Chapter Thirteen
I stole along the ravine and followed the dry creek bed to get to the lake. I crept under the barbed wire fence to the property next door and walked for about another mile, where an old, abandoned shed crumbled at the edge of the beach. Along the way, I passed the dilapidated dock where Neil, Ash and I had taken so many happy lunches. Like the shattered mirror, my heart splintered into jagged shards.
The old door creaked when I cracked it open. The morning sun illuminated the bow of the weathered rowboat I’d hidden beneath some rubble and an old tarp. It was an ancient thing, missing the middle seat, probably dating to the 1920s, but I’d tested it several times and it would take me across the lake, from where I could walk to the nearest truck stop.
I pulled on the boat, but it didn’t budge. I squinted into the darkness. I couldn’t see a thing back there. I leaned my weight against the heavy door and, pushing with all my strength, widened the opening. A perfect rectangle of light advanced over the space, illuminating the entire shed.
I gasped.
Ash sat on the boat’s back bench as quiet as the dead. Next to him, Neil wagged his tail and barked.
“Hush, boy.” Ash petted the dog. “Lia here is executing a top secret escape. No point in ruining it just because you’re happy to see her.”
My bag fell out of my grip. “H-How did you know?” The air just rushed out of me. “Never mind.” This was Ash I was talking about, the most thorough creature in the universe.
“As a contingency plan, a watercraft made total sense to me,” Ash said. “I just had to figure out where you hid it.”
I braced myself on the door. “Why did you follow me here?”
“I have questions,” he said. “I need answers.”
“Ash, I—”
“Why are you running?”
“Excuse me?”
“I asked you a simple question,” he said. “Why are you running?”
“Because of Red,” I said, “but you know that.”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you sure?”
“Of course,” I said. “Why else?”
“The way I see it,” he said, “running is a habit of yours. It’s the way that you deal with everything.”
I straightened. “Are you calling me a coward?”
“Your words, not mine.” He leveled his stare on me. “Sometimes, running is the right call. You could very well be running from Red, but knowing you, you could also be running away from...other things.”
“Other things like what?”
“You could be running away from our future.”
Our future? The mere idea set my heart aflutter. We had a future? Together?
“Running won’t make you safe,” Ash said. “Or happy.”
“But it may keep me, and especially you, breathing for a few more days.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “But don’t you get tired of running?”
Yes, I did, but I didn’t dare to dream about a life without running, because I knew, deep inside, that it wasn’t possible.
“I have to say this to you, Lia.” The lines between his eyes deepened. “I can’t stand it when you get like this. It pisses me off. Period. I have a hard enough time with my temper. Today has been...challenging.”
The strain etched on his face smacked my brain. I wavered. I hated the pain and frustration I’d added to his life.
“I also don’t appreciate you patronizing me with your condescension—”
“I don’t—”
“You do too,” he said.
“When?”
“When you keep me out of the loop,” he said. “When you take it upon yourself to make decisions for me.”
I scoffed. “How do you think I felt when I saw your guys and Steiner in the cottage?”
“That’s different.”
I cocked my fist on my hip. “How?”
“I tried to work with you, but you wouldn’t let me. You’re so stubborn—”
“Stubborn? Really? This is Mount Everest talking.”
“You’ve got major trust issues,” he said. “I get that, fine. You’re used to going at it alone. Okay. I can buy that too, if I have to. But maybe you also doubt me, because you don’t know me so well, or because I’m on injured reserve.”
I realized that I’d struck at the heart of his insecurities. At some level, he believed I was running away because I thought he was weak, incapable or disabled, or worse, because I didn’t want to be with him. He feared I was running away from the very concept of us.
Was he right? Could I be that sick?
“I don’t doubt your abilities,” I said, “I know you’ve got skills.”
“I set out to prove that you can trust me,” he said. “And I did. Do you remember that guy that came to the bar that night, the one who I told you was my business partner?”
“Yes?”
“Together we own a global security consulting firm,” he said. “Through it, I hired the guys, secured the cottage, set up surveillance and caught Steiner. Did I do wrong?”
