Heat Of Passion

by Alice Orr

  Slater had pulled the Jeep into the parking lot of La Escarpadura several minutes ago, but he was still sitting behind the wheel. He gripped the stick shift then let go, like he used to do with a flex ball he’d carry in his pocket and squeeze when he was feeling agitated. He hadn’t carried that ball in a couple of years. He’d been a time bomb waiting for a place to detonate back then. He’d thought he was over that. Now, here he was, clutching and releasing again because, if he didn’t, he might drive back downtown to find SideMan Sax. There’d be no telling what Slater would do after that, and maybe no controlling it, either.

  He’d slid way down in the seat with his head leaned against the high seat back when the sound of an engine without a muffler invaded his unsettled thoughts. Slater glanced in his rearview mirror to see a very old pickup truck chugging and smoking its way toward the far end of the lot. They’ve got no such thing as emissions standards in Mexico, he thought. Mexico didn’t have many standard regulations about anything at all. He’d left American-style law behind on the other side of the border. He was on his own here where any badge he’d ever carried wouldn’t count for much.

  He shoved the Jeep door open with a sigh and stepped out onto the gravel lot. He flexed his shoulders and stretched his neck to release some of the tension there. He looked up to see the sky was dark and clear, the stars seeming to shine through it like hundreds of silver pinholes in black velvet. How beautiful it was. He was thinking about how much he’d like to bring Phoenix out here to gaze at the stars with him when he heard a scuffling footstep across the gravel parking lot and there she was. Apparently, she’d decided not to wait for him after all. She had her head down now and didn’t appear to have noticed him where he was standing between the cars. The way she was dressed, in the same shorts and sneakers she’d had on before, made him think she’d been out for a walk.

  “Isn’t it a little late for a stroll?” he asked, stepping from between the vehicles.

  Her head jerked up. She stared at him, as if she couldn’t see who he was.

  “It’s me, Slater,” he said, feeling a little foolish.

  Obviously, she’d been thinking about something other than him. This wasn’t the first time he’d wished he could crawl inside her thoughts. He almost asked her what they were, then decided against it. If he asked her to come clean, she might want the same from him. He slammed the Jeep door instead and walked toward her. He could tell how uncertain she was by the expression on her face.

  “You look like you’re about to run away on me,” he said.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here.” She sounded as off balance as she looked. “I thought you would have gone in already.”

  “What made you think that?”

  She shifted from one sneaker to the other and bit her lip before answering. “Your meeting in town,” she said. “I figured it would be over by now and you’d be back in your room.”

  “Almost, but not quite,” he said. “How about a nightcap in the lounge?”

  “Did you want to have that talk you mentioned earlier?”

  “What talk was that?”

  “You said you wanted to talk about us.”

  She appeared to be more under control now, while he was suddenly feeling uneasy. He did remember saying that to distract her from asking where he had to go after Sax’s call, and to keep her from running away again. He shouldn’t have suggested something he was so totally unready for.

  “We could do that,” he said.

  She studied his face for a moment, as if she might be able to see the doubt and questioning there.

  “Maybe some other time,” she said. “It’s been a long day. I need to get some sleep.”

  She did look tired. That could be part of what had made her appear so puzzled a moment ago.

  “A long day,” he repeated.. “It has been that.”

  “Good night, then.”

  She started to walk away, more hurriedly than she’d been moving before.

  “Let me walk you to your room.”

  “Not tonight,” she said over her shoulder. “You go have your nightcap.”

  She kept on walking, still hurriedly, too much so for him to call after her that he’d never really wanted that nightcap at all.

  PHOENIX BARELY HAD the energy to get herself out of her clothes before falling into bed. She wanted only to be unconscious, and soon she was. Whatever thoughts may have plagued her through the confusion of the day were lost in oblivion. She would have been happy to leave them behind, though happiness was probably not an emotion she could manage at present, whether she was waking or not. Melancholy was what she’d felt as she fell into exhausted sleep.

  That melancholy stayed with her through the night, along with something else, something that even intruded upon her dreams. Morning was near, maybe even already dawned, and still she felt it. Even as she slept like a stone, hardly moving, it was there. She was afraid. Then, she heard something, though she didn’t know if the sound came from her dreams or from the waking world. It sounded like a shutter banging, the way the shutter would bang sometimes in her bedroom at her grandfather’s house. She reached out for that room, tried to turn the course of her slumbering senses in that direction, while the bang of the shutter grew louder.

  She forced herself awake, or partly so. She could see the light through her eyelids even before she opened them. The images of sleep and dreaming were gone, but the emotions she had experienced then were not. She was still gripped by fear. The sounds were still with her also, at least the rapping noise. Gradually, she knew that wasn’t a dream. She sat up and dragged one leg at a time over the side of the bed. She still had on her T-shirt and panties. The fear and melancholy of the night lost some of their hold on her as she rose to her bare feet. She felt the tension and sinking sensations fade as she stood there wondering what she’d meant to do next.

