Falling Darkness--A Novel of Romantic Suspense

by Karen Harper

  “Don’t even kid about Lily. Nick, I’m worried about Lexi. She’s deeply disturbed. Aren’t we all, but she doesn’t have the resources to handle it.”

  “Kids are resilient. Once we get out of here she—all of us—will be fine.”

  He kissed her cheek and went out. She heard him lock the hall door. So here she was in a top-floor luxury suite in the best hotel in Havana and all she wanted was to be in some nice little house, safe in Naples with Nick and Lexi. But there were sharks between here and there—sharks here too.

  She put her hands gently on her flat, upset stomach. Could there be a child growing there? She could never love another one as much as she loved Lexi—but, of course, she could, especially Nick’s baby. Besides, this might still just be upheaval and nerves and her powerful meds and...

  Exhausted, she drifted on the sea for a while, but she sat straight up when she heard the woman’s distraught voice.

  “Mrs. Claire? Mr. Nick said you’re here. Where are you?”

  Nita! Nita must be back with Lexi.

  “Here! In here!”

  Claire got to her feet, feeling slightly dizzy. There was something wrong. Nita sounded panicked, and she never raised her voice. Was Lexi hurt in the pool?

  She rushed into the living room. She saw only Nita with tears streaming down her face.

  “Where is she? Where is she?”

  “She being naughty. When we step out of the elevator, she run back in and press the button, saying Lily did it. I try to stop the door, but it close. I hit the button, but the elevator leaving. I watch the numbers. She go down, maybe to second floor, maybe lobby. I wait for that same elevator to come back, and she not there, she not there!”

  7

  “We’re a pair,” Nick told Jace as they watched for Heck by scanning the faces of people coming toward the hotel. “Two guys whose past careers and current lives depend on keeping cool, calm and collected, and we’re both a wreck. Getting out of Cuba’s starting to vie for first priority with getting rid of just one man, one bastard wreaking havoc on all our lives, and I don’t mean you-know-who, as Gina always says. Not Castro but Ames.”

  “And Gina’s you-know-who might be harboring Ames, because he’s probably in cahoots with the Castro brothers for something. At least he’s wanted by the FBI now, a little fact that might save us all and nail him. Man, I hope you’re contacted soon by Patterson. But you don’t think your friend Heck could have run off with a woman he just met, do you? I mean, I gotta admit I practically eloped with our-lady-in-common, but—”

  “Claire is not ‘in common,’” Nick interrupted, which really annoyed Jace since he was trying to be supportive. Even though he’d been flying the plane that went down, all of this major mess went back to Nick Markwood. And here Nick was running—ruining—Claire’s and Lexi’s lives too. Jace tried to control his anger, but he had to say something.

  “Look, Nick, you and Claire got together pretty fast too. But back to the latest problem. The way Heck stared at that ruined hotel and that private Russian firm sitting there in his family’s beautiful hacienda, who knows, he might want to stay here. And cozying up to Ames—turning on us—could make that come true.”

  “I know him, trust him. Something’s wrong. I’m going to the computer room to see if a reply came back yet. Then I’m—not sure what. We can hardly go to the Havana police to report him missing. Be right back. And if you change positions, let our bodyguard Bronco know. He’s still over by the line of taxis, watching for Heck from there.”

  Jace checked that Bronco was still there and gave him the high sign to stay put. Taxis here meant mostly cars that looked like they drove out of a 1940s or 1950s movie, so it was a real vintage auto parade in front of the hotel. Jace saw a lavender Ford with huge back fins, big Chevrolets, even some Cadillacs, all shined up, some with parts that didn’t belong to them, that somebody had probably bought in a back alley shop. He noted an occasional square, black Lada, the Russian-made car they’d seen at Heck’s family’s hacienda. And cars that Gina had pointed out, government-owned ones with the distinctive blue license plates, some cruising by, some parked.

