Chapter Nineteen

Carmen eyed the pitiful condition of the mountain encampment while trying to look as if she wasn’t looking around. She didn’t need to look far to read the true state of affairs for this fledging loyalist army. The children with the big eyes and silent stares, the women doing the work of men, with submachine guns slung over their shoulders and babes clutching their skirts.

There were too few men here and not nearly enough activity. They had suffered serious setbacks and were reeling with the impact.

She was taken to the hospital because of the deep scratch on her forearm from a barbed wire fence she had scaled on the edges of the city. The hospital was nothing more than a dozen dirty plastic and canvas tarpaulins stretched out over the top of two rows of camp beds to protect the occupants from the rain and sun. All the beds were full. At the end of the row, a woman in a white coat sat behind a folding table, writing. A battered folding chair stood in front of the table.

The boy who had led her this far pointed to the woman. “She will be able to fix your arm,” he told her.

“Thank you,” Carmen told him. She ducked under the low roof and made her way to the table.

The woman looked up as she approached. She had dark circles under her eyes, which spoke of long-term sleep deprivation. Her face was drawn, the cheeks sunken. “You need medical attention?” she asked, her voice graveled with weariness. Her accent was odd and unplaceable, but her Spanish was perfect.

“My arm—it is just a scratch. I’m sorry to bother you.”

“Not at all.” The woman stepped around the table and examined her arm, turning it gently. “How did you get it?”

Carmen told her.

“I will give you a tetanus shot too,” the woman told her. “Sit down, please.”

“Do you know who she is, Madra?” came another voice, a male one, from behind Carmen.

Carmen swiveled in the chair to face the voice. She found herself looking at a man in army fatigue pants and a white cotton shirt that had seen too many washings. He had unkempt long hair that curled around his shoulders and at least a three-day growth of black beard. There was a scar running from the corner of his eye down almost to the beginning of his mouth. The eyes were startlingly blue and sharp with intelligence.

Carmen straightened her shoulders. “Are you this outfit’s leader?” she asked.

“This one right here?” he asked, pointing to the mud at his feet. “Yes, I am that.”

“You’re American,” she accused.

“Guilty as charged. I know who you are, too.”

She could feel the old wariness rise in her. “I don’t think that’s possible,” she countered. “We’ve never met.”

The woman, Madra, appeared again, carrying a kidney tray with medical supplies. “Do you want to take care of this, doctor?” she asked.

Carmen blinked when she realized that Madra was speaking to the man.

“Yes,” he said, coming forward and taking the tray from her. “You go and get some sleep.”

“I just have to do one last round—”

“I’ll do it,” he said sharply. “Go. That’s an order.”

Madra nodded, relenting. “All right.” She walked back down the corridor of camp beds and ducked under the overhang.

The man was fitting a needle to a syringe and filling it with swift, sure movements.

“You let me think you were the rebel leader,” Carmen said.

“You asked if I were the leader of this outfit. I am.”

“You’re the camp doctor and the cell leader?” The needle stung and she hissed.

“I am the doctor here,” he said stiffly.

“Then who is the cell leader? That is the man I need to speak to.”

“Then you’d better speak to me,” he said, dropping the needle back into the kidney tray.

She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“The leader of this cell was killed a month ago. Now they look to me.” He smiled, but it was a mirthless, hard expression. “God knows why.”

“But, you’re a doctor!”

“And you’re the daughter of the President of Vistaria.” Again, the hard smile. “Yet here we are on this island paradise. Ironic, isn’t it?”

* * * * *

Minnie didn’t doze. She was too alert, her mind working overtime as she put more and more of her plan together, twisting details into the skein. She feigned sleep while she listened to Duardo moving around the room. Now, more than ever, she was mortally aware of the camera in the corner.

She also worked out exactly what she was going to do when he left. When Duardo did leave he did not speak to her, which was what she had been expecting. Zalaya would not have acknowledged her in any way.

She listened to the bedroom door open and then the outer door into the corridor open and shut. He had left the suite altogether.

Her heart was thudding again, but this time her fear mixed with heady excitement. She climbed from the high bed, trying to make it look unstudied. She went into the bathroom and didn’t bother shutting the door because the camera could not see that far. First, she used the toilet and let the noise of it flushing cover the sounds she made as she removed the lid from the tank.

Inside, rocking with the swirling water, the knife was propped up in the corner. Hanging from the button that popped the blade was a small key ring with the tiny key to the cuff on her wrist swinging from it.

