by Gayle Wilson
“My gown,” she said in sudden panic at the thought of trailing Diego down the dark halls as she was now.
She heard him laugh, but he fumbled among the sheets at the foot of the bed. She felt the cool smoothness of the satin against her reaching hands. They sat up together in the middle of that vast bed. He helped her put the gown on, smoothing it over her breasts as she had done earlier tonight in her room.
“If…” he said into the darkness and stopped as though what he wanted to say was too painful to be put into words.
“What is it?” she questioned, hearing the hesitation in the voice that had always seemed so sure.
“It’s possible that we won’t be together again. Things are happening more quickly than I anticipated.”
“No,” she denied, reaching for him. He caught her hands and held them away from his body.
“Listen to me,” he demanded. Finally she stopped struggling to hold him and let her wrists rest limp in his strong fingers.
“If tonight is the end…” Again he hesitated, but she only waited, knowing that nothing she could say would change his implacable will. “You will always be my heart,” he said finally.
She knew it was not what he had begun, not what he had intended, but he put her arms around his neck and pulled her with him to lie down once more in the tangled sheets. He held her as she cried, but he didn’t speak to her again.
SHE WAS DEEPLY asleep, exhausted by his demanding body, when the soft buzz broke the stillness, pulling her from the dream of making love to him again. She felt him move beside her, to reach for the phone on the table beside the bed. She was awake by the time he had stopped the noise. He had reached with the hand that lay under her body, and his arm automatically returned to encircle her neck. He put the receiver to his ear that had rested against her cheek.
“Yes,” he said quietly. Perhaps realizing that the phone was almost as close to her ear as his, he began to turn his body away from hers to change the receiver to his other hand, to his other side, but the speaker on the other end didn’t give him time to complete what he had intended. Into the darkness whispered only two words.
“It’s Hardesty.”
Then he was sitting upright with the phone against his other ear. The hollow quality of the voice that had escaped into the stillness of the bedroom made it unrecognizable, but there had been no mistaking the words. Hardesty’s voice or another’s—she didn’t know which—but the implications of either were frightening enough. It was a name that should not be spoken in this room, into the ear of the man who was now listening so intently.
He didn’t speak again and finally leaned against her body to replace the phone in its cradle. She felt him hesitate. She forced herself to lie still, unmoving, her breathing deep and controlled. She didn’t know where she found the strength of purpose to carry out the charade that she still slept, but apparently it was convincing enough.
He lay down again beside her, putting his arm across her body, but she turned sullenly away as if irritated in her sleep by the unaccustomed weight. She even managed a soft sigh or two before she finally settled along the edge of the high bed, as far away from him as the huge mattress allowed. He gently touched her bottom, a small caress up the curve of her spine, and then turned away to lie with his back to hers. She waited a long time before the occasional pleasantly masculine snore told her he slept.
It’s Hardesty. The whispered words played over and over through her frantic mind. She tried to remember the exact voice to force a recognition, but the distortion was too great to allow her to be sure of anything but the words themselves. Of those there was no doubt.
Either Paul was in contact with this man, was himself the traitor, or someone had just given him Paul’s name for some purpose. And because he himself had told her, she knew what he wanted: the person who could be forced to identify the courier who had betrayed the cartel that night in Virginia, the courier who could tell him where Escobar’s billion and a half dollars could be found.
She had always believed that Paul would know that name if anyone did, and she wondered if she had told him that under the influence of Diego’s drugs, and if that information had just been confirmed by the caller.
However, if the voice had been Paul’s, then he was the one who had sold out to the cartel. He had provided the information that had resulted in the deaths of Frank and the others. Perhaps he had even given this man her name, her picture. Betrayed her to him.
She had no obligation to risk her release. He had promised that no harm would come to her, and she believed him. She could go back to sleep and tell no one until she was safely away from him, And how many people would die before that happened? Would Paul be tortured for the name of the man who had died that night in Virginia? Would they do to Paul what they had done to that man? She had to get out of here, to leave and warn whoever was left alive in the force. She had no choice.
She felt for the floor with her bare foot. Her toes touched the carpet and, resting most of her weight on that foot, she eased onto her palms and then away from the mattress. She waited, ready to lie down again at the least change in that soft breathing, but the sounds from the other side of the bed continued unchanged. She dropped to the floor beside the bed and waited again. Then she crawled in the darkness to where she hoped the door was.
Her reaching fingers found blank wall instead, but she knew she couldn’t be that fat off. She found the edge of the frame and finally, following it, the knob. She twisted and it moved soundlessly under her fingers. Not locked. She breathed a silent prayer of thanksgiving and opened the door only enough to slip through. She pulled it almost closed behind her, but didn’t chance engaging the latch. Even that noise in the stillness might wake him.
She was disoriented in the dark hall. She couldn’t think which way she had turned to enter the room. She had depended on Diego, allowing him to guide her without thinking. Idiot, she thought, knowing that she had been anticipating his touch, never thinking about the possibilities of escape that being in his room offered her. She had never intended to escape, had not wanted to and still would not, except for the phone call.
