I spotted President Moreno, Susan, and the chubby goon from the condo at exactly the same time. Moreno was in a tuxedo, not much taller than me, and slender. Susan and the goon followed him by a few steps. I turned away so they wouldn't see my face. They were only a few steps behind him and I had to act fast.
Gabriela looked at me like I had gone mad when I walked up quickly to Moreno.
He sensed me approaching, and when he turned toward me I was struck by how warm his brown eyes were. Gray hair and more than a few wrinkles on his face showed that he was not a young man, but he looked energetic and kind. He smiled.
I carefully recited the speech, in Spanish, that I had practiced in the car with Teresa: "President Moreno, you are in danger. Please believe me."
His smile vanished at the same time Susan grabbed my shoulder, having realized that I was not a random anonymous server. Her goon was two steps further back, with Susan's body blocking his access to me. I had not seen the taller one, and it worried me not to know where he was.
"Believe me, por favor," I repeated as I yanked away from Susan, positioning myself between Moreno and the two of them. Three guards who had been ahead of Moreno turned toward us. I had no idea whether they were with Susan.
Part two of my speech was in English, and I shouted it: "They are going to kill President Moreno!"
The dull hum of conversation was shattered by several shrieks from guests. Gabriela gasped and nearly dropped a pitcher of water.
Two of the guards I did not recognize immediately flanked Moreno and hustled him back toward the door. They were followed by all of the dignitaries, who had become surrounded by the parade of security, including Susan and the chubby goon. Another guard grabbed me, pulling my arms behind my back with one beefy hand and putting his other arm around my neck.
In all of the thinking I had done since our visit from Susan and her goons earlier in the day, the question I had struggled most with was whether Susan was part of the assassination plan. There was no real evidence one way or the other. She knew about the money, but could have easily heard about it from the FBI instead of the cartel. Still, the way she had said, "It's show time" and the way the one goon had snickered, nearly a snarl, actually, made me feel like she was involved with more than just the money.
"Don't let that woman near him," I yelled, which was not easy with a supersized arm against my throat. "She's going to kill him!"
All hell broke loose. The chubby goon moved toward Moreno, who was not yet to the door. I kicked my guard in the knee and he loosened his grip just enough that I slipped out. I ran to Moreno and tackled him to the floor at the same time Susan's goon drew his weapon.
Of course, all the security people had drawn guns at this point. The chubby guy had chosen a different weapon.
I was lying on top of Moreno. When I looked down, his face was three shades whiter than it had been two minutes earlier. When I looked up, I saw a long, silver stiletto moving toward us. I screamed and rolled us both away until I was back on top, glad that Moreno was so small. The goon moved toward us and I started to roll again. The blade slashed through the air and I felt a pain in my right arm. If I kept rolling, Moreno's back would be exposed to the stiletto. I stopped and screamed again, this time yelling "Knife!" just as two guards grabbed the chubby guy by both arms, forcing him to drop the weapon and wrestling him to the ground. Bright lights flashed in the room, but I barely noticed.
"Susan! Don't let her get away! She's with him!" I shouted without getting off Moreno. I still hadn't seen the taller goon.
Moreno struggled underneath me. I repeated my speech, not knowing enough Spanish to say anything else.
"I speak English," he said, and I would have felt like an idiot if I hadn't just saved his life.
"There is another man," I said. "I don't know where he is. Stay down."
I lifted my head and looked left, then right. That's when I saw him. The taller goon stood about eight feet away, by table ten, and was pointing a gun at us.
The next three things happened at the same time. Somebody shouted "Gun," I put my head down to cover Moreno better, and a gunshot rang out.
I kept my head down for a minute. “Are you all right, sir?” I asked the Central American president lying under me. He paused, and it occurred to me that “all right” was a relative term, given the circumstances. “I mean, are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not hurt. I am fine.” He was remarkably calm. I hadn't felt anything, either, other than the stiletto blade in my arm. I stayed on top of him anyway, until I heard a strangely familiar voice say, "It's over. You can get up."
