The men gave her a mug of the cobbled-together stew they made. They also prepared and drank tea—not coffee, not right now—which they also shared with her, while not intruding more than to hold the cup out to her.
Parris was thankful she had built up this division between them. They didn’t find it odd that she stayed by the wall and worked and didn’t speak to anyone. It gave her the space she needed to think.
Not that she was doing any thinking. She tackled the hated reports and forms with a sense of gratitude. She could shove the uneasy thoughts to the back of her mind.
It worked only for a little while. Once her hunger was appeased and the hot tea gave her a warm sense of fullness and satisfaction, the paperwork lost all appeal.
She glanced over at the circle of comatose bodies. Snores and soft breathing told her they were properly asleep. Not one of them was stretched out, staring up at the roof to mull over an issue and wait for her to beckon so he could chat.
Adán, of course, was nowhere in sight. She had pretended not to notice him pick up the sleeping bag and take it somewhere else.
Her skin prickled with uneasiness. Had anyone else noticed? These men were all smart, keen observers. They also didn’t gossip. It was possible they had noticed everything that had passed between her and Adán and were holding it in, figuring it was none of their business.
Yet the functional status of their leader was their business. They trusted her with their lives. She couldn’t afford to play with personal stuff in the middle of an operation. It would be an insult to them.
He still wears the medallions.
The thought popped up, despite everything she had been doing to suppress any speculation about Adán.
He still wears them. Years later!
The date was seared into her memory. 2001. That was the year he had first kissed her. That damned kiss, that had changed everything. That was when she had given him the masks. Nearly twenty years later, he was still wearing them.
What did that mean?
Parris shut the laptop with a snap and shoved back on the mat with a soft hiss. Who was she fooling? No one here cared that she was staring at the screen, pretending to work.
She put her back to the smoothest part of the rock wall behind her, pulled her knees up against her chest and folded her arms over them. She rested her head against her forearms, hearing her heart thud in her ears and her breath rush in and out.
They had seen each other many times since she had given him the masks, and never once had she wondered if he had kept her gift. It was a stupid piece of second hand jewelry—not even a proper set, at that.
Maybe he had just happened to put the masks on when he came down to Vistaria…
Only, why would he have? It would be more probable he had stripped himself of everything to do with Hollywood before sailing here. It would fit with his state of mind.
Was it possible he had worn the masks ever since she had given them to him? The chain was long enough to nestle against his tanned chest, between the well-rounded pectoral muscles. It would be out of sight even if he was wearing an open neck shirt.
Her cheeks bloomed hot. Had he been wearing them beneath his tuxedos and evening wear, all the times he had posed with some model or actress or star on red carpets?
No. It just wasn’t possible. She couldn’t let it be possible, because if that was the truth, then…then…it meant…
She gripped her temples with her fingers, digging them in. “Get a grip,” she whispered, as her heart swung in a sickening way and her gut tightened.
She didn’t want it to be true, because if it was, that meant Adán…that he…had…liked her. All along.
Yet, he had refused her! She had gone to him, to beggar herself, to see if the hope in her heart was real.
And he said no.
Had he been wearing the chain, even then? The little voice was cool. Analytical. It was a dash of reason that countered the sweaty tangle of her thoughts.
Parris dropped her hands and rolled her head back against the wall, letting it knock sharply. She hissed, venting her frustration.
She studied the sleeping men. None of them was faking as far as she could tell. No one was tossing and turning. No one needed her right now.
Parris got to her feet.
I have to know.
She wouldn’t sleep until she did.
She eased across the cave, the soles of her boots absorbing sound, letting her creep to each concave arc and check it. Ramirez had taken one of them but he was the lone wolf of her pack and that was in character. Everyone knew he needed alone time, which was a rare commodity in a combat unit.
Adán was on the other side of the waterfall, in one of the last little recesses before the cave narrowed down to a passage that ended fifty yards farther on, closed off by a small mountain of rocks and dirt.
Like her, he was not sleeping. He was sitting sideways on the bag, one of the little LEDs next to him, turned down low. His knees were bent, his elbow resting on one, while he massaged his forehead.
He dropped the hand when he saw her. Otherwise, he did not react.
Parris lowered herself to her knees, her knees parked on the padded bag, her boot toes digging into the dirt in front. Her heart galloped. She shouldn’t be doing this. Not now. Only, she must know.
She reached out to touch his black shirt where the chain would sit, then realized it would be wrong to do that. She brought her hand back to her own chest and gripped the front of her shirt. “Do you ever take it off?” she whispered.
Adán’s gaze met hers. He didn’t pretend to not understand or look puzzled. His gaze was steady. “Only if a director insisted. Even then, I sometimes argued the point.”
Her breath came faster. Her heart thudded. It was as bad—as good—as she had suspected. She swallowed. “I didn’t ask you to.”
“That’s why I wear it.”
“It’s been years, Adán!”
“Twenty-one years, three months and six days,” he said, without hesitation.
She stared at him, her horror rising. That hadn’t been when she had given him the necklace. Twenty-one years ago was when they first met, at that stupid party. He had been counting since then. “All that time…you could have been happy with somebody else,” she whispered.
