Serrano was staring at Olivia. She stared calmly back. She had taken the heat off Ernesto.
“Drop his wrist,” Serrano instructed.
Olivia dropped Ernesto’s wrist.
Serrano considered her for a moment more, then moved back a pace to study Ernesto.
Ernesto, the weaker one.
Ernesto seemed to have himself under control now. Perhaps Olivia’s touch had calmed him, after all. Daniel hoped so, for all their sakes.
Serrano considered Ernesto. He gave it thirty very long seconds. Ernesto’s trembling increased, his hard-won calm deserting him again.
Daniel felt a tiny spurt of disgusted admiration for the general. He certainly knew enough twisted psychology to pull Ernesto apart.
Serrano held his hands out at his sides. “Your family, your loved ones. Do you not wish to see them again? Your lovely wife, your daughter?”
Even Daniel felt a spurt of surprise, until he realized that Serrano was stabbing in the dark. But what a gamble!
Ernesto grabbed at his chest, a high-pitched keening sound emerging from his mouth. He slowly toppled to his knees, his fingers digging into the flesh under his shirt, as he babbled in Spanish about his daughters, his wife, and his adored family that he thought he would never see again. How much he missed them all. He reached out for Serrano with his other hand.
It was exactly the sort of pleading, helpless gesture Serrano had been waiting for, the chink he needed to drive his wedge into. Daniel could see it in the gleam in Serrano’s eye.
He thought he’d won.
Olivia took a step forward, swiveled on her heel, lifted up her arm and swung it. It was a full-armed round-house slap across Ernesto’s face that jarred him to his knees. The crack echoed in the stone foyer with the shock of a rifle shot.
Ernesto fell silent, as if he had been shot.
The armed guard escorting Ibarra and Serrano sprang forward, instinctively protecting Serrano, who was right next to Olivia as she raised her arm. He didn’t fire his gun but he did swing the butt, which took her on the jaw. Her head snapped back and a bitten-off cry jerked out of her. She was lifted off her feet by the blow and pushed through four feet of air, before she went skidding across the tiles, to land up against the shins and feet of the civilians in the other line.
For a few seconds she lay there, dazed, before she eased herself up on one arm. Her hairclip was by Serrano’s feet. The guard had knocked her hairclip clean out of her hair. Her hair tumbled around her wrist as she pulled herself up onto her arm and touched her jaw.
Jenny, who was nearby, broke ranks to crouch down by Olivia and help her sit up. She pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at the trickle of blood oozing from the corner of Olivia’s mouth.
Olivia still didn’t look at him. Daniel shoved his hand into his trouser pocket, where he could hide the fist he was making. He needed to make a fist, so he could fight every urge and instinct to go to her.
He had the shakes. He knew the clinical diagnosis well enough. Adrenaline spike. Shock. Only, he’d never suffered through one before—not like this. Sure, elevated heart rate. That was normal. Adrenaline lift. He was human, after all. Get in a tense situation and that was to be expected.
But this? He’d watched the guard hit Olivia and the need to take action, do something, do one of the dozens of things that had occurred to him, do anything to get her out of this, it had all washed over him like a cold dump of ice water, making his gut churn in a way that had made him wonder if he wasn’t about to be physically sick with it.
Olivia, his mind whispered.
Oh shit, he whispered back to himself.
He let himself look at her again, as Jenny dabbed at her chin. At the tumble of hair, the long legs sprawled on the tiles, the breasts outlined under the silk shirt.
Then he deliberately turned to look at Serrano. The general watched Ernesto being picked up between two guards and walked away. Serrano had found his weak link. Ernesto was being taken away for questioning.
Serrano turned to study Olivia as she wiped the last of the blood from her lip with an impatient, angry gesture and got to her feet without help. Her hair hanging to her waist didn’t diminish the haughty fuck you attitude rolling off her and Daniel’s gut clenched again. Sick despair rolled through him.