  The rapping was at her door. She realized that eventually. Had she ordered breakfast in the room? She’d done that a couple of times, hung the long card on her doorknob at night with her selections checked off. Orange juice, coffee and oatmeal with brown sugar were her usual choices. She was hungry all of a sudden. Had she eaten yesterday? She must have, but she couldn’t remember when. She could picture the brown sugar melting into sweet pools on top of the hot cereal.

  “Just a minute,” she called out as she stopped to grab her robe from the foot of the bed and throw it on.

  She pulled the door open as she was tying the cord to her robe. She was about to tell the waiter to carry the tray out onto her terrace while she got a tip from her dresser drawer when she saw that it wasn’t the waiter at all. Standing on the threshold of her room was Slater McCain.

  “You shouldn’t open your door like that without finding out who’s knocking first,” he said as a greeting.

  “I thought you were food.”

  He laughed, a deep and full laugh that reminded her of that melting brown sugar again, except that she was the one melting this time.

  “I’m not food,” he said, “but that is why I’m here. Let’s go to breakfast. I’m starving.”

  The events of last night were drifting back to her now, drowning out the seductive rumble of his voice. Phoenix looked away from him. She couldn’t stand to see how wonderful he looked, or how just finding him there at her door had made her smile before she could remember why she shouldn’t be smiling.

  “Throw some clothes on. We’ll drive into town and find a breakfast place on the beach,” he said.

  She opened her mouth to babble some excuse why she couldn’t do that, but he cut her off before she could manage a word.

  “No arguments,” he said. “We both have to eat The sun is up. Let’s go find fresh-squeezed orange juice and the best coffee in Mexico.” He hesitated before adding, “Maybe we can have that talk we didn’t have time for last night.”

  Last night was what Phoenix didn’t want to think about. Then again, maybe talking would bring some answers to her questions, like the big que
stion she found herself unable to stop asking, the one about the gun. She shuddered at the thought

  “You’re shivering,” he said. “You need to get your clothes on and come with me.”

  He stepped forward, as if he might be thinking about chafing her arms to make her warm. Phoenix backed away from him. She was confused enough already without letting him put his hands on her.

  “Please, wait outside,” she said. “I’ll only be a minute.”

  She realized she was going along with him to get away from him. That didn’t make much sense even for someone so recently snatched from a much needed sleep, but she couldn’t think of an alternative. She needed to find out things, and she couldn’t do that without talking to him. She also couldn’t go much longer without eating or she might faint dead away. Two birds with one stone was what breakfast with Slater would be. She told herself she could make certain it was nothing more than that as he backed out of the room to keep her from hitting him with the door she was closing in his face.

  SLATER STARED AT the dark red door and contemplated how much force he would need to apply to shove it off its hinges. He didn’t really believe she intended to go to breakfast with him. She’d only said that to get him out of her room. She’d lock herself in there now, slide the night bolt, maybe even prop a chair back under the doorknob. He could still get through, but probably not before she had time to call for help, if she carried trying to get rid of him that far. He’d have to risk it anyway. If she wasn’t out of there in five minutes, he’d start knocking again. If that didn’t work, he’d start shoving. She couldn’t go anywhere, after all—or could she?

  He’d already figured out how she got into his room last night. The damaged flower vines on his terrace told that tale. She must have walked along the narrow ledge out there and climbed into his room. That was the only explanation for her getting in without a key. His door had been locked when he got back there last night and found her, just like her door was locked now. If she’d had the nerve to walk along that ledge last night, she’d have the nerve to do it again this morning. He wasn’t going to give her five minutes after all. Slater lifted his fist to knock one more time before he had to start shoving. The door opened just at that minute, and Slater found himself punching a knock against thin air.

  She’d put on jeans and a clean blue T-shirt and the same sneakers he’d seen her in last night. Her hair was combed, but she couldn’t have had time for much else in the way of making herself beautiful. He marveled at how beautiful she was anyway. The sleepy softness was still on her cheeks, and his fingers itched to touch her gently there. Her eyes, not so morning soft any longer, told him he shouldn’t do that. She turned away to lock the door behind her, and he couldn’t help but notice the way her jeans fit close over the roundness of her as she bent slightly to turn the key. In that instant, he remembered how he woke up that morning wanting her so badly he could barely stand it.

  “Do you know any good breakfast spots downtown?” he asked to keep himself from thinking any further about what he was really hungry for.

  “Any place that’s open along the Costera should do, or we could eat right here.”

  “Let’s try someplace different,” he said. “Maybe along the beach side downtown.”

  She nodded but didn’t say anything. They were on their way down the corridor now. She was walking as far away from him as she could without bumping against the opposite wall. He wondered why she’d come along at all. Maybe she’d figured out that he intended to come busting in after her if she didn’t Could she know him that well already, well enough to pick up on what he was thinking even through a closed door? Maybe so. He could tell what she was thinking right now. She was wishing she could be somewhere else, probably anywhere else as long as he wasn’t there. Slater didn’t need any extrasensory powers to guess that. All he had to do was look at the way she was walking with her back as stiff as a board and her eyes straight ahead to tell that she wasn’t exactly enjoying his company.

