Cristián’s gaze was on her hand. He swallowed.
Abruptly, the air moved from torrid to white hot. Her body turned to molten liquid, which beat and rushed through her limbs, making them weak. Her breath shortened.
Cristián observed every single shift and reaction in her. His eyes glittered with intensity. A pulse throbbed in his throat…the throat she wanted to slide her tongue over right now and couldn’t.
“Touch your lips,” she whispered.
He let out a ragged breath. Moving with infinite slowness, he brought the tip of his finger to the edge of his mouth, then stroked it over his bottom lip. Chloe tracked the movement. She felt him doing it. Her fingers tingled.
She let out a shaking breath of her own.
“Your shirt…” Cristián breathed.
Almost shuddering with the intensity of the moment, Chloe pushed back her chair a few inches. It wasn’t calculated. She needed the room to move. In the little square at the top of the monitor, she saw herself shift farther away from the camera, which brought more of her body into view. The realization that Cristián would be watching the same view did make her shiver.
She lifted the damp tank top off and dropped it to the ground. She wasn’t wearing a bra. It was too hot.
The tips of her breasts were rock hard and aching.
“Touch them…” Cristián whispered.
“You first.” Her voice was thick with the need pulsing through her.
He shoved his chair back as she had. His was a deliberate movement, designed to inflame her. If she had not already been throbbing with lust, it would have. Her heart jumped, though. Her breath halted as Cristián stripped away the tee shirt. Then his hands dropped to his jeans. His gaze didn’t leave her face as he worked to unbutton them and slide the zipper down, the tendons in his arm flexing.
Chloe realized she was stroking herself only when Cristián directed her hand with soft, hoarse commands. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from what his hand was doing, where it was moving, the silky flesh it moved across…
It had not been the only night they had found pleasure together, but it was the first and it had been powerful.
Cristián’s grip on the bag squeezed even further. “I remember that night,” he breathed, his throat working.
Chloe couldn’t help it. She moved closer to him, her body thrumming with a faint echo of the pleasure of that night. She brought her hand to his lips and traced the bottom one with the tip of her finger. Pillowy softness, warmth, and the touch of his breath on her finger.
“It is exactly the way I imagined it would feel,” she breathed.
The heat in his eyes was ferocious. “Chloe…”
The harsh rap on the door made Chloe gasp and jump. She snatched her hand away from Cristián’s face and spun to look at the door.
Parris took a half step into the room, her hand on the door knob. “Will you, for god’s sake, get your ass in gear? Just because you’re the brother of the President doesn’t mean you get to sit down on the job.”
She withdrew, shutting the door silently.
Chloe turned back to Cristián, chagrined. Parris had sent her in here to hurry Cristián along and she had done the complete opposite.
Cristián had frozen. The bag slipped from his still fingers. “Duardo is President?” His voice was strained.
Chloe’s heart beat heavily, and not with anticipation this time. “You didn’t know? No, you couldn’t have known. Flores died, when they pushed across from the Big Rock, which left Duardo…”
Cristián’s face worked.
“It’s only pro tem,” she added, wondering why she was trying to justify it. “He’s not giving orders or anything, but someone has to be president. Cristián…”
He shook his head. “My big brother. The fucking president.” The bitterness in his voice twisted it and made it not his. Cristián pushed past her, tore the door open and strode past Parris, who stood on the other side. She watched him go, then looked at Chloe and raised her brow.
“He didn’t know Duardo was president,” Chloe said. “It…didn’t go down well.”
Parris sighed. “Go after him,” she hissed. “Pull him back together, Chloe. We can’t stay here.”
How the hell was she supposed to do that?
“Now, Chloe!” Parris said sharply. “You wanna be here when Insurrectos ram the front door open and come in with machine guns firing?”
Chloe flinched and hurried after Cristián. She bolted down the steps into the kitchen and saw him climbing a different set of steps on the other side of the room. They weren’t the stairs to the back of the house, but another wing on the front of the house.
