Chapter Fourteen
Mark pulled Laura inside and slammed the wrought iron door shut behind her before closing the wooden one. Shots continued to be fired outside at random intervals.
“Tony is okay,” she said, her body shaking. “Margarita has him in a corner house on Calle Lozada, the third block.”
“Thank God,” he whispered, gathering her close.
“Do you know where that street is?”
“Yes,” he assured her, his cheek against her hair. “Close to the banking district and a few blocks from the Presidential Palace.”
“There were armed guards at each door, but I should have gotten him. Now, with the curfew—”
“You did the right thing. They would’ve had you arrested.” Or worse. He stepped back and placed his hands on her cheeks, searching her features for any sign of harm. She’d been crying, her face was wet, her lashes spiked.
Outside, a megaphone blared. Someone—a policeman or a soldier—ordered everyone to stay inside, that venturing out could result in being shot.
“We can’t get Tony right now. It’s too dangerous.” He stared into her eyes. “In the morning, when it’s quiet.”
She shook her head. “No, now. They say it’s war. There’ll be fighting, troops could march into the city.”
“It’s almost eight. We can’t get out with the curfew and so many enforcing it. Margarita Ruiz won’t let anything happen to him. She wants to adopt him.”
“What? Adopt him? What are you talking about? That’s crazy!”
“Rosa told me Margarita wants to adopt a little boy of six. That’s probably Tony. She loves him, Laura. I really believe that.” Thanks to Emilio Estrada. “Think about the way she’s been giving him things.”
“He has to be okay,” she whispered, her eyes locked to his.
“No one can go anywhere tonight,” he said. The boy had to be safe. They didn’t stand a chance of getting past the police and whoever else was enforcing the curfew. “As soon as the curfew’s lifted. First thing.” He was already thinking, planning. He’d go alone.
“I know we can’t leave now, I know that. I’m just so scared for him. It’s all I can think about.”
A flurry of gunfire erupted outside as a nearby church bell rang eight PM. Mark grabbed Laura’s hand and ran for the back of the house. “Upstairs,” he said. Upstairs would be safest since the bedroom windows opened to the patio along the narrow back street. Stray bullets wouldn’t reach them there. No one could easily break in because of the iron bars on the windows and doors.
They ran up the polished and worn steps as the shooting intensified. Mark pulled her into the bedroom he’d used the night before. Quickly, he took his Glock from his bag and placed it on the bedside table.
“The world has gone insane,” she said with a tremor in her voice. Tears still dampened her cheeks. “Doesn’t anyone think of their children?”
Mark gathered her in his arms and held her for long minutes, rubbing her back as she took deep breaths. Outside, the gunfire became sporadic again, the man on the megaphone continued to shout. Finally, she sighed as tension left her body.
“He has to be okay with Esperanza. If Margarita has fooled herself into thinking she can adopt him, she’ll make sure he’s safe.” She pulled back. “We’ll go for him as soon as it’s safe.”
“Yes,” he said, knowing the lie for what it was. No way was he taking her with him.
He rubbed the tears from her cheeks. She sighed and relaxed against him again. He continued to rub her back as he tried to think of other words to reassure her, but she went up on tiptoes and skimmed his lips with hers.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For helping me. For being here for me. For being the man you are,” she whispered, her lips inches from his.
Desire caught him off guard so quickly he actually shook. Her words were wrong, the timing wrong, the intense need. All of it so damn wrong. “Laura—”
She brushed her lips against his.
He had to walk away, had to be responsible. He owed her that.
No, he owed her a life different from the one she’d lived for four years.
But she wound her arms around his neck, pressed her body against his.
“I can’t take, Laura.” He shouldn’t respond, even though all he wanted to do was hold on and never let go.
“Then give.” Her eyes glittered in the dark. “Give me this. Let me give to you.” She kissed him, ignoring the tension in his body. Her tongue gently swept his lower lip.
Good intentions flew out the window. He crushed her to himself, opening his mouth over hers. She tasted rich with promise, and he was so hungry. The kiss spiraled quickly as their breaths blended. He couldn’t get enough of the heat of her, of the stroke of her tongue.
