Warrior Without Rules

by Nancy Gideon

  “I think I’ll go upstairs. This humidity and the tequila are giving me a bit of a headache.”

  “Oh, honey,” Bryce clucked. “Put a cool cloth over those beautiful eyes. We can’t have any swelling before tomorrow’s shoot.”

  “Concern noted.” She blew her photographer a kiss. “Good night.”

  The three of them left the crowded festival area and entered the air conditioned welcome of the hotel. Mateo linked his arm through Toni’s to edge Zach out of the way. He followed an obliging step behind, his gaze doing a quick point-to-point search of the open atrium.

  “Antonia, we’ve spent no time together,” Mateo complained with a petulant purse of his lips. “I had hoped to steal you away so we could talk, just the two of us.”

  “Mateo, I’d like that, too. I’ve missed our talks and the way you make me laugh.”

  He glanced back at their somber shadow. “I could arrange a little escape.”

  “Russell would not be pleased.”

  “And since when is pleasing him more important than pleasing me?”

  Toni squeezed his arm. “You sound like a jealous suitor.”

  “Perhaps I am.”

  Toni chuckled, dismissing the sudden intensity in his expression as pure drama. She touched the bracelet on her wrist, her mood sobering. “You don’t have to be jealous of Russell. He doesn’t have a personal bone in his body. He’s not interested in my heart, only my health.”

  “Foolish man.”

  Toni silently agreed.

  They reached the bank of glass elevators. One of the desk clerks called to Mateo and held up a phone receiver.

  “I have to take that.” Mateo hugged her briefly and pressed a kiss to her brow. “Sweet dreams, novia.”

  Toni slipped past Zach into the elevator, moving to the rail and putting her back to him as he pushed for their floor. Fatigue pounded at the base of her skull. An illogical irritation with Russell had that knot of pain fisting tighter.

  “Step back from the glass,” Russell commanded as they lifted from the lobby and began the upward climb.

  Just weary enough to be contentious, she snapped, “I really don’t think there’s any danger in—”

  That’s when the elevator shuddered to a stop between floors eight and nine.

  Toni gasped as Zach’s arm scooped about her middle to swing her to the back of the car. Pushed back against the doors with Russell’s body between her and any potential assailant, Toni felt the first cold spike of terror.

  “Stay behind me.”

  Zach’s quiet order froze her in place. While he scanned the open halls that ringed each floor, he pressed the various panel buttons to no avail. Finally, he sounded the alarm bell. As the sharp sound echoed in the elevator, the light suddenly went out.

  Toni flattened against the door, her eyes squeezing shut, the breath thickening in her throat. Just a coincidence, she told herself as fear shuddered through her. Russell would never let anything happen to her.

  Minutes ticked by as they hung suspended in the darkened cubical. Without air movement, the temperature quickly rose to a stifling degree. But it was cold that wracked Toni’s body from head to toe, a deep, deathly chill that had her teeth clattering and her limbs trembling.

  “Zach?” Her voice trembled, too.

  “It’s all right. I’m with you.” The calming power of that statement grounded her escalating panic. “Look. There’s a security guard with a radio. They’ll get us out. Help’s on the way. Hang in there.”

  She nodded and concentrated on breathing.

  The light flickered on overhead. Zach concealed the pistol in his hand as the car jerked then began to move upward once more. One, two, three floors then the doors slid open and Toni spilled on nearly boneless legs into the hallway. Zach’s palms cupped under her elbows in support but after a few deep draws of air, she was able to push away from him as the security guard emerged from the stairwell.

  “Everything all right?”

  “Yes. Thank you,” she returned in a thready voice.

  “It happens sometimes. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

  “No problem,” she assured him with a smile as watery as her knees. She lurched toward their suite, the sweat cold on her face and neck, her heart pounding an anxious rhythm against her ribs. Zach opened the door but had her wait in the alcove until he’d turned on the lights and done a cursory sweep of the interior. When he nodded the all clear, she wobbled across the room and out onto the balcony to suck in the cooler taste of ocean air. Zach turned off the lights behind her so her figure wouldn’t be silhouetted against the room’s brightness. Though he didn’t join her, she could feel him standing just on the other side of the slider’s threshold.

