“Well,” she murmured, affixing the blood pressure cuff to his right arm, “let’s see what we’ve got….” She pumped it up, let off the pressure and watched the dial as she listened for the first beat of his heart. He was watching her with great interest, and that bothered her. She had pinned her hair up to keep it off the back of her neck because it had been exceedingly hot of late, and suddenly she felt very self-conscious.
“Señor, your blood pressure is normal,” Ann informed him, removing the cuff. She saw him nod and appear relieved.
“That is good.” He looked around some more as she put the cuff and stethoscope back into her bag. “I had heard of a doctor up here. They said she was very beautiful. A norteamericana. I said, ‘No, how could that be?’ And the gossip was that you’d appeared one day, like an angel from heaven, in February of this year.” He snapped his fingers and grinned, showing a row of clean, white teeth. “It’s quite unusual for a doctor to be up here. A blessing, yes, but very, very rare.”
Ann didn’t like him—at all—but she hid her irritation. Moving around to the other side of the table, she said, “I work with the poor, señor….”
“Eduardo,” he said genially, “you may call me Eduardo. After all, your husband, Major Mike Houston, knows me very well.”
The icy grating of his words shattered her. Ann froze. She stared at him. He was relaxed, sprawled out in the chair, his arms across his chest. He smiled up at her, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. It reminded her of a predator’s smile right before it killed its frozen prey. That was how Ann felt right then—absolutely unable to move. Her heart thudded harshly in her chest. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe.
“Eduardo Escovar at your service, Dr. Ann Houston.” He rose and made a sweeping gesture as he bowed in her direction. As he straightened up, he snarled an order in Spanish. Instantly, two armed guards entered the hut, their gazes locked on her.
With a gasp, Ann tried to move. Escape was impossible. Eight months along, she was about as fast as a lumbering elephant. Besides, Ann knew that any violent exercise could induce premature labor. She rested her fingertips on the edge of the table, feeling the blood flowing out of her face.
“Señor, I don’t know what you are talking about. My name is—”
“Silence, bitch!” he snarled, his lips lifting away from his teeth. “I have tracked you for eight months. Ever since that bastard, Houston, stole you from your apartment in Lima, I have had my loyal spies out, searching.” He made a stabbing motion toward her. “My spies have discovered you are Ann Parsons. You work for Perseus. For that slimy Morgan Trayhern.” He smiled a little, picking at some imaginary lint on the front of his shirt. His voice softened and became cajoling. “You are Houston’s wife. That, I have no doubt.” His dark, angry gaze settled on her swollen belly.
Instinctively, Ann shielded her baby with her hand. Terror ate at her. She tried to think, tried to find a way to escape, but it was impossible. Her only help would have been Pilar, but she was gone until tomorrow morning. A coldness flowed up through Ann, more chilling and haunting than she’d ever experienced. Escovar was going to kill her—and her baby.
“Listen,” she pleaded hoarsely, “don’t hurt my baby! I’m eight months along…can’t you—”
In one lightning motion, Escovar lunged forward and with his open hand, slapped her as hard as he could across the face.
Her head exploded with light and pain. Ann cried out and staggered backward. She felt herself falling from the unexpected blow. Somehow, she threw out her arm as she was knocked sideways, and her hand struck the wall of the hut, breaking her fall. She crumpled heavily to the mat beside the table. Liquid flowed hotly out of her nostrils and across her parted lips. She tasted the salty, metallic taste of her blood. Automatically, she pressed her fingers against her throbbing nose and cheek.
“Get her up!” Escovar rasped.
Instantly, his two guards, heavily armed with modern rifles, moved forward.
Their hands bit savagely into Ann’s arms as they jerked her to her feet. She cried out as pain serrated her belly. No! God, no!
“In the car!”
Semiconscious, Ann was literally dragged between the two guards. She saw several villagers hiding behind their huts, their eyes huge with terror. The door was opened and the men shoved her into the back seat. Sobbing, Ann was sandwiched in the rear seat of the white luxury sedan by the two large, muscular guards. The air in the car was hot and humid. She watched through narrowed eyes as Escovar’s driver quickly opened the front passenger door for him. Escovar looked down before getting in.
