“Tributaries?” Maggie offered.
He nodded. “Yes. You get lost without a guide. I’ll take you for American cash.” At Dan’s hesitation, he said again, “I take tourists all the time to see the lightning.”
“What’s the lightning?” Maggie asked.
“Catatumbo lightning.” The boy opened and closed his hands as if flashing a light. “Big, bright light in the sky. Red and purple. All the tourists want to see it. My boat is very sturdy. Very fast.”
“Are you sure Jose Navarro is gone?” The kid could be trying to muscle in on the little business they got down here.
“Go knock on his door. If he doesn’t come out, I’ll take you anywhere you want on the lake. I promise lightning tonight. The weather is perfect, and we haven’t had any for five nights.” He pointed to the opposite end of the town. “My boat is right on the river. Very comfortable. Not expensive.” He added a grin. “Less than two hours to the lake.”
“We need to go to a specific location,” Dan said.
“The lightning is everywhere,” the boy replied. “But I take you wherever you want to go.”
“Let me try Navarro first. Wait here, Maggie.”
He knocked on the red shanty and an older woman selling fruit shook her head and yelled, “Él ha ido!” He’s gone.
“Let’s give the kid a chance,” he said to Maggie when he returned. “Otherwise we’re going to end up spending the night here.”
Two hours and one almost catastrophic motor breakdown later that their young driver, Javier, managed to fix, they were still meandering down a winding river that cut through the hills and jungle.
Dan pulled his shirt over his head and stuffed it into the bag between them in the tiny fishing boat. “According to the GPS, we’re almost at the lake. It’ll be cooler on open water.”
Across from him, Maggie dropped her head back, looking up at the sky and the occasional tree that hung over the river. “What’s the lightning he was talking about again?”
“Catatumbo lightning,” Dan said. “I’ve only seen it once. It’s a huge cloud-to-cloud display over the lake, something to do with the petroleum in the water causing an accumulation of methane in the ozone. It’s pretty, but my memory says it happens after midnight and can be followed by hours of torrential downpour. So God willing, we’ll be there and back before the show.”
He took out his phone again, but there wasn’t even a flicker of service. “I’d like to find out how it went with Lola at the FBI, but I can’t get a signal.”
“What do you think is going to happen there? She was just going to give them a description of her attacker, right?”
“Oh, we had a little extra surprise planned with the SAC, Thomas Vincenze. That’s what we were talking about when you woke up.”
“What kind of surprise?”
“Evidently Omnibus isn’t quite as clean as we first thought.”
“Drugs?”
“No, nothing that serious. Fraudulent insurance claims. She’s had quite a few, and they’ve been lucrative. And Con Xenakis may be meeting Lucy sooner than he thinks, because he’s done more than a few deals to help Ms. James ‘recover’ items that were ‘lost’ by her cargo company. If they can find him, they’ll bring him in, too.”
“So Con and Lola may be working together, and lied to us.” She gestured in the direction of the lake. “And we’re following directions we got from them.”
“True, but why would they send us to the wrong place? Just to get us off their case? I don’t think either of them is that smart, or has anything to gain by it. Plus, someone did cut Lola up pretty bad. Xenakis may be an unprincipled thief and mercenary, but I don’t get the impression he’s vicious.”
“There’s the lake!” the boy announced, rocking the boat as he stood. He looked over his shoulder and grinned at them. “Javi got you here!”
“Step it up, Javi,” Dan said, rolling his hands to indicate the boat moving faster. “We want to leave before nightfall.”
Javi looked baffled. “You miss the lightning, then. I’ll wait with you. It’s no problem, señor.”
“Not necessary. Just move.”
Maracaibo wasn’t technically a lake but a fat bay about a hundred miles long and nearly as wide. In this southwestern corner, far from the oil rigs in the north, the water was purer and the villages tiny. A few huts peppered the shore, with some farmers and locals milling about.
