No, it had not been totally Lassiter. It had been the two of them together. And she might have escaped Nicos, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t out there waiting to go after her again.
And it didn’t mean that she’d keep running, because she’d promised herself that Nicos had to be destroyed so that he could never hurt anyone else again.
No, it was not over.
*
“We’re about forty-five minutes south of Jamaica,” Lassiter said as he came out of the cockpit. He hadn’t had the chance to take off the tan stain, but he’d removed the dark contacts and his green eyes glittered against his dark skin. “We should be okay for the time being. How are you doing?”
“Well enough, considering,” she said. “Maybe a little shaky. It’s been a rough couple days. Probably not as rough as what you’ve been going through. Are you going to tell me now how you managed to get Patrick out?”
“Yes.” He dropped down in the chair next to her. “But it all came down to your getting that info about Zwecker from Salva. So not nearly as rough as you’d think.” He spent the next ten minutes filling her in on Zwecker, Brukman, and the Nalsara Detention Camp.
So much evil, so much pain, she thought. And it had all been caused by one supremely evil individual. Nicos deserved a very special place in hell for what he’d done. “But Patrick is doing better? He’s going to be okay?”
“I’d like to say that. But he’s still very fragile,” he said soberly. “He hasn’t turned the corner yet. He could go either way.”
“No, I won’t believe that,” she said sharply. “Not after all he’s gone through. Not after what you’ve gone through. He’s going to live. He’s going to be fine.”
“If you say so.” He grimaced. “God knows, I don’t want to be anything but positive. I’ll move heaven and earth to get him anything he needs to pull him through this. I suppose I’m just afraid to hope too much.”
She knew how that felt. All those months when she could see Rosa changing before her eyes, being destroyed, and not able to do anything about it. “It’s not going to happen this time. I’m not going to let it. Nicos isn’t going to win.”
“Hey, stop shaking.” He was turning her to face him. “You’re not going to have to face Nicos again. I dragged you into this, but you’re free now. Patrick is my friend, my responsibility. You’re out of this. I told you that I’d be going after Nicos the minute I got Patrick back.”
She hadn’t realized she was shaking. She tried to control it. “I’m not free. I won’t be free as long as Nicos is alive.” She wrapped her arms around herself to stop the trembling. “I found that out while I was on the island. I can’t bury my head in the sand any longer. I can’t tell myself that I should just go on and not remember Rosa. She’ll always be here with me.” She moistened her lips. “But he has to be … gone, Lassiter. He shouldn’t live after what he did to her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said hoarsely. “But I know it’s tearing me up. Whatever you need to do to him, I’ll do it for you. I’ll do it for both of us.”
“It doesn’t work that way. You weren’t there; you didn’t see her. It has to be me.”
“No, I wasn’t there. I don’t know who you’re talking about. But I want to know, Margaret.” His hands closed on her shoulders. “Stop bottling it up inside you. Share it with me. Tell me.”
Yes, she wanted to tell him, she realized suddenly. She didn’t want to be alone with it any longer. “It was Rosa.” She swallowed hard. She mustn’t cry. Too many tears … “You remember I told you about Rosa Gonzalez? We worked together at the petting zoo in New Orleans. She invited me to live with her family in Guatemala City. I stayed with them for over a year. I’d never really had a friend before I met Rosa. She chattered like a magpie, she was funny and made jokes, and it was so good. She and her mother were very kind to me.”
“But it didn’t last?”
“Rosa was a couple years older than I was. She liked boys and she met Luis Garcia and went crazy about him. It turned out that Luis was the son of one of Nicos’s men on Vadaz Island. He talked to his father about Rosa … and me.”
“You?”
“I told you that Rosa chattered. Naturally, she talked about me. She didn’t mean to hurt me.”
“She told him about your communicating with animals?”
“She thought it was funny and interesting and she wanted to impress him.” She repeated, “She didn’t mean to hurt me.”
“But she did hurt you.”
“Somehow the story got back to Nicos. He thought I might be useful. He wanted to see me.” She paused. “But they thought they might need Rosa to persuade me. So they took both of us from her home in Guatemala to the island. If they’d only taken me, none of it would have happened. I could have done something.… But I couldn’t do anything, because he kept hurting her.”
“That was how they persuaded you?”
“The things they did to her,” she whispered. “Sometimes Nicos did it in front of me. Most of the time he just took her back to his house and he’d send her to me the next day to tell me what he’d done. But every time I refused to do something he wanted, I knew that she would be punished. She became only an animal waiting to be hurt or used. She’d beg me to do anything he wanted just to keep away the pain.”
“My God.”
“And then one night when he thought I’d made a mistake, he shot her in front of me.” She stared him in the eye. “So don’t tell me I’m out of this. I’m not free. I ran away three years ago because I was too numb to deal with those memories, but I won’t run away again. You can’t make me, Lassiter.”
“I could, you know.” He smiled crookedly. “But I’d have to find a deep prison to keep you until it was over. And then you’d probably go after me.”
“Count on it. I’m not going to let you hide me away. You’re going to take me back with you to that monastery and I’m going to help get Patrick home safe. Then I’m going to be there with you when it’s time to take Nicos down.” She held his eyes. “Don’t you see? That’s how it has to be.”
He was silent a moment. Then he swore softly and said through his teeth, “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.” He didn’t speak for another moment. “Okay. But I’m warning you, I’ll try to keep you as safe as possible. I’m already having massive guilt attacks about sending you back to the island.”
“You didn’t send me. I told you it was my choice. This is my choice, too.” She shook her head. “If you don’t realize that, then you didn’t listen.”
“Oh, I listened.” He pulled her into his arms. “And I watched you. Now be still and let me hold you until you stop that shaking.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’ll be fine soon.”