by Linda Bond
“Antonio, your girlfriend is ill.” The woman in the tight pants continued to hold on to her.
Girlfriend? Is that what his family thought?
Antonio glanced her way, his mouth drawing down. “Esmeralda, can you help her? She has cuts on her legs that need to be tended to.”
So he had noticed.
“I need to go inside.” He stalked off, leaving her in the arms of a woman she didn’t know.
A slow burn of annoyance fired in Rebecca’s belly. “Dallas, follow Antonio. He knows why we’re here.” Screw him if he got mad.
“My name is Esmeralda. I am the second cousin of Antonio.” The woman next to her glanced at her as if she could read her mind. “Do not worry. Antonio is not angry with you. Most men don’t deal with emotions well.” Esmeralda shrugged. “I will help you, and you help me, si?” Then she pulled Rebecca down the narrow alley between the two homes.
Rebecca stumbled along, past windows with faded shutters open to the air. The run-down homes were packed together. One neighbor could probably see and smell what another cooked for breakfast. She tripped over a rock protruding from the weed-wrecked lawn and barked out a cry.
“Hurry.” Esmeralda jerked on her wrist, forcing her to pick up the pace. “Maria is in the back bedroom.” As they rounded a corner at the end of the house, Esmeralda pointed to open doors leading back into the home. “Listen.” She placed a finger to her lips.
Dallas bolted past them, scattering three noisy piglets. “Holy three little pigs. Where’s the big bad wolf?” Video camera still in his hands, he slipped quietly into the open doorway. He looked back and winked, then disappeared from her view.
“I don’t hear anything, Esmeralda.” Except the squealing pigs.
“Sometimes there is meaning in the silence, no?”
Still a bit dizzy, Rebecca limped forward, grabbing on to the doorframe. Ouch. The palms of her hands still stung with road rash from her kidnapping. Her nose twitched at the unusual scent within the home. Drawn into the room by some silent, invisible energy, her gaze landed immediately on a skinny, worn-looking woman sitting on a bed next to Antonio. The young woman wasn’t looking at him, though. Instead, she kept smoothing out a red cotton shirt lying across her lap. The shirt looked like it would fit a teenager, but the color had faded, and it was wrinkled. The woman was rubbing it with what looked like reverence.
Antonio sat close to her, but the two didn’t touch. His gaze was also anchored on that little red shirt. Rebecca swore his bottom lip trembled. She froze in the doorway, embarrassed to be gawking at the big man’s vulnerability.
“Do you remember this shirt?” The woman had to be Antonio’s sister, Maria. She spoke in Spanish. She had a scratchy voice and thin, bony fingers, which shook as they continued to caress the red top.
“No,” his reply, barely a whisper.
“This is the shirt you wore the day before you were sent to America. I took it out of your room and have kept it here under my pillow ever since.” She picked up the shirt and gently held it against her cheek. “For a while it still smelled like you. The scent made me less sad and more certain you weren’t abandoning me forever.”
A deep, guttural sound erupted from Antonio, and he looked away from Maria and his old shirt.
Rebecca’s own chest hurt at the raw sentiment.
“It’s okay, Antonio. You can help me exchange this memory for many new ones.” His sister reached out and placed her thin hand on Antonio’s back. “I want a new start, far away from here.”
When he turned back toward Maria, his cheeks were wet, and the pain of more than a decade of guilt could be seen in his furrowed brow and tightly pressed lips. “I would have come sooner,” he groaned.
“Tony, if not for this…” She laid the shirt back down on her lap and caressed it again. “If not for this shirt, the money you’ve sent monthly, and your promises to return in person, I would have given up thinking about a future a long time ago.”
Antonio sent money every month! He’d been supporting this family for ten years?
And she hadn’t heard a word, much less seen a dollar, from her father in all that time. In all fairness, maybe her dad hadn’t been able to send help?
Rebecca shuddered, feeling hurt and guilty at the same time, like a vulture circling over the heads of two wounded souls. She caught Dallas looking at her and reluctantly gestured for him to continue shooting. If the sincerity of this emotional moment translated onto video, the world would better understand what a revolution and a dictator had done to so many families. How the fallout continued even today. And she wouldn’t have to write one word.
