Freedom's Price (3 page)

“What exactly did Santiago ask of you?”

“I told you. Dinner a couple times a week.”

“Aha. A
couple
times. First it was
once
a week. Now the truth comes out. What else?”

“Like I said, we talk on the phone. No biggie.”

“Uh-huh. What else?”

God, he’d forgotten how like a pit bull Marisala could be. Once she grabbed onto something, she wouldn’t let go.

She was going to have a cow when she found out that her uncle had asked Liam to teach her to behave like a “civilized” young woman. He knew he was going to have to tell her sooner or later, but right now he chose later.

“He asked me to show you around Boston, around the university. He asked me to help you find your classes and your nonexistent dorm,” Liam listed on his fingers. “Let’s see, he asked me to help you find a doctor. He asked me to be available, particularly during these first few weeks, in case you need me.”

Marisala was scowling. “He thinks I’m a child.” Her eyes were blazing as she glowered up at Liam. “I’m
not
a child.”

“Hey, I’m not the bad guy here.”

Marisala snorted. “No, you’re merely his accomplice.”

“Mara, if you stop to think about it, you’ll realize that Santiago’s only crime is loving you too much.”

“Too much of
any
thing can kill you.”

Liam shook his head. “Not too much love. There’s no such thing as too much love.” They’d reached the top floor, and stood now, outside of his condo door.

Marisala gazed up at him, her dark eyes so serious. But then she smiled, her face softening. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She sighed. “But sometimes it can be pretty damn stifling.”

Liam unlocked his door. “Maybe.” But sometimes it could be lifesaving. He stepped back to let her go inside. “Make yourself at home, all right? I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

She paused just inside the door. “Liam, why does Santiago want you to help me find a doctor? I’m not sick.”

He chose his words carefully, trying not to offend her. “He thought that while you were in Boston you should see a plastic surgeon, you know, to see if there was anything that could be done to make the scar on your face less noticeable.”

But he should have known better. She wasn’t offended. In fact, she laughed. “I
like
my scar,” she countered, lifting her chin proudly. “It’s part of who I am. It lets the world know where I’ve been and what I’ve done.”

“I think Santiago’s just trying to help.”

“If he
truly
wants to help, he would let me live my own life.”

“It’s hard for him to—”

“It’s hard for
me!
Do you
know
what he did—” She caught herself. “I’m sorry. You have to go.”

Liam nodded. “We’ll talk later, okay?”

Marisala nodded too. Her smile was rueful. “We’ll talk later. And later. And later again. We’re going to talk until we’re blue in the face—the way we used to do, staying up long past midnight. And you are
so
going to regret getting involved with Santiago and me again.”

Liam shook his head. “No, I won’t.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, you will. Just wait.”

TWO

“I
DON’T GET
it.” Lauren Stuart, Liam’s editor at the
Boston Globe
, leaned back behind her desk and gave him a long appraising look. “I thought you were excited about writing that piece about the statewide sex-offender registry that’s gone into effect.”

“I was.” He resisted the urge to stand and pace back and forth across the room. He knew exactly why he couldn’t sit still, why he’d turned into a pressure cooker about to explode. It had nothing to do with impending work deadlines and everything to do with the fact that right now, right this very moment, Marisala Bolivar was in his condo, waiting for him to come home.

He couldn’t wait to get back there for another dose of the roller-coaster effect he felt from looking into her midnight-brown eyes.

Yet at the same time he dreaded going home. He knew damn well he wasn’t going to sleep at all tonight. He was going to lie in bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, while every single cell in his body hummed with the knowledge that he and Marisala were alone in his apartment.

“I was,” he repeated, trying to bring himself back to here and now. It was going to be tough enough to live through tonight. There was no need to experience that torture an extra time in anticipation. “But there’s no way I’m going to get it finished by the deadline. Something’s come up—a personal obligation that I’ve got to take care of.”

“I see.” Lauren nodded her perfectly coiffed blonde head. “All right. We’ll reprint something you wrote a few years ago.”

Liam looked over at her in surprise. “That’s it? Just all right? No questions? No third degree? No Spanish Inquisition?”

“Would it put that article on my desk in time?” she asked, then answered her own question. “No. Would it help? No, not unless my goal was to get you wound even
tighter
than the high-pitched violin string you resemble.” She reached forward and toppled the brass nameplate on her desk, revealing another sign that read
THE EDITOR IS OUT
. “Off the record, Lee, friend to friend, I wish you would—”

“I’ll have something for you next week. I promise.”

“Something,” she repeated, lifting one elegant eyebrow.

He had to look away. “Yeah. I don’t know if I’ll have enough time to do the research for—”

“Stop,” she said. “Just stop.”

Liam looked up at her then. She didn’t look happy. As he watched she stood and moved to shut her office door. He caught an enticing whiff of her delicate and extremely expensive trademark perfume and heard the soft whisper of silk as she moved past him. As usual, Lauren Stuart was impeccably dressed in an elegant designer suit. She was wearing her jacket despite the heat of the late-summer day and still managed to look as cool and crisp as ever.

