Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes)

by Blair Bancroft

  That’s what I was, I vowed. A survivor. And so was Rhys.

  To pass the time, I told him about the brothers, about Mom and Dad, Gramma Blaine, Aunt Candy and Grady. About the shock of moving from a sophisticated college-dominated New England community to sleepy, senior-oriented Golden Beach, whose only claim to fame was thirty years as the winter home of the country’s greatest circus. Rhys reciprocated with a bit about his family, a brother and a sister, both older. Parents, still living, though not a hint about who they were or where they lived. His superior education came as no surprise, although it was Harrow and Cambridge, instead of Eton and Oxford.

  We avoided all talk of Interpol. We made nice, inching our way through the labyrinth of each other’s minds. Our goal—get safely out of the mountains, get our feet on the solid ground of Peru’s coastal plain. Then we could consider options. Right now, survival was all-important.

  We ordered lunch, invited Sergeant Sayani to join us. He refused, but we reminded him how far it was to Cuzco and assured him Lieutenant Manko wouldn’t expect him to stand outside and starve. So he ate with us, perched on the end of my bed. We conversed in Spanish, leaving Rhys to struggle to follow what we were saying. Tupaq Sayani was one of a family of eight, and our maid turned out to be the younger sister of his girlfriend. By the time the police car arrived to take us to the station, we felt less like suspects and more like witnesses in protective custody. Perhaps that’s what we’d been all along. The lieutenant had left us in limbo. Deliberately, I was quite sure.

  Rhys was so cool, so bland British tourist as we climbed aboard the rear car of the shiny three-car train, that I almost dug my elbow in his ribs. Being familiar with this train, designed for panoramic views, not luggage accommodation, I dumped my backpack in the space on the far side of the entryway. (My gun was safely in my jacket pocket.) I pulled open the door into the main part of the car and headed down the aisle, looking for a row with empty seats on both sides. The train was crowded, and it simply wasn’t happening.

  “Allá,” Sayani ordered, indicating two seats on my right. I sat by the window, with Rhys beside me. I swear the sergeant’s lips twitched as he hauled out his badge and flashed it at the couple across the aisle, pointing toward a pair of empty seats three rows ahead. They got up and scurried away as if he’d held a gun to their heads. Oh, he’d enjoyed that, I thought. Sayani, the Quechua, scattering tourists from Topeka or Frisco, or maybe Glasgow or Rome.

  The VistaDome is what you’d expect from its name. Almost all windows, including the curved ceiling, with just a broad stabilizing strip of metal down the middle, with a row of imbedded ceiling lights. I’d been on this train before, while checking out the hotels in Agua Calientes. It offered panoramic views of the mountains, the Urubamba valley and its jungle-like slopes, of small villages surrounded by fields of grain and vegetables, of century plants and saguaro cacti. Definitely one of Peru’s best non-archeological treats. Too bad we weren’t going to be able to enjoy it today.

  With no attempt to be subtle, I studied the other passengers. Just ordinary travelers—day-trippers from college through retirement age. Not the wealthy who stayed overnight at Machu Picchu or Agua Calientes at rates ranging from two hundred to six-fifty a night. If there were an assassin here, he blended perfectly into the international melting pot.

  Stupid! Wincing at my lack of forethought, I told Rhys to exchange seats with me.

  He objected, but I made such a fuss he was forced into it, apologizing to the passengers in front of us as we jostled their seats. I should have had him go in first to begin with, but life and death decisions were new to me. Sergeant Sayani gave me a nod of approval.

  I was still standing in the aisle when the train began to move. I grabbed the back of the seat in front of me and sat down hard. “Sorry,” I muttered, and was rewarded by a glare from the man in front of me and a drift of French I wish I hadn’t understood.

  “What do you think you are, Secret Service?” Rhys demanded as I settled beside him. “Going to take a bullet for me, you silly little twit?”

  Truthfully, I’m not sure what I was thinking. It just seemed sensible to keep Rhys out of easy access from the aisle.

