by Alice Orr
He was still on the job after all, no matter what he might be going through personally. He’d been assigned to nail Laurent. Now, that was possible. Maybe Slater didn’t have what it would take to bring Laurent down on the gun-trafficking charges, but there was attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping. Slater heard the list of crimes ticking off longer and longer in his head. He had enough on Laurent to put him away for a hundred years, maybe more.
Too bad Slater couldn’t manage to feel the least bit good about that now.
“You will send help, won’t you?” Phoenix asked as he opened the door. “You won’t just leave us here, will you?”
Slater could see the doubt in her eyes. Even when he assured her that medical assistance would be on its way soon, he knew she wouldn’t believe him until the ambulance actually arrived.
Too bad Slater couldn’t feel good right now about anything at all.
Chapter Twenty
The cliffs were jagged and sparkled along sheer walls with points of shimmering light all the way to their vaulted heights. The blue-black, star-pricked sky above duplicated the scene. The ocean dashed and swirled among the rocks far below with a sound that had a voice in it. “Come to me. Come to me,” it crashed and breathed. Phoenix heard the call whispering around her where she balanced on the highest ledge. The wind was sharp at her face and swept her silken gown between her legs and close about her body so that every curve and sinew was displayed for all to see.
She should have been embarrassed by that, especially with the crowd watching as they were from the long, flat lower ledge across the cut between the cliffs. They clamored toward their restraining wall, hungry for a better view. She might have cowered from their impertinent eyes, but she was all boldness now and thrust her breasts high and proud against the satiny smoothness of her sultry gown. She could hear the gasp of appreciation and desire all the way across the chasm. The women wanted to be her. The men wanted to possess her. She tossed her hair back and breathed in the heady perfume of the power that was hers in this moment.
Her toes were bare and decked in rings glittering with precious stones. Rubies, emeralds, sapphires twinkled there as rivals to the stars above and the flashing lights along the cliff side below her feet and the sheer wall opposite. She was the envy of all in earth and heaven. She flexed her bejewelled toes against the rocky edge. Brown-bodied boys perched on lower juttings from the cliff. Their iridescent swimsuits were colored in a hue just lighter than her gown. She could tell that these boys and their taut muscles were waiting for her to move.
She rose, her body straight and purposeful as an arrow, off the cliff and arced for just an instant in the air. Suspended in that flash of time, she saw everything below and around as beautiful and swept clean by the wind and water. She straightened her body then and angled downward from that apex. She was reluctant to leave a vista of such captivating loveliness behind, but she must. Her plunge began, invigorating and free. The rush of wind isolated her in a soft cocoon of breezes as she cut through its resistance. Only herself and nature existed here in this unfettered space between sky and sea. The boys dove around her, their suits gleaming like the gems on her toes. Still, she was alone and drinking in the strength of her solitariness.
Then, everything changed. In an instant as swift and unpredicted as the flip from one page to another, the power and perfume disappeared There were only rocks below, cold and craggy, beckoning not with the soft voice she’d heard earlier but with cackling, mocking laughter. She was plunging toward them with increasing speed She tried to flap her arms like wings and soar back up again, but they were plastered to her side by the force of the wind The boy divers glided on the currents of the wind like gulls, kept safe from the menacing rocks below. The boys smiled sadly but couldn’t stop her plunge. Her gown stripped from her then, and the wind turned frigid and piercing against her unprotected flesh.
A gasp went up to heaven from the watchers on the cliffs, and she saw why. Below her on the rocks, a figure had appeared. He was tall and broad. His dark hair billowed in the wind as he lifted his face, all angles and stalwart intention, toward her. His green eyes shone more brightly than the emeralds on her toes. His mind spoke to hers in words that carried on the thought alone. “I will save you,” he said without a movement of his lips, and she heard him. He spread his arms open, wide and invincible.
