Deadly Little Lies (8 page)
Read Deadly Little Lies Online
Authors: Jeanne Adams
“I wish there'd been a second bottle,” Carrie echoed his thought. “I'm still thirsty.”
“Me too,” he said, finishing the sandwich and offering her the mango. “The mango will help though, to quench your thirst.”
“We don't have anything to cut it with.”
“Doesn't your tool have a blade? Otherwise, I think teeth are going to have to do.”
It took them a while, with Dav wielding the knife in short careful strokes to skin the mango. Finally, they were able to eat it all and it did indeed go a long way to quenching their thirst. “You said to save everything,” she said, and he heard the doubt in her voice. “Does that include mango rind and pit?”
“No, let's close it all up and put it in the bag. We don't want to attract...” He let that thought drift off, not wanting to think about what the smells of food would attract. “Anything.”
“No, we don't. Here, put the bottles in the other bag. We'll keep those. We can break them if we need something sharp, or fill them up with water if we get a chance.”
“There's no bathroom down here,” Dav said, careful to keep his voice level. “We'll need to plan for that situation. The fact that they've fed us leads me to believe they aren't going to kill us right away, but we can't count on them bringing us up for potty breaks either.”
“Why did they cut our hair?” she asked, reminding him of the brief incident aboveground.
“Proof of life. That tells me they'll be asking someone for a ransom.”
“What makes you think they won't kill us?”
“They haven't yet,” Dav replied, and smiled. “That's good for now. And if they are cautious enough to blindfold me, and send someone our hair, they have an agenda.”
“Do you really think that means anything?” Carrie sounded dubious. “They could send that and still kill us.”
“Yes, but if they'd wanted us dead, why bother with a kidnapping? If they wanted us out of the country before they killed us, then they could have done it when we landed. I'm guessing the landing strip is very remote by the lack of city noise or machinery humming. Or they could have killed us before they dumped us in here. If they were going to kill us tomorrow, why feed us?”
“Which all means what?” He heard the quaver in her voice. She had proven herself to be strong, but his litany of reasons why they were still alive seemed to be making her more afraid rather than reassuring her.
“They want something,” he said flatly. “Money, most likely. Or, given that my brother seems to be behind all this, revenge.”
“That doesn't sound good.”
“It isn't.”
Chapter 5
Dawn came early in the tropics. Bright sun lit the inner recesses of the underground cell and outlined the carved rock interior. Lines and traceries revealed by the early morning light showed fanged faces and whorls and patterns of an ancient people whose fear of the gods knew no bounds. Marching around the walls were war gods, people rushing away in fear, serpents with feathers and seated monarchs who levied punishment on the prostrate masses.
“Wow,” Carrie said, as they both woke, sitting up in the brightening space. They'd talked long into the night, huddled close together, shivering until their clothes finally dried.
Dav told the story of his brother and their disagreements; she talked about her husband's betrayals and the healing she'd found from the previous year's resolution of the art fraud case.
“Look at the carvings. No wind or rain to wear them away down here. Those are pristine.” She called the names of the deities she knew as she walked the perimeter, letting reverent fingers glide over the preserved sculptures. “I think this is Kukulcanâalso called Quetzalcoatlâwho'd be one of the principle gods for the ancient people in Central America.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “Your guess about our location was probably right, given what's carved here.”
When he just nodded, Carrie turned back to the wall. “And this, I think this is Voltan, god of Earth. I don't know all of the Mayan pantheon by any means. It's very complicated. All that pre-Colombian art course info got filed in the “interesting but not immediately useful” section of my brain. I remember just enough to be dangerous,” she joked. “But I don't think this is a common jail cell. Not with these kinds of carvings. It might be serving that way now, for these guys, but this is some kind of ceremonial space.”
Dav watched her as he stretched to loosen up. He wiggled his fingers, which still ached, and bent forward to flex the kinked muscles in his back, all while watching her move excitedly from wall to wall, carving to carving. Now that it was sunlit, he could see the cell was about eighteen or twenty feet long, by fifteen or sixteen wide. Its shorter ends were the more heavily carved, with the grate-covered entry hole dead in the center of the ceiling.
“Look!” Carrie exclaimed, as the rays of light edged into a new cranny of the space with the rising of the sun. “It's like a sundial,” she said, hurrying to gently brush at the floor where the light hit it. “There's stone under here, with markings and everything.”
