Forster, Suzanne (20 page)

Her conflicted expression shone back at her from the gold mirror, and her unsteady fingers left marks all over the face of the plaque, smudging her reflection. I had to do this, she rationalized. It's not for me, not entirely. It's for every woman who has ever felt that she wasn't enough. It's for Bridget, who will be a woman soon. It's for Jill, because I couldn't help her when she needed me.

"The mike is all yours, Gus." Christine smiled and stepped back, waving Gus to the podium.

"I don't know how to thank you for this—" Gus's voice was as shaky as her hands, and she prayed she would be able to say what she needed to without stumbling. "I certainly don't deserve it, " she told the crowd, "but if what I did inspires any of you to take a stand of conscience against the victimization of innocent citizens and the use of terror tactics as a means to a political end, then maybe I have contributed something. "

Applause swelled again, but Gus raised her hand. "There's more," she said. "I've personally looked into the charges that workers are being exploited by the Latin American manufacturers who make our products, and the chairman of Featherstone, Inc., assures me that more than half of our products are American-made. " At least that much was true, Gus told herself, and what she was about to say might force some corrective action. "He also assured me that he will vigorously investigate the conditions of the foreign plants we use with an eye to relocating if health and safety standards are not being met."

Someone shouted, "Brava!" and Gus's hand flew to her mouth in surprise. The applause was so passionate, she had to blink madly to stop from crying, and even then she couldn't quite manage it. Tears began to flow, and the thought of breaking down in front of all these people, the cream of her industry, was horrifying to her. She wanted only to escape, but as she moved to leave, she felt Christine's hand, staying her.

"Didn't you have something to announce tonight, Gus?" the anchorwoman asked.

Gus had almost forgotten that she was supposed to announce her engagement to Rob. That was the brainchild of the publicist for this event, but Rob had thought it a perfect way to personalize her fifteen minutes of fame. "A human moment, " he'd called it.

"Oh, yes! I do!" She mopped the dampness from her cheeks with her fingers and laughed, aware that she was hopelessly flustered, which was probably just as well, since it wasn't at all like her. "How could I have forgotten the most important thing in my life? There's someone I want you all to meet—"

Rob was scheduled to enter from the other side of the stage. Gus glanced over and saw him in the wings, lurking in the shadows like the very phantom, himself. She smiled. She'd had a hand in choosing his midnight-blue tux. The rich indigo satin of its shawl collar brought out the blue in his slate-gray eyes.

"I'm a very lucky woman, " she said, turning back to the crowd. "Lucky to be alive, lucky to be free, and lucky to be here. But I'm even more blessed because I have a wonderful man in my life. We've kept our personal relationship under wraps until now because we wanted to be sure it was right."

She felt herself flushing with pleasure. "Well, it is right, and now I'd like you to meet
Mr.
Right, my future husband." She threw out her hand.

The rock band served up another drumroll, and her fiancé emerged from the wings. As the crowd began to applaud, Gus's smile froze on her face. The man walking toward her across the stage was wearing a midnight-blue tux with a satin shawl collar. But he was
not
Rob Emory! Recognition sluiced over her like an icy shower as she realized who he was.

She scanned the crowd frantically, looking for some sign of her fiancé and despairing that he wasn't anywhere in sight. Where was Rob? What had happened? Her heart was pounding wildly, but it was too late to call Security. By this time the impostor was halfway across the stage, and the paparazzi were going mad. The fireworks display had begun again, shutters chattering, strobelights flashing.

A diamond glint of malice lit the man's eyes. Gus could see it clearly, even through the blinding lights. She knew exactly who he was, but as he walked up and stood before her, a barely discernible question slipped through her lips. "W-who are you?"

"I'm your future husband, " Jack Culhane informed her. The smile on his face was as dark, as obscenely menacing as his eyes.

Satan, she thought. He
is
Satan.

Even if Gus could have managed the words to summon help, he wouldn't have let her do it. She wanted to shout at him, to say that this was crazy, that he was outrageous! But she couldn't get any of that out, not even as he took hold of her arms and drew her close to him. She nearly dropped the plaque she was holding.

