“We understand,” Nick assured the man. “When did you get this message?”
“This morning, around 8:00 a.m. my time. About four hours ago. She couldn’t stay on for long. I got the impression that things were dicey for her and I’ve been keeping up with CNN’s coverage of events over there. I don’t suppose you care to explain to me what the hell she’s doing in the palace when it’s overrun by Insurrectos?”
“Not on an insecure line, I don’t,” Nick returned.
Again, the small hesitation. “Yes, of course, you’re quite right,” the man returned. “I’m not used to this sort of business.” It was an apology. “We should not linger over this conversation, either. The guts of her message was that someone called Minnie was also in the palace and that I should contact you—Nicolás Escobedo—and let you know that. She also indicated that she would only be able to contact me this one time and that doing so would put her in some jeopardy, but that she was taking steps to protect herself. She seemed to be more concerned about this Minnie—she is being held by a man called...er...Zalaya. Does this make sense to you? Do I have the names right?”
Calli gave a soft gasp and covered her mouth, her eyes wide.
“You have the names right,” Nick assured him. “I thank you, Richard Menzies. This is valuable information you’ve provided.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t provide it sooner. I’ve been trying to reach you since Carmen contacted me, but the Mexican phone operators told me it was impossible—or something like that. I know little Spanish.”
“I appreciate everything you’ve done. I would appreciate a more direct means of communicating with you. It’s possible we may need to speak again. Do you have an alternative phone number?”
“My cell phone.”
“Land line,” Nick returned.
“I could give you my home phone number, but I’m rarely there. I answer my direct office number when I’m here, but you can also trust my executive associate to reach me wherever I am.” He gave the number. “If you can spare the time to give me an update when you have news, I would like it. Carmen is dear to me.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Nick promised and disconnected the call. He sat back in his chair.
“Oh God, Zalaya has Minnie,” Calli breathed. “Nick, what does that mean? Will he use her as a bargaining chip, as you said he would?”
Josh pushed his hand through his hair and it trembled. “I could stand to know more about this Zalaya whom you two seem to fear so much. What will he do to my daughter?”
Nick opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. The crease between his brows deepened.
“The truth, please,” Josh added quietly. “I’ve had twenty-five years of my daughter’s excesses. I can stand much without buckling, but I would prefer to be braced for those possibilities.”
Nick nodded. “Very well, then. Zalaya was once in the Vistarian Army and he reached the rank of colonel before deserting his post, about ten months before the Insurrectos took over the island.”
“Why did he desert?” Josh asked sharply. “To join them?”
“Ultimately, yes, I believe that was his intention but Duardo outed him before he was ready.”
Calli’s eyes widened. “Duardo knew him?”
“They were both posted at Pascuallita,” Nick said. He sighed heavily. “I hate relating this story, you know,” he confessed to both of them, his expression sheepish. “Zalaya was inside our security systems, trusted with the most sensitive information because he had a brilliant mind for intrigue. What we didn’t know was that he was already working for the Insurrectos and was systematically milking every vital drop of information from us and passing it along. I know Carmen likes to blame me for the three-day coup—”
“And me,” Calli said softly.
“Yes, but it was Zalaya’s leeching that weakened us. They knew exactly where to hit us—and when.”
“What did Duardo have to do with it?” Calli asked.
“He was the Officer of the Day that day and grew uneasy when the security courier from the city was ten minutes late. The courier was one of our most trusted and reliable and was usually early, not late. Duardo investigated. He learned that the dispatches she carried included new security encryption codes. This had been something set up by Zalaya. As we had grown more aware of the major leaks in our security he had suggested that we use unexpected methods of sharing encryption codes, including sending them via human couriers. Zalaya’s idea had been hailed as brilliant in its simplicity. It was ironic that the man proposing the idea was doing so because that would make his job of stealing the codes much easier.”
“But why steal them that way and tip off everyone that the enemy had them?” Josh asked. “They’d just get replaced with new codes.”
“Zalaya banked on no one knowing they had been stolen.” Nick shook his head. “He is the most audacious son of a bitch you’re likely to come across. He waylaid the courier as she arrived on base and somehow got her to his office, where there was a photocopier. It’s only because Duardo followed his hunch and acted so quickly that Zalaya’s plan failed. Duardo walked in on Zalaya as he was attempting to extract from the girl the combination for the lock on the diplomatic pouch. He had stripped her, tied her up and was using a scalpel and bleach.”
Calli moaned, covering her face with both hands. Josh’s face grew whiter, but he nodded. “Go on,” he said hoarsely.
“It was messy,” Nick finished. “Zalaya shot the girl through the temple, though the doctors say it would have been a mercy for her. Duardo was shot in the leg, but one of the rounds he fired as he was lying on the ground ricocheted and sliced open Zalaya’s back. Zalaya escaped off base, trailing blood. He disappeared into the mountains north of Pascuallita. That blood trail gave us our first solid lead into the location of the Insurrectos’ base.”
Calli took a deep breath, calming herself. “That is the incident that got Duardo invited to General Blanco’s ball, which Minnie and I attended.”
“That’s right,” Nick confirmed.
