by Gayle Wilson
There was a long pause, and she heard quite clearly the breath he took before he asked again, the deep voice restrained and free of both anger and seduction, “Tell me about your relationship to Kyle Peters.”
In control now that he was no longer touching her, as angered by her own inexplicable reaction as she was by his violation, she turned sharply in the direction of his voice and spat very deliberately in what she prayed was his face. She thought she might have been successful, given the harshness of his Spanish expletive.
She could only imagine what his reprisal might be. So far, she had not really been brutalized. Frightened, but not hurt, and she supposed she should be grateful. But now…God, she was a fool to taunt him. This was not the way to survive. She had known that from the beginning.
“Diego!” he shouted. She was aware there was nothing but fury in the command. She heard the click of the lock in immediate response to his call, Diego with his ear against the door probably, only too glad for a chance to obey his lordship’s orders. Especially if they involved manhandling her again.
“Get her out of here,” Diego’s master grated, and behind the concealing blindfold, her eyes closed in relief. No matter what he believed she had done, he wouldn’t hurt her.
Diego untied her hands, all the while holding her right wrist in a grip like a vise. She was waiting for him to pull her up, for his guidance, and even when he turned her arm, she didn’t understand. It wasn’t until she felt the jab of the needle, its sting as unexpected as stepping barefoot on a wasp, that she understood.
“Damn you,” she said, desperately struggling to pull her wrist out of Diego’s bruising hold. She fought with her left hand to interfere with what he was doing, but he had turned so the bulk of his body was between the needle and her uselessly flailing fist. She could feel the effects of whatever he’d injected beginning to soar through her veins. Behind the blackness of the blindfold, her world began to shift and rotate.
“I don’t know what you want to know. I don’t know anything about the warehouse. I wasn’t there. I didn’t have anything to do with that. Please, don’t do this,” she begged.
“Damn you, Diego. What the hell are you doing?”
She heard his question from a great distance, drifting into the mists, and vaguely Diego’s answer.
“You want to know what she knows? Ask her now and she’ll tell you. Ask her what happened that night. About the twenty-five thousand dollars. Ask her, if you really want to know.”
She tried to deny the accusation again, but she couldn’t think how to form those words. She wanted him to rescue her, and she wondered why he was letting Diego do this. Those were the words that floated to the top of her consciousness. Only those.
“Help me,” she whispered, already falling under the power of the drug because, with what Diego had given her, she had no choice.
By the time he was there, she wasn’t aware that the arms she had wanted, had begged for, were holding her, or that she was once more surrounded by the sweet, invisible aura of his presence.
WHEN SHE AWOKE, there was no impression of light through the blindfold, and gradually she realized there was no blindfold. But she couldn’t find the rectangle of lesser darkness where she knew the windows to be. The room was as black as the inside of a coffin.
Out of that blackness had come the voices. Hardesty’s and poor Frank’s. Kyle’s. The agonized whisper of the dying courier. Diego’s. And her captor’s silken caress. She had talked to them all, but she couldn’t remember what they had asked. Or her answers. Only that she’d done exactly what Diego had promised him she would. She knew with sick certainty that she had told them everything they wanted to know. Everything she knew.
Her throat ached rawly when she tried to swallow. She felt the tears of self-pity start, but she forced them back. Crying wouldn’t help. She needed to think—something she hadn’t been very successful at up to now. She jerked and cried out when his hand slipped under the back of her head and lifted.
“Be still,” he ordered softly. “It’s ice.”
Amazingly she felt the blessed coldness against her lips. She let it melt down her throat as his hand held her with rock-steady sureness, her aching head resting against its strength.
“More,” she whispered, and then, like a polite child, she added, “please.”
He allowed her another mouthful, soothing over the druginduced dryness, before she opened her lips to beg again.
“No,” he said, “no more. You’ve been very sick. I don’t want to set off the nausea again.”
He carefully laid her head against the pillow, and she felt the weight of his elbows leave the mattress. She knew he was sitting beside her although she couldn’t even make out his outline in the darkness.
A sudden fear touched her heart and in her weakness she spoke the thought aloud, “What have you done to my eyes?”
“Nothing’s wrong with your eyes,” he said quickly, and she was reassured by the genuine horror in his voice. “It’s very late. There’s no moon, and the shades and draperies are both drawn. There’s nothing wrong with your eyes.” His voice was calming now, soothing.
“How long have I been out?” she questioned. He was the only fellow human in her world, and she had to communicate her fear to someone, in spite of the fact that he was one of those who had done this to her. He was also a living, breathing creature, and he had given her the blessed ice.
“Too damn long,” he replied, and she could hear the concern and anger in his voice. He took a deep breath and whispered, “I’m so sorry, querida. So sorry for everything.”
“You have to believe me—”
“I know that you weren’t at the warehouse. I know it all.”
“I didn’t…I could never have betrayed him. I couldn’t do that.”
“I know,” he said, soothing the renewed agitation that he might not believe her.
“And the money. I don’t know anything about money,” she continued, trying to convince him of her innocence. No one must ever believe that she would betray a man to what the courier had suffered. He must understand that.
