Don't Let Go (13 page)

Jordan winced. “I know. I’m sorry, but I really have no choice, and I can’t tell him, or he’ll try to stop me. Don’t worry,” she added, reassuringly, “he won’t blame you. I’m the one he’ll be mad at.”

“I’m happy to watch Silas,” said Ellie, with a grave look that saw more than Jordan wanted to show. “Just be careful,” she added with concern. “I’ve heard about Venezuela on the radio.”

Jordan’s heart palpitated at the reminder of the dangers awaiting her. “I will,” she promised. “Let me get the other boxes from my car.”

Jordan couldn’t sleep. Thoughts of her impending departure kept her mind churning, evoking terrifying visions of being detained by soldiers, questioned, incarcerated, and locked in a dark dungeon forever. She snuggled closer to Solomon, seeking solace in his warmth and strength.

With a sleepy murmur, he hooked an arm around her and pulled her closer. “Forgot to tell you,” he said, rousing for a moment. “I found a woman at the embassy in Caracas who says she can fetch Miguel for you.”

Jordan’s heart stopped, then resumed an erratic beat. “What? She will? When?”

“Don’t know. But she says he can leave the country with the remaining Americans if and when the embassy’s evacuated.”

Jordan pictured Miguel’s terror at finding himself with a total stranger while being evacuated at the last, harrowing hour.

She turned her head to make out Solomon’s shadowed features. His rugged, handsome face tugged at her heartstrings. With a sharp stab of regret, she realized she would miss him—more thoroughly than she ever would have guessed. “Thank you,” she whispered, lifting a hand to his cheek and then his chest, burrowing her fingers into the crisp hair there.
Thank you, but it’s too late,
she wanted to add
. I’m leaving tomorrow. This has got to be done right, and I’m the only one to do it.

Had there really been a time when she considered Solomon unfeeling? His love for Silas and his generosity with Ellie made it plainly clear that beneath his tough facade, he was every bit as romantic as his mother. No wonder Candace had so easily crushed his faith in love.

She, too, had sworn never to harbor tender feelings for a man, to give another human being power over her heart. And yet, this emotion that made her chest hurt felt an awful lot like love.

The other night he’d called her
sweetheart
. Did that mean he reciprocated her feelings? Or did it even matter? She didn’t have the leisure to dream beyond the next harrowing days. Miguel was her priority, first and foremost. If she managed to bring him home, and Solomon deigned to speak to her again, then she would know what
sweetheart
really meant to him.

A sudden yearning to connect physically with him, just one more time, overcame her.

Her palm drifted downward, over the hair-roughened plane of his abdomen, lower still to cup and stroke him. They’d made love earlier that day, but it had been a race to abate the tension that crackled the minute Solomon walked through the door. And with Silas dawdling in the kitchen over his pudding, they hadn’t had much time.

But given the possibility that she might never make love to Solomon again, Jordan wanted one more memory to carry with her. She pushed to her knees and ducked her head beneath the covers, noting that he’d slit his eyes open. His low growl was all the encouragement she needed.

“Damn, woman,” he said on a ragged whisper, sifting his fingers through her hair.

Eventually, she climbed over the top of him and filled herself, slowly and steadily, savoring the heady fullness, the thrill of him inside of her. His hands branded her hips, her breasts, her neck and lips as she undulated around him, lingeringly, tenderly, in no hurry to seek completion.

What if he won’t forgive me?
she wondered, drawing a breath at the feeling of loss that enveloped her.
What if he refuses to see me again?
Tears pressured her eyes even as the pleasure in her womb approached crisis.

A sob escaped her, and Solomon mistook it for a plea for intervention. He stroked his hands up her thighs and delved his thumbs into the moist alcove between, impelling Jordan into the current of her release.

She resisted for as long as she was able, putting off good-bye, but it tugged her under, smothering her in poignant rapture for the last time. Solomon was with her, clutching her fiercely, shuddering as his pleasure spilled into hers.

With their bodies still joined, they fell together, limply intertwined. Jordan buried her face into his neck so he wouldn’t see the tears brimming her eyes. She was certain he could sense the fullness in her chest.

“If I knew you’d thank me like that,” he murmured, stroking her hair, “I’d have told you earlier,” he said, mistaking the reason for her expressiveness.

She had to smile at his self-satisfaction. “You’re awfully thoughtful for a cold-blooded shark,” she replied.