  They were down the steps to the patio now and headed for the parking lot. He was trying to come up with something to say that wouldn’t sound too stupid. He’d discarded, “Did you sleep well?” and was searching for another possibility when she picked up speed. He had to hurry his pace to catch up. She was onto the gravel of the parking lot as he did. He reached out to catch her arm, and she dodged away from his touch as if his hand might be a red-hot poker or a stinging cactus.

  Slater didn’t even have the second it would take to register how crummy her jumping away from him like that made him feel. At almost the same instant she moved, something zinged through the space between them and hit the ground behind, spitting up gravel in a quick burst. Slater’s reaction was automatic. He dove for Phoenix and knocked her forward and down underneath him between the two closest vehicles.

  “What the—” she began, already struggling to get away.

  He thrust his hand over mouth. “Somebody’s shooting at us,” he whispered in her ear. “We have to keep down and keep quiet.”

  Her struggling stopped, as if she’d frozen suddenly to stone beneath him. Even her breath stopped against his hand. He moved his hand away from her mouth but remained ready to smack it back again if she started to scream. She whispered instead.

  “I didn’t hear a gunshot.”

  “Silencer,” he said.

  He was surprised she didn’t react to how improbable that must seem to her. Unfortunately, Slater didn’t find it improbable at all, even on this otherwise lovely Acapulco morning. His guess would be a .22 caliber with a silencer, just like he’d said, with SideMan Sax doing the shooting. Slater could even guess the reason. He was being put on the hot seat, hotter than the gravel beneath them now. SideMan was delivering a message for Beldon Laurent. Get down to business, fast, that message said, and Slater couldn’t help hearing it loud and clear. A warning was what this had to be. Otherwise, Sax’s aim most likely would have been dead-on.

  Chapter Eleven

  Somebody was shooting at him!

  Phoenix’s first instinct was to roll out from under Slater and throw her body over his instead of the other way around. She mustn’t let anything happen to him no matter what. She was surprised by how strongly she felt that. She was equally astonished by how unsurprised she felt to learn that somebody was shooting at him in the first place. What she’d seen last night had already led her to conclude he was mixed up in something criminal. Most shocking was the fact that, right at the moment, she didn’t care about the criminal part at all.

  Slater lifted gradually from on top of her, and that was when her elbows and forearms began to sting where she’d scraped them on the gravel as she fell. Slater inched forward in a crouch between the cars.

  “Be careful,” she said as insistently as can be done in a whisper.

  “He’s gone,” Slater said after a minute. He had pulled halfway out of his crouch and was scanning the top of the incline near the building where his room was located.

  “How do you know it was a he?” Phoenix asked.

  “I just know.”

  “Do you know who the man was?”

  “I have my suspicions.”

  Phoenix had been right. Someone was after Slater, and he knew who it was. That meant it had to be somebody he’d been associated with. She had scary visions of some kind of underworld deal gone wrong. She wished she could whisk Slater straight out of here. She was thinking about where she might whisk him to as she sat up and began picking bits of gravel out of the abrasions on her arms. She couldn’t help wincing as she did. Slater continued to scan the top of the rise near the buildings.

  “How do you know he was up there?” she asked.

  “From the angle of the bullet. Or, maybe it was bullets. I heard only one.”

  He knew too much about firearms for a regular person. He sounded too calm, also. This kind of incident wasn’t new to him. At least, he didn’t act as if it were. He turned back toward her, and she saw that he was holding a gun. She gas
ped.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t use it on you,” he said. “It’s for the bad guys.”

  Phoenix didn’t want to believe he was one of those. She tried to smile, and that was when she realized how hard her heart was pounding.

  “Look at your arms!” he exclaimed as he crouched back down at her side. “That must hurt.”

  Not as much as if I’d been hit by one of those bullets intended for you, she was thinking. It was dangerous to be with this man. She should get away from him right now, but she knew she wouldn’t.

  “We need to clean these up,” he said as he surveyed her scraped forearms. “They must have a first aid kit in the hotel office.”

  “Let’s not get the office involved,” she said. “They’ll make a big fuss.”

  “That’s true. They’ll be worried about a lawsuit.”

  He was really very cynical. She wondered if he’d been that way before and she just hadn’t noticed. What she did notice now was that he hadn’t said a word about reporting this attack to the police.

  “I have some Mercurochrome in my travel bag,” she said. “I can clean these cuts myself.”

  “I’ll do it,” he said. “After all, it’s my fault you have them.”

  She stared at him. Was this his way of trying to tell her the truth about himself?

  “Because I had to push you down on the ground like that,” he added.

  “If you hadn’t, I might be dead right now.”

  The truth of those words was startling, even more so because, despite that truth, she still had no intention of running away.

  He helped her up, and they headed back toward the hotel buildings. He leaned protectively over her as he kept watch in all directions around them. He still had the gun in his hand but tucked close to his side and between them so it wouldn’t be so noticeable to the few people out here this early. Acapulco tended to be a latenight town so there weren’t many potential spectators at this hour. The two people they did pass watched with some curiosity as Phoenix and Slater moved in a crouch across the parking lot and hurried toward her corridor. She avoided the curious glances and was relieved when she and Slater reached her room and could shut the door behind them.