“Comfortable, Señora Houston? I hope so. We are going for a little ride to a place not far from here that’s very, very famous.” He grinned savagely and slid into the leather seat.
Ann tried to compose herself. The guards were tense beside her, and when she tried to wipe the blood from her nose, they glared at her. Emotionally, she was in such terror that her mind was frozen, and she could taste death in her mouth. She had to try and think! Think! Mike wouldn’t be here until tomorrow, at noon. Did Escovar know he was coming? Oh, God, she had to keep his arrival time a secret at all costs! A sob caught in her throat as she protectively covered her unborn daughter with her hands. The glittering hate that Escovar had for her—for Mike—was palpable.
“W-where are you taking me?” she demanded in a wobbling voice.
Escovar turned his head and smiled generously. “Ah, Señora Houston, this is a place you must visit.” He turned in his seat and devoted all his attention to her. “Tell me, when does your very famous husband come home, eh?”
Ann avoided his piercing gaze. “I—I don’t know. I never know….”
Chuckling, Escovar nodded. “Yes, well, that’s very wise of him. He always operates on a need-to-know basis. I thought,” he said with a sigh, “that since you are the one he loves most, he’d certainly let you know when he was coming for a visit. My guards persuaded several of the villagers where you have your clinic to talk. Pity. None of them seemed to know when the jaguar god was going to appear.”
Coldness crept over Ann. She knew Escovar was prone to use torture to get the information he wanted. Yet she’d not heard of his arrival in the village. That was a clue to her of how lethal he was at what he did. He was almost like a jaguar in some ways, a shadow until he wanted to be seen.
As they bumped along the rutted road, the bouncing and jerking was hard on her. Ann could feel telltale pains around her belly. As much as she could, she held her abdomen, held her daughter from the jolting motions on the rutted road. Soon they were on another dirt road, one lined by a thousand-foot dropoff into the jungle below on one side and in a thousand-foot cliff of yellow-and-red soil on the other.
Escovar hummed a tune and seemed to be enjoying the scenery. Ann shook in fear. She couldn’t help it. Without a doubt, Escovar would kill her—and her baby. It was only a matter of time. Her mouth was cottony and dry. She tried to call Mike, but the terror broke her concentration. Again and again, Ann tried to call him. She knew he would hear her, but it had to be an intense, concentrated thought before he could pick it up. Oh, dear God, what was she going to do? Closing her eyes, she felt hot and nauseous. Ann knew there was no talking Escovar out of anything. She felt the full extent of his rage and hatred and it battered her senses.
As the sun was setting on the western horizon, the sky becoming gray with gathering clouds, Escovar snapped at the driver to stop. Ann looked around. They were parked in the middle of the dirt road, its green, grassy edge littered with bushes and big gray rocks before it fell away into space.
“Get her out!” Escovar ordered as he left the car.
Her legs wouldn’t work and Ann was dragged between the guards to the edge of the cliff. Her eyes bulged as she struggled to push away from the precipice. Dirt and stones tumbled down with her movements. The first hundred feet was nothing but rock, littered with branches from trees and bushes that had tumbled, over time, from the cliff above them.<
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Escovar sauntered over. He lit a cigarette and took a long, deep drag of smoke into his lungs. His eyes glittered as he studied her.
“You know this place, Señora Houston?”
Her skin crawled. Wildly, Ann looked around. “N-no, I don’t.”
He smiled a little and took another drag on his cigarette. “I’m surprised, frankly, because your husband has made this a very famous place.” He stabbed with his cigarette down the slope. “Look,” he snarled. “You see those four white crosses down there, about five hundred feet below? Just before the edge of the jungle?”
Ann tried to gather her composure. Sweat was dripping into her eyes and they burned with pain. Tears of terror ran down her cheeks. Blinking rapidly, she tried to concentrate on where he was pointing. Halfway down the slope, she saw four white crosses with huge bunches of fresh flowers around each one.
“Y-yes, I see them,” she whispered hoarsely. The guards’ hands bit deeply into her arms, the pain constant.