“Makos are warm-blooded, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right,” she murmured, recalling what she’d learned at the aquarium. She’d misjudged him entirely. But would he be warm-hearted enough to forgive her, she wondered, when he discovered that she’d left despite his efforts?

Solomon’s sixth sense had given him hell all day. Something was wrong; he didn’t know what. At the office, all his business was in order. The men had passed their physical readiness tests. All weapons and ammunition were operational and accounted for. Lucy Donovan had even advised him via e-mail that she would undertake her objective sometime this week. Everything at Spec Ops was shipshape.

It had to be something at the home front that had his antennae twitching, though he couldn’t imagine what. Silas had learned over one hundred fifty sight words. He couldn’t be any happier with his cousins now living in close proximity. And then there was Jordan . . .

Solomon savored the memory of her sweet, passionate nature. He’d never had a lover who satisfied him so thoroughly, so honestly. Perhaps she was just grateful for his help in securing Miguel, but there’d been a suggestion of desperation in her touch last night.

He’d mulled over it all day, unable to shake the feeling that he’d overlooked something.

The first thing he noted as he parked his truck beneath the carport by the big house was that Jordan’s car was missing. He shrugged his concern aside with the reassurance that she’d soon be back and headed down the dappled hill toward the houseboat. A breeze ruffled the leaves overhead. A distant roll of thunder stirred the uneasiness in his gut. His sixth sense was at it again.

He stalked on board and let himself inside, greeted by deafening quiet. Five steps into the houseboat, he spied the note stuck with a magnet to the refrigerator.

Premonition chilled his blood as he approached to read it.

Dear Solomon, I hope you will eventually forgive me but I left for Venezuela this morning. Silas is with Ellie, who has agreed to watch him in my place. I’ll be back in five days with Miguel.

Take care,
Jordan

“No!” Solomon shouted, yanking the note off the fridge and crumpling it in his hands. He swiveled in fury and helplessness and pounded his fist on the counter. “Damn it, Jordan!” he railed, unwrinkling the message to read it one more time. How could she do this to him? He’d made it perfectly clear that her life could be at stake, that others could bring Miguel stateside, and Jordan wouldn’t have to step foot outside the country.

She hadn’t listened to a word he’d said. Like Candace, all she’d thought about was herself, leaving without any word of her intentions. An awful but familiar betrayal bubbled within him.

Snatching up his keys, he stalked back outside, into the impossibly muggy heat to fetch his son. He drove like a demon toward Ellie’s cottage, cutting off cars, blaring his horn. He roared into the driveway and braked abruptly.

Sean Harlan looked up from the bricks he was laying to make front steps. As Solomon jumped out of his truck and slammed the door shut, Sean put his trowel down and stood up, blocking his trajectory to the door.

“The boy’s inside,” he said, in his low easygoing lilt, “and he’s fine.”

Solomon met Harley’s watchful blue gaze with disbelief. “You know about this?” he demanded.

“All I know,” said the chief in that same calming voice, “is that Miz Stuart is watching Silas for you now. She’s concerned that you would be upset about that.”

“Damn right, I’m upset. Do you realize where the fuck Jordan went?”

“Back to Venezuela,” Sean replied. “Take a deep breath, Mako, and don’t even think about taking that tone with Miz Stuart. You know this wouldn’t be happening if you’d let Jordan bring that little boy back.”

Solomon heard something in his head pop. He turned around and walked away. It was either that or plow his fist into Sean Harlan’s belly. With a pulse thrumming at his temple, he dropped the tailgate on his truck and planted his butt on it. He ground his teeth together and willed himself to calm down.

Sean approached him, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited.

“Women,” Solomon said, choking out the word with venom, “are senseless. Does she really think she’s going to waltz into a hot zone and pick up that boy and fly out with him again?”

“She’ll do anything to get him back. You should’ve realized that.”

Solomon glared at him. “Fuck you. Instead of taking her side, why don’t you help me think of a way to protect her?” he growled.

“Okay,” Sean conceded, with a shrug. He stroked his square, shaven jaw. “Who do we know that would help?”

“No one,” Solomon growled. “Because the soldiers we trained are now backing the fucking Populists.”

“Someone at our embassy, then.”

Solomon thought of Lucy Donovan. Sending one woman to help another was, in Solomon’s mind, like asking the blind to lead the blind, but Lucy was bound to have contacts. “I know where to start,” he said, slipping off his tailgate and shutting it. “Now. Let me get my boy. I promise to be nice,” he added with a snarl.

