by Nora Roberts
It wasn’t until she’d picked up her keys again that she remembered her tanks. Tucking the portfolio under the counter, she turned to deal with her own gear.
It was perhaps her only luxury. She’d spent more on her personal equipment than she had on all the contents of her closet and dresser. To Liz, the wet suit was more exciting than any French silks. All her gear was kept separate from the shop’s inventory. Unlocking the door to the closet, Liz hung up her wet suit, stored her mask, weight belt, regulator. Her knife was sheathed and set on a shelf. After setting her tanks side by side, she shut the door and prepared to lock it again. After she’d taken two steps away she looked down at the keys again. Without knowing precisely why, she moved each one over the ring and identified it.
The shop door, the shop window, her bike, the lock for the chain, the cash box, the front and back doors of her house, her storage room. Eight keys for eight locks. But there was one more on her ring, a small silver key that meant nothing to her at all.
Puzzled, she counted off the keys again, and again found one extra. Why should there be a key on her ring that didn’t belong to her? Closing her fingers over it, she tried to think if anyone had given her the key to hold. No, it didn’t make sense. Brows drawn together, she studied the key again. Too small for a car or door key, she decided. It looked like the key to a locker, or a box or… Ridiculous, she decided on a long breath. It wasn’t her key but it was on her ring. Why?
Because someone put it there, she realized, and opened her hand again. Her keys were often tossed in the drawer at the shop for easy access for Luis or one of the other men. They needed to open the cash box. And Jerry had often worked in the shop alone.
With a feeling of dread, Liz slipped the keys into her pocket. Jonas’s words echoed in her head. “You’re involved, whether you want to be or not.”
Liz closed the shop early.
Jonas stepped into the dim bar to the scent of garlic and the wail of a squeaky jukebox. In Spanish, someone sang of endless love. He stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust, then skimmed his gaze over the narrow booths. As agreed, Erika sat all the way in the back, in the corner.
“You’re late.” She waved an unlit cigarette idly as he joined her.
“I passed it the first time. This place isn’t exactly on the tourist route.”
She closed her lips over the filter as Jonas lit her cigarette. “I wanted privacy.”
Jonas glanced around. There were two men at the bar, each deep in separate bottles. Another couple squeezed themselves together on one side of a booth. The rest of the bar was deserted. “You’ve got it.”
“But I don’t have a drink.”
Jonas slid out from the booth and bought two drinks at the bar. He set tequila and lime in front of Erika and settled for club soda. “You said you had something for me.”
Erica twined a string of colored beads around her finger. “You said you would pay fifty for a name.”
In silence, Jonas took out his wallet. He set fifty on the table, but laid his hand over it. “You have the name.”
Erika smiled and sipped at her drink. “Maybe. Maybe you want it bad enough to pay another fifty.”
Jonas studied her coolly. This was the type his brother had always been attracted to. The kind of woman whose hard edge was just a bit obvious. He could give her another fifty, Jonas mused, but he didn’t care to be taken for a sucker. Without a word, he picked up the bill and tucked it into his pocket. He was halfway out of the booth when Erika grabbed his arm.
“Okay, don’t get mad. Fifty.” She sent him an easy smile as he settled back again. Erika had been around too long to let an opportunity slip away. “A girl has to make a living, sí? The name is Pablo Manchez—he’s the one with the face.”
“Where can I find him?”
“I don’t know. You got the name.”
With a nod, Jonas took the bill out and passed it to her. Erika folded it neatly into her purse. “I’ll tell you something else, because Jerry was a sweet guy.” Her gaze skimmed the bar again as she leaned closer to Jonas. “This Manchez, he’s bad. People got nervous when I asked about him. I heard he was mixed up in a couple of murders in Acapulco last year. He’s paid, you know, to…” She made a gun out of her hand and pushed down her thumb. “When I hear that, I stop asking questions.”
“What about the other one, the American?”
“Nothing. Nobody knows him. But if he hangs out with Manchez, he’s not a Boy Scout.” Erika tipped back her drink. “Jerry got himself in some bad business.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.” She touched the bracelet on her wrist. “He gave me this. We had some good times.”
The air in the bar was stifling him. Jonas rose and hesitated only a moment before he took out another bill and set it next to her drink. “Thanks.”
Erika folded the bill as carefully as the first. “De nada.”
She’d wanted him to be home. When Liz found the house empty, she made a fist over the keys in her hand and swore in frustration. She couldn’t sit still; her nerves had been building all during the drive home. Outside, Moralas’s evening shift was taking over.
For how long? she wondered. How long would the police sit patiently outside her house and follow her through her daily routine? In her bedroom, Liz closed the canvas bag of papers and cash in her desk. She regretted not having a lock for it, as well. Sooner or later, she thought, Moralas would back off on the protection. Then where would she be? Liz looked down at the key again. She’d be alone, she told herself bluntly. She had to do something.
