Against the Wind (3 page)

No one made a move toward her as she edged her way down the narrow village street, the car bouncing and lurching over the potholes. But every eye was trained on her sporadic progress, and not a word was spoken.

Maddy’s hands were numb as they gripped the steering wheel. These were her father’s people, she told herself staunchly, not believing a word. The people he’d devoted
his life to helping. They wouldn’t hurt El Patrón’s daughter, they would be more likely to welcome her with parades and flowers. Wouldn’t they? She was only thankful that she had no need to stop to ask for directions.

Her stepfather’s sources had been very clear. Samuel Eddison Lambert was living in an abandoned villa-turned-fortress two miles past the tiny town of Puente del Norte, surrounded by a small army of followers. Max hadn’t told her who led that army, and Maddy hadn’t asked. Lizard Eyes had answered that unspoken question. Jake Murphy, the man who had abandoned his career in the Secret Service and his life as an American citizen to follow a crazy old dreamer, would be there, still guarding the man who’d shaped his destiny.

She’d been seventeen when she’d last seen Jake Murphy. Seventeen, and as deeply, overwhelmingly in love as any seventeen-year-old girl could be. If nothing had ever quite come close to that astonishingly powerful adolescent passion, Maddy accepted that fact with wry humor. After all, that was what being a teenager was all about. Falling in love with unsuitable older men and filling diaries about the stark tragedy of it all. She had no doubt that Murphy now possessed a notable paunch, a plump wife and four or five bambinos, and a shared affectionate remembrance of her passionate crush.

It was little wonder she’d fallen so hard. Jake Murphy was the stuff dreams were made of. Samuel Eddison Lambert had run for President that year, had even been considered a fairly good contender for the highest office in the land. And Jake Murphy was the Secret Service man assigned to protect the candidate as he had stumped around the country in search of that elusive nomination, a suavely smiling Helen by his side.

Twenty-six years old, just out of Vietnam, Jake Murphy
had seemed the epitome of romance to Maddy, who was rapidly tiring of her teenage peers. Even the stigma of being involved in that dirty little war hadn’t tarnished Murphy, it had only made him more mysterious in her eyes. That he had hated it was more than clear, that there was some dark secret attached to his involvement also became clear as the months passed. It had taken an inquisitive sixteen- almost seventeen-year-old a long time to ferret it out, and by the time she had it was too late. And even that secret in all its horror wasn’t enough to shatter the threads of longing that tied her to Jake.

She was almost through the tiny town, heading out toward her father’s villa, and the staring faces were now watching her exhaust. Her fingers loosened slightly on the steering wheel as she thought back again to Jake, trying to dredge him up from her memory. She could remember the specifics, the close-cropped regulation haircut that she’d hated, the hazel eyes that watched constantly and never gave anything away, his tall, lean body in the dark suits that were a uniform in themselves. But she couldn’t summon forth a picture of him in her mind.

Not that it mattered. She would either recognize him or not when she saw him, and they’d laugh about the past, and then he’d take her to see her father. And Samuel Eddison Lambert would smile at her out of those dreamy blue eyes of his that only saw the larger scale of things, that had never noticed when his daughter was hurting, that only concentrated on the inequities of the Third World. And reassured, Maddy would turn around and head back to L.A., secure in the knowledge that her father was safe and well.

It was a lovely fantasy, one that sustained her through the last two miles of underbrush that seemed to have more eyes than the little town of Puente del Norte. She
knew as well as anyone that the chances of it bearing any resemblance to reality were tenuous indeed, but one could always hope. A hope that wavered and began to shatter when the car finally cleared the mountain forest and pulled up in front of a high-walled structure.

It had once been a villa, all right, but now it resembled nothing so much as an armed fortress. The pink walls were topped with barbed wire, scrawled with inevitable black graffiti, this time recommending long life to El Patrón. The once-neat landscaping was a tangle of encroaching jungle, the ornamental iron gates were tightly shut and guarded by a young man in jeans, Nikes, an ET T-shirt, and a machine gun. A machine gun that was pointed straight at her.