  The fiesta had broken up below but a different celebration had begun at the resort next to them. A dais surrounded by mock pillars hosted a wedding party with the bride and groom seated in throne-backed rattan chairs while their guests, all in white, line danced to the Spanish rendition of Achy Breaky Heart. A poignant smile touched Toni’s lips as she watched the revelers far below. She thought of the couples at their table during the fiesta, unashamedly necking, and witnessed the hopefulness of a new beginning in the celebration of dance and music and lantern light below. Personal delights she would never experience. A future she would never have. A bittersweet sigh escaped her as she turned away and was met with the imposing shape of the one man who didn’t wake all her defenses.

  “You look exhausted. You should take a shower and get some sleep.”

  “That’s a fairly personal observation, Mr. Russell.”

  “A practical one, Ms. Castillo. But do what you like.”

  “I’d like to just sit a minute and unwind.” The claustrophobic entrapment in the elevator had unnerved her more than she cared to admit. Just a coincidence. Not a sign that danger had followed her here to this paradise. Perhaps she was being overly sensitive, overly cautious, looking for threat in every shadow, suspicious of every circumstance. Or maybe she wasn’t wrong for feeling the stresses constantly gnawing just beneath the surface. She didn’t have to confess these things to Zach. He knew. And that’s why she felt brave enough to take a chance by saying, “Sit with me.”

  He moved with her to the couch that would become his bed. She sat in the center and after he opened the second slider so the night breeze could filter in, he joined her. For a long moment, they sat in silence, not touching, not acknowledging the fact that they were achingly aware of one another just as they had been ten years ago. That it was no less acceptable now than it had been then. Then Toni gave in and made the first move, shifting, leaning so that her head found the strong, inviting angle of his chest and shoulder. He lifted his arm to accommodate her, letting it curve lightly about her back, his hand resting easy upon the back of her head. Words would have ruined the poignant moment so neither spoke. And finally, after long minutes ticked by, Zach felt her relax into a malleable slumber. Only then did he turn his face into the soft cushion of her hair to inhale its subtle fragrance.

  She didn’t deserve the torment the past was putting her through. That was his fault.

  If there was any way to lessen her pain, her guilt, her fear, he swore an oath at that moment when she was vulnerable in his arms, that he would do whatever it took to give her back some sort of normal life.

  Whatever it took.

  Chapter 8

  Tomas picked them up in the hotel limo. After he’d assured Zach that he’d inspected the vehicle as he’d been shown, the shoppers were loaded in and they started up and away from the coastal city. The girls and the two photographers chattered nonstop. The beach boys had passed on the excursion, electing to sleep off the effects of the fiesta at poolside.

  In the rear seat, Toni sat wedged between a silent Russell and Mateo, who was actively pointing out the sights as they drove by. Toni wasn’t listening. She was pondering the fact that she’d woken up on Zach’s sofa, surrounded by his scent and feeling wonderfully refreshed.


  Had he held her all night long?

  As they approached the village of Zihuatanejo, Bryce rolled down the window to take some shots of the vastly different landscape. Instead of the neat boulevards lined with walled resorts, pharmacias, trendy shops and restaurants beckoning for the tourist dollar, these dilapidated buildings squatted at the roadside, squeezed together in a broken patchwork of brick and uneven corrugated steel, forming a weary pattern of poverty. Beyond that tattered neighborhood, cut into an inhospitable mountainside, were homes, most of them little more than shacks that seemed stuck into the sheer face like precarious push pins.

  “How do they get up there?” one of the girls exclaimed in a horrified fascination. “What kind of people can live like that?”

  “The ones who serve you your meals, and leave a flower on your turned down bedsheets,” Tomas answered without looking back in the rearview. “The ones who check out your beach towels and bring you your poolside drinks. My family.”

