Chapter Twelve

Serrano switched off the monitor when he heard voices in the anteroom. A quiet tap and his secretary looked around the door. “Colonel Zalaya?” he asked.

“Yes.”

The secretary withdrew and the door opened to let Zalaya through. The tall security officer lowered himself into the chair and absently rubbed the thigh that had taken the bullet, his other hand still resting on the head of the cane.

“It’s been confirmed,” Zalaya told him. “It’s Nicolás Escobedo’s boat.”

“You still think she has nothing to do with him?”

“We know that Escobedo has those two American women in his household, but she’s Australian.”

“So she says,” Serrano replied.

“She’s an accomplished liar,” Zalaya agreed. “I’m inclined to believe the baseline story, though. No one would attempt to sell such a preposterous tale unless it was the truth. Then there are the site passwords and log-in to verify it.”

Serrano frowned. “Perhaps holding her apart from the bordello may be a wise course, after all. It would be best to preserve her.”

“In case she is Escobedo’s agent?”

“Yes.”

Zalaya smiled. “You mean, use her as leverage against Escobedo if he makes his move?”

“Oh, he will make a move sooner or later and I’m a great believer in being prepared. We must keep her more or less whole. No wounds...or bullet holes.”

Zalaya glanced at the blank screen on Serrano’s desk. “I see.” He moved the cane impatiently. “I think you overestimate her value, even if she is Escobedo’s agent. He knows how to cut his losses.”

“Not for that little firecracker,” Serrano assured him. He picked up the remote again and turned the monitor back on. “My secretary recorded this last night from the television show Star Gazing.”

“Which has won dozens of awards for its reliable, ethical journalism,” Zalaya responded dryly.

“Images don’t lie,” Serrano said calmly and backed up the file and hit “play.” He watched the footage again, glancing at Zalaya to see if he picked it up. It had taken Serrano several replays to see what had got his secretary wound up.

When the report about Adán Caballero’s Acapulco sojourn flashed upon the wedding he had attended, Zalaya threw up his hand. “Wait,” he said softly. “Back it up.”

Serrano backed it up while Zalaya watched intently.

“Stop,” Zalaya said. This time his voice was even softer. He tilted his head to look at the fuzzy images on the screen—it was footage from an amateur video camera and the images were jerky. Where Serrano paused it, Caballero was almost out of the frame, which allowed the official wedding party standing on the steps of the cathedral to be seen. “You think that’s her? On the left of the bride in the green dress?” He frowned. “They’re out of focus.”

“The size and coloring...even the hair is right,” Serrano said.

“So you did watch the security camera footage,” Zalaya said, glancing at him.

Serrano winced. Zalaya was quick to spot things like that.

Zalaya turned his attention back to the screen. “Why come here though? Why send her of all people? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Does it have to? We know he has no decent men except, perhaps, Blanco and he’s been behind a desk for too long. We know he has a gift for doing the unexpected. Would you, in a million years, suspect one like her of being an agent?”

Zalaya sat back. “It doesn’t matter either way,” he said, smiling. “You and I have both forgotten Escobedo’s weakness. He has a soft spot for the people, the underdog.”

Serrano shook his head, honestly confused. “So?”

“Even if the woman in my bedroom wasn’t the one who attended his wedding, we can still use her to manipulate him. He is incapable of turning away from suffering if it is right before his eyes. Look at how he met the American woman he just married—he personally sprung her from jail when he heard she had been picked upon by a pack of jackals during the Luna Festival. We keep this woman tucked away until the timing is perfect, then we parade her in front of him as the price he pays if he tries to move against us. If he’s personally acquainted with her peril, it’ll stay his hand. I guarantee it.”

Serrano considered it carefully. He didn’t fully trust Zalaya yet, but he had learned to trust the man’s instincts about the psychology of other men. “Then we must certainly preserve her hide,” Serrano agreed. He held up his hand. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That scratching sound. Coming from above the ceiling. I’ve been hearing it on and off all day.”