Serrano was smiling as he watched her.
Olivia was at the top of Serrano’s hit parade now.
Chapter Seven
Olivia expected the quiet tapping on her door. She didn’t answer it. After two sets of taps it stopped.
Then the door opened and the chain flew off the slide with a musical tinkle, proving it was useless as a guard.
Olivia turned in the armchair enough to confirm it was Daniel. “Of course you’d force your way in.” She turned back to the window.
She heard the door close and the sound of bedclothes moving.
“I’ve disabled the bug,” she said shortly.
“Of course you’d be sitting in the dark, sulking,” he said.
She was on the verge of saying “I don’t sulk,” and stopped. Because that was exactly what she was doing. She amended it. “I’m allowed to be afraid.”
She felt his fingers under her chin, turning it so he could see it in the light falling through the window. He was checking the swelling, she realized.
“I didn’t think you’d show your fear by hiding in a dark room.” His voice was a breath across her cheek. Warm. Intimate.
“Daniel—”
His kiss was hot and soft. Designed to coax her past her fear. Her sulks. To seduce her.
His hands on her arms lifted her from the armchair to her feet and then wrapped around her. They told her without words that Daniel could be the safety she craved, the safe harbor that was nowhere to be found. The rock she needed.
She clung to him and kissed him as if she believed it and let him seduce her. Why not? What else was there? She had learned today what Daniel had instinctively understood from the beginning: They were all doomed.
She might as well enjoy what time she had left.
When he reached for the tie on her robe, she let him pull it undone and she reached for the belt on his trousers and tugged on it. “Get rid of your clothes,” she told him. “I have less than you to remove.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he murmured, his lips against her upper breast. He stepped back and shed his shirt and shoes and socks, then kissed her, hard and deep, before sliding the rest of his clothes off and dropping them to the floor.
With a smile, she shrugged her robe off her shoulders and let it settle on the floor behind her.
“Naked,” he said. “One would almost think you had been expecting me.”
“If I had been expecting to entertain you, I would have put on something more alluring in lace and satin.”
“You have something in that category here?” His voice dropped to a tight, hard, excited note.
“I always having something along those lines with me,” she said with a smile. “But not for the nonexistent men in my life. I buy them for me.”
“God, you’re a buried treasure under those suits of yours.” He pressed his hands around her waist. “My fingers almost meet,” he murmured. Then he picked her up, his arms flexing. “Put your legs around me.”
She wrapped her legs around him, her heels coming to rest against his rear. He carried her to the bed and made her forget her fear. Forget everything but the sweet pleasure he gave her.
* * * * *
Afterward, Daniel kissed her temple. “Not that I want to give you anything more to fear…but I seemed to have forgotten to use a condom,” he said softly. “A first for me.”
“My fault,” she whispered. “Too anxious to have you.” She rolled onto her side and switched on the bedside lamp to look him in the eye. His hair was disheveled where he had fallen against the bed. There was sweat on his brow.
“You’ve never failed to use a condom, ever?”
He was watching her, his expression wary.
“Never.”
“I don’t think it’s an issue, then. I’m on the Pill and the last time I had a lover was so long ago, it rules out any sort of communicable disease.”
Something flickered across his face and was gone, too quickly for her to catch.
“What?” she asked.
He shrugged, making it look casual. “You’re a mass of contradictions. I would have bet you had a long string of lovers. Constantly.” Then he looked away.
Olivia sat up, astonished at the insight his glance away had given her. “You’re jealous.”
“Of nonexistent lovers?” He laughed.
“Exactly. You’re jealous of every lover I might have had.”
Daniel shook his head. “You’re being ridiculous. I don’t even know you all that well.” He sat upright with a jerk, a furrow between his brows.
Olivia nodded her head. “You’re right,” she agreed carefully. “You don’t know me.” She plucked at the bed cover. “Are you staying the night?”
“And she changes the subject,” Daniel muttered.