Then she was tearing at the back of his T-shirt, her mouth still locked to his, trying to lift the shirt over his head. She broke the kiss and jerked his shirt off, tossing it to the floor. She pressed one hand against his lower back, the other clutched his neck, her mouth open against his once again.
He had to touch, had to feel the femininity of her, the softness. Between desperate kisses he began unbuttoning the gray uniform she wore. His fingers bumped against the plumpness of her breasts.
She stepped back to help him. Her fingers tangled with his as they worked the buttons through the stiff holes, their breathing ragged in the room lit only by the glow of the city lights reflected from the clouds.
Dressed as she was in her simple bra and panties, he shouldn’t have found her so seductive, but he did. Gently, he traced the soft skin at the tops of her breasts. Her breath hitched and she met his gaze. Slowly she reached back and unfastened her bra.
Bathed in the dim lighting, she was a fantasy come to life. With one hand, he traced a line from her chin, down her neck and chest, to her left breast. Cupping the full weight, he gently teased the nipple to a point, only to have her do the same to him.
Desire shot straight to his dick. He sat back on the old-fashioned four-poster behind him and pulled her between his widespread legs, starved for the taste of her. He kissed a path to one nipple, drew it into his mouth and sucked.
***
Laura clutched Mark’s head to her breasts. She ran her fingers through the silk of his hair and relished the feel of his mouth, the wetness, the pressure. Desire curled rich and deep in her stomach.
For so long, she’d ached to touch, to taste him. She gloried in the freedom and let her fingers slide to his neck, his shoulders. When he moved his mouth from her breast, she bent and placed her mouth on the thick muscle of his shoulder. He tasted salty, male. Delicious. Her fingers found his right nipple and brushed it to a stiff point. She kissed a path to his left nipple and laved gently.
He hissed out a breath and trailed his hands from her hips to her back. She took the tiny pebbled nub into her mouth, her hands braced against the hardened muscles of his upper thighs. His heart beat a staccato rhythm beneath her mouth. The richness of the moment was heady, emboldening. She rubbed her hands up his thighs until they rested at the very tops. His hips shift forward and she moved one hand to the front of his pants.
Beneath the soft cotton, she felt his erection, long and thick and hard. She ran her hand up and down as he groaned, then backed away enough to see what she was doing and reached for his belt. Somehow she managed to undo it and deal with the single button. The zipper proved difficult, but she fumbled until she lowered it, all the while listening to his harsh breathing.
His white knit boxer shorts stretched tightly over his erection. She spread his pants open to run a finger down his length which strained against the fabric.
He blew out a breath and she pulled her hand away. “Sorry.”
He laughed, a soft, rumbling sound. “No. It feels good. You feel good.”
With more confidence, her heart racing, Laura bent to kiss his stomach and again placed her hand on him through the thin cotton.
He flexed against her hand once, twice, then hauled her up to kiss her stomach before falling back on the bed with her on top.
Laura pushed herself up, her hands against the mattress next to Mark’s shoulders. Looking down at him, the glow of city flowing through the window, she was struck again by the masculine angles of his face. Bending low, she kissed a path from his jaw, down his neck to his left shoulder. As she tasted his skin, her lips felt the change in texture from smooth to the raised and puckered scarring. She wanted to erase the pain he must have suffered. Suddenly he rolled her over onto her back and she felt him thrust against her, through their remaining clothing.
“It’s safe. I’m very regular—”
“It’s okay. You told me.” Mark didn’t care right now. Even before, at the river, he hadn’t cared.
The sight of her hair, spilled like an exotic dark blanket on the white sheets, pulled his thoughts to this reality. He didn’t want to think, he wanted to glory in the feel her body beneath his, her hands on his chest.
She kissed him and he forgot about wishes and caution and the hundred different things that should be screaming in his head.
For the pleasure. For the pleasure he could give her.
Touching her, listening to her breath-hitched responses, watching her face light with satisfaction, feeling her hands and mouth on him, all were heaven to him. He could do this. He could give her this, even if only for a moment in time.