I grappled with the enormity of his actions. Where could I begin to unravel the mess in my mind?
“I appreciate your good intentions,” I said. “But you’re squandering your money and you’ve got to believe me. You and the guys are in terrible danger.”
“Each person made their own decision,” he said. “Each person was chosen because they have the qualifications and expertise to do the job. As to my resources, they’re mine to use as I see fit. What would you have done in my place?”
Most sane people would have walked away from trouble like mine. I myself favored running away as far and fast as possible. But Ash? He wasn’t like the rest of us.
“I need to know, for good.” His eyes fixed on my face. “Do you want to be with me? If you do, I’m willing to find a way to make it happen. But you’ve got to answer my question honestly. Are you running away from me?”
“No—yes—maybe—” I hesitated. “Maybe I’m—I was—a little scared of us, of the way I feel about you. It’s...overwhelming.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” he said.
“But now...” I swallowed a sob. “I can’t stay.”
“What if you could stay?”
“If I could stay?” I hugged myself. “I wouldn’t leave you. Ever.”
The smile on his face brought back the light into my world. He reached behind the craft and plopped down his fully loaded backpack in the boat. “Mind telling me where we’re heading?”
I croaked. “We?”
“Yes, we,” he said. “You wanna run? No problem. We run.”
“We can’t run,” I said. “We’d be too easy to find.”
“Because I have a cane and a dog?”
“Because you coming with me would defeat the purpose of me running in the first place.”
“Which is, of course, to keep me out of this and safe,” he said in a flat monotone.
“And the guys,” I said, teetering at the edge of hysteria. “And Neil, don’t forget Neil.”
“I’m thinking Iceland.” Ash clasped his hands and steepled his forefingers together. “Astonishing geography. Or Barbados, if you prefer a tropical climate. Oh, yeah, you’d look great in a bikini.”
“Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
“I’ve got excellent contacts in Poland.” He tapped his fingers against each other. “Top-notch special forces friends over there. Or we could go to Madagascar. We touched down there en route. It seemed like a fascinating place.”
“We can’t go anywhere,” I said. “I’m the one who has to go.”
“See, now, that’s a problem.” He straightened his fingers and cracked his knuckles. “Should you be tempted to go anywhere without me, you’ll keep getting the same result: me, anticipating your every move.”
“You can’t—”
“Oh, yes, I can and I will,” he said. “It’d be a monumental waste of time and energy if you ask me, a huge strategic mistake, not exactly where I’d choose to concentrate my resources right now. But Neil and I, we’ll do it if you force us.”
He was so damn stubborn, not to mention devious, bringing Neil into the picture like that. But I believed him. He wasn’t one to make idle threats. He’d do exactly as he said and then he’d get killed. Neil tilted his head and whimpered, shifting his attention between Ash and me.
“Ash,” I said. “I don’t want to go, but I have to go. Surely, you understand.”
“Yeah, sure, if we’re running, we ought to get going.” Ash checked his cell. “On the other hand, unless they hear from me, the guys will wait a minimum of twelve hours before releasing Steiner, and, as of three minutes ago, our target and his assets remain stationary.”
I couldn’t wrap my head around that one. “How could you possibly keep track of Red?”
“I told you,” he said. “These guys are good and I’m using the resources of one of the most advanced global security firms in the world.”
Of course it would be the most advanced global security firm in the world if Ash had anything to do with it. But the world didn’t turn on an axis of kindness. Free lunches didn’t exist. Even if Ash was a founding member, his partner would expect something from him in exchange for using the firm’s resources.
“So what’s the catch?” I asked. “What do you have to do for them?”
“I’m expected to become an active partner.”
“But you love being a SEAL,” I said. “You weren’t sure about leaving the service.”
“It’s like you said, Lia, I’m leaving all of my options open. I agreed to become active in the firm, but I haven’t given anybody any starting dates just yet.”
He’d done all of this...for me?