“Somebody else wouldn’t have been you.” His voice was low. Strained.
She closed her eyes, suppressing a moan. It was worse than she had thought. “Why didn’t you say something?” she breathed, her guilt and her horror mixing into a repulsive brew that made her feel ill.
“Because you were married. Then, because you wanted your freedom. You know the reasons, Parris. I told you, that night you came to see me.”
“You said you would ruin my life,” she said bitterly. Her eyes ached, warning her that she would cry if she kept this up. Crying here, where her men could see her…that was not good. That was very not good.
“And I would have,” he said gently. “Look at what you’ve achieved. Look around you. Look at the work you do. You could not have done that, with me in your life. You would have become a forgotten appendage of my own. It’s who I am. That’s what I do to people. That’s what the fame does.”
“Then why didn’t you take the masks off?” she demanded in a soft hiss. “If it was so impossible for us, you should have tossed them into the sea or melted them or sold them!”
His chest rose and fell. “I couldn’t,” he breathed, his voice strained.
Instead he had lived alone.
Parris pressed her lips together, holding in the words that pushed at her. She blinked hard, to disperse the moisture building in her eyes. “Even now, you’re not going to touch me, are you? Not voluntarily.”
His gaze met hers, sharp and hard. “Of course not,” he said, his voice still low and strained. “You’re an independent woman. What would I be, to try to change your mind that way?”
She pummeled her knee. “Oh, your damn Vistarian honor! You’re the most hot-blood
ed Latino man on the planet and you won’t touch me because…because…”
He leaned forward. “Because you don’t know what you want right now,” he said, his voice even lower. His expression was calm. “You’re on the verge of tears, yet you’re still half-listening for sounds of your unit stirring and maybe hearing us. You’re conflicted, Parris.”
“And you’re not?” she breathed, for she could feel his body heat radiating against her. Warming her.
“No.” He sat back.
Her heart stuttered. “No?” she repeated, her breath whooshing from her.
His gaze met hers. The liquid fire was back. “I’ve always known what I want,” he told her. “Right now, I want to hold you over my knees and slowly remove every last inch of cloth from your body. I want to kiss every inch of skin that is revealed. I want to slide into you and stay there and watch the pleasure take you. I want you to scream in my arms and tremble. I would brand myself upon you that way. I want to give you such joy and leave you so drained that whenever you look at me, you lose your concentration, because your body remembers.”
Parris couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak.
Adán shook his head. “I won’t force that upon you. I won’t try to convince you with my hands and mouth, even though I know I can, because that would erase the unique heart of you. Until you are completely sure that is what you want, if you decide that is what you want, only then will I touch you.”
Her breathing was labored. Her body throbbed. Parris squeezed her fists, pressing them into her knees. She ached for everything he’d said. She wanted it. Her body was melting from the middle with just the thought of it.
Adán shook his head. “Not here,” he said softly. “You have a job to do.”
He was reminding her of her job!
Parris sucked in a deep breath and leaned back. “That’s the problem, right there,” she said, as awareness filled her. “My job. Your job. There’s nowhere they meet. There’s zero ground for compromise. That’s what you were trying to tell me, the last time, and I didn’t hear it. All I heard was you saying no. I thought you didn’t want me.”
“You know I did.” Adán’s gaze pinned her and held her. “You’ve always known that. Don’t you understand? I would wait for you forever.”
Her heart lurched and seemed to hang weightless. “Despite our jobs?” she whispered. “Despite knowing neither of us would give them up?”
“Because I know you would never give this up, is why I wait.” Adán lifted his hand to indicate the cave and the men. “This makes you who you are.”
“Even if it means you’ll be alone forever?” she breathed.
“I grew up alone. I didn’t know that until I met you. I haven’t been alone since.”
She closed her eyes and hung her head. She felt humble and small and pathetic. Bowed under by the weight of his regard. “I’m a selfish woman who only wants to have it all, Adán.”
“You do have it all.”
“I don’t have you.”
“All you have to do is reach out and take. I’ll always be here.”
He always had been. She just hadn’t known it, until now. Parris leaned toward him. “It’s not that sort of kiss,” she whispered, and pressed her mouth to his.
Only she lied. It was exactly that sort of kiss. She felt it shift and change between them. The images he’d painted for her, of her body trembling against his, flared like neon in her mind.
The touch of his tongue against her lips made her moan. She heard the sound she made and remembered with a jolt where she was, and snapped back upon her heels, breaking the kiss.
Adán didn’t protest. His gaze was steady. His chest rose and fell.
You’re conflicted, his voice repeated in her mind.
“I…must think,” she breathed, and got to her feet.
“No, don’t think. Do your job. Think later.”
“That, too.” She made herself walk away, back to her mat and her paperwork. The mission waited. Somewhere out there was a dirty bomb that would kill thousands of people and it was up to her to find it. She couldn’t afford to let herself get distracted with little things like love.
Chapter Nineteen
“God, if I see another bag of coffee, I’ll puke,” Garrett breathed.
