Shades of Gray (17 page)

“The town and harbor patrols are outnumbered.” Durant’s voice was terse. “The ships’ captains are moving their vessels out of the harbor to avoid mortar fire; they ask if you wish them to fire on the town.”

“No.” Andres’s face was a mask, hard. “I won’t sanction that. Guns from the ships would kill innocent citizens. Have the captains send every available man to the town; they can come ashore at the beach on the east side of the island.”

Durant relayed the order, then looked at Andres. “It won’t be enough,” he said bleakly.

Sara’s voice came steadily into the silence. “Almost a third of your men are guarding the house.”

Andres looked at her, his face still hard but hell leaping at her out of his eyes. “It could well be a diversion,” he said. “To get to you.”

“That doesn’t matter. You can’t let them destroy the town.”

She was right, and he knew it, had known it all
along. But that didn’t make his orders easier to give. He looked at his waiting colonel and spoke flatly. “Leave two men on the parapet, a dozen guarding the perimeter—but pull them inside the fence. Have the rest ready to go in ten minutes.”

Durant saluted and strode quickly from the room.

“I’ll stay here,” Andres told Sara.

“No, you won’t.”

“Vincente can lead the men, Sara.” He wasn’t arguing, merely stating a fact.

“I know that. But they fight for you, Andres. For
you
. You always lead them, and that can’t change now.” It took all her control to say the words calmly, steadily. “We both know that. You have to go on fighting for your people.”

“Sara …”

“I can’t be allowed to change you!” she said fiercely. “You can’t be less than you are. If I weren’t here, you’d go with your men without hesitation, without even thinking about it. Wouldn’t you?”

He didn’t answer, just looked at her.

An explosion in the town made the floor
shudder beneath their feet, and Sara drew a deep breath. “I know how to handle a gun, and I’m a good shot.” She nodded toward the far wall, where he kept a small handgun collection. “I’ll find something in there. Maria and I will go down into the cellar just in case, and stay there until you come back. We’ll be fine, Andres.”

After a moment Andres bent slowly and got his webbed holster from the desk drawer. He buckled the belt in place, then came around the desk and pulled her into his arms. “If anything happens to you—”

“Nothing will.” She lost herself for a few precious heartbeats in the heat of his kiss, then found a smile from somewhere. “Just … come back to me.”

“Always.” And it was a vow chiseled in stone.

Sara went to the front door with him and watched the jeeps disappear into the slowly lightening darkness before closing and locking the door. She went to find Maria in the kitchen, telling the pale and quiet housekeeper that they were going to spend a few hours in the cellar.
Grateful for something to do, Maria began gathering a few snacks and drinks to take with them.

Sara returned to the office and went to study the handguns in Andres’s collection. Not allowing herself to think of anything but practical defense, she made a swift choice and took a Colt automatic from the case. The gun was cleaned and oiled, the clip holding seven bullets. Sara weighed the gun in her hand, then double-checked the safety and stuck the gun inside the waistband of her jeans.

She could indeed handle guns. Her father, a career army man who’d been undismayed by having a daughter rather than a son, had taught her from a young age to know and respect guns, to handle them easily, and to fire them well.

She had practiced regularly, especially during the past few years. While moving so constantly to avoid what she had thought had been Andres’s men, she had practiced at various target ranges, renting a pistol rather than keeping her own. As much as she would have preferred a gun of her own during those hectic days, she had decided reluctantly against it; the police and the FBI took
a dim view of guns carried across state lines, and she had been constantly on the move.

She had accepted then, somewhat to her shock, that in her own defense she could have shot at something other than a target. But that had not been put to the test then. Now it looked as though it would be.

On the point of turning away from the gun case, Sara hesitated. What was it her father had once told her? That police officers often kept “backup” guns other than their service revolvers on the theory that one gun might jam or be lost, and another might be needed. And Sara had often muttered in disgust while reading of fictional heroines who had
known
they were in danger and hadn’t taken the simplest precautions.