On impulse, she started into her daughter’s room. Perhaps Jerry had left a case, a box of some kind that the police had overlooked. Systematically she searched Faith’s closet. When she found the little teddy bear with the worn ear, she brought it down from the shelf. She’d bought it for Faith before she’d been born. It was a vivid shade of purple, or had been so many years before. Now it was faded a bit, a little loose at the seams. The ear had been worn down to a nub because Faith had always carried him by it. They’d never named it, Liz recalled. Faith had merely called it mine and been satisfied.
On a wave of loneliness that rocked her, Liz buried her face against the faded purple pile. “Oh, I miss you, baby,” she murmured. “I don’t know if I can stand it.”
“Liz?”
On a gasp of surprise, Liz stumbled back against the closet door. When she saw Jonas, she put the bear behind her back. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, feeling foolish.
“You were busy.” He came toward her to gently pry the bear from her fingers. “He looks well loved.”
“He’s old.” She cleared her throat and took the toy back again. But she found it impossible to stick it back on the top shelf. “I keep meaning to sew up the seams before the stuffing falls out.” She set the bear down on Faith’s dresser. “You’ve been out.”
“Yes.” He’d debated telling her of his meeting with Erika, and had decided to keep what he’d learned to himself, at least for now. “You’re home early.”
“I found something.” Liz reached in her pocket and drew out her keys. “This isn’t mine.”
Jonas frowned at the key she indicated. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean this isn’t my key, and I don’t know how it got on my ring.”
“You just found it today?”
“I found it today, but it could have been put on anytime. I don’t think I would’ve noticed.” With the vain hope of distancing herself, Liz unhooked it from the others and handed it to Jonas. “I keep these in a drawer at the shop when I’m there. At home, I usually toss them on the kitchen counter. I can’t think of any reason for someone to put it with mine unless they wanted to hide it.”
Jonas examined the key. “‘The Purloined Letter,’” he murmured.
“What?”
“It was one of Jerry’s favorite stories when we were kids. I remember when he tested out the theory by putting a book he’d bou
ght for my father for Christmas on the shelf in the library.”
“So do you think it was his?”
“I think it would be just his style.”
Liz picked up the bear again, finding it comforted her. “It doesn’t do much good to have a key when you don’t have the lock.”
“It shouldn’t be hard to find it.” He held the key up by the stem. “Do you know what it is?”
“A key.” Liz sat on Faith’s bed. No, she hadn’t distanced herself. The quicksand was bubbling again.
“To a safe-deposit box.” Jonas turned it over to read the numbers etched into the metal.
“Do you think Captain Moralas can trace it?”
“Eventually,” Jonas murmured. The key was warm in his hand. It was the next step, he thought. It had to be. “But I’m not telling him about it.”
“Why?”
“Because he’d want it, and I don’t intend to give it to him until I open the lock myself.”
She recognized the look easily enough now. It was still revenge. Leaving the bear on her daughter’s bed, Liz rose. “What are you going to do, go from bank to bank and ask if you can try the key out? You won’t have to call the police, they will.”
“I’ve got some connections—and I’ve got the serial number.” Jonas pocketed the key. “With luck, I’ll have the name of the bank by tomorrow afternoon. You may have to take a couple of days off.”
“I can’t take a couple of days off, and if I could, why should I need to?”
“We’re going to Acapulco.”
She started to make some caustic comment, then stopped. “Because Jerry told Erika he’d had business there?”
“If Jerry was mixed up in something, and he had something important or valuable, he’d tuck it away. A safe-deposit box in Acapulco makes sense.”
“Fine. If that’s what you believe, have a nice trip.” She started to brush past him. Jonas only had to shift his body to bar the door.
“We go together.”
The word “together” brought back her thoughts on couples and comfort. And it made her remember her conclusion about Jonas. “Look, Jonas, I can’t drop everything and follow you on some wild-goose chase. Acapulco is very cosmopolitan. You won’t need an interpreter.”
“The key was on your ring. The knife was at your throat. I want you where I can see you.”
“Concerned?” Her face hardened, muscle by muscle. “You’re not concerned with me, Jonas. And you’re certainly not concerned about me. The only thing you care about is your revenge. I don’t want any part of it, or you.”
He took her by the shoulders until she was backed against the door. “We both know that’s not true. We’ve started something.” His gaze skimmed down, lingered on her lips. “And it’s not going to stop until we’re both finished with it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.” He pressed closer so that their bodies met and strained, one against the other. He pressed closer to prove something, perhaps only to himself. “Yes, you do,” he repeated. “I came here to do something, and I intend to do it. I don’t give a damn if you call it revenge.”
Her heart was beating lightly at her throat. She wouldn’t call it fear. But his eyes were cold and close. “What else?”
“Justice.”
She felt an uncomfortable twinge, remembering her own feelings on justice. “You’re not using your law books, Jonas.”
“Law doesn’t always equal justice. I’m going to find out what happened to my brother and why.” He skimmed his hand over her face and tangled his fingers in her hair. He didn’t find silk and satin, but a woman of strength. “But there’s more now. I look at you and I want you.” He reached out, taking her face in his hand so that she had no choice but to look directly at him. “I hold you and I forget what I have to do. Damn it, you’re in my way.”
