The hallway stretched the length of the house and the doors at each end led outside onto the veranda. She exited through the far door and found she was on a shady stretch of porch. She could see the roof of what must be a garage some ways away and beyond that, the twelve-foot stone wall that surrounded the compound. She began walking along the veranda and still didn’t see or hear anybody else.
The masked man was right, Gabriella and Nico truly did have free reign of the house and pool.
It was baffling. But when she stood on the long back veranda by the pool and saw the desolate jungle that lay hundreds of feet below the house’s hilltop perch, she got some idea why they were not locked up. The hacienda was on top of a hill that overlooked jungle to all sides. The grounds were enclosed by the wall. Last night, the woman had told them the wall was to keep the jaguars out. But it also effectively prevented Gabriella from devising a way to escape. They were miles from anywhere and leaping that fence meant throwing herself into the jungle.
But filled with despair about her mother’s decaying health, Gabriella was ready to do just that.
She paced the veranda glancing over her shoulder every few minutes. There didn’t appear to be another soul around. She took one step off the veranda and onto the deck of the pool. Circling the pool, she paused on the far side and looked back at the hacienda. It looked sleepy. There was no movement in any of the windows. No faces peeking out watching her. Nobody standing in doorways keeping track of her movements.
Ducking behind a large palm tree, she took a step into the brush below the elevated pool deck. It was further down than she anticipated and she stumbled, having to grab ahold of some branches to stay upright, her ankle twisting painfully.
Looking over at the hacienda, she waited. Nothing. No fluttered curtains or shades. No mad dash outside to stop her.
Turning, she ran toward the stone wall. This portion of it—on the far side of the pool—was the part most heavily hidden by trees and bushes and furthest away from the house.
When she reached the wall, she looked for any place to get a toehold, but the wall was sleek stone.
She noticed a small bucket with a sponge inside. Something the gardeners had left out perhaps. She overturned it and stood, trying to see how much closer to the top of the wall she could get. Not enough. Even stretching her arms, the top was out of her reach.
During her perusal of the veranda, she’d looked for something that could be used as a ladder, but there was nothing.
Now, she eyed a small tree about two feet from the wall. If she scaled the tree to the top, she could reach over and jump to the top of the wall. She grabbed a hold of a piece of bark sticking off the tree a little above her head and then using it to gain leverage, put her right foot on the tree and tried to hoist herself up. Her foot held on the tree trunk, and she grasped the tree with both arms, now about two feet above the ground. Searching the trunk for another piece of loose bark, she found one a few feet above. She reached up. It was too far away. Poking her head around the trunk she examined the other side. There was a piece of bark she could grab. She scooted until she was on the other side of the tree and reached up for the piece of bark starting to come off the trunk. She grabbed it. When she lifted her foot up and her weight was temporarily supported by the bark, it broke off and she fell to the ground, landing on her back with a heavy thud that knocked the wind out of her.
For a few seconds, she couldn’t breathe. She struggled to sit up, worried she’d hurt herself.
“Take it easy.” The voice was low and amused. “You might have seriously injured yourself.”
Now sitting up, she glanced behind her. The sun blocked the man’s face, but she recognized his voice. He turned his head and the sun silhouetted his mask with the long-pointed nose. El Loro.
“I need to go home. I need to be with my mother. She’s dying.”
Maybe, if he had half a heart, he would understand this.
Tears of anger and frustration shot out of her eyes. Maybe he would think they were sad tears, but she was furious.
“We’ve had this discussion already,” the man said.
Gabriella shielded her eyes, trying to see him better but he was still just a dark figure with sunlight streaming around him.
“Please.”
She would beg if she needed to. The only thing she wanted in the world was to get back to her mother before she died and to be there to comfort her daughter. She would do anything. She stood, relieved to find that nothing hurt except her twisted ankle.
“I’ll do anything you want. Anything.” She said it with such conviction the man laughed.
“I believe you.” He turned his head again. “There is a slight problem.”
Gabriella waited.
“There is nothing you have I want.”
“If that is true, then let me go. I beg you.”
“You serve a purpose. I cannot let you go until something else is resolved. Something that you can do nothing about.”
Despair filled Gabriella. She was even more helpless than she realized.
A few other people had arrived. What looked like a gardener, and the cook, Esmeralda and a couple of men dressed in what appeared to be work clothes, matching khaki pants and shirts and boots. She spotted Nico on the pool deck watching. He was near Marco, the man in the white linen suit.
The man stood between her and the pool. The other people stood a little bit away, watching. All of them had blank looks on their faces.
She started walking toward the man in the mask and he held up a palm.
“No. I’m not done.”
Gabriella waited. Could she take him? Maybe. But then where would she go and what would she do?
“I obviously did not make myself clear yesterday. If you behave, and this morning’s little stunt is not considerate guest behavior—if you behave like a guest, there is a chance you will be able to return to your mother and daughter. You see I am not a monster. I am a businessman. Yes, sometimes my work requires me to act in certain distasteful ways, but it is not my first choice.”
Gabriella let out a big breath, thinking he was done.