She ran across the kitchen and leapt up the steps two at a time. There was only one room at the top. The door was slowly swinging closed. She rammed it open with the heel of her hand and strode into the room.
The door swung closed behind her once more. It was weighted to do so, she guessed, for it clicked shut with a soft snick.
The room was an office. This one was ordered, calm and tidy, with none of the frenetic chaos which marked Cristián’s room. The desk was bare, except for an old-fashioned blotter and a silver pen cup.
There were bookshelves on the wall behind the desk, with paperbacks and thick hardcover business books, photos in frames and an awful plastic dragon which looked as if it had come out of some sweatshop in Taiwan. It was there, she guessed, for sentimental reasons, not decorative ones.
Cristián was staring at the desk with a deep resentment marring his face. His hands were fisted.
Duardo’s desk, Chloe realized, with a sinking feeling. She glanced at the other side of the room. There was yet another set of steep stairs heading upward and at the top, she glimpsed the corner of a bed, beneath an attic-styled dormer window. Duardo’s bedroom. Had to be.
Anger stirred, wiping out the last of the fizzing wickedness which had been circulating.
“So, did you pick Shadow as your handle because of the Freudian comment upon your life, Cristián?” she asked, her tone dry.
He turned his head sharply to look at her, his eyes widening.
“That would be no, then,” she surmised. “Shit, you didn’t see it at all, did you? You’re so big on self-awareness. You used to hound us all the time to face the truth about ourselves. You dogged me for years about going straight so my internal gyro could run smooth. And you can’t see how much you’ve been letting your brother drive your life for you.”
Cristián swallowed. “Duardo is…” He shook his head. “I love him, but…”
“You hate him, too.”
Cristián closed his eyes. “Shit.”
Chloe inserted herself between Cristián and the big desk he was staring at. She lifted his chin to make him look at her. “You think you’ve got a monopoly on resentment, Cristián? Your brother was the perfect son and scholar, now he’s a brilliant general and the president of the county. You think anyone is going to be shocked you have issues about that?”
Cristián drew in a deep breath. “I’m shocked.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“It’s just…no one ever noticed me.”
She gripped his shoulders. “I did. I didn’t know your brother. I didn’t know you even had one, remember? I only caught up on that stuff about your life in the last few years and by then…” She halted, aware of where her words were taking her. “You have only ever been you, to me,” she finished. “The most important person in my life, since 2003.”
Cristián’s gaze met hers. “Guess I just wrecked that, huh? Fraternal issues he never noticed…”
“Hey, I like that you’ve actually got a flaw, Peña,” Chloe told him. “It makes me feel as if my shitty history isn’t so bad.” She picked up his hand. “Tell me something.”
He lifted a brow.
She lifted the hem of her shirt and slid his hand beneath. She still wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts were small enough she could go without most of the time and she liked the
unfettered feeling.
She put his hand on her breast and sucked in a sharp, shocked breath at the sensation. “Oh….”
Cristián’s finger moved, exploring. Stroking. His breath emerged in a hot rush, too.
“You liked this fine on the screen,” she whispered, unable to work her voice to sound normal. “Tell me you don’t like it now.”
Cristián pulled her closer to him. “You know I like it.” His breath fanned her cheek, then his lips touched it. His hand stroked and teased and made her moan. “Damn it, you know I do…” he muttered.
She did. The heat seemed to pour off him in waves. Chloe clung to him, as his lips hovered over hers.
Then he thrust her backward, her shirt tearing as his hand ripped from beneath. She staggered up against the desk, her brain scrambling. “What’s wrong?”
Cristián was staring at the bookcase. “Dino has been moved. That wasn’t where he was sitting, when we left.”
She looked at the plastic fantastic dragon. Dino. Sheesh. “You remember exactly where it was?”