He pushed those thoughts aside and got them both out of their remaining clothes. The scent of her filled his senses. He wanted nothing more than to get inside her, to assuage the ache. Her legs tightened around his hips, her body so in tune with his. He began his incremental entry, his heart galloping as she accommodated herself around him, her heat drawing him in.
Alternating his rhythm, watching for what pleased her most, he tried to finesse his thrusts, tried not give in to the overwhelming demands of his own body. Mouth over hers, he kept his movements smooth in her slick body. But there was one moment when everything he was demanded something from her. “Open your eyes, Laura,” he whispered.
She did, opening those exotic eyes, so dark with the pleasure he was giving her, and said his name in a soft whisper.
He felt her tighten around him and let himself go.
***
Laura looked up at Mark, their bodies still joined after a second, more leisurely loving.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She smiled, taking in the perspiration at his temples, the strength of his chest and shoulders. His eyes and mouth. “Mm, hm,” she replied. She could still feel the aftershocks of his pleasure, of hers. He shifted away and pulled her against him.
“Get some sleep.”
She nestled against him, one leg over his, her head against his chest, and listened to the quiet outside, broken only by an occasional shot. But she couldn’t shut down her fears.
“Tony will still be there,” she said quietly. “Won’t he? They can’t have moved him, not with all this going on.”
“From what Rosa said, Margarita cares deeply for him,” Mark said, the rumble of his voice a reassurance.
“How will he ever forgive me?”
Mark tilted her chin up toward him. “Forgive you?”
“I should never have left him that day. If it weren’t for me he—”
“Don’t second guess yourself. You couldn’t have known Ruiz would take him.”
“But I should have.”
“No,” he shook his head. “There has never been any way to predict what Ruiz will do.” He took a breath. “You can’t blame yourself.”
“But Tony can.”
“He won’t,” he said quietly. “Remember, Margarita has been trying to spoil him, Esperanza is with him.” He pushed a strand of hair away from her face. “He has to know how much you love him.”
“Still, I’ll never be able to make it up to him.”
“There’s nothing to make up for. I’ve seen how you deal with people, like that girl in the kitchen with the crazy chef. You’re patient and loving. Not all mothers are. Tony is very lucky to have you.”
Laura sensed a lot unsaid in that statement about him. Her thoughts spread in circles.
“Your mother,” she said softly. “Are you close?”
She felt him draw back. She must’ve touched on a sore spot.
“I was a holy terror,” he said after a moment. “She wasn’t a hands-on mother.” He took a breath. “My parents are divorced. The day before she left I’d disobeyed her, not for the first time, and wound up in the hospital being sewn up. When I was a kid, I thought I’d made her leave. But she left because she did, she would have left even if I hadn’t hurt myself.”
“Are you close now?”
“I wouldn’t say close, but she was there when I needed her. She has her own life.”
That sounded so pragmatic. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“One sister.” He chuckled. “My twin.”
She pushed up on one elbow and looked at him. “There are two of you?”
“Well, she’s a girl,” he said with a laugh. “Very much a girl.”
“Do you look alike?” she asked.
“Hair and eyes are the same color.”
“I’m sure she’s beautiful.” She settled against him again.
“Her husband thinks so.” Another laugh. “Yeah, she is.”
“That’s a problem?”
“It was when we were teens.” He chuckled. “Boys,” he said. “Lots of boys.”
She laughed. He would have been a protective brother. “My brother said I was too much trouble.” Had she really said that? She rushed to add, “Manolo and my husband were good friends.” ¡Ay! That was probably worse. Was it right to talk about her husband while naked in bed with another man? “I’ve always wondered if José Antonio married me because my brother urged him to.”
***
What could Mark say to that? No way. Your husband’s dying words were about you?
Mark had wanted her from the moment he saw her waiting tables in Puerto Escondido. Before he realized who she was, the kind of person she was. And now? She was special. Strong, caring. Resilient.
She’d gambled when she confided in him about her son. He’d wanted her trust. And now he had it.
Be careful what you wish for.
He should have told her. It wouldn’t have made any sense when they first met and would have blown his cover. Still, he should’ve told her at some point.
Before now.
Hell. Long before now.