Still naked, she moved back into the bedroom and opened the tall closet. She selected a fresh shirt and a pair of trousers and took them back to the bathroom. Away from the camera, she measured the trousers against the length of her legs and used the knife to hack away the bottom six inches of each trouser leg. She cut a long spiral out of one of the tubes of cut-off fabric. It would serve as a make-shift belt. Then she carefully folded the clothes up into a small square pile and hid the knife and key between them.

She carried the pile through the bedroom into the office and dropped them onto the desk there, the chain stretched almost taut. She undid the cuff, slid it from her wrist and fastened it about the handle of the desk drawer. It kept the chain taut, so the watchers would believe she was still at the other end of it.

Thrilled to be free of the constraint, she dressed quickly. The trousers were tight in the hip and far too big in the waist, but she used the length of fabric to draw the waist in and hold the trousers up. The shirt billowed and she realized how much fluttering white material would draw the eye. She sliced and tore off the long tails and tied the front ends into a knot at her waist, which controlled the fullness.

Dressed, she crossed to the console and turned on everything. She was familiar with the controls now and she quickly located both Serrano and Zalaya. They were in the older, sterile-looking rooms that she had learned were inside the administrative building at the front of the palace grounds. Serrano was in what looked like an intense meeting of half a dozen senior officers, including the white-haired Torrez.

Zalaya was moving from room to room, speaking to the odd person, collecting files. Minnie could track his movements by switching from camera to camera.

Satisfied that both men were far from the palace, she left that bank of monitors on the pair of them and began tracing her route through the palace with the screens on her left. She made mental note of guards, congregations of people, busy thoroughfares. For each risk she searched for alternative routes, using the cameras to check their viability.

For forty minutes she plotted her course but could not eliminate every risk. She did not bother trying to reverse the path she and Carmen had used to enter the building. The coal chute cover was too heavy and she would never move it on her own. It meant she had to use one of the public entrances and that was where her greatest risk lay. No matter which way she worked her path, she ended up having to move through the rotunda at the center of the palace where the grand staircase and foyer lay.

She recalled Duardo’s voice again and the harsh instructions. Your only choice will be to use the knife or die. It does not matter what you do with it. Stab, slice, hack. You keep using it, and you get yourself out of trouble if you can.

So be it. She would have to take the risk. She smiled to herself as she finished tracking her route. It would make Calli laugh if she knew that Minnie planned to escape from the palace the same way Calli had once stolen into it, over the second floor balcony on the north wing and climbing down the sides of the decorative brick wall at the end, screened by the ancient and massive old banyan tree there.

Her route decided, she glanced at the main bank of screens again. Serrano was still in his meeting, although the meeting appeared to be on the verge of breaking up. Torrez had already left the room. Zalaya was still on the move but hadn’t left the building.

Minnie picked up the folded knife and weighed it in her hand. It was time to act.

She climbed onto the desk and stepped up on the console, then onto the high section at the back of it. It gave her slightly less than six inches to stand but provided the necessary height. She took a deep breath and rammed the butt of the folded knife into the closest screen.

They were flat panel monitors. She felt the soft screen give under the impact, then a satisfying crunch and an electronic pop sounded. The screen went blank and when she lifted her hand away, she discovered that the flexible screen showed barely any sign of her blow. That was a bonus. Moving quickly, she bashed each monitor into blank oblivion. For the last of them, on the left, she was forced to use the paper punch for extra reach. Balancing on her toes at the edge of the desk, grasping the bottom of the metal frame that held the monitors, she swung it over her head.

She climbed beneath the console and battered her way through the wood paneling there with the base of the paper punch. She used the knife to slice through any and all wiring she could find. There was a lot of it. She kept at it until bare, shiny wire ends were all she could see.

About ten minutes had passed.

She dropped the knife into her pocket and eased open the door to the corridor. There were no posted guards in sight. The second floor of this wing was primarily used as bedroom suites for the more senior officers, so traffic at this time of day would be light.

The corridor was empty.

She stepped out, her heart leaping. There was a lightheaded relief at being able to leave Zalaya’s suite, but she ignored it because the relief was premature and inaccurate. She still had the rest of the palace to negotiate.

She moved down the middle of the corridor, walking normally, as if she had every right to be there. There was no other way to do it. If she tried to run and flitter by unobserved she would draw attention to herself. The cameras were no longer able to track her and alert suspicious watchers. No one else in the palace had seen her before and might possibly mind their own business as she passed them.