  The only sound after that was the quiet whirring of Bryce’s camera as he took candids of the wizened men crouched in front of a graffiti-ridden bar and of the battered pickup trucks they passed with whole families standing up in the open beds to catch the breeze on their way to work in the posh hotels of Ixtapa.

  As they entered the village, the quality of the buildings improved, becoming grocery stores, car repair shops, museums and the inevitable tourist shops hawking beach accessories and gaudy tee shirts. Their destination was at the far side of the busy traditional town.

  Tomas wheeled them expertly onto a narrow one-way street where every other block was under some sort of construction and the compact cars that lined either side of the road were coated with a patina of grime. He maneuvered around the taxis angled in carelessly at any opening to drop off their neatly dressed foreign passengers and cut in behind a shiny red sports car to let them out.

  “Page me when you’ve had enough,” Tomas instructed. He held the door open to the parade of wares dangling beneath an endless canopy of awnings suspended over the sidewalk, offering a hospitable shade under which to spend one’s pesos.

  The market was a rabbit warren of temporary plank walls on uneven cement and cobbled floors. From their rented booths, the locals offered everything from high quality silver, leather goods, and carved mahogany pieces to tiles and bowls painted with colorful callas and wedding scenes, coaxing the passers-by with claims of “Almost free. Like Kmart.” Every available space was hung with woven handbags, string hammocks and never ending tee shirts. The booths went back four to six deep and tourist traffic wound from section to section through narrow aisles heaped with more souvenir treasures.

  Toni liked to shop. Despite her inheritance, she had a nose for a bargain and it was twitching at these incomparable deals. Mateo led her back into the merchandise-draped caverns, explaining what stamped number to look for on the silver to tell its purity and negotiating prices for any trinket that caught her eye. Russell followed a few paces behind, carefully staying out of Bryce’s viewer, his attention on the crowd rather than the trinkets.

  As the morning progressed, the oppressive heat in the crowded marketplace made the tiny cubicles into sweat-boxes. After exclaiming over the seemingly unique items found in the first few aisles, repetition of goods urged Toni to move more quickly than her companions in search of the truly original. She picked up a heavy green glass pyramid to use as a paperweight on her desk, then sorted through her fanny pack when the seller exclaimed, “Not pesos. American dollars.” While the weighty souvenir was wrapped in the daily newspaper for travel safety, she noticed a chess set with pieces carved from onyx and quartz. Though her father didn’t play, he liked to have items of sophistication scattered about him. Thinking this was the sort of gift he’d enjoy, she asked the teenage boy in charge of the booth to give her a price.

  “I’m interested in this chess set, but there’s a chip on the queen. Do you have another?”

  An older man scurried over grinning obligingly. “Sí, lady. You come with me. We have another booth.”

  Toni glanced about. Mateo was busy helping the girls select beach cover-ups from a suspended ceiling hook. Zach had been cornered by a woman with bundled necklaces of shell, beads and precious stones strung on her arms like leis who was insistent that he choose for his sweetheart, two for ten American dollars. Toni gestured to the next aisle, bringing an immediate furrow to his brow. When she hesitated, her salesman pulled at her arm impatiently, urging, “Lady, you come. I have Mexican air conditioning.” He pointed to an old metal fan that ineffectively moved the heavy air. “I have many stones to choose from. You come. No cost to look.”

  She smiled and allowed herself to be coaxed to the next aisle, trying to keep Zach in sight.

  “Lady, you come. Over here.”

  His pulling became more insistent, moving her beyond the next aisle and down into another. When he towed her across several side passages, she started to balk in earnest.

  “My friends,” she protested.

  “Here, lady.”

  “Wait.”

  It was then her other arm was gripped by a rough hand. Something sharp pricked beneath her ribs.

  “Walk with us, señorita. Do not call for help.”

  There were different ways to call for help. Toni pressed the catch of her bracelet and walked docilely between the two men. A robbery? A kidnapping? Blood began pounding in her head, making it difficult for her to think. They were pulling her quickly through the maze of corridors. She did her best to slow them without seeming to, stumbling, dragging her feet, until they were off balance struggling to propel her forward. The sudden brilliance as they broke from the shaded aisles and onto the sidewalk was enough to make them hesitate for an instant. But it was long enough.

