Barefoot With A Stranger

  “I’ll be back,” he said pointedly in the direction of the listening device. “You just stay right there and wait for me.”

  He nodded to the door, and she snapped the dead bolt. The minute they were in the hall, she closed the door tight.

  “Run,” he ordered in a hushed whisper. “Straight to the car. Run!”

  She flew down the hall and up the stairs, saying a thankful prayer that there was no one around. She darted outside, turned left, and bolted to the Prefect, yanking the door open. He was right on her tail, tossing the bags in the back, then starting the engine.

  Which sputtered.

  “Holy fuck, not now,” he growled. “Come on, girl. Come on.” He sounded very much like he had in bed, cajoling an orgasm out of her. His jeans still hung open, his T-shirt stuck to his body with sweat from their pseudosex.

  Finally, the Prefect engine hummed to life, and Mal threw it into drive and shot down the alley, flying through the streets of Caibarién like a hunted, wanted man.

  Which, she had to remember, he was.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Mal took a roundabout, convoluted, mangled trip over deserted roads, through wooded areas, and deep into the farmland of Cuba and lost anyone who might be on their tail. Yet, he was barely fifteen minutes from town and making his way to Ramos’s farm.

  Except for helping him navigate the winding, unpaved roads without benefit of headlights, Chessie had been quiet, even when she found out where they were going. Was she upset about the bug in the room and what they did to escape? Brimming with questions she knew he couldn’t answer? Or, as he was, fighting the feeling of slipping closer to someone who was wrong on so many levels?

  Still silent, she reached over the seat and dug into her bag, producing a pair of sneakers. After she put them on, she resituated herself against the passenger door, far away from him.

  Too far away. Mal lifted his hand along the bench seat, letting his fingers graze her bare shoulder. His need to touch her—constantly—was more intense than ever. Real sex, fake sex, hopeless sex—whatever the hell they called it—had done nothing to satisfy his craving for her. It only made things worse.

  “C’mere,” he said, giving her bra strap a little tug. “There has to be some advantage to no seat belts and no console. Sit next to me, Francesca.”

  Before she moved, she shot him a look. “I know what you’re doing when you say my name like that.”

  “Addressing you?”

  “You want to get intimate.”

  “While driving without headlights? I think we’ve had enough adventurous sex for one evening.” Although, he always wanted more.

  She scooted over and dropped her head on his shoulder. “There are other kinds of intimacy,” she said.

  Like a sweet girl laying her head on his shoulder as if she depended on him for security and happiness and love and a whole host of other things a guy like Mal couldn’t supply.

  “For example,” she continued. “Sharing the truth with a person.” She sat up straight and looked at him, but Mal kept his concentration on the dark road ahead. “Truth with a person who just proved she’s up to field snuff.”

  He gave her a squeeze. “You were amazing. I’d brag to your brother about what a great spy you’d make, but I like my balls and don’t want him to cut them off.”

  “Gabe of all people would know you do what you have to, right?”

  “True,” he agreed. “And, Francesca Rossi, don’t listen to the voice inside your head telling you that you don’t have what it takes to do what your siblings and cousins do. You’re rock solid.”

  He could practically feel her smile. “Then tell me the whole Robin Hood story because you know you can trust me.”

  He didn’t answer, but turned onto another side road, glancing in the rearview, confident they hadn’t been followed.

  “Then I’ll just ask questions and figure it out on my own,” she said, impatience adding an edge to her tone.

  After watching her in action at the municipal, he didn’t doubt that she had the intelligence and determination to do just that.

  “But you have to make me a promise,” she said.

  Whatever it was, he already knew he’d say yes, just like he knew she was going to get the whole story out of him one way or another.

  “That you’ll tell me when I’m right or wrong. Like twenty questions.”

  “Okay,” he agreed, because he knew she’d start the process with or without his consent. “Log on and start hacking my brain.”

