage stared at her for a moment, then eased the knob noiselessly shut and went next door to his own cold bed.
A line of light showed beneath Ramón’s door and rock music, crackling with static and unintelligible Spanish lyrics, filtered into the corridor. He let himself into his room, left the light off as he undressed, put on his faded blue pajama bottoms, and stretched out on his back on the bed.
Hoping to God that his mother wouldn’t call, Gage lay in the near darkness, staring at the ceiling he could just barely see, and prayed that Marco Byrne was taking good care of Ethan. What was his brother thinking? Was he scared or just angry? How did he feel knowing his life depended on Eslin?
How in hell could she sleep, he wondered, how in hell could she find Ethan? How in hell could he just lie here thinking about it and do nothing? There had to be something he could do, something. Unconsciously, his hand strayed to his neck chain, and when he realized it, Gage bent his chin close to his chest, lifted the horseshoe nail, and stared at it, dull and warm from the heat of his body in the darkness.
He heard Eslin cry out then—or thought he did—faintly above the music still drifting out of Ramón’s room, and bolted upright on the side of his bed. It rang in his ears, more a keen really than a scream; still, he got to his feet and across the room to the door. He opened it, stuck his head out into the corridor, and saw Ramón’s still-closed door and frowned. Had he imagined it? Slipping into the hall, he shut the door behind him and noiselessly traversed the few feet of tiled floor that separated his room from Eslin’s. He closed his hand on the knob but didn’t turn it, just pressed his ear to the door and listened.
Hearing soft whimpering through the louvers, he rapped his knuckles against the door.
“Eslin?” He said her name gently as he twisted the knob and pushed the door open.
A shaft of light from the corridor sliced over his shoulder, spread across the tiles and the white figure huddled on the side of the bed. The hinges creaked a little as Gage pushed the door open wider. Blinking in the light, Eslin raised her face from her cupped hands, looked at him, and then quickly away from his half-naked body.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his shoulder screening some of the light out of her eyes as he leaned into the room.
Raking her fingers through the tangled hair falling around her face, she shook her head no, pressed her trembling lips together, and closed her eyes.
“I saw it again,” she moaned, sweeping her hair over her left shoulder as she sagged against the side of the bed. “I saw the rocks and the waterfall”—she covered her eyes with her left hand and her voice quavered on a sob—”but I didn’t see where—I can’t see where!”
Oh, Ethan, oh, God, I’m sorry, she wailed silently. I can’t see where you are, I’ve tried and tried, but this headache is killing me and I’m so frightened—
“Maybe you’re trying too hard,” Gage suggested gently.
“I have to try hard!” she shouted at him, then sighed tiredly. “I’m sorry, it’s just that my head hurts so much, and I’m just so tired.”
And cold, and frightened. She didn’t say it but she didn’t have to, the tears reddening her nose and her eyes, huge and luminous in the half-dark as she pushed at her hair again and raised her chin, said it for her. What Gage couldn’t read there was the remembrance of being in his arms that crept unbidden into her mind as she tried to look at him but not at his body, tried not to remember how warm and safe she’d felt in his arms.
Half of her wished he’d go away, the other half wished he’d close the door behind him, come to bed with her and hold her, make her feel warm again and alive, not cold with panic and dread that she wouldn’t find Ethan in time.
Aching from wanting her so badly, Gage just stood there looking at her. Unconsciously, he began to toy with the horseshoe nail on the chain he wore around his neck.
“Please don’t do that,” she whispered, shivering as the familiar chill crawled up her back, stiffening her spine and her nipples.
“Please don’t do what?” Gage asked, letting go of the nail as he stepped through the door and pushed it shut behind him.
The only light in the room now came from the lit-up cobblestone courtyard beyond the window. It sifted through the blinds and the louvers, making soft cross-barred patterns on the bed and the tiled floor. Pale and dim as it was, it was illumination enough for him to see Eslin’s face as she looked up at him.
“You know perfectly well what I mean. You’ve been taunting me with that damn neck chain for the last two days
.”
“Why does it bother you?”
This was hardly the time to tell him what she thought it was. “I don’t know,” she lied, getting out of bed. “Now if you’ll leave, please, I think I’ll try another warm bath.”
“Eslin, wait.” Gage took another step toward her as she headed unsteadily for the bathroom. “You don’t know what it is and I sure as hell don’t, but we both know something happens when I touch my neck chain.” He drew a deep, sharp breath as she turned around to face him and the light filtering through the blinds illuminated the outline of her body beneath her gown. “What d’you suppose would happen if you wore it?”
His question seemed to startle her, even frighten her, but he could tell by her sudden frown that she was seriously considering it.
“I don’t know,” Eslin admitted. “And I won’t say the idea hasn’t occurred to me, but the neck chain is yours and it’s very special to you.”
“I think that we need to find out just how special it is.”
As he raised his hands and unfastened the chain, Eslin turned her head uncertainly to one side, then lifted her hair out of his way with a sweep of her right hand. The smooth skin on the side of her neck shimmered in the pale light, and her shoulders rippled as Gage slipped his hands around her throat and his fingers fumbled with the clasp.
“Let me.” Eslin let her hair fall but kept her eyes averted as she raised her left hand and closed her fingers around his.
She was trembling, so was he, but he let go of the chain and lifted her hair in both his hands. Soft and thick, it felt like silk in his fingers. He heard a snap and the chain went slack as Eslin lowered her hands. The horseshoe nail slid, winking dully in the dim light, past her collarbones and came to rest in the cleft between her breasts, their soft upper swells just visible above the ribbon-threaded bodice of her gown.
His hands still full of her hair, his breathing erratic, Gage felt her eyes lift to his face, but he couldn’t break his transfixed stare on the shallow rise and fall of her breasts. He could see that her shoulders were trembling now, but she didn’t say anything. She stood quietly in front of him and let him look.
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