“Hush, my heart. I know everything. Close your eyes and rest.”
There seemed nothing else she needed to say, and finally, obedient again, she closed her eyes against the pain in her head.
“God, you were so sick,” he murmured.
She spoke past the agony, not thinking, simply reacting to the anguish in the beautiful dark voice, “It’s all right. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me.”
She realized she was attempting, ridiculously, to comfort him, but her head hurt too much to formulate why she wasn’t supposed to assuage the pain she could hear in his voice. She only knew that she wanted to.
They didn’t speak for a long time until finally the dryness of her throat forced her to beg again, “Could I please have some more ice? I don’t feel sick anymore, but my throat’s so dry.”
His fingers held the crushed ice to melt against her lips and onto her tongue.
“My head hurts,” she complained softly when the cold had eased her throat.
“What?” he whispered, his thumb caressing the line of her jaw.
“My head,” she murmured. She heard the indrawn breath and then his lips were moving against her temple, as tenderly as a dragonfly touching the water.
“Here?” he asked, as his tongue caressed the throb of pain.
“Yes,” she breathed into the darkness.
He spoke, his mouth leaving soft kisses across her eyelid now, “I’m so sorry, querida. I’ll never hurt you again. I swear to you. Never again.”
“Let me go. I won’t tell anyone. Please, just let me go.”
She waited for his answer, thinking that in his regret he might weaken enough to release her.
When he slowly sat up, moving away from her body, she knew what his response would be. “I can’t. Not yet. There’s too much I don’t understand. Until I do, I can’t let you go. It’s too dangerous.”
&
nbsp; She strained, trying to see through the darkness, to steal even the smallest glimpse of his face, but although he was so close to her, she could see nothing.
She supposed that she should be grateful for his promise. She even believed him, but she wanted to go home. Back to her life and away from the pull of this dark stranger who controlled her emotions. She wanted the familiarity of her apartment, her furniture, her clothes. She wanted explanations from Paul Hardesty. She wanted harsh fluorescent office lights and gossip. Greasy coffee and sexist jokes. She’d had enough danger and adventure to last her a millennium.
“Please,” she whispered and felt the tears she had denied so long begin. They rolled across her temple where his lips had rested, and she couldn’t stop them. She sobbed once into the darkness, then bit her lips to block the sound. His fingers found her closed eyelids, brushing the moisture from her lashes.
At that tenderness, she tried to regain control, but now she had started, she was helpless to prevent the flood of all the pent-up fear. She sobbed again, turning her face against his palm. He caressed her there, as he whispered words of comfort and finally, after a long time, words of love. She cried as he held her face and talked to her above the sobbing. In the days that followed, she would never be sure what she had really heard and how much of that tenderness her drug-fogged brain had created.
Finally the sobs died away to small hiccuping breaths, and he used the corner of the sheet to wipe her face.
“You’ve made me cry more than I’ve ever cried in my life,” she murmured, drained and exhausted by the release of the tears, embarrassed now.
“Women cry,” he said gently, as if that explained and excused. “All women.”
“I don’t. Austin Phillips’s daughter doesn’t cry,” she said fiercely, wanting the emotional armor she had always worn to be once more in place.
“Your father?”
“He wanted a boy. I was a poor substitute.”
“So you became a cop. To please him?” His fingers eased the tear-dampened tendrils from her temples, but the feel of them moving in her hair evoked the scene earlier tonight, so that she turned her head away from their caress.
“Don’t. Don’t touch my hair.”
He removed his hand, and she heard the sigh.
“I’m sorry I hurt you. I don’t know what to do.”
“Just don’t touch my hair. I know that you’re trying to help, but please, just don’t touch me anymore.”
“Go to sleep,” he commanded softly.
“I don’t think I can. I don’t think I can sleep.” She wondered if she would ever sleep again. “Talk to me,” she begged. Keep the darkness at bay.
“About what?” For the first time, amusement drifted back into the richness of his voice.
“About anything. About your family? Your childhood?”
“I don’t think I can do that, querida. Not even for you.”
“Then about your country. Tell me about it. Where you lived. Where you grew up. Your favorite parts.” It seemed little enough to ask after all he had done to her.
She was still surprised, however, when he agreed. “All right,” he said, “but close your eyes. Relax. I’ll stay here until morning. I promise I won’t leave you. Close your eyes, my heart.”
When she had obeyed him, the beautiful voice whispered out of the darkness and over her senses. She could never remember what he told her, but it had the desired effect. He talked a long time after she no longer had to will her eyelids to stay closed, long after she had ceased to be aware of him at all.
He kept his promise and dawn was breaking when he gently untangled her fingers from his. The fear was finally gone from the tear-stained face, relaxed now in sleep, exposed by the soft light that had begun to creep in around the shade. Then it was too dangerous, so he moved quietly to the door and out of her room.
WHEN DIEGO CAME to find him later, he was touching the photograph he had been given. It lay in the very center of the massive desk, and he was examining it as if his fingertips could tell him the secrets it contained.