  She shifted as if she needed to settle and get comfortable. “Okay, you stole five hundred thousand dollars from a government account that funded certain activities at Guantanamo Bay when you were a guard there, except you were not a guard, you were an undercover spy for the CIA. And you stole that money to help someone in trouble, right?”

  He stayed perfectly still, then he shook his head.

  “Oh, really? Something in that statement wasn’t right?” She turned to him. “You stole five hundred thousand…”

  He swallowed. Hard.

  “You didn’t steal five hundred thousand dollars?”

  He let out a slow, low sigh, and she put both hands on his thigh and squeezed. “You stole more?”

  “No.”

  “Less?”

  “No.”

  “Ohhh.” She had that nice, satisfied tone in her voice, like when she tore down a firewall with her flying fingers. “You didn’t steal the money. Someone else did, and you took the blame.”

  He ripped his gaze from the road to give her a look. “You sure you didn’t train to be a spy, or is interrogating a genetic gift in your family?”

  She gave a dry laugh. “Okay and, wow, okay.” She dragged out the last word with the sound of appreciation in her voice.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means my lover isn’t a thief.”

  Something in the vicinity of his chest felt like it cracked a little. Her lover? Not a thief? As true as both those statements might be, he didn’t dare hope. “Tell that to the US government.”

  “Someone should.” She turned in her seat to face him again. “And your name would be cleared.”

  “If only it were that easy.” If Alana got arrested for the crime, there was no telling what would happen to the kids. Maria was twelve now, so she’d be shipped off to some heinous place near Havana. Jorge would be ten, so he’d go to military training. And Solana had been two the last time he’d seen her, and she was just a little heartbreaker.

  “The money was never recovered,” he added, mostly for the reaction he knew he’d get.

  As expected, she gasped. “So where is it?”

  “Beats me. But they think I know, so I’m on a watch list just to be sure I don’t suddenly buy an Aston Martin.”

  “Nice car choice,” she said. “But if we found the money, couldn’t you be cleared then?”

  He couldn’t help giving her a squeeze. “Your optimism is charming. Downright adorable.”

  “Don’t be condescending.”

  “I’m not. It really is charming. It’s…infectious.”

  “Okay, then tell me the whole story, Mal, if you’re so damn infected by me. Don’t make me guess anymore.”

  He was infected by her. Affected by her. Ready to open up in a way he’d never done before, and he hadn’t known her a week.

  He slowed the car, almost stopping at a pitch-black section of forest and farm, not far from that Poinciana tree now. But he had enough time to tell her the truth, and deep inside, he knew he owed that much to her.

  “I didn’t steal the money. A woman named Alana Cevallos did, or someone close to her.”

  “How did she do it?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. She worked as a high-level admin at Gitmo, a secretary to my boss and a liaison with the local community, since she’s Cuban. She and I became friends while I was there, and she came to me in a panic because she claimed she had found an enormous sum of money in an offshore
account her husband had opened before he was taken away.”

  “Taken away?” she asked.

  “By the government. And now he’s dead.”

  “What? Why?”

  “There doesn’t have to be a reason, Chessie. Suspected of being a dissident, most likely. And with Alana having the quite unusual job of working as an administrative assistant for a US operation? Government made a move on him.” About a month after baby Solana was born, the bastards.

  “And she just found the money?”

  Mal shrugged. “My guess is she didn’t want to implicate her husband any further, since he was already a prisoner of the government. Anyway, she said she didn’t take it, but…”

  “But you think she did.”

  Did he? There was no other explanation, no matter how much he wanted to believe her innocent. “Probably at the urging of her husband, but he didn’t have access to those funds at Guantanamo, and she did. So it’s moot. They did it.”

  She looked out into the darkness of the night, thinking. “Why did she go to you?”

  “Like I said, we were friends.”

  Chessie inched back and dropped her glasses so she could look over them, the question in her eyes obvious. “A married woman, Mal?” she asked.

