Hush (23 page)

Clearly not that interested in a stranger in their town, the card players only glanced up when she walked in. None of them said anything, so her booted footsteps sounded very loud on the cracked tile floor as she walked up the narrow room to the back. The only clean spots on the floor were where things had spilled, and her boots made sticky noises with each step.

“
Buenas tardes
, gentlemen.” The dog sat beside her when she stopped beside the scarred, beat-up oak table.

“
¿Quién de ustedes es el oficial policía?”

“I speak English.” The man closest to her slung a beefy arm over the back of his chair and looked at her from beneath the rim of a grimy black-and-orange baseball cap with a roaring tiger emblazoned on the front.
A faded black short-sleeved shirt pulled across his large belly, exposing a lot of thick black hair on his barrel chest and the fleshy “smile” where his shirt parted from his pants.

Acadia kept her eyes on his face. Small, close-set, dark eyes. Heavy jowls, black five-o'clock shadow. Honest to God, he looked like every bad cop she'd ever seen in a movie. His accent was very heavy as he said proudly, “I am Police Chief José Fejos.”

Of course he was
. “Police Chief, my name is Acadia Stark. My husband is at the mission right now, fighting for his life. He was shot by kidnappers—”

He leaned forward, popping two buttons off the bottom of his shirt in the process. “You are
American?
”

“Yes, we—”

“You have seen the Bengals?”

She frowned. How had the conversation switched? “Are there tigers here?” Not that she'd ever heard.

“Cincinnati.”

“Cincin—Oh!” The penny dropped. “The Cincinnati Bengals
football
team. No. I've never seen them.”

“Eh. Who shot your husband?” Now he sounded disappointed, and certainly not interested in her shot husband.

She took a deep breath. “We were kidnapped from our hotel room by a woman named Loida Piñero. Have you heard of her?”

“No.” He turned back to the game and picked up his cards. “You have papers, to be in my country?” He didn't look at her as he asked the question, instead reaching for
an unlit, soggy-tipped cigar in an overflowing ashtray beside him.

The dog leaned his thin body against her legs, as if lending her his trembling courage, and she stroked his head. “No,” she told the asshole police chief. “I told you, we were
kidnapped
. With just the clothes—”

He picked up a pink Bic lighter from beside the ashtray and swiped the cigar a couple of times with the flame until the end glowed red, then gave a couple puffs to get it going.

The choking stench drifted over her face. God, was he smoking manure? Disgusting. The stink obliterated the yummy fragrance of onions, not to mention any desire she'd had to eat.

He turned his Bengals cap her way and blew out a foul cloud. “Por
la ley—by law
—you must carry your passport and
tarjeta de ingreso
—your entry card—at all times.”

“Sí,” The guy to his right agreed. Bald as a billiard ball, he wore paint-splattered blue coveralls, was missing both eyeteeth, and had a tattoo of an openmouthed snake crawling up his thick neck. Lovely.

“
Por la ley
,” Acadia said tightly, glancing back at the portly police chief, “Americans shouldn't be kidnapped in the dead of night and held for ransom. Sh—stuff happens. No, I don't have any papers. I would like to report the kidnapping, and then I need your help to get back to Caracas as soon as my husband is well enough to travel. In the meantime, I'd like the use of a phone to call—”

“You have American dollars to pay?” He gestured with his cards for the man to his left to play his hand.

“To pay for
what
exactly? A new entry card?”

The tall, skinny man on Fejos's left looked to be a hundred years old. His shoulder-length white hair was as fine as dandelion fluff, and his deeply lined face was baked dark brown by the tropical sun. Seemingly oblivious to the conversation, he tossed in a few coins and kept staring at his cards.

“How will you pay for Sister Clemencia's”—the chief shot an inquiring glance at the guy seated across from him—“hospitality?”

As with the guerrillas she'd thought she'd left behind, Acadia would not like to bump into any of these men in a dark alley. She'd particularly not like to bump into the last guy, even in broad daylight.

In fact, if she had her way, she'd actively avoid him.

He looked about thirty, fighting fit, with bulging muscles and an attitude that dared anyone to try to knock the chip right off his linebacker shoulder. Probably just to kill the offender stone cold dead.

He looked like a prisoner, a gangster, and a nightmare all rolled into one. His dead black eyes ran over her like a creepy caress, lingering on her mouth before sliding a greasy visual trail to measure her breasts. She restrained herself from shuddering with everything in her body and looked back at the chief and said firmly, “I'll send her money from Caracas.”

“How much money?” Fejos wanted to know.

“It depends … Look. If you can't help me, just say so. But is there anyone in this town who can or will help two Americans get back to Caracas? We'll pay well.”

“You can use my
teléfono
cellular,” the chief offered, taking a brandnew iPhone from his breast pocket. She was so tired, Acadia didn't even blink at the incongruity of seeing it in this setting.

Almost weak with relief, she reached for it. He snatched it back. “Five hundred American dollars.”

“Come on—” She modified the anger in her voice. She was blond, she was relatively attractive. She'd catch more flies with honey. Relaxing her shoulders and smoothing out her crimped features, she dug up a smile. “Help me out here, guys. I don't want to buy your phone, and honestly, I can't afford five hundred dollars.”
You opportunistic dirtbag.