“The clothes Tonito wears are the gifts you send regularly. They always fit, Antonio, always. I’ve been amazed at how well you’ve taken care of us from so far away. I’ve never doubted your love or commitment.”
Wow. How ironic that Antonio took such care of his sister and her Tonito even though he’d never met the boy, and her father, if still alive, hadn’t made one effort to reach out and see if she needed anything. But she had no idea what her father’s life had been like. What if he’d been ill, or in jail? If she’d known he was alive sooner, she would have reached out herself to find out.
She turned away from the touching scene in the bedroom, suddenly feeling lonely, although surrounded by people. A thought crept into her head. She tried to flush it out. But not before it resonated deep within her.
Antonio would make a good husband and father.
Pedro bolted past her, slamming her backward into the doorframe. “The CDR is coming.”
Rebecca jumped to get out of the way in case someone else was following him.
Maria looked up, eyes widening. “Angel?”
“Si.” Pedro stopped midroom, staring at Dallas and his camera.
“Angel always works at this time.” Maria’s hand flew up to cover her heart.
“He knows.” Antonio hit the bed with a balled-up fist.
Maria bounced away from him.
Her brother eyed her. “I told you not to tell anyone else, especially your fiancé.”
“I didn’t tell him.” Flinching, the sister scooted farther down the bed, glancing at the door.
“We have to leave now,” Antonio ordered.
Old, bossy Antonio had returned.
“You,” Maria whispered, pointing at him. “You have to go.”
“Not without you.”
She shook her head, her gaze darting around the room. “Angel will know if I’m not here. He’ll hunt us down.”
“He knows anyway. You’re coming with me, Maria.” Antonio grabbed her wrist. “I won’t leave without you and Tonito.”
“No.” Maria pulled away from him, blinking back tears. “Angel doesn’t know for sure you’re here unless he catches you. And if he does, he’ll kill you and arrest all the others.”
“Wait a minute. Arrest us?” Dallas dropped his camera, letting it sway at his side. “I’ve always wanted to visit Guantanamo Bay, but not to live with the al-Qaeda brothers.”
He may have been delivering a joke, but the look on Dallas’s face told Rebecca he was about to freak.
First, they were both kidnapped at gunpoint. Now maybe they’d be arrested?
“I think…”
“If we leave now,” Antonio cut Dallas off, “we can outrun the bastard.”
“If Angel catches us, he’ll punish me by separating me from Tonito.” Maria’s ashen face froze with fear.
Glancing around the room, Rebecca realized Maria’s son must still be up front. Not good.
“He’s done it before,” Maria whispered.
Antonio’s face paled. “We’ll go.”
Rebecca pictured little Tonito playing with his toy car, maybe even showing it to the man Angel, telling him about the Americano who had just given it to him. Her stomach flip-flopped. They were screwed.
“Go to Tio Juan’s farm.” Maria pointed toward Esmeralda. “She can take you.”
“I remembe
r Johnny’s farm.”
“I’ll meet you there, I promise.” Maria sprang off the bed, passing Pedro and Rebecca to stand in the center of the hall. “Johnny will hide you. I’ll be there, with Tonito, tomorrow.” Her anxious glance found Antonio. “I promise. Angel works all day tomorrow.”
“Angel is coming inside,” an unknown voice shouted down the hallway.
“Esmeralda, take them to the bike in the back. Don’t start it. You’ll have to walk it out the side.”
“Down that skinny alleyway?” Rebecca knew they’d get caught if they had to go back out to the main street. They’d be seen for sure.
“That’s right.” Esmeralda pulled on her hand, jerking her out of the room.
Antonio blocked Maria’s escape. “You better come tomorrow, Maria. If I have to come back here to get you, and Angel’s here, I’ll kill the son of a bitch. As God is my witness.”