But then he lowered his voice and leaned forward, so close she could smell the minty toothpaste he had used that day.
“If you try to escape again. I will make sure there is no mother and daughter for you to go home to.”
Gabriella’s heart stopped for a minute, but he wasn’t done.
“That penthouse has some top-notch security, but it is nothing compared to my trained men. They have been inside it already without anyone being the wiser. Your daughter’s bedroom is a fine tribute and example of her love of horses and books.”
Her head slumped. They had been inside her daughter’s bedroom.
“I understand.” She didn’t look up as she said it. She stared at the ground, watching the largest ants she had ever seen strut across the toe of her boot. She was beaten.
He had won. She was his prisoner and there was nothing she could do about it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Gabriella knew who was knocking on her bedroom door even before she threw back the lock. It had become a nightly habit. After “curfew” each night, Nico snuck down the hallway with a small bottle of whiskey and two glasses.
After that day by the stone wall, Gabriella had never seen the man in the mask again or his colleague in the white suit. She’d been at the hacienda for ten days.
Sometimes the desire to escape and find her way—somehow—back to her mother and daughter was nearly irresistible. She’d stand with her hand on the doorknob and close her eyes, willing herself to remain rational.
Meanwhile, her heart would race and she’d become nearly paralyzed by panic attacks.
Thoughts and images of her mother’s death haunted her constantly: Maria in excruciating pain, yet protesting the painless peace of death, clinging desperately to life, waiting for The Saint’s jet to arrive from Central America with Gabriella so she could say goodbye to her daughter be
fore she slipped into oblivion.
Or worse, Maria willingly taking her last breath, already convinced that Gabriella was dead and she was joining her in the hereafter.
The desperation she felt was overwhelming. Gabriella needed to escape. Of course she was afraid of the man in the mask. He said he’d kill her family. But if she got to a phone, she could stop any threat. El Loro was powerful but so was her mother’s husband. The Saint wouldn’t let anything happen to her mother or daughter if she could only warn him. She needed to be smart about her escape plan. She’d need a vehicle to get away and get to a phone. Or she needed to contact someone to come get her. Those were her only two options.
Although many doors were locked, many were also available to them, including the extensive library the masked man had mentioned. Gabriella had pilfered the library, keeping a big stack of books on her nightstand.
But every time she sat down to read, her frantic thoughts of her mother and Grace would take over.
The only thing that allowed her peace from her thoughts was the nightly visits from Nico when she would drink until her mind shut off and she could tumble into a dreamless sleep.
Because it was her only small measure of peace, it didn’t take long before she began to look forward to Nico’s nightly visits.
After the first night, Esmeralda told them one other house rule was that they both should be in their rooms each night by ten. It was unclear why that rule was established, but Gabriella had no reason to stay out late anyway. Esmeralda never said they had to each be in their own rooms, so Nico’s visits seemed to be approved.
Without his visits, Gabriella would have spent those late-night hours pacing. They sat by her fireplace on the rug, drinking until dawn. She never asked where he got the alcohol.
During his visits, they talked for hours. Gabriella found they had a lot more in common than she initially realized. They both had giant Italian families with characters that were straight out of the movies.
Nico was a surprisingly charming and interesting man. Like that first night over dinner, there was never enough time together to share their thoughts on books, film, and art. They even played chess on an old wooden board he’d brought to her room one night. But it wasn’t his first choice since Gabriella usually won fairly fast.
They spent most of their time together sprawled on the rug in front of her bedroom fireplace. Every time he arrived, Nico would start the small blaze for them. The wood in her bin by the fireplace was mysteriously replaced while she was at dinner each night.
Although the talk often veered into lighthearted topics, the main subject was always why they were being held captive.
“I think I know why,” Nico would say. “They want me to tell them about my operative who was on the plane. They want ... the name.”
Gabriella noticed how he changed courses instead of saying “his” or “her” name. He didn’t even want her to know if the operative was male or female.
“Just who are they? Sinaloa?” she asked. Sinaloa was known as the most powerful drug cartel in the world. They were also known as the Blood Alliance, the Federation and the Pacific Cartel.
She’d researched them the second Donovan’s flight left for Central America months ago. From what she’d found, the Sinaloa Cartel had smuggled nearly two hundred tons of cocaine and heroin into the United States in the past twenty years. Their main arena of operation was in the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua. That’s one reason she was surprised to find that when Donovan’s plane went down he was south of Mexico, in Guatemala.
Nico shook his head. “Los Zetas.”
The name sounded familiar but Gabriella wasn’t sure who or what they were.
“Los Zetas is a gang of mercenaries. They are all former members of the Gulf Cartel. They were all members of the cartel’s special forces. But they got greedy and broke away to form their own cartel. They are the ones smuggling cocaine from Columbia to America.”
The Gulf Cartel was the oldest organized crime unit in Mexico. Gabriella knew the defection was not taken lightly.
She shook her head at her naivety, thinking she could tromp through the jungle in Central America to look for her dead husband’s body and then waltz right back out again.