“Duardo would not speak of it. He tried to pass it off as nothing, a small thing, he had simply helped defend Vistaria and the details would bore us.” She grimaced.
“I don’t understand. How did Duardo figure out it was Zalaya and so quickly?” Josh asked.
“Everyone entering or leaving the base after hours is supposed to report to the Officer of the Day. Zalaya did not and Duardo noted the omission. When the courier was late, he tried Zalaya first.”
“He must have been suspicious of him,” Calli said.
“He was following a hunch,” Nick agreed. “Duardo was a fine officer, honorable, supremely talented and with a shining future—he was everything that Zalaya was not and they both knew it. There was no love lost there and Duardo never trusted Zalaya the way the upper echelons did because Zalaya was careful to show his superiors only his good face.”
“And this man has my daughter?” Josh whispered hoarsely. “God, I don’t even know how to begin to brace myself for what may come.” He buried his head in his hands.
Nick studied the top of Josh’s head and glanced at Calli’s pale face. “You are right, both of you,” he said, throwing down his pen. “The time for waiting and bracing ourselves for what comes at us is over. Enough is enough.”
Josh looked up, hope in his eyes.
“For your sake, Josh,” Nick said. “For Minnie and Carmen. For General Blanco and for Vistaria. Let’s do something about it. I’m damned if I’ll sit and wait for Zalaya to call the shots. Not anymore.”
“But, the money. Resources...” Calli breathed.
Nick smiled. “It’s a matter of scale,” he said. “We’ve been thinking in the wrong scale. We don’t need an army. We just need us.”
Chapter Eighteen
When Duardo slipped into the darkened room, Minnie was awake and waiting for him, but there was no whisper of cloth as he undressed. No silent pause as he prepared to enter the bed. He came straight to h
er side and his hand curled over her shoulder, as if to rouse her.
His fingers moved restlessly, stroking the flesh over her collarbone with unexpected gentleness and sending ripples down her spine.
“You are awake,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
Her awareness of their invisible watchers made her answer Zalaya. “I wasn’t waiting for you, so don’t get your hopes up.”
He gave a low laugh. “I know what drives men and women. You lie here wrestling with your guilt over your lost soldier.”
She had been grappling with guilt. “How did you know that?” she said, surprised into it.
“I have listened to your dreams as you whispered them into the night. You regret that you were never given the chance to say goodbye properly. You despair that you were cheated of one last moment with him when you might have sealed your relationship for all time.”
She shuddered. He had touched upon the seed of her dreams, yes. This was the unnamed ghost that had driven her to Vistaria. Then Duardo knew. If he knew and was speaking of it now it meant he must have forgiven her.
She blinked away her tears. “That is something you could never understand,” she said, speaking to Zalaya.
“I understand more than you believe. You think it is your fault he died.”
She could not stop the fall of her tears and was beyond caring. She stared at his silhouette. “Yes,” she whispered. “Goddamn you, yes.”
“Then pretend that he sits before you now. Take the last moment that was stolen from you.”
“Is this another game you are playing? Messing with my head?”
“What would be the value in that?” he asked, leaning on the chain at her wrist, reminding her of it. “I can already take what I want.”
“Then why? What do you get out of it?”
His silence stretched before he stirred. “Time has run out,” he said at last. His voice was barely audible. She knew he did not want the unseen watchers to hear this. “I want to know what it might feel like once more.”
The fatalistic words spoke of an impending doom, one that he had warned her of that morning, of an unraveling and of brewing storms. He moved and she did not know what he was doing until she felt his hands at her wrist, lifting the cuff. There was a tiny snick as the key turned and the chain fell to the sheet. He pushed it away until it slithered off the end of the bed. He got to his feet, stood beside the mattress and held his hands out from his sides, as a man would if he was showing he was unarmed and harmless. “I await your pleasure.”
Her heart hammering unsteadily, Minnie got to her knees. “Mind games,” she whispered.
“You want. I want. Where is the game in that?” he asked. “Tonight, I will not take.”
It was an echo of a previous night, but this time he had laid it out before her so she understood he was coming to her as Duardo, with no taint of Zalaya or regard for those who watched.
She moved across the bed slowly, sizing him up. Her taxed heart scurried, skipping beats and hurting with the pace it worked. Her whole body throbbed and it was not all because of her heart.
She climbed from the bed and he turned to face her, watching passively. She took a step toward him. Another one. And another, so there were only a few inches between them.
She raised her hands to his shirt and slipped the buttons undone. She pulled the tails free so the shirt hung loose and open, revealing the flesh beneath. With a deep breath, she slid her hands inside and rested them against his chest. Heat and warmth and yielding softness impressed themselves upon her. Then she felt the rapid beat of his heart and the shallow lift and fall of his chest and knew she was affecting him.
Minnie seduced him, deliberately taking what she wanted, with no regard for the camera. The dark would hide nearly everything and anything she might want to say to Duardo, she spoke with her hands and mouth instead.
The hours passed as they indulged themselves. Minnie reached for him time and time again, nudging nerves back on-line, teasing needs back to life.
Until, with their limbs entwined and Duardo’s chest at her back, sleep slipped over Minnie and she dreamed...
