On Thin Ice (15 page)

“I don’t have any family.”

That made him pause. “What happened?”

“Nothing as dramatic as your story,” she said. “My mother died of an accidental drug overdose when I was seven. Sleeping pills and alcohol, they said. My father was much older, he died in his late sixties. Leaving me, the sole heir to the Pennington fortune.”

“Lucky you.” There was no sympathy in his voice, and she hadn’t expected it.

“Lucky me. So who are you going to call on this dangerous cell phone?”

“I’m going to call in some favors.” He glanced over her in patent annoyance. “Why don’t you go to sleep? We’re heading for Puerto Claro, and it’s going to take most of the day.”

“Why there?”

“Best chance of getting a freighter.”

Dylan popped his head up from the back seat. “Freighter? Dude, I want an airplane! I can’t wait to get the fuck out of this hell hole.”

“The Guiding Light and the army were hand in hand last thing I knew, and I doubt if things have changed. They’re not going to want two such high-profile victims to simply slip out of the country. They’re either going to want to make a big fuss about your escape, or they’re going to want to make you both quietly disappear. Either way, I can’t take any more time making sure you two survive. Either you come with me on the freighter or you’re on your own.”

It was a tempting thought. The sooner she got away from him the happier she was going to be, but she didn’t feel like risking becoming one of the disappeared ones. The idea of a media firestorm was almost as bad.

Dylan spoke first. “Sticking with you, man,” he said, sinking back.

She said nothing. She had no choice, she knew it, and so did he, but she wasn’t going to give him the victory of a quick answer. “You can let me know, Sister Beth,” he said. “If you want I can put in a call to the American Embassy after I’ve finished my phone calls and then drop you in the next town.”

“I haven’t made up my mind,” she said, refusing to be bullied.

She should have remembered she was outclassed and outgunned. “You’re out of time, sweetheart. Either you’re in or you’re out.”

She didn’t give in to the temptation to glare at him, or the even stronger one to stick out her tongue. The very impulse was childish and absurd, given the desperate nature of their situation, but she was feeling childish and stubborn.

“I’m in,” she said.

He said nothing, giving her a sideways glance, but she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he wished she’d given the other answer.

CHAPTER TWELVE

 It was close to dusk when MacGowan pulled the car off the paved road. He’d already made the phone calls he’d needed, then deliberately smashed the phone so his charges wouldn’t be tempted to use it. They had berths on the Martha Rose, a Nigerian freighter sailing from Puerto Claro to Spain tomorrow night at midnight, and in the meantime he needed to keep Beth and Dylan stashed while he dealt with a few things, including forged passports for the three of them. Tomas could dig up internet photos of them and go from there in making the phony documents without them having to provide photos. Tomas was a genius when it came to forgeries, and a genius was what he needed.

“Have you called Peter yet?” Bastien Toussaint had asked him at the end of their short conversation. “He’s been trying to get through to you.”

“I’ll just bet he has,” MacGowan drawled.

“What do you want me to tell him?”

MacGowan only thought about it for a minute. “Tell him to watch his back.” And he broke the connection.

Dylan had already abandoned the car to take a leak, but Beth had stayed put, watching MacGowan out of those unnervingly calm eyes. “Okay, Sister Beth,” he said, coming over to the side door and opening it. “Come on out.”

She made no effort to move, just looked up at him. “I don’t need to use the bathroom.”

“The bathroom, as you call it, is the bushes, and I don’t care whether you use it or not. It’s time to change.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that if we go into Puerto Claro looking like we do we’ll be picked up in no time. I’ve got a much better idea.”

“What?”

He tossed the yards of black and white fabric into her arms. “Meet Sister Maria Elizabeth.”

“No.” She tried to shove it back at him.

“Don’t give me grief. When the church abandoned your mission they left a shitload of things behind, including clothes. No one ever looks too closely at a nun, particularly in a Catholic country. You keep your head down and your mouth shut and let me do the talking and everything will be fine.”

She opened her mouth to say no again, but something in his face stopped her. She was learning, MacGowan thought. Dylan chose that moment to come around the side of the car, chuckling. “Aw, c’mon, Sister Beth. Don’t be such a spoilsport.”

