“All right, lady,” he said. “Answer my questions.”
And for the first time in fourteen years Maddy Lambert looked up into Jake Murphy’s all-seeing hazel eyes.
CHAPTER THREE
Good Lord, he was so different! And yet so very much the same that she would have known him anywhere. Those eyes that never missed anything were looking right through her, their hazel depths flat and unreadable. When she’d last seen him he’d been twenty-six, with short hair and dark suits and a dead look in his eyes. The man standing before her looked half-savage, with the large, ugly gun in one hand and that implacable expression on his face.
It was the same face. Older, leaner, darkly tanned from years in the semitropical climate, but still the same. Lines fanned out from his piercing eyes, deep grooves were cut in the lean cheeks, bracketing a grim mouth that had forgotten how to smile. He hadn’t smiled much when she’d known him before, but when he had done so it had usually been at her. He wasn’t smiling now.
He had a bandanna tied around his forehead, holding back the hair that was perhaps the greatest surprise of all. It was long, dark brown streaked by the sun and by a natural graying, and it hung almost to his shoulders, adding to the look of wildness. He was wearing a rumpled, sweat-stained khaki field shirt, open to the waist, and his chest was hard and tanned and smooth. He had a knife at his belt in a worn leather holder, and the weapons were all a part of his cold, merciless savagery that terrified her more than Lizard Eyes with his pistol, or ET at the gate with his machine gun. She stood there and watched the destruction of her teenage fantasy, and it was frightening indeed.
A dead silence had fallen between them, and in the background she could hear the lazy hum of bees wandering through the profusion of flowers in this military stronghold. He was waiting for her to speak, his impatience barely held in check, and those implacable, opaque eyes of his looked right through her. It took a moment for her to realize that he didn’t recognize her.
“I’m Maddy Lambert,” she said in a damnably shaky voice. “Samuel’s daughter.”
No light filled those eyes, and the gun didn’t waver. “Are you?” His voice was flat, noncommittal.
Some of the mindless panic began to leave her, to be replaced with a confused anger. She’d imagined a great many things about her arrival there, both bad and good, but nothing had come close to the simple fact that he might not know her.
“Of course I am,” she snapped. “Don’t you know me?”
The guard reappeared behind Jake, her pawed-through purse in his hand. He handed it to Jake, adding a military salute that only added to Maddy’s uneasiness. Keeping the gun trained on her, Jake rummaged through the purse, and it took all Maddy’s self-control not to protest. He pulled out her passport and Maddy breathed a sigh of relief. One that quickly changed to despair as he flipped it open and she remembered what it read.
“Allison M. Henderson,” he read in that raspy voice of his that had grown even more gravelly in the ensuing years. The sound of it had filled more than one fantasy years ago. Now it grated on her raw nerves. He looked up at her then, and his hazel eyes were cold and merciless. “No, I don’t know you, Allison Henderson. I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
“That’s not my real name,” she said, her voice a sudden babble of nervousness.
He raised an eyebrow beneath that sweat-stained bandanna. “Not your real name, Miss Henderson? Don’t you know it’s a federal crime to get a passport under a phony name? I ought to report you to the American Consulate. Unfortunately San Pablo no longer has an American Consulate. I believe it was blown up, along with half the local workers, several months ago.”
“I mean, it’s my legal name, but not my real name,” she stammered. “My name is Allison Madelyn Lambert Henderson. My mother remarried and—”
“And being a loyal daughter you gave up your father’s name,” Jake supplied smoothly, still watching her out of those cold eyes, the gun never moving. “Samuel wouldn’t have a daughter like that.”
Maddy flinched. She wasn’t about to make excuses to this hard-eyed stranger, particularly when he was holding a gun on her. Wasn’t about to explain that the only way she could get a passport and visa that quickly was to take the protection of her stepfather’s powerful name, the name she’d accepted through apathy when she wasn’t quite eighteen and abandoned when she was twenty. “But you do admit he had a daughter?” she pressed.