“I can’t let you or the guys get killed on my account,” I said. “I just can’t.”
“I know you have trouble with this,” Ash said, “but you need to understand. You’re dealing with a high level of expertise. Will’s skill set is exceptional. He’s got tabs on Red. He’s hacked into his devices. He’s actually hooked into the signal from Red’s ankle monitor. We’ve even got visual on his place. So...”
“So what?”
“So we have some time, not a lot, but a few hours to make good decisions.” He offered me his hand. “Let’s make them together.”
Stepping into the landlocked boat was both victory and defeat. Kneeling before Ash was a reprieve from my heart’s execution. I relished the way he took me into his arms and welcomed me against his body. I let out a long breath. Was this how a hermit crab felt when it found the perfect shell?
I leaned my head on his shoulder and found joy in his heart’s steady song. Ash signaled and Neil abandoned ship. The dog bounced out of the boat, trotted out of the shed and plopped down outside to guard the building, obsidian fur gleaming under the sunlight.
I looked up at Ash and found him waiting. He kissed me. The contact squelched my worries, eased my anxieties and melted away the fear. In his arms, I could be brave. It was reckless, but how could anybody blame me for wanting this?
“If you die, I’ll kill you,” I mumbled against his lips.
He chuckled and kissed me again. “I’ve proven myself hard to kill before, but I’ll be careful. I wouldn’t want to be haunted for eternity by your merciless spirit.”
“I’m not kidding, Ash. I’ve survived a lot of stuff, but I can’t survive you dying on me.”
“Funny how death doesn’t bother me overly much,” he said. “A life without you, now that’s terrifying to me.”
A moment ago, a life without Ash had been exactly my best prospect. Now I had to kiss him while holding back tears. I’d never loved anyone the way I loved Ash.
“No need to stress right now,” he said, caressing my face. “It’s going to be okay.”
His mouth distracted me from his hand’s doings. I didn’t notice when my coat came off, or when he unzipped my jeans. By the time I did notice, he’d already unbuttoned my shirt and unhooked my bra.
“Um...this might not be the best moment for this kind of thing.”
“I disagree.” He kissed me some more.
“Here?” I looked around the dusty shed. “Now?”
“Here, now,” he said. “Say yes, Lia. You need this. Christ help me, I need it too. If I don’t have you right now, I might just pass out from lack of blood to the brain.”
“Is that so?” I stroked the bulge between his legs. “I do believe I just found all your blood.”
He grabbed my hand and pressed it against his groin. “Say yes, Lia, and hurry up, please?”
I cherished the look on his face, the excitement in his eyes, the boyish grin that was not boyish at all, but sexy as hell. I relished the way he looked up at me and waited, the fact that he wanted me to need him as badly as he needed me. I liked that he would back off on the spot had I said no.
“Yes.”
The look in his eyes obliterated any option that involved living my life without him. He unfastened the sleeping pad from his backpack and unfurled it on the bottom of the boat. It took him hardly any time to finish undressing me. He tugged off my boots, peeled off my jeans and, after stripping my shirt, hurled it overboard, along with my bra.
I blushed, looking down on my naked self.
“No worries.” He stripped out of his own clothing. “Now we’re even.”
Between kisses, he laid me down on the mat at the bottom of the boat. He kissed my feet and, with care, hung each one by the heel on the boat’s back bench. It was hard to lie still when I was so intimately exposed, and yet I wasn’t afraid. The Mona Lisa smile etched on his face praised, reassured and promised at the same time.
He kissed my toes, shins, knees and thighs in a slow progression, working his way up my body, delighting me with his lips. My pulse quickened and my breaths sharpened. He kissed my sex and then licked me as if every fold in my body tasted like an exquisite delicacy and my clit was a treat. Talk about bliss. I clenched the gunwales and puffed through his tongue’s caress, melting under his mouth’s exquisite heat.
“Oh, God.” I whimpered, delirious, entwining my fingers through his hair and curling my hips against his tongue. “I’m going to come.”
“Not yet,” he mumbled, pausing for a moment.