“You too, kiddo,” MacGowan said, tossing another bundle of cloth at Dylan.

The boy actually looked pleased. “I get to be a priest?”

“I’m the priest. Nuns always travel in pairs.”

For a moment the boy’s face was blank with incomprehension. And then he understood. “Oh, no. Hell, no. No fucking way. If there need to be two nuns then you can dress in drag, not me.”

“You’d never pass as a priest. Sorry, kid, but you’re too young. Beth can show you how the outfit goes.”

“I have no idea,” Beth protested, looking at the various pieces of fabric. “This is a terrible idea.”

“Yeah,” Dylan said. “Why don’t we just . . .”

“Enough!” MacGowan thundered, and his squabbling charges fell silent. “I’ve had enough of the two of you. I don’t give a flying fuck how much your families are willing to pay – some things just aren’t worth it. I hear one more complaint, one more disagreement, and I’m leaving you here to find your way home on your own. And I wouldn’t give you very good odds.”

Dylan looked mutinous, but he kept his mouth shut. Beth climbed out of the car, tossing the fabric over the open door. “Come on, Dylan,” she said in a soft voice, “we’ll figure it out together. And just think, it’s going to make one hell of a story later on.”

“I’m not telling anyone I dressed in drag,” he muttered.

“It’s up to you. All I know is I want to get home, and I think you do too. So let’s see how good we are at being nuns. I bet we’re a lot closer to God than MacGowan is.”

Finn was already stripping off his shirt. The dressing across his ribs had come loose, and he yanked it off in frustration, but the butterfly bandages still held and there was no fresh blood. He could see Beth’s assessing eyes on the wound, but she said nothing, merely diving under an enveloping dress of black cotton. He turned his back on them, pulling on the old-fashioned priest’s cassock he’d found.

Whoever had last worn the thing was a man who enjoyed his food, and Finn had to distribute the folds of cloth beneath the rope belt. The priests in Ireland had given up wearing such old-fashioned cassocks, but he could hope the backwaters of South America would be behind the times. He fastened the high collar, looked at the two black-garbed crows and laughed.

“You make a more believable nun than Beth does, kid,” he drawled. “It’s those limpid blue eyes of yours”

“Fuck you,” Dylan snarled.

“The rules go for you as well. Eyes downcast, no talking.”

“Fuck you,” Dylan said in an artificially high-pitched voice.

He glanced at Beth. He’d had the distant hope that wrapping her in a nun’s habit would help keep her off-limits in his sex-starved brain, but just his luck. It had the opposite effect. She looked serene, saintly, exquisitely pure and beautiful. And he wanted nothing more than to debauch the hell out of her. If his fantasies had been dark before, they were now bordering on depraved. What was it about purity that made a man want to defile it? Bring her down to his level? She’d never make it – it was too far to sink. In fact, Dylan would be keeping her company, and he could count on Sister Beth to keep the kid in his place. And with Dylan there, Finn wouldn’t be able to get any closer.

Check and mate. “We ready?” he said, irritated.

Beth looked at him. “Yes, Father,” she murmured in a dulcet voice that made him want to throw her on the hood of the SUV and take her then and there.

“Then get in the Goddamn car,” he growled.

It certainly wasn’t the worst hotel MacGowan had ever spent the night in, but it came damned close. By the time he’d stashed the SUV it was pitch dark, and even the lights of the small city didn’t penetrate into the dock area where he’d decided to stash the three of them. The hotel owner seemed taken aback that members of the church would choose his less than respectable establishment, but after MacGowan had explained in perfect idiomatic Spanish that they’d taken a vow of poverty he was willing enough to accept the money MacGowan gave him before handing over a key.

“You don’t mind sharing a room, Father?” the greasy-haired owner had asked.

He heard Beth’s choked protest, but his voice covered it. “We prefer it that way, señor.” He kept a solemn expression on his face. “These are dangerous times, and we stay together.”

The man shrugged. He was about thirty, pock-marked and unwashed, with the same feral expression in his eyes that many of the rebels had. It was too late to change his mind, and the man didn’t seem interested in more than taking his money and returning to the soccer game he was watching, but MacGowan felt uneasy.