Across from Dan, Maggie took it all in, occasionally lifting her camera to take a shot like any other tourist.
“Twenty-five kilometers, northeast,” Dan told Javi, glancing at the GPS and then gauging the light. They still had time to get there, explore, and make it back to the Jeep. He could get them to San Carlos in the dark.
“Look!” Maggie pointed to a shell-colored dolphin that leaped next to them.
“A pink dolphin,” Javi hollered over the revving motor as they picked up speed. “That’s very good luck!”
She loved that, excitedly taking pictures as the dolphin leaped next to the boat. Then she turned to Dan, her eyes bright. “I feel really good about this. This is a really good sign.”
Dan leaned over and kissed her. “That’s my sign,” he said, barely loud enough to be heard over the motor. “For luck.”
Camera in hand, she wrapped her arm around his neck and pulled him closer. She kissed him back with much more passion than he’d offered, parting her lips. With her free hand, she pressed against his bare chest, caressing it as she deepened the kiss.
“Oh, you’re on your honeymoon!” Javi exclaimed.
They parted reluctantly. “No,” they said in unison.
But Javi shook his head in disbelief. “You’re going to a palafito for the wedding night, sí? “
“Not the night, Javi,” Dan said. “Just an hour, then we head back.”
“What’s a palafito?” Maggie asked softly.
“A stilt house.” Dan replied. “And spending the night in one alone with you wouldn’t be the worst thing that ever happened.”
Her look said she agreed.
“But we’ll find a nice hotel in San Carlos,” he promised. “With no live chickens.”
They held hands as they bounced over the gentle waves, the late afternoon sun finally far enough behind the mountains and the wind strong enough so that they felt cool for the first time since the plane had landed.
And then, on the horizon, Dan saw a small structure on stilts in the exact location that the GPS was sending them.
“You see!” Javi pointed at the spot. “A palafito! “
The closer they got, the more Dan felt certain it was deserted, and absolutely on top of the coordinates, right down to the seconds in either direction. It rose from the water on weathered, wooden stilts with a covered porch that faced west, what looked like one room under a tarred roof, its sides lined with wide windows and a tiny dock. Piping ran down from the house right into the water.
Javi motored up next to the dock, where Dan tied the boat and instructed Javi to wait for them. “You go first,” he said to Maggie, giving her a boost.
She hoisted herself up and Dan grabbed the duffel, shouldering it as he climbed onto the dock. As he passed Javi, he saw the kid eye the gun in his holster.
“Don’t move from this spot,” Dan repeated.
The response was another glance at the gun and a solemn nod.
“It looks empty,” Maggie said, already headed to the ladder that led up ten feet to the patio. She started up, and Dan followed. At the top was a six-foot-wide opening to one large room, and an enclosure around a closet that held a toilet and sink.
Dan crossed the room, testing the wooden floor and checking for hollow areas where something might be hidden, heading toward a pile of canvas in the back.
“Anything?” she asked.
“It’s a hammock, I think. Yeah.” He flipped it around in his hands. “This would be the furniture.”
He started his search, carefully tapping boards, opening the s
ingle cabinet built into the wall, examining the ceiling, completely concentrating until he heard a distant splash. He pivoted and darted to the front, pulling his gun. Javi was rowing like crazy, and well out of range of a safe shot.
“He thinks we want to be alone,” Maggie said, putting her hand on Dan’s arm so he didn’t shoot.
“Or someone paid more than we did, and told him to leave us wherever he was taking us.”
Either way, they were stranded.
Alonso Jimenez heard the distant ring of a phone. Blinking away sleep he reached for the tiny device that he used to communicate with one person only. And he’d been trained not to use names.
“Sí?”
“I’ve found him. I’ve found the boy.”
The boy who wasn’t his grandson. “Bring him to me.”
“It won’t be easy, Viejo.”
More, always more, with this one. “Then take a wrench, bárbaro! “
“Easy, old man.”
