bodyguard—and heads toward the balcony. Perhaps toilet breaks, or to get some air? He is looking a bit pale. Maybe too much champagne... The loyal bodyguard follows anyway, keeping his distance.
I start for the open screen door at a slow pace so that Valdez and I will reach it at the same time. But he lengthens his stride, quickens his step, to make sure he gets there first. Christ. Is he about to throw up? Or is his bladder about to explode? With my short legs I’d have to run to keep up, but I can’t do that. No use drawing attention to myself.
Once outside, Valdez clutches his stomach and props himself up on one of the stone pillars. Coughs, stumbles in a not-so-straight line across the balcony. The gibbous moon sinks behind a silver raft of cloud, and it goes dark. It's very dark. Seizing the opportunity, I dash out after him, my heels cli-cli-clicking on the bare stone. “Mr. Valdez, is everything alright?”
He groans, almost doubles up in mid-stride.
“Mr. Valdez?” I deftly uncap the needle on my ring and go to help him—help from which he will not recover.
“I’m—I’m all right,” he manages. “It’s just a little—”
Fssp...
A tiny dart from the shadow taps his jugular before I can reach him. It's tiny and orange. Valdez smacks the back of his neck as though he’s swatting a mosquito, but it only rams the dart further in. He brushes it off, looks up at me with eyes that spit recognition; like quelled oil fires, they empty suddenly.
He flops to the ground. Like dead? Like really dead?
But—but I didn’t do this! Someone else shot the dart. I was just here minding my own killing business...
“What did you do?” Strong arms wrestle me to my feet; spin me round so roughly it almost dislocated my shoulder. The bodyguard’s livid face is inches from mine. He looks down in disbelief at the body of his dead master, and then brands me with his gaze. Oil fires at full flame.
“I didn’t do anything,” I plead. “He was sick. He just dropped down.”
“You liar...!” He slaps me hard. The pain lashes right through me, stings like hell. I go to knee him in the balls but he’s ready, blocks it with his knee. Suddenly his hands clasp around my throat and dig in—endgame force I have no defense against. I pound on his arms and his shoulders and work to pries his fingers loose. Something works. He lets go. But his next blow is a vicious backhand that leaves me completely dazed. For a few seconds I’m...someplace else, observing the whole scene. It’s with a cold indifference I watch the man reach for his weapon and pull the trigger.
But I don’t feel a thing.
A shadow swoops down from the tangle of vines and creepers that girdle the stone pillars. It lands in front of me, on top of the bodyguard. Their combined weight topples them both over, knocks me backward against the balustrade. I crab away from the flurry of fists and body moves and countermoves. My senses return with the piercing sound of a scream. It's a woman’s scream.
It wasn’t mine. At least I don’t think it was.
The bodyguard lands a hefty punch to the ribs of my dark defender. Dressed all in deep gray, with a ski mask that shows only the whites of his eyes, this man of the shadows is tenacious. He takes blow after blow and keeps giving back. Finally, after ducking a huge roundhouse kick, he sweeps the bodyguard’s legs from under him and lands a devastating boot square in his face.
A crowd has gathered at the screen door entrance. I can see the silhouettes. But it’s so dark out here they won’t be able to see us. Our faces, that is. All that might change, though, if we don’t get out of here in hurry, the dark defender and me. More screams, shouts in Maltese for someone inside to “Aghggel...!”
“You’ll have to jump—right now,” the stranger says to me in Greek, peering over the edge. But all I can see down there is an arrangement of six large, ornate fountains lit purple by underwater lights. Surely he can’t mean—
“We’ve no time,” he insists. “Jump now or face the consequences. It's your choice.” And with that he vaults over the balustrade. Plummets forever... His dull splash below sounds miles away, unrelated to what’s just happened.
The fear bites, gnaws as I scan the balcony to my left—it’s filling with heavy suited types, and they’re acting quicker than me. My mind can’t steady the scales of this decision under pressure, so instinct alone will have to tip the balance.
He saved my life. I need to trust him.
So I kick off my heels, clamber onto the balustrade; slide my butt to the very edge. By now I’m showing all my legs and a bit more besides, but it doesn’t seem to matter. In a single glance, I size up the trajectory of the jump and the absence of my dark defender. The latter spurs me on. There’s no more time. Oh God. I suck in three quick breaths, hold the last one...