Her heart smiled into his. The fear that had gripped her throat during those moments of terrifying descent toward bare rock evaporated She was breathing in her first free breath and smiling at him still when he disappeared. She plunged on toward empty, unforgiving, rocky doom as the terror returned, ten times more heart stopping than before. She tried to close her eyes against the harrowing sight, but could not. Her throat opened just far enough to emit a high, thin scream.
Phoenix was still screaming when she awoke just inches from her inevitable impact with a shattering end. She was trembling all over in a shudder that clattered her teeth together. She had kicked the blankets off, maybe at the same moment she lost the silken gown of her dream. She was wet from the intensity and exertion of that downward plummet. Her hair lay plastered against her neck, and the wetness made her shudder more fiercely than ever.
Terror still gripped her heart, which slammed inside her chest and echoed in her ears. Her scream had faded to a whimper which she did her best to quiet as she clamped her teeth tight together against their chattering. She gradually grew sensible enough to understand that all of this shuddering and chattering did not come from her dream. The room she was in happened to be freezing cold. But how could that be? Acapulco was never cold. How many times had her grandfather said that? “Always eighty-five and balmy. It’s a wonder they don’t die of boredom down there.” That had been his little joke, but he always looked melancholy after he made it.
Phoenix awoke fully to the joke of the moment. She was not in Acapulco now. She’d left there some time ago. Was it yesterday or just this morning? She’d flown out at an odd time and couldn’t get a direct flight She remembered slouching in a surreal haze through the Dal-las-Fort Worth Airport between connecting flights to New York City. She’d tried to sleep in the airport and on the flights as well, but she couldn’t. She’d drifted in that same haze all the way through customs, not truly conscious but also not asleep and definitely not getting any rest.
The cab driver that brought her from JFK International Airport to her Manhattan apartment in the freezing February morning kept glancing at her in the rearview mirror. He was probably wondering if he should drop her off at the Bellevue psych ward instead. She must have looked quite deranged in the rough wool sweater, fake leather shoes and too short slacks she’d bought some-where—was it on the street in Mexico or at an airport?—to replace the bloodstained ones she’d discarded in some ladies’ room trash can.
She’d clutched her beige leather shoulder bag all the way. That bag was an expensive contrast to the rest of her makeshift getup. More important, that bag held very precious contents—her bank and credit cards and, mercifully, her passport as well. That was all she’d rescued from Mexico. Her clothes, her camera, her jewelry, everything else had been left back there in Acapulco, in those perilous hotel rooms where abducting murderers might still lie in wait for her return.
Help had finally come for Citrone Blue at the brickworks shanty near Coyuca. Fortunately, after the police arrived, Blue had revived enough to tell the truth about who had shot him. The police still wanted to hold her for questioning, but let her ride with Citrone to the hospital in Acapulco. In the confusion there, she’d managed to slip out of a side door and away. She remembered now stopping at a vendor across the street from the long, wide flight of steps leading up to the hospital. That was where she’d purchased the odd outfit she was still wearing now and hailed a blue-and-white Volkswagen cab to take her first to a bank machine for cash and then to the airport. All the way, she’d searched the road behind for a black Bronco.
She credited the quickne
ss of her exit, not stopping even to think about what she was doing but heading straight for the airport and away, for her escape. She’d counted on her pursuers not expecting that. They would more than likely underestimate her boldness and resolve. Not even Slater would have guessed how single-minded she could become, like a bullet from one of the vicious firearms they all so routinely carried. She’d headed, true as one of those shots, for home and the purpose she had to fulfill. She’d kept to that course all the way, even through her daze.
That daze and the unreality of her journey north and east had everything to do with pain. Her heart had been split right in two, and the torture of that fatal wound would find no sudden relief. She might have healing in her future, but that was too far off and abstract to have any recognizable substance for her now. She could only carry this heavy ache which threatened to bury her deep in the darkness of her despair. She mustn’t let that happen though, at least not yet. Later on, she might allow herself to be covered over and sink into grief from the loss she couldn’t allow herself to feel right now. She might seek that uneasy peace eventually, but not today. It was evening, the best time to set her plan in motion, and that was what she had to do.