  Jace edged around the corner of the building where he could see the Nacional’s outdoor hotel patio overlooking the sea. Businessmen and a few couples were having lunch, silhouetted by the harbor and the sparkling water. So deceptively beautiful, so luring, this seemingly benign place. He watched some daredevil boys cannonballing off the seawall of the Malecon, barely missing the jagged rocks to splash into the water. That was more like the daredevil mess they were in, he thought. To get back over the water they had a lot of dangerous snags to avoid.

  He heard someone call, “Seth!” and turned. He wasn’t yet used to hearing that instead of “Jace.” It was Lexi’s nanny they were now calling Lorena, looking terrified, in tears.

  “Where’s Mr. Jack?” she demanded. Before he could answer, she went on. “Meggie is missing. She trick me, went down somewhere in an elevator. We have to look for her!”

  Suddenly, he felt like he’d jumped and hit the rocks.

  * * *

  Nick was disappointed there was no answer to his email yet. Wasn’t the FBI more efficient than that? It had been—he checked his watch—nearly an hour, but maybe Patterson had to lay plans before sending them instructions. If word came they should go somewhere and Heck wasn’t back, what then?

  He decided he’d go up to be with Claire, see how she was feeling since Jace and Bronco were still on watch at the front entry. If only they had a way to contact Gina. She had to be with Heck, hopefully helping with whatever he’d got into. This was so not like him. If he couldn’t trust Heck anymore, what could he do with him when they got to Michigan—if they got to Michigan?

  Nick was waiting by the bank of main elevators when one opened and Claire ran out. She gasped to see him, seized his arm in a tight grip and pulled him away into a dead end of the hall behind a cluster of potted palms.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Lexi ditched Nita by ducking back into an elevator. I’ve been riding them while Nita looks outside.”

  “Damn! Heck’s still MIA too.”

  “Maybe she found him and he—No, he’d bring her right back to us. I’m going crazy. What if someone bad sees her, takes her? Why haven’t the hotel people found her? I had to risk telling them she’d gone off on her own. I keep checking in the room.”

  “Have you looked out by the pool?” he asked.

  “Yes. Nita did too. Where are Jace and Bronco?”

  “Out watching the crowd for Heck and/or Gina. Where haven’t you looked? Is there someplace here she’d go to, wanting to feel safe? Lily may do bad things, but not your girl.”

  “I—I don’t know. I feel like I’ve lost her in more ways than one, and that terrifies me. Maybe—maybe the store where we bought the bathing suit for her. She liked those stuffed animals in there, and I wouldn’t let her have one to lug around and I knew she’d never leave it when we leave here.”

  “Let’s go check that out. Did you tell the lifeguards at the pool in case she goes back there?”

  “Yes,” Claire said, her voice breaking, her hands gripped together as if in prayer. “That’s when I really lost it, started to cry—when he said he keeps a watch on the kids, because they found one last month drowned at the bottom of that big pool.”

  * * *

  Claire spotted Lexi the moment she and Nick walked into the beachwear and gift shop. She was so grateful, so relieved, she burst into tears again. Her knees went so weak she almost fell. Standing in the corner, the child had a bright green stuffed toy whale clutched in her arms. But she looked like she wasn’t embracing it but strangling it.

  “Meggie,” Claire cried and knelt beside her. She threw her arms around the child and the whale. Nick squatted beside them and propped Claire up.

/>   “Whales are bigger than sharks,” Lexi whispered. “Big enough to kill those sharks we saw, big enough to ride out of here. I want to go home.”

  “We will,” Nick promised. “We will. Sorry,” he said when a saleswoman hurried up to them. “She wanted that, and we told her no, but we’ll take it.”

  “I thought she with other people here. You want put it on your room bill?”

  “Ah, yes, that would be fine. No, on second thought I’ll just pay cash for it.”

  Claire lifted Lexi and the whale and headed out into the hall. She overheard the saleswoman telling Nick the price and saw him take what must be his last small American bill out of his pants pocket.

  “Lexi,” Claire told her as she carried her over to a wicker bench and sat down beside her, “don’t you ever do that to Nita or me again! And don’t tell me Lily did it. Everyone’s been looking for you!”

  “But, Mommy, I didn’t even know where I was. Where are we? Why can’t we be home?”

