Hot Streak

by Susan Johnson

  “Why didn't I think of food?” he said, slamming the car into gear and accelerating out of the drive.

  “Probably because if you were with an Air France stewardess you wouldn't be thinking of food,” Molly sweetly replied.

  “Great, I'm three thousand miles from home looking to stay one step ahead of the death squad and I've a comedian on my hands.”

  “It's the truth, admit it.”

  “Jesus, what a nag.” But his voice was teasing and for a brief, insane moment he was glad she'd come along.

  “I'm simply pointing out the reason for your oversight.” Her voice was smug, but teasing too.

  “I guess you're right,” he replied. “They never did think about food.”

  She hit him then.

  And he laughed. “You've led a sheltered life.”

  “Until now,” she pointed out.

  “You should be back on the plane with Jess.”

  “Don't want to.”

  “Impossible woman.”

  “But charming.”

  “Just impossible at the moment. You realize, of course, you're in the way.” He kept his eyes on the road, both his hands on the wheel and was braking just before the curves, then accelerating into them with a speed much too fast for dusk on this narrow mountain road. “If he's at the Ruins, I'm going to bodily throw him over my shoulder and carry him out. You can make yourself useful by uttering polite noises to the stewardess and saying Egon's good-byes.”

  “Just like that. Won't she think it rude?”

  “Not as rude as a 9mm round in her head. She'll thank you, believe me, for saving her family the expense of a funeral.” Carey's voice was without a trace of amusement and Molly instantly recalled the attempt to kidnap Carrie. She still had trouble digesting the full impact of an act of violence like that directed at her family. Now that it was over, her first impulse was to dismiss it and forget it as some surreal infringement of her conventional life. And even here in Jamaica, racing down a mountain road as a magical lavender twilight settled into the anonymous gray of dusk, she seemed detached from the murderous danger of kidnappers and lethal bullets.

  “Are you sure that Rifat is really after Egon?”

  He should have locked her on the plane, he thought. It was a terrible mistake to have her along. “Can't be sure,” he lied, thinking he'd drop her off at the Sheraton, book them a room, and tell her he'd be back to spend the night once he'd found Egon. She'd be safe then, and out of Rifat's way. He should have thought of it sooner.

  “And Egon's fear might just be drug-induced.”

  “Could be.”

  “Maybe Carrie and Lucy were imagining things. You know how they go off on tangents when they're together.”

  Carey thought of the broken door jamb she'd obviously forgotten. “Maybe I am taking this all too seriously,” he agreed in a voice he'd found particularly effective with nettled women and suspicious producers. “Probably read one script too many.”

  CHAPTER 35

  E gon and Mariel were dancing on the small outside terrace. The last traces of sunset reflected off the water falling into the pool, sparkling saffron on mauve. They held each other close, moving slowly to the music, absorbing the pleasure inundating their senses.

  “I'm glad I met you,” she murmured, her face lifted to his.

  “I should have met you years ago,” Egon softly replied, feeling happiness for the first time in years.

  “I would have been too young,” she teased.

  “I would have waited for you.” His voice was low and hushed. Mariel was genuine and unaffected, with a warm vivacity that seemed to reach out and touch him. She'd talked of her home in Haut-Provence, of the countryside, and her family. Her conversation was eons away from the brittle banality passing for entertainment in his social milieu: seeing who'd outdressed whom; participating in silly games; overindulging to alleviate the lethargy, the excruiating sameness of the people and idle chatter. Mariel was like a fresh, cool sea breeze, and for the first time in many long years he thought beyond today.

  “Do you have to go back?” Egon asked.

  “No, not for three days,” she answered, her cheek against the soft linen of his shirt, his scent fragrant in her nostrils.

  That wasn't what he meant. “I mean can you stay with me.”

  She looked up, her expression bewildered. “I said I would.”

  He stopped dancing. “Forever,” he said without emphasis.