Phoenix hurried out of bed pulling the blanket along with her and swaddling herself in it over the sweat-soaked, mismatched outfit she’d dropped into bed still wearing however many hours that was ago. The floorboards chilled her bare feet. She must have kicked her shoes off some time in the night—or was it daytime?—of her uneasy slumber. She switched on radiators and the space heaters she kept for arctic days in her apartment, which varied in climate during winter from too much steam heat to drafts that crept out at her from nowhere.
She hustled into the bathroom, stamping her feet and hopping up and down to get her blood moving faster toward the icy extremes of her fingers and fanny. She was hopping that way when she looked in the mirror over her bathroom sink. She stopped dead still in shock at what she saw. No wonder the taxi driver had watched her so closely. She was amazed he’d let her in his cab at all. Her dark blond hair was matted and wild from more than just sleep. Deep, purple circles ringed her eyes. Their usually clear blue had turned to muddy gray. Remnants of Mexican dust smudged her forehead and caught in the creases of her neck. She recognized a particularly knotted place in her matted hair as the caking of dried blood. Her reddish brown tropical tan had taken on an ashen tinge, as if beneath it there lay the pallor of a ghost’s complexion.
Phoenix turned abruptly from the image and lunged for the tub. She twisted the faucets to their familiar positions of just the right temperature for her shower. She turned the hot water faucet up two notches higher still. She needed that extra heat to thaw her out, though she expected to carry this frosty chill at the center of her heart for some time to come.
She hurried out of her clothes as the shower splashed and began to steam. She recognized how rapidly she’d been moving ever since the pall of her dream had subsided enough to let her move at all. She also understood the reason for all of this dashing around. She was trying to widen the distance between herself and that very same dream. Nonetheless, as she stepped into the shower, one stark moment remained vivid before her, as if emblazoned on her eyes for all time—Slater broad as a tree with branches spread and birds singing promises of her salvation, then gone like the puff of empty air he had turned out to be.
SLATER HAD CALLED the police and ambulance from the first phone he found in Coyuca. He’d called back again to make certain they were both on their way, and once more to find out that Phoenix and Citrone Blue had been picked up from the brickworks and were safely on their way to Acapulco and the hospital there. Slater drove the Jeep back down Highway 200 to the city then. The trail after Sax and Laurent was as cold as cold could be by now. They’d probably have watchdogs at each of the three hotels Phoenix and Slater had frequented. He could simply go back to any of those and wait for one of the two creeps, most likely Sax, to pay a visit or follow Slater wherever he might go. That would give Laurent the choice of when and where to make a move, putting Slater at a distinct disadvantage. He wasn’t about to let that happen.
Instead, he found a neutral outpost in the lobby of a modest hotel along the Costera on the opposite side from the beach. He staked out the pay phone there and began placing calls to D.C. He had an idea that Phoenix would return to New York, but he couldn’t be absolutely sure. He had his D.C. computer mole keep close watch on all of the airlines out of Acapulco airport just in case.
In the meantime, Slater had no clue where she might be. He knew she was smart enough not to go back to any of the hotel rooms they had stayed in. They’d spoken of the impossibility of that on their way to Coyuca. She had access to cash and credit by way of the cards she had with her. He wasn’t surprised, though, to find she’d retrieved her passport from the hotel safe at La Escarpadura. She had mobility, and she was smart. Unfortunately, he had a hunch that she was also carrying a stubborn determination to clear any taint of doubt there might be against her name. She’d said something about that back in that shack after Citrone Blue let the cat out of the bag about why so many people had followed her to Mexico.