Escovar took another drag on his cigarette. He looked at her, his face raw with grief. “Those four crosses are my wife, my two sons and my daughter, señora,” he rasped. “Your husband murdered them in cold blood! Look at them, damn you! Look at them because it is the last thing you are going to see!”
With a cry, Ann jerked her head toward him. “Señor Escovar, please, don’t do this! Mike didn’t murder your family! I swear it! It was an accident! He was following them in a helicopter and trying to land in front of them. The driver of your family’s car panicked. He was going too fast for this road. The car flipped!” Ann sobbed as she felt the guards move her within inches of the cliff edge. “Oh, God, you’ve got to believe me! Mike never meant to harm your family. I swear it….” She sobbed as she clung to his angry features with tear-flooded eyes. His gaze was black and glittering as he stepped toward her.
“Do you know how much I loved my wife?” he screamed into her face. Reaching out, he wrapped his hand through her hair and jerked her head forward.
Ann felt his breath against her face, hot and nauseating. She was held captive, her neck and head twisted at a painful angle as Escovar glared down at her. Her scalp radiated in pain. She tried not to cry out as tears slipped from her eyes.
“My children. The babies my beautiful Juanita carried in her belly, which I tenderly caressed every day she carried them….” His voice cracked. “I loved her. I loved them! Your murdering husband took them from me. The coward didn’t come to me. No,” he rasped, his spittle splaying across her face, “he picked on innocents who could not protect themselves.”
Suddenly, he released Ann’s hair.
With a cry, she was jerked upright by the guards once again.
Escovar was smiling, but there was no life in his eyes. Only death. “Let me see…” he murmured, composing himself. “I have killed his first wife and I understand she was pregnant. Too bad. I counted that as one death. To make up for the death of my sweet little daughter, Elizabeth.” He shrugged. “And then the second woman he loved, that norteamericana who worked in the embassy. Poof!” He threw up his hands and laughed.
Ann winced. She thought he was going to strike her.
“Her death paid for Ernesto’s death, my youngest son….”
Escovar reached out, gripping her belly hard.
Ann screamed and kicked out, trying to protect her baby from his clawlike hands.
Escovar dodged her attempt, his hand loosening on her belly. He grinned savagely.
“I should have both your legs broken for that,” he snarled, staying just out of range of her flailing feet. “Ordinarily, I would,” he told her archly. “But I am not a man without honor, not like your bastard husband….” Again, he inhaled deeply on the cigarette, regarding her from hooded eyes.
Ann sobbed for breath. She hated his touch on her belly; she felt his hatred and revenge and tasted it in her mouth.
“So, you will pay for my Juanita, my heart, who I grieve for daily.” He turned and pointed to the largest of the four crosses at the bottom of the cliff, the one with the most flowers around it. “Every day, did you know? I have one of my men come here and place fresh flowers near these crosses. Oh, they are not buried here. No, they are at the compound, in proper graves where I can go and talk to them daily. It is a custom, you know, señora? To place a cross to remind everyone that they died a needless death at the hands of a murderer.”
She saw Escovar’s eyes glitter with tears. His voice became laced with grief and grew harsh with emotion as he turned back to face her.
“Well, now, Houston can place a white cross of his own down there.” Escovar smiled, showing his white teeth. “You and your unborn baby will be an even trade for my wife and my other son’s death. Yes, that feels right to me. When he finds you—if he can find you—he will understand it all…my plan. I knew someday he would fall in love again. And I waited…. I have the patience of a jaguar, also.” He dropped the cigarette to the yellow dirt and crushed it out with the sole of his expensive loafer.
“I will not torture you, señora. Ordinarily, I would. But you are a woman, I can see, of great courage. Most people who are dragged in front of me lose their bowels and scream for mercy. You did not. You begged only for your baby’s life. I find that—commendable. Houston, when he finds you, will find your body eaten by buzzards. There won’t be much of you left to grieve over.” He smiled. “Say your prayers, señora. For you are going to die….”
“Nooo!” Ann shrieked, her voice cracking. She tried to yank free of the guards, but they were simply too strong, and she too far along to do anything more than struggle in their grip. She saw Escovar’s face grow cold and expressionless. His eyes went dead. She dug her heels in as the guards propelled her forward, toward the edge of the cliff.