“I remember where everything was,” he said absently, moving toward the bookcase. He was focused, concentrating. With a measured movement, he reached up to the shelf and swept the dragon aside with the back of his hand.
Glass glittered. A round eye.
“A camera,” Chloe breathed, clutching at her chest. Her heart was working too hard, as her body swung from one extreme emotional state to another, too many times in the last few minutes to keep up with.
Cristián whirled. “Run!” he shouted. “Get out of the house! Now!”
Chloe lurched into a broken, unsteady sprint, her limbs uncooperative, her fear making her clumsy. Cristián’s sharp imperative made her move without pausing to question or demand explanations.
She almost slithered down the stairs to the kitchen. Parris leapt down the last four steps of the flight on the other side, her gun up. In her other hand, she had the bag which Cristián had packed. “What’s up?” she asked, with astonishing calm.
“Camera. Not ours. Monitoring,” Cristián said.
“Shit,” Parris breathed. “I should’ve checked. No way they leave this house still standing if they weren’t monitoring.” She put her thumb and forefinger to her mouth and whistled—a sharp, two note call.
“Moving!” came Ramirez’s response, from the back wing. Chloe heard Pia protesting and Ramirez growl something back.
“Move. Out the back door. We don’t have time to sneak out windows,” Parris said. “Into the trees, as fast as you can go. Don’t stop for anything, not even gunshots. Move it!”
Chloe didn’t know where the back door was, although she guessed the general direction. There was one short flight of steps on that side of the kitchen. She ran for them. Cristián was right behind her, crowding her. He had longer legs. He would be faster in a sprint.
She surged up the stairs, into a work area with deep concrete sinks and laundry equipment. To the right of a barred door was a bench and hooks and shelves above. A mudroom.
Cristián yanked the heavy lumber out of the pegs on either side of the door and pulled the door open. Parris slipped past him and out. She didn’t slide out or look around. She burst out of the door like a sprinter through the finish line, not slowing down, not checking around her.
Then Chloe realized—there were eight other men up at the tree line, covering them. They would have eyes on the area.
“Go, go,” Chloe urged Cristián.
He took off as fast as Parris. As soon as he emerged from the door, though, the ground around his feet erupted in little fountains of dirt. Then Chloe heard the shots.
The assault rifles on the ridge behind the house opened up, returning fire.
The Insurrectos had been waiting for Cristián to emerge.
Her heart screaming, her limbs shaking, Chloe hesitated at the door. When she ran out, would they shoot at her, too?
She couldn’t stay here. She had to go. No choice.
Chloe gripped the door, tracing the path she would take across the yard and up the slope until she reached the rope one of Parris’ team had thoughtfully dropped down for them to use to scramble the remaining thirty feet.
They would be sitting ducks, climbing that rope.
“Oh fuck…” Chloe breathed.
Cristián turned. Beckoned. “Come on!” he cried.
She threw herself out of the door and ran like hell.
11.
CHLOE SHIVERED AGAIN AND WISHED she’d brought her down-filled parka with her from New York, only who’d’ve thought she would need one in sub-tropical Vistaria? Only, it was freaking cold up this high in the mountains and Parris flatly refused to allow anyone to light so much as a cigarette.
It wasn’t late, although it was already dark. Night fell earlier, this far south. They had run or jogged or hurried all day, since they burst out of the house and scrambled up the sandy ridge.
Chloe didn’t remember a lot of the climb. She remembered hearing bullets whizzing yet none of them came close—Parris’ men, above them, had seen to that. They were scary-efficient in their shooting. While the Insurrectos sprayed bullets around like confetti, figuring they were safe in their hidden positions, Parris’ men watched for muzzle flash, then popped a single bullet in that direction, picking off the Insurrectos one after another, while conserving their ammunition.
It was the first time Chloe had ever been under live fire. The clinical part of her brain told her she couldn’t remember much of it because she was hopped up on adrenaline, which narrowed her focus down to the simple acts required to survive. In this case, to slither up the rope like a monkey, with a speed the drill sergeants at the military school would have been proud of.