Her clothes would draw attention but if she kept her nose in the air and looked as though she belonged here, it might deflect questions. If it didn’t, then she always had the knife.

At the end of the corridor, the passage opened onto the rotunda—an elegant stone balcony swept around the full circle, broken only by the big sweeping staircase down to the first floor and the two wings of stairs that curved up to the third. From the ceiling skylights muted light bathed the area, making the white stone of the balustrades glow.

This was the risky part. She had to circle the rotunda to reach the foyer that gave her access to the outdoor balcony overlooking the front grounds and the administrative building. Even though she badly wanted to stop and take stock, Minnie forced herself to keep walking. It would look odd if she paused to look around.

When a soldier’s head appeared as he climbed up the stairs, Minnie nearly jumped out of her skin. She took a shuddering breath and kept walking, not looking at him. She was going to have to pass almost in front of him. God this was stupid, he would notice something. Her bare feet for a start—his eyes were right at that level.

She hurried her pace.

“¿Apenas un momento, señora?” the man called.

Sweat broke out on her temples. What would a normal person do?

She looked over her shoulder and gave him a big smile. “I can’t stop, I’m very late,” she called out in Spanish, trying hard to emulate Carmen’s accent and pronunciation. She glanced past his shoulder. Another soldier climbed the stairs. This one carried a rifle. It was Soto, but his head was down watching the stairs as he climbed.

“Stop just for a moment!” the first soldier called back. Minnie hurried around the curving balcony. The south wing corridor was about twenty yards away and the little foyer was just inside it.

“Hey, I said stop!” He was shouting now. Soto would most certainly be alerted.

She stepped onto the carpet in the corridor and was almost running as she reached the glass doors onto the foyer. She could hear the tread of the soldier behind her, echoing on the terracotta tiles in the rotunda.

She pushed the doors inward and shoved her way through. She curled her hand around the haft of the knife in her pocket and with her other hand tugged at the knot of shirt tails at her waist, listening for the footfalls of the soldier to change as he reached carpet.

She ripped the last of the buttons undone and held still, her back to the swing doors.

“Lady, I said just a minute!” he exclaimed as he barreled through the doors behind her.

Minnie spun to face him, a bright, enquiring smile on her face, the shirt pulled aside to reveal her bare breasts. “Hi there!” she told him, walking right up to him.

He stared at her breasts, his eyes widening and his mouth shaping into an almost perfect “O”.

Time slowed down. Sound became muffled. Minnie could hear her heart beat loud in her mind and it was steady and calm.

She withdrew the knife from her pocket when she was a pace away and triggered the blade as she whipped it toward him. He seemed to move sluggishly. He lifted his hand to fend her off but she slipped the knife past it, aiming for a point just below where she thought his ribs would end.

The knife slid into him with little resistance, right up to the hilt.

Time restored itself to normal speed. Minnie stared at him as he looked down at his stomach and up at her. He looked surprised. Then he crumpled to the floor and the knife was jerked out of him because Minnie still had her hand curled around the handle.

His green shirt turned brown as the blood soaked it.

The hot, coppery taste flooding her mouth made Minnie sick. Her stomach cramped and spasmed and she put her arm across her face. It was only the lack of food this morning that saved her from vomiting. Trembling almost violently, she leaned down and wiped the blade on the man’s trousers as best she could and tottered toward the other set of glass doors at the end of the foyer. The balcony lay beyond.

She fumbled to knot her shirt together as she went. The buttons were beyond her capabilities right now.

The doors didn’t give under her hands and she stared at the handles stupidly until she thought to try turning them. The catch gave way and one of the doors swung open. She slipped outside.

It was the first time she had tasted fresh air in nearly a week and she took deep lungfuls of it, feeling a touch of calm return. The sky was low overhead, black with menace. The air was thick and warm. A storm was building.

She forced herself to keep moving. Soto would not be far behind.

The wide balcony ran the length of the north wing, ending in the decorative open-weave brick wall that was as good as a ladder for climbing. She hurried toward it, glancing out over the balcony to the grounds below.

Then she stopped.

Duardo was walking toward the palace along the concrete path that connected the two buildings. He was about halfway between the two. Farther behind him but hurrying to catch up, was Torrez. There was something about the way he steadily stared at Duardo’s back that made Minnie’s neck prickle with almost painful intensity.

