Deadly Little Lies (30 page)
Read Deadly Little Lies Online
Authors: Jeanne Adams
Dav moved more fully in front of Carrie, his only concession to the silent negotiation. When he shifted to cover her, he saw the man smile. For a moment longer, the man seemed inclined to wait him out, but then shrugged his shoulders.
“There is little time,” he said, shifting his weapon in front of him. “You cannot use the road.”
Dav frowned at the weapon, recognizing it from Gates's lessons as a sniper rifle.
“Who are you and why are you telling us this?” he demanded.
“I'm ... a friend,” the man said, and let the smile show fully on his beard-roughened face. Between the stubble and the paint, Dav couldn't tell what color his hair was. “You have a number of enemies and all of them are converging on you. You should be gone when they get here.”
“What do you know about it?” Dav felt his defensive instincts rise up and snarl.
“This”âthe shooter shifted the barrel to indicate the clearingâ“is your brother's doing.” He seemed amused when Dav tensed, then nodded briskly.
Carrie's hands braced at his belt. As the man gestured with the weapon, Dav realized that a round from it would go through both of them. The shooter seemed to know the direction of his thoughts and smiled.
“What about you?” Dav said, nodding toward the weapon. “What's your part in all this?”
“As I said, I'm a friend.” Although the man kept his voice carefully neutral, Dav caught a trace of an accent. Scandinavian, perhaps. German? He couldn't tell.
“Why can we not use the road?”
“It's mined. The second set of enemies.” The shooter pointed toward the bodies lying where the woman had dragged them. “They did that. I believe they were targeting your brother.”
“And you shot them.” Dav made it a statement, not a question. His gorge rose at the thought. He felt faint and sweaty at the same time, but he forced his face to remain blank, knowing that this man was a cold-blooded killer. A sniper, casually mentioning the deaths of others with no emotion whatsoever, would be unimpressed by his fever.
The rest of the sentence penetrated his fever-clouded brain. “Wait. I know Niko is after me, but someone is after him?”
“Yes.”
Dav waited for him to say something more, but he remained silent. Thinking was like slogging through mud. His usually speedy grasp of situations was agonizingly slow.
“So. Eh-la, how can we get past the mines?”
The shooter shrugged. “You set them off, take your chances that you have gotten them all.” He paused a moment, then said, “When you do, go south. North will take you into Guatemalaâyou do not want that.”
“What country are we in?” Carrie spoke for the first time.
“Belize.”
With that, he turned and left, fading into the trees and grasses along the entry road with barely a whisper of movement to betray his passing.
It took them a long time to move. “Was he really here, or is the fever affecting my mind?” Dav seriously wanted to know the answer to this question.
Carrie gave a shaky half laugh. “Are we back to the gibbering again? Because I think I might be ready to join you.” Her voice trembled with anxiety and he slipped his good arm around her shoulders, squeezing her tightly. It was the first time he'd touched her since he came out of the hole.
Sheer pleasure and relief flooded through him at the contact. The warmth of her, the delicate balance of muscle and fragility brought a flood of images into his mind.
Carrie rising above him. Her wild abandon in the waterfall. Hundreds of memories, images and thoughts shot through his mind on fast-forward.
His certainty that he might be in love with her strengthened.
“Yes, gibbering can be arranged,” he replied, his face pressed into her hair, knowing she was waiting for his reply.
“It's getting dark,” she said, looking around. He heard the rustling of the leaves and wind, noted the darkening skies. Somehow he must move from the heaven of her arms, the solid reality of freedom.
That concept jarred him enough to let go. Much as he hated to move apart, make decisions and focus, he had to. They weren't free yet.
“You go and get whatever food might be in the building. I will begin clearing the road.”
Her nod, pressed into his chest, was quick and decisive. “I'll get you aspirin first.”
He smiled. “That would be good, Carrie-mou.”
She kissed him then, her hands pressed to his face, her body leaning into him. It was a moment that stood in stark contrast to the danger and death surrounding them. For a moment, nothing mattered, no one else mattered but her.
Then she broke the kiss and hurried away.
His newly discovered heart wrenched in his chest and he staggered. He could read nothing into her action, good or bad. Was it a farewell-I'm-sorry kind of kiss? Or a ohmy-GodIreallyloveyou kiss?
He had no basis on which to judge.
