by Julia London
“That’s it?” she cried, incredulous. “Have some orange juice? And will you stop with the orange juice already?” She fell into a chair at the table. “I’m glad you understand, Adolfo, but I thought there might be a little more reaction than that.”
“Of course I understand,” he said, seeming a little affronted that she thought he wouldn’t. “It is clear to me. It is the bastard, no?”
“No!”
“No?”
“Well . . . all right, maybe a little,” she admitted, and picked up the orange juice and took a sip. It tasted funny, like processed orange juice.
“Si, si I know this for a very long time,” Adolfo said matter-of-factly. “He has hurt your tender heart, yet you cannot get him out of it.”
“Something like that,” she admitted, and took another big sip of orange juice.
“I see this very often,” he said, nodding sagely. He leaned up against the Formica countertop and pointed an apple slice at her. “My advice to you, mi amor, is that you get him out. He is like . . .” He tapped his chest. “Poison in there.”
“You really think so?” she asked weakly.
“Yes,” he said emphatically. “It is obvious.”
It was obvious, and would be to her, too, if she would just think clearly about it. Leah sighed, drank more OJ, and pushed it away, had the thought that it was a little absurd to be having this conversation with a man she had almost slept with last night.
“Well,” she said glumly, “be that as it may, I guess there is nothing left for us to say. I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.”
“De nada,” he said, flicking his wrist.
Why did he keep smiling like that? He was acting like he did this sort of thing all the time. Her head was beginning to ache again, and she put her knuckles to her temple and began to rub. “Will you at least tell me what happened to my dress?”
“The zipper, it was very stubborn,” he said cheerfully.
“Did we . . . you know . . . do anything?”
He laughed at that. “You have a grand imagination.”
Not really. “Can I borrow the shirt?” she begged. “I’ll return it to you in Bellingham.”
He nodded politely. Leah stood, and whoa . . . her knees were wobbly again. She laughed a little self-consciously. “I guess I really tied one on last night, huh?”
Adolfo smiled.
“So . . . you’re going to give me a ride, right?”
“No, no,” he said shaking his head.
Man, she felt bad. She put her hand on the table to steady herself. “Come on, Adolfo. I don’t feel well, and I can’t really walk through town dressed like this.”
“No, that would not be good,” he agreed.
Well all right then . . . why didn’t he move? “I don’t think you understand. I need a ride.”
“No,” he said, smiling brightly.
“Jesus, Adolfo, what is with you?” she cried with exasperation, the force of it making her feel extremely woozy. “What is your problem? I need to go, and I need you to take me.”
For some reason, Adolfo’s smile faded. “But I cannot do that, Leah,” he said, his pleasant voice belying the suddenly hard and very cold look in his eye. “I need you here.”
Leah gasped. “What do you mean? Like a sex slave?” she almost whispered.
He chuckled at that, reached out and traced a line across her jaw. “That is an appealing offer, but put your mind at ease—I do not need you for that . . . not at this time,” he added, his gaze flicking the length of her.
“I don’t understand,” she said, and had a very thick feeling that her brain couldn’t absorb anything at the moment. “Look, I don’t know what your deal is, but I am out of here,” she said, and moved awkwardly for the door.
Adolfo caught her hand and turned her around, and Leah had to grab his wrist to keep from slipping to the floor, she was suddenly feeling so bad. “Leave me alone,” she said sharply.
“But I cannot,” he said, and reached behind his back, into the waist of his pants, and when he brought his hand around again, he was holding a black gun. A big, ugly black gun that he held away from him, almost as if he was afraid to touch it.
Leah shrieked and swayed backward, colliding with the table and sending orange juice flying across the ugly linoleum floor. “What are you doing?” she cried.
“I need you here, mi amor. I need you so that the bastard will come for you, and then I may kill him.”
