Deadly Little Lies (16 page)

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Authors: Jeanne Adams

BOOK: Deadly Little Lies
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“No,” she said, shaking her head so that he would feel her denial as well as hear it. “I knew I wouldn't be able to resist being interested in you. I had to be sure I was...” She hesitated, then went silent. How did you express that kind of fear? Fear that you'd lose yourself, that you'd become so weak you'd just disappear in the shadow of a strong man?
“Sure you were what? Safe?” he questioned.
“No, I've always felt safe with you. It wasn't that. I needed to be completely myself. Stable. Strong.” She sighed. “I had to know that I wasn't weak or pliable, ineffectual.”
“Yourself ?” He sounded puzzled, and again, stronger now that he was discussing the world outside, the life they'd led. “Why wouldn't you be yourself? You are a strong, capable woman, Carrie-mou.”
Her heart clenched at the endearment. How could she explain to this self-assured man that her weakness was her heart?
“Dav, I lost so much of myself with Luke. I just faded, like a painting that's been hung in strong sunlight. The colors were still there, but so muted, so... so...”
“Pastel?” he offered.
“Exactly.”
“Ah, but Carrie-mou, you could never be pastel. Even with that shadow over you, with Luke and the problems, you still were vibrant, alive.”
Was that admiration in his voice? Approval?
Whatever it was, it was warm, and reassuring. “I didn't feel that way, though. I couldn't see myself that way. I was so lost. I kept finding myself at the Bay, by the bridge or down at Fisherman's Wharf, looking out at the water, thinking, ‘Where is my color? Where is my strength?'”
He snugged her more tightly into his arms, a brief squeeze, then he relaxed his grip so that she could move, escape if she chose. “You have always seemed strong to me. A willow that bends in the wind, but comes back straight and as strong as ever when the wind dies.”
She let out a rough half laugh, half sob. “Oh God, Dav, if only I'd known that someone saw me that way. It would have helped.” Tears welled up. “I lost so much.”
“Tell me, Carrie,” he encouraged. “What made you feel so lost?”
“Everything. When Luke would cheat on me, it hurt,” she said. Saying it now, here in the dark with him, she could feel the pain, but it was distant, as if she could let it go. How odd. “Then, he would come back, be affectionate, loving.”
“He was so wrong, Carrie, so stupid,” Dav said, his hands sliding up and down her back, a reassuring caress. “He should have been, what is the word? Horsewhipped.”
She smiled in the darkness. “A very old-fashioned punishment.”
“The worst betrayal,” he countered with strength, “requires a stern reprimand.”
“True.” She hesitated, knowing she should shut up now. The words wanted to slip around her good sense. She wanted him to know, she wanted all the horrible stuff out of her mind, spewed into this inky, terrible darkness to be swallowed up and sent away. Purged before she met her Maker, since that seemed fairly imminent. “I got pregnant.”
He went very still. His hands froze in their caresses, his restless fingers stilled. “Carrie? Little one, what happened?”
“I wasn't very far along when Luke died. I never got to tell him,” she said, and the words ran together. She couldn't get them out fast enough. “I fell. At the funeral home, I fell. Later that night, I had to go to the emergency room. I lost the baby the day after I buried Luke.”
She broke. Her voice, and her heart, and her reserve all broke, and she wept. She'd cried back then, in her mother's arms, but this was like a catharsis, an emptying of her soul's pain. All the while, she heard his whispered endearments, mostly in Greek, but some in English. His hands, never still now, reassured her on the physical level, holding her tightly, keeping her safe in the darkness as she cried out the last of the hurt from those long-ago days.
“Ah, darling,” he crooned, pressing kisses into her hair. “You'll have another chance, my love, if you want it. You'll see the sun again.”
They lay together for a long time, and she listened to the deep resonant sound of his heartbeat, the reassuring whoosh of his breathing. Oddly enough, despite their terrible situation, she felt at peace. “You're the only person I've told besides my mother,” she finally admitted. “I felt so alone. So useless.”
“Ah, Carrie,” he whispered. “You are none of that.”
“I know that, in my head,” she whispered back. “But it took me a long time, maybe till now, to feel it in my heart.”
He was quiet for a long while. When he spoke, he said, “Yes. I understand that. It is in this place, knowing we may die, that we can be truthful, yes?”
Realizing he was right, she agreed. “I guess so.”
“What have we got to lose, telling our secrets here? You know mine,” he said, and she heard a deep thread of anger underlying his words. “I still live in fear of the dark, of being trapped. So
.
Eh-la. I must talk of the light and of other things or I will go mad. If I go insane, you will have to tie me down and force me to eat Nutella and crackers while I quibble in fear.”
“Quibble?” She hesitated, searching for what he might mean. Unaccountably, a chuckle sneaked out. What the heck could that mean? It was such a strange word to use. “I don't think you mean... um—” She stopped, unsure of how to correct his English, worried that he'd be offended by her laughter.
“What does that mean then?” he said impatiently. “Quibble?”
“I think it means to argue.”
“No, no, that isn't the right word.” He sounded disgusted. His irritation with the language had distracted him from his fear for the moment, so she took advantage of it.
“To quake?”
“Like the earth? To shake?” He paused, then said, “No, that isn't it. It's a word like making noises, animal noises, the talk and noises madmen make.”
“Oh,” she said, unaccountably delighted to figure it out. “Gibbering.”
“Yes!” he said. “That's it. Eh-la, that is it. Gibbering in fear.” He laughed. “The point has somewhat lost its impact, however, with this discussion of words.”
“It's better than being crazy with fear,” she offered. “Let's play a word game.”
“Like you did, spelling into my hand?”
“I couldn't believe that worked.”
“It was difficult,” Dav said, and she heard the chagrin in his voice. “I had to translate the letters, you see. Speaking, that is different. Writing, if I can see it, yes, that isn't so hard. But that?” She felt him shift, heard the huff of air as he grunted. “That was hard.”
“Is it hard to learn another language?” she asked. “I learned French, but not much. I even learned some Norwegian when I worked at a gallery in college with a Norwegian owner.”
“That's not something you'd use every day,” he said, and she heard the smile in his voice.
“No. I've not learned much Greek, though.”
“I'll teach you,” he said. “Should we start now?”
“Start with hello,” she suggested, and he laughed.
 