Carmen used her good hand to stack cotton bags packed with coffee beans against the back wall of the tiny room they used as a kitchen. “It’s good coffee,” she pointed out. “Especially spiced.”
Garrett sorted through the diminishing bottles and serums in his big bag. “Coffee doesn’t buy drugs and supplies,” he said. “Or food for us to eat while we’re ministering to the needy.”
“Maybe you should ask everyone to pay for your services with drugs and bandages, instead of coffee,” Carmen suggested.
“Or gossip,” Daniel said, from the doorway. He raised his brow. “Wow, that is a lot.”
Garrett scowled. “That was the point I was trying to make,” he said, his tone grim. “I’m useless as a doctor if I don’t have something to treat them with. All I can do is diagnose, which isn’t the help they’re looking for.”
Daniel leaned against the doorway. “I’ve been chatting to everyone who sits in the front room waiting for you. I was right. The city folk have seen things we can only guess about out in the woods.”
“Like what?” Carmen asked, her interest piqued.
“People have been disappearing. More than usual. It’s not because they’ve headed for the hills to get away from the Insurrectos, because everyone inclined to run escaped in the first few weeks. This is different. The people going missing are folk who have found a way to live under the Insurrectos, who suddenly don’t show up the next day.”
“We knew that was happening,” Carmen replied.
“Now we have proof. It points to something. I just don’t know what, yet.”
“See anything up on the roof today?” Garrett asked.
“A lot of nothing,” Daniel said, his tone philosophical. “They’re not going to put up a public notice on the bars of the palace gates. Only, they will slip sooner or later. They always do.” He moved over to the stacks of coffee and lifted one of the bags and sniffed it. “That’s the Mejia stuff. Puts hairs on your chest.” He put the coffee back as a soft tap sounded from the room beyond. “And that is someone else at the door.”
“Another patient,” Carmen said.
Garrett sighed.
She moved over to him and kissed the corner of his eye, which was all she could reach while he scowled down at the meager contents of his medical bag. “Stop making that sound. You like helping people at the grass roots level. If I snapped my fingers right now and conjured up a white office in a tall building with nurses and appointments and waiting lists, you’d jump out the window before the end of the day.”
“Sooner than that,” Garrett admitted, with a small smile. He sat on the rickety chair and pulled her into his lap. “You know me too well. It’s just that I can’t help without even basic supplies.”
“We’ll get more. We always do.”
He kissed her back. His lasted longer and had a greater effect.
When Daniel tapped on the door frame, Carmen sighed and got up.
Daniel grimaced, which was a form of apology. “You’d better come and hear this,” he said.
“Another STD?” Garrett guessed, with a put-upon air. Carmen smacked his arm.
Daniel jerked his thumb backward. “Pablo, out here, works at the medical clinic, downtown. He says the palace ordered in a week’s worth of insulin, late yesterday.”
Garrett’s eyes narrowed. “He just blurted that out?”
“I asked him about drugs and supplies. Then he blurted it out. I told you people wanted to help. You have to tell them what sort of help you need. Otherwise they guess and bring coffee.”
Garrett got to his feet. Carmen handed him the nearly empty bag. He closed it with a pinch of his fingers and thumbs and took the handle. “It’s the first time the pala
ce has ever asked for insulin?”
Daniel stood aside. “I don’t know what to ask the man. Go be a doctor and find out for me.”
Garrett moved out to the front room to speak to the new patient.
Carmen tucked her good hand under the sling. It was the closest she could come to crossing her arms right now. “If they’ve not ordered it before, then it might mean someone who has just arrived there needs it. Diabetes isn’t something the average person can diagnose, so it wouldn’t be a new case.”
Daniel nodded. “Might be worth reaching out to the big house in Acapulco. Get them to ask Aguirre if his ambassador is diabetic.”
Carmen dug the laptop and cellphone out from under the fat bags of coffee beans and shook loose beans off.
* * * * *
Duardo put the cellphone down and looked at Flores. “It’s confirmed. The insulin is for Roldán. They’re being held at the palace.”
Flores looked pleased. He straightened from his bend over the table and put his hands to the small of his back and stretched. “It gives us a nice fat target.” He reached for the large-scale map of the center of la colinas and dropped it on top of all the others and held it spread with his hands. In the center of the map, surrounded by green, was the grayed-out shape of the presidential palace and the administrative building in front of it.
Duardo frowned. “What are you thinking, Flores?”
“I’m thinking that the palace is the most heavily guarded building on the island. We can’t sneak in there. An open assault is the only way but we must be smart about it…”
Duardo’s gut tightened. “An open assault,” he repeated.
Flores looked up, frowning. His lined face, which had grown far more creased and aged in the last few weeks, seemed to wrinkle everywhere at once. His graying mustache bowed downwards. “You have a problem with that?” he asked.
Even though they were now of equal rank, everyone including Duardo knew Flores was the senior officer. He was also President pro tem, and even though he had no interest in being President, temporary or otherwise, he was the ultimate authority among the Loyalists right now.
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