She went to the balustrade to watch. As she spread her still trembling hands on the smooth stone, Torrez swung his rifle over his shoulder and brought it up to aim at Zalaya’s back, just as thunder cracked almost directly overhead with a noise like an explosion.

Fright tore through Minnie, sharper and harder than any fear she had felt that morning. She heard the little squeak of the balcony door as Soto stepped through but ignored it. She knew what she had to do. She gripped the stone and took a deep breath.

“Duardo! Behind you!”

He looked up sharply and spotted her. She pointed to Torrez and he spun instantly, alerted.

Torrez fired, but Duardo’s spin had pulled him out of the line of fire. The bullet smashed into the palace itself. Minnie could hear the sour “zing” as it ricocheted.

Even as Torrez tried to re-cock the rifle, Duardo dived at him, grabbing the rifle and jamming it across the white-haired man’s throat.

“Get your hands up, woman!” Soto yelled.

Minnie turned to face him, knowing time had run out for her. She was content, knowing she had helped Duardo. As she turned, she realized she still held the bloody knife in her hand.

Soto saw it too. His face hardened. “Oh no, you don’t,” he muttered and aimed the rifle.

“Hey, asshole!” came a woman’s voice in English.

Soto looked up and to his left, his eyes widening.

A gun fired and Minnie saw a black round spot appear on Soto’s forehead. His fingers squeezed the trigger of his rifle as he fell back and an invisible force rammed into Minnie’s upper arm and sent her staggering. She fell against the balustrade and her head knocked sharply on the stone. At once her thoughts scattered as dizziness swamped her. She fell to her knees and still the floor swayed and rolled beneath her. She toppled sideways and felt the cool tiles beneath her cheek. As she lay, she heard the rain begin to fall heavily, hissing and pattering.

Hands were on her, rolling her onto her back.

Nick’s voice, low and fast. “Hurry,” he commanded. “Her shout will have roused them.”

“Minnie?” It was Calli’s voice. “Where did the bullet get you?”

Minnie looked up, blinking and swallowing convulsively. “Calli?” She giggled. “You climbed the balcony again?”

“It’s shock,” her father said and she felt a light touch on her arm. She rolled her head to look at him.

“Dad?” Of all the astonishing events in the last few seconds, this was the most bizarre. Her father’s face moved into the field of her vision.

“Yeah, hon, I’m here.” He looked up at someone. “Just a graze.”

“She hit her head on the balcony rail as she went down,” Nick’s voice came again. Minnie couldn’t see him.

The sound of boots running along the balcony came to her.

“No, no, no...” It was Duardo’s voice. Minnie saw Calli look up, her mouth opening.

Warm hands on her shoulders. “Minnie. Please, Minnie, God, look at me.”

“It just winged her arm,” Calli said gently.

Minnie rolled her head to find him. Duardo was looking at her, his face working. “You have to go,” she told him.

He reached up and tore the eye patch from his head, revealing his other perfectly good eye. “No, you don’t understand,” he said.

“You’re Duardo,” she told him. “But you have to get Téra—before word passes about who you really are.”

He looked around at the group of them hovering over her. “She’s right.”

“Téra is here?” It was Nick’s voice again, sharp with surprise. Minnie realized she could not see him because he stood guard over all of them.

“Go,” she told Duardo.

He looked at Nick.

“Yes, go,” Nick said swiftly.

He nodded and slid the eye patch back into place. “Where?” he asked Nick.

“The grotto.”

“Forty-five minutes,” Duardo promised. He lifted himself up and moved away.

Minnie struggled to sit up and held her head as the world seemed to swim. Yet she got to watch Duardo stride down the length of the balcony, the limp miraculously gone, before Calli and her father helped her to her feet.

Nick shepherded them down the balcony. “Still no alert,” he said, sounding worried.

Giggles gripped Minnie again. “There wouldn’t be,” she said, laughing harder. “I took out their entire security communications system. The only way they can spread the word is by telephone or by mouth. There is nothing left to broadcast with.”

Nick grimaced. “No wonder it was so damn easy,” he muttered. “Let’s go. Back to the grotto.”

The grotto turned out to be a narrow valley in the foothills behind the palace, filled with shade trees and a deep, dark pool of water that rippled with raindrops. They were soaked, but Minnie was glad of the mud beneath her bare feet. She could not have made such good time in dry weather and Nick, Calli and her father were moving fast.

In the grotto Calli turned to her. “Sit down. I want to look at your arm.” She was studying Minnie’s eyes as she spoke.

