Baby’s Watch

by Justine Davis

  So maybe you’re wrong about her point of view, he thought. He looked at her, steadily, and at last she gave him what he’d suspected.

  “He cannot forgive himself for giving up on his brother.” She held his gaze. “For giving up on you.”

  Ryder let out the breath he hadn’t even been aware of holding. “How did you know?”

  “I was not sure, until now, when you said you and your brother might even hate each other. Jewel told me that was Clay’s greatest regret, that his brother had…died thinking he hated him.”

  Ryder tried to wrap his mind around that. He could see Clay feeling responsible for the breach—after all, his brother felt responsible for damn near everything—but the image of a grieving, saddened Clay, over him of all people, was more than he could conjure up.

  “Your brother is, by all I have heard, a good man.”

  “He always was. It was me who was the problem. I—”

  The ring of her cell phone cut off his words and short-circuited the turmoil in his gut. He held his breath again as she picked up the phone and looked at the caller ID.

  “It is not Jewel,” she said, and he saw a tremor go through her. “It is a restricted number.”

  Had all his shaking yielded some fruit after all? Ryder took the phone and flipped it open.

  “Talk,” he said shortly.

  “Back off.” The voice was male, but so muffled, either by something over the mouthpiece or by electronic means, he couldn’t tell anything more.

  “Can’t do that.”

  “You’ll regret it.”

  “Probably,” Ryder agreed. “But I want her back. Now.”

  The caller didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “The baby?” The voice laughed then, giving Ryder a moment to focus on his way of speaking; he thought there was a trace of an accent, but as muffled as it was he couldn’t be sure. “I grant you, her mother’s a pretty hot piece of ass. But is she worth dying for?”

  Initially, Ryder bridled at that description of Ana, even though, had he seen her for the first time without all the entanglement, he might have thought pretty much the same thing. She was, after all, incredibly attractive. He had the memory of long, aching hours of holding her and holding back to prove that.

  But that reaction was blasted away by the realization that the question the voice had asked had provoked. Time was, he would have laughingly answered that there was nothing in this world he counted worth dying for. His life might not be worth much, but he still wouldn’t give it up for something as stupid as a cause.

  Or for someone else.

  But now he wasn’t so sure.

  “Have to think about it, cabrón? Then I’ll make you a deal. A trade. The baby…for you.”

  The voice laughed again as Ryder’s mind raced. Was this Mr. E, looking for payback for that kneecap? Or was it Alcazar himself, demanding retribution for Ryder daring to infiltrate his operation?

  “I’ll call you back with details,” the voice said, and the phone went dead.

  It didn’t matter who it was, Ryder told himself. What mattered was making sure whoever it was kept his end of the deal.

  And it wasn’t until that went through his mind that he realized he had every intention of making this devil’s bargain. If it would put Maria back in her mother’s arms, he would do a lot worse.

  Besides, he’d escaped from them once. He could do it again. And even if it took some time, he’d survived prison, hadn’t he? He could hold on long enough.

  “What is it?” Ana asked, her voice shaking. “Was it the men who have Maria?”

  “Yes.”

  She stifled a cry.

  “It’s all right,” Ryder said, knowing he couldn’t tell her the truth, it would only add to her burden. “We’re starting negotiations.”

  “Negotiations?”

  “We’ll get her back, Ana. We will get her back. I promise you.”

  He hoped he wasn’t telling the biggest lie of his misbegotten life.

  Chapter 20

  “Italy?”

  Ana stared at the screen of the self-service check-in kiosk. The bustle of the San Antonio airport was simply background noise to her now, the people all around vaguely resented for not having such horror in their lives.

  “So it seems,” Ryder muttered.

  Ana looked at him for a long, silent moment. When they’d parked the truck, he had stowed the weapons behind the seat with obvious regret. But he clearly knew there was no way he could get a weapon through security.

  “They have taken my baby to Italy?” she asked, bewildered.

  “Ana,” Ryder said, “I don’t know what they’re doing. Maybe you should stay here, in case this is a false lead.”

  He had been trying to get her to agree to stay behind since the mysterious voice had called again, with the numbers for two e-tickets and instructions to be at the airport within the hour, and to board the plane without drawing any attention.

  “But he said for both of us to take this flight. And if he has Maria, I must be there.”

  “If he does, I’ll bring her back, Ana.”

  “I know you would,” she said, believing it with a faith she was surprised to find was so strong. “But she is my daughter, and my responsibility.”

  “What if this is just a trick, to get us out of their way?”

  As he voiced her worst fear, that while they were in Italy Maria would disappear irrevocably, Ana felt a shiver of pure terror grip her. It was a moment before she could control it and ask, “Do you believe that it is?”

  Ryder shifted uncomfortably, and she read the answer in his eyes before he spoke. “No.”

  “Then we go to Venice.”

  Ana was thankful he did not argue with her. Perhaps it was because they did not have much time; they had to find the rental locker the mysterious voice had directed them to and still make it to the gate.