Sara hesitated, then went quickly upstairs to change her running shoes for a pair of soft-soled ankle boots. She returned to the gun case and removed a tiny derringer, studying it thoughtfully. Useless for any long-range defense, of course, but quite effective at close range. She made sure it was cleaned and loaded, then bent
and slid the little gun into the top of her right boot. It was virtually hidden there, and yet she could get to it quickly if the need arose. It made a small but comforting weight against her ankle.

She hesitated yet again, forcing her mind to work methodically and trying to ignore the continuing sounds of gunfire and explosions from the town. Was there anything else she could do?

Lucio wanted to capture rather than kill her, wanted to use her to force Andres to renounce power. Wanted, even, to break his enemy thoroughly and completely.

Torture
.

Sara felt the coldness of rational fear but tried to think practically. Ropes, perhaps. Ropes … She went to Andres’s desk and rummaged for something vaguely remembered, emerging at last with a small, flat penknife. It wasn’t much as knives went, but the blade was sharp, and it would be almost invisible in her hip pocket with the tail of her summer blouse loose over it. She thrust it into her pocket grimly.

She found Maria waiting for her at the top of
the cellar steps, and it was only then that she remembered something.

“Damn. Oh, damn, and I’ll bet—Maria, did Andres know how I got through the fence when I ran away before?”

Bewildered, the housekeeper said, “He was wild then, half crazy. Nobody knew how you got out, and he didn’t blame anyone.”

Sara was torn for a moment, knowing she had promised Andres to remain in the cellar. But … “Maria, go on into the cellar. I’m just going to speak to one of the guards outside.”

She left the housekeeper worried and upset, then went quickly out through the kitchen and into the garden. It was almost light now, gray and misty, and Sara hadn’t gone three steps before she encountered a young soldier who relaxed perceptibly when he realized who she was.

“
Señora
 …”

He had her already married, Sara thought, and could hardly help but grin a little. “Do you speak English?” she asked him.

He looked blank, worried. Tried a hesitant “No.”

“Damn.” She had been a little tardy in worrying about speaking Spanish, Sara realized. If none of the guards here at the house spoke English, she’d have to do this herself. She felt, briefly, like a foreigner, then smiled ruefully at the soldier. “
De nada
,” she said, using one of the few phrases she knew.

He made an anxious sound when she continued on into the garden toward the western fence. “
Señora
!”

Sara waved a hand dismissively at him and went on, pushing through the shrubs rather than taking the path.

What with one thing and another, it hadn’t occurred to her to ask Andres about the opening in his defenses that she’d discovered two years ago. She thought it had probably been closed by now just as a matter of course, but there was always a chance it hadn’t, and a chance was too much.

When she got to the fence, she was relieved that she had remembered to check, because the gap was still there.

It wasn’t really much of an opening, however. Rainwater had eroded a narrow gully that ran
from just inside the fence all the way down the hill, leaving a gap of about two feet square between the bottom of the fence and the base of the gully. It wasn’t an obvious opening, being almost completely hidden from inside the fence by a creeping shrub that had crept over most of the hole, and more or less invisible from outside the fence because more greenery practically hid the gully.

But it was an easy way in.

Sara paused for a moment, staring down at the gap. She’d have to go back toward the house and try to find a soldier who spoke English. Failing that, she’d just lead one of them here and make the problem obvious. She began to turn away. Then realized something with a jolt of fear, and her hand was closing around the Colt’s grip even before she was consciously aware of it.

The creeping shrub was flattened, its gleaming green leaves torn and mashed into the ground. The opening was obvious—because someone had already used it.

Someone was inside the fence
.

Sara had an instant to reflect bitterly that she
was no better than those stupid, unprepared fictional heroines. Made less wary by soldiers and her own guns, she had trotted out cheerfully to check on a breach in the defenses on her own instead of pulling up the drawbridge, flooding the moat, and barricading herself in the castle like any sensible heroine.

