Scorpion (32 page)

“
She’s well known in Trinidad, by now Ramsingh knows she’s back. He’s probably got every cop in the country looking for her.”

“
Think again, you’d never believe the shit she had in that bag. She’s a master of disguises, you’re old girlfriend. I thought I was flying back to Trinidad with my mother. She sailed through customs, a little old lady from Boston, coming down to Trinidad to visit her son who works for one of the oil companies. She even had the accent down.”

“
I don’t believe it.”

“
Believe it,” Earl said, then he gestured toward the pills in Broxton’s hand. “Now, eat up, I don’t have all day.”

“
I’m not very hungry.”

“
Mr. Broxton, we can do this easy, or we can do it hard. I got no instructions about my wife. You want her to stay alive you eat the pills,” Earl said, as he moved the barrel of the gun till it was pointing at Maria. “Well?”

Broxton poured four of the pills into his hand and swallowed them dry.

“
Now you baby.”

Maria took the bottle from Broxton and tipped it to her lips, swallowing the last two pills, then she drank the water. “I hope they kill me, Earl,” she said. “That way I’ll never have to see you again.”

“
Baby, death is the only way you’ll ever get rid of me,” he said.

“
Now what?” Broxton said.

“
Now we wait,” he said, looking at his watch. “Tomorrow evening, at five straight up, Ramsingh will be getting his and it’ll all be over.”

“
She’s going to hit him during the dedication speech?”

“
Yeah, in front of an army of cops, pretty fucking ballsy. I almost with I was doing it, but it’s her show now. I’m out of it.”

“
It’s not too late to really be out of it, Earl,” Broxton said. “Let us go and I’ll keep you out of it.”

“
Climb up on the bed, lay down on your backs and stare at the ceiling,” Earl said.

“
You don’t have to do this,” Broxton said.

“
You’re wasting your breath,” Maria said, and she scooted on her rear till she was in the center of the bed and lay down with her head on the pillow.

“
Now you, Broxton,” Earl said, and by the time he was stretched out next to Maria she was asleep and he was out a few minutes later.

The slight breeze blowing through his hair told him it was a dream. He tried to reach a hand up, to touch it, to pull on it, to feel its texture, but his hands were locked at his sides. He opened his eyes and looked down, wind rippled through his loose clothes, tickled his bare feet and helped to keep him aloft.

“
Dani,” he moaned. He was floating above her nude body, gently coming down on top of her. He felt her breasts pushing against his bare chest, felt himself getting hard. He tried to bring a hand up to caress her, but his arms were locked iron tight at his sides.

He felt her hand take him and guide him into her. After all these years, it was happening at last. He felt her grind up to meet him and he was thrilled. He never wanted to wake, the dream was better than any reality, better than life.

He was so hard, but he couldn’t seem to find release. The dream had him in its grip and he slowly pumped into her. He came so close, but the pleasure he craved was just beyond the edge. He tried to grind into her faster and harder, but he was crippled without the use of his hands and so he was forced to match her slow, sensual rhythm and she held him on the edge of forever with her steady rocking, stomach tightening, thigh clenching motion, seeming to suck him deeper and deeper into her until he felt like his heart was going to burst.

Then she pumped her pelvis up to him to catch him as the greatest release he’d ever known ripped through him. He went and went and went and he thought he’d go on forever. “Dani, Dani,” he moaned, then he was sinking in dark waters, the surface fading away. There were sharks here, danger near, and he was moving blindly out of control, buried in black, shivering and shaking, cold one second, hot the next. He tried to see, but pain plagued his eyes, the lids weighed heavy, covering an ache that caromed through his head. To open them would be to invite in the hot chills that ravaged his body. He felt like he’d been crucified and tossed into a whirlpool, and it was sucking him down into the pit.

Reality was spinning away as the varying shades of red running inside his eyes turned into flames dancing over hot coals, leaping out from behind his eyelids and wrapping hot tongues of fire around the back of his neck, hot and clenching, choking his breath away as his lungs exploded. He gagged, trying in vain to suck air through lips that refused to part. And then he passed out again.

Later he came awake, shaking in a cold sweat. He was covered in pain. His legs felt like an army of assassins were beating on them with flaming torches. His arms were frozen, hands still nailed to the cross. Ice dripped from his armpits instead of sweat. His face was buried in snow. His mouth was nailed shut, cutting off air. The red flames inside his eyes had turned into frozen hands of clutching ice. Wicked hands, long nails digging into the back of his neck, digging deep, drawing blood, squeezing, clutching, seizing his spinal chord, snatching it away, pulling it through his throat.

Somewhere someone moaned, then his body started shaking, arms and legs vibrating and shuddering. He sensed that the source was from outside of himself, and he was powerless to control it. His right arm shot upward and came down hard, hitting himself in the leg. He felt a stab of pain as his arm was going up to attack himself again and he stiffened himself and fought against the force, slowing the attack. His midsection started jerking, spasms from outside of himself, flesh against him, pounding and rubbing, slippery and slapping. He wanted to see, but was choking, struggling to take in air, and he passed out again.

The cold was gone when he woke again, the clutching hands replaced by a dull headache, greater than a hangover, but bearable. The pain in his legs was gone, but so was most of the feeling. His bladder was screaming, but he couldn’t relieve himself. He was aching, stiff, and his tongue lay flat, dry in his mouth. He tried to move it, tried to swallow saliva and couldn’t. He had a kink in his left foot and tried to move it. Like his tongue, it was immobile. He opened his eyes.

Her eyes were inches from his own, staring unblinking. He tried to jerk away, but he was frozen in place. He fought to reclaim his raging pulse. He tried screaming, but the sound was killed in his mouth. He squeezed his eyes closed and tried to fight the fright building inside. He was attached to her and she was dead. He shivered and gagged on another scream, then his arm shot up, out of his control, and he slapped himself in the leg, but he kept his eyes closed, hoping beyond hope that he’d slipped into a nightmare and not cold reality.