  “Anna Giovanni,” Ana read as he handed her a very real-looking Italian passport. “And you are?”

  “Antonio Giovanni,” he said. “Not too original. But I don’t much like that they were able to find a photograph of you.”

  Ana shrugged; it was indeed a photo of her, not just someone who resembled her. “But it is from school, my graduation,” she said. “It would not be hard to find, even to get from the university website.”

  “But they know who you are.”

  “They do now, yes. But that is not surprising, is it, after what we have done these last two days?”

  “Maybe,” Ryder said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  “What of you? Your photograph?”

  “That is a mug shot,” Ryder said with a grimace. “Also public record. They just cropped it a little.”

  It was not until they were at their gate that Ana said, more than a little worriedly, “To do this so quickly…they are very efficient.”

  “Yes,” Ryder agreed, and she did not think she’d mistaken the grim note in his voice.

  “Benvenuto,” the flight attendant said cheerfully as they boarded.

  “Grazie.” Ana thanked him for the welcome, automatically in Italian, earning her a sideways look from Ryder.

  “Italian, too?”

  “And French,” she said. “And I can manage a bit of Greek, and a bit less German.”

  “Handy,” he muttered, and she wondered why he didn’t sound very happy about it.

  She had many hours to think on the long flight. She tried to rest, telling herself she would need to be alert and ready when they landed. But she could only doze, never really sleeping, going just deep enough for awful imaginings about Maria’s fate to shock her awake. It was only when Ryder put his arm around her after a particularly nasty one that she was finally able to relax.

  When she woke that time, it was a gentler thing, and she found herself sleepily snuggling against his warmth. He was awake, and she wondered if he’d gotten any rest himself; he had to be as tired as she was, and must feel even worse, still aching from the beating he’d taken.
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  “Tell me about your family,” she said impulsively.

  “I don’t have—”

  He stopped suddenly, as if only now remembering that she knew who he really was. Would he refuse? She had poured out her sordid story, admitted to him the truth of her father and her fiancé. She knew this did not mean he had to do the same in return, knew that often men did not have the same view of sharing, bonding through the telling of secrets that many women had.

  But still, these were hardly ordinary circumstances, she thought.

  Just when she thought he indeed was not going to answer, he started to talk. It was clear from the awkwardness of it that he had not done this often, and she knew she would need to take care that he not regret it later.

  That she was even thinking of later, and that they would still be together, was something she couldn’t deal with just now. So she quietly listened to his halting tale of a free-spirited, fiery-haired rodeo rider who had fallen hard for the worst possible man for her, and ended up with three children whose father had never even acknowledged their existence until long after her too-early death.

  “I think she worked herself to death,” Ryder said, and Ana couldn’t blame him for the bitter note in his voice.

  She wondered if that was why he had shied away from settling down to a normal occupation, or if it was simply that he had inherited his mother’s free spirit and couldn’t handle settling down at all.

  “Your father,” she said, remembering what Jewel had explained when she’d first come to Hopechest Ranch, “he is related to the famous Colton, the man running for your presidency?”

  “The black sheep brother,” Ryder said sourly. “That would be dear ol’ dad.”

  Ana hesitated before saying carefully, “You have called yourself this name as well, the black sheep. Do you see yourself as like your father?”

  “No!”

  The answer was so vehement that Ana had to hide a smile.

  “Good. Because you are nothing like him.”

  He blinked, as if startled by her certainty. “How do you know?”

  “A man who would go halfway around the world to help a baby who is not even his, would hardly abandon one of his own.”

  He stared at her for a long silent moment. “But I feel as if she’s…partly mine.”

  “She is,” Ana said quietly, admitting for the first time that some part of her daughter—and some part of herself—would always belong to this man who had come in out of the darkness to help them when they were most in need.

  Ryder looked away then, quickly, as if he were embarrassed by the admission. Ana felt a flood of tenderness, and wished things were different so that she could show him how she felt. She had known that he wanted her, it had been impossible to miss his state of arousal when he had held her so gently for those agonizing hours in his motel room. That he hadn’t even tried to act upon it told her many things, not the least of which was that he cared.

  Had her body been healed already, would she have acquiesced? She did not know. She did not want to believe she would have fallen into bed with a man she barely knew, but she suspected it might have been a harder battle than she would like to admit.

  Perhaps she was just destined to always fall in love with the wrong man, she thought.

  Love?

  Not, she told herself. Surely not.

  She realized slowly that she was still leaning into him, loath to relinquish the closeness that had allowed her to rest.

  Maybe not.

  She stole a quick, sideways glance at Ryder. He was to her right, so she got the full impact of the beating he’d taken for Maria.

  Maybe.

  But she had no right to even consider such things until Maria was safe. Ana forced such thoughts out of her mind.

  But she didn’t move away from Ryder’s warmth.

  For a guy who’d never been farther away from the United States than Saltillo, Mexico, this should have been an exciting trip. Could have been, if you added in the beautiful, fascinating, incredibly courageous woman at his side.