Carrie rummaged in the scant cupboards. Her motions were more of a cover for her tears than a real effort toward finding anything. How could he make her feel this way? How could he be so incredibly alive, make her feel so alive, when he didn't love her?
She wanted to cry. She wanted to go home. She wanted...
“Stop it,” she remonstrated with herself. “You have to get out of here first, and unless you want to die today, you need to go help Dav. Now.”
The words, ringing in the small confines of the hut, were almost a shock. The quiet clearing, devoid of all but watching, inimical animal life, was the last place she wanted to stay, much less die.
She pulled two drinks from the tiny icebox, which had been hooked to a battery. They were lukewarm by American standards, but their intact caps and Spanish labels made them seem the ultimate in civilized beverages. She heard the car start and hurried to the door.
Dav pulled the car near to the building and got out. Pain etched his features and Carrie remembered the aspirin. Hurrying to her purse, she found the bottle and got the pills for him. With a quick twist she opened the cap and held it out, dropping four aspirin into his waiting hand.
“I know you're not supposed to take more than three, but I think you should have them,” she said, and put her hand to his forehead. “You're really hot.”
Dav laughed as he tossed the little pills into his mouth, draining the soda before he spoke. He was still grinning as he said, “Why thank you. It is good to know I have not lost my suave presence, even under these conditions.”
“Suave... ?” It took her tired brain a moment to catch up. “Youâ” She grinned, then laughed. Within moments, they were both laughing so hard they could barely stop.
“I don't think it was that funny,” she snickered, “but thanks, I needed that.”
“Good. So did I.” His expression fell into somber lines. “We must act quickly, Carrie, if our strange protector is to be believed.” He glanced at her from under hooded eyes. “He really was real, yes?”
He waited for her nod before he continued. He must be more worried about the fever than she guessed.
“Once we believe we have cleared the road, it will be difficult to drive out with the holes the mines will make. Despite that, we must go, and again, if our friend is to be believed, we must do it fast. The explosions will alert everyone from here to... to whereverâ” He waved his good hand in a sweeping gesture. “We must be gone when anyone comes to search for the cause of the explosions.”
“All right. What do I do?”
“Take this.” He offered a weapon and extra clips, which he'd obviously taken from one of the bodies. “Get in the building. I will use the Jeep as cover. I have gathered enough things to throw that hopefully I can set off the mines. If they are personnel mines, they blow upward, which will not leave a huge crater.” He stared toward the road, as if willing this to be the case. “The man said there were six.”
“He did?”
Dav smiled. Perhaps he was delirious, but when the man mentioned the mines, Dav had seen his hands release the weapon, flash three fingers with a gloved hand once, and then again, before he regripped the weapon.
“I think so. Quickly now.” Dav urged her toward the concrete building, always thinking of her safety.
With obvious pain, he climbed back into the driver's seat. Before he could put the car in gear, she made her decision. She ran to the Jeep and jerked open the passenger door.
“Wait,” she said, climbing in, dumping the gun and extra clips on the seat. “We'll do it together and then leave. I'm not waiting for you again. It nearly killed me when I thought you weren't coming.” She sucked in a breath. “Together,” she declared stubbornly, when she saw the protest forming on his lips. “Or not at all, deal?”
She held out a hand and for a moment he just stared at it, and at her. A brilliant smile blossomed through the growth of the beard he sported, startling in its white contrast to the dark hair.
He took her hand and kissed it, then shifted his one-handed grip to her shoulder and pulled her close to kiss her hard on the mouth.
“It is a deal, yes.”
“Wait here, then.” She ran into the hut and grabbed everything she'd found, snatched up her purse from the tiny, rickety table and got back in. “Let's do it.”
“My action hero,” he said, smiling, as she dumped the odd collection of gleanings over the seat to be sorted later.
“Wonder Woman, that's me,” she said with gritted teeth as the Jeep bounced over the rough ground of the clearing. She studiously avoided looking at the bodies strewn about. There was nothing she could do about them, and any one of those men would have killed them both.
“It is, indeed,” was all he said as he fought the steering wheel. She saw the lines of pain return and saw him wince with each jouncing, jarring bump.
He whipped the car across the mouth of the road and got out.
“Now comes the interesting part,” he said, flexing the fingers of his good hand. He looked at her now, a keen assessment. “How well do you throw?”