“I think it was just a momentary dizziness,” Minnie told her. “I’m fine, though my arm throbs like crazy.” She lifted the sleeve of the shirt and checked out her arm with as much interest as Calli. The bullet had creased the skin, leaving a two-inch-long furrow across the muscle. The rain had rinsed it clean. It wasn’t bleeding anymore, though the shirt sleeve was pink with diluted blood.

“It needs stitches,” Calli said.

“Is that a first aid kit on your belt?” Minnie asked, pointing to the pouch at Calli’s hip. “Just slap a field dressing on it. I’m fine. We have a long way to go.”

Calli stared at her. “All right,” she said at last, reaching for the pouch.

“By the way, you look seriously cool in all black,” Minnie told her. “You should wear it more often.”

Calli grinned. “I’d prefer a black evening sheath rather than combat wear, but okay.”

“I still can’t believe the way you just appeared. I can’t believe you came at all,” Minnie said.

Calli applied the field dressing, a frown forming. “You’ve handed out a fistful of your own surprises, you know.”

Nick, who stood facing back the way they had come, waved with the hand that didn’t hold the pistol and Calli nodded. “Quiet,” she murmured.

Minnie nodded, though she had understood Nick’s signal anyway.

A soft, three-note whistle sounded from among the trees and Nick relaxed. He whistled back and turned to face them, holstering his gun.

He came over to Minnie and lifted her chin, looking into her eyes. “No concussion,” he judged. “Tell me what happened to Carmen.”

“She’s all right. She stayed hidden in the palace for three days, then she got a message out—I don’t know who to, but I suppose it must have been you as you’re here. Then she got out. They found where she had been hiding and they figured out who it must have been, but they never saw her. She’s somewhere on the island. Duardo will be able to tell you more. He was the one leading the search for her.”

Nick absorbed the news and she could see him turning it over, examining it. “Then she is out of my reach for now,” he said softly. His expression softened and warmed. “You did well, Minerva Benning.”

She felt a warm glow of pride. “Thank you.”

Nick grinned. “I think you’re the only one who got it figured out fast enough. It wasn’t until you screamed his name that we realized Zalaya was Duardo.”

“You didn’t know?” She felt her chest squeeze. “God, you were there to...to...”

“Kill him,” Nick said softly, his smile vanishing.

Duardo slipped into the grotto, moving with trained silence. Téra was with him, her face pale and her eyes wide. Nick hurried over to Duardo. “Any trouble?”

Duardo shook his head. “Not worthy of mentioning.”

Téra shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.

Duardo was looking around the grotto and Minnie knew he searched for her. He had taken off the eye patch, but the moustache was still too much Zalaya for her to go to him readily.

Nick beckoned them all. “Let’s go,” he called softly just as it started to rain again. “Silence until I say otherwise,” he added.

Their trail was long, circular and took hours, but no one pursued them. Nick had come from an unexpected direction—the west coast of the island. The grotto was the east end of a low, easy mountain pass. On the western end of the trail, tucked behind a disguising wall of hacked-off branches and leaves, was a rusty all-wheel-drive pick-up truck.

“Minnie and Téra in the cab with me,” Nick ordered. “Everyone else in the back.” He handed Duardo his rifle and shepherded Téra and Minnie into the cab and settled behind the wheel. Then he reached beneath the steering column, his fingers tangling in exposed wires there.

“You stole it?” she said softly.

“We rented the boat in Acapulco,” he said, “but the only Vistarian currency anyone has are checks and no one in Vejia would have accepted a check with Nicolás Escobedo’s name on it. So we borrowed it.” He smiled at her. “Brace yourself. This will be a wild ride.”

Téra’s hand slipped into Minnie’s and squeezed. Minnie looked at her as the truck started, backfired and settled into an uneven rhythm.

“He told me you were the one who insisted he come back and get me,” Téra said. Two big tears welled and slid down her face. “I will never forget that.”

“It wasn’t quite like that,” Minnie tried to explain.

“He could only think of you, but you remembered. It was like that,” Téra insisted.

* * * * *

Nick drove out of the mountains as fast as the truck could safely manage and used secondary roads and cart tracks to reach the coast road. Once there, he pushed the truck to top speed, a bone-jarring eighty miles an hour, for there they were most vulnerable to being stopped and questioned. As they drove, the dark day turned to pitch black night and Nick flicked on the headlights only to curse softly as they feebly lit only a few yards of the road ahead.