He should never have made love to her. Here she was telling him she wondered about her husband’s love, while the truth yawned like the deepest, darkest pit between them.
Sure, she might not have trusted him initially, but he’d had ample opportunity to tell her and hadn’t.
No point in sugar-coating it with excuses. There was no excuse. Because he’d been protecting himself. He didn’t want her to know because she’d hate him. He was a selfish son of a bitch.
“Your husband was a lucky man. I’m sure he knew that.” Truth told. To a point.
“I should have asked him to leave the army.”
Her words fell into a silence he could close with a few simple sentences. Instead, he asked, “Would he have if you asked?”
“Maybe. But it wouldn’t have been right for him. He was a soldier. He loved what he did, truly believed in what he did.” She sighed against his chest. “He loved Tony,” she added quietly.
“We’ll get him back, Laura.” He’d move heaven and earth to make that true. No matter the cost. “I promise.”
She nodded and closed her eyes.
He held on to her as she tucked herself against his body. As if she belonged.
God in heaven. The irony hit him like a sledge hammer.
He was in love with the woman who would hate his guts when she found out the truth.
***
Laura woke to a sound from somewhere in the house. It was still dark. She was alone, tangled in the sheets. Mark must have gone downstairs, but she hadn’t heard him or felt him leave the bed. She listened intently but heard nothing more, nothing inside, no shooting outside. The cathedral bells clanged out four-thirty. She’d get a quick shower and be ready to leave.
The sense of urgency she’d managed to put aside for a few stolen hours came rushing back. Please, please, let Tony be safe! Dios mío, por favor.
Grabbing the top sheet in case Mark came back, she walked to the bathroom. As if a sheet would mean anything at this point. He’d seen and touched her body, had loved her with a fierce intensity and equally fierce tenderness. And she’d kept up with him. No, she’d matched his intensity.
He’d given her more than physical pleasure. Whether he knew it or not, he’d given her a glimpse of the man he was away from the dangers they’d encountered. That gave her pause.
Was she falling in love? Was this… love? Unexpected, unwanted…
¡Ay! What a time for such a realization.
The small bathroom had no window, so she turned on the light.
Immediately, she saw the note on the sink.
He’d gone without her.
Wait here, he said. Wait here for him. He would bring Tony.
But would he?
He worked for her father. His loyalty was to him, not to her, despite the days they’d spent together, the hours they’d shared in bed. He probably believed if he left early, he could somehow help her father, too.
Tony was all that mattered, surely her father would know that. She didn’t have time for a shower. She dashed into the bedroom and pulled on her clothes.
Why had she trusted Mark to take her with him? Because he’d put her needs first, not a vendetta, not duty to country or to anything or anyone else. Only loyalty to her and what she needed. Her son.
Or so she thought.
Por Dios, her father. What kind of daughter was she to think like this?
No. Her father had to be okay. He had his men, Emilio Estrada among them. Emilio, who’d told her he’d get her out of the country if she would hide and wait. Just as Mark now asked her to do.
Wait? For what? For the country to be safe? Because duty came first to men like that. Men who could ignore the danger to a small child.
She had grown too dependent on Mark, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew how to get away from the city undetected. She would do it again.
At least Mark had left her a gun. For her protection, he’d written.
Her protection.
That made her think about all the time she’d spent with him. Not just the last few hours, but from the first. He’d stepped in when no one else dared stand up to Ruiz. Yes, he was her father’s man, determined to do anything to stop Ruiz. She was sure Mark didn’t know who she was, not until he saw her in her shabby little room. Oh, she didn’t discount the fact that showing Ruiz the kind of man he was served his purposes, but he’d risked his mission to protect a waitress.
So, wait, or not? Trust, or not? Did she dare believe in him? While she might have been able to leave the city undetected weeks ago, now, with a curfew and troops everywhere, was that possible?
Another cold hard fact to consider was that if Mark did bring Tony and she wasn’t here, she would miss them altogether if she left.
She touched her lips. She remembered how Mark asked her to look at him, when passion should have kept him from saying anything. She’d seen tenderness and caring.
That tenderness and caring scared her because she was going to wait and do what her heart told her to do.
Trust him.
