Nick was the first to recover. He lowered his glass of wine. “Your company is insisting you return, Josh?”
Josh pushed his thick fingers through his hair and for the first time Calli had noticed just how gray her uncle’s hair had grown over the last year. Josh shook his head. “Nope,” he said shortly, pushing out his breath. “They actually like it that I’m down here, keeping an eye on the mines from this close. The board is expecting that any day now Serrano is going to declare the mines to be property of the Insurrectos and all income streams the right of the people of Vistaria. My managers and the President are just as happy to have me here with your people, Nick. That’s not it.”
Duardo picked up Minnie’s hand. “You are lost here now,” he said. “You have no one anymore.”
Josh grimaced. “Yeah, that’s a huge part of it, big guy. Beryl just can’t stand the heat down here, so…” He shrugged.
“And the other part?” Nick coaxed.
Josh sighed. “I need closure, Nick, and I’m not getting it. I need to get on with my life. I’m not young like all of you. I need to get on with the life I had, not the life you want to build. The life you want to build is so far out of reach right now, I may not be around when you start building it. I can’t wait for that. I have a wife waiting for me. A life. I need to go back and pick up the strings again.” He looked Nick in the eye. “I’m sorry, Nick.”
Nick shook his head. “No, you’re perfectly correct. You have a life of your own. I’ve been selfish asking you to stay and build my world for me.” He held out his hand. “I appreciate everything you’ve done, Josh. I intend to let your President and CEO know that.”
Josh grinned as he shook Nick’s hand. “He’ll shit himself. A call from you?”
“Oh, I planned to do it in person.”
Josh laughed. “Even better.”
Calli hugged Josh. “You’ll be back to see us, won’t you?”
Josh squeezed her. Hard. “You bet,” he said. “Once things are ironed out.”
That was when she saw Nick’s face over Josh’s shoulder and put it together. Icy fingers touched her spine.
Nick thought Josh was leaving because he believed Nick was going to lose Vistaria. Nick put his glass down and slipped back into the house. It had taken Minnie’s intuition for Calli to find him, hiding away in the bedroom, twenty minutes later.
She looked at Nick now, the edges of her own anger stirring. Yeah, he was upset about Josh returning to the States. Big deal. “There are things that need doing, Nick. Your little boy tantrum isn’t going over with anyone.”
His lips parted as his jaw dropped. His eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?” he said, his voice hard and low. It was the tone he used on generals and diplomats when he wanted to keep them in line.
“You can’t make me cower with your whiplash commanding presence, el leopardo,” she told him, putting her hands on her hips. “I’ve made you beg for mercy too many times, so quit trying to intimidate me. You’re just a man and we both know it.”
His features darkened with the quick, black Irish temper he’d inherited with his bastard blood. “You dare—”
“I dare because you’re being a pain in the butt, Nicholás Escobedo. You need a kick up the rear.”
“Calli, I warn you…” She could see his hand was shaking as he gripped the window frame.
She wasn’t afraid. He had never in his life hit her and he wouldn’t now. “You’re behaving as if Josh’s vote of no-confidence is the only one you’ve had lately!” She laughed shortly and even to her it sounded strident and strained. “The whole world thinks we’re in a tailspin and never going to pull out of it! Jesus, Nick, wake up and smell the coffee! I couldn’t get better than less than even odds on us from a wet-behind-the-ears bookie on his first day on the job!”
“You think it’s overwhelming odds that have me at this window?”
“You turned tail and ran from that verandah the moment Josh admitted he didn’t want to see us fail,” Calli snapped.
“You’re calling me a coward,” Nick breathed. His eyes seemed black in the low light. Black like the leopard he was named for. He was motionless, just as the leopard would be the second before it leaped on its prey.
She held up a hand, cold sense slapping her. “No. Never, Nick. I would never call you a coward. Not in a million years.” Images flitted through her mind. Nick at the controls of a helicopter, while bullets streaked past the canopy like lines of white fire. Nick with an arm around her, a gun in the other hand, with three dead bodies lying in the hot sand at his feet, which he’d just taken out with cold, calculating shots inside five seconds. Nick facing down generals, Insurrectos, more….