Zalaya glanced at the ceiling and shrugged. “There’s nothing above you but the roof. It’s nesting season. It could be birds. Or mice.”

Serrano grimaced. “Spring already. I tell you, Escobedo will move before the summer storms.”

“And I tell you he won’t be ready that fast. He can’t. He has no money and few men. It is physically impossible to recruit, train and equip a big enough force to take back a country in five months.”

“Not if he has help,” Serrano said darkly.

“You’re being paranoid again.” Zalaya got to his feet, moving stiffly as he often did toward the end of the day. “The Americans are refusing to speak to him.”

“They’re not talking to us either.”

* * * * *

Minnie crept into the big bed and hugged herself, warmed and comforted by that one ghostly word on the mirror. The warning about the microphone forced her to merely mouth Duardo’s name to herself. It was enough. She pulled a length of the chain in with her so she could cover herself. The brown paper bag at the foot of the bed crinkled with her movements. It was Zalaya’s bag. She kicked until it fell off the bed then curled herself up into a ball.

She woke to the feel of lips upon her neck, the caress of a tongue beneath her ear. She thought she was on the edge of dreams again, for Duardo’s hand was caressing her. She sighed her contentment, rolling over to allow him better access. Her shoulder came up against his hard chest, her legs tangled in his. So good, so very good...

She heard the sound of metal clinking and it reminded her of the chain that she was fast coming to hate. That was when she froze, her heart hammering.

She wasn’t sleeping at all. This was real. Zalaya was behind her, caressing her. He was in the bed with her and from the little she could feel, as naked as she.

He caressed her with the gentleness of a real lover. It was Duardo’s touch. “Pretend I am your soldier,” he said and she knew he spoke for the microphone.

She lay against him in the dark as his hand stroked her. She wept silently. The tears were those of joy and remembrance. She’d risked everything by flying directly into hell on earth just to learn what had become of him and had been rewarded with the most unexpected, ultimate prize—Duardo himself. In this evil place, she had been blessed with a pocket of time to feel his arms around her, his body against her.

He had pulled down the blinds so not even the starlight could illuminate them for the camera. All she could sense was his hands and the heat of his body against her.

He wiped her tears and kissed her and at last she knew that this was Duardo, the shell of Zalaya discarded. His touch melted the thousand questions that had pummeled at her. None of them mattered here and now.

He stroked her throat, her face, the full length of her body. Nothing was spared. Her body responded with an arousal that made her almost dizzy with its power.

“Yes,” he whispered and rolled her over onto her back.

Except for inconclusive, unsatisfying dreams, she had not felt Duardo’s hands on her for an eon. She had forgotten the joy of a man’s touch. How could she have foregone this primal pleasure?

He was baiting her. Coaxing her. With slow seduction, he took her, possessing her with a nearly forgotten mastery.

It wasn’t until he lay down beside her that she realized both her hands were free. The cuff had been removed while she slept, at the time he had slipped into the bed beside her.

She held him to her, encouraging him with her hands, caressing him. Her fingers felt the ridges of what could only be a scar, close to his spine, level with his shoulder blade.

It was not the last coupling that night. He seemed inexhaustible. Driven. Minnie let him take her how he wished and reveled in it all.

She woke to daylight and stretched like a cat, feeling tendons pop and muscles flex with the delicious ache that came after greedy, abandoned sex. She was forced to abort the movement when the chain around her wrist brought her arm to a halt. She looked down at the cuff and the chain pooled under the sheet with her.

She didn’t remember him replacing it. She didn’t remember anything beyond her exhausted slide into sleep.

She quickly rolled over to check the other side of the bed. It was empty. But the sound of running water and the closed bathroom door told her where he was. The water shut off as she listened and her heart pattered harder.

She scrambled out of the bed and gathered up the hateful chain in her hand. She tried the door handle and it turned without resistance.

The door was ripped aside, tearing the handle from her hand. He stood before her, fully naked except for the patch over his eye. “You dare interrupt me without permission!” he roared and shoved her hard, back into the bedroom.