“What?” she shrieked. “Kill him? Kill Michael? Why?” she exclaimed, and in her fogged mind, she meant to tell him that he had no reason to kill Michael, that he was a bastard, okay, but he didn’t deserve to die for it. Yet all her words were garbled, and the walls started to melt behind Adolfo’s smiling face as the floor rose up to meet her.
MICHAEL was able to get cell phone reception halfway to Bellingham, and phoned Rex. “Well,” Rex said after Michael told him what had happened. “I think you’ve got your boy. I’m on my way.”
“I’m not waiting for you,” Michael warned him. “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to rip him in two.”
“Don’t go off and leave me nothing. I want a piece of him, too,” Rex said. “Why don’t you leave all the killing to me this time—I’ve got permission to do it and you don’t. I’ll try and get a couple of guys out of Seattle to lend you a hand. Just sit tight until they get there, okay?”
Michael couldn’t promise that. He just told Rex to get out there as soon as possible. And then he turned the Jeep around and headed back for the little town and the Italian restaurant where Leah had been seen last, and thought back to the last time he’d seen Juan Carlo.
It had been a few years ago, at a party Juan Carlo had thrown for his sister at his Costa del Sol mansion. Juan Carlo loved a good party and that night had been amazing—the pool had been filled with floating candles. Girls in skimpy bathing suits, high on coke, had walked around sharing liquor and cocaine with all the male guests.
Juan Carlo had been in fine form that night, dancing with his wife, Maribel (who complained to Michael in private that she couldn’t bear his touch), flirting with all the girls, and clapping all the men on the back, sharing a joke, a cigar, or a drink. He’d told Michael that night that they were compadres, the closest of friends. “One day,” he had said in English, “you will work with me. I will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.”
At the time, Michael had thought that was slightly amusing, because he knew the Spanish authorities would be paying an early morning call to Juan Carlo and that he likely would never see his mansion in Costa del Sol again. Juan Carlo—jovial, fun-loving, generous Juan Carlo—had made his millions from trading arms to terrorists who intended to use those arms against the United States. He was a ruthless arms supplier, crooked as the day was long . . . but he was nonetheless an affable, likable guy, and in a weird way, it had pained Michael a little to put him away for the rest of his life.
“You know how it is out there,” Rex had waxed philosophically when he had told Michael that Juan Carlo was, surprisingly, out of prison and had been to see Maribel, roughing her up badly enough to put her in the hospital. “Money is a powerful corrupter.”
Michael supposed so, and while he could have guessed Juan Carlo had wanted to kill him from the moment the federal agents had shown up and taken him down—there was no question in Michael’s mind that Juan Carlo hadn’t known immediately who set him up—he never would have guessed he would come to the United States to do it.
Frankly, he was a little blown away by it.
But the man had made a grave error when he’d touched Leah. Michael felt a fury boiling in his veins like he’d never felt in his life, a palpable energy coursing through him and dredging up every single drop of testosterone in his body.
He was seeing red, all right. And lucky him, he’d get to kill Juan Carlo with his bare hands, because he didn’t have a gun on him, and Michael was honestly looking forward to breaking Juan Carlo’s fucking n
eck.
Chapter Twenty-Five
LEAH woke up once again, her head pounding and her mouth dry, lying on her stomach across the bed. She was still wearing the ruined dress, but Adolfo had taken his shirt back, the bastard.
With a groan, she pushed herself up and looked around through a curtain of hair. Adolfo was lounging in the old chair, the gun on his lap as he watched a small black-and-white TV. An old sitcom from the sound of it.
“You’re an asshole, Adolfo,” she said hoarsely.
He lazily turned his head toward her and smiled. “I have been called far worse.”
She pushed her hair over her shoulder, rolled onto her back, and stared up at the ceiling, trying to focus. “It’s the orange juice, isn’t it? There was something in the orange juice.”
“Si,” he answered readily, as if she was asking the ingredient in his special brownie recipe. “The same as was in the wine.”
“What was it?” she asked in a near whimper. “Is it poison? Am I going to die?”
