Flirting with Disaster (25 page)

She knocked. Waited.

Nothing.

She knocked again.
Please be home. . . . Please. . . .

She listened for any movement inside the house. She heard nothing.

When she knocked for the third time, she came to the ominous realization that this wasn’t going to be as simple as she’d hoped. Gabrio’s car was here, but he wasn’t answering the door.

Peering through the window, she saw the interior of the dilapidated little house. The television was on. An ashtray on the coffee table held the butt of a cigarette, still smoldering. Gabrio was definitely home, but he was nowhere to be seen. Sera looked through the doorway into the kitchen, then craned her neck around and managed to see part of the way down the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Nothing.

She believed that Gabrio might be sick, but she doubted that the flu had anything to do with it. She remembered the crushing fear that had been in his eyes when he’d brought Adam to her—the look of a person who’s in the middle of something dark and hideous and doesn’t know how to get out of it. Any sickness he was experiencing right now was probably the result of guilt and horror all meshed together until it had incapacitated him. He wouldn’t answer the door because he was afraid Adam was dead. Or that he was still alive. Maybe both.

She banged on the door again. “Gabrio! Please answer the door! Please! I have to talk to you!”

She tried the door. It was locked. She knocked on it again, then took one more look through the window.

Gabrio was peering through the doorway leading to the hall.

As he came into the living room and walked slowly to the front door, her heart leapt with hope. The lock clicked, and he opened the door a crack. His face was tight and drawn, with dark circles under his eyes, and when he spoke his voice was coarse and raspy.

“What do you want?”

“Let me in, Gabrio. Please. I need to talk to you.”

He swallowed hard. “Adam’s dead, isn’t he?”

“No! He’s alive. For now, he’s okay. But I need to get him to a hospital in Monterrey. We want you to come with us.”

Gabrio blinked with surprise. “Come with you?”

“I know you’re afraid of your brother. You should be. Once it comes out that Adam is alive, he’ll hurt you. You have to get out of here.”

“No. My brother won’t hurt me.”

“When you brought Adam to me, you said he would.”

“No,” he said sharply. “I shouldn’t have said that. My brother would never hurt me. Never.”

“Then you’ve told him you saved Adam’s life?”

Gabrio’s jaw trembled. “N-no. Not yet.”

“If you’re so sure he’ll protect you, then why haven’t you told him?”

Tears gathered in his eyes. He tried to push the door closed, but she put her hand against it.

“Gabrio. Please listen to me. Adam refuses to leave unless you come with us.”

“No. It’s a trick of some kind. You want me to give my brother up for what he did. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“No! I just want you to leave with us! That’s all! We just want you to be safe!”

“I told you Ivan shot him, and now you want to make him pay for it. But I’m not telling anyone else what happened, no matter what! I’m not giving my brother up!”

Gabrio slammed the door and locked it. Sera pounded on it again. “Gabrio, please!”

“Go away!”

“Gabrio!”

She heard his footsteps fade away as he disappeared into the hall again. She turned and leaned against the door, frustration running wild inside her. She had no choice but to go home and tell Adam that she’d failed. And that meant that he would refuse to leave town and get medical attention, which meant he was still in danger.

This nightmare was never going to end.

Sera got into her car. Ten minutes later, she pulled up to her house and went inside. She heard the low hum of the television in her bedroom upstairs. She came into the room to find Adam propped up against the headboard, a look of hopeful expectation on his face.

He muted the television. “Did you talk to him?”

She came over and sat down on the bed next to him. “Yes. He refuses to come with us.”

Adam looked at her incredulously. “But he knows he might be killed as soon as I show myself!”

“He thinks we want him to come with us so we can force him to testify against his brother. And he refuses to do that.”

“Are you kidding? He ought to be telling the whole damned world what his brother did. And he ought to be running from him as fast as he can.”

“Adam, you’ve seen this before. I know you have. Kids always refuse to tell doctors what their abusive parents have done to them. All they want to do is go back home. It’s the only life they know, no matter how horrible it is. Gabrio is no different. No matter how much he knows in his heart that his brother will hurt him, he can’t admit it. And he can’t conceive of anyone wanting to help him, because nobody has ever given a damn about him before.”

Adam shook his head. “He’s so scared. The poor kid is so scared that he’s not thinking straight.”

“Yes. I know. I don’t want him hurt any more than you do, but right now he’s so lost and confused that we might never get through to him.”

“We have to think of another way.”

Sera sighed heavily. “There may not be another way.”

“God, Sera, how in the hell did this happen? He’s going to die, and I can’t do anything about it.”

Sera was silent. She had no idea what to say.

Adam nodded toward the television. “I was watching the news. You’ll be pleased to know my memorial service is scheduled for Thursday morning in San Antonio.” A look of anguish crossed his face. “My sister. I wish I could tell her I’m alive, but I don’t dare. Not yet. God, I can’t even imagine how she feels right now.”

She slid her hand over his arm. “Adam, I don’t want Gabrio hurt any more than you do, but the time may come, very soon, when you’ll have to think about leaving him behind.”

“I can’t.”

“You may not have a choice.”

Adam shook his head in frustration. Then his gaze drifted toward the television, and his eyes suddenly widened. “Sera. Look.”

She turned, shocked to see a familiar face on the screen.

Lisa Merrick.

Adam fumbled for the remote and turned up the sound.

“. . . pilot for a humanitarian organization who was presumed to have died in a plane crash in central Mexico two days ago surfaced alive and well today, only to be arrested in San Antonio on suspicion of drug smuggling. . . .”