  She didn't realize this was the only commitment Egon had ever offered. She smiled at him. Misunderstanding both the meaning and significance of his words, she flirtatiously replied to what she interpreted as amorous banter. “Forever and ever.”

  “I'm quite serious,” Egon said.

  Her smile diminished as they stood in the center of the dance floor. “Please don't.” She, too, had been touched by emotions so powerful she'd had to rationalize them away as the product of a tropical evening in the company of a wealthy young aristocrat with extraordinary charm. Egon von Mansfeld was beyond the pragmatic dreams of a young farm girl only two years out of Provence. You don't have to say things like that. I'll stay with you for my three days without the facile words, she thought. And in some ways his words tarnished her pleasure. A man so handsome and wealthy had surely used those phrases many times before.

  Egon smiled then, a small, crooked grin. Hugging her, he said, “I'll tell you again in the morning when you know me better.”

  Responding to his smile, she brushed aside her misgivings and allowed herself to only feel the sheer joy of being with him. “I should like that immensely,” she replied. “And if we're not dancing, could we go?”

  Egon glanced around, startled to see the band was still playing while they'd become an obstacle in the center of the floor. “We can dance all night if you care to,” he said graciously.

  But she shook her head.

  “In that case,” he remarked, his lean face creased in a smile, “I'll show you Le Retour.”

  “And teach me to ride.” Her voice was husky with double entendre.

  His eyes held hers for a long moment. “With pleasure,” he said.

  Carey lost at least ten minutes arguing with Molly outside the Sheraton. The idea of her waiting while he searched for Egon seemed reasonable to him. Unfortunately, he was unable to convince Molly of his plan's merit.

  “I'm not going in, and that's that.”

  “I'll carry you in.”

  “Try.”

  And her eyes were such narrow slits, he knew he'd be thrown into jail if he attempted that maneuver. “Look, I'll level with you. There's a certain amount of danger.”

  “I already know that.”

  “I won't be gone long,” he countered.

  “Then I won't be in the way for long.”

  He held his arm out the window to catch the last of the light and checked the time once again. He couldn't waste another minute. “Okay,” he said, “you win.”

  “I don't want to win. I want us to cooperate.”

  “Cooperate, shit,” he muttered, slamming the car into gear and taking the turnaround with a sharp jerk of the wheel and squealing tires. “Does this place look like fucking Sesame Street?”

  “You needn't be grumpy,” she said in the satisfied tone of a winner.

  “Egon better be at the Ruins,” Carey said in a very grumpy voice.

  But he wasn't.

  Carey was informed that Count von Mansfeld had left a half-hour ago.

  “For?” Carey snapped.

  “Le Retour, of course,” the maоtre d' smoothly replied.

  “You're driving like a madman,” Molly remarked in as placid a tone as she could muster slung against the door as they rounded a curve at eighty.

  “Keep it in mind,” Carey growled, his frustration mounting. He couldn't shake the nagging fear that Ceci would appear before he could carry Egon off. Damn Egon's politesse. If he'd taken that sweet young thing straight to Le Retour instead of wining and dining her, they'd a
ll be halfway back to the plane at Montego Bay by now.

  “At least you know where he is.”

  Carey only grunted, his mind racing over possibilities for defense at Le Retour. What was the weapon situation? Egon's father used to keep some rifles in the study. They'd taken them out for target practice once, but how often were they oiled? It probably had been years since they were used, and this humidity was hell on metal.

  “You can't always have your way, you know,” Molly said in a small voice that brought his head around for a brief moment from the headlights' flaring gleam.

  “I know,” he replied with a sigh. Molly was unaware, he realized, that he had had his own way for a great many years now… almost without exception. And “cooperation” was almost as big an adjustment for him as it was for her to recognize there were paid killers in the world. Killers who were, at the moment, probably extremely close and checking their ammunition. “I don't want my way in an arbitrary sense, but will you promise me to listen if things start really heating up? You don't know-” He hesitated, and then simply finished, “just promise me.”