There was a long silence, one that seemed to go on forever, but in actuality it was probably less than thirty seconds, as Maddy watched the man opposite her and begged him to remember her. She held her breath, waiting, praying with a fervor that she wouldn’t have thought she was capable of.
Finally he spoke, the rough voice shattering a small, secret portion of her heart. “He may have had a daughter,” Jake Murphy drawled. “I don’t really remember. It was a long time ago.”
Part of her had been expecting it, but it didn’t make it any easier to take. “This is ridiculous,” she said finally. “I don’t have to convince you of anything. Take me to see my father. I expect his memory might be a little better.”
Jake lowered the gun then, uncocking it and tucking inside the waistband of his faded khaki pants. “I’m afraid you’re wrong about that.”
“About what?”
“It is me you’ll have to convince. Sam’s in no shape to be bothered by General Ortega’s latest conspiracy. I don’t know what the two of you have in mind, but you’re not getting within ten feet of Sam Lambert until I say so.”
She stared at him, mouth agape, fury and something else warring for control. “Damn you, I want to see my father!” she demanded furiously.
For the first time Jake Murphy smiled, a cold, heartless smile that barely lifted the corners of his hard mouth. “Then I expect you’ll have to go back to the States where you’ll doubtless find him. That is, if you ever knew him in the first place.”
It took her a moment to recognize the insult, and it set the seal of her almost incoherent fury. “Listen, Jake Murphy, if I’m not Sam’s daughter, how would I know you?”
“Everyone who knows anything about El Patrón knows me,” he drawled. “And I’m tired of arguing with you, lady.”
Maddy had never considered herself a violent person, but she had the sudden overwhelming desire to fling herself on this hard-eyed, long-haired stranger and beat some sense into him. The gun at his waist and the knife at his hip stopped that thought, and with a great effort she drew together the shattered pieces of her calm. “All right,” she said. “If you won’t let me see Samuel I suppose I have no choice but to leave.”
That smile again, that damnable, nasty little smile appeared as he shook his head. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Maddy hadn’t spent years coping with the extraneous threads of the Greater Hollywood Help Network for her to quail before the likes of Jake Murphy. If she could outmaneuver General Ortega and Lizard Eyes, she could outmaneuver him. “You can’t have it both ways,” she said patiently. “Either you let me see my father or you let me leave. One way or the other.”
He was entirely unmoved by her attempt at logic. “There’s a third alternative. You stay right here until I find out what brought you here. As long as Ortega thinks his current plan is working then he won’t be busy thinking up something new. Better the devil you know …”
“You can’t keep me here!”
“Of course I can,” Jake said. “For as long as I want. This is an armed camp, Allison Henderson, and I’m commander-in-chief. You’ll stay right here until I decide you’re harmless and let you leave.” He held out his strong right hand, the one that had trained the gun on her with such unstudied aplomb. “Come along, lady. Maybe you can convince someone else of your claim. I doubt it, though, and if I were you I wouldn’t even try.”
She continued to watch him warily. “Why?”
“Because being Samuel Eddison Lambert’s daughter would have distinct disadvantages. We’re an armed
camp for a reason, lady. The Gray Shirts of your General Ortega would like nothing better than to have Lambert dead. He’s an embarrassment to the government and affront to all their lip service about human rights. They would love to have him murdered by the bloodthirsty insurgents.”
“But the rebels …”
“The rebels have been fighting an impossible war for six years now. They need a martyr. I don’t think any of them would go to much trouble to stop the government from disposing of Sam. If the U.S. government got mad enough it might stop sending all that nice money to President Morosa, and the death squads might stop. It’s been proven that the murder of one American citizen causes far more outcry than the slaughter of thousands of San Pablans.”
“And which side are you on? The government or the rebels?”
Jake grimaced. “I’m on Sam’s side. For all the good it does him.” He shook his head, the long hair moving in the stifling breeze. “So you might think twice about trying to convince all and sundry that you’re Sam’s daughter. A young American female would make just as good a martyr as a saintly old man.”