“I hate to confess it,” Dav said, and found a smile for her enthusiasm, “but at the moment, I'm slightly more interested in that.” He pointed to a portable toilet shoved tight into the far corner. Against that same wall, iron shackles hung. They were obviously of a much newer vintage than the carvings, though not so twenty-first-century as the portable john.
“Oh!” Carrie said, and he saw her eyes light up again. “I thought we'd have to”âshe broke off, blushingâ“well, you know.”
“Yes, I do. Please, go ahead, I'll just be over here.” He walked to the farthest end of the cell. It was impossible to ignore the process, but he focused on the carvings instead to give her at least the illusion of privacy. The one he was examining showed the god she'd called Kukulcan stacking up bones, then carrying them away. He moved down the wall to see more, but Carrie interrupted his art appreciation.
“Okay, your turn,” she said. “When you're done, we should go through everything we have, figure out what's useful and what isn't. If there's any chance at all that we can get out of here, we need to be ready.”
“Now you sound like Gates,” he said, trading places with her and taking care of his immediate needs. Hunger rumbled his stomach, but he didn't mention it. It must have been on her mind, however.
“I was thinking I sounded more like you,” she said, smiling. She deepened her voice and added the slightest hint of his accent as she mimicked his words, “We must save everything.”
“I don't sound like that,” he demurred, embarrassed at the portrayal.
“No, you sound much better than I do.” She bent to straighten out his coat, smoothing the fabric they'd layered under them to keep the ground's chill from making sleeping any more difficult that it already was.
“I have some protein bars in my purse, if you're hungry,” she said, sitting down again.
“I think we should save those for later,” Dav cautioned. “You never know what might happen. If they brought us dinner, scant as it was, they may bring breakfast too.”
As if the words had summoned them, they heard their captors' voices approaching.
“Turn your faces to the wall,” the smooth, amused voice called out. “If I see your faces, I shoot you.”
Dav whispered an additional order. “Put your hands in front of you, like you're still tied. We don't want them to know we have any skills or weapons.”
He saw her comply as he turned to face the wall. Dav fought down the urge to reach for Carrie's hand. Much as he wanted to reassure her, he didn't want anyone to see just how important she was to him. Doing that might put her in yet more danger.
Dav focused on the carvings as the rattle-clang of the lock and grate echoed in the small space. There were grunting sounds and the slap of metal and fabric as something was lowered down.
“We'll be back for you in two days,” smooth-voice said.
“Or not,” another voice said. Coarse laughter greeted this statement. “Adios for now, rich man.”
The voices receded and both he and Carrie turned to see what had been left for them. Four canteens of water, some fruit, what he presumed were hard-boiled eggs, more sandwiches, crackers, a bunch of bananas, an out-of-place plastic baggie full of bacon, and to his great surprise, ajar of Nutella.
Carrie looked from the provisions to him and back again. “That's a strange breakfast. Strange provisions.” A flash of fear crossed her face, but she showed no other sign of concern as she said, “Why do you think they're leaving?”
He considered it as they advanced on the cache of food. “Perhaps to get Niko. Perhaps to contact someone regarding ransom.” He looked around the cell, strange as it was, and then up at the locked, metal grate. There would be no escape for them, not from this hole. “Either way, these aren't regular kidnappers. They're not prepared for us to be here for a long time, nor are they thinking too far ahead.” He didn't want to go into the ramifications of that, so he asked, “Do you still have your watch? They took mine at some point.”
“Well, it was a Rolex,” she said, smiling at him. “Easily hocked.”
“Yes, too tempting, I guess.” He hesitated. Should he tell her the watch had held a locator?
“Look at it this way,” she added. “One quick way for Gates to find you, if it turns up in a pawnshop in the States.”
“Good thought, since it does have a location device built into it,” Dav said, making his decision. He wanted to hit something, knowing it had been taken. How could anyone have known it had the fail-safe locator in it?
This was a problem. As cunning and snakelike as Niko was, he wasn't into tech. He'd either hired that kind of smarts or... or what, he didn't know. Either way, it made a grim situation even more desperate. Gates would have no way to know anything about where they were or even what direction they'd gone. “However,” he said, softly, “without it we're a needle in a...” He paused, searching for the phrase he wanted. “A worldwide haystack.”
“I know,” she said, glancing away. “But maybe it will lead him to something. Some conclusion that will help. If he finds it.”
“Oh, he will.” Of that, Dav was sure. Gates would be on the locator like a stooping hawk. Hopefully it would yield something that would direct him their way.
“It's nine
A.M.