  Toni dipped abruptly to the left then came up swinging the bag that held her glass pyramid. It caught her pseudo-salesman in the temple. He staggered, giving her just enough slack to twist free and bolt out into the street. A horn blared. A cry escaped her as a hand caught her braid, using it to whirl her out of traffic and back up onto the sidewalk. She fell over a basket of papier-mâché parrots but the hold on her hair didn’t lessen. As the vendor began shrieking in Spanish, her assailant hauled her toward a battered VW bus that listed wearily at the curb. The utility door was open.

  Horrible remembrances flooded back, paralyzing her muscles, numbing her brain, freezing her vocal cords. Her knees buckled, slowing their progress just long enough for a sleek black limo to squeal a sharp U-turn and catapult over the curb, coming between them and the van.

  Shocked back into action, Toni jerked free and darted into the caverns of the market, dodging beneath racks of shirts and near motionless wind catchers in an effort to escape her would-be captor. As she slipped through a curtain of shells at a full run, an arm banded her waist, using her momentum to swing her around and behind a solid form just as her pursuer thrust through the wildly swaying strands. Only to skid to a halt with Zach’s pistol nearly up his nose.

  “Think about it,” came his soft warning.

  While Toni pressed her face between Zach’s shoulder blades, her fingers clenched in his damp linen shirt, the attacker thought better of pursuing his present course of action. He gripped a handful of beaded ropes and jerked hard to bring the curtain, rod and all, down upon them. Zach stepped back, his movement one of instinctive protection instead of pursuit. The man was gone like a hare down a hole.

  Pocketing his gun, Zach turned to meet her wide-eyed stare. His hands bolstered her elbows when her legs threatened to give way. “I got your call.”

  Issuing a shaky laugh, she leaned her forehead against his chest. Fear flooded from her in violent tremors.

  “Antonia? What’s happened?”

  She straightened in time to greet Mateo with a wobbly smile of reassurance. “Someone tried to grab my bags and you know me, I just couldn’t let go. Thankfully Russell showed up to break the stalemate.”

  For once, Mateo let
his hostilities go long enough for a sincere, “I am thankful as well. Antonia sometimes does not know when to back down. I am in your debt.” He put out his hand.

  “That debt’s been paid,” Zach told him somberly but he took the proffered hand in a firm clasp.

  “I think I’ve had enough shopping for one day,” Toni announced. “Mateo, could you see the others get back safely?”

  Clearly becoming the shepherd for her friends was not what he had in mind, but Mateo agreed with his own conditions. “If you’ll spend some time alone with me this evening.”

  “Just me and my shadow.”

  Mateo’s smile curled slightly. “Of course.”

  Tomas was waiting outside the big limo. He’d managed to park it behind the abandoned van and was watching the local police going through it. He offered Toni a smile and handed her the bag she’d used to cold-cock one of her attackers. That man was sitting in the back of the police car with an ice pack pressed to his bloodied temple.

  “They said they didn’t need this as evidence. No one identified you as the victim.”

  “Thank you, Tomas.” Toni took the bag and cautioned a glance at the man in custody. “Did he say if it was a robbery attempt?”

  “He’s said nothing, Miss Castillo. The van was stolen and his friend is long gone.”

  Zach held the door to the limo open for Toni, eager to get her off the street and out of sight before some witness came forward to link her to the activity. After she was inside, he turned to the young driver. “Antonia tells me that was some pretty fancy defensive driving for a city chauffeur.”

  Tomas smiled somewhat sheepishly. “I went to a rather exclusive school for training. Jack Chaney sends his regards. He thought you might need some assistance.”

  “Did he now?” Good old Jack. Always one step ahead. “Then see if you can arrange for me to talk to our mate after he’s booked. I’d rather like to know what was on his mind.” He slipped Tomas a thick wad of currency and joined Toni in the backseat.