  He liked the sound of that “at his side” stuff. But it was the courageous part that threw cold water on the expedition. Much as he might—to his own bemusement—like the idea of a long, romantic trip with Ana Morales, the circumstances were what they were. They had a long way to go before he could let his thoughts turn to romance.

  But he was willing to wait. That alone told him how much he’d come to feel for her.

  Of course, he had to survive this first.

  The mundaneness of being met by a driver holding a card with the names on their false ID nearly made him laugh. But that ordinariness was soon forgotten as, a few minutes later, the same driver ushered them from the car to a waiting boat, for which he was also apparently the wheelman. Ryder barely had time to glance around, marveling at this postcard image of buildings and canals, with the oddly shaped gondolas bobbing gently.

  This boat was a racy-looking powerboat, however, and he had the thought that big houses in Texas weren’t the only thing this smuggling ring had paid for.

  It went so much against his nature to allow the driver to wrap a black cloth around his head as a blindfold that it took everything he had to sit still. His vision cut off, he heard the rustle of cloth as the man apparently did the same thing to Ana.

  The boat began to move—surprisingly slowly and quietly, Ryder thought, until it occurred to him that perhaps there were laws here about speed and noise. The last thing these people would want was to attract attention. Not that that explained the fancy boat itself, but—

  He heard Ana make a quiet, quivering sound that she was obviously trying to stifle. Instinctively he put an arm around her. She leaned into him, much as she had on the plane.

  Despite everything, including the uncertainty of his own life span just now, he liked it just as much. Wanted nothing more than to have an endless string of such moments with her, forever.

  And that he’d just thought once more of the word forever in conjunction with a woman came as only a minor shock this time.

  They made several turns, and Ryder began to learn the pattern, the change in the sound of the water against the hull, the barely perceptible lean as the boat changed direction. He started out noting what directions they were traveling in and for how far, thinking about finding the place again. But when he realized that if he followed his mental map they would have gone in a big circle twice, he gave up.

  Finally the boat slowed, and he heard the lap of water against stone much closer this time. Their driver called out, although in Italian. At least Ryder assumed it was Italian. Someone ashore answered.

  “He wants them to tie up the boat,” Ana whispered.

  He tightened his arm around her in thanks; even now her quick mind never faltered.

  Getting off the boat blindfolded was tricky, and his hands clenched into fists when he heard Ana say something sharply to one of the men, something that sounded like “diavolo.” He could guess at the satanic reference, but didn’t want to know what the man had done to earn it; he was having enough trouble allowing himself to be trundled along like so much baggage.

  Like a duffel bag, he thought, and anger spiked through him, reminding him of exactly why they were here, because these people had thought of Maria, and dozens like her, as nothing more than baggage.

  There was the sound and feel of stone beneath their feet as the two men now herded them along. Ryder could tell when they stepped inside a building by the change in the sound of their steps, by the echo of movement, by the very feel of the air around them. They kept going and the sounds changed again, echoed louder, as if they were walking down a hallway.

  They turned to the left, and Ryder heard the sound of a door opening. Their escorts pushed them forward, he assumed into a room. He heard the door close behind them, and realized he didn’t know if their two shepherds had come into the room with them or not.

  A baby cried.

  “Maria!” Ana’s shout was joyous, but
Ryder heard a thickness to it, wondered if she, too, was crying.

  Ryder couldn’t hear or sense the two men, so decided to risk yanking off the blindfold. He found Ana had already done the same, although he could barely see her in the darkened room. She threw down the cloth and started toward the crying baby; Ryder grabbed her and held her back.

  “Wait, Ana. It could be a trap.”

  “But it is Maria! I know my baby’s voice.”

  “I’m not saying it’s not, just—”

  A loud peel of laughter echoed off the walls, filling the room eerily.

  “Have you not learned there’s no logic in women?”

  Ryder went still; it was the voice from the phone. The muffled effect must have been electronic, because it was the same here, coming over what had to be a speaker somewhere at the far end of the room.

  “But I must thank you, Ana, for keeping your end of the bargain. I have been looking for this man.”

  “What does he mean? What bargain?” Ana asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ryder whispered to her. “Just don’t agree to anything until you have Maria in your arms.”

  “No one crosses me and lives to speak of it,” the voice said. “It simply isn’t good for business.”

  “Ryder—” Ana began, but the distorted voice cut her off.

  “There is a rope on the wall behind you, Ana. Get it, and tie his hands behind him.”

  “What?”

  Ana sounded bewildered, but Ryder knew her well enough by now to guess that her mind was racing.

  “It’s all right,” he said to her, almost absently as he surreptitiously fiddled with the belt at his waist. “Do what he says.”

  “But you—”

  “If you want Maria back, do what he says.”

  There was a split-second’s pause before he heard her breathe a low, reverent oath. “This is the bargain? You, for my baby?”

  The voice laughed again. “You did not tell her that was the deal—your life for the baby’s life? How noble of you. How self-sacrificing.” The laugh again, this time it sounded utterly gleeful. “How delicious.”

  “Do it, Ana,” Ryder told her.