  “Oh, my sweetheart, I’m so sorry about everything. But we’re together. We love you, all of us. We’re a little family now, but—I guess I’ll have to explain things better.”

  When Nick came out of the shop, Claire stood and hiked Lexi up as if she was a much younger child with her legs around Claire’s waist and Claire’s arms under the girl’s bottom. That stupid stuffed animal was still in the way, but nothing else mattered now that Lexi was safe, but—actually, it did. Everything mattered to get them out of here.

  Nick looked both relieved and desperate. “I’ll tell them at the desk she’s been found,” he said, “but I’ve got to check my email too.” He took Claire’s elbow and steered her farther away from the shop. “Sit in the lobby. Don’t budge. I want to be able to see both of you.”

  Claire sat with Lexi on her lap on a leather sofa and kept an eye on Nick too as he went into the adjacent room where she could see little cubicles sheltering laptops. Jace must be frantic over Lexi too, all of them. She needed to tell Nita and him their daughter had been found. She needed a tissue to wipe her eyes and blow her nose. She needed Nick to hold her. Most of all, maybe more like her daughter than she cared to admit, she needed her sense of safety and sanity back.

  * * *

  Nick’s stomach was in free fall when he gave his card to the guy in charge, then sat at a different laptop from the one he’d used a little bit ago. He typed in his code, and an email appeared on the screen. Bingo! It was from the fake Chicago firm!

  Jack Randal: sorry your investment gamble went in the tank, but we can reinvest. I promise we can “git mo,” to use an old saying around here about getting you more money with interest. Can you handle that ASAP? Let me know if you’re on board with my advice. Investment adviser Robert Patmore.

  Gitmo. Guantanamo! That had to be what he meant. Get to Gitmo and the officers there could spirit them out, help them get home—that was, to their WITSEC hideout in Michigan. But the thing was, Guantanamo Bay with its naval detention camp was way on the southeastern end of the island, a long trip away. And Patterson had signed the note with a fake name, but one that echoed his own.

  Nick typed a message back: Sounds like good financial advice. ASAP, will do, with all my investments. I realize this could take some time.

  He sent the message, then erased Rob’s, wishing he could erase the dangers between here and Gitmo—and without Heck, if he didn’t get back here soon.

  * * *

  Lexi’s little family reunion in their hotel room wasn’t pretty, Nick thought. Lexi insisted it was all Lily’s fault and that the stuffed whale was named Shark-Killer. Nita kept saying it was her fault, and Bronco kept saying it wasn’t, when a loud knock sounded on the hall door.

  Everyone quieted and froze. Nick went over to the door and, pressed to the wall on either side of him, Bronco and Jace waited. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s us,” Heck cried. “Open up, boss.”

  Still, Nick looked through the spyhole on the door. “He’s with Gina.”

  Nick swung the door wide and yanked Heck, then Gina, into the room. He stuck his head out to look up and down the hall, then closed the door and locked it.

  Jace began, “Berto, where the hell have you b—”

  “I know it took me longer than I planned, but I know where your father’s former friend that cheated him out of some money is here in Havana.” Heck raised his hands as if to ward off an attack. “We got his address, me and Gina, and we walked there, not far from my family’s old hacienda. A guard told us to get away, so we did. It was my idea, but she helped. I had to tell her a few things about him. How he hurt your father—financially, I mean.”

  “You found him—how?” Nick demanded. “Are you sure it wasn’t a trap—a setup?”

  “It was something Meggie said, how he had those rare fish. Gina and I passed a tropical fish store on the edge of El Vedado. So I said let’s go in, and we made like we wanted to buy some of their pricey stuff. Asked who cleaned tanks in a home visit if we wanted it, all of that. Then I left, and Gina turned it on with the guy, one that cleans the tanks, and he boasted about some American bigwig has an office here in a hacienda. So we walked where he said, looked at the place. It’s offices but Ames must live there. Big. Fancy. Not far from my family’s old place.”