And then everything slowed down. Ann closed her eyes. She drew a deep, quavering breath into her body. Opening her heart fully for the first time, she pictured Mike’s hard, scarred face in front of her. She sent out a cry for help that reverberated through her, through everything surrounding her in that moment. For the first time, Ann surrendered fully to her love for Mike. She felt all her emotions build, felt the thunderous power of feeling grow within her, and as she pictured him, she sent everything she felt to him. Within those long, drawn-out seconds, she surrendered fully to the magic of possibility, to his world, his belief in the mystical, the unseen. This was one time when she must reach out, embrace him fully and believe—for her baby’s sake…for any chance of survival….
Seconds later, she was hurled out into space. Her last view was that of the sharp, gray rocks racing up to meet her. Her scream was for Mike…and then darkness was upon her and she remembered no more.
Chapter 16
The dawn was a thin, bloody ribbon along the horizon. Houston tried to keep his focus, his concentration, but the pain in his lower body, on the left side of his rib cage and head kept shredding what little composure he could muster. The shaking of the helicopter around him, the humid wind whipping into the open craft where his squad of hardened soldiers sat as they flew toward their destination, didn’t help.
Hours earlier, he’d heard Ann scream for help. Far south of her in the Andes, in the middle of a firefight with some of the heaviest opposition Escovar had thrown against his men to date, Mike knew she was dying. He could feel it throughout his body. He’d known it the instant he’d felt her scream rip through him. And he knew…oh, hell, he knew…. Sweat trickled down the hard planes of his features, across his stubbled beard as he anxiously sought out the grayish black ground a thousand feet below him.
His jaguar guardian was with Ann and he could feel everything that Ann was experiencing. She was unconscious and bleeding to death. The massive pain he was feeling in his abdomen were savage birthing contractions. Trying to keep his anguish at bay, his need to sob, Houston sat in the copilot’s seat, gripping his fists in his lap. He’d tried to withdraw from the firefight when Ann’s cry shattered him, but it was impossible. Escovar�
�s men had launched such a massive counterattack that Mike had finally had to call in army reserves from Lima itself to come and help extricate him and his squads.
Now, as the bloodred color on the horizon thickened to announce the coming morning light, Houston had managed to get two chopper loads of men—his handpicked, well-trained soldiers—out of that hellhole and into the air to fly to Ann’s side. He knew where she was and it sickened him until he wanted to vomit. Escovar had planned this so well, so very well…. Mike couldn’t believe Escovar had found out his connection to Ann, they’d tried so carefully to hide her status. The spies in the Peruvian government on Escovar’s payroll had won again.
Over and over, Mike sent Ann energy. But he had to be there in person, he had to be there at her side for it to make a real and lasting difference. Judging from all the pain in his body he was picking up from her own, he knew she had broken ribs and a wound on the side of her head. The cutting pains in his abdomen told him his daughter was in the process of being born—alone to die if he could not reach them in time. Closing his eyes, Houston tried to steady his reeling emotions, his love for Ann, his terror in knowing that he was feeling her life slowly leaking away from her.
His mind spun wildly with plans and tactics. It wouldn’t be unlike Escovar to set up a trap, as Mike came to rescue the woman he loved more than life. Escovar could be waiting for him on the cliffside his own family had accidentally driven over, rolling end over end and dying five hundred feet below as the car smashed into the jungle.
Rubbing his face savagely, Houston took deep, gulping breaths. Never had he expected Escovar to make a stand against him over the graves of his lost family. That was sacred ground to him—and to Mike. But he’d broken that taboo. Escovar’s hatred of him was so complete that he’d captured Ann, taken her to the spot where his family’s car had run off the road, and he’d either shot her, tortured her or pushed her off that cliff. Mike didn’t want to consider that he might have done all of those unthinkable things to her and then hurled her down the slope, thinking she was dead or dying. Then he had left her for the black buzzards to find as the sun rose this morning.
Morgan’s Mercenaries: Heart of the Jaguar Page 29