She almost tripped over the chain and scrambled backward to keep her footing as he came after her, shrugging into a bathrobe he pulled from behind the door. Without the cane he limped heavily.

He must be Zalaya now, she reminded herself. “I just wanted—” she began, but could think of nothing to add. Her surprise had stolen her ability to think.

“You do not get to satisfy your wants here!” He grabbed the trailing chain and yanked it so she was pulled, stumbling, toward him. He looped the chain around her wrists. They were caught together in the metal tangle. He tugged her toward the bed. “You need to learn who is in charge.”

He pushed her until she was pressed against the high side of the bed. His hand pressed on her back and the other pulled down on the chain, forcing her to bend her chest to the crumpled coverlet, her hands over her head. A weight settled on her hands, holding them down. His foot kicked at her ankles, spreading her legs.

She realized that this was how Zalaya would do it. He would take her, right now, bent over in this demeaning position. She recalled the camera in the corner of the room and moaned into the mattress. Of course, Zalaya would do it for the camera. For his own private collection and for whoever else would be watching.

She had to do the same. She had to be the Minnie she would be if this was Zalaya. Their lives depended on it. What would Zalaya’s Minnie have done?

Well, she wouldn’t just lie there and take it.

Minnie shoved back as hard as she could, but her strength was diminished in this position and Duardo—Zalaya—was a strong man. She could only jerk on the chains that bound her hands and her butt rammed into him. It barely moved him.

“You fucking asshole,” she muttered. “You think this makes you a man?”

“No, but this does.”

He slid into her, his movements rough.

She bit her lip. She knew she must keep up the act but there was an odd sensation of doubling—it was Zalaya, but it was also Duardo who held her down and took his pleasure. Out of nowhere, she felt a touch of excitement. Arousal.

“I’ve seen dogs do the same,” she husked, maintaining the act. But the huskiness in her voice was real.

All her life, Minnie had been the one to hold the power over men. Even with Duardo, who was almost old-fashioned in his beliefs about a man’s role in a relationship, she had still been sure of her power over him.

Now, he held the control. Physical control. She was forced to submit.

It was novel and it was arousing her in a way she had never experienced before. To be completely at his mercy...

She moaned into the mattress and pressed her hips back into him, opening herself up to the invasion.

“Yes, you understand your role here,” he told her and the double meaning was clear to her. Zalaya was confirming her role as a slave. Duardo was agreeing that the role she was playing for the camera was correct.

Minnie forgot about the camera, forgot that this was supposed to be Zalaya bending her to his will. She sunk deep into the pool of new sensations Duardo provoked in her.

Zalaya finished with a groan and shifted away. Her wrists were pulled into the air as he hauled on the chain.

She straightened up stiffly but was spun around to face the bathroom door. His hand pushed on her shoulder again. “Clean yourself,” he ordered.

She moved into the bathroom, unraveling loops of chain from around her wrists as she went.

“Leave the door open,” he told her, when she tried to shut it. “I will not have you slashing your wrists while my back is turned.”

She looked over her shoulder and saw that he had pulled the straight-backed chair over from the dressing table and had lined it up with the bathroom door. He settled himself in it, his arms crossed. He intended to watch her shower.

Ah, yes, Zalaya would do that. He would demean his victims in some cold, calculating way that took away their will to live and fight back. She applauded Duardo’s role-playing. Duardo knew, as Zalaya would not, that any attempt to tell her what to do, to control or direct her, would deliver the opposite.

She must respond in character.

She turned to face him fully, her shoulders squared, heated fury boiling in her chest. “Slash my wrists over you?” she asked, pouring all her derision into the last word. “You’ve got the wrong girl for that, asshole.”

He studied her for a long, silent minute. Then he smiled. “It seems I may not tire of you as easily as the others, after all.”

She spared a thought for the women—and possibly the men—who had been the real Zalaya’s victims and felt deep pity along with the hope that they had not succumbed to the shit Zalaya handed out.

“Wash yourself,” he commanded.

She stepped into the shower and turned on the water.