Courage was not a quality Nick lacked.
Calli lifted up her other hand so that both were palm-out, facing him. Peace. “You bolted, Nick. Now you’re hiding.”
He stared at her. She watched his anger drain. Bull’s-eye, she thought. Nick was at least fair enough to acknowledge when someone spoke the truth, even if he didn’t like the taste of it.
He turned back to look out the windows, then lifted his fist and pummeled it lightly against the frame. “Our last tie to the United States is departing,” he said softly. “Now we’re truly on our own. We don’t even have Mexico. It’s just us in this big house and a few hundred people camped on five hundred acres on a beach property north of Acapulco. That’s all that is left of the old Vistaria.”
“Rank sentimentality,” Calli snapped.
“Truth,” Nick said.
“Bullshit,” Calli shot back.
“Facts,” Nick said. His tone was tired.
“God, I am so sick of Vistarians and their…their chest-beating,” she declared. She held out her hand. “Give me your switchblade.”
“What?” He turned, startled, to look at her.
“You heard. Give it to me. I’m not going to draw your blood, Nick. Relax. I’ll leave all the melodramatic gestures for you guys.” She kept her hand out. “Gimme.”
Nick dug in his pocket for the switchblade he always carried with him and dropped it onto her palm. The scratched, worn instrument was hot from his body heat. The outer casing was red tortoiseshell. The knife was an antique from an Irish relative who had spilled the blood of others with it. She curled her fingers around it and strode over to the huge old-fashioned walnut wardrobe where they kept most of their casual clothes. “Know how many people it took to defeat Japan in World War II?”
“You’re about to tell me,” he said from behind her. The tiredness had gone from his voice.
“One hundred and seventy-five people.” She threw open the door and reached inside.
“Everyone who worked on the Hiroshima bomb?” Nick guessed.
“And delivered it,” she confirmed.
“I don’t have thermonuclear devices stashed in that wardrobe.”
“You’re missing the point.” She pulled out one of Nick’s designer teeshirts, the ones he wore most days around the house when he didn’t have a formal appointment as the President pro tem of Vistaria. With a flip of the wrist, she reversed the switchblade, stabbed it through the teeshirt and ripped it down to the seams.
Nick sucked in a sharp breath. “Calli!”
She held up the knife. “Come near me and I will draw blood.”
He rocked back on his heels, because he had taken a step forward. “You’re going to explain yourself, of course.” His tone was calm. When she glanced up from reaching for a pair of his jeans, she could see the pulse in his temple. His temper was back up.
“No,” she said airily. She used the knife to rip the crotch out of the jeans and shred them into two pieces. She tossed them onto the floor. “How many generals and colonels do you figure Serrano has in his inner circle? How many do you figure he truly trusts?”
She reached into the wardrobe and pulled out another teeshirt and tore it in half and let it flutter onto the ruined jeans. She heard Nick’s breath blow out hard.
“How many?�
� she repeated and sawed another pair of jeans in half and let them fall.
It took him another breath before he could answer. “Duardo said he thought fewer than a dozen. Perhaps only as few as six.”
“Six trusted lieutenants running the whole Insurrecto operation,” she said as she swiftly destroyed three more teeshirts and a casual shirt and dropped them on the growing pile. “Or, let’s be generous and say ten.”
Nick was staring at her hands, watching her maul his jeans and shirts, all the casual clothes in the closet, one garment at a time, as if he could not tear his gaze away. “Ten,” he repeated, his voice distant. A vein was throbbing in both temples and the base of his throat.
“The Insurrectos don’t have diplomatic status. The Americans and Mexico haven’t acknowledged them either. They look like they have the whole island, but if you actually did a head count of people who support the Insurrectos and who were genuine Loyalists when push came to shove, I think you’d be surprised by just how much support you have on Vistaria, despite who is sitting in the palace right now.”