Suddenly his mouth was so near her ear she could almost taste the crisp, bubbly champagne on his breath. His shampooed hair gave off rich traces of lanolin. At least his grooming had improved, she thought, somewhat hysterically.

"Play along, " he warned. "Or I'll blow this thing wide open. The whole world will know you faked your own kidnapping. "

Gus laughed as if it were all a clever joke, part of the entertainment. What choice did she have
but
to play along? He was threatening to destroy everything. It was only for the moment, she promised herself. She would find a way out of this as soon as she had time to breathe.

"Introduce me, " he said under his breath. "Tell them my name. "

"Satan?"

"Jack Culhane... tell them how much you want to be Mrs. Culhane.
Do it."

Gus did what he demanded, but with great difficulty. Her stammer had returned full force, and she could barely control it. While she struggled to tell the hushed and curious crowd that this was the man she would marry, she scanned the ballroom for her real fiancé. What had he done with Rob? An image flashed through her mind of her fiancé tied up somewhere, naked.

"When's the wedding?" someone called out.

"Tonight, " Jack told them all. "We're flying to Rio de Janeiro. There's a limo outside right now, waiting to take us to the airport. "

That was the first moment Gus realized he was truly serious. He was kidnapping her again, and this time he was doing it on national television. She had to believe that he was bluffing about the rest of it. It was too far-fetched even for him, but the mere announcement was a hideously clever way to wreck her credibility and her plans. The bastard, she thought, as he took her arm and hustled her toward the wings. He had no idea now much damage he'd done with his asinine stunt.

Chapter 12

"Do you tek thes man to be your lawfully wedded hossban?" The young Mexican priest nodded hopefully at Gus and Jack, his eyes so huge and sad and fudgy brown that Gus wanted to say yes just to please him. She flushed the urge as she might have a wad of soiled toilet paper.

"Hell
wouldn't take this man, " she enunciated slowly, making sure he caught her meaning.

The padre consulted the holy book that lay open in his hands, apparently looking for where it said anything about hell in the sacred marriage ceremony.

"She's
dying
to marry me, " Jack assured him. "Carry on. "

Cold steel nudged Gus's bare backbone, reminding her that she was being married at gunpoint in an ancient Spanish mission somewhere in the wilds of Baja California. Not a shotgun wedding, a
handgun
wedding. The. 357 Magnum was concealed beneath a coat draped over Jack Culhane's arm, but the weapon was hardly necessary. He had far more effective ammo than bullets. He could ruin her life with a few words, the same words he'd whispered in her ear at the WomanPride Fashion Show.

Doubtless the priest had picked up on her "reluctance. " She was as rigid as one of the plaster saints that adorned the altar behind him, her posture ramrod stiff, her arms clenched about her middle. He couldn't have missed the gun, either, since Jack was doing a conspicuously lousy job of concealing it.

What the man lacked in subtlety, he made up for in sheer, clanking brass balls. The only thing Jack Culhane had been bluffing about was the trip to Brazil. Instead of a limo purring out in front of the Beverly Regent, there'd been a battle-scarred taxi, which had sped them to the Ontario Airport and a creaky Cessna charter. That's when Gus had stubbornly refused to get out of the taxi, and the. 357 Magnum had become part of the scenario.

It was also when she'd realized Jack Culhane would stop at nothing. He'd blackmailed her in front of a television audience of millions, kidnapped her at gunpoint, and then skyjacked her to this isolated outpost on the Baja Peninsula. He'd also slipped her real fiancé a mickey, stolen the designer tux off his back, and left him semi-naked in a stall in a men's room at the Beverly Regent. Culhane was clearly determined—she just didn't know what about. Whenever she demanded an explanation, she got the business end of a gun barrel for her trouble. Safe to say he had a communication problem.

"So..." the priest queried Gus carefully. "Do you take heem? Or don you?"

Gus dragged on a section of her lower lip with her teeth, sucking the entire thing into her mouth. Not terribly attractive, she imagined. But then neither was this place. The tiers of votive candles were a nice touch, and the nave was misty blue with sandalwood incense, but other than that it was the mission that time forgot. The mudstone and stucco walls were crumbling to brown silt, and the wooden pews looked like a heavy breeze would have turned them into firewood.