 
The mercenary's sightless, milky eyes were the first thing Dav saw when he woke. The midnight scavengers, unable to turn Carlos's body off the grate, had torn into him from the back. Dav could see where the clothing was askew because the legs had been shifted and daylight flowed more freely into the cell than it had after the man died.
The gun, crusted now with dried blood, still stared down at them, an accusing empty eye with a drop of dried blood hanging from its barrel. It occurred to him that if they could get the weapon, they could shoot the lock off, but it still wouldn't help them get the body off the grate or give them a way to climb out, so it was a futile idea.
He felt Carrie stirring in his arms and he deliberately shifted forward so the body wouldn't be the first thing she saw. With the night passed, Dav felt more solid, more stable. He despised that the old fears still haunted him, but he had no more control over them than he did his reaction to Carrie.
“Dav?” she murmured, stretching and turning his way. He moved again, blocking her view.
“Good morning, Carrie-mou,” he said, smiling at her, knowing that if he died tomorrow, it had been a sweet joy to have been with her, made love to her. “I believe we'll be checking out of this fine establishment today,” he joked, standing now, so her gaze followed him. “Here, let me help you up.”
She stood and he pulled her into his arms. “Carrie, you need to keep your eyes down. The view above us is very unpleasant,” he murmured in her ear. She shifted and he said, “No, don't look.”
Pulling back a bit, she protested. “Dav, I'm in this with you. Don't try to shield me.”
He nodded. “Just know that it is ugly, as violent death usually is, and brace yourself before you look, yes? We are going to find our door today.” He shook her slightly to ensure that she focused on him. “Yes?”
She smiled. It was a bit shaky, but it was a smile. “Yes. If you say so. We will.” The smile grew a bit broader. “You're seldom wrong, so I'll trust that.”
“Good,” he approved. “Carrie?”
She had looked beyond him now, and he could see the tears standing in her eyes. For a moment, she said nothing, just shuddered once—a quick involuntary movement—then turned away. “Gee, what's for breakfast? Nutella? How yummy,” she said with false cheer. “It's been so long since we had Nutella and crackers, I'm sure you're just as excited as I am.”
“Sarcasm becomes you, darling,” he said, delighted that she was so strong in this situation. What a woman, his Carrie. He had known she was strong, but this? This stirred a deep admiration for her.
It reassured him to know that when they got out of here, as they went through life, as the passion left them, he would have this deep admiration to sustain them.
Yes,
he nodded to himself at the thought.
It was good.
His father had never admired anyone, much less a woman. That Dav could, and did, told him he'd sloughed off that mantle his father had imposed upon him.
Odd that, trapped and desperate, he would finally feel whole. Terrible that, as he might be living his last day, he was at last free of his father.
“Hmmm, yes, well, you might not appreciate that same sarcasm when I have to eat Nutella again tomorrow, but, for today, we'll just go with it.”
They did the best they could to wash up, and clean up as they ate a meager breakfast of crackers and the now-sickeningly sweet chocolate nut spread. At least it was filling.
Studiously avoiding looking up, and ignoring the jungle noises beyond the grate, they both approached the wall.
“He's going to start to stink in a few hours,” Carrie offered, not looking at him. “And there will be buzzards.”
Dav nodded, studying the wall intently. “And insects.” He kept his voice calm, but the idea of it, the idea of having to watch as insects devoured the man above them, nearly brought the Nutella back up. “However, we will be gone.”
“Right,” Carrie said, with finality. She shifted both her eyes and her body away from the noxious sight. “Let's follow the sky line here—” She pointed to the set of carvings that whorled and shifted unpredictably, even as it made its way around the walls. “Sky is freedom in most cultures. I can't remember enough of my Mayan studies to know if it's right, but we've got nothing but time, so we'll try it first.”
“Good plan,” he agreed, starting with the whorl above her head as she took the one closer to the Earth line, which featured stylized representations of people and plants. The gods were above it all, above the sky, above the plants and the puny worries of man.
 
 
There was no one waiting when Niko landed at the airstrip.
Something was wrong. The hackles on his neck prickled and he knew he'd been double-crossed, betrayed. Somehow.
Had his team abandoned him? Had Dav somehow figured out that it was him and gotten to his men? They were loyal, but money spoke volumes.
Who had given in? Whom had he misjudged? Had his inside man given him away?
He slipped his weapon out of its holster, motioned his pilot to pull them close to the hangar.
“Something's not right, compadre,” Sam, the pilot, muttered under his breath. “Why is the second Jeep here? It should not be here. Where are they?”
Niko shook his head. “I don't know, but let's lock the plane down and get out of here. We're too exposed. We check the Jeep for explosives, too, before we start it.”
“Damn, Skippy,” Sam offered, darkly. “And go expecting a trap.”

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