“Leave the curtain aside,” he added as she reached for it.

She shrugged and enjoyed the spray of hot water, hampered somewhat by the chain dangling from her wrist. She didn’t concern herself with the water trickling down the length of chain to pool on the floor outside the cubicle. Zalaya’s Minnie wouldn’t.

It reminded her to keep the role-play alive and that gave her an idea on how to get answers to some of the many questions she wished she could openly ask Duardo.

“The scar on your back,” she said. “Is that why you use a cane?”

“I ask the questions,” he snapped.

“What, I’m supposed to shut up unless spoken to?” she shot back. She kept her gaze on her feet, to keep the challenge less confrontational. “You like fucking mechanical dolls so much?”

Silence.

She resisted the need to look around to see what his reaction was. Instead, she concentrated on the soap in her hands and lathering it across her stomach. The silence stretched on and she realized he would not answer her question directly. It would be an admission that she was right.

She rinsed the soap off. “I figure someone shot you in the back,” she prompted. “Do you know who made you a gimp?”

“There are many of us with scars on our backs,” Zalaya answered dryly. “Which proves the lack of honor in the Vistarian army. But for me, that is an old scar. That is not why I must use a cane.”

She looked at him then. “I didn’t see any other scars,” she said. Challenge, always challenge, she reminded herself. “I got a pretty good look at you buck-naked a while ago.”

“You were not looking closely enough then.” He turned his knee out and lifted the edge of the robe. At that angle, she could see the hamstring on the back of his right leg. A thick, viciously red, almost writhing scar ran for eight inches down the length of it. It was recent. The flesh around it was colorless and delicate. “A sniper shot me—also from behind,” he explained with a humorless smile. “It tore the tendon from the bone, shredded the muscle and shattered the femur. It also nicked the great artery. They replaced my blood three times over before they could control the wound.” He replaced the robe and folded his arms again. “They told me I would not ever again be able to use the leg—that I would be a cripple. I told them...” He grinned. “I told them I always get my way.”

Her heart jumped and cold touched her. How did Duardo get that scar? Her mind raced as she forced herself to casually bathe.

Duardo could not fake such a scar over the long term. Somehow, he had been shot a second time. Only, he had been taken into the infirmary and then possibly to the city hospital...

Yet he was playing Zalaya, so this wound had to be Zalaya’s.

It fell into place with almost an audible click. Zalaya had been wounded and sent to hospital. Duardo had been in the same hospital. That was where the deception had begun. That was where, somehow, Duardo had become Zalaya.

She shut off the water with a snap of her wrist, making the chain rattle, and reached for a towel. She glanced at the mirror. More words were there.

You must leave. I will help. For now, play the part. D.

Minnie stared at the words, her heart hammering. She could not reach the mirror to leave her own message for the chain was not long enough. It meant she had no way to protest.

She had no intention of leaving without him.

She heard him moving. The scrape of the chair over the thick carpet. A drawer opening. Small sounds.

When she stepped out of the bathroom, she found him fully dressed in the black trousers and simple shirt. He tossed the paper bag from the previous evening onto the bed.

“Wear that,” he said shortly and picked up the cane where it leaned against the bed. He pointed to the door that opened onto the security control room. “I have a meeting in my office in ten minutes. You will serve coffee.”

He left without waiting for her answer.

Aware that she was within camera range again and that someone might be staring at the monitors in the next room, she kept her face neutral, tipped the contents of the bag onto the bed and inspected them. A pair of high stiletto shoes. A baby-doll nightgown. Delicate organza roses decorated the triangles that would cover her breasts, the rest of the tiny garment was sheer pink chiffon, with satin bows over the shoulders. She held up the tiny panties. They were also sheer pink chiffon. She would be more naked than if she poured coffee, well, buck-naked. This would call attention to her body.

Play the part, Duardo said. She fingered the chiffon, the chain clinking softly. So be it. If Zalaya wanted to parade her in front of his men, he’d get a parade and damn his eyes.

She got dressed.