Alonso picked up the condescension in the voice. This one knew who had control now. He closed his eyes and leaned back. Was it time to give up? Did those years in prison really suck the juice from his heart? Was he impotent in all ways, now?
“Just bring me the boy,” he said. “And tell me you’ve got a plan for his mother and father.”
“The plan is well under way by now.”
“And the shipment? Did it go?”
The silence was too long.
“Did it?” he demanded.
“We’re having some problems on this end.”
Once he lost control, he lost everything. And it seemed . . . he’d lost everything. “So fix them.” The command was . . . impotent.
A man without power was no man at all. And a Venezuelan man without power might as well be dead. He closed the phone and set it on the table next to his cold bowl of arroz con leche.
A real man would go to that warehouse now.
Mañana. He would go to the warehouse tomorrow. First, he would sleep some more in preparation for his last act of revenge.
CHAPTER NINTEEN
THEY WERE OUT there like proverbial sitting ducks, especially since there was no satellite signal. They were so vulnerable, surrounded by thirty miles of lake in one direction and fifty in the other, the mountains of Venezuela the only sight of land they had. And the three flimsy walls—two of which were only three feet high— and bamboo roof with gaping holes would provide little shelter from the coming rain.
Maggie settled against a wide beam, her bare feet peeking out from khaki cargo pants, her white T-shirt sticking to her skin, as Dan tried again in vain to get a call through to the pilots or Miami. Nothing.
He finally stopped pacing, trying various spots for satellite reception. “We’re stuck.”
“Maybe Javi will come back for us in the morning,” she suggested.
“Maybe whoever paid Javi to strand us out here will come back and try to kill us.”
She shot him a look. “I realize you’re wired to think that way, but who knows we’re here?”
“Whoever knows about the fortunes, and gave us bogus information. Ramon could have been lying about reading the clues. Con and Lola could have cooked up the whole thing to get us off their backs. The FBI notes could have been wrong. People know we’re here—we just don’t know who they are or why they want us here. Hell, Viejo could have orchestrated this for revenge.”
He put his gun and phone down, then stretched out next to Maggie. “The view’s nice, I’ll give you that.”
“The colors keep changing,” she said. “First it was a muted peach, then it was fiery tangerine, and now it’s a soft, ripe plum.”
“Someone’s hungry.” He twisted around to grab the bag and dug for some protein bars and two bottles of water. “Pretend it’s peaches, plums, and tangerines.” He gave her a warm smile and in response got . . . tears? “Hey, what’s the matter?”
“I miss my son.”
He nodded, giving her arm a rub. “I bet you do.”
“I mean, when I look at you. He has so many of your expressions. Funny, how those are genetic and not just picked up arbitrarily.”
He did his best quintessential teenager impression. “Dude, that’s, like, so tight.”
She laughed and unwrapped a protein bar, leaning back to gaze at the natural beauty around them. “What did you and Quinn talk about when I left the media room?”
Not a thing. The kid was locked up and the key’d been tossed. But there was no reason to upset Maggie by sharing that. “I told him that Max was going to let him drive the Testarossa in an empty parking lot later in the day.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Wow. I bet that perked him up.”
Not enough. “I believe he said ‘cool.’ Then we just talked about the movie. How we both fast-forward through the face-sucking scenes. His words, not mine.”
“He didn’t always skip through those parts,” she said as she broke off a piece of the bar. “A few years ago, when we had ‘the talk’ and I explained what a man and a woman do when they are in love, you know what he said? ‘Oh, so that’s what Maverick’s doing to the instructor.’ “
That made him laugh hard. “So it was up to you to tell him the facts of life, huh?”
“As well as I could. A few of the guys at the bar might be augmenting my efforts. I found a Penthouse in his room, and I know where he got it because one of my regular customers quotes that magazine like it’s the last word on human behavior.”
“Must be tough, doing that all alone.”
She shrugged. “We’re muddling along.”
“You’re doing more than muddling, Maggie. You know he’s a good kid.”