She smiled. “It seemed better to,” she said apologetically.
“Let’s change the subject to something that is at least not trivial.” He picked up her hand. “You must be very, very careful around Serrano now. He’s got you in his sights. Not just as one of the herd. He’s got you picked out. He thinks you’re special and he wants you.”
She swallowed. The fear was back, blooming as large and as big as it had been before Daniel had arrived. “What do you mean, he wants me? You mean sexually?”
Daniel frowned. “He saw you defy him tonight. He likes a challenge. He likes breaking people. He wants to break you because he saw how strong you are. If that includes using sex, I think he’d use it.”
She shuddered.
“He’s working on Ernesto because that’s the weak link that will give him what he wants the fastest. You, he’ll work on just for the fun.” His hand tightened. “He only needs an excuse. Any excuse at all, to drag you away and question you.”
She pulled her hand away from him. “Bullshit,” she said distinctly, feeling anger rise inside her. Where did the anger come from? She had no idea. It was just there, big and large and hot. She threw herself from the bed. She would not accept this. Nuh-uh. No way.
Because it was just too frightening. That was why.
She stalked over to the window and stood at the edge of the glow that spilled in from the outside, knowing that no one would be able to see her from out there if she did not step into that light.
Ibarra was quantifiable. Predictable. For weeks, they had been able to move around inside Ibarra’s rules and survive. They had been able to live within the lines Ibarra had drawn.
Now Serrano had come along and everything had changed and…and…
“We aren’t going to get out of this, are we?” Olivia whispered, looking out at the chain link fence and floodlights. “Serrano could send for me tonight, play his little games and throw my body out to sea for the sharks to feed off and no one will know the difference. If the UN hasn’t jumped up and down now, they’re not going to know any better later.”
“If you’re waiting for the UN to come in and rescue you, then no, you’re not going to get out of it,” Daniel said from behind her.
She shuddered. He’d only voiced what she had been thinking, but it was hard to hear.
She fought hard to not let the tears break.
“Then who?” she asked. “Does anyone give a damn? Does anyone even know we’re here?”
“The UN does,” Daniel replied. “They just can’t afford to acknowledge that fact. It gives Serrano leverage with the UN if they do. Serrano is too unstable to deal with openly in that way.”
“We’re ghosts to our own people,” Olivia said bitterly. She turned to look at Daniel. He still sat on the bed, cross-legged now. Patient. “How is it that you know so much about Serrano and the Vistarian and UN politics involved here? I thought you were just a businessman who got caught up in all this by accident?”
He slipped off the bed and came to stand beside her at the window. In the white, unforgiving glow from the floodlights, he seemed to gleam. He picked up her hand and kissed the back of the knuckles.
She frowned. She had seen that gesture dozens of times before, but when? Somewhere in the recent past. It niggled at her memory.
“I must tell you something, Olivia.”
Her heart raced. It was his tone. His face. She could feel it there. Large and scary.
“Must you?” she whispered. “If we are all doomed, must you tell me now?”
He nodded. “It will change everything.”
“Will it change…” She could barely speak the words, but she pushed them out. “Will it change how I feel about you?”
His hand tightened about her fingers. “It might, sweet Olivia. It might. But it’s better that you know, now.”
Fine trembling settled into her bones. “Tell me.”
He looked at her, then glanced away, toward the window. He pushed out a breath. “I have never done this before.” He touched her cheek. His hand was shaking.
She caught it in hers and held it. “Tell me.”
He drew in a deep breath. “My name is not Daniel Castle, as they’ll find it registered with the UN. I’m not British.”
Olivia knew. She already knew. The kiss on the back of the hand. She moaned softly.
Daniel kept talking anyway. “I’m Vistarian, Olivia. My real name is Daniel Alejandro Castellano y Medina. I’m a Major in the Vistarian Army and I’m a Loyalist. I’m also a member of the Intelligence Unit, working under deep cover.”
