Escape Out of Darkness (12 page)

His strong back was slippery with sweat. It felt good to her, strong and real and hot, and she moved her head to place her
mouth against his slightly bony shoulder, opening it to taste the dampness their lovemaking had brought forth. Then his head moved down, catching her mouth, kissing her with a sweet passion that had only begun to be sated. And the slow coils of desire began to burn again, and she was wide awake once more.

There was no way she could deny it. Her body was already reacting to the renewed proof of his desire, tightening around him in reminiscent, anticipatory spasms of longing. “We’re going to be sorry,” she said, trailing hot, hungry little kisses down his chest.

“Maybe,” Mack said. “Maybe not.” And he flipped over, bringing her with him, and smiled up at her, a devilish, sexy grin that wrung her heart. “Okay, kid. Your turn to do all the work.”

She looked down at him, considering for a long moment. “Pulaski,” she said, shifting slightly and watching with pleasure as his eyes glazed, “you’re going to be my downfall.”

He looked up. “God, I hope so, Maggie May. I surely hope so.”

It had been a strange, uncomfortable morning. Maggie woke up first, crawled from beneath the tangle of limbs, and made it to the shower before Mack could pull her back. She killed as much time as she could, then went directly down to the small, clean lobby to find out about flights to Tegucigalpa. By the time she came back to the room, Mack was up and dressed.

She didn’t want to look at Mack and see that warm, tender look in his eyes that completely demoralized her. He seemed suddenly much larger, filling the small hotel room with his presence, and yet she knew it was an illusion. He wasn’t much taller than her almost six feet. She felt nervous, unsure of herself and her reactions to the almost shocking events of the night before. The feelings he stirred in her left her disoriented, quiet, and in desperate need of time to think and reflect.

But right now time was their most precious commodity. So she entered the room, avoiding his gaze, moving straight to the window and looking out over the courtyard. The soft trade breezes blew her damp hair against her forehead, soothing her. “We’re taking the first flight out of here—I’ve arranged for a taxi to take us to the airport. Was there anything you needed to buy before we go?” Her voice was cool, distant, friendly, and she allowed herself a brief look at him before her eyes skittered away.

Hurt and anger clouded his hazel eyes, but his rough, drawling voice sounded just as unmoved as hers. “I think I’ve got everything I need. Tegucigalpa’s the biggest city in the country,
according to Fodor’s. I’m sure if we need anything else, we can find it there.”

“Yes, I’m sure we can,” she said, staring out at the leaves gently moving in the soft wind. She forced herself to turn, smiling brightly at him. “Let’s go.”

He waited. Watching her. He was going to say something, she just knew it. He was going to open that sexy mouth of his that had done such shocking things to her last night and say, “About last night …”

Without a word, he stuffed their damp clothes in the knapsack, fastened it, and hoisted it over his shoulder. “Let’s go,” was all he said.

They slept the short flight from La Ceiba to Tegucigalpa, careful not to touch each other. There’d been an uncomfortable moment when they’d taken their seats in the small commuter plane, and Maggie couldn’t keep her eyes from meeting his as she fastened the seat belt.

“You’re not the slightest bit nervous?” he asked her, his voice nothing more than politely curious. They might never have clung together on the shattered wing of a downed plane, might never have kept each other alive and alert during those endless hours.

“Not the slightest,” she said, and it was only a little bit of a lie. “What about you?”

“Scared shitless,” he said. “But then, I’ve never made any claim to being perfect. I have real emotions. I get angry, I get scared, I get hurt. What about you?” There was no mistaking the pulsing anger in his voice.

Maggie knew that sooner or later she was going to have to face what happened, sooner or later they were going to have to talk about it. But not right now, when she was trying to hide the fact that her palms were sweating, not right here when they were surrounded by tourists and businessmen and flight attendants.

“You should know by now that I do my absolute best not to
let things faze me,” she said in her coolest voice. “Life is a great deal more comfortable that way.”

“I’m sure it is,” he snapped, and he didn’t say another word the entire trip.

If his nagging, impertinent questions made her edgy, his silence was even worse. As they made their way through Tegucigalpa, Mack followed her with a leashed docility that she had little doubt would explode sooner or later. She found she was looking forward to it.

Tegucigalpa was a bustling, growing city, nestled in one of Honduras’s many valleys, with new construction abounding on the outskirts and in the center of the capital. The pastel houses, the red-tiled roofs, the twisting little neighborhoods and charming, colonial ambience made Maggie think twice about settling for the anonymous comfort of the Holiday Inn Plaza. But not three times. That anonymity was just what they needed while she made contact with the head of the rebels.

