Dateline: Kydd and Rios (6 page)

A voice crackled on the phone tucked between her shoulder and ear. She immediately stopped typing and covered her other ear with her free hand.

“Hello? Hello?”

“Your call is . . .” The operator’s voice trailed off in static.

“Dammit,” she muttered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nikki?”

“David!” Nikki sighed with relief.

“Collect call from Nikki Kydd. Will you accept—”

“I accept!” David yelled into the phone.

“David, I’ve got the story of the century breaking here,” Nikki said in a rush. “Strictly front page, and a guaranteed twelve-hour lead on everybody else in this godforsaken country.”

“That’s what I pay you the big bucks for.”

Normally she would have taken the opportunity to try to wrangle a raise out of him, not that she’d get it. David had a line of bull a mile long about budget restrictions at the
Washington Post
. But the only thought on her mind was the deal Travinas had offered her.

“I want you to take a very light hand on this, David,” she said, working to keep the desperation out of her voice. “
Very light
. Print it the way I give it to you and I promise to stay out of trouble for the rest of the year.” It was an easy promise to make. If her editor ever found out about the message she had hidden in the article, she’d lose her job and he would never have to worry about her again. Neither would any other editor working for a respectable newspaper in the States.

“You always ask for the moon, Nikki.” He sounded leery.

“This time I want the whole Milky Way, and you’ll be happy to give it to me. Listen to this.” She whipped the top sheet of paper off the pile next to her typewriter. “ ‘Intrigue and betrayal remain the watchwords of politics in San Simeon. In two surprise moves on Thursday, General Travinas followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, Enrico Aragon de Manuel, by imposing martial law and disbanding his own cabinet. Included in the purge was the minister of economic development, Carlos Delgado, a man many consider Travinas’s most dangerous opponent.’ ”

“It’s only Wednesday night,” David said.

“And we’ve got an exclusive.”

“Where did you get this story?”

“From Travinas. This afternoon.”

“How?”

“I sold my soul,” she answered truthfully. Travinas had given her no other choice. Her mother’s freedom for Joshua Rios, he’d said bluntly. Nikki didn’t know what in the hell Josh was up to, but he’d suddenly become the hottest commodity in San Simeon—if she could get him back in the country. “Come on, David. Get me a typist. Let’s go with this. Check my track record if you have trouble sleeping tonight. I’ve never been wrong. You know that.”

“I’d hate for this to be the first time.”

“It’s not,” she stated emphatically.

“Okay, Nikki. You sold me.”

“Thanks.”

Half an hour later Nikki hung up the phone and slumped over her typewriter, every muscle in her body aching with tension. There was no turning back now. She’d set the wheels in motion; she just prayed they wouldn’t go spinning out of control.

A deep sob caught in her throat. Damn Travinas, She’d never felt more manipulated in her life. She’d been sidestepping his deportation threats for so long, she’d never considered the possibility that he might have a use for her. Well, he’d found two—emotional blackmail and betrayal of the best friend she’d ever had. He wanted Joshua Rios at any cost.

In his palatial office, he’d torn her values apart piece by piece, stealing every shred of her integrity and reducing her to a helpless mass of conflicting loyalties and loves. Her mother’s freedom, the remaining years of her life, in exchange for getting Josh back into San Simeon. She’d had a choice: accept Travinas’s proposal and pray she could come up with the right solutions at reckoning time, or play the saint and reject the offer out of hand.

Nikki knew she wasn’t a saint, but she’d always thought there were a few sacrosanct lines she would never cross. Then Travinas had shown her a photograph of her mother. One look had convinced her there was more at stake than a person’s freedom. The woman in the picture was near death, not only in spirit but in body as well. Empty eyes had stared back at Nikki from, a hollow, haggard face. Four years of imprisonment had changed Helen Cavazos from a pampered matron of society into an ancient, withered woman without hope. But the general had a much worse fate in mind for Josh; he’d sicced the mad dog Brazia on his trail.

Even in the relative safety of her apartment, the memory of Travinas’s words sent a shudder of fear through her body: “I will have Joshua Rios,
Señorita
Kydd, with or without your help. Brazia left for Colombia yesterday. Unfortunately, Rios had already disappeared. It could take Brazia weeks to track your friend down, and I don’t have weeks to wait. I have already made you a generous offer for your help, but if you need added incentive to overcome your naive aversion to betrayal, think of this—if Rios proves difficult or is reluctant to return, Brazia will kill him. I will lose some important information if he does, but I can still win the war. And winning,
señorita
, is the only thing that matters.”

“Damn him!” She brushed back frightened tears as she jerked open the top desk drawer and pulled out her address book. Travinas hadn’t wanted to give her the story, but she’d convinced him that the front page of the
Post
was the quickest, most reliable way of contacting Josh, and she’d known the general had something big planned. The whole country was growing restless, waiting for the ax to fall. Travinas’s final willingness to give her what she wanted had confirmed Josh’s unprecedented importance.

Now she was going to use that information to her advantage in every conceivable way. Yes, she’d promised him Josh, but she wasn’t going to lead Josh to slaughter. Not if Carlos Delgado appreciated the early warning, and not if she could convince the minister of Josh’s value.

But the biggest “if” of all was Josh. Would he remember? Would he understand the hidden message? And if he did understand, would he care enough to come? The love they’d shared had been fleeting, barely a memory now, but their friendship had been inviolate—until the night he betrayed her.

Nikki slid back in her chair and covered her face with her hands.
Please come, Josh. Please come back to me . . . and when this is over, please forgive me
.

* * *

Mustache or no mustache? Josh leaned forward over the sink and eyed the sleek line of whiskers above his mouth. Bright Panamanian sunshine streamed through the bathroom window, warming his shower-damp skin. Morning birds chirped and sang in the mango trees edging the courtyard of his rented bungalow. He whistled along with them as he tied a towel around his waist.