Adolfo clucked his tongue. “Not from poison. I do not want to kill you, Leah, I merely want to . . . how do I say it . . . make you not move.”
“Incapacitate me,” she said.
“Si, si!” he sang out, pleased that she knew the word.
“But why?” she cried. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“What are these tears?” he scoffed. “I have explained why, no? I need you so that the bastard will come to me.”
Man, she had the distinct memory of having witnessed this very scene in a soap opera she’d watched between jobs once. A woman inexplicably captured and held in a remote mountain cabin—only it had gone on for months, and the woman had fallen in love with her captor. That was definitely not going to happen here, although Leah might fall in love with the men in white coats who came to get Adolfo.
“The bastard is not going to come,” Leah said, swiping at a single tear from beneath her eye. “He’s never going to find you here, and even if he does, he is so much smarter than you are. He won’t walk into a stupid trap.”
Adolfo chuckled. “First you despise him. Then you defend him. Which do you want, mi amor? To love him or to hate him?”
“Oh . . . just shut up,” she said irritably.
“He will come. I left many clues, so even a man as estúpido as he will find us. And because I have you, he will arrive very soon, for he will be very afraid.”
Leah sat up and glared at Adolfo. “You know, I used to think you were a nice guy.”
He laughed again, inclined his head in acknowledgment. “It is a sad thing that you will know me only under these circumstances. I am very charming—many women have said so. In Spain, you would have adored me very much.”
“Oh, right, you’re a regular prince,” Leah snapped. “So do I at least get to know why you want to kill him?”
He shrugged. “He is a liar. And he made love to my wife.” Adolfo smiled coldly. “Many times.”
Leah’s heart sank a little—apparently, the Extreme Bachelor had gone international. She got off the bed, pausing only a moment until her head cleared a little.
When it did, she saw that Adolfo had sat up, had his hand on his gun. “What are you doing?” he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
“The bathroom,” Leah said, and ignoring him, she stumbled into the pit of a bathroom.
When she had availed herself of the facilities, such as they were, she emerged again, hands on hips, and glared once more at Adolfo, who was now on his feet, holding the gun with the ease of a man who had apparently done so many times before. He reminded her of one of the villains in a bad TV movie, holding it so carelessly.
“Can’t you point that thing in another direction?”
He looked down at it and seemed surprised. He quickly pointed it toward the ceiling.
“What is the matter with you?” she demanded.
“Ach,” he said, flicking his wrist at her. “I do not care for guns. I have others use them on my behalf.”
Leah’s jaw dropped open. “You don’t know how to use the gun you are holding?”
Adolfo shrugged.
Leah shook her head. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
He laughed, looked down at the gun he was holding. “You should mind your tongue when a man is holding you at gunpoint,” he said, “especially when he does not know how to use it properly.”
Excellent advice, but Leah smirked at him nonetheless. “Is there anything to eat or drink besides poisoned orange juice?” she asked, and walked past him, into the kitchen. Adolfo did not try and stop her, but followed her in, as if he, too, was interested.
“You will find small biscuits and canned foods,” he said, watching curiously as Leah opened a cabinet door.
“Wait a minute,” she said, pausing to look at him over her shoulder. “Do you mean you planned to hold me captive without food?”
Adolfo laughed and took a can of tuna out of the dank cabinet. “I did not see the point of wasting good food on a woman who will soon be dead.”
Leah gasped. His glittering brown eyes were hard as rocks, and she felt the pit of her stomach slide, woozy and sick, to her toes.
He was serious. Dead serious.
JUAN Carlo might as well have strewn his path with bread crumbs and cookies, or better yet, paint a big red arrow pointing up the mountain, he was so damn obvious about it. Michael started with the bartender, whom he had to rouse out of bed after coaxing his name from a waitress. The man wasn’t very happy about it until Michael tossed a couple of twenties at him—then he remembered Juan Carlo very well. Juan Carlo had taken the time to have a long and memorable conversation with the man about cabins, and one in particular up the old Sunlight Canyon Road.
