Under the Wire (21 page)

The jeep was a piece of shit. He'd known it when he'd bought it, but since it was the only piece of shit on the lot and there'd been no time to look for another, he'd had to take a chance.

Time was king now if they were going to find Adam alive.

Manny gave Lily credit for keeping it together in the face of that very obvious fact. She was smart. She knew the score. And yet she kept her head.

While he was losing his.

Over her.

Christ.

He drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel, resisting the urge to glance over at her. Lost the battle.

Even in the mountains and this close to the reservoir, the temperature must be pushing one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, the humidity closing in on 90 percent. The wind whipping over the windshield and funneling around the open jeep was hot, wet, and scented of the rain that would most likely arrive midmorning out of the blue and then dissipate as quickly as it came before retooling for an afternoon shower.

This part of Sri Lanka was much like Nicaragua that way. It made him think of home. Of family. Of loss.

As the jeep rumbled down the road, the wind licked his hair wildly, played rough with Lily's, tugging stray wisps and slapping them across her face even though she'd twisted the mass of it into a thick, lush knot and tucked it up under a ball cap.

Despite the protection of the cap's brim, the sun had painted her cheeks and nose pink. She was hot and tired and her white camp shirt was wilted. Yet even with the weight of the world on her shoulders and the sweat of the day beating her down, she was beautiful.

She should look fragile. But she was solid and steady and . ..

Jesus Christ, he wanted to hate her.

Needed to hate her.

Had hated her for so long now.

But he was damn weary of the battle.

Was he falling under her spell again? Was that why he wanted to smile for her instead of snarl? Walk toward her instead of away?

Cristo.

He didn't know what was happening. He just knew that one way or another, he needed to clear the air. He couldn't breathe anymore with the way things were between them.

Swearing under his breath, he jerked the wheel hard left and pulled over to the side of the road. Gravel peppered the underbelly of the vehicle when he slammed the brake into the floorboard; dust plumed around them.

Beside him, Lily braced one hand on the roll bar, the other on the dash. Her eyes were wide, her mouth poised on the brink of screaming.

But she didn't. Because she was Lily. Strong. Brave. True.

How he wanted to believe that she had been true.

The jeep rocked to a stop and she turned her dark eyes on him. She must have read something in his face, because she didn't rail at him. Didn't demand to know what the hell he was doing. She simply sat and waited.

"I have something to say," he said at long last— because, Jesus, he'd turned into a cur dog of a coward all of a sudden.

Her wary looks shot an RPG of guilt dead center through his heart.

"I've been an ass," he said, staring at the dusty, bug-streaked windshield because he couldn't look her in the eye.

He'd been a boy when he'd faced off against the Sandinistas. A Special Forces soldier when he'd battled the ruthless drug cartel in Ecuador, the Taliban in Afghanistan. Boston had been rife with its own brand of terrorists. And yet he didn't have it in him to face this one small woman.

Beside him, she was very quiet. He was sure she wanted to put a punctuation mark on the "ass" part of his admission, but to her credit, she didn't.

She quietly said, "Tell me why. Tell me all of it."

He dragged a hand over his lower face, realized he was squirming, and sucked it up.

"When they came for me that night," he began, needing to work this through as much for his benefit as for hers, "they said it was you. They told me that it was you who told Poveda."

"They lied," she said with a quiet conviction that made him want to believe.

He gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands. Only realized he was pushing it toward the dash when his biceps started to burn.

He loosened his hold. Finally worked up the courage to look at her. She stared straight ahead, her hands clutched together in her lap; a single, silent tear trickled slowly down her cheek. She quickly wiped it away with the back of her hand, as if making it disappear would erase what she probably considered a show of weakness.

"It no longer matters," he said, realizing it was true.

Her head whipped to the side to meet his gaze, her dark eyes puzzled and a little wary. "No longer matters? How can it no longer matter? What changed, Manny? What changed after all these years that it no longer matters?"

What had changed was that after seventeen years of hate and belief in Lily Campora's betrayal, he was ready to let it go. Needed to let it go.

On a hot, dusty road thousands of miles from home, in a broken-down jeep, on a life-and-death search for a boy who didn't have time for a "man" to come to terms with his new reality, Manny was suddenly ready to forgive her.

Maybe he was just tired of hating her. Maybe, like the boy he'd been then, he was so dazzled by her now, it was simply easier to forgive her.

"You came back into my life again. That's what's changed." He wasn't sure of much else, but that, at least, was the God's honest truth.

Silence, as weighty as the worry over their son, crowded into the open jeep with them.

"So . .. this isn't about believing me? It's about accepting? Forgiving?"