  Blast it! We were riding in Peru Rail’s best, fully loaded with happy, laughing tourists (except the two glum Frenchmen directly in front of us), past some of the finest scenery in the world, and my fists were clenched, my heart pounding, my eyes jittering back and forth across the aisle like they had a life of their own. Absurd! The train car was brightly lit and chock-full of an international array of tourists. There was only one entrance, in full view, and a uniformed police sergeant across the aisle, with a gun prominent on his hip. Tupaq Sayani, I noted with some satisfaction, looked about as relaxed as I did. Evidently, he was taking his responsibility very seriously.

  The train’s route was simple. An hour and a half to Ollantaytambo, another hour-plus to Poroy, the last stop before Cuzco. Rhys made a couple of attempts at conversation, but gave it up when my responses were monosyllabic.

  I flexed my foot, the one with the knife in the boot. Surreptitiously—for the umpteenth time in under three hours—I felt for the weight of the .22 in my jacket pocket. Fine. Good. We were now less than an hour from Cuzco.

  The sleek, shining train, still well lit though the sun had dropped below the ring of mountains, slowed to a stop at Poroy. Vendors swarmed the platform, hoping to coax the more adventurous tourists to sample native cuisine. With a wheeze, the door at the front of our car opened, and a man walked down the aisle. A middle-aged, casually dressed tourist, who could have been almost any nationality from German to South African.

  The hairs on my arms stood to attention. Nonsense. He’d just gotten on, was on his way to Cuzco. Or perhaps the toilet on the car ahead was occupied and he was searching for an alternative.

  I never took my eyes off him. My hand was on my gun. He didn’t even glance at us as he walked by. I hissed out a breath, shut my eyes, and reminded myself safe was better than sorry.

  “I was afraid you were going to shoot first and ask questions later,” Rhys murmured, leaning in to press his lips and warm hot breath against my ear.

  I almost shot off my foot. My pheromones somersaulted, my heartbeat accelerated to warp drive. Slowly, carefully, I let go of the trigger. “Move away,” I hissed.

  Rhys sighed, and complied.

  Which was good, because I heard a soft pop-pop, and a bullet ripped between us, plowing into the seat in front of Rhys. I heard one of the Frenchmen yelp.

  Across the aisle, Tupaq Sayani slumped in his seat, blood oozing from the back of his head. I stood up and fired three rounds. Into the back of a fleeing man.

  Screams . . . dying away to sobs. Not a head in sight as everyone had hit the floor. I stepped into the aisle, approaching the assassin with caution. I wasn’t doing this. It wasn’t happening.

  Not so much as a twitch from the sprawled body. I knelt, put my fingers to the assassin’s neck artery.

  I wasn’t going to have to tie him up.

  No time to think about what I’d done. I shoved the .22 back in my pocket. Carefully, I pried the silenced Sig Sauer out of the dead man’s hand, snapped on the safety. I heard soft whooshes of relief echoing around me. Holding the Sig down past my hip, I ran back to Sayani. Rhys was kneeling beside him, looking grave. “He took one to the head,” he said. “He never knew . . .” Rhys paused, swallowed, took a deep breath. “I liked him,” he added simply.

  I grabbed for a seat back as the train lurched, shuddered, and got underway. How very strange. Outside this car, no one knew anything had happened. When the conductor came in to check tickets . . .

  Heads were beginning to pop up around the car, eyes and skin of every color turned in our direction. “Look, everyone.” Rhys, raised his voice, indulging his ultra-high-class Brit accent to the max. “I’m sorry about all this, but you’ll all be a bit delayed in Cuzco. You are witnesses to the assassination of a Peruvian policeman and an attempt o
n my life as well. I’m an Interpol officer and this lady”—he pointed to me—“has just saved my life. Naturally, we will need you to verify that to the officials who come on board in Cuzco.” Rhys repeated his announcement in French and German. I contributed the Spanish version.

  Talk about stacking the deck in our favor! Rhys was good, very smooth, as I had good reason to know already.

  We left the bad guy lying in the aisle. “Evidence,” Rhys explained cryptically to the people who had to sit next to the body. Then, in the disgustingly competent manner of someone accustomed to dealing with dead bodies and wounded and terrified bystanders, he turned his attention to the bleeding Frenchman, who had taken the bullet meant for Rhys. Fortunately, the deep padding of the seat cushions had prevented a fatal wound. As for me . . .

