Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 05]

by Under the Wire

  And then he was combating something that snagged at his legs. Grabbed at his feet.

  Panic hit before understanding, and with it an adrenaline spike that revived him. The Tipitapa was home to any number of night stalkers—including the only freshwater sharks in the world. And if the bull sharks didn’t get him, there was a good chance a bushmaster would. He’d never tangled with a pit viper but knew that one venomous bite from the monster snake could kill a man in minutes. He prayed to God he wouldn’t have to fight the snake now. It was a battle he could never win.

  He kicked for his life and managed only to become more entangled. And that’s when it hit him. Brush. He’d hit a patch of brush. Which could mean a downed tree.

  Which meant shoreline.

  Tree branches, not a shark or a snake, had latched on to his pant legs and ended his free float down the river.

  He was saved. And yet this saving grace could be the death of him as the current and the brush sucked him under one more time.

  One more time, Manny surfaced, his lungs screaming for oxygen, his head pounding from the pressure. He had to figure out a way to break free, yet use the tree to keep him from floating away or sucking him under again. Each time he’d gone down, it had become harder to come up. He strongly suspected he had very few resurrections left in him.

  Drawing on the last of his reservoir of strength, he dug deep and threw a leg over what felt like a stout arm of the tree. The serrated rip of tearing fabric blended with the sounds of the rushing river and his panting breath. When he felt a connection, he clamped his thighs together like a vise and heaved his weight into righting himself.

  He fell face-first on the log, teetered like a tightrope walker as his St. Christopher medal clinked softly against it. Chest heaving, he used his chin, his shoulders, his forehead; he levered himself upright. The river waked around his hips, strong and determined to knock him from his perch.

  But he hung on.

  Gasping for breath. Fighting the pain that screamed through his arm and head. Pain that kept him clinging to consciousness. And conviction.

  No way was he going back into that spin cycle. This, he understood, was his last chance. If he fell back into the river, he was done for and Poveda would have won. That fact, above all, kept Manny going.

  He shook his head. The deluge of pain cleared the cobwebs. Battling for balance, he straddled the tree trunk and fought to orient himself to his position. The night was dark, but a sliver of moonlight skimmed the rippling water. Beyond, he could make out the riverbank. See the roots of the downed madrono tree that held him, the base of its trunk disappearing into the water some thirty feet away.

  Thirty feet that separated him from drowning.

  On a bracing breath, he leaned back, just far enough so he could reach the tree with his hands and gain a measure of balance. Now, if he could only feel his hands.

  Inch by cautious inch, he pushed forward, his eyes on the bank, his mind blank of anything but reaching his goal. He didn’t think of the pain. He didn’t think about falling. He didn’t think about the clammy night air that cooled his bare, wet skin and made him shiver. Didn’t think about the dizzying rush of water beneath him or the light-headedness that made him nauseous.

  Most of all, he didn’t think about Lily. To think of her would make him weak. To think of her betrayal would make him want to die.

  So he pressed forward at a snail’s pace. It felt like years. A century passed as mosquitoes bit him incessantly and night creatures slithered along the surface and brushed against his bare feet.

  Finally, his toes touched mud.

  Gracias a Dios.

  Relief ran as deep as the night. He was utterly exhausted, barely conscious. Muscle memory and guts propelled him as he threw his leg over the log—and sank up to his chest in thick, muddy water and muck.

  He sucked in a wheezing breath when the cool water rushed over the inside of his thighs that had been scraped raw from grating across the madrono bark. His arm throbbed and burned like someone had nailed him with a branding iron. His head pounded.

  He had no feeling in his hands. No conception of time as he half-stumbled, half-crawled his way out of the water. Digging with his chin, his shoulders…knees, toes, whatever it took…he worked his way up the steep, muddy bank.

  Where he collapsed on the ground. Facedown. Covered in muck. The religious medal hanging from his neck slapped him in the face when he dropped.

  Darkness sucked him under like the river. He passed out cold—passed out deep. And alone with his tormented body and mind, he dreamed fitful dreams of Lily.

  Of the first time he’d seen her beautiful, treacherous face.

  CHAPTER 2

  Managua, Nicaragua, residence of Gen. Jorge Poveda, nine days earlier, July 1

  Lily needed air. And she needed it now. Even more, she needed to get out of this crowd.

  It wasn’t proper. It wasn’t politically correct, but Lily Campora couldn’t take another second of the oh-so-polite, oh-so-porous posturing of the thirty or so guests milling about inside Gen. Jorge Poveda’s garishly opulent home.

  She no longer cared that she represented her Doctors Without Borders medical team stationed here in Managua. It no longer mattered that her attendance at this sham of a celebration was the equivalent of a mandate issued by the grandiose military leader of Nicaragua’s communist Sandinista regime. She could no longer tolerate the boorish general’s subtle but aggressive attempts to seduce her.

  She abhorred Poveda, despised all he stood for, and if she didn’t get away from him soon she was going to do or say something she’d regret. Something that, in this war-torn country, could place her and her DWB team in a volatile and dangerous situation.

  So she left. Slipped silently out the double French doors and onto the terrace where she could be alone in the humid Central American night.