“Even our government will not send men here. Your husband was an exception. I’ve heard rumors that he came here without permission, that he scheduled his own flight down here despite the DEA forbidding him from doing so.”
“Good God.” Gabriella sat back against the base of the love seat. That revelation explained so much. Of course Donovan would disobey DEA orders if he thought he was on to something larger, bigger, and more relevant.
And that could also mean that the DEA had probably never actually gone to search for him down here. That he’d gone rogue and as punishment, they had cut him loose.
The only question was why the senator had helped her. And how he had received details of Donovan’s travels. Maybe under the senator’s pressure, the agency had a change of heart. Gabriella found that hard to believe, though.
“If all you say is true,” Gabriella began. “Why are they keeping me prisoner? It seems if I were in the way, they would just kill me.”
“They think we are lovers?” He let slip a small smile.
“It’s not funny.”
The word “lovers” made her stomach flip flop.
“I truly think they are using you to get to me,” he said. “That is why they let me visit you. Look.”
He pointed up to a small Moroccan lamp in one corner of the ceiling. Each corner of her room held a different colored tin lamp. “Those are everywhere. They have cameras inside. Except the bathroom. The senor at least has decency not to pry in that one spot.”
“They’ve been watching us the whole time?” Gabriella felt like she was going to vomit. She was tempted to take a poker from the fire and reach up and try to break the lamps, but she remembered what she had been told by the man in the mask. If she behaved she had a chance of going home to see Grace and spend every precious moment left with her mother.
She’d behave all right. Until he wasn’t looking.
Thinking of what the cameras had already witnessed in her room made her skin crawl. Someone had been spying on her and Nico.
Then her fury turned to him. “I don’t understand why you didn’t say anything sooner.” She could almost feel the anger spurting through her veins.
He looked surprised. “I only today realized this. I knocked one over in my room and it shattered. When I was cleaning up the pieces I saw the tiny camera.”
Gabriella narrowed her eyes at him. She wasn’t convinced he was telling the truth. He might have lied to appease her.
She stood abruptly and headed toward the bathroom. Despite what Nico said about the bathrooms not having cameras, she searched every inch, standing on the counter to search the lights in the ceiling, pulling down every single towel, dumping every drawer.
“You okay in there?” Nico asked.
“Are you sure there isn’t a goddamn camera in here, too?” She shouted back.
“I don’t think he would go that far.”
“We can only hope.”
Finally, she decided to let it go. She cleaned up her mess, came back into the living room and poured herself another glass, which she downed in one shot.
Before she said a word, she pointed at the camera. “Is it recording what we say, as well?”
He shrugged. “I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure.”
Just to be safe, she leaned over and turned up the volume on the small stereo system. A U2 song that always brought tears to her eyes—Miss Sarajevo—was playing but she tried to tune it out and focus on Nico. In low voices, they continued discussing the possibility of getting to a vehicle and escaping.
“What about the garage down the hill?” Gabriella asked.
One time, not long after her escape attempt, she had headed that direction but Esmeralda had whistled loudly to let her know
she was watching.
Fear of the woman reporting back to the man in the mask—and that he might follow through on his earlier threat—sent her back to the house.
“I have walked down there,” he said. “All the doors were locked.”
“You walked down there? Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice was sharp. “I thought we were in this together, but you apparently aren’t including me in anything.”
Nico looked away for a minute. He pulled at his shirtsleeves and sighed, turning back. “I can tell you one thing but it won’t help us.”
He leaned forward conspiratorially. “I heard Esmeralda tell someone the other day that the keys to the vehicles were kept in the garage.”
“Really?” She leaned forward.
He held out a hand. “I told you it wouldn’t help us. Without the key to the garage, we can’t look in the garage for the vehicle keys, can we?”
“All we need to do is get inside the garage, right?”
He looked skeptical. “I suppose. But that’s going to be very difficult.”
“No, it’s that simple,” she said and yawned. She didn’t explain it would be simple because of her lock picking skills. It was nearly six in the morning. The pink light of sunrise was filtering in through her French doors.
Each night, when dawn broke and they were both nearly falling asleep, Nico would lean over and tenderly kiss her on the cheek before dragging himself to his feet and out the door, leaving Gabriella flushed with lust and guilt, disconcerted by the wave of desire that whisper of a kiss sent coursing through her. It was that damn scar.
Tonight was no different.
“You’re falling asleep,” he said. “I’ll go now.”
He leaned over and it seemed as if his kiss was extra warm on her cheek and lingered a little bit longer than normal. She watched him gather up his things through half slit eyes and didn’t move until he left, closing her door softly behind him.
Crawling into bed, she was torn by her desire. It was natural to be physically attracted to Nico. Even without the way his eyes devoured her each night, she knew he wanted her, too. But after that first night at the campfire when he kissed her, he had respected her desire to be left alone. Ironically, it made her like him even more because he respected her loyalty to her husband. He didn’t mock her belief that as long as there was the most infinitesimal chance that Donovan was still alive, she owed him her fidelity.
Blessed are the Peacemakers Page 9