He slapped himself again and he opened his eyes.

She blinked.

She was alive.

He stared into her eyes and forced his fear aside. Her nose was touching his, he could feel her warm breath on his face. She had gray duct tape stuck over her mouth. He tried to move his lips, moved his parched tongue between them, touched and tasted the tape covering his own mouth. Cold fear crept up his spine.

He closed his eyes again and inhaled a long slow breath through his nostrils. When he open them back up she was still staring at him. She cast her eyes down the length of their bodies and he followed her look and the fear so recently calmed burst through the surface, screaming and sending spikes of ice into the base of his neck.

Their arms and legs were duct taped together, wrapped several times, mummy like. They were naked, her breasts were flat against his chest, her pelvis pressed against his, their breath intermingled, their eyes sharing their combined fear. They couldn’t move, he couldn’t sit without breaking her back, she couldn’t without breaking his, but there had to be a way, he thought. There was, it was at the edge of his mind, but the drugs riding the blood through his veins dulled him and he found himself drifting into semi consciousness.

But there was a way out, he thought, as everything faded to black.

He felt the sun warm on his neck as he woke again, craving water, still stiff, still unable to move, and she was still staring, eyes so close to his. He tried to blink her away. He was still groggy from whatever drugs that were working on him, and it took a few seconds before he realized that this was no dream. He tried to talk through the tape, but his words, “Are you all right,” filtered through his dry mouth, the drug haze, and the duct tape, and came out like a cross between a moan and a groan and he knew they were as unintelligible to her as they were to himself.

He closed his eyes for a few seconds, to think, but he opened them quickly when she raised her arm up, pulling his along with it, and slapped him in the leg. He got the message and nodded his head. He wasn’t going back to sleep.

Then he remembered the dream and he knew that it had been no dream. It wasn’t Dani he’d made love to, but Maria. He stared deep into her eyes, felt her sweat mingled with his, felt her heart beat racing and rippling through her to him, tingling his skin and his soul. They were trapped and taped to each other as one, and he felt all the love he had to give flowing through him, passing into her.

She picked his arm up again and he shook his head. She didn’t have to slap him anymore to get his attention. He was awake now and he was thinking. He looked past her to the clock on the nightstand beyond. Two-thirty, two-and-a-half hours to prevent an assassination, but first he had to get free.

Then he remembered something he thought about as he fell back into unconsciousness He knew how to get free. The phone. All he had to do was get a message to the operator and help would come running, but first he had to get the message to Maria. They had to work as one or they’d never get free.

“
Phone,” he tried to say through the tape, but it came out as ome. “Ome, ome,” he repeated.

She shook her head, indicating no. She didn’t understand.

“
Hone,” he said, empathizing the H part of the sound.

She shook her head and he raised his and looked beyond her, at the nightstand, the clock and the phone. Then he looked back into her eyes, then beyond her, then back into her eyes, then beyond her again. She blinked and scrunched up her nose. She understood, he wanted her to see something, to see what he saw and then her eyes lit up like a kid’s in school and he knew she got it.

“
Phone,” she said and he heard her distinctly through the tape. He wondered how come she could talk better than him and then he saw it. The tape over her mouth wasn’t on very well. He stared at it. She saw the direction of his eyes and blinked several times letting him know she understood.

She moved her head forward and he ran the side of his face against the tape, pulling it down with his chin and his cheek. One sweep of his face and the tape started to peel away, two and it gave way some more, three and it was hanging off her mouth and she could talk.

“
Help,” she screamed. Help us.” Her voice was loud and full of desperation and it was the sweetest thing he’d ever heard. “Hurry, help us, help us,” she screamed again.

“
It’s going to be okay,” she said to him. “Someone must have heard me. We’ll be free soon.”

He blinked at her.

“
They’re going to kill the prime minister at exactly five o’clock.”

He blinked at her. He remembered her husband saying that.

“
Help,” she screamed out again, but nobody came.

“
Ome,” he hummed through the tape.

“
Yes, the phone,” she said. She was breathing hard, panting heavy, like she’d just finished a race. “Let’s roll toward it and see if we can’t knock it off the hook. Ready, now,” she said, and he rolled with her toward the right side of the king-sized bed.

He was on the bottom now and she stretched her neck, trying to reach the telephone. Then she stopped. “It’s unplugged,” she said, staring at the wire dangling over the nightstand.

He sighed, breathing out through his nose. Any minute his bladder was going to cut loose and he didn’t want to do that.

“
My husband’s gone off the deep end,” she said. “I think he’s going to kill us.”

Broxton nodded. He wasn’t surprised.

“
The tape on your mouth isn’t like it was on mine. It goes all the way around, two or three times. It looks tight, that’s why I couldn’t understand you, but I think I can get it off. Hold still.”

He felt her teeth on his cheek as she bit into the tape that was wrapped around his neck. After a few attempts she had a firm grip and he winced as she worked the tape downward. It was tightly wrapped, but it stretched and he felt it pull away from his mouth. Then it was down past his upper lip and he drew in a great gulp of air. She wasn’t able to get it past his chin, but his mouth was halfway uncovered and he could talk.

“
Thanks,” he said, his voice a raspy whisper.

“
Now what?” she said. She was on top of him and they were both looking at the phone they couldn’t use. He felt her flex her fingers and then she squeezed his right hand with her left.

“
It wasn’t a dream?” he said.

“
No, it wasn’t,” she said.

“
I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“
You were drugged.”

“
He didn’t tape our hands. If we had something sharp we could cut our way free.”