  Alone to think. Alone to grieve over news she’d barely had time to absorb. To deal with the guilt that had been carving on her conscience all evening like a rusty knife.

  Kara Kaiser was dead.

  Lily still couldn’t believe it.

  The night was warm and sultry. The soft breeze was scented of the bougainvillea-draped terrace and of sea salt from the southernmost waters of the North Pacific. Yet a chill cut to the bone when she thought back to the horrible news she’d received only minutes before she’d had to leave for this grueling dinner party.

  Kara was dead.

  A tear fell—the first Lily had let herself shed—as she stood at the ornately crafted concrete rail surrounding the stone terrace. She stared without seeing at the lush tropical gardens beyond and thought back to the moment this afternoon when Dr. Russell Davis, her DWB team’s head surgeon, had come to the tent she had shared with Kara at the clinic compound.

  One look at his eyes and Lily had known something terrible had happened. The strain on Russ’s face foreshadowed news that could only be grim.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  He’d sat down on Lily’s cot; his legs had just sort of folded, like the weight he carried was too much to bear.

  A terrified trepidation had filled Lily’s chest as she waited for Russ to gather himself.

  “We lost Kara,” he finally said, looking weary and old for someone so vibrant and young.

  No soft soap. No buffer to ease the way.

  We lost Kara.

  “Oh God.”

  Russ had buried his head in his hands. “They were evacuating an injured child from Jinotega to Managua. The pilot radioed that he was experiencing engine trouble. That was at noon. We didn’t hear anything more until a few minutes ago. A search party found the bird.

  “Jesus, Lily.” Tears had misted the generally unflappable doctor’s eyes when he looked up at her. “No one survived the crash.”

  Lily’s heart had stopped. So had her world. Kara Kaiser, like Lily, was one of six nurses on the team who had worked side by side in the fetid, draining heat for the past six months. Because Lily
had drawn the short straw and gotten herself delegated to represent the team at this damn gathering tonight, Kara had taken Lily’s run in the chopper today.

  Muffled laughter bled outside to the terrace. Lily touched trembling fingertips to her lips, wishing she were anywhere but here. Each month, the pompous general bestowed platitudes and long-winded speeches, and personally decorated “heroes” for the benefit of the invited press. Each month, one of the DWB team members dutifully attended at Poveda’s request. Playing his nasty game lessened the chances of their visas being arbitrarily revoked, which would force the team to leave before their work with the mudslide victims of Nicaragua was done.

  Before their work was done.

  Kara’s work was done.

  Kara’s life was over.

  Tears trickled down Lily’s face. Why had this happened? Why was there so much suffering—not just here but all over the world? And why, at twenty-eight, did Lily feel like an old and used-up soul?

  She should have been dead, not Kara, who was barely twenty-two and wide-eyed, her spirit not yet sullied by the grim reality of life.

  Guilt, crushing and relentless, weighed like lead.

  Grief, absolute and consuming, suffocated her.

  And heaped over it all was the resounding awareness of her own mortality. Like Kara’s, Lily’s life could be over in a heartbeat. And what would Lily have to show for it? A bad, childless marriage that had ended over a year ago after lasting five years too long. A career where she saw more pain and suffering than the bandages she regularly applied could heal. An existence void of anything but work.

  God, she was tired. She braced the flat of her palms on the terrace rail. Regret, for a life that had begun with so much promise but had digressed to one tragic scene of poverty, disease and despair after another, drained her of what spirit she had left.

  She felt empty. Empty and wholly, achingly alone.

  “Senorita.”

  Startled, she looked over her shoulder. A young soldier approached her, his smile tentative as if he were afraid she might run.

  She thought about it. About running, not necessarily from him, but from her life. The weight of it. The pain of it. The recurrent cycle of sameness.

  But then she looked into his eyes. And it struck her. Here was something different. Here was someone different.

  “It is a beautiful night, yes?” he asked in a wonderfully accented English that, combined with his equally beautiful presence, both intrigued and anchored her where she stood.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Beautiful.”

  Before barely an hour passed, and against everything Lily stood for, she agreed to much, much more.

  Her name was Lily. Lily Campora. Stunning. Beautiful. American. And before the night was over, Manny was determined to make her smile for him…perhaps even more than smile.

  All evening, as he’d endured Gen. Poveda’s “celebration” dinner, Manny had been waiting for his chance to be alone with her. When he saw her slip quietly outside of Poveda’s grandiose and palatial house, Manny waited a few minutes, then followed her out to the secluded terrace.

  As she had when he’d first set eyes on her, she took his breath away.

  “Senorita.” He approached her tentatively, afraid she might be startled when he walked up behind her. “It is a beautiful night, yes?”

  Her head came up. She sniffed delicately and wiped the back of her hand over her cheek before glancing over her shoulder at him. “Beautiful,” she agreed, and looked away.

  Then she walked away. Not far. Only a few steps down the terrace railing where pink and white bougainvillea twined and clung. Still, it was far enough to let Manny know she did not welcome company.