She could pride herself on being a little cooler this time in the face of danger. Her sweaty hands slipped only once as she opened the car door, and she raised them over her head with as much aplomb as possible as she moved slowly toward the young guard. Even younger than Lizard Eyes, she noticed. Where were all the men of San Pablo?

And why the hell did San Pablo Spanish have to be so far removed from Mexican Spanish? Granted there were several Central American countries in between, but you’d still think there would be more than a few similarities. The demands of the young soldier guarding El Patrón were abrupt, hostile, and nonnegotiable. Once more she summoned her best smile and her most-oft used Spanish phrase.

“No comprendo. Habla usted inglés?”

Her winning smile got her exactly nowhere, as did her tourist’s Spanish. The question was repeated, and this time Maddy could begin to comprehend a few words. She took a step toward him, and the gun remained stationary.

She had a fair idea what she looked like to him. She was a tall woman, just over five feet nine, and her lean body with its meager curves lay hidden beneath the loose cotton shirt that now clung wetly to her back. Her long legs were encased in rumpled jeans, her own Nikes were dusty and muddy, and her close-cropped dark-brown hair swept back from a narrow, delicate face that doubtless was sweat-stained, exhausted, and scared. She hadn’t bothered with makeup, having discovered that it melted off her face by noon in the damp climate, and her pale mouth and wary brown eyes that filled her face would scarcely entice the young man into any acts of conspicuous gallantry. She would have to rely on her minimal Spanish and her father’s intervention. After all these years he ought to be good for something.

But after five minutes the conversation had gotten no further. Maddy’s conversational Spanish made no dent on the soldier’s mountain dialect, and the machine gun stayed trained on her stomach. Her arms were getting tired, but every time she tried to drop them the machine gun clicked warningly.

Once more she tried.
“Mi padre,”
she said again.
“Mi padre es El Patrón.”

The boy shook his head stubbornly, his mouth curling in contemptuous disbelief, all his responses consisting of negatives as far as Maddy could tell. At some sound beyond Maddy’s hearing he turned his head, directing his attention into the compound. A moment later he turned back to her, gesturing with the gun for her to approach. As she passed him, sliding through the narrow opening in the iron gates, she tried to drop her hands. She was rewarded with the barrel of the gun jabbing her sharply in the ribs, and it was all she could do to keep from slapping the little punk. She contented herself with glaring at him
and continued on into the courtyard of the tumbled-down villa.

There was no one in sight. The guard had shut the iron gate after her and was now concentrating his attention on the outer world once more. Slowly she began to lower her hands, half of her expecting the bully from the front gate to shoot her in the back. But he had clearly dismissed her, and she pressed a shaking hand to her side. The blow had hurt, her rib was throbbing, but that was the least of her worries. The courtyard was a mass of fragrant flowers, a tangled jungle of scent and beauty in the midst of an armed camp. Maddy stood very still, breathing in the damp smell of the garden, every nerve tightly strung. She could feel the eyes on her, eyes that had watched her since she arrived in San Pablo, different eyes along each step of the journey to her father. And suddenly she didn’t want to wait any more.

She took a decisive step toward the massive stone structure, then stopped as the short, sharp click of a gun being cocked stilled her every movement, even the beat of her heart.

She could feel him behind her, though she couldn’t imagine how he could have gotten so close without her having been aware of his approach. She could feel the barrel of the gun in the middle of her back, and for a moment she felt like screaming. Three times in the last hour she had had guns pulled on her. That was three times too many for her thirty years, it was scarcely the sort of thing she was used to, and for a brief moment she struggled with the sudden urge to burst into tears of exhaustion and fright. She bit her lip, hard, and stood very still.

“That’s right,” a deep, scratchy voice came from directly
behind her. “Don’t make any sudden moves, lady, and no one will get hurt.”

With the barrel of the gun still planted firmly in her back, she felt a heavy hand drop down on her shoulder, gripping her hard and propelling her against the nearby garden wall. She went up against it with a resounding thud.

“Spread your arms and legs,” he drawled, and immediately she complied. A rough hand moved up and down her sides and over her back. “We don’t take much to strangers showing up here,” the voice said as he searched her. “Particularly friends of General Ortega’s. Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in Puente del Norte?”