***
Mark closed the back gate behind him. The church bells echoed over the now quiet city. Four-thirty AM. He’d dressed in cargo pants and a shirt over a T-shirt because he needed the pockets for the magazines and ammo for the Glock in his back holster, then sneaked out of bed like a thief in the night.
Very appropriate choice of words. He’d stolen hours with Laura, then, as she lay asleep and trusting beside him, her naked body snug against his, he’d left her to go for the boy.
He’d written her a note. She’d be furious, but she’d be safe until he came back.
Two Guardia patrols moved back and forth in the plaza in front, but there was no one on this back street. The night mist from the Pacific glowed around the streetlights.
From the direction of the Plaza de Armas he could hear an occasional shot. Looters, no doubt, always looking for any opportunity.
While he came to San Mateo to uncover Ruiz’s involvement in the sale of guns to a terrorist group, he’d run into something more dangerous because of the wider repercussions. With the help of the men he’d seen arriving to meet with Ruiz, the ex-general could use the cross-border incursion to paint the democratic government as weak and helpless in the face of an attack. Only he, Ruiz would claim, could defend the nation by taking command of all military and civilian security forces as he had done.
With so many armed patrols, Mark stayed in the shadows, forced to take a circuitous route toward the house where Margarita Ruiz kept the boy. A half hour later he was within one block of the safe house. He debated whether to find out what Emilio Estrada was planning and what orders Sam Mackenzie and his Delta team had been given before moving on. If he did, and Sam had gotten hold of Ethridge, Mark ran the danger of having to disobey a direct order. He didn’t want to do that yet again.
A shot cracked through the air from the direction of the safe house. Then two more.
He couldn’t ignore that. He glanced right, then left, and seeing no one, peered around the corner.
Three San Matean Army troops stood guard outside, their submachine guns at the ready.
Shit! The safe house had been made. He sprinted around the block to come at the house from the other direction to see if Estrada or Sam had been arrested. By the time he got there, two other soldiers, officers, stormed out and ordered the troops following them and the three waiting guards into a transport truck. They drove off.
If Sam or Estrada were inside, wounded, he could help. He ran from one darkened doorway to the next until he reached the house. The front door had been broken off the hinges. With one last look up and down the street, he stepped inside, his Glock in hand. He moved silently, carefully, from the front to the kitchen. No sign of Sam or Estrada. No signs of blood. The other rooms were clear. The place had been trashed, but there was nothing he could see that would have identified this as a CIA safe house. If Estrada and Sam had been arrested, Mark would never know. No one would.
More than likely Ruiz would have them killed.
Nothing he could do here. He had to move on.
Minutes later, he jogged across an expressway overpass. A military convoy rolled underneath headed toward the center of town, not toward the highway that would take it north to the border with Monte Blanco.
He crouched low and dashed to the concrete railing where he could look down but not be seen by the convoy. Automatically, he began counting. Ten troop carriers, all loaded. Five flatbed trucks carrying Russian tanks like the ones he’d seen the day before, then a string of army Jeeps. They headed toward the Presidential Palace in the Plaza de Armas. If Monte Blanco had invaded, San Matean troops would have held them back in the north. So why all of this in the city?
Then, as the last Jeep passed by, he got his answer.
Ruiz rode through the early morning darkness toward the presidential palace, surrounded by three of the men who’d come and gone from Ruiz’s house earlier. All lower echelon officers.
Mark remembered the men who were being held at Ruiz’s. The vice-president, the heads of the police and Guardia, and the generals in charge of the three branches of the military. Men key to the security of the country, all now sidelined.
This wasn’t about using a war with Monte Blanco to prove to the people that Ruiz was the only one who could handle a military conflict, or at least wasn’t the main point. This was a coup d’état.
Ernesto Ruiz had what he’d wanted for years, the reason he’d jailed, maybe even killed, his opponents, the reason he’d done everything he’d ever done. For the presidency of San Mateo. By subterfuge and by force.
With that came the ruin of a country and the deaths of scores if not hundreds of people. The chaos of last night was nothing. Mark had seen it before. The country now teetered on the edge of a black and bloody chasm.