“You don’t trust me?”
“Actually, I do trust you. Or I wouldn’t be in this predicament. I don’t believe you’d want me to be hurt, and that’s why the empathy is so strong. It’s only that I probably know Nicos better than you do and I won’t be shut out. I want this over as soon as we can do it. For my own sake as well as your friend Patrick’s.” She punched the pillow to make it more comfortable before she settled her head on it. “Now go away and let me sleep a few hours. I need it.”
“I guess you do.” He got to his feet and moved toward the nightstand. He paused to look down at her as he reached out to turn off the lamp. “I meant it: Nothing is going to hurt you, Margaret.” His hand moved to brush her hair back with a whisper touch. “I have to take what you’re giving me. I wish I didn’t. And I’m sorry that it happened this way. It’s not how I wanted it to go. Who would have known that you’d be—”
“Weird? A freak? Hard to find the word, isn’t it?”
“Not at all.” He bent and brushed his lips across her forehead. “I was thinking of sensitive.” He smiled as he drew back. “Or perhaps very special.”
“Are you conning me, Lassiter?”
“I’ll save that for another time, when you’re not so fragile.” He turned off the light. “And it will be done only with humor, not an attempt at manipulation, I promise.” She could hear him move across the room toward the door. “Good night, Margaret. Sleep well.”
She heard the door close behind him.
She stared into the darkness. Disturbance, as usual. Always disturbance with Lassiter. Only this time there was also this closeness she had never wanted. Even his hand on her hair had felt terribly intimate. She had wanted it to remain, to keep giving her that sense of being treasured. It was the way she had felt when he had touched her like that on the deck before he had pushed her away and called Juan Salva.
“Desperation,” he had called it, “a last resort.”
And she realized why he had called Salva. He might not have had her empathy, but he’d realized he was softening, and that couldn’t be allowed to happen. At that point, he might not have been certain how far he’d have to go or what he’d have to do to get to Nicos.
He had no doubt meant it when he’d said that he wouldn’t have sacrificed her to Nicos. But everything was always changing in this world. Except Nicos. Nicos never changed. Evil that dark always stayed the same.
Nicos.
Black-and-white tiles …
She closed her eyes tightly.
Go to sleep. She’d made her decision.
Don’t think of what waits for you on Vadaz Island.
CHAPTER SIX
Port Tendalos
Mexico
“It doesn’t look like much of a seaport,” Margaret said as she gazed at the sleepy little Mexican town, which possessed only a handful of piers and a strip of weather-beaten shops on the sandy beach. From where she stood at the rail of the ship it resembled one of the many Caribbean islands where she’d lived after she’d run from Nicos. “More like a fishing village.”
“That’s exactly what I wanted,” Lassiter said. “Nicos has contacts all over Mexico and Central America. I’ve no desire for him to know where I am or what I’m doing at any given time. I’ve used this village before. There’s a small private airport about three miles from the beach, beyond that dune. I have a Cessna waiting for us in a hangar there. I’ll have Cambry drop us off and take the ship to an inlet about a hundred miles north to anchor and hide it. We’ll pick him up there.”
“You can fly that plane?” Then she remembered. “That’s right, Devon said something about a Gulfstream.”
He nodded. “I learned while I was in the Special Forces. It comes in handy.”
“I imagine it does.” Her gaze remained on the sandy beach. A peaceful seaside scene, a sleepy town. She didn’t feel either peaceful or sleepy. All she could think of was that this town was the first step toward Nicos. “You had it all planned.”
“It shouldn’t be a surprise to you,” he said curtly. “I wasn’t in the least secretive about it. If you’d asked, I would have told you anything you wanted to know.”
“At the time I was either avoiding thinking about this place or planning how to escape so that I’d never have to see it. I guess I should be grateful now that you’ve been careful about not alerting Nicos or Salva.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’d be a fool to expect gratitude from you.” He turned away from the port, his gaze raking her face. “You’ve got circles beneath your eyes that look like bruises. No sleep at all?”
“A little. But I had a lot on my mind.”
He stiffened. “Nicos?”
She shook her head. “I try not to think of him. I’ll do that when I have to do it. No, I remembered what Cambry told me about your working on the computer before you came up on deck yesterday evening.” She smiled faintly. “He was being discreet and wouldn’t tell me exactly what you were doing, but I gathered it was important to you and not going well. Don’t you think I should know now?”
He nodded. “I’ve been trying to get a clue to where that camp is where they’re holding Patrick. It wouldn’t be totally self-maintained; there would have to be supply records, maybe salary, transportation, something.… Perhaps even names and backgrounds of the guards who are holding him. If I can trace any items back to the source, I might be able to get my hands on someone who knows where he’s being held.”
“But you’ve not been able to do it yet?”
“I managed to assess one of Nicos’s main files from the cloud.” His hands clenched on the rail. “I’m betting that it’s the right one. Everything points to it. But I couldn’t break in or decode it. Whoever Nicos hired to create it must have been supertalented, genius caliber. The firewall is megatight. But I’m close. I know I’m close.”
“That must be frustrating for you. You were able to break into CIA data banks when you were seventeen and you can’t get into Nicos’s files?”
“I’ll get there,” he said grimly. “I’ll just work until I can find the password Nicos buried in that file.”
“By all means, that would simplify everything, wouldn’t it? If you were able to go around Nicos to find that camp, you wouldn’t be forced to confront him.” She made a wry face. “Or should I say, I wouldn’t be forced to confront him? Because that’s how it would end up.”
“No, it wouldn’t.” His eyes were glittering in his taut face. “I told you that I wouldn’t let that happen.”
“I know you’ll try not to let me have to face him.”
“Try? You’re not listening to me.”
“Yes, I am. You don’t have to get angry or upset. I just know Nicos.”