“Pretty well, why?”
“Time to clear the road,” he said simply, offering her a softball-sized rock.
From behind the wall of the car, Dav cocked his arm back and lobbed a fragment of stone toward the road. The chunk rolled in the dust and stilled. No explosion.
“Farther up, then,” Dav muttered. “Come, get back in.”
They crept forward on the road, and he stopped again. They got out.
Another toss, another blank response.
He handed her a fat chunk of charred wood. “You try.”
She hefted it, then rose up from behind the car to throw it, overhand as she'd seen in countless war movies.
The explosion was louder than anything she'd imagined. Dav grabbed her, yanking her down below to relative safety behind the bulk of the car. Dirt pinged on the metal, but other than the squawking of the birds behind them, there was no other sound.
“Again.”
He threw, then she threwâodd pieces of equipment, pieces of wood, the chunks of stone he'd originally thrown. He counted six explosions.
“Now we must see if we have succeeded. Stand back a ways, Carrie-mou. I will drive through.”
The road was a Swiss-cheese-shred of massive potholes now. Some were only inches deep. Another looked as if someone were ready to plant a good-sized tree in a readied hole in the dusty soil.
“No. Together,” she insisted. She wasn't going to stand on the road and watch him either blow up or disappear again.
They argued, briefly, but she won. He was either too tired, or in too much pain, but he gave in.
“I do not like it,” he muttered. “If we missed anyâ” he started.
“Six explosions. Six holes. If you're right, we're home free.”
He whipped toward her in the seat. “And if I'm wrong?”
A sense of fatalism seemed to have settled into her bones. “We'll die together,” she said, with a shrug.
For long moments, he just stared. Something of her determination must have shown on her face, however, because he finally nodded and restarted the car.
“Fast or slow?” he wondered, scanning the ugly mess before them.
“Go for it,” she urged. “As fast as you can. Get us out of here.” She recognized the hysterical edge to her own voice, but the tantalizing view of freedom, symbolized by the road, beckoned. “God, Dav, just go.”
“Eh-la,” he said, with more strength. “We go.”
Chapter 19
Way in the distance, a flock of birds rose into the sky. Niko trained his high-powered binoculars that way, but saw nothing but sky and dusty trees as the birds disappeared. Had they come from the clearing? Why would the birds have left?
Frowning, he was about to tell Sam when the phone rang. They exchanged glances as Niko picked it up.
“You are still in place?” His mentor's smooth voice rang in his ear. They'd been without contact for hours. He and Sam had decided to head for Guatemala and had turned the car, just before he'd done one last scan of the area.
“I am,” he lied, keeping his voice level, unemotional.
“There is a change of plans. I have created a ... haven where the main roads join. Go, check on your guest, then join me. Once you arrive we will head for home. I believe the ransom has cleared, so you will be well paid. My jet is waiting.”
He clicked off. The whole scenario was beginning to smell like rotten eggs. He ran it by Sam.
“It'll get us out of the country,” the other man reasoned, voting for the plane. “We can scatter from there and stay out of this guy's way from now on. Guatemala's too hot for me,” he added with a wolfish grin. Sam had outstanding warrants in several countries. Apparently Guatemala was one of them. “Be better if I got out another way.”
They debated it a bit more, but decided to go for it. A scan of the clearing would give them more information anyway.
When they arrived twenty minutes later, they got a surprise.
“Mines,” Sam said, whipping a weapon out and going on full alert to cover the road, actively scanning back and forth.
“I'll go in. Wait for me.” It was an order, not a request, but Sam nodded.
“Ain't goin' nowhere.”
Niko hopped out, crouching by the cover of the Jeep's front fender. He moved down the road, right at the edge, lest there be additional mines. In the clearing, he saw more damage than what he and Sam had first surveyed.
Pressed against the wall of the hut, he scanned everything, cataloging it. Two more men lay in the shadowy area. He could tell from where he crouched that they weren't his men, and he didn't know them, or he didn't think he did. They were shorter, stockier than his mentor's minions. The man hired tall people, taller than he was, Niko had noticed.
“Tall poppy loses its head.” He muttered the old saying, thinking that his mentor made sure everyone around him was a higher target than he was.
These two weren't of that ilk. They were neat, though, and had been clean shaven and well kitted out. He saw the packaging for another mine lying by the second man's side. It had fallen out of his satchel when he'd been dragged.