  The gesture was small deterrent for a man on a mission. Even before he had found her out here alone with the weight of tears glimmering on lashes as dark and thick as the heavy fall of black hair tumbling down her back, he’d recognized the sorrow and despair etched in her eyes. Eyes the color of a midnight sky and set in the most extraordinary face—a face that had mesmerized him through each of the five dinner courses.

  Hers was an angel’s face—porcelain skin, delicate brows, Cupid’s-bow lips that had rarely tipped into a smile all evening. Even then those smiles had been forced. Yes, she had an angel’s face. So appropriate, because Manny knew that she was an angel. An angel of mercy who was being honored tonight for her service with her American DWB medical team. Just as he was being honored by the Sandinista government for his bravery as a soldier.

  The bitterness he felt over that dubious honor and the hatred he felt for Poveda and all he stood for were overshadowed in this moment by his concern for the beautiful American.

  So he ignored her subtle attempt to get rid of him. He’d waited all night for a chance to get her alone. He was going to take full advantage. “It is too beautiful a night to spend alone and unhappy, would you agree?”

  She was quiet for a time, then turned to face him with a look that relayed controlled patience. “You’re very kind—”

  “But,” he preempted, knowing she was about to launch another dismissal, “you would much prefer it if I left you alone.”

  She tilted her head, studied him with more tolerance than interest, then reluctantly glanced at the emblem on his uniform. “Lieutenant, is it?”

  He bowed, clicked his heels together in an exaggerated show of military élan. “At your disposal, Senorita Campora.”

  To the tilt of her head she added a slight narrowing of her eyes. “You know my name.”

  “I made it a point to, yes.”

  Her back stiffened marginally. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.”

  “Oh no, senorita, it is I who am at a disadvantage. Your beauty has…how do you say in English?” He frowned, then flashed his most guileless grin. “Ah…it comes to me. Your beauty has left me without speech.”

  One corner of her beautiful mouth tipped up into an almost smile. She found him amusing—perhaps even ridiculous. That was fine. He would take her smiles however he could get them.

  “Speechless?” She shook her head. “That’s a hard sell, Lieutenant, considering you haven’t stopped talking since you walked out here.”

  “This is true,” he admitted, smiling with her. He lifted a hand, a show of agreement. “Maybe my words, they were not so right. My English sometimes…is not so good.” His English was fine, but pretending otherwise better suited his purpose tonight. “Maybe ‘senseless’ is the term I am searching for.”

  Another slow, soft smile had Manny’s heart swelling—along with another body part that had been on the verge of response since he first saw her.

  “Tell me,” she continued, her interest piqued even though he could see that she was hesitant to allow herself this small curiosity. “How does one so young become such an accomplished flirt? And a lieutenant to boot.”

  “Flirt?” He pressed a hand to his chest, feigning innocence and shock, then negating both with a self-deprecating grin. “But no. I only meant to make you smile. Tears on such a beautiful woman…no. It is not right. And I am not so young as you might think,” he assured her with a slight bow. “Manolo Ortega. And I’m very pleased to finally meet you.”

  Again, she was tentative, but he knew he held her interest when she allowed herself another question. “Finally?”

  “It has been an eternity since I first saw you at the far end of the table at dinner.”

  She shook her head with a “give me a break” roll of her expressive eyes. “Let’s amend that to ‘very accomplished flirt.’”

  Manny took a chance and walked closer; he leaned an elbow on the concrete rail, plucked a flower from a bougainvillea vine, and grinned up at her. “You misinterpret my intentions.”

  “Do I?”

  He touched the pink petals of the flower to her bare shoulder, let it trail slowly down her arm, then drop away when she stiffened. “It is just that you are so sad. And now, no matter how hard I try to make you happy, for some reason y
ou don’t feel you deserve to be. And that knowledge hurts my heart.”

  He offered her the flower.

  Her eyes softened, misted over, before she accepted his gift. “Okay. So maybe you’re not so young after all.”

  Her tears weren’t the only giveaway. The quiet regret in her words also told him that he’d been right. She was desperately unhappy—which made him more resolved than ever to make her forget that pain.

  And yes, he would make her forget, because about one thing she was correct. He was an accomplished flirt. He was also a very determined man.

  “So, Lily, what should we do with you, do you think?”

  She was still guarded, but she turned to face him again, leaning a slim hip against the terrace rail. “We?”

  “But yes. In my experience,” he said, intrigued by the play of moonlight over her ivory skin and by the lovely curve where her neck met her shoulder, “two make things so much better than one, alone. Especially on a night like this. For instance, have you even noticed the stars?”

  She breathed in the flower, glanced guiltily at the sky, then back at him. “Actually…no.”

  “Well then, you see? It was meant to be. What you do not appreciate by yourself, I can help you enjoy. Now you must look again. Up, up,” he insisted when he was met with an impatient sigh. “I will point out what you have missed out here on your own.”

  If for no other reason than to placate him, she tipped her head back.

  “Amazing, is it not?”

  She gave a reluctant nod. “Yes. It’s quite beautiful.”

  “Do you have skies like this in America, Lily? Ink black and glittering with brilliant prisms of light?”

  “We do, yes,” she said after a moment, then made an admission that seemed to surprise her. “But it’s been a long time since I’ve taken time to stargaze.”