, Pacific time,” she said, bringing him back to the original question as she handed him an egg. “And I'm an optimist. We'll hope, right?”
A.M.
, Pacific time,” she said, bringing him back to the original question as she handed him an egg. “And I'm an optimist. We'll hope, right?”
“Right.”
They pulled the odd assortment of food closer to their sitting area and began peeling the eggs. “Hang on a second,” Carrie said, digging into her purse. “I was just wishing I could wash my hands, and I remembered this.” With a “ta-da” she pulled a small bottle of waterless hand soap from her purse. “It won't last us long in this situation, but hey, we can pretend we're somewhat civilized.”
Laughing, he used the gel sparingly, then went back to peeling the eggs. “I don't know much about food,” he admitted, scanning the pile before them. “I'm thinking we should eat anything that would spoil, first. I guess the bacon would be okay for a day or so.”
“If the sandwiches have mayonnaise on them, we'll need to eat them. Mustard would keep okay, I think, but the bread will be stale pretty quick.”
“Crackers too,” he said. “I could never keep crackers fresh, back in my starving student stage,” he said idly, turning the box to look for an expiration date. He slipped a finger under the cardboard and opened it to find the interior waxed bag with crackers still sealed.
“I can't picture you as a starving student, somehow,” Carrie said, glancing his way. “You've always seemed so polished, so urbane. So,” she hesitated, then added, “rich.”
“Urbane?” That was an English word he'd not come on before. “Does that mean something good or something bad?”
She laughed and it made her blue eyes twinkle. “You make it so easy to forget that you weren't born here. It means something good.”
“Eh-la, well, thank you, then. I'm afraid I was very much the starving student. I wanted to go to university in America, my father was against it. He wanted me closer to home. I wanted to get away from him and from my brother and from all the watching eyes. And frankly, from all the women.”
He said it without thinking, because it had been true. Then he winced for it must have sounded pompous, macho and arrogant. Carrie's response told him he was right.
“Oh, really?” Carrie drawled. “That sounds chauvinistic.”
“Hmmm, it is,” he muttered, struggling to figure out how to explain without sounding even worse. Only this woman could disconcert him so. Perhaps that was why he had always been so intrigued with her. “In the suburb outside Athens where my father kept his estate, he had many families who worked for him. My brother had run through one generation of the daughters, and when one of the young women got pregnant, my father gave her money.
“Unfortunately young women and even young men, everywhere, when they need a job, will do many things they might not otherwise do to secure their future. There were also the daughters, and sometimes the wives, of my father's associates, who would follow me around or seek to come into my room.” He felt the heat rise in his face at some of the memories associated with that time. “My father made sure everyone knew that he had pitted my brother and me against one another to prove our worth. What is the old saying? To the victor go the spoils? That was to be the deal.”
“Oh, my gosh, that's terrible.” Carrie looked shocked, appalled.
Dav nodded. “It was. You never knew who was helping you because they liked you, or thought you would be the winner in the game, or who was helping to actually hurt you.” And some had truly, truly hurt him, in those games. Dav tried to make his tone lighter, more upbeat as he finished his story. “He made only one rule. We could not kill one another, for if either of us died, he would give it all away, he said. Neither Niko nor I would inherit if we were rash enough to cause an inconvenient accident.” Dav sighed, thinking back to what had started the question. “He also made it known that if we managed to kill one another, he had no compunction about naming a bastard grandson as his heir.”
“Which attracted even more women, looking for a chance for a child.” She quickly picked up on the ramifications of his father's pronouncements. “What a dangerous, cruel game your father played with you both,” she said, and he saw pain in her eyes.
Pain for him. His appreciation for her deepened, something he'd thought impossible.
“True,” he said lightly, feeling her caring soothe the old ache of his father's callousness. He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth. “Thank you for caring about that. At the time, I thought little of it because I had grown up with such treatment. It seemed ...” he hesitated to say it, but they had already revealed much. He wanted to share more, and if his plans ever came to fruition, she must know the truth anyway. He would not have a wife who did not know the darker side of him, so he must be willing to speak. “It seemed normal.”
She nodded. “People can get used to a lot of cruelty, can't they?” He agreed and they both pondered in silence as they ate. Trying, evidently, to change the somber mood the revelations brought, she asked, “So what happened when you came to America?”
“He cut me off,” Dav said, shrugging, as if it hadn't hurt, hadn't devastated the young man he had been. “I managed a scholarship, and he deigned to pay for my books; he did that much, but anything else was on me.”
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