Fejos grabbed her left hand, and she almost screamed the rusted ceiling down because she a), hadn't braced herself to be touched, and holy crap b), did not want to be touched by him. “Where is your wedding ring?”

“The kidnappers stole all our jewelry. Everything.” The lie slid effortlessly from her tongue. Zak's watch was tucked inside one of her pants pockets right beside the St. Christopher medal. “And it was a beautiful—”

“How much money you got?”

“I don't have—” Lightbulb. It flashed behind her eyes and she said quickly, “I have twenty American dollars. I'll go get it for you. Then can I make a call?”

He waved his sausage fingers like he was the freaking
King of Siam and blew out a cloud of noxious smoke on the word “Go.”

Acadia went. The dog kept up as she jogged across the street, went inside the mission, and returned to the room Zak had been in. With a quick glance around, she unlaced her left boot, tugged it off, and removed the folded twenty she'd tucked inside a century or so ago.

Staff Sergeant Dad had been right. A girl always had to have a little mad money with her.

She and Zak had exactly twenty bucks between them. But with one phone call to her friends, she could have money here—wherever “here” was—within hours. Or at worst, by the next day.

She and the dog returned to the bar.

Acadia held on to the twenty and extended her other hand for the phone. “Thanks, this is so great of you to let me use your phone.”

Fejos plucked the bill out of her hand. Serious misgivings swooped in her stomach like dive-bombing pterodactyls. She didn't trust him any further than she could throw his lard ass, which would have required a crane, but she needed that phone.

“One phone call.”

“Right.” Fortunately, she remembered the number of the hotel, since she'd confirmed her early reservation. Twice. Her friends would be there. Worried out of their minds, rallying the police. Sending out search parties …

The phone rang. And rang. And rang.

The men at the table watched her, and she could
almost read their minds. She wished she couldn't. She half turned her back.

Pick up. Pick up. Pick up.

The dog growled low in his throat as suddenly the phone was plucked from her fingers mid-ring. Fejos was standing right behind her. “
Sólo una llamada telefónica
,” he told her roughly, tucking the phone into his pocket, then falling back into his chair. He picked up his cards. “You understand? Only one phone call. My telephone is only for police business.” He waved her off as he tossed her twenty into the pot. “Go back to your husband. Where you belong.”

With an iron ball of dread pitted in her stomach, Acadia left the bar, crossed the narrow street, and reentered the clinic.

With nothing left to do, she curled up in the bed Zak had been placed on what felt like hours before. She leaned against the hard metal headboard, causing it to clank against the wall every time she moved to pet the dog, who was curled up on her feet. “We are well and truly screwed, Dogburt. But I'm resourceful. I got us here, didn't I?” She glanced at Zak's watch, now strapped to her wrist. It was way too big, and the face kept sliding under her wrist, but it seemed to be working now. There were scratches and signs of wear all over the cracked face and strap; it reminded her of Zak. Plenty of scars, plenty of stories.

She wondered if she'd ever get to hear any of them. “He's been in surgery for over an hour,” she told the dog, whose cold, wet nose was pressed against her bare foot. “Why's it taking so—”

The door to the room crashed against the wall, scaring the dog to his feet on the thin mattress, and Acadia bolted upright. The man, in a terrifying bloodstained apron, his eyes wild, motioned her to come.
Quickly. “Señora, señora, dale prisa, su marido está muerto.”

Acadia sprang off the bed. “God—what—”

He gestured wildly. “¡
Rápido! Entre por aquí!”

Muerto
. As in … Her knees buckled, and she dropped back onto the hard, saggy mattress to stare at him with dull eyes. “Zak is …” Her mouth dried to bitter cotton.

“Dead?”

TEN

S
till raining.

Zak opened surprisingly heavy lids. No. Inside. Not rain. Hard, narrow bed.

Unfamiliar.

Jennifer?

He waited for the typical heavy sensation of loss to lodge in the pit of his stomach; waited for that cold knot to crystallize as it always did on first waking.

Two beats. Three. It didn't come.

He blinked rapidly, but his vision was still blurry and he couldn't figure out how he'd gotten wherever he was. Had the three of them done the jump from Burj Khalifa's Spire in Dubai?

Yeah, a while back.

Zak frowned. Tibet, about to kayak down the Sanpo River? No. He remembered that trip with Gideon, and several more extreme sports trips the two of them had gone on afterward.

He flipped through memories like old postcards. Jennifer in Dubai, dark hair blowing, laughing into the
wind. That last trip with her. Turkey … smile tight, eyes hard … Haiti—

Tangled honey-blond hair and soft, smiling gray eyes. The sweet, soft fragrance of night-blooming jasmine …

Something inside him lightened, flew free.

Acadia. Venezuela.

Got it. A surge of relief relaxed his limbs as his brain sluggishly ground into gear, moving him into the present. Not the cell. Not jungle. Tent? He blinked rapidly, his vision slamming back into focus. The smell—disinfectant? A hospital, then. His brain connected the dots.

Shot.

From the neat white bandage across his chest and his immobilized left arm, he had to be in a medical unit of some kind.

What hurt? Nothing.

The IV hooked to the side of his bed, dripping into his left arm. No pain. Well, that explained his oddly subdued emotions. But it still didn't tell him where the hell they were. Caracas? Had Acadia actually gotten them back while he'd been out? Impossible. She was good, in a Girl-Scout-be-prepared sort of way, but not
that
good.