  “I can shoot, you know.”

  “I don't want you to shoot. Jesus, that's the last thing in the world I want you to do. Lie, humor me-just promise.”

  “Okay, okay. I promise.”

  “Thanks, Honeybear. I love you like crazy. Now if we can drag Egon out of his darling's arms in time, we might, we just might get the hell out of here healthy. It's only nine. Once we're back on the road past Ocho Rios, they can't tell one car from the other.”

  CHAPTER 36

  T hey were just beginning to climb the upgrade into the hills above Ocho Rios after having stopped in town to get directions for Le Retour. Ceci rode shotgun, Deraille drove, and Reha assembled his assault rifle in the backseat. Their weapons had come over with their luggage in a crate with scuba gear. The rifle stocks were made of molded plastic to avoid detection on x-ray machines. But security wasn't a priority at Montego Bay, and they could have shipped them over assembled without problem.

  “Remember,” Ceci warned, “take von Mansfeld alive. If you have to shoot him, aim for an arm or leg. Watch it, with that rifle, Reha. It'll blow his leg off. I don't care about anyone else. They're expendable.”

  His companions were efficient and professional. His warning was only meant as a cautionary reminder for Reha, who took more pleasure in killing than was natural. Rifat needed Egon alive in order to have the prototypes delivered.

  The fact that Le Retour was unstaffed struck Egon as unusual, but not unprecedented. From a quick survey of the kitchen and servants' rooms, he saw they hadn't been absent long, and on rare occasions they did go up mountain for overnight visits home. He hadn't been expected. Everyone would be back in the morning, he explained to Mariel. Taking a bottle of champagne from the refrigerator, he escorted her up the curved staircase to his suite of rooms facing the ocean.

  The teakwood floors glistened warmly with the patina of time, and the simple four-poster bed crafted by the original plantation owner's slaves was an artisan's derivation of Queen Anne purity. Tall windows framed in sea island cotton opened onto a large balcony. White, hand-loomed cotton rugs were placed beside the bed, before two tall mahogany dressers and under the oversized cane armchairs situated so their occupants were afforded a view of the water.

  “And flowers,” Mariel exclaimed, as though her silent survey of the room's beauty had been audible to Egon. Dropping his hand, she moved toward an enormous earthenware bowl of white roses and buried her face in the delightful fragrance. Turning back to Egon with a smile, she said, “They knew you were coming.”

  “No, the flowers are changed daily. The freesia is my favorite,” Egon replied, kicking off his shoes and strolling over to the bed. He set the champagne on the bedside table, adorned with a tall majolica jug of bright yellow freesia and baby's breath.

  “Baby's breath too. Does everything grow in Jamaica?”

  “Everything. Even an English garden was nurtured for centuries by the previous owners, although the climate is so tropical.” He shrugged out of his sport coat and sprawled on the bed, his arms clasped comfortably behind his head. The crisp white linen bedcover felt cool against his body, and he peacefully watched Mariel walk from window to window exclaiming over the view of moonlight and sparkling sea.

  “It's not hot up here.”

  “A fact the early settlers discovered immediately.”

  “How long have you owned Le Retour?” She turned from the moonlit windows, her small form silhouetted against the silvery brilliance.

  “My great-grandfather bought it in the eighties as a retreat. He was an amateur naturalist, and he enlarged the gardens, bringing in trees and plants from all over the world. Am I boring you?” he asked politely. He wasn't generally a conversationalist with a woman who aroused him.

  “Will you show me the gardens in the morning?”

  “I'll show you every last botanical eccentricity, if you wish. Great-grandpapa brought over a gardener he'd stolen from the royal court and Herr Schramm oversaw an army of native gardeners whose descendants still practice his style of horticulture.”

  “My great-grandpapa raised cattle, and my grandpapa and papa do the same.”