Maddy was getting tired of those questions, almost as tired as she was of having guns pointed at her. “If you’ll get your hands off me,” she said through clenched teeth, “and remove the gun from my back, maybe I’ll tell you.”

The gun didn’t move for a moment. Then it pulled away and his large hand clamped down on her shoulder once more, spinning her around with an abruptness that made her teeth rattle. “Lady, this isn’t a game,” he snapped, and his hands were roughly impersonal as they searched the front of her body, her breasts, even between her legs. She stood rigid with shock and fury, and then finally his hands left her, and he stood back with the gun trained on her.

“All right, lady,” he said. “Answer my questions.”

And for the first time in fourteen years Maddy Lambert looked up into Jake Murphy’s all-seeing hazel eyes.

Good Lord, he was so different! And yet so very much the same that she would have known him anywhere. Those eyes that never missed anything were looking right through her, their hazel depths flat and unreadable. When she’d last seen him he’d been twenty-six, with short hair and dark suits and a dead look in his eyes. The man standing before her looked half-savage, with the large, ugly gun in one hand and that implacable expression on his face.

It was the same face. Older, leaner, darkly tanned from years in the semitropical climate, but still the same. Lines fanned out from his piercing eyes, deep grooves were cut in the lean cheeks, bracketing a grim mouth that had forgotten how to smile. He hadn’t smiled much when she’d known him before, but when he had done so it had usually been at her. He wasn’t smiling now.

He had a bandanna tied around his forehead, holding back the hair that was perhaps the greatest surprise of all. It was long, dark brown streaked by the sun and by a natural graying, and it hung almost to his shoulders, adding to the look of wildness. He was wearing a rumpled, sweat-stained khaki field shirt, open to the waist, and his
chest was hard and tanned and smooth. He had a knife at his belt in a worn leather holder, and the weapons were all a part of his cold, merciless savagery that terrified her more than Lizard Eyes with his pistol, or ET at the gate with his machine gun. She stood there and watched the destruction of her teenage fantasy, and it was frightening indeed.

A dead silence had fallen between them, and in the background she could hear the lazy hum of bees wandering through the profusion of flowers in this military stronghold. He was waiting for her to speak, his impatience barely held in check, and those implacable, opaque eyes of his looked right through her. It took a moment for her to realize that he didn’t recognize her.

“I’m Maddy Lambert,” she said in a damnably shaky voice. “Samuel’s daughter.”

No light filled those eyes, and the gun didn’t waver. “Are you?” His voice was flat, noncommittal.

Some of the mindless panic began to leave her, to be replaced with a confused anger. She’d imagined a great many things about her arrival there, both bad and good, but nothing had come close to the simple fact that he might not know her.

“Of course I am,” she snapped. “Don’t you know me?”

The guard reappeared behind Jake, her pawed-through purse in his hand. He handed it to Jake, adding a military salute that only added to Maddy’s uneasiness. Keeping the gun trained on her, Jake rummaged through the purse, and it took all Maddy’s self-control not to protest. He pulled out her passport and Maddy breathed a sigh of relief. One that quickly changed to despair as he flipped it open and she remembered what it read.

“Allison M. Henderson,” he read in that raspy voice of
his that had grown even more gravelly in the ensuing years. The sound of it had filled more than one fantasy years ago. Now it grated on her raw nerves. He looked up at her then, and his hazel eyes were cold and merciless. “No, I don’t know you, Allison Henderson. I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

“That’s not my real name,” she said, her voice a sudden babble of nervousness.

He raised an eyebrow beneath that sweat-stained bandanna. “Not your real name, Miss Henderson? Don’t you know it’s a federal crime to get a passport under a phony name? I ought to report you to the American Consulate. Unfortunately San Pablo no longer has an American Consulate. I believe it was blown up, along with half the local workers, several months ago.”

“I mean, it’s my legal name, but not my real name,” she stammered. “My name is Allison Madelyn Lambert Henderson. My mother remarried and—”

“And being a loyal daughter you gave up your father’s name,” Jake supplied smoothly, still watching her out of those cold eyes, the gun never moving. “Samuel wouldn’t have a daughter like that.”