Three hours later, Solomon stepped aboard his houseboat all alone. With Jordan’s protest echoing in his ears—
You can’t wake up a child at four in the morning!
—he’d ended up asking Ellie to watch Silas in his stead. No doubt that was what Jordan had intended all along.

Shutting himself inside, Solomon listened to the downpour that had left him wet and chilled. Silence coiled around him, surrounding him in solitude and loneliness, reminding him of the night he’d returned from Iraq to find his wife and son missing.

Jordan had betrayed him. She’d left.

But not the way Candace had, he admitted. She’d left him a note. She hadn’t stolen Silas away. She’d even said good-bye, he realized belatedly. That was what his intuition had been trying to tell him all day long—that Jordan’s sweet possession of him last night had been her farewell.

“Damn me for being a blind idiot,” he growled, his back to the door, his face in his hands. If something happened to her, he had only himself to blame. With a shuddering breath, he dropped his hands, squared his shoulders and pushed away from the door.

He needed to contact Lucy Donovan, ASAP.

Chapter Thirteen

Jordan eased out of the taxi on knees that jittered. A wind-tossed, two-seater plane piloted by an amateur had been the only transportation she could find from Maiquetía International to the rebel-occupied state of Las Amazonas. From the tiny airstrip outside of Puerto Ayacucho, she’d been lucky to find a taxi. And, now, by the grace of God, she was here, closer to Miguel than she’d been in weeks.

She was tempted to pinch herself. She had dreamed so many times that she was back. Yet the scent of the soil was distinct enough to assure her this was real.

This city had sprung out of a trading post set beneath the rapids of the Orinoco River. Built on black granite, surrounded by jungle-shrouded, flat-topped mountains called
tepuis,
it now housed more than seventy thousand souls, including those of mixed race, but also tribal natives who, fifty years ago, had never seen a white face.

The city looked just as it had earlier this summer: a sprawling and unwieldy conglomerate of buildings, from ramshackle huts to skyscrapers lost in the mist that seeped out of the surrounding jungle. There was only one difference: the presence of armed soldiers standing on every street corner and armored vehicles parked everywhere she looked.

Pulling down the brim of her baseball cap, Jordan darted from the taxi to the cathedral across the street. Ignoring the curious gazes of two soldiers standing nearby, she darted up the cathedral steps and tugged on the cathedral doors. They were locked. With her heart jumping up her throat, she knocked briskly on the dense wood. “Hurry, please!” she begged, as the soldiers started to approach her.

They were almost upon her when a window set into the bigger door slid open, revealing the face of Father Benedict. “Jordan!” he exclaimed, glancing behind her. With a scrape, the big door swung open. The priest yanked her inside and slammed the door shut, sliding a bar across the threshold.

“Jordan,” he said again, “What are you doing here?” His face struck her as pale in the gloomy antechamber.

“I’ve come for Miguel, of course.”

“Miguel? But—”

“But, what?” Her pitch rose with alarm.

“A woman from the American embassy was just here this morning,” he announced in bewilderment. “She showed me a note explaining that she was having Miguel escorted home to you.”

The floor of the musty space seemed to perform a slow turn. The woman in question had to be Solomon’s contact, the one who’d said she would have Miguel evacuated with the embassy workers. “No,” Jordan cried, so profoundly disappointed that she would have collapsed if the priest hadn’t caught her.

A rapping at the door startled them both. “They won’t dare breach the door,” he whispered with confidence, drawing her deeper into the nave. “Come inside, and we’ll talk about this situation.”

“But I have to go after Miguel,” Jordan protested.

“That may not be possible,” he retorted grimly.

The pounding at the door had ceased. The light of the stained-glass windows bathed the priest’s robes as they paused in the sanctuary.

“The woman who came this morning—Lucy Donovan—didn’t know if she could get back into the city. The Populists are marching on Caracas as we speak.”

More bad news. “But I have to get Miguel. I have forms that need to be signed in his presence. I have the money to pay for him!”

The priest startled her by pulling her into his embrace. “Peace, Jordan,” he murmured, fiercely. “We must think prayerfully about your next move. God got you this far. He’ll see you through,” he promised.

Jordan swallowed heavily.
Okay,
she thought
, but does God know that I only have four days left on my visa?

Within the next six hours, Father Benedict summoned Señor Lorenzo, the lawyer, to the cathedral to receive Jordan’s payment. The lawyer secured a seat for her on a public bus bound for Caracas. He even agreed to escort her to the bus terminal.

Jordan bid a sorrowful farewell to the priest, not knowing if she would ever see him again.