“He’s moody and, in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s mad at me right now.” She rolled up the protein bar paper with her last bite, tucking the trash in a side pocket of his bag. “He doesn’t like change. Even temporary.”
“That’s not a trait I can take any credit or blame for. I live for change.” He pulled her closer to lay her head down on his thighs. “Here, get comfortable and watch the show.”
“So you get bored easily.” There was the faintest note of accusation in her voice. “Is that why you’ve never settled down?”
“That’s why I do what I do for a living,” he told her, stroking her hair. “Every few weeks or months, a new country, a new principal, a new assignment.”
“A new woman.”
He caressed her cheek softly, the smooth olive skin warm under his finger. “That could change.”
As soon as he said it, and her pulse kicked, he waited for regret. The last thing he needed to do was give false promises to the one woman he’d already hurt more than any other.
But oddly, he didn’t regret saying anything to Maggie. So he just cradled her head and lifted her face, bending over to kiss her forehead. Then her cheeks. Finally, her mouth. She rose up partially sitting, deepening the kiss to a natural, warm exchange. Not sexual, just intimate.
When she broke the kiss, he cuddled her into his chest and rested his forehead against hers.
“Why do you live for change?” she asked. “Something in your past?”
“Sorry—no torturous memories, no bleak childhood. I had decent parents, a cool sister. Well, she’s a pain, but we’re close. I grew up in Pittsburgh, had Roper as my best pal, aced my way through Penn State, the FBI, and the Bullet Catchers. It’s all good.” So why was intimacy difficult, while the sex was so easy?
“I have enough mess for both of us,” she said dryly. “But maybe that’s why you like change. Everything comes too easily for you.”
“I do like a challenge,” he said. “Don’t get enough of them.”
Behind her, the flash was so bright, Maggie whipped around with a quick intake of breath, turning just in time to see a fiery red-orange spark electrify the entire sky, followed by a millisecond of incandescent light that bathed the blackness in a shock of white.
The Catatumbo lightning.
“There’s no thu
nder,” Dan said, wrapping his arms around her waist, her back to his chest so they could watch together. “And that’s a blessing, because if a boat comes anywhere near us, even rowed, I need to hear it.”
In seconds, it happened again, more dramatic because the color was magenta, and the white light bounced between two clouds as if the gods were tossing it back and forth.
“I’ve never seen anything so majestic,” she said.
“You probably think it’s a sign.”
She chuckled. “You know, I didn’t even think of that. What I think is that if we have to be stuck in the middle of a lake, it can’t get any better than this.”
“Oh, it could get better.” His lower half stirred, already well aroused. He slid his fingers under her T-shirt and touched the warm, sweat-dampened flesh of her belly. “Much better.”
With a sweet sigh of consent, she tilted her head, offering him her neck. Her curls had long ago been tied up in her little palm-tree ponytail, and he trailed a few kisses along the tender flesh, enjoying how that made her stomach muscles clench and goose bumps flourish on her back.
He glided his hands upward, closer to her breasts. She turned her head to get to his mouth.
Meeting her lips, he flicked the front catch of her bra and captured her breasts in his palms. Her tiny, budded nipples made heat shoot straight down to where his erection pressed into her backside.
“I’ve always loved your breasts,” he said, adoring them with his hands, circling and tweaking her nipples.
“You once told me they were small but mighty. I must have used that description a hundred times.”
“Did you think of me when you did?”
“Yes.” She arched, pressing more flesh into his hands and more pressure on his hard-on.
More lightning flashed in black cherry strobes, followed by jagged white slashes in the sky. Electricity crackled as she turned to face him, their tongues curling, fusing, fighting with the same spark that lit the sky.
“When you thought of me,” he said, her ass in his hands as she straddled him and wrapped her legs around his hips, “was it ever anything good?”
She smiled wickedly. “Yes. It was.”
Intrigued, his hands stilled. “Really? What?”