Right, she realized suddenly. She had been on Diego’s right arm, and he had turned her right to knock on the door. She had wondered how he knew which door and how many they had passed, but now she must turn left, retracing that long journey to find the stairs. She stood up in the darkness and began moving to her left.
She held her hands before her and couldn’t believe that not one glimmer of light pierced the darkness of the hall. Darker than a tomb, she thought, shivering at the image of being buried alive. She moved noiselessly on bare feet along the miles of carpet until the blackness faded slightly into gray. Ahead of her she could make out the banister and the stairwell. The moonlight from the uncovered windows of the first floor illuminated this section of the upper story. She moved to the stairs and using the railing, she ran down. This at least was familiar.
She hurried across the cold marble squares of the foyer. Her trembling hands found the handle of the entry door, but when it wouldn’t move beneath her fingers, she felt panic building in her chest. She pulled her hands off, fighting to control her breathing. She ran sweating palms down the satin of her gown and then touched the cool metal of the handle again. Nothing.
Dear God, she thought in despair, leaning against the hard wood. It was locked. With a key, of course. And the key’s in Diego’s room.
Something else, then. Closed doors stretched on either side of the halls that ran from the foyer to branch beyond the stairs. The doors on the left—she would simply start there and work systematically until she discovered a room that had an outside entrance.
She opened the first, recognizing even in the darkness the room she had entered several times before. Windows stretched behind the desk where he had sat today. She paused, her eyes locked on his chair. She could almost see him there. Her gaze fell to the top of the desk, and she saw the phone beside the elaborate computer system
.
Get out of the house first, she thought, and then call someone. First get away from the reach of Diego and from those hard fingers that had tangled in her hair, the same fingers that had so sweetly tormented her body tonight.
She stopped that train of thought and ran across the car pet whose texture she had known before. She had almost touched the handle of the French windows before she saw the grill. Heavy wrought iron, covering all the windows in this room. As her eyes traced the grillwork, she saw, too, the wires along the sills—a security system that would announce the slightest movement of the tall windows. Perhaps even being this close was enough to set off the alarm, so she moved hurriedly away from the glass, listening for any disturbance of the surrounding darkness. What would Diego do if he found her here?
Back upstairs? Back into the bed with the man who wanted information that Hardesty had? With the man who was perhaps willing to kill Paul to get what he wanted? She turned instead to the phone. She picked it up and heard, almost with disbelief, the reassuringly ordinary dial tone.
You have done nothing for which you should be ashamed. No betrayal. Until now. She commanded her fingers to begin dialing, first 1 and then the area code and the number. She listened to the ringing that sounded in her ear as if loud enough to wake those who slept above. She eased down onto the floor behind the massive desk, waiting and praying. There would be no one there in the middle of the night, but she could leave a message. Then she heard the voice—not an electronic voice, but one that was human and comfortingly familiar.
“Hello,” he said. She could hear his tiredness even over the distance the wires traveled between them.
“Kyle?” she breathed into the receiver as quietly as she could and still hope he might hear her.
“Who is this?” he demanded.
She wanted to tell him to whisper. She licked dry lips, unable to believe it had been this easy. She fought the unfamiliar urge to cry, swallowing the emotion building in her throat. Finally when she thought she could push a sound out past the hard lump, she whispered, “It’s Rae.”
“What the hell?” he demanded. “What is this, some kind of sick joke?”
“Kyle, it’s Rae. I need you.”
“Rae.” She heard him breathe against the mouthpiece and knew that he believed her, that he had recognized even her hoarse whisper.
“Where are you?” he asked. Only with his question did she realize that she didn’t know.
“I don’t know. A house. I don’t know, but I can’t get out. It’s wired.”
“My God, Rae, we thought you were dead.”
She shivered against the impact of the word, although it was only what she had assumed they would think.
“Not yet.” She forced herself to laugh.
“Paul thought that you’d—”
“Kyle,” she interrupted, realizing she hadn’t warned him against the possibility that Hardesty was somehow involved in this. “Don’t tell Paul where I am.”
“What? Why not? What’s wrong with you?”
“I think Paul might be working with this man. I over-heard part of a phone call. I heard Hardesty’s name.”
The silence was too long, and then she heard his softly breathed profanity.
“Okay. We’re tracing. I’m coming for you. Hang on.”
“Talk to me,” she begged.
“I’m right here, and soon I’ll be there with you. Don’t worry. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I’m coming to get you, Rae. It’s all right. Everything is going to be all right now. My God, how did you manage this call? Where are you?”
“I’m downstairs. They’re asleep upstairs.”
“But how-”
“A slipup,” she lied. “They got careless.”
“Good girl. Hang on, hang on, we’re almost there.” She knew he was waiting for the word on her exact location, so she swallowed her fear, hoping that soon…
It wasn’t good. She knew as soon as she heard his voice. “Rae, listen to me. It’s going to take several hours before I can get to you.”