“Espionage.” She sighed. “You’re a spy.”
“If you want to be that melodramatic about it,” he said softly. “One fact the movies do have right. I can be shot for treason for telling you what I just told you. I’ve broken every oath I gave when I signed up by telling you my true identity. You’re American, not Vistarian.”
“Then why tell me at all?”
“Because Serrano is questioning Ernesto and I think Ernesto knows I’m not British and not a businessman. Those two doubts, if he gives them to Serrano, will be enough for Serrano to come after me.” Daniel squeezed her hand a little. “The revolution is still technically in effect. If Serrano finds out I’m Vistarian and with the Loyalists, he can shoot me on the spot without benefit of a trial and no one can say a word against him.”
“If he finds out you’re an agent it would go even worse for you, wouldn’t it?” Olivia added.
“There’s worse than dying?” Daniel said lightly.
“We both know there is.” She slid her hand around the back of his neck. “That isn’t why you told me, though.”
His short silence was an agreement. Despite it, he still made an attempt at denial. “You don’t find the idea that you are not Serrano’s sole target a comfort?”
“You told me because you wanted to assure me in some small way that even if the UN could not take care of us—me—that you would try to, that you have the skills to do it.”
Daniel laughed. “I would not dare try such a gallant gesture with a woman as independent as you. You would cut off my balls for me.”
“Yet you did, anyway. You didn’t start to tell me the truth about yourself until I said that there was no one who would help us here.” She pressed her lips against his. “Please tell me you are not planning to do something stupid and heroic to try to save us all. To save me? Are your loyalist friends in Acapulco aware we are here?”
His arms came around her and his hand buried in her hair. “They don’t even know I am here.” His lips pressed against her cheek. “I got my orders directly from General Blanco and he died by car bomb assassination, four weeks ago. I am as stranded here as you are, my sweet, long-legged one.”
* * * * *
Calli stepped into the gloomy bedroom and felt a tiny spurt of anger when she saw Nick standing at the window, staring out. He’d turned off all the lights
except for the lamp on the side table and opened all the windows so the sea breeze washed through the frames. His dark red hair was lifting in the wind coming off the sea.
“You really are here,” she said. “I didn’t believe it when Minnie said you were.”
Nick turned his head a little, his eyes narrowed. “I should be somewhere else, oh great Chief of Staff?”
“You don’t have any formal appointments. We both know that. If you’re not going to join us on the verandah, there’s mounds of paperwork in your tray.” Calli stopped two paces away from him, which was far enough that he couldn’t reach for her without effort. She would have preferred to have done this anywhere but the bedroom, only he’d chosen the location by hiding out here. She mentally rolled up her sleeves. Nick at his most stubborn took all her energy, strength and ingenuity to deal with.
“You about done sulking?” she asked sweetly. It was a direct attack. Pussyfooting around with Nick, trying to use any strategy at all, was a waste of time. He was a master strategist and would spot a scheme in a heartbeat and outmaneuver her. She went straight for the emotional button instead.
She knew exactly why Nick was hiding away in their bedroom at eight in the evening when the rest of the family were gathered on the verandah. After eating with the generals, staff and personnel as usual, they had retired to the family verandah just as the sun had set tonight. It had become almost traditional. The tiny verandah on the front of the house on the third floor was now reserved for family members and a few trusted people they chose to allow to join them in the evenings.
It wasn’t a matter of privilege, but sanity-saving. They needed somewhere private where they could unwind and be themselves, to truly relax. That tiny strip of concrete and bamboo matting became a haven of escape each evening when they did not have formal appointments.
Tonight after supper, Josh had cleared his throat and announced diffidently that he was going back to the States, to rejoin his wife Beryl and take up his desk job at the corporate office of the mining company he represented.
A tense, long moment of stunned silence greeted his announcement. Everyone on the verandah froze in the positions they had been in. Glasses were lifted halfway to mouths.
Hostage Crisis Page 11