A few more weeks and he’d have a regular set of handlebars, he thought, but he went ahead, lifting the scissors and starting to cut. The mustache had served its purpose. It had turned him from Josh Rios into Juan Alonso for the week necessary to track down the last informant he needed to bring General Travinas to his knees. Lord, what a sordid life the bastard had led.

A knock on the door stopped him in mid-snip. “
Señor
Rios?”

“Come on in, Quico,” Josh hollered over his shoulder, recognizing the teenager’s voice. “Go ahead and put it all on the patio table. Did you find the newspapers?”

“Did I find them yesterday morning? And the morning before that? Did I find them last week?”

Josh grinned into the mirror. The boy was getting cheeky. “Yes, you found them last week, but I wasn’t here yesterday or the day before. I’ll never know if you found those papers.”

“But,
señor
, I put them right—” He stopped suddenly, realizing Josh was teasing him. “They are right where I put them, on your bedside table, and from the mess they are in, I would guess you also found them, maybe even slept with them.”

Josh chuckled. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Your favorite. Coffee and sweet rolls,
pan dulce
.” Quico’s voice faded as he walked out to the patio.

“And what’s happening in the world?” Josh raised his voice as he lathered his face.

“Trouble. Always trouble.” Quico walked back through the open doors, carrying one of the newspapers.

“Anyplace in particular?”

“In America everybody is getting richer, some people too rich. You’re throwing them in jail. Strange kind of trouble.” He paused for a moment, scanning the front page. “No more trouble in Panama, but San Simeon has big trouble, very big trouble.”

Josh stopped shaving and slowly lowered his razor to the sink. “What paper is that?” He wiped the shaving cream off his face.

“The
Post
.”

“Let me see it. Go get the
Times
.” He took the paper and sat down on the edge of the bathtub. The headline had him swearing under his breath: “Travinas Declares Martial Law, Ousts Cabinet.” The front page byline was painfully predictable—Nikki Kydd—and the dateline told him the story had broken the day after he’d gone searching for his underground informant. The damn thing was four days old, and he was sitting in Panama.

Quico came rushing back in with the
Times
.

“Forget it,” Josh said. He didn’t need any more old news. He reached into the pocket of the pants hanging on the towel rack and pulled out a wad of bills. He shoved them into Quico’s hand. “Go get all the local papers, today’s edition and yesterday’s if you can find them. Go quickly.”

Josh watched the boy disappear through the courtyard, then returned his attention to the newspaper. He skimmed the article, getting angrier with each successive paragraph. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered if Travinas had somehow gotten wind of the story he’d been working on for the last three years. The truth was enough to panic anybody into cracking down, especially if that truth was grade A blackmail material in unfriendly hands. A lot of the people Josh had dealt with wanted revenge against Travinas, but any one of the few who didn’t might have decided to play both sides against the middle by telling the general a man named Rios was digging into his past.

Under those conditions, Josh wouldn’t give two bits for the value of his life in San Simeon. Luckily he didn’t need to return to San Simeon. A man in Panama had given him the final details of Travinas’s cryptic history.

But his anger had another, deeper cause, one that he couldn’t control, had never been able to control. Nikki Kydd, the young woman whose love and betrayal had marked his turning point from a boy into a man. There had never been another like her, and she was still neck deep in the hottest water in Central America.

Remembered pain tightened his mouth into a grim line. The weeks he’d spent looking for her had left permanent scars on his heart. The long days filled with dead ends, the even longer nights of fear, had turned his carefree existence into a battleground where hope always lost out to reality. He’d left messages in a dozen of the places he’d expected her to go, but she had kept running and he hadn’t been able to catch her. In the end her total rejection of him as a friend, a partner, and a lover had forced him to leave San Simeon. Leave or go crazy.

Three years later, the choice was still clear in his mind. He focused again on the newspaper in his hands. Three years later, she still had the power to wound.

He read the article again, more slowly this time. The story unfolded line after line, speaking to him on a personal as well as a political and journalistic level. Nikki was good, the best. Despite her intense hatred of Travinas, she kept to the facts.

But by the second reading, those facts started to unravel a bit around the edges. Everything was in place, almost too neatly. His eyes narrowed, and he pulled a washcloth off the sink, using it to wipe away a stray dab of soap. Beginning at the top, he combed through the story again, searching for the details causing him unease. He found one in the second column, in a quote from a minor official, or so the article said. Josh recognized the name for another reason. The man, or a man with the same name, had been a friend of theirs. He’d owned a cantina they’d frequented, and Josh doubted if the congenial saloon keeper had switched loyalties and become one of Travinas’s followers.

Coincidence, he decided, in spite of his natural journalistic aversion to coincidence. But two paragraphs down he found another memory-jolting sentence, and one more in the next column. The wording in all of them was subtle, the implication almost imperceptible, yet as he read the lines again, the hint of a plea became clear.

Plea for what? And to whom? Nikki was too careful a writer for the hidden meaning to be a result of sloppy work. She’d been sending a message to someone. Only that person—and another who knew her as well as he did himself—would understand.

A knot of fear slowly formed in his gut, making it impossible for him to concentrate. In disgust, he strode into the bedroom and tossed the paper on the bed. He was overreacting, seeing mysteries where none existed. He’d be better off if he, too, kept to the facts. He had only two: she was still in San Simeon and the country was falling down around her ears.

He grabbed his pants and walked over to the dresser for clean underwear. Over the years he’d followed her career through half a dozen newspapers until she’d landed a permanent position at the
Post
. He’d sent her a card, in a fit of weakness, the first time she made the front page, but she hadn’t replied, or if she had, the letter had never reached him. Now Nikki Kydd only did front-page stories.