  I’d just shot a man in front of sixty witnesses.

  Correction. I’d just killed a man in front of sixty witnesses.

  Chapter Nine

  This was the part they never show in the movies, Rhys thought as he finished tying off the makeshift bandage he’d devised for the Frenchman’s shoulder. Audiences didn’t have to watch the clean-up or the blood pool trickling down the aisle as the VistaDome began its downhill creep into Cuzco. Or wait, white-faced, as the train’s passengers were doing, wondering what lay ahead. Or search for the right words to explain to the Cuzco policia how an American female just happened to be carrying a gun on their precious VistaDome.

  Or how she had killed for him.

  Concentrate on the moment, Tarrant. There’s not a bloody thing you can do about Cuzco.

  Rhys accepted the Frenchman’s thanks with a nod and a simple “Pas de quois.” Fortunately, declaring himself an Interpol officer, plus his impeccable French, seemed to have prevented the two Frenchmen from blaming him for the carnage. But the glances they sneaked in Laine’s direction were both awed and wary.

  As the VistaDome reversed into yet another zig-zag leading down into the city, Rhys slid into the seat next to Laine. Laine, who was everything he had hoped she was. And more. But this was one effing bloody way to go about recruitment. She was turned away from him, her nose pressed to the glass, her face a pale, almost eerie, reflection framed by the darkness outside. No doubt she wanted to run straight back to Florida and never speak to him again.

  Laine Halliday had killed for him. It was never, ever supposed to happen, but it had.

  She’d killed for him. For Tupaq Sayani. For the side of good against evil.

  “Laine, listen to me! The conductor’s going to be here any minute. Just tell it as it happened. A stranger came down the aisle. He shot Sayani. He shot at me and missed, the Frenchman caught the bullet. You shot the bad guy. End of story.”

  “Annie Oakley to the rescue.” Laine’s reflection mouthed the bitter words, as she kept her back to him, her bronze curls glimmering under the lights set into the ceiling.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a hero, Laine.”

  “Don’t feel like one.”

  “Laine, all hell’s about to break loose. I don’t know when we’ll be able to talk again. Just know I’ll find you, whether it’s here or in the States.” Lighten up, Tarrant. No need to frighten her. Haven’t you done enough already? “I owe you lots of money, right?” he quipped. “I assure you Rhys Tarrant pays his debts.”

  “You owe me habeas corpus.” Laine swung around so abruptly, her lips were scant inches from his. A moment of quivering tension that had nothing to do with fear. Unspoken questions, swallowed answers. Slowly, Rhys straightened, never taking his eyes from hers. “If I disappear into the system,” she snarled, “you’ll call Fantascapes. Get the brothers on my trail. I’ve saved your butt several times over, it’s the least I can expect.”

  “It’s not going to be like that, Laine. It’s a clear case of self-defense.”

  “He wasn’t trying to kill me.”

  “Laine, I’m sorry, so bloody sorry. None of this makes any sense. I have no idea why someone is after me.” He reached out to touch her, ignoring the long, hard length of the Sig Sauer lying in her lap. She shoved him away, her usually sparkling green eyes gone cold and opaque. “It makes sense if this is some ‘effing’ conspiracy,” she accused. “Were you waiting there on the trail, waiting for the right moment? Did you throw yourself down behind that wall when you saw me coming? How many of your bruises are real?”

  “God, woman. You saw me starkers. Did they wash off?”

  “No.” Soft, reluctant, almost petulant. She wanted to trust him, Rhys sensed, but knew she shouldn’t.

  “You saved my life. You really think I’m going to throw you to the wolves?”

  A whoosh of sound, a rush of air. The conductor walked in, and sixty voices roared to life. There were a few, of course, who swore they saw nothing. A few whose version of what happened was enough to make Rhys think they’d been on the Mine Train at Disneyworld instead of the VistaDome to Cuzco. But the solid majority were true blue, insisting the American woman had killed the man who shot the policeman.