“I would think that would suit your purposes very well,” Maddy snapped. “The rebels would have their American victim and I’d be out of your way. Why don’t you just turn me over to them?” For the moment she trusted Lizard Eyes more than she trusted this cold, dangerous stranger.
“Don’t tempt me,” he ground out, that hand fastening on her elbow with a grip just short of painful. “If you don’t watch your step you may have no say in the matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that people aren’t always what they seem,” he murmured. “Come along and I’ll introduce you to some of the others. But I wouldn’t take any of them at face value, if I were you.”
“Not even you?” she couldn’t help asking as she was half dragged toward the looming old hacienda.
Jake Murphy glanced at her with those fathomless hazel eyes. “Especially not me,” he said.
She was the last thing he needed right now, Jake thought with a barely controlled fury. It took every effort of concentration on his part not to crush that curiously vulnerable elbow he held in his grip. Damn, but he wished he were the sort of man who felt justified in beating women.
As if things weren’t complicated enough, he had to have her show up, claiming to be Maddy Lambert to everyone who’d listen. Ortega and a dozen troops must be close behind, not to mention Carlos’s band of merry men. Damn it all to hell!
And how was Sam going to react? Probably far better than he was. Sam had no qualms about sacrificing everything for the greater good, he wouldn’t have any doubts about whether he was doing the right thing. Sam was a saint, with all the disadvantages that came with such sainthood, and Jake Murphy was just a poor, foolish mortal.
He should have told Enrique to send her away at the gate, and leave it to Ortega to deal with her. There was no way anyone could get into the fortress without his say-so and it would have simplified matters considerably. And even once he’d made that mistake, he still could have sent her on her way. Once he’d decided he wasn’t going to let her get near Sam, he should have shoved that tall, slender, rumpled body back out the gates and had Enrique send her on her way.
But he hadn’t. He had given in to the impulse, inspired by those huge brown eyes that brought back feelings he’d thought long dead, by the long legs and defiant mouth and whatever lay beneath that loose cotton shirt of hers. And it was too late to do anything about it now.
He could only hope things held off for a while longer. That he could convince someone to take her and Soledad out of the country before all hell broke loose. Sam wouldn’t go. They’d talked about it for years now, and his health had deteriorated to such a point that there was no longer any question of his leaving. He’d be gone soon enough, and not back to the country he’d turned his back on.
Damn, she even smelled good. Clean and fresh and feminine, not like the tropical profusion that filled the tangled courtyard of the villa, not like the overripe musk that Soledad favored. She smelled of something light and delicate and so appealing that it twisted his gut in a knot. It was no wonder Ortega was panting at her heels, no wonder Carlos had sent word once he’d accosted her on the road into Puente del Norte.
So maybe he deserved to play with fire for a change. She carried no weapons—his professional search had ascertained that, along with the fact that her breasts were small and soft and warm, that her hips were slightly bony beneath the jeans and her rear was the most delectable thing he’d seen in years. She’d have no choice but to sit and wait for him to decide what to do with her. And he’d have to damn well make sure that Ortega hadn’t gotten to her first.
“Jake.” The sound of her voice broke through his dangerous fantasies, and he halted under the portico that provided much-needed shade in this tropical climate, his grip sliding down her arm to capture her wrist. “Why won’t you believe me?”
He looked back at her. She was just a few inches shorter than his own six feet, something he wasn’t used to in this land of diminutive women. The loose cotton shirt was open at the neck, revealing a tanned column of throat, and at the base of her neck there was a faint sheen of moisture. He had the sudden, almost uncontrollable urge to lean forward and place his mouth against the dewy warmth, and his grip around her narrow wrist tightened.
“Because I have a strong sense of self-preservation,” he replied shortly. “I wouldn’t have made it to forty in my business if I believed every pretty lady who came up to me with some outlandish tale.”
“But won’t you feel like a fool when you find out I was telling the truth?” she persisted.