“Anything else?” Michael asked.
The bartender thought about it. “He was a nice guy, actually. A big tipper.”
That was Juan Carlo, generous to a fault.
At the only real grocery in town, Juan Carlo had apparently proven once again that he was a consummate ladies’ man. He had chatted it up for almost an hour with a middle-aged clerk with Brillo-pad jet-black hair who had added a thick slash of dark red lipstick across her mouth, perhaps in anticipation of a return visit by the dashing Spaniard. Whatever he’d said to the clerk had obviously kept her smiling into today.
“Do you know where he might be?” Michael had asked as he paid for some gum.
“I don’t know for sure, but he was talking about making the drive up Sunlight Canyon Road.”
“Up there?” Michael asked, feigning confusion. “I heard there wasn’t much up there anymore.”
“Oh there’s not,” the clerk agreed, confirming Michael’s guess. “Just a couple of old family cabins. I know two of them have been empty for years, since the cost of heating fuel got so expensive. But there are a couple of nicer ones down by the main road. I’m sure that’s where he’s probably staying.”
Michael was sure that’s where he was not staying. He thanked the clerk, walked out to the Jeep. This was like finding an elephant in a haystack. All he had to do now was find the right cabin, which wouldn’t be too hard, thanks to Juan Carlo’s big red flags and pointers.
He got into the driver’s seat and sat a moment. What was he going to do when he found him? Storm the cabin? Right. Juan Carlo was as crafty and cunning as any arms trader or dope runner could be and undoubtedly was waiting in the trap he’d set for Michael. Without backup—and Michael wasn’t waiting hours for backup—he’d basically have to walk right into the trap if he was going to get to Leah.
He did not relish the thought of doing that, but he figured he had little choice. If she was still alive—and he couldn’t even think of the other possibility—it was his only chance to get to her before Juan Carlo did something stupid. But once Juan Carlo had him, Leah would become secondary. Maybe he could negotiate her release in exchange for himself. He liked his chances much better on his own.
He couldn’t even guess how this was going to pla
y out, but first things first—he had to get Leah away from Juan Carlo.
AS he guessed, Michael found the cabin easily enough—it was just where he suspected it would be, high on the end of the old forest road, the last of a couple of run-down vacation cabins.
The car sitting out front of the cabin bore the familiar logo of a rental agency—it was a predictably high-end car and too nice for this particular area. It stuck out like a sore thumb. But Juan Carlo was the sort of guy who liked top of the line so that he could flash his wealth at every opportunity, even when he was in the hunt to kill a man. Stupid bastard.
Michael parked his Jeep at the bottom of the long road up, beneath a stand of spruce trees on an abandoned mining road. He tried to call out on his cell phone, but couldn’t get a signal, and pitched it inside his Jeep. He’d already called Rex from town and told him what he knew. Once again, Rex had urged him to sit tight, that he’d have someone out from D.C. as soon as possible.
“D.C.?” Michael asked. “I thought you said Seattle.”
“I did. But the FBI prefers we keep this below the radar. The president doesn’t want any bad press over a known terrorist slipping undetected past our borders. If the media got hold of that, the administration would have to explain it. So just sit tight. I’ve got a plane—we’ll be there in a matter of hours.”
“Right,” Michael said, but he and Rex both knew that he wouldn’t wait. “Whatever you do, just be cool, man,” Rex said before Michael hung up. Easier asked than done, Michael thought.
Outside of the Jeep, he took the lug wrench to carry with him for protection. He had never, in all the years he’d worked for the CIA, carried a gun. He had a deep cover, a businessman selling packing materials to people like Juan Carlo. He’d had no need of a gun. There was only one time he’d even wanted one—back when he was sleeping with Juan Carlo’s wife and spent each night wondering if it would be his last. That, and today. He would have liked the feel of cold steel in his hand, would have liked to find Juan Carlo’s fat face in its sites.