Chapter Seven

Minnie bit her lip to stop herself commenting as Calli moved her queen’s rook forward three squares. It was a bad move, but it was Calli’s game.

Minnie put her chin back on her forearm, which was resting across the back of the dining chair. She had pulled the chair up to the game board and reversed it, happy to let her mind drop into neutral as she watched the game.

From the arm of the big sofa in the corner, Carmen gave a breathy wheeze of laughter, quickly muffled. Minnie glanced at her. The woman was wearing a perfectly respectable pair of cut-offs. Her shirt was somewhat see-through, but she wore a bra beneath. For the last three days, Carmen had been behaving herself, but Minnie was still wary of her.

She returned her chin to her forearm. The scratches on her arm were already healing. Only her lip gave out the odd twinge now.

Minnie’s father winced and moved his queen. “Checkmate in four, I’m afraid,” he told Calli, looking at her over the top of his glasses.

“Three, actually,” Minnie said.

Her father stared at the board. “Yes, three,” he agreed.

Calli sighed and laid her king down on the board. “I guess I just didn’t learn it young enough. Or practice enough.”

“I don’t get much practice either,” Carmen said, pushing her hands into the pockets of her cut-offs. “And I’ve only been playing a few years.”

Calli bit her lip. She was weighing something up. “Would you like to play a game, then?” she asked Carmen. It was a form of peace offering. Minnie wasn’t sure what had happened after the fight in the kitchen, but the air between Carmen and Calli had been strained since then and Minnie’s gut told her it wasn’t all because of the fight. Something else had happened afterward.

Carmen stood up, showing mild interest. “A game against you?”

“I wouldn’t play her,” Nick said from behind the file he was reading at the desk. “Not unless you like being humiliated twice in an afternoon. Carmen was Harvard’s grand champion four years in a row. She’s selling you a dummy.”

Carmen shoved her hands back into her pockets. “You ruined a perfectly acceptable bluff.”

“If you’d tried to bluff Josh, fair enough,” Nick answered. “But Calli? You just wanted the pleasure of annihilating her in two moves. Ego, pure and simple.”

“¡Mierda!” Carmen hissed.

Nick lifted his head and just looked at her.

After a few moments, Carmen looked away.

Josh, standing at the window, cleared his throat. “The beach sentries are coming up to the house,” he said mildly. “They’re carrying someone.”

* * * * *

The woman was in her early twenties but looked twenty years older. All her exposed skin was raw, red or blistered. The house doctor diagnosed severe dehydration, too. The damage had been delivered by three days in a one-man sailboat with no water, relying on prevailing winds and currents to get her across the strait from Vistaria to Mexico.

It was the cuts and bruises around her face that aged her and they had not been delivered by the crossing. When she was examined in the tent that served as a hospital, they learned that the bruises covered most of her body and were concentrated around the abdominal area.

The doctor treated her and with great reluctance allowed Nick, Josh and General Blanco to question her, though he issued a stream of warnings, cautions and conditions.

When Nick tried to prevent Minnie, Calli and Carmen from entering the tent with them, Calli placed her hand on his arm. “We’re grown women, Nick. We can stand it. We deserve to know what she has to say as much as you.”

Minnie caught his glance at Carmen, who stood shoulder to shoulder with Calli, her arms crossed, her gaze steady. He sighed and reluctantly nodded his head. One day soon, she must to sit Calli down and find out what had happened between the three of them.

The woman lay on a stretcher. She had an intravenous drip in her arm and thick gel covering her burned skin. Her dark eyes were surrounded by flesh that looked as bruised as the rest of her face and they were clouded with pain. She was alert and she recognized Nick immediately. “Señor Escobedo, thank God,” she said in a strained voice. “I was hoping I would find you. I must warn you.”

Calli leaned toward Carmen. “‘Advertirle’? Does that mean warning? Who is she warning?”

Nick touched the woman’s hand gently. “You’re safe now,” he assured her.

“I must tell you what he is doing to Vistaria. I must tell you and you must stop him.”

Carmen whispered back. “She’s warning him, asking him to go back to Vistaria and stop it.”

“Stop what?” Calli whispered back

Carmen held up her hand. “Let me listen.”

“As long as you translate for us later,” Calli shot back. “No one else here will do it.”

Carmen looked around the tent. Everyone else crowded around the woman was male. She looked Calli in the eye and nodded. “I will.”

Calli drew Minnie outside.

“You trust her to tell you?” Minnie asked.

“Believe it or not, yes.” Calli looked at her watch. “Eleven a.m. on a Sunday. Mama Roseta is at church.” She grinned. “The kitchen will be empty. You know what I’ve had a huge craving for the last few days?”

“God knows. What?”