There was no doubt about it. Beautiful, sophisticated, elegant, and intelligent, with a body to die for and a brain and quick wit that was sharp as a sword, Lauren Stuart was a knockout. They’d been fast friends from the first moment they’d met, after his San Salustiano reports had aired on CNN.

Liam had been presumed dead for more than two years, falsely listed among the casualties in the deadly bombing of a civilian bus that occurred outside of the capital city of Puerto Norte in San Salustiano. His staff position at the
Globe
had long since been filled when he returned, but Lauren had quickly made room for him, giving him the cushy job of Sunday columnist, then offering him a chance to syndicate his extremely popular issues-oriented articles in other papers across the country.

There had once been a time when Liam would have pursued Lauren simply because she was bright and beautiful. He would have attempted to get her into bed as a matter of course. And odds were he would have succeeded.

But he’d come back from the hell he’d endured on San Salustiano with an ability to see beyond the instant gratification he’d always gone after in the past. And when he’d looked at Lauren, he got a clear glimpse of their two possible futures. One involved a love affair gone far too quickly stale because neither of their hearts would have been in it. The other was based instead on a strong and healthy platonic friendship.

He’d chosen friendship, and he’d never regretted it once.

“What’s the deal, Lee?” Lauren asked quietly as she sat back behind her desk. “I thought you were jazzed about investigating the strengths and weaknesses of the sex-offender registry.”

He gestured to the sign on her desk. “I thought the editor was out.”

She leaned forward, impaling him with the no-nonsense crystal blueness of her eyes. “I’m asking you this as your
friend
, cowboy. I thought you told me this story was going to be the one to pull you out of your slump.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not.” He rubbed his eyes, applying pressure to what was promising to be one hell of a headache.

Lauren was silent for a solid thirty seconds. It had to be some kind of a record for her.

“So it’s finally happened, hasn’t it?” she finally said. “You’re thoroughly, totally, absolutely blocked.”

He looked up. “No! I said, I have this obligation and—”

The language she used was extraordinarily pungent. “You couldn’t write this piece on the registry to save your life.”

“I sure as hell could—”

“Then do it,” she challenged him. “Four years ago you could write an award-winning article on any compelling social issue in twenty minutes. Less. Today, you’re taking two and a half weeks and coming up with articles about…what was last week’s gem? Little stuffed animal toys called Beanie Babies?”

“It’s an outrageous phenomenon,” Liam said defensively. “Every kid in America has half a dozen of ’em.”

“And you believe this information rates right up there with your reports on that Boston soup kitchen that lost its funding, or on the possibility of reinstating the death penalty in Massachusetts? Or how about that little exposé you did on that local right-to-life group that openly condoned violence, even murder, as a means to stop abortion? Oh, and then there was that piece you did on the resurgence of heroin as a recreational drug? Heroin. Beanie Babies. Sure, I can see the similarities.”

“You’re a real stand-up comic today. A barrel of laughs.”

“I’m not laughing. And you’re not either. As a matter of fact, you haven’t laughed out loud in at least a year. Longer.”

It was true. Everything she was saying was absolutely true. The depression that had caught hold of him upon his return home from San Salustiano had sunk its teeth into him again. He couldn’t deny it. He couldn’t explain it. But he could try to sidestep it. “I need some aspirin.”

“I have everything
but
aspirin.” Lauren reached into her desk drawer and took out four bottles of different over-the-counter pain remedies and lined them up on the edge of her desk. “Take your pick. But I doubt it’s what you really need.”

She opened the compact refrigerator that was positioned within reach of her chair and pulled out two bottles of sparkling water. She set one on her desk and handed the other to Liam.

“Thanks.” He took the nearest plastic container of painkiller and popped the top open, dashing two colorful little pills into the palm of his hand. “I should get going.” He couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes.

“What, without telling me about this annoying obligation that’s suddenly sprung up out of nowhere?”

“It’s—
she’s
not annoying. And I thought you weren’t interested.”

“Aha. It’s a she.” Lauren opened her own bottle of water and poured it into an elegantly shaped glass. “Now I
am
interested. Especially since you haven’t been interested in much of anything—female or otherwise—since last summer. What was the name of that last obligation? Janice?…”

“Janessa.” Liam shook his head. “And she wasn’t an obligation. She was…” He closed his eyes briefly. “I don’t know what she was. A mistake, I guess.” He tossed the pills into his mouth and washed them down with the bubbling water, drinking directly from his bottle. “Still, this obligation isn’t what you think.”