These were the mine-layers, then.
Niko scuttled to the hole, where the open grate gave mute testimony to the fact that Dav and his woman were gone.
He frowned at the signs below him. The fat angle of stone was ancient, a sharp contrast to the metal facing of the grate.
Without time to explore it, he couldn't be sure, but it seemed as if even the past had conspired with Davros to aid his escape.
When he got back to the road, the car was there, but Sam was gone.
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“Carrie.” Dav said the word through gritted teeth as they made their way down the steep, rutted road.
“Yes?” She stuttered out the word. The trip back down was better than it had been when they had ridden up the road, bound and blindfolded in the backseat, but it was still unpleasant.
“I think you must drive now,” he managed, slowing to a stop. The adrenaline rush of exploding the mines and the sheer tension of making their way out to the road had carried him thus far, but his scant reserves of energy were eroded by the pain and the fever. It was getting dark and his vision was blurring from fatigue and constant pain.
“Okay,” she said, unfastening her seat belt. “Just put it in park, we'll switch.”
He did, unfolding himself from the seat, using his good hand to unclench the injured one from the steering wheel. The fingers were stiff and unyielding, cramped by the tightness of his grip.
He stumbled round the front as Carrie rounded the back, efficiently switching seats as if they'd rehearsed it innumerable times.
He sank into the passenger side, feeling every scrape, every bruise, every cut on his body. With as much aspirin as he had in his system, he was sure his blood had thinned and he would bleed to death if he were cut now.
The thought was just another in a long line of rambling, unpleasant images rattling his brain. Exhaustion pulled at his consciousness, begging for sleep, for surcease from thought and decision and constant threat.
Carrie belted herself in, primly checked the rearview mirror and the side-view mirrors, and then gingerly put the Jeep in gear. In the middle of everything, despite the pain, he had enough humanity left that it amused him.
“You do not drive?” he asked, wondering at this first show of timidity. She'd been brave as a lion up until now; this checking and rechecking spoke of fear.
“I'm a city girl. I haven't driven for... years.”
“You can make few mistakes out here, my love,” he said, closing his eyes, trusting her to get them going again. The darkness called to him, beckoning his consciousness.
“Dav,” she said, and he heard real fear in her voice again. “Please, you have to stay awake if you can. I don't think I can do this alone.”
Her soft plea had him adjusting the seat back upward once more, struggling to return to full alertness. It was challenging. Everything in him wanted the healing that unconsiousness would bring. Snatched hours in the cave, waiting for morning, had not been enough. The endless day, traversing the dark caves, had taken every erg of energy he possessed, and more. Pushing past that boundary, they had faced down the unknown sniper and escaped.
Everything within him cried out for rest.
“Eh-la, what shall we talk about, on our Sunday drive?” he managed, sitting forward so his back didn't connect with the leather at every jolt, and spacing the words between jouncing shifts. It was hard to focus, but he thought the rough road had widened a bit in the beam of the headlights.
A nervous laugh was her first answer. “How long have we been here?”
The question set off a cascade of queries in his mind, none of which he had the answers to. “I don't know. I thinkâ” He hesitated, counting what he could remember of the days. “Seven days, perhaps?”
“They didn't find us.” She didn't turn his way, but he saw the white knuckles, the tighter grip on the wheel as she spoke. It took him a moment to unravel the non sequitur. “What if we'd waited, hoping for rescue?” She glanced at him, then resolutely stared back at the road.
He nodded, using his good hand cross-body to hold on to the handle above the door, doing everything he could not to jostle his back, his finger or his aching head. With his hand pressed into his chestâthe most stable place for itâhe could smell the faint sickly sweet smell of decay. Either the bloody bandages were beginning to stink, or his hand was. He didn't want to contemplate which.
“We would still be there, then, waiting,” he said, barely suppressing a groan as the car hit a particularly difficult stretch of the road. “Or dead from one of the killers who came for us.”
In the cool light of the dash, he saw her shudder.
They rode in silence for a while and he tried to make conversation. They managed it in stilted sections, between hanging on and trying to see the margins of the road.
The road straightened out for a bit and they could breathe more freely.
“Dav, I don't think I can go on. I'm exhausted and I'm falling asleep at the wheel. I ... I ... don't think I can do it.”