Seeing the red in Antonio’s cheeks and sensing his anger bubbling out of control, Rebecca grabbed his arm. “Let’s go.” They needed to leave. She wasn’t going to get arrested. Not for him, not for his sister, not for some damn cause that had never been her own. “Now, or we’re leaving without you.” But her fake threat didn’t sound convincing, even to her own ears. Where would she and Dallas go? How would they get back to America? In that instant, Rebecca realized she had put her entire life in this angry, bitter stranger’s hands, and today his judgment was clouded by emotions he’d kept bottled up for years.
Dallas angled past her. “I’m with you. Let’s go!”
“You need to stay.” Antonio’s arm shot out, blocking Dallas’s retreat.
“What?” Rebecca jumped in. “Leave him alone. My photographer is not staying.”
“His job is to document what’s going on here. And only two can ride on the bike.”
“Oh my God.” Antonio was serious. Her heart felt as if it had just dropped into her stomach.
Facing her now, his cheeks flushed, Antonio tried to reason with her. “Listen, Dallas can stay here. Angel doesn’t know him. He can be Esmeralda’s new boyfriend.” Then, dismissing her concern by turning his back on her, Antonio dropped his arm but still blocked Dallas’s path with his large frame. “Stay, and use that undercover camera in your backpack to prove what kind of man Angel is. He abuses my sister.” Antonio leaned into Dallas, who shuffled back, almost stumbling over his own slow feet in an effort to retreat. “I want any violence documented on video.”
“Look, dude.” Dallas tilted his head in that way that said I’ve made up my mind. “You can do what you want, but I want out.”
Bile rose into Rebecca’s throat. “Antonio, it’s too dangerous.” She wasn’t leaving Dallas here.
Turning slowly, Antonio drilled her with that knowing stare of his. “You want to stay and shoot the video instead?”
She froze.
“Well, Rebecca, what’s your answer? You have less than a second to decide.”
“I’ll stay.” What else could she do? Dallas was here because of her.
“No, no, Becca. You go. Angel, or whatever his name is, is less likely to mess with this big black man. I’ve got this. Just come back for me, you hear?”
She threw her arms around Dallas, squeezing him despite his bulky camera. “I promise.”
She’d be back for her friend.
No matter what.
She glanced over at Antonio.
No matter who might try to stop her.
Chapter Seven
As she roared up to the Morro Castle, a picturesque fortress guarding the entrance to Havana bay, dust from the road stuck to Rebecca’s damp skin. Antonio rode with a lead foot the whole fifty-minute drive in from the country, maybe due to his adrenaline-fueled personality, or maybe in response to their close call with that government watchdog guy. Either way, Antonio’s need for speed had left her no choice but to keep her arms wrapped tightly around his middle.
His lean, well-defined middle.
She’d been praying silently the whole time that they’d make it to Johnny’s farm without getting busted by the Cuban police.
Sun-driven heat smacked her cheeks as they buzzed down the road. Antonio hadn’t said a word the whole way. Not that she would have been able to hear him from the back of this beat-up motorcycle. The old machine roared, and the wind kept whipping up a sound barrier.
Acid churned in her stomach, her discomfort increasing with each new bump in the road. She prayed again they didn’t get pulled over. Did Cuba even have speed limits? No signs, and the few 1950-looking cars they’d passed on the road didn’t seem to be going very fast. They’d ripped by all of them.
Antonio took a sudden turn to the right, squealing into a dusty parking lot. She gripped his center, his midsection hardening as he clenched his muscles. She couldn’t help but marvel at how little body fat he had on him, another sign of his disciplined nature.
She gripped his abs tighter as he spun the bike in a circle. The cycle’s back wheel spit up muck and then fell silent.
“So much for trying not to draw attention to us.” Wow, how his mood had changed. Where was the gentle, loving man who’d dropped to his knees and cradled his grandmother in his arms? What was up with this sudden overdose of testosterone? “Okay, I’ll ask. Why are we here?” She glanced around the empty parking lot. An abandoned overgrown lot was to her left; that freaking huge castle was on her right. “Obviously, this isn’t your uncle’s farm.”