The government of Honduras had cracked down recently, ordering the various bickering groups of rebels to maintain a lower profile in the country’s capital. It might prove more difficult finding them than she supposed. She also had to figure out what she was going to do with Mack while she made contact. While it was unlikely that word of his involvement with the New York drug deal could have filtered all the way down here, Maggie didn’t dare rule it out.

Mack waited in the spacious lobby of the new Holiday Inn Plaza while she checked in, followed her as she led the way to their room on the third floor overlooking the charming city and the mountains that ringed it.

Finally he spoke. “Where am I sleeping?”

There were two double beds in the spacious, American-style hotel. “Like a five-hundred-pound gorilla, Pulaski, you can sleep anywhere you damn please.”

He didn’t smile. “Which bed do you want?”

So it was going to be like that, was it, she thought dishearteningly. She had no one to blame but herself. She’d known it was
a mistake from the start, she’d been deliberately cool all morning, and it was no wonder he was setting his own distances between them.

“The bed by the window,” she said in an even voice. “I like to be near the light.”

Mack nodded, dropping the knapsack on the other bed. And then he kicked off his shoes and sank down onto her bed, stretching out and placing his hands behind his head. “Good. I like this one better too.” And his eyes were challenging.

Her eyes met his challenge for a long, unwavering moment. Then she sank down in one of the chairs. “I want you to stay here while I contact the RAO.”

“The who?”

“The RAO. The … God, I can’t remember what the letters stand for, and I don’t really give a damn. It’s the largest group of rebels. They’re the ones working the most with the CIA—they should know where Van Zandt is.”

“And you want me to stay here while you talk to them? Forget it, Maggie.”

“Pulaski, we can’t be sure they haven’t been warned about you. Your voice is distinctive—all they’d have to do is hear that rasp and recognize you.”

“Then I won’t talk. I can be discreet, Maggie. But I’m not going to let you go into a lion’s den alone.”

“I don’t need some goddamned man watching out for me!” The nervous tension that had been simmering within her all morning ignited, and fury lit through her like a forest fire. “Don’t think that sleeping with me gave you some sort of rights over me. I can take care of myself, and I’m not about to start relying on some insecure male who’s got something to prove and thinks he owns me. No one owns me, mister, and no one is responsible for my well-being but me.”

He remained calm and unmoved during her tirade. “Got anything else to say, Superwoman?” he taunted gently.

Her anger evaporated as swiftly as it had come. “All right.
I’m sorry for flying off the handle. Why do you want to come with me?”

“Because it’s my butt you’re trying to save. I figure I have some responsibilities to myself, even if you won’t let me have any toward you. It would be nice if you could look upon this as a cooperative effort—you save me when the need arrives, I return the favor when the time comes. But I know you have problems with that, and that’s okay. I just don’t want to sit in the Holiday Inn waiting to hear what’s happened to you.”

Maggie laughed, a forced laugh, but a laugh all the same. “Tell you what. Keep your mouth shut and your shades on. As far as anyone’s concerned, you’re my husband, Jack Portman.”

“God, we’re back to him again?”

“We’re back to him again. I don’t suppose I’ll fool the RAO, but unless the informer at Third World Causes has been amazingly efficient, they shouldn’t suspect you at all.”

“You think there’s an informer? Is that how people managed to find us time after time? Is that why Peter Wallace wound up dead?” They were reasonable enough questions, ones to which Maggie had no answers.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m being paranoid again. But you’re not going to stay put and let me find out, are you?”

“You know me pretty well by now.”

Maggie shrugged. She did know him pretty well by now, and she knew he was determined to stick to her like glue. “Well, then, we’re just going to have to find out together. Let’s go.”

He’d already slid his feet back into his battered Nikes. “Yes, ma’am. I’m ready.”

The headquarters of the RAO had been moved, at the Honduran Government’s polite but inflexible request, from the high-rise office building in downtown Tegucigalpa to an unprepossessing location across the river in one of the less desirable neighborhoods. Everything looked prosaically normal, the neatly painted lettering on the plaque outside the soft pink building, the children playing in the streets. Even the armed
soldiers standing guard outside the main entrance were relaxed and smiling. Until Maggie asked for Enrique Castanasta in her liquid Spanish.