“What I
thought
was that you might’ve been working on an article about celibacy in this age of STDs, but since it’s been nearly a full calendar year since Janessa took her sweet little pout and walked out of your life, I’ve changed my mind. I seriously doubt you’re researching the lifestyle of a Franciscan monk.” Lauren narrowed her eyes. “However, it’s occurred to me that whatever’s bugging you, getting laid sure couldn’t make it any worse. So maybe you should stop and buy a nice bottle of wine on your way to meet that new little obligation and—”

“Stuart! God! My obligation happens to be Santiago Bolivar’s niece!”

“Bolivar. Bolivar…Isn’t that the name of your friend in San Salustiano?”

Liam jiggled his foot in a burst of nervous energy. “Yeah.”

“And the niece…Wait—what was her name?”

“Marisala.” God, he couldn’t even say her name without feeling a flash of heat.

“She was the one who helped your brother and his wife get you off the island.”

“Yeah.”

“The teenager. The seventeen-year-old guerrilla Amazon.”

“She’s not an Amazon. She’s a tiny little…girl.”

“I was speaking figuratively. Amazon as in female warrior.”

Liam couldn’t sit still any longer. He got to his feet and started to pace. “Santiago’s sending her to college here in Boston. He’s asked me to give her any help she needs. And she does need help. There’s been a mix-up with the campus housing, and I’m going to have to help her find an apartment near mine.”

“An apartment in the Back Bay in September?” Lauren laughed. “Good luck.”

“Thanks, Stuart. Your encouragement is greatly appreciated.”

“So where’s she staying until…” Lauren laughed again. “Oh, my. She’s staying at your place, isn’t she?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, Lee, don’t fight it. This girl could be exactly what you n—”

“No. No way.”

“What is that they always say about protesting too much?…”

Liam turned toward the door. “Look, I have to go—”

“Maybe, at the very least, you can
talk
to her.”

“I’ll give you a call over the next few days.”

Lauren stood up. “She was there, too, Lee….”

“In the meantime I’ll work on that article and—”

“…and you’ve got to talk to someone!”

He stopped then, turning to look back at her. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Obviously. Especially since you’ve never so much as
mentioned
what happened to you in that San Salustiano prison. You know, at first I thought you weren’t talking about it because you were writing a book about your experiences. But it’s been five years and there’s been no book.”

“I started one. I couldn’t…” Liam shook his head. “I couldn’t do it.” Writing down what he’d been through had been too painful. It was easier to lock his hellish experience deep inside of him and just try to go on with his life, pretending it never happened.

“All I know is that you went down there to report on the political situation and the government stuck you in some prison and told your family you were dead.”

Liam stared across the room at his friend. He’d always been grateful that Lauren had never asked about his experience in San Salustiano before. And she still wasn’t asking him to tell her about it now. He knew she’d never do that, but she
was
giving him a clear invitation to volunteer the information.

With a sigh, he sat back down. Lauren Stuart was his friend. She deserved to know at least the basic facts. But that was all he could tell her. He’d told no one more than that. Even his good friend Kayla, his brother Cal’s wife, had heard only an extremely edited version of the horrors he’d endured in that hell-hole of a prison.

“I went to San Salustiano seven years ago, to meet with Santiago Bolivar,” Liam recited. It helped to tell this story as if it had happened to someone else and not to him. “At the time Santiago had run for president against the incumbent, and lost despite a large showing of public support. He was convinced the results had been tampered with, and that the entire election had been a sham. When I went down to talk to him, little pockets of violence and resistance to the special police force had already sprung up, all over the island.”

He paused, remembering that evening he’d spent, sharing dinner with Santiago Bolivar and his family. Marisala had been there, sitting quietly in the background as the men had talked about the possibility of an all-out war, of a political coup to regain control of their beloved country. And when Liam had finally gone out to his battered rental car, to head back to the hotel in the city of Puerto Norte, she had followed him.

“I met Marisala that first night,” he told Lauren, trying to keep his voice devoid of emotion. But he couldn’t. Where Marisala was concerned, he simply couldn’t help himself at all. “She was fifteen years old, and…”

So beautiful. So young and innocent and pure. He could still see her coming out of the shadows beside Santiago’s house to introduce herself. She’d had something to say to the Americano, and despite the fact that she was a mere girl, she was determined to say it.

“She begged me to talk sense into the men,” he continued, “to keep them from turning this political disagreement into a war. We talked for a long time—she knew a little English, and I knew a bit of Spanish, and I swear, Stu, I’d never met anyone like her before, but she was just a
child
. Anyway, she told me she was afraid for her uncle’s safety.

“And rightly so,” he added, feeling the familiar queasiness in his stomach. He tried to step back, to push his feelings aside. He was a journalist. It helped if he remembered that—if he focused on the facts alone. “Two days later I met Santiago at a Puerto Norte café, and somehow the special police found out about it. They came to arrest us both. I knew as soon as they realized I was an American reporter, they’d make me disappear—probably permanently—so I ran.”

He couldn’t look at Lauren, couldn’t look anywhere but out the window at the skyline of Boston. He didn’t want to think about the force of that bullet that had hit him in the back, throwing him forward and down into the dirt.