Nick blinked as she ran the blade down the back of a sleeveless and collarless silk shirt he often wore around the house and dropped the two halves onto either side of the pile. He cleared his throat.
Calli reached into the wardrobe and came up empty. She folded up the knife and hefted it in her hand, studying Nick. “Japan was defeated by one hundred and seventy-five people…and a leader. Someone who made decisions and made the call. Someone who knew that a war can be won by a small handful of people who don’t quit. Serrano knows that. Mexico knows that. The United States knows that. You need to brand it on your soul and live it, too, or Serrano will win this war and Josh will be right.”
Nick lifted his hand toward the pile of clothes. “You cut up my clothes.”
“Just the non-leader garbage. You need to stop mooching around this house like el leopardo, hugging the shadows. If you are President pro tem, then you need to lead, Nicholás Escobedo, and stop fucking around.”
He came for her then, but she had been expecting it and sidestepped his charge.
Only, he had been expecting her sidestep, too. Nick knew her far too well. He knew how she worked. He was a strategist.
He changed directions at the last second and she smacked up against his chest. The impact almost winded her because she hadn’t been expecting it. Fright tore through her. Nick’s expression was implacable. His fury radiated over her like a hot shower, making her shiver. His arms trapped her against his chest and he lifted her off her feet. He was carrying her. Her fright lifted higher.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, trying to struggle but with her feet off the ground and her hands trapped between her chest and Nick’s, she could barely breathe, let alone do anything that resembled fighting him off.
His eyes were glittering with an emotion she was unable to name and that added to her uncertainty. Had she provoked him too much? Pushed him too far?
He kicked the bedroom door and it thudded shut with an impact that made the walls shudder. Then he dumped her back on her feet.
Her respite was short-lived. He snatched the knife from her fingers, then gathered her hair at the nape of her neck, holding her head captive in one hand. He pulled her head back so he was looking down into her eyes and flicked the knife open over her face. “Payback.” His voice was the controlled, soft whisper of el leopardo.
She shuddered.
He sliced her blouse open from neck to hem and shoulder to shoulder, then pulled it from her body. The bra he dispensed with quick flicks of the blade. Then he picked up the remains of her shirt and ripped it into strips that he tied around her wrists, binding them together.
“Just a man, hmmm?” he breathed in her ear.
She felt the cold steel of the knife touch her back just above the skirt and caught her breath. The skirt parted easily under the blade, for Nick kept it sharp. The cotton drifted down to the wooden floor beneath her.
Then he unhooked her arms, bent her over the bed and slammed into her.
Calli cried out at the fierce taking, reveling in it. It was exactly what she wanted. Her pussy clamped around him, quivering and crawling with pleasure. She trembled.
He rode her with the hard roughness she wanted, ramming into her, using her. They both came at the same moment and Calli heard herself scream.
She shook, her oxygen depleted, as Nick tugged at the bindings around her wrist and picked her up. She was laid gently on the bed.
Nick curled around her. His lips touched her temple. Her cheeks. Finally, her lips. He curled his arm around her waist and she was tucked in tight against his heat and strength.
“You are right, of course, la dama fuerte,” he murmured in her ear. “You are always right, most especially when I am…what did you say? Being a little boy?”
“Chucking a little boy tantrum,” she said and tried to hold back a huge yawn. She rolled her head so she could look him in the eye. All his anger was gone. He was calm.
“Your English isn’t that bad,” she said.
“My pride is,” he replied. Then he smiled. “However, on one thing you are quite wrong, Callida Escobedo.”
“Oh?”
He pointed to the pile of destroyed clothing. “It’s not just Vistarian men who are prone to melodramatic gestures.”
Chapter Eight
Daniel slipped away from her bed in the early hours of the morning, giving Olivia barely enough time to wash and dress for breakfast and go over the room to ensure there was no evidence she had entertained a man.