“Who wants him?” the suddenly hostile soldier demanded in thickly accented Spanish. The expression in his dark, distrustful eyes suggested that no mere female could have anything of importance to discuss with such an illustrious person.

She hesitated. On the one hand, if she gave them her phony name it would give them some measure of protection. There was a good chance someone at Third World Causes was far too talkative and then she’d be in trouble. But Enrique Castanasta was not the sort to grant interviews to any American
turista
who happened to show up, even accompanied by a hulking, mute male. She was far more likely to get to see him and to find out where Van Zandt was if she told him a variant of the truth.

“Margrethe Bennett of Third World Causes, Ltd.,” she said. Mack didn’t make a sound, didn’t move a muscle, but she could feel his sudden tension. “This is my companion, Jack Portman. We’re good friends of Jeffrey Van Zandt, and we’re hoping General Castanasta could help us find him.”

The names meant something to him; she could tell by the flickering of his basilisk eyes. But which names—Van Zandt and Third World Causes? Or Margrethe Bennett and Mack’s previously used alias? Or all of them? His reply wasn’t illuminating. “Wait here.”

Maggie stood there with the afternoon sun beating down on her bare head, wishing she’d managed to arm herself with a pair of mirrored sunglasses like Mack’s. Her rumpled jumpsuit was already sticking to her in the heat, her feet hurt, and her nerves were strung as tightly as high wire.

“Why the hell did you give him your real name?” Mack muttered in her ear. “Weren’t you taking a big chance?”

“It was either that or not get in to see Castanasta at all,” she replied without turning. “Don’t bug me, Portman. I know what I’m doing.”

“I sure as hell hope so.” He stepped back as the soldier reappeared in the doorway.

“He’ll see you. Alone,” he added, waving his machine gun as they both stepped forward.

Maggie shook her head. “We go together or not at all.”

The soldier shrugged. “Suit yourself, gringa. I am certain it will make no difference to the general.”

Maggie’s shrug matched his, and her smile in the blazing afternoon sun was brilliant. “Perhaps,” she replied. “But I wouldn’t count on it if I were you. Many people would be distressed if the RAO didn’t help us reach Van Zandt. People of influence and power, people who support your noble cause with their hearts and their money.” She kept her voice neutral. Mack could probably hear the cynicism in her voice, if he even understood her Spanish, but the soldier in front of her took her words at face value.

“I will check.” Once more he disappeared into the building, once more he reappeared, gesturing the two of them in with the barrel of his machine gun. It took all Maggie’s willpower not to skirt the evil-looking weapon nervously.

“Senora Bennett, how may I help you?” General Enrique Castanasta was all shiny teeth and charm. His office was small and surprisingly luxurious, and everything was all affability. An affability Maggie instinctively distrusted.

“I’m trying to find Jeffrey Van Zandt. He’s aided Third World Causes over the last three years, and we were counting on his help on a small matter. We have reason to believe he’s working in a training camp somewhere north of the Nicaraguan border, and we hoped you might be able to help us.”

“If only I could, senora,” Castanasta said, the regret in his voice but not in his eyes. “We know of Third World Causes, though we are as yet unsure whether to count them as friends. And we know of Van Zandt and his training camp. Unfortunately the camp is not stationary, nor is it even always on this side of the border. For all I know, Senor Van Zandt might be in
Managua at this very moment. Or he might be back in Washington.”

“Do you have any idea where there might be training camps?” she persisted.

Castanasta shrugged, smiling. “Who can say? I may be a general, senora, but I am merely a desk-bound bureaucrat. We exist here in Tegucigalpa to raise money and disperse it to where it is most needed. Two weeks ago we had two thousand troops on the eastern coast. Last week they were just north of El Paraíso. Who knows where they will be tomorrow?” He stood, and Maggie had no choice but to follow suit. She was aware of Mack behind her, silent, watching, waiting.

“I am sorry I can be of no further help, senora.”

“Do you suppose the ACSO might know of his whereabouts?” She came up with one last try.

It was the wrong try. The RAO and the ACSO were competing rebel factions, competing for media attention and money, completely ignoring the fact that they were ostensibly on the same side. Castanasta’s affable smile vanished, his small, rather cruel mouth snapped shut, and he moved to the door, the interview clearly at an end.

“Who can say with the ACSO?” he grumbled. “They are a pack of dogs, chasing their own tails. I would like to think the United States Government would be wiser than to waste the small amount of money they’ve allocated for us to fools like them. But that is probably a vain hope.”