He turned onto an unmarked, sandy trail that wound and turned for another couple of miles until it opened onto a white beach. He stopped the truck and turned it off. “Stay silent,” he warned Minnie and climbed from the cab. Minnie and Téra followed him as the three in the back jumped to the sand, all holding rifles of one type or another. Even her father was dressed in black.

Minnie shivered.

Nick jogged down the beach, his pistol out, glancing from side to side, until he reached a pile of seaweed heaped upon rocks. He pulled the seaweed aside and slid an inflatable dinghy out from beneath. It had an outboard motor attached to the stern and Duardo silently helped him turn it and drag it down to the water.

Everyone climbed into the boat as soon as it was afloat. Duardo and Nick used the oars to paddle a hundred yards from the beach before they started the motor and steered the dinghy out to the boat somewhere on the black ocean.

* * * * *

Nick and Calli stayed on the deck, getting the boat under way. It was a sailboat, which astonished Minnie until she realized that a sailboat could slide through night waters in near silence and on the open sea, with the prevailing southerly winds, was just as fast as a motorboat.

They waved everyone else toward the cabin, already preoccupied with their task.

The air inside the little cabin was stuffy and warm after the breeze off the ocean. The ceiling was too low overhead. The deck tilted as the boat moved under sail and Minnie clutched at the doorway. The tilting deck felt much too similar to the way the balcony had wavered that morning.

Téra glanced at Josh. “It is safe to speak now?” she asked in stilted English.

“Yes, I believe so,” Josh told her in Spanish.

She turned to Duardo, lifted her hand and cracked it across his face. “You pig! You sent me to that damn bordello to be raped! You let them do it! You even gave them drugs!”

Duardo rubbed his jaw. “It was distilled water, little sister.”

If anything, her eyes blazed with more fury. She planted her hands on her hips. “What, so I would be awake through every disgusting moment? I hate you! I spit on you!” Her Spanish disintegrated and grew too fast and too full of slang and swearing for Minnie to follow after that.

Nick climbed down into the cabin and took in the torrent of Spanish, hiding his smile. “Inventive,” he murmured.

Minnie sighed and reached out to touch Téra’s shoulder. “You would never have had a single customer,” she told her.

“What?” Téra turned on her. “What do you mean?”

Minnie nodded at Duardo who was watching her warily. “Straight after they marched you down to the bordello, Zalaya visited Rosa, the manager. He got her to spread the word. I heard two officers speaking about it just before I destroyed the monitors. Zalaya let it be known that he wanted you first and any man who touched you before he did would wake up to find his balls being sawn off with a rusty hacksaw.”

Téra blinked, absorbing this. Then she wrinkled her nose. “Eeyuuuwww, my own brother?” She spun and threw herself at Duardo, holding him tight. “I knew you weren’t dead. I knew it.”

Minnie slipped from the cabin, the air too stifling to bear. She climbed up to the deck and found Calli standing at the big wheel, the wind ruffling her blonde hair. A pair of pilot lights on either side of her illuminated the little wheel deck. She looked quite comfortable behind the wheel.

“Oh don’t worry,” she told Minnie. “We’re running under a direct wind—no tacking. Nick will take over when we get to the tricky stuff.”

“Some honeymoon, huh?” Minnie said.

“It has the virtue of being unique.”

“I can’t believe you shot Soto. Right between the eyes.”

“Practice,” Calli assured her. “Nick has had me doing target practice every day since we landed in Acapulco.”

Minnie crossed her arms. “Yeah, but that was big round targets with bull’s-eyes. Soto was living, breathing animal. I won’t call him human, as I don’t think he qualified, but he was alive.”

“He was about to shoot you. It was a no brainer.” Calli shrugged. She looked at Minnie. “Duardo told me about the soldier you dealt with in the foyer off the balcony.”

Minnie shifted uneasily. “I had to,” she said softly. “It was him or me.”

Calli nodded. “We’ve all been doing things we never thought we’d be able to do. Look at your father.”

Movement sounded behind Minnie and a hand touched her back as someone squeezed passed her. The boat was a small one and the deck cramped by sheets, the wheel and more.

Nick stepped behind Calli and looked over her shoulder at the compass set before the wheel. “Come around ten degrees, to due north.”

She adjusted the wheel and the boat moved obediently.

Duardo slipped past Minnie and she jumped, startled by his appearance. Her heart jumped too. He glanced at her and looked away and she realized that he felt as awkward as she.