As she said it, the beams of the headlights showed another road turning off to the right.
“Wait,” he said, startling her into hitting the brakes hard. They were both thrown forward into their seat belts, but he waved away her apologies. “Turn in here.”
She backed up a few feet and managed to crank the wheel around enough to make the turn. As they rolled down the smoother, planed, but overgrown road, he told her to slow down, switch to the parking lights.
“Take it easy,” he urged her. The lights showed mining equipment neatly parked in a fenced-in area. The gate had a padlock, held by a rusted chain. A paved, covered area outside the gate was currently empty of vehicles, but appeared to be a place to park. “There,” he pointed. “Back in.”
Her skills were obviously rusty, but she turned the Jeep and backed it under the canopy. When she cut the engine and the lights, silence enveloped them. Nothing moved in the darkness but the wind.
There were creaks and pings from the cooling engine, and he felt as much as heard her deep sigh.
“Water?” Carrie croaked the word. “Can you reach it?”
“Not with my good hand,” he said, wishing it were otherwise. She grunted and turned in the seat, nearly falling into the back in her attempt to reach the refilled canteens.
“Here.” She pressed a canteen into his working hand. “Drink as much of this as you can. We have to get that fever down. Since we don't have antibiotics, you need fluids and aspirin.”
“Antibiotics would be good, I'm sure,” he quipped, between long draughts of the stale-tasting water. He didn't care though. The wet, cool liquid felt like heaven as it slid down his parched throat.
“They would. We have to get you to medical help as soon as we can,” she fretted, twisting the other canteen round and round in her hands. “Maybe we should keep driving.”
“No.” He reinforced the word with his voice, firm and final. “We are in no shape to go on. Either of us. We are stumbling blindly on a dark road in a country we do not know. We are exhausted, and I am weak and feverish. With thisâ” He lifted his hand but realized she couldn't see it. “With my hand going bad, you are carrying us both for the moment.” He turned toward her, reaching awkwardly to grip the hand now lying limp in her lap. “You must be able to drive, and keep your wits about you. This you cannot do if you are falling into sleep.”
“I feel so useless,” she admitted. “I feel like I should be able to go on.”
“As do I, but I cannot.” He thought for a minute before giving her an admission of his own. “It was not easy to ask you to drive. I want to carry you away from this, win your freedom.” He squeezed her hand, and felt her turn her palm to his, interlace their fingers. It gave him a ray of hope. “I too have this sense of failure, that I cannot push my body further, get you, tonight, to a place of safety.”
She was silent for a moment, then squeezed his hand again. “I get that. I really do.” He couldn't see her, but heard the rueful amusement in her voice. “We're both white knights, I guess, trying to do the right thing.”
“We are, indeed. Now, come, rest your head on my shoulder, and let us sleep.”
She scooted over, and leaned carefully on him, relaxing finally with a deep sigh. They sat like that for long moments and Dav felt the lassitude that preceded sleep beginning to overtake him.
“Dav,” she said softly. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome, my flame. But do not thank me so soon. We are not, how you say, out of the woods yet.”
“No, but thank you anyway.” She hesitated and he felt the tension in her shoulders.
“What is it, Carrie-mou?”
“I need you to understand why I can't marry you,” she said, surprising him. With succinct phrases, she laid it out. Her dissection was calm, and clinical, and he heard the finality of her decision in her words and tone. For a man long used to reading those things in business, he knew she meant everything she said. There would be no negotiation, he thought, his tired, feverish mind running answers and arguments to every one of her statements. For her infertility, her refusal to settle for less than love, her sure knowledge that he didn't love her and her desire that they remain friends, he could see an argument, but each time he tried to grasp it in his mind, put it forth to break down the walls she had built, it slipped away in a haze of pain.
“I don't want to lose that, Dav,” she finished earnestly. “Please tell me that we will still be friends.”
“After all we have been through, my flame? You would doubt this?” Somehow he managed to say that, although the words seemed thick and foreign as he struggled to get them out.
“I... I... yes,” she admitted. “I saw your face when I saidâ”
“Shhhh.” He hushed her, grimacing in the dark at the memory. She had said no. Her answer remained no. He would not embarrass either one of them by pressing an unwanted suit upon her.
But his heart ached, still. That long-dormant and elusive sense of love would have to find its way without her.
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