“Is she all right?” Diego asked and watched as his master removed the dark, finely shaped hands from the picture.
“I think so. Damn it, Diego, you gave her too much. Why the hell—” He stopped, shaking his head, because they had been through this already. Diego had done what he had done out of loyalty—and love—however misguided his action had been. There was no use remonstrating with him again, especially when he remembered the depth of Diego’s remorse, faced with his own fury and her innocence. He said instead, “I hope you’re finally satisfied she’s not hiding anything.”
Diego had no answer for that rhetorically bitter comment.
“Why did he send the picture?” he asked instead.
“I don’t know. Maybe he thought we wouldn’t have access to the equipment to analyze it, but she knew who was in the picture, and he had to know she would,” he answered, thinking out loud. “Or maybe he thought we wouldn’t stop to question her. Just accept his proof and—” He stopped, wondering again, as he had throughout the night, how he would have lived with himself if, in his anger, he had hurt her.
“What do you know about Peters?” Diego asked.
“No more than the others. Not enough. One secret at a time,” he said, his patience hard-earned. “Now, however, our friend has given us something to work with. The picture and the money. That was a very serious error in judgment, Diego. Money always leaves traces, no matter how skillfully you try to hide it. That’s something I know a lot about,” he added, the amusement back in the silken voice. “More than he can imagine.”
Diego watched the long fingers move again over the face in the photograph. Finally he said aloud what he had thought about in the hours since the woman, under the effects of the drug he’d given her, had begun to talk, her memories of those long-ago events spilling over them in a flood.
“Now you know that she’s obsessed, too,” Diego said.
He watched without pleasure the slight smile that lifted only one corner of that hard mouth.
“Obsessed? Perhaps,” his master said, the smile deepening slightly. The rich voice, when it eventually continued, was softly reflective, “Obsessed with a dead man. With a man who died one night, a long time ago, somewhere in Virginia.”
Diego’s eyes rested on the thumb that unerringly found and moved caressingly again across the blurred face of the woman in the photograph, and finally, unable to watch, Diego turned and left him alone.
Chapter Six
When Rae awoke the next day, it was very late. She felt exhausted, despite the hours she’d slept. It had not been a natural sleep, of course, and her head ached again, almost as badly as it had the first morning she’d awakened in this bed.
She still wore the T-shirt she had pulled last night from the jumbled items in her suitcase. She touched the thin, betraying cotton that must have revealed exactly how his touch affected her. She closed her eyes, remembering the texture of his hair, like silk next to her skin, when she had rested her face against his. Dark hair and eyes, she was certain of, but nothing else.
In the middle of those speculations, she realized she was daydreaming about the man who had kidnapped her. What the hell was wrong with her? She forced herself out of bed and under a hot shower.
She scrubbed every inch of her skin as if she could wash away last night. Then she scrubbed again, trying to remove from her body all traces, even the emotional ones, of his hands and lips, but somewhere inside she knew it was an exercise in futility.
She washed her hair and stepped out of the shower to dry off. She studied her face a long time in the mirror, wiping the glass periodically to remove the fog that formed and then re-formed. There were no outward signs of what had happened to her these past two days. It was there, however, in her eyes. She had always met life head-on, sure of her goals and her abilities. Only her father’s death had thrown her, and now this.
She turned from the mirror to walk back into
the bedroom. She lifted her suitcase onto the bed and dressed quickly in the most practical underwear she owned—no black silk—and then tan slacks and a peach cotton sweater.
She used her makeup to mask the evidence of last night’s ordeal and finally surveyed the finished product in the bedroom mirror. At least she gave the appearance of being back to normal, calm and in control, outwardly unaffected by his interference in her life.
She straightened the room, closing the case and hanging the towels in the bath, finally sitting cross-legged on the bed to comb her damp hair. She forced her mind back to the events of last night. Someone had given him her picture to make him believe she was the one who had betrayed the courier, the one who was most likely, therefore, to know his name. Why was the courier’s identity so important? Even given the cartel’s reputation for swift and brutal retaliation, they seemed to be going to a lot of trouble for revenge.
Logically, whoever had given her captor the photograph must be trying to detract attention from his own guilty knowledge, but whoever had betrayed the courier had already dealt with the cartel. So why not deal with them again? Why try to feed her to this particular wolf? Her useless conjectures were interrupted by a knock on the door.
“Come in,” she called, and as Diego entered and deposited the tray he carried on the dresser, she wondered why he’d bothered to knock. He hadn’t knocked last night.
“He would like to see you after you’ve eaten.” Diego even managed to make it sound like a request.
“Here?” she asked.
“Downstairs.”
“If I refuse?”
“It is your decision whether or not you’ll see him.”
That’s certainly a change from last night, she thought bitterly. Your decision. Which implied no one was going to jerk her off the bed and drag her downstairs for more fun and games.
“Doesn’t it bother you that I can identify you, Diego, and not him? He’s been very careful not to reveal his face and yet he’s sacrificed your anonymity happily enough?” The question was more than idle curiosity. Divide and conquer. If she could get Diego to question what he was getting out of this deal…