“What I can’t figure,” Nick said to Duardo, as if he was picking up a conversation they had already started, “is why they tried to assassinate Zalaya at all. He was Serrano’s key to keeping everything under control.”

“It was Torrez who tried to kill Zalaya. He was a rejected lover and resented it,” Duardo said.

“No, it was Serrano who arranged it,” Minnie said and they looked at her, surprise on their faces. She shrugged. “Serrano was paranoid from the beginning. He hired Zalaya to protect his back from all the conspiracies he imagined going on around him. He had the roof of the walkway dismantled so he could see who approached the palace...everything to him was a plot to get him. In the end it was Zalaya himself he came to suspect and had to kill.”

“Why?” Nick asked sharply. She knew he was not disagreeing with her but asking for more information.

“Zalaya has a reputation for violence, evil tastes and horribly effective methods. Plus a head for intrigue. Yet in the last few weeks, Zalaya was getting less than spectacular results. Serrano complained of it—curious holes, he said. Then I came along and screwed things up. That’s when the holes became neon signs that even Torrez noticed. You played the part well, Duardo, but you weren’t quite ruthless enough and that was your undoing.”

Duardo looked doubtful. “Serrano relied on Zalaya too much to get rid of him.”

Minnie shook her head. “He was grooming Torrez to take over. It was Serrano all along. Not a rejected boyfriend.”

“Then my use as Zalaya is truly at an end,” Duardo said.

“God, you weren’t thinking of going back in there, were you?” Calli asked, startled.

“It was worth considering.” Duardo replied.

“You can’t,” Minnie said flatly. “You have to come back to Mexico. Nick is going to need your help taking back Vistaria.”

Nick looked astonished. “How did you know I was going to say that?”

“It’s perfectly obvious,” she said truthfully.

They were all looking at her now. Calli said softly, “You’ve changed!”

Minnie grimaced. “Yeah. Zombie girl has gone.”

Nick grabbed one of the overhead sheets as the boat lifted over a swell. “So has the party girl, I think.”

Minnie looked at Duardo. “Yes. Her too. Zalaya killed her.” She turned away and threaded her way along the deck, ducking under the spinnaker to reach the prow and solitude.

Duardo followed her as she had known he would. She leaned back against the railing and faced him.

He gripped the railing next to her and his knuckles were white. “I would have preferred you never learn what I had to do there,” he said at last. “Part of me died when I realized that you were there and that I must deal with you as Zalaya would.” His chest lifted, as if he wanted to say more, but he remained silent.

She could almost feel his doubt and hesitation. He was trying to find a path through everything that lay between them. She relented and softly said, “I’ve been able to put together nearly all of it from your hints. I know you only did what you had to do. Serrano was watching you as closely as anyone else around him.”

He lifted his hand. “I was trying to protect you. You will never believe that, but—”

“I believe you,” she said softly.

Again, the awkward silence.

“You knew the end was coming,” she said. “A breaking storm. I understood that as well as you did. You didn’t expect to survive this day. That is why you insisted I find a way to leave.”

She saw his chest rise and fall. “You knew that too?”

“When I found the key with the knife, I knew.”

Again, a silence grew between them. Minnie desperately sought another way around the barrier.

“The story you told me, about killing Duardo in the hospital.” She grimaced. “It sounds confusing put that way, doesn’t it?”

Duardo shook his head. “I think of Zalaya as something apart from me. It’s better that way. You want to know what happened in the hospital? How I came to be Zalaya?”

“Yes.”

“The story I told you as Zalaya was accurate to a point.”

“But what happened to you, after the helicopter? Carmen told me the door they took you through led to the infirmary, but...” She shrugged. “After that, I can’t connect the dots.”

“The bullet was too close to my heart,” Duardo said. “The surgeons shipped me off to the city hospital for better treatment. There happened to be a cardiac surgeon visiting, one of the best in the world. He operated. Later, when the Insurrectos had taken over the city, the hospital staff destroyed all my records and took my tags so I couldn’t be identified.

“The first I knew of any of this was when I woke up to find Vistaria in the hands of the Insurrectos, the president dead and Nick and those who would be with him—including you—nowhere to be found. I spent the next few weeks going through the most painful physiotherapy and rehabilitation I’ve ever experienced. Getting shot was easier.”

Minnie saw his ghostly smile.

“Your English is so much better,” she said. “It’s idiomatic, almost flawless.”