...and shove myself off.
A chorus of gasps and screams from faraway party land only helps to steel me on the way down. I’ve always been a bit of a daredevil on holidays—kayaking in the chop, jumping off low cliffs into the sea, wreck diving with friends—and the sensation of falling is not new to me. But I’ve never done any of that blindfolded, with a sequined cocktail dress flapping about my ears.
The shock of thumping into water wakes me absolutely. I climb out, wipe my streaming hair back over my shoulders, and search for the man in gray. Security lights blaze on all around the house itself, so I can’t go that way. That leaves the garden, seaward—the only viable escape route for a man who operates in the shadows.
Moonlight reflects off the sea’s glassy wrinkles, and that’s how I spot him, in silhouette against it, running flat-out up a shallow mound. He’s left me behind, the bastard! Mustn’t have thought I had the pluck to jump. And when I try to follow him, my ankle gives way, drives splinters of pain up my left leg. I limp on, determined not to give up. This whole kill-trip might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, but I did it for Papa, and Papa would not want me to get caught.
The stranger halts, looks back. His shoulders appear to slump, his head bows, and my heart reaches out across the shady acre between us. He’s coming back? He is coming back! My dark defender, here for the same reason I am, can’t let me die. He doesn’t say a word as he approaches, just takes my arm and with surprising gentleness, supports my limp. We pass through a maze of hedges, and then row after row of pungent flowers whose colors are well-kept secrets of the night.
But we aren’t moving fast enough, and he knows it. I can’t see anyone else, but coordinated shouts across the grounds of the hacienda seem to be zeroing in on our position. They grow closer from every direction—all except one, the sea. The stranger crouches, bows me onto his shoulder and carries me up a steep earthen verge. At the summit is a row of poplars. Beyond, a high, wire mesh fence roofed with coils of barbed wire.
I expect him to put me down but he doesn’t, instead pushes his way through a slit he’s already cut into the fence. It's his escape route.
Who is he? Why has he just killed Valdez? What’s he going to do with me if we make it out alive?
From now on it’s a steady downhill run to the beach. Clumps of tall, swooning grass soon become isolated among the shallow dunes. The stranger’s breathing is heavy, he’s exhausted. After making for a cleft between two dunes, he spills me onto the sand, plucks me onto my feet and supports my limp again—all without a word.
I daren’t break the silence.
We come to a miniature estuary channel overgrown with bracken. With one arm he brushes aside the foliage on the water’s edge, revealing a black, glimmering Jet Ski moored in the shallows.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“Get on.”
I do as he says, but rather than ride pillion, I shuffle up front, grab the handlebars. After almost screwing up the whole night for everyone concerned, it’s time I did my part in this. I tell him, “I’ll drive.”
He motions to throw me off, decides against it. In the whites of his eyes I glimpse a spark of recognition—his, mine, I’m not sure—but it persuades him of something. He touches his ribs, winces
, and then hops on behind me. “Cut right across the bay,” he says. “Make for the headland, about a quarter mile before the lighthouse.”
He’s speaking fluent Greek, but I’m pretty sure he’s something else; call it a hunch, woman’s intuition. He slides his gloved hands around my waist, grips me just above my hips. I give a shivery gasp, immediately try to hide it by starting the engine. With neither headlight nor sunlight, it’s dangerous to be on the open sea in any kind of small craft, especially one of these. Good job I’ve been handling jet skis since I was fourteen. I take us out slow, conscious of the estuary’s low water-line.
Once we’re out in the chop, I throttle up, but slowly. Enough to skim the waves rather than jump them... He doesn’t protest, which gives me confidence. Night-lights along the coast appear to bob up and down with us as we ride the swells. It has an odd tranquilizing effect, and reminds me of some of the earliest boat rides I ever took with Papa, around the harbors of Zakynthos and Kefalonia after sunset, when he’d bring me an ice-cold can of 7-Up lemonade and let me steer for as long as I wanted, sometimes till well after bedtime. Then we’d sleep on the boat, Papa and me, and go snorkeling the next morning. We were so close back then, when I was little, before I realized what a cruel son of a bitch he could be, had been, with Mama. It took me a long time to forgive him for that, for the dark