The adrenaline let her run, keeping up with the group, as they turned and sprinted deeper into the trees. Three of the unit lingered to protect their backs.
There was no chatter. Parris ruthlessly squashed any talk at all, although the only people to try were Isabela and her daughters and once, Cristián. Parris’ men communicated with grunts and gestures and a sign language stripped down to military commands.
Chloe learned to watch Parris for directions, after Parris raised a fist and Ramirez nearly took Chloe off her feet to make her halt.
It seemed to her they’d left the Insurrectos far behind, for she heard nothing and saw nothing to indicate they were still following. Parris and her team stayed alert, though, pushing deeper and higher into the mountains with silent drive. They took a bewildering path which moved downhill as often as it went up. The sun was never in the same position. They were boxing the compass.
The sun was sinking behind them when Parris came to a halt and turned to look at Locke, her second-in-command. Locke shook his head. So did the others, one by one.
Parris nodded. She wasn’t breathing hard, despite hours of hard, steady movement. Neither was Isabela, Pia, Trini or Cristián. This was the equivalent of a quick walk through Central Park for them.
Chloe breathed heavily but only because of the altitude and thin air. She would have been fine on flat ground. Not that there was any flat ground around here.
Parris waved everyone closer to her. “We squat here for the night while the others head out and nose around. Take a seat.” She settled in an actual squat, leaning forward to compensate for the pack on her back, which she did not take off. She planted her rifle butt down in the soil and propped herself up with it.
Chloe let herself drop in a heap, exhaustion registering.
One of Parris’ men shoved a bag of jerky toward her. Chloe took three pieces. “Thanks.”
He nodded and moved on, dolling out the jerky. Another moved around silently, offering a canteen which Chloe figured was filled with water. When it came time for her to sip, she tasted a salty, diluted liquid with a minty aftertaste. Electrolytes, she realized.
After that, there was nothing to do but sit and watch the night form around them. She felt the cold. It grew colder, the longer she sat. She
curled her knees up against her chest and wrapped her arms around them, shivering.
Cristián’s hand on her shoulder came from behind and was unexpected, making her gasp in shock. He put his hand over her mouth to hold the sound in and waited until her heartbeat slowed.
Then he pulled her in against his chest, settling her between his thighs. He wrapped his arms around her, which made her realize how cold it was, because he was warm against her back. Her shivers tapered off.
“Can we talk?” Cristián said softly.
“If you keep it below a murmur,” Parris said, her own voice low. “And if I say shut up, you shut up instantly.”
Isabela sighed. It was the first time she had made a sound since Parris rounded on her and told her to keep it zipped or else. That had been not long after they escaped the house.
“How long to we need to stay here?” one of the girls asked. Chloe thought it was Trini, although as she was just a silhouette in the dark, Chloe couldn’t be certain.
“We’re completing a five-kilometer sweep centered on this position,” Parris said. “Checking to make sure they’re not doing a long tail. We can’t afford to have them behind us when we head for the base.” Parris paused. “On flat ground, it would take a couple of hours to be sure. Here, though…”
The silence rebuilt as everyone reflected.
Cristián swept Chloe’s hair off her back and put it over her shoulder, out of his way. It was starting to frizz again. She hadn’t been able to straighten it since leaving Acapulco and the dampness and humidity were making themselves felt. She had lost the elastic she was using to keep it out of the way sometime during the day.
His lips touched the nape of her neck above the tank top and she shivered, and not because she was cold.
“I was thinking about EllaJean,” he murmured, keeping his voice down as instructed. “I think she would be proud of you, if she could see you.”
Chloe drew in a deep breath and let it out. No one had ever spoken her grandmother’s name aloud, not since she died.
“I’ve been putting it together, since you told me about the Place,” he added. “The year she died…it’s the year you ran away, isn’t it?”
V-Day Page 11