As I rolled off, I saw that the voice belonged to Charlie. He stood over the taller goon, who was lying on the floor, not moving. A gun lay nearby, and Charlie picked it up.
"Nice to see you again, too," he grinned as he holstered his own gun and pulled me up by my good arm. Two other guards helped President Moreno to his feet.
"Sorry about that, sir," one of the guards said.
Moreno smiled at me, this time with a twinkle in his eye. "It was not so unpleasant."
23
The guests hadn't had time to leave the room, although quite a few people started moving toward the main doors once order was restored. Reporters, on the scene to cover a boring state dinner, swarmed toward me. Charlie cut in front to stop the media and guided me into the room behind the carpeted door.
Paramedics were already there. They were giving oxygen to one of the VIPs. Another paramedic tore open my sleeve. The stiletto had pierced my tricep and blood was running down my arm. So much for the company shirt. Although I had felt the cut at first, it did not really start to throb until the EMT starting dabbing at it. She was very young, with spiky blonde hair and a no-nonsense attitude. She could be my daughter, I thought, and for a minute I felt very old.
"It wasn't deep, ma'am," she was saying.
"Tina."
"Excuse me, ma'am?"
"Please, call me Tina." I laughed a little. "Ma'am makes me feel old."
The girl laughed, too. "Okay, Tina. The cut isn't deep. Really it just broke the skin, so you won't need stitches. I'm going to bandage it up and you'll want to keep the bandage on and dry for about twelve hours. Sorry, no swimming in the morning." She smiled.
Thinking about tomorrow reminded me I needed to call Teresa, which I did with my free hand. She answered before the first ring finished.
"What's going on? Are you okay? I saw a dozen police cars and four ambulances go by to the hotel!"
"I'm fine. President Moreno is fine. But Susan and those two goons are not. One of them was killed when he was shooting at us."
"At who? At you?"
"Yes, President Moreno and me. Susan's other guy had a knife and I jumped on Moreno to protect him."
"Oh my God, Tina! But he didn't hurt you, right? You said you are fine?"
"He nicked my arm a little but didn't get Moreno. It will be fine. They've already bandaged it and I'm as good as new."
"What about Susan?"
"She was arrested, along with the other goon. I'm so glad that I was here, because they were right behind Moreno. The guy with the knife would have easily gotten him."
Charlie was standing with another man and started motioning for me.
"Teresa, the police need to talk with me. I'll call you back soon."
"I'm so glad you're all right."
"Me, too."
The other man was only a couple of inches taller than me and vaguely Hispanic. Charlie introduced him as Detective Perez, but he did not wait for the detective to speak.
Who are you, exactly?" Charlie began, his eyes narrowing. I wasn't sure whether he was angry or joking. I decided to try humor.
"Just your friendly neighborhood server."
"Seriously," Charlie said, his slight scowl telling me I'd been wrong. "What in the hell are you doing here?"
I gave them the ten-minute version. I had to include Susan's visit, of course, but I made it sound like she was crazy
for thinking that I knew anything about the twenty million dollars.
"Why would she think you were aware of the money?" Now it was Detective Perez's turn. He was taking notes on a little pad he had pulled out of his suit jacket.
"She thought that was why I came. But I told her, like I told you all last night," I turned to Charlie, "that I came because of Moreno. After last night I thought that everything was going to be fine, that he would be safe because you knew about it, so I picked up my friend at the airport and we had lunch in Little Havana. She wanted to stay somewhere nicer than I had been, so we found this condo to rent, and then Susan called and came over.
"After she left, I knew that she was crooked, obviously, and there was something about the way she said, 'it's show time' that made me feel like she was involved with more than the money. My friend Shelly had already started trying to connect me with Sarah Stapleton and that came together right when I needed it to."
"That was very convenient." Detective Perez looked up from his notebook when he spoke.