“I want to show you something.” Antonio flipped the bike’s stand down, motioning for her to get off.
At least he held out a hand to help her. “Show me what? The castle?” She put her fingers in his, and a spark shot between them.
He dropped her hand as soon as her feet hit the ground. “Havana.” He whispered the word like the name of a lover.
“We just drove through Havana.” But he’d been speeding like a bat out of hell, so she saw nothing but the expressway. They’d taken a bypass around the bay, she assumed to get to Johnny’s farm, but after exiting a tunnel, the city had vanished, replaced by this fortress and this abandoned neighborhood.
“You haven’t seen Havana this way.”
“Should we really be sightseeing right now?”
He ignored her.
Sighing, she decided against arguing with him. He’d been through a very emotional reunion. Apparently, his compassionate and tolerant mood had evaporated somewhere between Güira de Melena and Havana. She pulled her backpack off her back and dug in for the GoPro camera Antonio had packed for her. “Okay, let’s go.” Anything to get away from the heat his body had been putting off.
And the effect that was having on her.
She followed him to the edge of the tall stone wall dividing the parking lot near the castle and Havana bay. Did he expect her to climb that thing? Looking up, she shaded her eyes from the blinding glare. She estimated the wall was about two feet taller than she was. She’d need help. Even in the tennis shoes she’d finally put on.
As if reading her mind, Antonio cupped his hands for her. She put her foot into his man-made step, reaching for the top of the wall. Gravel cut into both palms, still smarting from her injuries, but she strained to lift her own body weight. Her arms wobbled, and her left elbow started to give out, but with a push from Antonio, she hoisted herself to the top.
He handed her the GoPro camera, and she reached out to help him, but he jumped, scaling the wall like Spider-Man. Good thing, since her hands were sweaty and slippery, and one of her injured palms was starting to bleed again.
“Turn around.” His voice was deep and breathy, and she wondered if it was from the burst of energy it took for him to leap up this high, or from his intense feelings for this forbidden city. His black eyes bored into hers with the same kind of heat his body had been transferring the whole ride over here.
Inhaling, she did as he requested, turning toward the city, mostly to hide from his probing gaze, which made her center all shaky. The view of Havana from across Havana bay
hit her full force, pushing the air out of her lungs in one long whoosh.
She’d never in her life seen a skyline quite like this, except maybe in Miami. “Oh my God. It’s beautiful.” The blazing July sun bathed the city in the most perfect light, as if she’d thrown up big TV reflectors and directed sunshine right onto the city’s tallest buildings. Against the brilliant blue sea, the white buildings stood tall and proud, and the city seemed to stretch on forever, looking very much like a thriving resort destination. “I…I…” Her heart fluttered like baby butterfly wings. “I didn’t expect this.”
“Why not?”
From this distance, the city looked so pretty and polished, like it belonged on the front of a tourism brochure. But she knew better. “I’ve heard stories of how Havana continues to rot. That it’s crumbling away.” The eclectic mixture of architecture was dying because no one had the money to take care of it. Not even the almighty government. From across the bay, she could make out the diversity of the city. Two- and three-story neoclassical buildings. Art deco high-rises like the ones in South Beach, and the real-life castle on her right. It would be a shame to let such a unique city die.
“Beauty in decay.” Antonio moved up behind her, so close her body flooded with warmth.
The top of the wall was so narrow, she was afraid to move for fear she’d touch him. As it was, her nerves were on high alert. “Beauty in decay. That’s what you see right now?”
“From here”—his breath tickled the hair above her left ear—“what I see is perfection.”
She shivered. Was he still talking about the city? She held her breath, afraid to exhale. She didn’t want to set off another jolt of electricity. The charge might send her off the wall and face-first into Havana bay.
“I wanted you to see your birthplace from here first to fully appreciate its potential. Once you get up close, you’ll remember Havana in another light. But from here, you can be touched by its rare exquisiteness and limitless potential.”
Antonio was quite well-spoken for a rebel who hung out in the Everglades. “You sound like a man in love.”