  He laughed softly at the implication, which couldn’t be further from the truth. “Alana is in her forties with three kids, Chess. When shit at Gitmo got ugly—and, man, it could get ugly there—you need an escape. Gabe had Isa, and they used to go off, but I didn’t have that many people who knew I wasn’t really a guard. Alana did, because she worked for our boss. So sometimes I went to her house for dinner, and I liked it there.”

  “What did you like about it?”

  He suspected she was still sniffing around to see if he’d had a romantic relationship with Alana, which he had not. “I liked her kids a lot. And there was a lot of good feels in that house, even with the father being gone. She kept it solid for those kids.” He shook his head, just thinking about what would have happened if she’d been arrested for embezzling US funds. A Cuban citizen who had all kinds of special clearance to work at Gitmo? “I hated to see that end for those kids.”

  “So, what did you do?”

  “She did it, actually. She created an account in my name that only I could access and put the money in there so the trail would lead to me.”

  “But she didn’t put the money in there?” Chessie asked, confused. “I mean, you said they never found it.”

  “It disappeared.”

  She dropped back on the seat. “The answer is in the computer,” she said.

  “There is no answer, Chessie. Who knows what her husband had arranged before he died? Someone got that money, maybe used it for other dissidents to fight the Cuban government, or who knows? Doesn’t matter. I took the blame for her.”

  “It matters to clear your name,” she insisted.

  “It might clear mine, but it would damage hers forever. So what good would my four years in prison have been? She’d be dragged off, and no one would ever see her again, and I couldn’t…” He struggled for the words, his throat thick, an old fear resurfacing, as it did any time he thought about going through this and trying to clear his name without implicating Alana. “I couldn’t do that to those kids.”

  After a moment, he realized Chessie was staring at him, hard. He turned, ready to defend his decision. He’d certainly had this fight with her brother often enough.

  But she’d pushed her glasses back, and he saw a tear slide down her face.

  “Chessie, don’t cry,” he said, lifting his hand to wipe it away. But she grasped his hand and pressed it to her lips. “I can’t change this to save myself, and I won’t let those kids’ lives get lost just so I can find mine.”

  She dropped her head back and closed her eyes. “So, do you think we can scare up Internet access out here?”

  “Doubtful, why?”

  “I want to find that money.”

  He actually laughed at that wild level of optimism. “Sorry, but that’s not why we’re in Cuba. Gabriel Rafael Winter, remember?”

  “How could I forget? But I still want to find that money.”

  “Talk about hopeless.”

  “I don’t believe in hopelessness,” she said. “I believe that somewhere in the deepest, darkest corner of cyberspace, there’s a way to clear your name, and if I can find it, then maybe you can do something good with that name.”

  Like give it to you. He closed his eyes and pulled her closer, the only way to keep himself from voicing that stupid, hopeless thought out loud.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The Prefect bumped over the dirt as they followed the rocky road after the Poinciana tree, and Chessie kept expecting some kind of light at the end of the road.

  But it couldn’t have been darker at the Ramos farm.

  “It looks so deserted at night,” Chessie said.

  “Come on, let’s walk the rest of the way.” Mal tucked the car behind a small grouping of trees, getting out and reaching his hand to help Chessie slide out the driver’s side. “Let’s try the barn,” Mal said, guiding her forward.

  They walked slowly, getting their footing on rocks and dirt, using Mal’s small flashlight to reach the back barn used as a school. Mal put his hand on the massive door and jiggled, which opened instantly and easily.

  Once inside, Chessie gasped softly at the sight of…nothing. Absolutely no sign that there had been a school—the books, tables, boards, and chairs were gone. Just some hay strewn around the dirt floor.

  Mal kept walking, scanning the empty area, while Chessie mentally clicked through the options. Did Ramos break the school every night? Had the government come and shut it down? Were they all in hiding?

  And what happened to Gabrielita? The very question made her heart ache.