“Zalaya’s English was perfect. I spent every moment I could watching American television and reading novels in English. There were a lot of sleepless nights.” He shrugged. “It just had to be done.” He reached out for the rail. “I must sit,” he said. “My leg was not shattered as Zalaya’s was but it still aches if I stand for too long.”

Minnie processed that as he sat down. She sank to the deck beside him. “You really were shot in the leg?” she breathed.

He cocked his knee and rubbed at the hamstring as she had seen him do countless times in the last few days. “Of course. I had to withstand the closest scrutiny.”

“Ohmigod. You did it yourself.” She felt queasy and wrapped her arms around her stomach. “That was why Zalaya was in the hospital, wasn’t it?”

“About four weeks after the operation, when I was just starting to walk again, they brought him into the same ward. He was angry they didn’t give him a private ward and made such a fuss they pulled a man in the last stages of cancer out of his room and gave it to Zalaya.”

“The poor man,” Minnie breathed.

“He was pleased about it—it gave him company he was glad to have and everyone was so relieved to have Zalaya out of the ward they were happy to keep him entertained. Only, the fuss Zalaya made alerted me. I knew Zalaya from before. One day, perhaps, a long time from now, I will tell you about that.”

“You said—Zalaya said—Duardo tried to kill him.”

“Reverse it and you have the truth,” Duardo replied. “Zalaya tried to kill me and yes, he had the gun. He came up on me in the physiotherapy room. Afterward, I knew I would never survive the investigation as Duardo Peña and Zalaya and I looked enough alike that it was worth the risk. A nurse helped me arrange it. When I took his eye patch, I learned that it was a prop and the eye beneath was perfectly normal. Zalaya must have used it as a way of moving around incognito. If he took off the patch, anyone trying to describe him afterward would never link the man with two good eyes to Zalaya with the eye patch.”

“That was what Serrano learned—that Zalaya didn’t need the patch,” Minnie said. “He went away satisfied when you showed him your eye.” She thought about it. “Torrez told him?”

“Perhaps. Who knows? Torrez will never tell anyone anything else.”

Minnie shivered but did not regret the man’s death. “You shot your own leg, put on his eye patch and dog tags and...?”

“I only intended the bluff to hold up long enough for me to get out of the city,” Duardo said softly. “I knew the illusion would not hold for long. I knew Zalaya. I knew what he was. There were things Zalaya did that I would not be able to do. Yet there I was in Zalaya’s suite and everyone believed me, including Serrano. When I tried to find a way out, there was none. I had to keep juggling, keep all the balls up in the air for as long as I could.” He turned look at her. “Then you came along.”

“Yeah, well, I know what I did,” she said. “I blew it all for you.”

“It was inevitable anyway, Minnie. The bluff would never have lasted. What you did was find me a way out of it that left me still breathing.” He took a deep breath. “You might have got me killed, back in the helicopter, but you also saved my life today.”

Her heart leapt hard. “You forgive me?” she breathed wonderingly.

“There was never anything to forgive,” he said. “If anyone must ask forgiveness, it is me. There are things I have done as Zalaya... God, Minnie, I think it would have been easier if Torrez had killed me. I keep thinking of the things I have done, that I did to you—”

She rested her hand against his thigh. “Stop,” she said quickly. “Just...stop.” She swiveled to face him properly. “Perhaps we should agree that your time as Zalaya never happened. Not between us.”

He shook his head. “I can’t agree to that,” he said, his voice rough. “I have watched you defy Zalaya for four days and although I thought I loved you before, it was nothing compared to how I love you now. I can never pretend these days did not happen, Minnie. I am in awe of your courage and your incredible strength.” He took a deep breath. “Last night Zalaya told you to take one last moment, but that was me speaking. I wanted one last night with you, as myself.”

He reached out, his long fingers stroking her cheek. “Could you ever again consider...?”

She took his hand in hers and held it tight. “I can’t see a way around it, Duardo.”

His head bowed.

“No, there’s no alternative I can figure out. I’m afraid you’re going to have to live up to that deathbed promise of yours and marry me.”

He crushed her to him and dotted kisses all over her face. “If I must, I will make such a sacrifice,” he told her.

“On the mouth,” she begged breathlessly. “A real kiss.”

He kissed her hard and long and when he let her go, she rested a hand against his chest. “There’s just one teeny condition,” she said.

“Oh?”

“You have to get rid of that moustache.”