Gus had always thought flies didn't buzz at night. And lizards! There was one peeking at her from behind the brass baptismal font right now. She couldn't seem to escape the crawly things, which made her wonder if they were to be symbolic of her relationship with him.

It wasn't a relationship, she reminded herself, more like a series of fiery car crashes. And if lizards were symbolic of anything it was something perversely, disgustingly sexual. Why had she had sex with him? Why had she done that? The man was a necrophiliac, a kidnapper, and a blackmailer. And those were just the atrocities she knew about.

"The priest is waiting, Gus. "

The gun barrel made its hateful presence known again.

As motivating as cold steel and bullets were, Gus was almost as compelled by the priest's plight. He seemed so desperate. She lifted her shoulders apologetically, wondering if this was his first wedding ceremony. Of course, it
was
three in the morning and he
had
been wrested out of his tiny cot in his tiny cell in the tiny mission by an American psycho, armed and demanding to be joined in holy matrimony with a hysterical woman.

"All right. " She sighed, comforting herself with the thought that she would have the marriage—and her husband—annulled the moment she was stateside,
if the
ceremony was even legal, which it couldn't possibly be.

"The señorita, she say yes?"

"Yes," Gus snapped.

"Quiero dar gracias a Dos de rodillas!"
the priest whispered.

Gus had just enough Spanish to know that he was thanking God on bended knee. At least someone was happy. A broad smile revealed his dazzling white teeth and healthy pink gums as he gazed at the two of them beatifically. The near-tragedy averted, he turned a page of the Bible and swung to Jack eagerly.

"Count me in, " Jack said, checking the luminous dial of his diver's watch, a fashion faux pas with a tux. "Are we about done here?"

Ten minutes later the pronouncements were over, the papers were signed, and the priest, who had just been paid handsomely for his efforts by Jack, was mumbling another prayer of thanksgiving.

"There's one little fact you both seem to have missed. " Gus let her would-be husband
and
the padre have it with a death-be-to-anyone-who-screws-with-me stare. "I'm not Catholic. "

She swung around to leave, her silvery jumpsuit flying in its own breezes as she double-timed it to the mission's massive portals. The click of her high heels against the uneven stone floor ricocheted like drumfire. She wanted out of this den of blue incense. She wanted to run screaming into the night never to be seen or heard from again. That thought relieved some of the terrible frustration building inside her, even though she knew it was only a fantasy.

Lizards fled her path as she advanced on the wooden doors. The way her luck was running, she'd get picked up by a gang of bandidos, stripped of her clothing and jewelry, and sold into white slavery. Either that or they'd kill her and broker her vital organs to some unsavory, unlicensed medical clinic. She had no identification. No one would know who she was, what she'd risked to accomplish everything, or more important, that she was the guardian and sworn protector of a five-year-old who needed her. And no one would care if they did know, she suspected. It was the dead of night, and decent, law-abiding folks were asleep in their beds. The priest had been her best bet, but he'd wisely resorted to prayer instead of heroics.

The rusty iron bar that secured the mission's doors didn't seem to care what Gus wanted, either. It was stuck fast, and she couldn't budge it.

"Slow down, " Jack said, right behind her. He slipped an arm around her waist, his fingers splaying against her bare skin.

Gus blanched at the contact, then realized he was simply moving her out of the way so he could open the door. He dislodged the bar effortlessly, but the jammed doors wouldn't give, she noted with some satisfaction. They had come in through a side entrance, a small stone courtyard, and she should have slipped out that way, too.

The huge doors groaned with Jack's weight as he rammed them with his shoulder. A second hit popped them wide open. The sudden rush of chilly night air was fragrant with the rich, almond scent of virgin's bower, a flowering vine, and the lingering residue of fried fish, probably caught fresh and cooked earlier in some neighboring sea shanty. It was dark outside, so dark Gus could only make out the swaying hovels of the oceanside village by the lonely glow of candlefire still burning in a window or two. She shivered, wishing she had something more to wear than a skimpy, translucent jumpsuit.