“Chocolate chip cookies and hot chocolate. As homemade as apple pie.”

“It’s ninety degrees!” Minnie exclaimed.

“So what?” Calli punched her arm. “C’mon. I know where there’s some chocolate stashed.”

* * * * *

Just over ninety minutes later, Carmen’s arrival in the kitchen was again punctuated by the slamming of the screen door at the back entrance. This time, though, she stood in the doorway sniffing.

“Ohmigod...chocolate chip cookies! Tell me you made chocolate chip cookies.”

“We made chocolate chip cookies.” Calli held up the plate of cookies she had placed on the table between them.

Carmen rushed over, the cat-walk stride noticeably missing. “Oh please, please...?” She held her hand out. “Just one? My roommate in college used to buy them from a homemade cookie store every Saturday morning, fresh out of the oven. I’d never tasted them until then. You can’t get them in Vistaria—not like you get in the States.”

Calli offered her the plate and Carmen took one and bit into it with an expression that was possibly the most truthful one Minnie had ever seen on her face. She looked rapturous.

“There’s hot chocolate too,” Minnie offered. Her offer was reluctant. It surprised her that Carmen had reported back as promised. Her arrival at least deserved an acknowledgment. The hot chocolate was the best she could do.

Carmen peered at it. “Does it have ginger in it?”

“Ugh. No.”

“Pity. Thanks, but no.” She nibbled the cookie.

Calli pressed her hands together. “What happened with the woman?” she asked.

Carmen shook her head. “Men,” she said, around a mouthful of cookie. Minnie realized that even with her mouth stuffed full of food, Carmen looked glamorous. It just wasn’t fair.

The tall girl sat on the table. “They should have had other women there to comfort the woman. My God...”

“I’ll mention it to Nick, but there are three full-time registered nurses working there. They’re just not there at the moment.”

Carmen frowned, then her brow cleared. “Right, it’s Sunday, isn’t it?”

“And her story...?” Calli coaxed.

Carmen took another bite, nodding her head. “I have to ask you something,” she said to Calli. “You’re sleeping with Nick, so I figure you’ll know the answer.”

Calli blinked. “Well, if you put it that way...”

Carmen waved her hand impatiently. “Lady, you were plastered across the front page of the Vistarian national newspaper, buck-naked and in his arms. I saw the pictures. So, don’t start playing coy, please.”

Minnie hid her smile as Calli’s face turned bright pink right up to her hair line. “You understand I didn’t pose for that picture, right?”

Carmen smiled a slow, knowing smile. “Honey, I know. But I saw the body language. Don’t pretend you don’t have an intimate relationship with him. He pulled you into that meeting the other day in the dining room. He doesn’t do anything without reason. I know he talks to you about stuff that no one else gets to hear. He has to. There is no one else who can do that for him.”

Minnie blinked, taken aback. Even while Carmen had been flouncing around, trying to irritate the shit out of Nick, she had obviously been watching the people in this house, figuring them out.

So what had happened the other day that had allowed her to tone down the sulky college girl routine and actually sound...intelligent?

Calli was staring at Carmen steadily. “All right,” she said at last. “Try me.”

Carmen smiled. Then Calli’s own mouth curved up into a return smile.

Carmen brushed crumbs off her thighs. “Who the hell is this asshole Zalaya?” she demanded.

* * * * *

“You didn’t tell me!” Calli’s voice was strident. “You didn’t tell any of us.”

Nick pushed his hands into his pockets and leaned his butt against the front of his desk. “You didn’t need to know.”

“Didn’t need to know that some guy over there has a brothel going in the palace to service all the supremo Insurrectos? That this Zalaya has his own private bordello attached to his office? The woman out there in the hospital tent says it’s like some sort of Fiesta de la Luna times ten. There’s orgies that would make the Romans blush. Women are being coerced into participating. Men, too.”

Nick seemed calm in the face of Calli’s outrage, but Minnie had been around him long enough to know that he thrust his hands into his pockets when he was frustrated...or cornered. Her father was sitting in the chair by the door watching Nick, too. It was as if he were waiting for a signal of some sort.

Nick sighed. “Zalaya’s bordello earns him the gratitude and loyalty of all the superior officers. What he’s really doing, though, is sitting at the center of the most efficient intelligence operation ever devised and controlled by a single man. Virtually no information is escaping the borders. Just what we learn from the small handful who have crossed the strait.” He shook his head. “It isn’t Serrano we have to defeat to take back Vistaria. It’s Zalaya and his web of intrigue. Only, he has cast such a wide net we’re uncertain who we can trust.”

“Even in this house?” Calli asked, appalled.

“Especially in this house. Which is why no one speaks of him and his activities. I gave that order myself.”