  “Let’s try the little house,” she said, and Mal agreed, heading back outside and around the barn to the small structure. “Where is everyone?”

  The sound of a rifle being cocked echoed, and Mal instantly whipped Chessie around and pushed her to the ground to protect her.

  “Everyone is right here.” Nestor Ramos’s thick accent was barely audible over Chessie’s thumping heart.

  Slowly, Mal straightened, positioning himself in front of Chessie, keeping the light down so he didn’t blind Ramos. “Señor Ramos. It’s us. The teachers.”

  He snorted. “I know you are not teachers.”

  “Where is everything?” Mal asked. “The school? The books?”

  “What school? There is no school here.” There was just enough sarcasm in his voice to make Chessie wonder if he was jerking them around, or really going to deny what they’d seen there. “There are no books. This is a farm.”

  Chessie pushed to a stand. Screw sarcasm and denial. They knew the truth. “Where are the kids?”

  “My children are sleeping. My boys are placed around this farm to kill you if they have to.”

  Chessie put her hand over her mouth, stunned at this turn and his…authority. He didn’t speak like a rural farmer. His accent couldn’t hide intelligence and…training.

  Mal took a non-threatening step closer. “I came to warn you that someone might know we were here today. We wanted you to be prepared, but I see you already are.”

  Ramos just stared, his rifle still leveled at Mal’s chest. For each achingly long second that passed, Chessie’s breath got tighter and her heart pounded harder.

  And no one said a word.

  The older man let out a long, slow sigh. “A man came here today,” he said in halting English. “American. That’s twice in two days. That smells very bad to us.”

  “What did he want?” Mal asked.

  Ramos let out a dry laugh. “He wanted you.”

  Chessie felt the world sway a little under her.

  Ramos’s eyes shifted to her, and even in the ambient light she could see them soften just a little. “Both of you. He didn’t see the school. He didn’t get beyond the tr
ee. I made sure of that. But he was like you…CIA.”

  She just blinked at that, and Mal stepped closer. “Did you get his name?”

  Ramos laughed softly. “He didn’t leave his card. But I know. I know you. I…know about you.”

  Why? How? She actually took a breath to ask the questions, but Mal gave the slightest signal, and she closed her mouth.

  “Señor Ramos, please. We’re seeking a boy who was here on this farm,” Mal said. “We don’t want to hurt you. Or report you. Or bring any attention to your school. We are looking for Gabriel Rafael Winter, who was born on June 29 in 2011. You gave us the rosary with his name and that date engraved on it.”

  Even in the dark, Chessie could sense the information hit the man hard. “I gave it to her,” he said, nodding toward Chessie. “As a gift. I know of no such child.”

  He was lying. She clenched her fists as Mal leaned closer. “He was adopted,” he said. “Did you aid in that adoption?”

  He shook his head very slowly.

  “But you do that, don’t you?” Chessie asked. “You take in orphans, and you find them homes?” It sure explained how the baby could be here last, and then be listed as adopted. And how Ramos could have so many of “his own” kids the same age.

  His attention shifted back to her, his night vision obviously good enough to allow him to take a long, hard scrutiny of her face, and once again, his expression changed from threatening to curious and, maybe, a little trusting.

  “Otherwise…” He leaned closer to lower his voice. “They would be owned by the government and lost forever.”

  His honesty gave her the nerve to move on instinct rather than rules. “Señor Ramos,” she said softly. “This child is my nephew, my brother’s son. Please.” Damn it, her voice cracked. “Do you have any record of where he might have gone?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. But it wasn’t a cold refusal to answer. It was a genuine admission that he didn’t have all the facts. Then he angled his head toward the little cottage. “Come.”

  He opened the door, and they followed him into a dark room. After a moment, he switched on a small lamp that cast a golden glow over the room, which looked the same as yesterday except for the addition of a tiny cot in the corner, where a little body stirred when the light came on.