“No.” Her mind denied what he was telling her. She shook her head as if he could see, knowing that she couldn’t stay here for hours.
“You’re too far away,” he said.
“Call somebody. The locals. Call them, Kyle,” she demanded.
“No, listen. You know they’d screw it up. It’s a little town, Rae. They don’t have the people to handle this. How many are there in the house with you? How many right now?”
“Only two,” she whispered.
“Are you absolutely certain of that?”
“Yes. No. I think only two. That’s all I’ve seen.”
“Okay. This is what we do. You go back upstairs—”
“No,” she said harshly, too loudly.
“Yes, Rae, back upstairs. Don’t let them know you’ve been downstairs. Don’t leave any traces. Fix everything like it was and go back to where they expect you to be. I’ll be there. With lots of help. I promise. Do it, Rae,” he commanded.
“Don’t hang up,” she said in panic. “Don’t leave me, Kyle. Why can’t I wait down here? I could hide,” she argued, knowing rationally that he was right, but unable to explain the difficulties he was asking her to undertake. To find his room among all those doors and to climb back into his bed and wait for Diego…
Diego, she thought. What time was it? Was he there now? How many minutes had passed? She turned to look out at the reassuringly dark windows and then wondered in quick panic if they weren’t a lighter gray than they had been when she had first entered the room. Or maybe her eyes had simply adjusted.
“Rae?” Kyle said into her silence. She could hear the effort he was making to control his impatience with her arguments. “Go now before they discover you’re gone. If they realize what you’ve done, they’ll kill you and get away. Go back upstairs,” he said very deliberately, trying to impose his will on hers. “We can’t chance losing them now, sweetheart. I’ll be there with you in a few hours. I promise. Do it, Rae. Promise me. Swear to me.”
“All right. I promise—” And she heard the connection broken. She almost cried out with the pain of it, but instead she leaned her forehead against the smooth wood of the desk, finally putting the softly humming phone back into its cradle.
She turned to stare into the grayness of the night, knowing with certainty that it was lighter than it had been before. She felt the copper taste of fear in her mouth, so she bit her tongue hard to bring her back to the reality she had to face.
Back upstairs. She stood, examining the top of the desk, trying to see if she had disturbed anything he would notice in the morning. She hadn’t touched anything but the phone. She moved across the floor to listen at the door before she opened it, slipping out, the marble of the hallway cold under her bare feet. She looked up the stairs and wondered if she could climb them with her knees trembling. How many minutes? How long? Was he still asleep? And Diego? Where was Diego?
She put her hand on the railing and climbed into the everincreasing darkness at the top.
Chapter Ten
To the left, she told herself as she climbed, using it as a mantra against her fear. She wondered if she could simply slip inside the door of her own room and convince them that she had found it in the night.
Think! she screamed silently to a brain that persisted in offering any solution other than the one she had promised to carry out. She reached the top and, taking a deep breath, began to walk, concentrating on how far the journey had taken with Diego. How would she know which door? What if she walked into Diego’s room, crawled into his bed? In spite of her fear, she couldn’t prevent a brief smile at the thought of Diego’s reaction.
His reaction before or after he kills me? she asked herself, forcing her mind back to the reality of who and what these people were.
She had never imagined when she left his room that she would have to find it again in the dark. She had intended to be out, gone, before they woke. She knew logically
that Kyle was right: if they discovered she was missing, they would disappear.
The thought pierced her blind obedience to Kyle’s instructions. They’d be gone. He’d be safe. She would have accomplished her purpose, and he would be safe. She had already warned Kyle that Hardesty could be mixed up with them, so Kyle would follow up on Paul’s involvement. And if he wasn’t involved? If someone else had given Paul’s name, then she had condemned him to the authorities without a shred of real evidence against him—only his name whispered into the darkness.
She wished she had explained that to Kyle, had told him what made her question Paul’s connections here, but it was too late now. She could explain when Kyle got here. She could hide and then give them time to get away before Kyle and whoever he brought arrived. Surely Diego wouldn’t take time to search this enormous house if he thought she had given the alarm. How long would she have to stay hidden to ensure they would give up their efforts and leave, and would they be gone before Kyle’s arrival? She had promised to return to his bed and not let them know, but she didn’t want him hurt.
He’s a drug lord and I’m plotting to allow him to escape. No, not allow. To warn him. To warn him by my absence. To make sure he escapes punishment for what he’s done, for whatever part he played in what was done to the man in Virginia that night.
She knew in her heart there was something wrong with that argument, and she steeled herself against anything but the promise she had given Kyle: to go back and never let them know she had called.
She heard a sound somewhere in the darkness, and she froze, her fingers against the wall. A door closing? Or only the creaking of an old house?
Her mind screamed at her to hurry, but she forced herself to stand silent for several long minutes, listening to the darkness. She could hear nothing else and finally she began to move. She touched each door her fingers encountered, remembering that she had not engaged the latch on his. It should push open, and then she would know. If only all the other doors on the long hall were securely fastened. If only Diego had not already opened his and was waiting for her in the black bedroom.