At the end of the words, his mouth was crushed hard on hers. He hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t had a choice. Before he’d been gentle with her because the look in her eyes requested it. Now he was rough, desperate, because the power of his own needs demanded it.
He frightened her. She’d never known fear could be a source of exhilaration. As her heart pounded in her throat, she let him pull her closer, still closer to the edge. He dared her to jump off, to let herself tumble down into the unknown. To risk.
His mouth drew desperately from hers, seeking passion, seeking submission, seeking strength. He wanted it all. He wanted it mindlessly from her. His hands were reaching for her as if they’d always done so. When he found her, she stiffened, resisted, then melted so quickly that it was nearly impossible to tell one mood from the next. She smelled of the sea and tasted of innocence, a combination of mystery and sweetness that drove him mad.
Forgetting everything but her, he drew her toward the bed and fulfillment.
“No.” Liz pushed against him, fighting to bring herself back. They were in her daughter’s room. “Jonas, this is wrong.”
He took her by the shoulders. “Damn it, it may be the only thing that’s right.”
She shook her head, and though unsteady, backed away. His eyes weren’t cold now. A woman might dream of having a man look at her with such fire and need. A woman might toss all caution aside if only to have a man want her with such turbulent desire. She couldn’t.
“Not for me. I don’t want this, Jonas.” She reached up to push back her hair. “I don’t want to feel like this.”
He took her hand before she could back away. His head was swimming. There had been no other time, no other place, no other woman that had come together to make him ache. “Why?”
“I don’t make the same mistake twice.”
“This is now, Liz.”
“And it’s my life.” She took a long, cleansing breath and found she could face him squarely. “I’ll go with you to Acapulco because the sooner you have what you want, the sooner you’ll go.” She gripped her hands together tightly, the only outward sign that she was fighting herself. “You know Moralas will have us followed.”
He had his own battles to fight. “I’ll deal with that.”
Liz nodded because she was sure he would. “Do what you have to do. I’ll make arrangements for Luis to take over the shop for a day or two.”
When she left him alone, Jonas closed his hands over the key again. It would open a lock, he thought. But there was another lock that mystified and frustrated him. Idly, he picked up the bear Liz had left on the bed. He looked from it to the key in his hand. Somehow he’d have to find a way to bring them together.
6
Acapulco wasn’t the Mexico Liz understood and loved. It wasn’t the Mexico she’d fled to a decade before, nor where she’d made her home. It was sophisticated and ultra modern with spiraling high-rise hotels crowded together and gleaming in tropical sunlight. It was swimming pools and trendy shops. Perhaps it was the oldest resort in Mexico, and boasted countless restaurants and nightclubs, but Liz preferred the quietly rural atmosphere of her own island.
Still she had to admit there was something awesome about the city, cupped in the mountains and kissed by a magnificent bay. She’d lived all her life in flat land, from Houston to Cozumel. The mountains made everything else seem smaller, and somehow protected. Over the water, colorful parachutes floated, allowing the adventurous a bird’s-eye view and a stunning ride. She wondered fleetingly if skimming through the sky would be as liberating as skimming through the water.
The streets were crowded and noisy, exciting in their own way. It occurred to her that she’d seen more people in the hour since they’d landed at the airport than she might in a week on Cozumel. Liz stepped out of the cab and wondered if she’d have time to check out any of the dive shops.
Jonas had chosen the hotel methodically. It was luxuriously expensive—just Jerry’s style. The villas overlooked the Pacific and were built directly into the mountainside. Jonas took a suite, pocketed the key and left the luggage to the bellman.
Liz followed him out onto the street. True, she hadn’t come to enjoy herself, but a look at their rooms and a bite of lunch didn’t seem so much to ask. Jonas was already climbing into a cab. “I don’t suppose you’d considered making that a request.”
He gave her a brief look as she slammed the cab door. “No.” After giving the driver their direction, Jonas settled back. He could understand Jerry drifting to Acapulco, with its jet-set flavor, frantic nightlife and touches of luxury. When Jerry landed in a place for more than a day, it was a city that had the atmosphere of New York, London, Chicago. Jerry had never been interested in the rustic, serene atmosphere of a spot like Cozumel. So since he’d gone there, stayed there, he’d had a purpose. In Acapulco, Jonas would find out what it was.
As to the woman beside him, he didn’t have a clue. Was she caught up in the circumstances formed before they’d ever met, or was he dragging her in deeper than he had a right to? She sat beside him, silent and a little sulky. Probably thinking about her shop, Jonas decided, and wished he could send her safely back to it. He wished he could turn around, go back to the villa and make love with her until they were both sated.
She shouldn’t have appealed to him at all. She wasn’t witty, flawlessly polished or classically beautiful. But she did appeal to him, so much so that he was spending his nights awake and restless, and his days on the edge of frustration. He wanted her, wanted to fully explore the tastes of passion she’d given him. He wanted to arouse her until she couldn’t think of accounts or customers or schedules. Perhaps it was a matter of wielding power—he could no longer be sure. But mostly, inexplicably, he wanted to erase the memory of how she’d looked when he’d walked into her daughter’s room and found her clutching a stuffed bear.