  Astounded, taking that all in, Nick said nothing at first. Ames was here. And Heck knew where. He’d used a partial cover story with Gina so she evidently wouldn’t panic at all the gory details. Finally, he asked Heck, “And are you sure no one followed you back?”

  Heck and Gina exchanged quick glances. “No one,” he said, “but we spotted a drone. Maybe it was filming the hotel, but maybe not. Couldn’t see who was running it, but someone down on the Malecon, I bet. Funny, but it’s still hovering outside over the front entrance. If we were on the other side of the building, you could see it. We—”

  Nick interrupted. “I don’t like the sound of that. Maybe he was looking for us just like we were for him or maybe that guard that ordered you away had you followed. Gina, I see Berto hasn’t clued you in on everything, but we needed to keep secret that we—I—have an enemy here who was my father’s enemy years ago and maybe caused his death. That guy Seth mentioned at the Key West airport who could have tampered with the plane could have been working for that man. Somehow he learned we survived the crash, landed here—I don’t know. Over the years, I’ve learned to put nothing past him. We’ve got to go—now.”

  Claire said, “Jack’s right. He’s spied on us with a drone before. But we can’t just run out the front, then.”

  “Down the back inside fire-escape stairs and out the back service entry,” Nick ordered. “Grab things fast. We have to go now!”

  Nita started to cry again, but Nick was amazed at how solid Claire suddenly seemed. She handed Lexi and the whale to Jace and seized her purse with her meds. They had so little, it didn’t take long to get ready. They streamed out the door, and Nick practically shoved them down the hall toward a sign that read SALIDA/EXIT. Because Jace had Lexi, he pushed him ahead, let them all pass, then locked and closed their hotel door and raced after them. They didn’t get even one night in this place with the inviting beds, he thought.

  “And don’t make noise on the stairs! Wait for me at the bottom!” he called after Bronco, and the big man nodded as they headed through the emergency exit.

  Nick was barely to the stairs where Heck was holding the heavy door for him. “Sorry, boss. Wanted to help. The drone—I didn’t know he’d be looking for us here too.”

  “You did help if we can tell our friends where Ames is. We needed to run anyway. I’ve been given a plan. Go, go!”

  Nick saw he had been right. As the heavy door started to close slowly behind him, he saw two men dressed in suits and ties down the hall burst from the elevator and draw guns. They must have inquired at the desk. What el
se did they know? Nick watched them for one split second through the hazy glass window in the door. Heck tugged at his arm and hissed, “Boss, come on!”

  And then Nick saw what scared him as much as Ames’s men. One man produced something from his pocket that opened the door just as the other elevator door slid open to reveal four men who looked like Cuban police.

  8

  Heck and Nick rushed down the stairs as quietly as they could. The others were below them, whispering, but it echoed in the stairwell.

  “I’d like to fire you for being followed back here, but you’ve just made a promotion,” Nick told Heck. “Keep going. We’ve got to get out a back door somehow. Heck, I have to know. You sure you trust Gina?”

  “With my life.”

  “Well, maybe,” Nick whispered as they heard a door above them in the stairwell slam open with a bang, “you’ve risked exactly that. Run.”

  * * *

  Claire heard a bang, then heavy, fast footsteps above as Heck and Nick joined the rest of them in the ground-floor stairwell.

  “Out. Out!” Nick told them. “Not the lobby. We need to get out back.”

  Here! Jace mouthed. Despite the fact he held Lexi in an iron grip, he shoved one of two doors inward. It opened on a plain back hall with a concrete floor. Claire glimpsed mops leaning against the wall, a barrel, a ladder. Jace thrust Lexi into Claire’s arms and pointed. He whispered, “Go!” and, clutching her daughter to her, she ran.

  She saw Jace drop behind the others to jam a ladder against the door, but it wouldn’t last long. Would any of them?

  They emerged through a back entrance with a delivery bay but no trucks in it now. Looking up for the drone, they darted under a line of trees and ran the only way they could. Nick took Lexi from her, thank heavens. Claire felt dizzy, nauseous. She needed a pill, but not now...

  “Palm trees—not much cover,” Gina said, panting as hard as the rest of them.