  Her words were like a soothing tonic, as though all the tension in his body and mind, all the raw nerve endings he'd been calming with heroin were tranquilized. He could imagine a quiet childhood on a farm generations old. Not that his family's homes weren't venerable, but the frenzy of his mother's social life was too prevalent, as was the unspoken disapproval of their wealth. Their fortunes were fostered by death. “My family made money on wars,” he said. He'd had no control over his feelings, no defense to bear the censure. Unlike Sylvie, he was sensitive to the slurs. “Would you like some champagne?” he asked, wanting to dismiss the plaguing inequities. With Mariel near, he'd found a new ease in banishing the past.

  She came to him with a smile and sat beside him on the large, linen-covered bed. Taking off her jacket, she watched as he poured champagne into the two glass tumblers which had been on the pottery tray beside the freesia. Everything was anticipated and ready at hand, Mariel noted, down to the last small detail. Danish biscuits, no doubt a favorite of Egon's, were arranged on the tray, as well, only an arm's reach away. New magazines lay on the tables beside the chairs. Even the cologne on the tallboy was unopened and new.

  “Do you come here often? It's very beautiful.”

  “Not lately,” he said, offering her a glass. “Although,” he went on with a boyish smile, “if you like, we can come more often.”

  “Be careful what you say,” she replied, her eyes serious. “I'm a simple farm girl and my head can be easily turned.” Her smile was winsome. “And I don't care to be hurt,” she added very softly.

  “I'd never hurt you,” Egon said, his eyes sober beneath the wave of blond hair falling across his forehead. “I'm an authority on the subject.”

  “Because of this?” Mariel said, reaching over to touch the needle marks on his bare arms. His short-sleeved linen shirt exposed the tracks of heroin use, and he didn't stop her from stroking the vestiges of bruises.

  He gazed at his arms as though they were detached somehow, a landscape of misadventure he'd overlooked. “I forget how they appear to other people,” he said, shrugging away the familiar sense of error. “It's not habitual. I go off and on.”

  “Could I help?”

  He nodded, covering her small hand with his. “I'd like that.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “It's not very pleasant.”

  “Only if you want to,” she quickly added, conscious of her overwhelming presumption. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be judgmental.”

  He smiled. “A crusading female.”

  “No!” Her small cry was instantly apologetic.

  “Tomorrow's fine,” he softly said, stroking the back of her hand, wondering for a brief moment why he was agreeing with such pleasure to undergo the excruciating or
deal. But his feelings were inexplicable-not muddled or distorted, merely inexplicable. And he savored the feeling of bliss.

  Reaching over, he set his glass on the bedside table and said, “This may sound off-the-wall, but have you ever experienced bliss?”

  “Do I have to answer that?” she replied, uncertainty in her voice. She knew him too little to admit to the sensation she was experiencing, and was afraid somehow he was toying with her.

  “No-no,” he quickly answered. “Are you through? Do you want more?” he asked. At her negative nod he set her glass next to his. “I'm sorry, I knew that was going to sound bizarre… and it's not the drugs talking. I've finally understood the sensation of bliss. That's all.”

  “What's it like?” Mariel asked with a childlike inquisitiveness he found endearing.

  “It's warm,” he said.

  And she nodded in agreement, although he took it for understanding.

  “Did you ever daydream as a child about something you wanted to happen and visualized how happy you'd be if everything worked out exactly like your dream?”

  She nodded again, knowing how he felt, thinking he looked very strong, the muscles on his tanned arms powerful and taut.

  “And it's like you've found the answer finally… and you wonder why you've never known it was there before.”

  “But it wasn't,” she softly said.

  “Exactly,” he murmured. “Until now.”

  “Until now,” she whispered.

  Their hands met and twined, and they both smiled a secret, understanding smile that transcended all the unknowns in their lives.

  And she bent to kiss him.

  He stopped her short inches away, both his hands on her shoulders. “You don't have to worry about the needles.”