Scorpion (5 page)

The attorney general, on the other hand, had bitten into his lower lip and drawn blood. A slight trickle oozed down his chin. That, coupled with his glazed eyes, gave him a crazed vampire kind of look. “Yes,” he said. “The prime minister is right, you should go back to your seat.” The words, whispered above the engine noise, weren’t mean in themselves, but the way he said it, they were threatening. She had seen his fear and he was the kind of man who would never forget it. She wanted to be away from him.

She turned to go back to her seat when she heard the baby cry again. A loud, long wail that seared her soul. There was only one lap child on board. A darling baby girl. She remembered seating them in the forward bulkhead position, right in front of the movie screen in second class. Just on the other side of the curtain. She prayed the child was okay, she had to know.

She turned around, away from her seat next to the DEA man, pushed aside the curtain and stepped into second class and chaos. The overhead luggage lockers had been stuffed to capacity with overweight carry-on bags and many of them had come open during the rapid descent, spilling their contents on the passengers below and out into the aisles.

The baby stopped crying. Her young parents were sharing an oxygen mask, taking turns breathing through it, like a pair of scuba buddies, allowing the baby to wear mom’s mask. She felt like reminding the baby’s father that they were low enough so that he could breathe without it, but she noticed his shaking hands. Sharing the mask with his wife gave him something to do. Made him feel like he was taking care of her.

“
Are we going to make it?” he asked, as his wife was drawing in oxygen.

“
Certainly, but like the captain said we’ll get into Port of Spain a little late.” Maria kept her smile, trying to project an image of calm security to the young couple, just the opposite of how she felt.

The plane lurched to the right and another overhead locker opened. She saw the black bag start to fall and she remembered how heavy it was. Full of bricks, she thought when she’d shoved it up there. She remembered mentally cursing the ground personnel for allowing the passengers to bring aboard carry-on baggage that was obviously too large and too heavy.

She lunged toward the open compartment as the plane careened through more turbulence. Someone screamed. The boy sitting below the falling bag was piercing Maria with innocent blue-eyed trust. The bag was halfway out of the locker. She wanted to scream, tell the boy to move, but she needed all her energy. She slammed her right foot into the deck and dove, hands outstretched. The boy started to look up. The bag was out of the locker. Her stretching fingers tipped it toward the aisle. She tried to loosen her body as she fell, she didn’t want to break anything. She hit the deck and wound up wedged between the bag and a seat stuffed with a large black man. Her right ankle was screaming.

“
Let me help you,” the man said in a rich baritone, and in the fluid movement of a professional athlete he was out of his seat, one hand lifting the bag and the other pulling her off the deck.

Standing, she caught her breath and looked up into his eyes. He looked as if he had played basketball when he was younger.

“
I think I might have sprained my ankle,” she said. She remembered earlier thinking that it was a shame that such a big man had to be folded into one of the cramped second class seats. “There’s an empty seat up in first, if you help me back, you can have it.”

“
No problem.” He looped an arm behind her legs and hefted her off the deck.

“
I didn’t mean you had to carry me.”

“
It’s the best way.” He turned sideways and sidestepped up the aisle toward first class. She pushed the curtain aside as he carried her through.

“
Are you all right?” the prime minister said as they passed his seat.

“
Sprained my ankle.”

“
Ouch,” he said, and she smiled down at him.

“
What happened?” Broxton said, when he looked up and saw her in the arms of the tall man.

“
Sprained my ankle,” she said again, and Broxton scooted over to the window seat as the big man gently put her down in the seat he’d vacated.

“
You can take the seat over there.” She pointed to an empty seat in the second row. He nodded, went forward and took the seat.

She buckled up, then wiggled her ankle.

“
How is it?” Broxton asked.

“
Not sprained, just twisted. It’ll be okay,” she said.

“
That’s good,” he said. He was holding onto both a tight smile and the ring.

“
Squeeze it any tighter and you’ll break it,” she said. Damn, she thought, that came out wrong. She was always putting her foot in her mouth.

He lowered his eyes to the ring, relaxed the tight expression and slipped it back into his pocket. She wondered if it had a case. “You’re right,” he said, looking up and grinning.

“
I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. My mouth is always getting me in trouble.”

“
That what happened to your eye?” he asked.

That got her attention and she bored into his eyes looking for a trace of sarcasm, but found none. She decided to be honest. “Yes,” she said.

“
The cop husband do that?”

“
Yes,” she said. It had been over a week ago and she really thought the makeup covered it.

“
He do it often?”

“
Not so often.” She raised a finger to touch the bruise. She winced and she saw that he noticed.

“
Once is too often,” he said.

“
I’m handling it,” she said.

“
You should leave,” he said. “They never change.”

She broke away from his stare and looked beyond him, out the window. They were flying smoothly now, but the ocean seemed unnaturally close. She saw a sailboat below and wondered what they thought of the big jet flying overhead, so low and so slow.

“
He’ll change,” she said, still looking out the window, but she felt his eyes even as she tried to avoid them.

“
How long have you been waiting?” he asked.

“
Twelve years,” she answered without hesitation. Everyone on the aircraft was worrying about whether or not they were going to live or die this day, including the man sitting next to her, but he was also concerned about her.

“
You could leave,” he said, voice barely above a whisper.

“
And go where?” she said.

“
You’re working. You have a glamorous job. You must have some self esteem left.”

“
I have a lot.” She turned toward him, angry now.