Not that he’d felt anything but uneasy since he’d started his escape. He still had the gun tucked in the waist of his jeans, but it would take a while to get to it under the enveloping folds of the cassock, and he wished to hell he had some other kind of weapon. Once he locked the good sisters in for the night he’d have to see about getting a second, smaller gun, and a couple of good knives. They weren’t out of the woods yet.

The room was small, shabby, and none-too-clean, and he didn’t need to see Beth’s expression to know what she was thinking. There was a table, two chairs, and two beds, and Dylan threw himself down on one, ripping the wimple off his head in disgust. “Don’t think I’m sharing with you, dude. Wearing skirts is bad enough.”

“You’re not sleeping with me, kid,” Beth said with asperity. She’d left her veil on, and he knew why. To remind him that she was off-limits.

It annoyed him. He had no intention of getting any nearer than he had to, for his own self-preservation, but he didn’t need her making that decision.

He’d planned to sleep on the floor. Instead he gave Beth a slow, wicked smile. “Good to know you prefer me.”

She didn’t rise to the bait. “Where are we going to eat? We haven’t had much food today and I’m starving.”

“I’ll have the innkeeper send something up. I’ve got things to do and I need you two buttoned up here so I don’t have to worry.”

She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it without a word.

“Whatever,” Dylan said. “Just tell me where the bathroom is. I need to take a dump.”

“End of the hall. And put your fucking veil on again.”

Dylan yanked it onto his head, slamming the door as he went. Leaving him alone with saintly Sister Beth.

She looked up at him then with those clear blue eyes that saw him all too well. “Are you coming back?”

The question annoyed him, partly because he’d been considering dumping them, leaving the two of them to their own devices. He had enough money on his own if he stretched it, and they were slowing him down. By this point they should be able to make it the rest of the way home unless they were really stupid.

The temptation had passed as quickly as it had come. Revenge was a dish best served cold. He could take his time getting to Madsen. The better to enjoy killing him.

He looked at her, annoyed that she’d read his mind. “I brought you this far, didn’t I? I’d be a fool to leave you now. Once we get to Spain I’ll put you on a plane and you’ll never have to see me again.”

“Lovely,” she murmured under her breath.

“Lovely,” he echoed, moving toward the window. It was grimy, and the dim light barely illuminated the alley behind the hotel. That nagging feeling of unease was still dogging him, and for a brief moment he considered dragging them along with him to make the deal for the papers and cash to keep them going. If it had been only Beth he would have done it, but two of them complicated matters too much, and Tomas was Committee. He would count privacy more than payment.

He felt her come up beside him – how could he not – and every inch of his skin prickled. She followed his gaze out into the alleyway.

“If there’s trouble, go out the window.” He kept his voice flat. “You did a good job at the old woman’s cabin – just roll when you land and you probably won’t break or sprain anything. And then run like hell.”

He felt rather than saw her nod. “Isn’t there an American consulate here? Someone we can throw ourselves on?”

He shook his head. “Puerto Claro is a small city, very poor, and few if any American tourists make it this far south. They probably rely on the consulate office in the capital.”

She said nothing, and he made the mistake of looking down at her. Always dangerous, being so close to her, and he said the first thing that came into his mind. Anything to push her away. “I’ll probably take a little longer. I need to get laid. The girl at the cantina only took the edge off.”

“The girl in the cantina?”

There was something in her voice he couldn’t define, but he could guess. Disgust. Disappointment. Hell, maybe some ill-placed jealousy. It didn’t matter – it did the job, keeping her at a distance.

“Yeah, I spent the night with a lovely piece of tail at the local cantina, and she was very generous with her favors. But one night isn’t going to work off . . .”

“Three years,” she said before he could. “That was pretty fast work, seducing her so quickly.”

He grinned at her. “Seduction had nothing to do with it. She was a working girl, and cash cuts through a lot of the bullshit. Not that I couldn’t have seduced her. I can seduce anyone, given enough time. I just wanted to cut to the chase.”

“Lovely,” she murmured. “And I doubt you could seduce anyone.”