“I don’t mind feeling like a fool,” he drawled. “As long as I’m a live fool. Come along, Allison Henderson.”
“Don’t call me that!”
Jake could feel her pulse hammering beneath his thumb, pounding away with anger and frustration, and for a moment he wondered what it would be like to make her pulses pound from something else. And how that pounding pulse would feel beneath his mouth.
Damn, he was getting horny in his old age. He’d have to settle for keeping her furious with him. As long as she was enraged she wouldn’t be able to think clearly. Strong emotion always clouded people’s judgment. He looked at her. “Come on, Allison,” he said again. “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.”
Maddy blinked rapidly in the sudden darkness of the cool, shadowy stillness of the hacienda, temporarily blinded by the change from bright sunlight. Jake wasn’t similarly afflicted, and she had no choice but to follow along, hoping he wasn’t going to lead her into a stone wall. Gradually she became accustomed to the dimness, the cracked plaster walls surrounding them as he led her down a long hallway, a flight of stairs, and around a corner. The hacienda was a tall building, consisting of at least four floors, and they must be in the basement. Jake came to an abrupt stop, and Maddy barreled into him.
The adobe walls would have had more give in them. Her lighter body jarred against his, and he absorbed the blow without flinching, without even turning. The long fingers that had been a manacle around her wrist released her, and absently she rubbed the mark his hand had made, aware that for all his manhandling, the rifle in her rib had pained her far more.
“Ladies and gentlemen, señors y señoras,” Jake said in his gravelly voice that might or might not have held an element of mockery, “allow me to present Miss Allison Henderson. She’ll be giving us the pleasure of her company for the next few days. Come forward, Allison, and meet your fellow hostages. Though the rest of us are hostages to fortune.”
There were seven of them seated around a long, rough table, clearly at the end of a rather spartan meal. Three women and four men eyed her out of wary, distrustful faces, no one saying a word.
“Who is this?” A red-faced man in his mid-fifties spoke first, his voice querulous and bearing the traces of an upbringing in the southern part of the United States. He was wearing a cott
on suit that had once been white, but was now dingy gray and spattered with the remnants of other, more sumptuous meals. “You know as well as I do, Murphy, that there is barely enough food to go around. What are you doing bringing in another mouth to feed? And you, young lady, what the hell are you doing in a country that’s being torn apart by revolution? This is a poor choice for a vacation spot, Miss … Henderson, was it?”
She could tell by his voice that he was ever so slightly drunk. The smaller, darker man next to him managed a weary smile. “Doc doesn’t mean to be unwelcoming, Miss Henderson,” he said slowly. Another American, she realized, despite the darkness of his complexion. “But we’ve had a difficult time of it the last few months, and this is hardly a pleasant place to be.”
Jake moved forward then, grabbing a chair and swinging it around to straddle it, his expression distant and watchful. “You may as well have a seat, Allison,” he said. “You’re going to be here for a while. If you behave yourself I may even see if there’s a scrap of food left from lunch.”
“My name isn’t Allison,” she shot back, ignoring the sudden shaft of longing the word food swept through her. There was plenty of stuff in the back of her car, but she’d been too nervous that morning to do more than nibble on a chocolate bar. Suddenly she was famished.
Jake only smiled faintly. “Let me introduce you to our happy family. Going clockwise around the table, we have Dr. Henry Milsom, late of North Carolina, Samuel’s physician.” The doctor gave her no more than a cursory nod. “Then we have Richard Feldman, late of parts unknown. The two ladies are Miss Mary Margaret Gallager and Sister Margaret Mary McDonald, relief workers who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and are now seeking shelter with El Patrón.” The two middle-aged women gave her shy smiles. “Then we have Ramon and Luis, two of El Patrón’s guards.” Two more teenagers in T-shirts and Nikes and armaments stared at her stonily. “And last but not least, Senora Soledad Alicia Maria Mercedes Lambert de Ferrara y Morales. Samuel’s wife.”