“But I can’t wait.”
“Believe me, the wait will be well worth it.”
I moaned and I begged and still he held me in place as his tongue deepened its reach to taste the very heat he’d baked into me. His gaze probed mine, lustrous and engaged, assessing my reactions. Lips parted, I blew out little breaths. I had no choice but to keep my legs apart, arch my back and stand the tasting, flowing with all kinds of flavors delivered exclusively to his mouth.
When he’d had his fill and I was incapable of coherent thought, he stopped, leaving me perching precariously at the edge of a monumental orgasm.
“Don’t stop.”
He chuckled with a perverse lack of mercy. “I’m not done with you yet.”
He kissed my belly button, my hands, nipples and cheeks. His erection trailed his kisses, brushing against my thighs and tripping against the crook of my legs, unleashing the shivers that pebbled my skin and sent severe pleasure advisories to every part of my body. By the time his lips hovered over my mouth, the tip of his cock pressed against me.
“Promise me,” he whispered, “No more running from me, no reservations, no secrets.”
“Ash, I—”
He growled. “Promise me.”
“I do, I promise.”
“I want in,” he said. “We do this together.”
I murmured against his mouth. “Together.”
“I’m going to let you come,” he said, “but I’m not letting you go. Do you understand?”
“I do,” I said. “You’re not letting me go.”
He stared into my eyes. “Are we a done deal, then?”
“We’re a done deal.”
He glided in, searing my flesh with pleasure’s fire. My body seized on him and wouldn’t let go. His tongue and cock worked in tandem, probing my body at the same time, like twins meeting twins. He breached me slowly, thrilling my body with his exquisite progress. I learned what it was like to belong with someone and to own them in return.
“Christ, Lia, can I fuck you?” he rasped. “Can I fuck you right now?”
He didn’t have to ask me. The question alone had me whimpering with lust. How could his touch bring so much joy to my body? I wrapped my legs around his waist and arched my hips, freeing him to his desires, freeing my body to his. He curled over me like a dolphin on a wave. I rippled, rolled and swelled beneath him.
The muscles of his powerful buttocks contracted beneath my hands. My fingers dug in his flesh, my teeth raked his skin and my tongue licked his body’s exquisite salt. His fullness satisfied the void inside. His presence in my body ended all prospects of loneliness. In his arms, I was worth something. In my arms, he was everything that mattered and my body’s elation matched my heart’s euphoria. His cock pumped into me, an increasingly frantic drumming that reverberated throughout my body until I could no longer ride the crest of my own wave.
“Lia,” he called out my name as he came.
“Yours,” I whispered.
* * *
Afterward, we walked together to the dock, listening to the breeze whispering as it combed through the trees. The morning was crisp. The sky gleamed with the perfect blue. Neil found a stick and dropped it at our feet. Ash hurled it a good distance away and Neil took off after it. Ash sat on the dock and tapped the tattered boards between his legs. I settled with my back against his chest, rested my head on his shoulder and sighed like a satisfied kitten.
“It’s time,” he said quietly.
“Time?” I said.
“It’s time for you to share with me everything you know. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. But information is key to good intelligence. Every detail is vital. I’ve managed to gather some valuable intel, but it’s time for you to tell me the whole story.”
My stomach lurched. “I... I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Sorry, baby. You’ve got to try. If Steiner found you, chances are Red can find you too.”
I gulped. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“How about we start with the basics?” He wrapped his arms around me. “What’s your real name?”
It was a simple question, one that I should have been able to answer easily. But it had been a long time since I’d heard my own name, and I’d spent many years painstakingly hiding my identity from everyone. A straw might have allowed more air to pass through my strangled throat. I struggled to speak, but my body refused to make the sounds.
Neil trotted back to the dock, dropped his stick and, stretching out next to me, rested his chin on my lap. I ran my fingers through his coat, smoothing out the wet spots and combing the sable bristle into a semblance of order.
“Lia?” Ash squeezed his arms around me. “You can trust me. You need to trust me.”