The sex-stained sheets she could do nothing about, so she arranged the bedclothes higher over the top of them and hoped the maid would not notice when she made the bed.
She stepped out of the room feeling she had covered her tracks as best she could and relaxed. Breakfast was a return to routine. The spiced coffee and the strained silence would be welcome. It was a predictable event among so many swift changes and fearful uncertainties surrounding them right now. She almost smiled at the armed guards dotting the corridors on her way to the elevator. It seemed close to normal once more.
When Olivia stepped between the arches into the dining room, her heart fell.
Serrano was standing to one side of the room, Ibarra next to him. Standing between them, looking rumpled and defeated, was Ernesto.
The Spaniard wore the same clothes he had been wearing last night, but they were disheveled now, as if he had been wearing them for more than twenty-four hours. The tall, olive-skinned man had dark circles around his eyes. They looked like bruises, except they followed the lines and creases of his face, fanning out from his sharp hooked nose.
Sleep deprivation, Olivia mentally catalogued.
Ernesto shook as he stood between the two military men. He could barely stand on his own two feet. His hands were twitching as they hung at his sides. He blinked constantly as he watched everyone enter the dining room and pick up their trays.
Olivia forced herself to keep moving forward, making it look as natural as possible. Her heart, though, was racing a mile a minute and her chest was squeezing hard, making her feel sick. She could taste something coppery in her mouth. Adrenaline. She was close to flat-out panic, she realized. She hadn’t counted on Ernesto being here. Or Serrano. This wasn’t part of the plan. It was too soon. Too quick.
Too quick? Too soon?
She picked up a tray from the end of the line and saw that her hand was shaking. She concentrated on making it not shake as she held the tray. She worked on keeping her face without expression as she tried to puzzle out why she would have such an odd reaction. Why too soon?
It gave her a distraction to focus on, rather than looking over her shoulder and watching Serrano and Ibarra. It allowed her to appear disinterested.
Why too quick? Surely, the end of Ernesto’s questioning session could not come too soon at all for the poor man, so why would she have any reluctance for it to end, period?
She poured herself a cup
of the spiced coffee and noticed that her hand had stopped shaking. Good for her. She even nodded at the waiter behind the urn and smiled a silent good morning at him.
Then she heard the gasps behind her. The combined indrawn breaths.
She whirled.
Time slowed down as the adrenaline already surging through her system kicked her reactions into high gear and instinct took over.
She got a quick, heart-beat-long snapshot view of the entire dining room from where she was standing at the buffet line, which was spread across the west end of the room, in front of the rear arches.
Ernesto, between Serrano and Ibarra on her left, was just beginning to lift his trembling arm, his long forefinger stretched out to point. He was going to single out someone in the room.
Daniel was just coming into the dining room through the east end arches, from the foyer. Ernesto was looking at him.
Olivia threw her cup onto the tiles with all her might.
The ceramic mug exploded like a small hand grenade, sending china fragments and steaming spiced coffee splattering in all directions for dozens of feet, making those around her scream or gasp and jump backward, sideways, or up out of the way.
Every head immediately turned in her direction. Guns were cocked and aimed.
“I am so sick of fucking spiced coffee!” she screamed. “I can’t stand it anymore. All day, every day. Day in. Day out. When can we get decent American coffee? This…this…shit you’re serving takes paint off walls!” She waved toward the big urn of normal coffee that everyone had learned to avoid.
She pushed a hand up against her temple as if she was delicate and stressed. She didn’t have to work too hard to make it look convincing, because her hand really was trembling. “What about waffles or something for breakfast? Or some real protein and vegetables instead of this constant garbage you keep serving up? Weeks of it…” She gave a shaky laugh. “We’re all gonna die of scurvy at this rate!”
Serrano was staring at her, his little eyes narrowed. He had shown no other reaction to her outburst. He had been one of the few who hadn’t jumped when she’d thrown the cup.
Hostage Crisis Page 12