“
Then you could leave,” he repeated.

She bit off her answer by biting into her lower lip. He was right, she had a chance, if only she could be brave enough to take it.

“
What is it?” he asked.

“
I speak Spanish,” she said. “My mother is Mexican.”

“
And?”

“
I have this friend, she works for Iberia, you know, the Spanish Airline. She said I could get on there.”

“
But?”

“
It’d mean moving to Madrid and starting over. No seniority. Less pay.”

“
Do it,” he said.

“
I’m thirty-six, three more years and I’ll have my twenty in. It would be insane. It wouldn’t just mean less money, it’d be a lot less.”

“
How much do you get to keep now?”

That stopped her. How did he know that Earl took all her money, leaving her only a small allowance for food and clothes? It was one of his ways of keeping his fist wrapped around her.

“
Take the Iberia job.”

She looked back into his steady eyes. He didn’t understand. “He’d never let me,” she said. “He’ll come after me.”

“
Maybe, but I doubt it. They get off on the control. If you don’t go back, he’ll most likely look for someone else to dominate.”

“
You make it sound so easy.”

“
It usually is.” His hands were folded in his lap. She noticed that his finger tips were white. He was worried, too, but he did a good job of covering it up.

“
Do you have a picture of your girl?” She wanted to take his mind off his fear and take the conversation away from her problems with Earl.

“
I do,” he said, and she couldn’t help but notice how his blue eyes glowed as he reached toward his back pocket for a wallet. It was a short struggle because the tight fitting Levi’s didn’t want to yield the wallet. He had to shift in the seat in order to get his fingers in the hip pocket and she saw a quick grimace as he pulled it out. From the faded condition of the jeans she’d guessed that he’d had them a long time, and from the way they fit she guessed that he’d been a few pounds lighter when he bought them.

“
My husband never carries anything in his back pocket.” She didn’t know why she said it. She was thinking about the bulge the wallet must have made when he was standing and for some reason she’d pictured Earl standing fully dressed in front of the full length mirror in their bedroom, admiring himself, running his hand over his muscular body, touching his chest, his stomach, his ass.

“
Why not?” Broxton asked.

“
He’s proud of the way he looks. He doesn’t like to break up the lines.”

“
Weightlifter?”

“
How’d you guess?”

“
Weightlifters like to show off.”

“
He doesn’t lift for bulk, he lifts for strength,” she said. For some reason she felt like she had to defend him. “He does all kinds of sports.”

“
Really?”

“
Sure, he hunts.”

“
That figures,” Broxton said.

“
He goes river rafting every chance he gets.”

“
Really? I wouldn’t have guessed it.”

“
He’s on a softball team, they came in second place last year. He bicycles, runs and he swims everyday,” She was rambling and she knew it.

“
All right, he’s into more than body building and killing innocent animals. I still don’t like him.”

“
You don’t know him.” Why was she still defending him.

“
He beats his wife, I don’t need to know anymore.”

“
How about that picture,” she said. Now she really wanted the conversation turned away from her and Earl.

“
Here.” He handed her the open wallet. “It’s my favorite picture of her.”

Maria looked at the picture. It was a black and white photo. The girl staring at her from inside the plastic credit card holder was stunning. She had a model perfect face, not a blemish, a perfect roman nose, perfect wide set eyes, gray in the photo, but she guessed they were blue, perfect blond hair flowing past her shoulders, perfect high cheekbones, perfect chin, perfect woman, perfect girl. “What color are her eyes?” Maria asked.

“
Blue,” Broxton said.

“
Perfect,” Maria said.

“
She sure is,” he said.

“
She looks happy here.”

“
It was taken the day the happiness came back. She went right down to the studio at the mall, no makeup, no fancy hairdo. She wanted her happiness recorded forever, just her happiness, nothing else.”

“
Where’d it go, the happiness?” Maria asked.

“
A drunk driver took it away. She was fifteen and riding in the back seat. That’s why she survived.”

“
Who was in front?”

“
Our mothers. Hers and mine. Their lives were snuffed out in an instant.”

“
I’m sorry,” Maria said.

“
It killed something inside of her, her father too. For over a year they went through the motions of living. Then finally Warren, her father, started to come out of it, but Dani was lost to all of us. I suppose I could have helped, she was my best friend, but I was suffering, too. When we started living again, Dani was a recluse. She failed her sophomore year in high school and had to be sent back a grade and we just sort of lost touch.

“
Warren tried everything—counseling, doctors, shrinks—nothing seemed to help. So he threw himself into his business, built it up, sold it and bought property in the booming Southern California market. He made a fortune, but he still lived next door, in a fifty-year-old home on the edge of the barrio.

“
Then it happened. It was Dani’s eighteenth birthday and she was as glum as ever. I hadn’t seen her in a while, but I knew what day it was, so I went to the pet store and bought a collie puppy. I took it next door after dinner. That pup took one look at her, jumped in her lap, shook his little body like he’d just come in from the ocean and promptly pissed.

“
Warren and I watched in dumb amazement. Then Dani smiled, then she laughed and then the light came back into her eyes. It took three years and a collie puppy.

“
After that she threw herself into school. She majored in French, minored in business and studied Spanish and Japanese in her spare time. She managed her father’s successful Senate campaign before going into business and making a fortune in her own right.”

“
Senate campaign, as in the United States Senate?” Maria asked. She wanted to ask more about Dani, because something about her picture was familiar. She knew her from somewhere, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.