"It was," I agreed. "And I have to say that it sounds too convenient to me, too. All I can tell you is that it is the truth. Check with Sarah Stapleton."
"We are," Charlie said. "Don't you worry about that." I wondered whether he was still miffed from the night before. I started getting paranoid, and realized that the paramedic had several pieces of gauze with my blood—and DNA—on them. I had been careful in the motel room with Christine, but all the cops had to find was one little hair and they would be able to say I had been there, and that I had killed her.
"I'm really exhausted and my arm hurts," I said. That was true, although the reason I mentioned my arm was to reinforce the fact that I had been injured saving the life of a head of state. "Can I go? You have my number. If there's more that you want, maybe we can talk about it in the morning?"
Perez flipped his notepad shut and nodded. "You'll be in town a few days." It was more an order than a question. He handed me his business card.
"Yes."
"I'll be in touch in the morning. Get some rest." Perez turned and walked away.
Charlie looked at me and I realized that his scowl wasn't hostility but confusion. "I still don't understand exactly what you're up to, but that was really quick thinking tonight. As close as they were to Moreno, with both the gun and the knife, he would have been gone before anyone knew what happened." As Charlie spoke his face relaxed, like he had convinced himself. He extended his right hand and reflexively I did the same. The arm movement made me wince.
"Sorry," he said. He patted my left arm in place of a handshake.
"That's okay. I'll feel better in the morning, I'm sure. The EMT said it would heal up on its own."
Charlie's eyes narrowed again, but this time he was smiling. "Get some rest. That was great work tonight."
"Thanks." As I turned to leave I was hoping that he and Detective Perez would focus more on my saving Moreno than they would on the parts of my story that did not completely add up. A uniformed policeman walked me to the kitchen through a back hallway so I could avoid the media frenzy, which was still going strong in the ballroom.
Gabriela was talking with some of the other servers in the kitchen. As I came in to get to my shirt and purse from the locker, they greeted me like a hero.
"Is that why you had all those questions?" Gabriela asked. "Because you knew that they were after one of the dignitaries? Did you plan all along to save him like that? How did you even know? Who are you?"
Although these were all very similar to the questions I had just answered, they felt a lot more like praise when being asked by somebody who was not a cop. A few of my female co-workers surrounded me so I could change into my own shirt. Gabriela helped me get dressed with my bad arm, all the while peppering me with questions. Even Chad appeared impressed.
I basked in their praise for a few minutes. It felt great. And, I had to keep reminding myself, it was deserved. Despite what Charlie had said at the end, talking with him and the cop made me feel like I had done something wrong. But now, hearing words like "brave" and "remarkable," was better than a beer in raising my spirits. The servers had seen with their own eyes what had happened, and they knew that there had been no trick about it: I had saved someone's life. Cops or no cops, money or no money, that was something no one could take away.
Sarah Stapleton came into the kitchen and gave me a hug, carefully avoiding my right side. She looked exhausted.
"We'll talk tomorrow, okay?" I assumed she had a bunch of questions and appreciated that she was not going to make me answer them tonight. I nodded as I put my bag over my left shoulder, punched my number into Teresa's phone, and walked out of the kitchen of the InterContinental Miami.
24
Teresa drove us back to Surfside, where she gave me a Tylenol with codeine. My arm had started aching in the car once I was able to sit down and relax a bit. I repeated the story for her. She seemed genuinely impressed and we sat in the parking lot at the condo for a few minutes so I could finish filling her in on details.
It was still early. Teresa asked whether we should celebrate, but I didn't feel like going out. Even with the codeine, my arm hurt. Mostly I wanted to unwind. Tomorrow was likely to be stressful, filled with suspicious cops and the still undeveloped plan for tracking down the money. I owed Shelly a call, since she had been the Sarah Stapleton connection, but I was too tired to explain things to her.