His silence was her answer.

She shook her head and he could see the frustration in her eyes along with the heat of anger. Anger that transitioned to sorrow. "Well, I'm sorry. That's not good enough," she said after a long moment. Her eyes looked as sad as she sounded. "Not nearly good enough."

He worked his jaw, as angry, suddenly, as she was miserable. "What else do you want from me?"

She pinned him with a look of tempered steel. "I want you to believe me. Why is that such a hard thing for you to do?"

"And why is it so hard for you to just admit it?" he shot back. "Christ, Lily. I told you things I'd never told another living soul. Not even my family knew for certain that I fought for the Contras. No one but you had access to Poveda. No one but you could have turned me in."

"And what was my reason for doing this?" she demanded, her anger matching his. "What was my reason?"

He jerked his gaze away from her burning black eyes; he didn't want to see her reaction when he threw the truth in her face. "You don't have to pretend anymore. I know what was going on. I know that Poveda was your lover."

CHAPTER 14

If Manny had said, "I know you are an alien," Lily couldn't have been more stunned. It took her a moment to find her voice.

"My lover? You think Poveda was my
lover?
For God's sake, Manny,
why
would you think that? After all we'd done together? All we'd been to each other? Granted, we were only together for a week, but we shared everything. Did you
really
not know me? Did you not have even a clue who I was?"

"I didn't then," he said quietly, and a muscle in his jaw worked. "I only figured it out later."

She actually laughed. "Well then, by all means, enlighten me. Who was I?"

He had the balls to actually try to be patient. "You were a woman with a hatred for men," he said with a grim conclusiveness that stunned her.

"Hatred? What are you talking about?"

"Your ex-husband. Men before him." He lifted a hand. "You told me. They all let you down."

"God, Manny."
Unbelievable.
"That made me disappointed, not deceitful."

"And distrustful. You did not trust my love for you. You never trusted it."

Now, as it had then, she could see that it hurt him.

"Because you were a boy," she pointed out, still reeling over his conclusions. "You couldn't have known your heart."

"Yes. I was a boy. Who was easily fooled."

She didn't even know what to say anymore. It was all so preposterous. But somehow she needed to make him see that.

"So let me see if I'm following this. Because I hated men, I fooled you into loving me? And the reason I did this was because in my deep hatred for men, I wanted to—what? Make you pay for being one of them?"

His jaw tightened. A building breeze sent dust skittering down the side of the road.

"And in my quest to wreak havoc on
mankind,"
she continued, unable to stem the sarcasm, "I pried secrets out of you, then told them to my 'lover,' General Poveda, who I hated,
but,
vindictive bitch that I was, used those secrets to bring you down. Does that about sum it up?"

But for the wind rattling through the trees she was met with more silence.

"Manny. Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?" She lifted a hand, let it drop in frustration. "I could
maybe
understand a boy rationalizing such a load of crap. But you're a man now. An intelligent man. With a man's experience. A man's head, for God's sake. A man's heart. Can you look at me and honestly think I could have done such a heinous, horrible thing?"

She watched his sullen profile. Watched the muscles in his neck work when he swallowed. Watched, heart in her throat, when he finally turned to her. His dark eyes were bleak, penetrating, and bored straight into her soul.

"When I look at you, Liliana ... I can only think of having you."

Silence rang in the wake of his hushed confession. A small dust devil skittered around the open jeep, spinning pine needles and leaves with the fine soil at the side of the road before it rose and twirled away.

"And if I can have you," he continued as if the admission sliced scars in his soul, "then nothing else matters."

She was still reeling over the stunning shock of his statement when he turned the key, shifted into gear, and, spraying gravel like a wake from an outboard motor, tore out onto the highway.

Jaffna Peninsula

Dallas knew he had company even before he heard the single warning shot from the Kalashnikov.

"What took you so long, boys?" he muttered under his breath, and, stopping in the middle of the road, raised his hands to either side of his head.

He was hot, he was dry, and he'd been walking this parched, dusty road since the pilot had reluctantly set down on a pocked airstrip a few miles out of Jaffna an hour ago. The terrain was flat and empty but for bomb craters in the fields and burned-out shells of vehicles littering the roadside.

Dallas was in the middle of what looked like a war zone. In truth it
had
been a war zone and in all likelihood would be again. Such was the way of life in Sri Lanka.

He wasn't surprised when two AK-47-wielding Tigers appeared on the path in front of him. Four others closed in on all sides, rifles locked and loaded.

None of them looked older than sixteen. And he knew of only one thing that would keep their testosterone-charged fingers from squeezing a few rounds into the American trespasser.