Adam stared at the screen with an expression of shocked disbelief. “My God. It’s Lisa. She’s alive.”

chapter fifteen

By the time Lisa arrived at her apartment, it was nearly five o’clock. She’d never spent a more horrendous three hours in her entire life—three long, unbearable hours filled with accusations she’d had to endure, anger she’d had to swallow, and anxiety she’d felt at the thought that Dave was being questioned at the same time she was, with the same accusations being thrown at him as were being thrown at her.

And Robert Douglas was the one who’d tipped off the customs agents.

The very idea that he’d have the audacity to turn the tables on them so completely flabbergasted her. But it hadn’t taken long for her surprise to turn to anger. He may have won this battle, but somehow, someway, she was going to make certain he lost the war.

Right now, though, she had a king-size headache and her mind felt muddled, just as it had felt for the past three hours. Out of desperation that Dave not be dragged down with her, she’d told those agents over and over that he had nothing to do with it, that she alone had knowledge of the drugs in her backpack. But they clearly didn’t believe her. And it was probably because Dave was in there telling the truth. But then, had she really expected him to do anything else?

They told her he was going to be released, just as she was, but she was terrified to see him. She couldn’t bear the look that was sure to be on his face, the one that said,
All I did was
try to help you, and this is what I get?

If he was smart, he was on his way to San Antonio International right now and before the day was out he’d be back in Tolosa where he belonged. She wished she’d never called him that night, wished he’d never come to Santa Rios, wished she was still sitting at that abandoned mining camp, injured and delirious, even if it meant dying there. Anything but having him facing a prison sentence because of her.

She’d taken a cab from the airport to Blue Diamond Aviation, where she’d managed to pick up her car without running into anyone she knew. They’d hear soon enough that she was alive. They’d also hear she’d been detained on drug charges, and she certainly didn’t want to talk to anyone about that.

She strode up the sidewalk leading to her apartment, and as she approached her front door she turned and saw somebody sitting on the porch railing. Her heart skipped wildly.

Dave.

He just sat there, his arms folded and his eyes narrowed, his angry expression sending an avalanche of anxiety plundering through her. He rose slowly. She started to unlock her apartment door, then thought better of it. She turned and faced him, her back to the door.

He approached her, his gait slow and threatening. “Open the door.”

“Why are you here?”

“We have some talking to do.”

She felt a jolt of apprehension. “About what?”

He inched closer, his jaw tight with anger. “I’ve got something to say to you, Lisa, and I can’t guarantee it won’t be at the top of my lungs. So unless you want your neighbors to wander out here to find out what all the commotion’s about, you’d better open the door.”

With every word he spoke, Lisa felt the weight of guilt press against her until she could barely breathe. She turned, her hands shaking, and opened the door. She went inside and headed straight for the kitchen. She heard Dave close and lock the door and drop his bag beside it, then heard his footsteps behind her. She tossed her backpack onto the kitchen table. When she turned back, his expression had become positively glacial.

“Tell me about your drug conviction.”

Lisa felt as if the floor had fallen out from beneath her feet. She would have done anything—anything—to keep him from finding out about that, but apparently the customs officials had filled him in.

“It doesn’t matter now,” she told him.

His eyes widened. “Doesn’t matter? What do you mean, it doesn’t matter? Did you think you could just hand those drugs over to the customs agents and accuse Robert of counterfeiting without them finding out you’d been convicted of a drug offense?”

She blinked. “What?”

“What’s the first thing they do when somebody blows a whistle? They check out the whistle-blower! Even if you hadn’t been accused of the crime yourself, the minute they found out you had a drug conviction any credibility you had while trying to take Robert down would have been shot to hell. And now that you’ve been accused,” he said, glaring at her, “let’s just say that they’re not the least bit inclined to believe anything you say.”

She raised her chin, her voice quivering. “So they told me.”

“I want to know what happened. Tell me how in the hell you got convicted of cocaine possession. And by God, you’d better tell me the truth.”

“I suppose all you want is the facts.”

“That’s a damned good start.”

“Fine. I was at my brother’s apartment. The police stormed the place. Lenny was caught dealing for the fourth time, which meant he bought a fifteen-year prison sentence. They found five grams of cocaine in my purse. I was convicted of possession and got probation.”

“Were you using cocaine?”

“Would you believe me if I told you no?”

“To tell you the truth, right now I don’t know what to believe.”

She glared at him. “Then nothing I say will make any difference, will it?”

“Lisa,” he said, his voice escalating, “if you want me to believe you were innocent of those charges, you’d better start talking!”

“I don’t give a damn
what
you believe!”

He stared at her in silence, his face tight with anger. “Fine. Just forget it. I shouldn’t have come here in the first place. There’s a seven-thirty flight to Dallas. I intend to be on it.”

He started out of the kitchen, and suddenly Lisa couldn’t bear the thought of it ending this way between them. He’d been like a lifeline to her, a lifeline she was watching slip right out of her grasp.

“Dave. Wait.”

He stopped and turned back, his face fixed in a harsh frown. She shouldn’t have to defend herself against accusations that weren’t true. Damn it, she just shouldn’t have to. But she didn’t want Dave walking out of here thinking she was guilty of anything.

“It happened the summer after our high school graduation,” she said. “I wanted out of Tolosa, but I had almost no money and nowhere to go. So I took a chance and called Lenny in San Antonio. He told me I could stay with him as long as I wanted to.”

“I’m listening.”