* * * * *
The dream was both a memory and a fantasy spun from the illusion in which she had willfully taken part that night. The memory was of her father complaining about watching one more movie with her. “As long as you don’t tell me the rest of the plot fifteen minutes in, Minerva Benning,” he said as he queued movie.
Duardo, whose lap she sat in, with her shoulder against his warm chest, kissed her cheek. “She can tell me. I need to know what they will do. I have to outflank everyone, you know.”
As it was possible to read minds in dream worlds, she knew that Duardo was thinking of Serrano and Zalaya.
The reminder of Serrano and Zalaya fractured the dream and she knew she was waking. She reached frantically for Duardo, for a last touch, before the real world intruded...
* * * * *
Minnie woke with a jerk. Adrenaline surged within her as if she had survived a close call. She lay awake and fully alert in the darkness. She was facing the window and saw the night was about to end. There were angry red streaks in the sky as there had been yesterday. These were bigger and seemed to pulse with menace.
Duardo lay behind her, one arm over her waist, the hand tucked under her breast, his chest against her shoulder.
She tried to calm herself, but the dream was vividly clear in her mind and impossible to dismiss. As the sky lightened, she grappled with the dream, trying to dredge up ancient lessons from college about dream images and symbols. She pushed all the dry, formal terms aside and listened to her gut and her heart.
Was this a prophetic dream? She didn’t believe in them but could intellectually accept that dreams were the way her subconscious might choose to communicate with her conscious mind. What was it trying to tell her? If she was right, she already knew the answers and merely had to acknowledge them.
She had been a precocious thirteen when her father had called a family ban on watching movies with Minnie in the room. That had lasted a year, until they had hit upon a way for Minnie to have both the first and the last say. When she had figured out the twists and turns of the plot, she could write them down, along with the elapsed time. Once the movie was over, they would all read her notes and tabulate her score.
Her score had risen higher as she had matured.
Her father had scratched his head once. “I don’t know, Minnie—it’s as though you’ve got a divining rod in that brain of yours.”
Calli, who had been visiting on that occasion, had disagreed. “That’s not it at all, Uncle Josh. She’s just good at people.”
“At people?”
“Yes, as I’m good at economics. People are Minnie’s gift.”
If people were her gift, if she was so good at reading them, shouldn’t she be using that gift now? She was right next to Serrano. She could do something for Nick, for Calli, her father and the others in the big house.
If she stayed, though, Serrano would use her as a bargaining chip, fending Nick away from Vistaria forever.
There was the answer, the reply Duardo had given her in the dream—she had to escape from here. She had to get away somehow and she must read Zalaya and Serrano and everyone around her to do it. She must get it right first time, too. There would be no second chances. Not with Serrano.
She had to outflank everyone.
Duardo stirred against her shoulder and the hand beneath her breast was slowly extracted. He was trying to avoid waking her. She held still, pretending she was asleep. She could feel his movements through the bed then heard the hateful rattle of the chain.
The cold cuff slid around her wrist and ratcheted shut. She suppressed her sigh.
Duardo grew still. “Then you are awake,” he murmured.
There was no point in hiding it. She couldn’t look at him though. “I was watching the sunrise,” she said, keeping her voice down. “There is much more red this morning than yesterd
ay. Yesterday was bad, just as you said it would be.”
His hand on her shoulder made her lie back, looking up at him. The long fingers caressed her cheek. Her breath caught, for the hard lines had dropped from his expression. She could not see enough in the weak light, but it seemed he looked at her with almost open warmth.
Then he leaned down and kissed her. His lips were gentle against hers and her heart seemed to stop in its tracks. The kiss grew. His lips firmed and she became lost in the luxury of it, incapable of protesting. His tongue thrust inside her mouth and she moaned against his lips, reverting to a creature of wants.
When he lifted himself away from her, she gave a shuddering gasp, reaching for him again and he caught her hands to his chest, holding them still. He moved his head to look over his shoulder.
The camera.
Then he nodded toward the window, to the angry welts scarring the dawn sky. “The storm will break today,” he said. “Be warned.”
He pushed her hands from him, slid from the bed and went into the bathroom and shut the door.
Minnie curled herself into a tight ball, shivers racking her. She closed her eyes as patterns, ideas and behaviors pummeled at her. The last of the dream elements locked into place, their message revealed. Her subconscious had found its voice.
Chapter Nineteen
Carmen eyed the pitiful condition of the mountain encampment while trying to look as if she wasn’t looking around. She didn’t need to look far to read the true state of affairs for this fledging loyalist army. The children with the big eyes and silent stares, the women doing the work of men, with submachine guns slung over their shoulders and babes clutching their skirts.
There were too few men here and not nearly enough activity. They had suffered serious setbacks and were reeling with the impact.
She was taken to the hospital because of the deep scratch on her forearm from a barbed wire fence she had scaled on the edges of the city. The hospital was nothing more than a dozen dirty plastic and canvas tarpaulins stretched out over the top of two rows of camp beds to protect the occupants from the rain and sun. All the beds were full. At the end of the row, a woman in a white coat sat behind a folding table, writing. A battered folding chair stood in front of the table.
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