I forced my breathing into a steady pattern, one breath in, two out. The exercise helped even my pulse. Breathe and cope, or just cope, for God’s sake. After several attempts, my voice finally trickled out, small, frail and reticent.
“I was named after my mother and grandmother,” I said. “Two first names and two last names: Rose Amelia Faulker Ventura. Most people knew me as Rose, but my little brother called me Lia, short for Amelia, and my parents followed suit. I think you know me by my best name. Lia is what I like to be called.”
“Nice to meet you, Rose Amelia Faulkner Ventura,” Ash said. “I love Lia too.” He paused. “Where were you born?”
“Tampa, Florida.”
“How did you first meet Ruiz Ramon Rojas?”
I craned my neck to look at him. Of course Ash would know Red’s real name by now, but he must have understood my need to know how he’d figured it out.
“We started with Red Rush,” he explained. “In order to discover who was behind it, we followed an intricate maze of subsidiaries through several layers of corporate umbrellas that led to a number of empty shells operating offshore. It took a while, but we zeroed in on a holding company operating out of Panama. The principal of that company turned out a name: Ruiz Ramon Rojas.”
“You guys are amazing.” They really had to be extraordinarily skilled to be able to navigate Red’s complex corporate maze. “Red usually covers his tracks really well.”
“Believe me, his tracks were thoroughly covered,” Ash said. “But we’ve got grit. Red Rush is only one of Red’s many lines of business. The FBI, the ATF, the Justice Department and DEA all have investigations in progress. Even Homeland Security and the CIA had some interesting things to say about the son of a bitch. When did you first come in contact with him?”
“I met him in Colombia, but I don’t know that I want to remember.”
“Okay, then fill in this blank: how does a girl from Florida end up in Colombia?”
“Oh, that.” I sighed. “My mom died when I was very young. After she died, my father was never the same. Trained as an agricultural scientist, he became very religious and believed he was meant to bring God to the poor inhabitants of the jungles of South America.”
“Did he travel to Colombia?” Ash asked.
“He tried to get hired by several missions operating out of Colombia, but none of them ministered in the Amazon, where my father wanted to go.” I stroked Neil’s soft fur. “My father decided to go on his own, ignoring the warnings from the State Department and the Colombian government about the dangers from the drug trade and the guerrillas. When I was about twelve and Adam was ten, my dad gathered his savings, packed us up and off we went.”
Ash’s eyebrows clashed in the middle of his face. “And nobody objected to his taking two young children into such a remote and dangerous area?”
“There was no one to object,” I said. “Both Mom and Dad came from only-child families. My grandparents were dead and we’d been homeschooled since we were little. I don’t know that anybody noticed when we left.”
“So your father believed in taking big risks?” Ash said.
“He saw himself as a man of faith,” I said. “He believed that kindness was especially needed in areas of conflict. Drug traffickers and warlords needed God more than the rest of us. He thought they acted out violently out of necessity, because they grew up in poverty and didn’t have access to education and organized religion.”
Ash took that in, wearing the neutral expression he used to spare me from what I was sure wasn’t a stellar opinion of my father’s choices. “What happened when you got to Colombia?”
“We started with a one-room hut, a small garden and a field in a jungle clearing, where my father wanted to experiment with growing crops. My dad believed that people were inherently good and would welcome anybody working to bring prosperity to their communities. How wrong he was.”
Ash squeezed my hand. “And Ruiz Ramon Rojas?”
“Him.” My throat went suddenly dry. “He used to come around a lot.”
“Can you tell me how you first met him?”
“I can try.”
Neil lifted his head and whimpered.
“It’s okay, boy,” I said. “It’ll be okay.”
I raked my fingers through Neil’s fine fur. I could do this. I had to do this. There was no way I could verbalize what I felt, but as I spoke, I gave Ash dates, names, places, the information he needed. I’d tried hard to forget the past, but now the memories crystallized in my mind like a movie in high definition. I was back in the jungle, remembering the first time I ever saw Red.