Slater didn’t like to think about cats out of bags. His emerging feline had let forth the most earsplitting shriek of them all. That revelation ripped through whatever connection Slater and Phoenix had like a stiletto slitting through gauze. What they’d had together was just that delicate, too. They hadn’t been with each other long enough to build anything more sturdy or resilient. Besides, just as she said, his end of their connection had been built on a pack of lies, a house of cards which toppled at the first breath of truth.
He’d waited in that hotel lobby for hours, with sojourns into the bar every now and then where he had to resist with all his might the temptation to drown his sorrows in tequila. As usual, the locals minded their own business. If they thought it was odd for this scruffy, rather wild-eyed gringo to be hanging around for most of the afternoon and into the evening, they never questioned him once. He had no doubt they kept a watch on him all the same. From what he’d seen of the Mexican people in these past few days, they might be discreet, but they definitely weren’t stupid.
The crucial callback came just in time. The long hours that make up the night for heartsore saps like he’d become were rapidly descending. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could resist the siren call of those Cuervo Especial Gold bottles over the bar. He might at least find some respite from the thudding ache in his left shoulder which had reasserted itself, probably because of these hours of inactivity. He was almost ready to order a tequila on the rocks or maybe even straight up when the call came. Phoenix had hopped a flight to New York City with a layover at Dallas-Fort Worth, and she was on her way. Slater breathed a sigh of relief to hear that, first because she was out of this town that had become so dangerous for her, and second because he could now get a move on at last himself.
His contacts in high places managed better flight connections for Slater than the ones Phoenix had to contend with. He’d arrived at JFK in New York only a couple of hours after she did. He thought about renting a car then, but he’d had enough of that back in Mexico. Public transport tended to be more efficient in Manhattan anyway. Thinking about that reminded him of all those loose ends he and Phoenix had left hanging around Acapulco and vicinity. One more phone call to Washington assured Slater that the hotel bills would be paid and the various vehicles accounted for. There would even be someone at each of those hotels to collect their belongings and ship them back to the states ASAP.
Slater took a taxi to yet another hotel room, in midtown Manhattan this time. This wasn’t the hotel Laurent and Sax knew about, of course. That one was in a much seedier part of town befitting Slater’s cover story as the impoverished victim of his gambling ways. Instead, he’d cabbed it to an official hideaway high up inside a tower of steel and glass. A change of clothes appropriate to the bone-chilling season awaited him there. He turned his hot shower to cold when he
felt his weariness about to overcome him. He’d slept on the plane, but he was tired still. The king-size bed invited him as temptingly as the tequila had done all those hours and the breadth of a continent ago, but once again he wouldn’t let himself give in.
That was how he’d come to be here now, shivering in this doorway across from Phoenix’s apartment building. A rental car might have been the smart choice after all. At least then he could sit inside somewhere for this stakeout. He’d spent a few hours in the diner on the corner, seated in the window with a clear view of Phoenix’s front entry. He’d carried on a mild flirtation with the waitress so she’d let him sit there nursing cup after cup of coffee for that long a time. Then her shift had ended, and he felt it was time to leave. This was New York not Mexico, after all. People could be anything but discreet here, and they didn’t care if they stuck their noses in your business, either. The next waitress might not be so accommodating.
Darkness had fallen, and an even deeper chill of the air came with it. Slater was almost ready to call his magic D.C. number and have them send him an automobile for shelter. Then Phoenix emerged from her apartment building across the wide avenue from him, and Slater was suddenly as warm as Acapulco once more.
Chapter Twenty-One
Phoenix did have a plan, and it might even be a good one. Then again, it might not. Success depended on there being no glitches. After her experiences in Acapulco, she wasn’t sure it was possible for anything in life to be glitch-free for her any longer. She tried to stay positive all the same, even when the chill of February knifed through her layers of clothing to remind her how her blood had thinned in just a few weeks of tropical weather. She did her best not to think about how much she would prefer to be watching the lights on Acapulco Bay with a day of lounging at Caleta Beach ahead of her. Instead, she was trudging through Midtown with her head tucked into her collar against the wind.