  Because they were so close to the station, the train was not stopped, but allowed to continue its snail-pace zig-zag into the city below, where a phalanx of officials met them. Relief as Rhys spotted a familiar face from Interpol’s National Central Bureau in Lima—the call he’d made from the Pueblo hotel. And, beside him, a stiff Brit suit, probably from the Embassy. So, for him, it was over. It seemed unlikely that anyone was going to press too hard about the death of a known Quechua thief on the Inca Trail. If only he’d thought to ask Interpol to call the American Embassy, but not in his worst nightmares had he expected Laine to land in worse trouble than he was.

  Not that it wasn’t a long night. At the sight of Sergeant Sayani’s body, the Peruvian detectives and uniformed police went from professional to grim. And although they looked a bit leery as Laine handed over the Sig Sauer and the .22, the witnesses, including the Frenchmen, remained staunch. The assassin shot two people, and the American woman killed him. The big gun was his; the small gun, hers. Damn good shot, declared a stout man from Montana, adding, the NRA would love her.

  The Frenchman was hustled off to the hospital. Everyone else stayed put. Statements were taken, the bodies removed. By midnight, Rhys and Laine were the only passengers left. The man from the Interpol NCB in Lima and the man in the suit had been hovering behind the Peruvian detectives, ever present, ever watchful. An hour ago, they had been joined by another suit, one with an American accent broad enough to be heard from four rows back. Rhys breathed more easily. Someone, probably the rep from Peruvian Interpol, had had sense enough to call the American Consulate in Cuzco.

  Suddenly, the American suit pushed his way forward. “There’s nothing strange about a woman carrying a gun for protection on the Inca Trail,” he stated firmly. “And if she hadn’t been, the assassin would have gotten clean away. She shot a cop-killer. You should be giving her a medal. Let the poor girl get food and some sleep. If you have more questions, do it in the morning. Him, too,” he added, nodding to Rhys. “From what I’ve been hearing, he’s got a target painted on his back. Yet here he sits in a lighted train surrounded by walls of windows.”

  One of the detectives rapidly translated. Rhys bit back a smile. Arrogant Americans could be bloody annoying, but sometimes their supreme confidence that they were always right came in handy.

  And then it was over. With no more than an anguished glance in his direction, Laine was led off by the big American. Interpol Lima flashed ID, as did the Brit with him. And then Rhys was in the back seat of a limo, watching the tail lights of the big American car disappearing down the street.

  Laine?

  It was all right. He’d see her at police headquarters in the morning.

  But at first light he was on a plane to Lima, and by noon he was over the Caribbean on the first leg of his flight back to Interpol headquarters in France.

  I watched dawn break over the balcony of my room at the Monasterio. Watched while the fountain silvered and the
flowers went from gray to dew-kissed color. I thought about my foolish dreams of an intimate night, just Rhys and me. Dining on our private balcony, walking the courtyard garden in the moonlight, seriously testing the buoyancy of the high-quality mattress.

  A foolish fantasy, but somehow the blasted Brit had got under my skin. No matter how many times I reminded myself ours was nothing more than a professional relationship, my heart clung to the mantra that had haunted me since we met. I’d saved him, he was mine.

  So it hurt. The one time I allowed my imagination to soar just for me . . .

  Idiot! I was an integral part of Fantascapes, helping people indulge their dreams of fantasy weddings and vacations. Interpol had no place in my world. Dead bodies had no place in my world.

  Particularly bodies that were dead because of me.

  And to compound the stark truth, my personal fantasy of a night with Darcy/Rhys might have happened to the Laine Halliday who went up the mountain, but it wasn’t going to happen for the Laine Halliday who came back down.

  Where was he? I wondered. If Rhys was what he said he was—and the credentials of the two men who had come for him confirmed that—then I hoped they’d gotten him out of the country. Time enough to figure it all out when he was safe. As for me, I suspected I’d gotten a top dog for a guardian as well. Hooray for diplomacy that sometimes actually worked. Dead bodies had a way of getting people’s attention.

  I whispered into the darkness. “Rhys?”

  Nothing but silence. My sense of loss astounded me. I hadn’t known the man seventy-two hours, and it was like I’d lost my best friend.

  I didn’t even know what he looked like under all those bruises.