Her gun was in her hand, but she never got the chance to fire it. With only a fleeting awareness of someone behind her, Sara felt an explosion of pain in her head and crumpled to the ground without a sound.

Sara had underestimated the young soldier. He had been wretchedly aware of his inability to communicate with her and shuddered at the very thought of dragging the president’s lady back to the house against her will, but seeing her roaming in the garden, armed or not, scared him to death. The moment she disappeared into the shrubbery, he raced quickly around the house until he found Captain Morales, who
did
speak English.

“Captain, the lady. She’s in the garden.”

Morales cursed bitterly, but he was moving at the same time, moving quickly and ordering the younger man to show him where the lady was. The shooting started all around then, as one of Andres’s guards encountered one of Lucio’s men—inside the fence. And there were, it developed, half a dozen of Lucio’s men inside the perimeter. The small battle didn’t last long, ending in minutes, with the enemy dead and two of Andres’s men wounded.

But the lady was gone.

They found her gun near the fence, and it was obvious she had been taken out through the unsuspected opening. There was no sign of movement. Morales ordered his men to search the house and grounds, just in case, but he knew they were too late.

He would have to go to the president and tell him. He didn’t look forward to that.

At some level of her mind Sara was still swearing at herself when she fuzzily came back to consciousness. She knew time had passed; not
even the interlacing of jungle greenery above her head could block out the hot morning sun. And it was very hot, damp, and sticky.

With her eyes still half closed and unfocused, Sara silently took stock. She was sitting on the ground, her back and aching head against a narrow tree. Her wrists were bound with ropes—in front of her. She thought that was ironic and even amusing; after her careful selection of a knife with which to cut ropes, she couldn’t get her hands around behind her to
get
it. Which certainly said something about best-laid plans. And since her ankles were tied as well, Sara wasn’t sure she could get to her small derringer either.

She forced her eyes to focus, studying her bound ankles. She could, just barely, see the derringer’s grip, and she didn’t think the gun was inaccessible; it didn’t feel as though those ropes were pressing it against her ankle, at any rate. So maybe she still had that ace. The problem was, she wouldn’t know for sure until she tried—and any attempt would certainly give away the gun’s hiding place.

Because he was watching her very closely.

Deliberately, perhaps unwilling to look death in the face, she turned her head slowly and gazed around at her surroundings instead. A jungle camp, mostly deserted. There were signs that a large number of men had been here at least a couple of days, but they were gone now, fighting in the town.

There were only two men present. One was a burly, bearded soldier with blank eyes. He stood a few yards away, holding a rifle. He wasn’t looking at her but scanning the area almost automatically, and he held the rifle like a friend.

The other man …

He was slightly above medium height. Dark, of course. Slender to the point of thinness, but when he moved, it was obvious there were muscles. It was obvious there was strength and determination and purpose.

Sara hadn’t wanted to look at his face. But she looked at last, compelled to know what she could about this man who would certainly kill her—after he made both her and Andres suffer.

He was standing only a couple of feet away from her, staring down at her. He was handsome in the way a glacier is beautiful: cold, remote, deadly. His black eyes were unusually large, unnaturally brilliant with cunning and something else. Evil. He had a wide, mobile mouth that was sensual and cruel. A mouth that smiled like the gates of hell.

Lucio.

Suddenly he spit a single word at her in Spanish, and Sara didn’t have to understand the word to catch the meaning. He was, she realized in vague surprise, calling her a whore. She didn’t know why that surprised her, except that she wouldn’t have expected him to waste time with words. But then she began to wonder if he intended to break her mind and soul as well as her body, and looking into those brilliant, hate-filled eyes, she thought he just might.

She fought to keep her face expressionless, to keep command of her voice. “Sorry,” she said ironically. “I’m afraid I don’t speak Spanish.”

He laughed. There was, astonishingly enough, a glint of real amusement in his eyes. And his
wide, white smile remained. “You’re Andres’s woman,” he said, his English as easy and idiomatic as Andres’s, his voice deep and somewhat quick.