“I’m sorry I can’t go with you to the terminal,” he apologized. “I’m a wanted man out there,” he added with a mocking smile.

“Thank you for everything and for taking care of Miguel.”

“The pleasure was all mine, Jordan. Now, go. Be safe.”

At the bus terminal, Jordan waited in the lawyer’s car until the last possible moment. As a result, she got the only seat remaining, between an open window and a woman holding a pig. She took it gratefully, pulled her cap down over her eyes, and tried to sleep. She had many long hours ahead of her.

But the pig squirmed continuously, and the bus hit potholes that slammed Jordan’s temple against the window, startling her from shallow slumber. The occasional volley of gunfire in the distance had her snatching the hat out of her eyes in fear.

It was just as Solomon had predicted, Jordan thought with a frozen heart: Venezuela’s bid for democracy was doomed. Would she even be able to get Miguel out before the Populists took complete control?

Afternoon dragged into evening. A tangerine sunset drew Jordan’s gaze to the rolling western plains. The wild rugged beauty of untamed land made her think of Solomon. Regret lanced her heart, followed by an aching emptiness. He and Silas seemed so far away.

Her consolation was Miguel—
if
she found him.
If
she got him out in time.

The sun dropped from sight, drawing darkness behind it. Exhausted, Jordan closed her eyes and lost herself to dreams in which Solomon held her close, murmuring assurances that Miguel would be all right.

The realization that the bus had stopped awakened her abruptly. It was past midnight, she saw, pressing the light on her wristwatch. The low murmuring of passengers infused the idling bus with tension. “What’s going on?” she asked the woman beside her.

Speaking in rapid Spanish in a dialect difficult to understand, the woman said something about a road block.

Jordan peered fearfully up the length of the bus. At first, the glare of lights ahead suggested traffic backed up on the highway. But then, with a shiver of dread, she made out the shapes of tanks, parked sideways to prevent the passing of vehicles. Soldiers were leaning into cars, speaking to the drivers, then waving them on.

Jordan swallowed against a dry mouth. She carried both her passport and her visa in her backpack. She wasn’t in the country illegally, and yet Father Benedict had warned her that Americans were being picked up and questioned, and those believed to be supporters of the Moderate government were not released. With just four days left on her visa, she could not afford delay of any kind.

“Do you know where we are?” she asked her companion, her pulse accelerating with fear and desperation.

“Just outside of Caracas,” the woman replied.

Jordan sought landmarks beyond the glare of the blockade. She made out a forested hill dotted with lights that signified buildings, civilization. “I need to get off the bus,” she said out loud.

The woman whispered something to her husband who sat across the aisle. She then turned back to Jordan. “Use the door at the back,” she suggested. “Perhaps the soldiers won’t see you.”

“Thank you,” said Jordan, patting the pig’s head as she squeezed out of her seat. Considering that Venezuela’s poorest supported the Populist coup, she was lucky they weren’t grabbing hold of her.

The latch on the emergency exit was stuck. With escalating panic, Jordan jiggled it. The old man sitting closest to the door offered assistance. The latch yielded with a squeak. Jordan croaked out a word of thanks, eased the door open and jumped out. She shut it quietly, unwilling to draw attention to herself.

The bus’s fumes filled her nostrils as she peered toward the blockade, measuring her ability to vault the low wall at the edge of the roadway without being seen.
Solomon could do it,
she thought, tightening the straps on her backpack.

Without warning, the bus moved forward, leaving Jordan no choice but to sprint out of the traffic. With her heart in her throat, she raced toward the wall, bounding upward and bruising her knees.

A warning shout sounded over the rumble of engines. In the next instant, gunfire cracked the air. A bullet whistled past her head. On hands and knees, Jordan scrambled toward the vegetation growing on the hillside.

Oh, Jesus!
The metallic taste of fear filled her mouth.
She’d been shot at. She could’ve been killed!

Raised voices and the beam of a powerful spotlight warned her that they were coming after her. She commanded herself to rise on rubbery legs and run. But the incline was nearly vertical. Grasping the limbs and branches she could now see because of the light shining up at her, she hauled herself upward, weighted by sudden terror and the pull of gravity.

The vegetation thinned and then there was a guard rail. Vaulting it, she found herself on a street above the highway. Spying an alley, Jordan sprinted pell-mell into its welcoming darkness, putting distance between herself and the sound of pursuit.

