“Or the end?”
“Not the end. You’ll have plenty of years to write that. It will probably be an epic. I just want to catch up.”
And for some reason, it was important to him, she could see. Just as it had been important for her to know about his background, the way he thought and felt. She had fought that desire to know him, to let herself open to him, but now there was no reason why she should do it any longer. They were too close, with an intimacy that had been born of what she was and what he needed from her.
So give him what he wanted. Not everything. She had to keep the walls high if she was going to survive going back to Nicos.
“When I was thirteen, I met a couple who lived on a farm near Markville, Kentucky. Jason and Marcia Nixon. We … liked each other. They accepted me. They took me in and sent me back to school. I helped out on their farm and they told everyone I was their niece, whose parents had been killed in a car accident.” She cleared her throat. “It was good. And pretty soon I realized that I loved them. I wasn’t used to that. I hadn’t been around people very much since I’d run away. But there it was, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I thought I might even stay with them if I wasn’t in the way. But they didn’t treat me as if I were a burden. I think they might have loved me, too. It looked as if it was going—” She drew a deep breath. “But DEFACS traced me to the school where I was enrolled. One day my father showed up at the farm and was shouting and threatening the Nixons with a lawsuit.”
“And what did you do?”
“I picked up a frying pan and hit him over the head. Then, before he could regain consciousness, I packed a bag and took off.”
“Frying pan,” Lassiter repeated. “Excellent decision. Except for the running away. Wouldn’t the Nixons have fought for you?”
“It was my place to fight for them. I didn’t want to cause them trouble. And my father would have given them nothing but problems. It was time to move on.”
“Guatemala?”
“Not then. I headed south and ended up in New Orleans. I got a job at a petting zoo and worked there for six months. Then I met a girl, Rosa Gonzalez, who worked behind the refreshment stand there. She was a little older than I was, but we struck up a friendship. She was fun and made me laugh. She lived in Guatemala City and she said her father had a speedboat that he used to transport ‘clients’ back and forth from New Orleans to Guatemala.”
“Clients without proper documents, I assume?”
She nodded. “I didn’t care about that. I’d been traveling without documents myself since the time I ran away from home. The only time I got into trouble was when the Nixons falsified my birth certificate to get me into that school near their home. Anyway, Rosa was going back home at the end of the summer and asked me if I wanted to go with her.”
“And you saw a great adventure looming.”
“And a way to get below the radar if my father was still looking for me. There wasn’t much chance that he wouldn’t be. It seemed a perfect solution.”
“And was it a great adventure?”
“At first. Rosa was kind to me, and so was her mother. I grew to love them both. I had a good time that year.”
“Only at first?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes perfect solutions don’t turn out so perfect. Things happen.”
“What things?”
Time to back away. “You’ve had the beginning, Lassiter. Be satisfied.”
“I want more.”
“And I don’t want to give it. Maybe when I get back from Vadaz Island, I’ll be ready.”
He stiffened. “You’re not going to—” He stopped. “You’re trying to distract me.”
“Yes.” She leaned back in the seat. “And it worked really well. You’re beset with guilt these days. Of course, you should be, considering how you started with me.” She tilted her head. “I’ll make a bargain. You find either the password or the name of our computer whiz before you have to turn me over to Nicos and I’ll tell you how the perfect solution turned sour.”
He flinched. “That hurt.”
“Yes, it did. It’s meant to spur you on.”
It wasn’t the truth; she knew that he didn’t need anything to drive him any harder. “Maybe I’m getting tired of having you know everything about me. I’ll make you work for it from now on.”
And keep the pain at bay as long as she could.
Black-and-white tiles.
Rosa …
CHAPTER NINE
The sand was warm beneath Margaret’s bare feet as she walked toward the front door of the small beach house. She’d taken her shoes off the minute she’d hopped out of the Toyota. She’d seen the blue sea lapping up to the beach as they’d driven up to the house and felt the sunlight strong and pure as it touched her face.
She needed this. It might be the last time she could relax and enjoy these natural wonders until she got off Vadaz Island. There would be only tension there, and Nicos had managed to taint even the beauty of the island with his ugliness.
“You look like you did that afternoon on the ship when you took your swim.” Lassiter grinned and glanced at her bare feet as he unlocked the door. “All golden and ready to face the sharks.”
“They never came. You scared them away with your big bad gun.” She glanced back at Cambry, who had chosen to feed Juno beside the car and was now walking slowly toward them to accommodate the dog’s sprain.
Cambry grimaced as he saw her looking at him. “Don’t say it.”
“I was just thinking you’d found your true vocation,” she called back to him as she entered the house.
Just one large living area with a kitchenette, a long spice-colored couch, a round oak dining table, and five chairs. There were three doors opening off the central room that presumably led to bedrooms or baths. Nothing luxurious. But there were also huge, wide French doors opening to the beach. That was luxury enough for Margaret.
“You like it?” Lassiter asked, his gaze on her face as she wandered toward the French doors. “I can see you do. I’ll tell Nick Mandell that he did well.”
“When do I meet this Mandell?” she asked as she threw open the doors to let in the sunlight. “He’s clearly a man who knows what’s important.”
“In more ways than one,” Lassiter said. “He’s the most lethal man I know with a Remington 700 rifle. He can pick off a target at over a thousand yards. He was invaluable to our team in Afghanistan.” He threw his backpack on the couch and grabbed his computer equipment bag. “As for when you’ll meet him, it depends on how soon we locate Nicos’s computer expert and I squeeze the information out of him. We’ll be moving fast then.”