So Teresa and I sat in the comfortable living room, talking about everything and nothing. We tried to come up with a plan for getting the money, but were both too exhausted to have any ideas. Finally she flipped on the television and we watched most of a Law and Order episode before heading to bed.
I had one of those "wake up at four in the morning, lay there for an hour, then fall back asleep to an incredibly realistic dream" nights. I was in the seventies, and it was like the movie American Hustle. Christian Bale and Amy Adams were there, and the guy who played the mayor from New Jersey, and we were planning some big scam. It went back and forth between feeling real and feeling like a movie. Then the bright Miami sun hit my face and I was annoyed at myself for not having pulled the drapes tighter, because I was really curious about what would have happened next.
My phone said it was seven o'clock. Before I could decide whether I should get up or simply roll over, a text beeped. That startled me, because I had gotten used to not having a working cell phone. It was Shelly.
"Are you okay? What is happening? Call me!!!!!" Shelly's texts were often full of exclamation points.
Now was as good a time as any to catch her up, so I called. She picked up on the first ring, and was suitably dazzled with my story.
"My neighbor is going to be really impressed," she laughed.
Talking with Shelly made me think that I should let Mark know what was going on. It was still only six thirty in New Orleans, so I texted him to call me for an update when he had time. Apparently all my friends were up early that Saturday morning, because not three minutes later my phone rang.
"Should you have your phone on?" he began.
"Good morning to you, too." I was slightly miffed that he was beginning our conversation with a mini-lecture, but only slightly. "The bad guys already know where I am, so it doesn't matter right now."
"How did they find you? Are you okay?"
"Yes, I'm fine. They found me because I told them where we were." That was an in-the-middle way of beginning the story, but then I went back and told him about meeting Susan and Charlie in the bar, and what Teresa and I had figured out, and then Susan and the goons, and finally, the big finale. Mark asked a couple of questions along the way. When I finished, he was so quiet that for a moment I thought we had been disconnected.
"Tina, you are completely amazing. I was trying to think of a different word because I know I said that before, but that's the best one I can come up with. So smart and so gutsy. And so, so hot."
I smiled at that. "You say that to all the girls," I teased, al
though I was eating it up.
"And I hope you don't think this minimizes what you did in any way, but I am hard as a rock thinking about you right now. I've never been with anyone who has saved a world leader before, and for some reason that is incredibly sexy."
Some women might not have liked that comment, but I did. A lot. "No offense at all," I said, and I was sure he could hear my smile. "I wouldn't mind a little more of you right now, either."
And I wouldn’t have minded. The fear that I had in New Orleans—had it only been four days before?—about becoming too needy or getting emotionally tangled up was gone. I felt something new: confidence. That let me enjoy Mark without being afraid of losing myself in him.
"So now what?" he asked.
"The cops want to talk with me today," I began.
"On a Saturday?"
"I guess so. This was a pretty big deal, you know. And then Teresa and I need to figure out Plan B." I didn’t want to discuss the money on the phone more than I already had; given our earlier conversation, I figured he would get it. He did.
"But first I need to get out of bed," I said.
"You don't need to be in a rush for that, do you?" His voice turned very smooth, and despite the soreness in my arm I found myself responding. As he talked, my left hand slid underneath my panties. My left hand was more awkward than my right, but Mark's coaxing helped and I needed the release. Soon I was on my stomach moaning into a pillow and hoping that Teresa was still asleep.
She was not, because halfway through I heard a knock at the bedroom door. I sent her away, and could hear her giggling when she realized what was happening. Mark kept talking. It was too late to worry about privacy, so I ended with a scream into the pillow and told Mark I owed him.
Mark's need to hang up—I assumed to take care of his own situation—and the smell of brewing coffee got me out of bed. Teresa was pouring a cup as I walked into the kitchen. She handed it to me with a big grin on her face, then poured herself another.
"Feeling better?" Her teeth gleamed.
Passing Semis in the Rain: A Tina Johnson Adventure Page 12