“I still don’t understand,” Minnie confessed. “Who is he exactly? We’ve heard the names of all of Serrano’s officers before. All except this Zalaya. Where did he come from? Why haven’t we heard about him from general gossip?”

“Zalaya was in the loyalist army up until two years ago,” Nick said. “He was discharged. Dishonorably. That’s what is known about him. What we’re almost certain of is that Zalaya is now Serrano’s right-hand man. Less certain is just how long he has been Serrano’s best buddy, but we do know that Serrano can’t run his operation without him. Zalaya is a shadow man—he doesn’t take credit or applause as the other officers do, which is why you haven’t heard of him until now. He likes power and knows how to get it. In other words,” Nick finished, “he is my equivalent, but over there.”

Josh stood up. “Serrano is your equivalent,” he said sharply.

Nick shook his head. “No.”

It was clearly the latest round in an already ongoing discussion, for her father blew out his breath. “I can’t say anything in front of your generals, Nicolás, but it’s all family here—or close enough to make no difference. So hear me. You’re the leader of Vistaria whether you like it or not. Every attempt you’ve made to pass the torch has failed. There is no one else and you know it.”

Nick rubbed his eyes. “I can’t be the leader,” he said, his voice low.

Carmen nodded. “Nick’s right. If he is the de facto president of Vistaria, then why is the President of the United States ducking a direct conversation with him?”

“Who says he’s ducking a conversation?” Josh shot back.

“Have you spoken with him yet, Nick?” Carmen asked.

“No.”

Carmen smiled. “Have you tried?”

“Sort of. I was told—indirectly, of course—that they’re waiting to see what Mexico does with us.” Nick’s tone was dry.

Carmen looked at Josh. “If Nick was the recognized leader of a nation, the U.S. President could not refuse to speak to him if he requested it.”

Josh spread his hands. “Then elect him, appoint him. Do what it takes. You, Carmen and Nick’s boardroom of officers out there are the people who have that power.”

“You don’t understand, Josh,” Nick spoke in the same tired voice. “I’m not legitimate.”

“Huh?” Josh blinked.

Carmen, with the legally trained mind, answered for him. “Nick cannot be president of Vistaria. He’s only half Vistarian. He cannot lead.”

Minnie jumped on that one. “Who says?” She was outraged by such prejudice. It was ridiculous.

“It is the law,” Carmen said.

“What law? Where?”

Nick tried to appease. “Carmen just graduated from Harvard Law School, Minnie. She knows what she’s talking about. This has long been established in our country. Your own president must also have been born in the United States, yes?”

Minnie focused on Nick’s phrasing. “Long been established” had a lot of meanings. She faced Carmen squarely. “Is there a law? Is it written down anywhere that Nick can’t be a leader because his mother was Irish?”

Carmen bit her lip, staring at her. Then she grimaced. “No.”

“Any case law?” Josh asked, stepping to the other side of Carmen. Minnie appreciated his support. She wouldn’t have thought to clarify between case law and statutes.

Carmen was getting edgy. Her hip bone thrust forward and she crossed her arms. After a long pause she said, “No.”

Minnie turned to Nick. “So there’s no real reason you can’t be the President. You just don’t want to be a leader. You’re too used to being the Red Leopard who skulks in the background, manipulating but never visibly taking the power. I guess, in that regard, you want to be Zalaya’s equal.”

Nick opened his mouth, then closed it.

Minnie didn’t wait for him to figure out his next protest. “Out of everyone in this room, it’s you who can pull victory out of this chaos because you know what needs to be done and you can do it. Why won’t you do it, Nick? What’s stopping you?”

“Right now? Right at this very moment?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Well, arranging a wedding for one.” He held his hand out to Calli and she took it, a soft smile on her face. “Calli has consented to marry me as soon as I can arrange it. You’ll forgive me if I off-load the concerns of a country for forty-eight hours?”

Carmen straightened up, almost snapping to attention. “Forty-eight hours?” she cried. “How can I get a proper dress in forty-eight hours? How can Calli? Have you no idea at all about the scale of a thing like a wedding? You have to give us a week at least, Nick!”

“And why haven’t you asked anyone else to help?” Josh asked, moving closer to the pair.

Minnie found herself slowly edged to the side of the room as the four of them gathered together, talking over the top of one another excitedly.

She couldn’t rejoice. Not just yet. Nick had deliberately dropped the news of the wedding into the conversation to distract everyone. He confirmed it by looking her way a moment or two later. He didn’t say anything but his smile faded, until Josh clapped him on the shoulder and forced his attention back to talk of the wedding.

Minnie clutched her middle with both arms, feeling a chill despite the mid-afternoon heat.

Nick wasn’t ready to face Serrano. He wasn’t in a position to take on Zalaya.

That meant the only person left who could help Duardo was her.