She had covered four blocks at a dead run before the stitch in her side forced her to a gasping halt. She stood by an abandoned factory, utterly lost, shaking from head to toe, trying to catch her breath. A car cruised by, and she shrank back into the shadows.

What now?
she thought, digging in her backpack for her cell phone. It hadn’t worked at all in Puerto Ayacucho, but perhaps it would here, in this modern city.

With trembling hands, she eyed the digital display and quickly silenced the ringer that indicated a new message.

Solomon had called her.

Putting her back to the wall, her heart racing to see what he’d had to say, she played his message back, closing her eyes as the rumble of his voice filled her ears.

“Jordan,” he said on a note that brought goose bumps to her skin and tears to her eyes, “if you have any sense whatsoever, you will get in touch with Lucy Donovan. I’m going to read you her cell phone number.”

Relief made Jordan’s knees tremble. Solomon had thrown her a lifeline, giving her hope that he hadn’t cut her out of his life forever. She memorized the number, and whispering it over and over to herself, she dialed Lucy Donovan with fingers that shook so badly, she could scarcely accomplish the feat.

Lucy Donovan had instructed Jordan to look for a silver Hummer with tinted windows. When a vehicle fitting that description squeezed into the alleyway heading toward their designated rendezvous point, Jordan first thought it was a tank.

She pressed herself against a cinder-block wall, cringing as it approached her, but then a beam of light glinted on the silver fender wall, and she realized this was Lucy, who, despite Jordan’s sketchy description of where she was, had found her within an hour of her call.

Jordan darted over to the waiting vehicle and pulled the door open.

“Hurry,” said the woman at the wheel. “There’s a curfew.”

Jordan climbed into the leather seat, shut the door, and grappled for her seat belt. The SUV took off, turned a sharp corner, and headed up a hill.

There was no sign of Miguel in the car, only a shovel on the floor of the seat behind her. “Where’s my son?” Jordan asked.

“Safe,” said the woman. “You’ll see him soon.”

The interior of the vehicle was dark, but Jordan could tell that Lucy Donovan was younger than she would have thought, her dark hair caught up in a ponytail. She wore black clothing, and there was a dirt stain on her right cheek, evidence that she’d been using that shovel a short while ago. What on earth for?

The woman flicked a glance at her and then at her rearview mirror. She turned abruptly left. “You are either extremely brave,” she said in a cool voice, “or extremely naive.”

Jordan stiffened. “How is Miguel?” she asked, choosing to ignore the comment. The woman was going well out of her way for her.

“He’s fine,” she answered with certainty. “He’ll be glad to see you.”

“I went all the way to Puerto Ayacucho, and he wasn’t there,” Jordan quietly accused.

Lucy flexed her fingers on the steering wheel. “You shouldn’t have come into Venezuela in the first place,” she opined. “The airport is being overtaken as we speak. Everyone but DEA agents, hard-core military attachés, and code clerks have left the country.”

Jordan’s heart stopped, then started again. How would she get out of the country with the airport closed? “I need someone at the embassy to sign the adoption papers,” she said, deciding she would face that obstacle later.

“It’s a little late for that,” said the woman quietly.

“But the embassy isn’t evacuated yet,” Jordan pointed out.

“I just told you most of the personnel have already left the embassy.”

“But someone could sign his papers,” Jordan insisted.

Lucy thinned her lips. “We’ll see,” she said without optimism.

As if on cue, light flared in the night sky, and the sound of an explosion vibrated the shell of the SUV. Jordan gripped the armrest, her heart in her throat.

“That came from the airport,” Lucy informed her. “The few workers remaining at the embassy will be evacuated soon. You can leave with them.”

“Only if Miguel comes with me,” Jordan replied. “I won’t leave again without him.”

Lucy Donovan cut her a reflective glance. Silence filled the vehicle as she switched into a lower gear, and they ascended yet another steep, narrow road, seemingly bound for the top of the mountain where high-rise apartments loomed toward a starry sky.

“Thank you for coming to get me,” Jordan added. Better to be with fellow Americans than lost and alone.

“You’re welcome,” Lucy said, matter-of-factly.

Her earlier words,
You can leave with them,
echoed in Jordan’s head. “Aren’t you leaving the country also?” she asked.

“Eventually,” Lucy replied.

The vague answer made Jordan curious, but she had worries of her own to preoccupy her—like whether Miguel would be able to come with her this time. The memory of her last evacuation filled her with premonition.

What if the powers that be refused to evacuate Miguel? She couldn’t remain in Venezuela indefinitely, hiding from persecution, while managing to care for him.