Mercy Killing (Affairs of State Book 1) (34 page)

Mercy leaned back on her elbows and looked up at the black heavens. What did she see up there that made her so much calmer than he felt? He let his head drop back and peered above them. The stars here, away from the city, came out of hiding. They frosted the sky, almost too thick to see through them to the endless space beyond.

“It’s so vast,” she said, “and we’re so little.”

“Transients,” he murmured, “that’s what we are. A life comes and goes in a flash, while the earth and all of that up there goes on forever.”

She nodded. “Yet we take it for granted, don’t we? We destroy nature and abuse the liberties of others. All in the name of ego, greed, or stupidity.”

“Rather hard on the human race, aren’t you?”

“Sometimes, yes,” she agreed. “There are times I think we deserve it.”

“Do you get that cynicism from your parents?”

“My mother is very active on behalf of human rights and the environment.”

“Does she live in Washington?” he asked.

Mercy turned her face away and fell silent. He didn’t know what he’d said wrong, but he felt certain something was troubling her. Maybe he’d unknowingly made it worse. He didn’t ask.

“So,” she said after a while “it seems we’ve been on the same side all along.”

“More or less on the same side, when we weren’t working against each other.”

He watched her, wondering what secrets her heart held, and why she didn’t trust him with them. How beautiful she looked sitting here in this magical time between night and day, the golden highlights of her soft brown hair catching every stray star beam. Sebastian reached out and stroked his fingers through the fine strands. She didn't pull away.

Then he remembered. “You spoke of a reason you couldn’t let me keep you at the ranch. Does that have anything to do with your mother?”

“I can’t talk about this with you. I’m sorry.”  She nibbled her bottom lip, looking torn. “But there’s something, or rather someone, I need to warn you about.”

“Lucius Clay, I know. You are working for him.”

She blinked, looking only a little surprised that he knew. “I
was
working for him. I'm not any longer.” She seemed undecided about continuing. At last the tension in her eyes eased and she spoke quickly, letting it all out. “He recruited me, I guess you’d say, a couple of months ago in Washington.”

She went on to describe the scene Sebastian had witnessed at the Mexican Cultural Center reception and, later, the times she and Clay had traded information.

“But why?” Sebastian asked. “Why align yourself with that snake?”

Mercy drew a deep breath. She acted as though she hadn't meant to talk to him about any of this, but now that they'd gone through so much together maybe she’d decided it was all right.

“You see, my mother's gone missing—” as soon as she said the words, her lovely brown eyes filled up “—and I. . .I think I know where she is. Somewhere in Ukraine, Clay says. But the State Department flagged my passport. They’re probably also putting pressure on Ukrainian officials to hold up my visa. Meanwhile, my mother has somehow become
persona non grata
with Interpol.” Her voice had risen an octave, and she was having trouble breathing and talking at the same time. “Oh, God! I can’t. . . it’s just that Clay, as horrible as he is, has been my only means of trying to locate her.” She looked up at him. “I’m not even sure he cares. All he wanted was to break his slavery case.” She laughed bitterly. “I guess we did that for him.”

Sebastian frowned, confused. “
His
case?”

“Freeing the kidnap victims. He's part of a task force trying to stop human trafficking. He thought you were one of the bad guys.”

Sebastian felt the anger building inside his chest. A conflagration that went from a smolder to a blaze, like lighter fluid tossed on glowing coals. “That’s
not
why he was after me, Mercy.”

She frowned at him. “Why then?”

“Guns. He thinks I’ve been smuggling weapons out of the U.S. I'd contrived to make it look like I was running an illegal arms business. He’s after me because he thinks if he turns me in he’ll collect a reward offered jointly by Mexican and American benefactors to stop arms being shipped into my country for use by the gangs. My guess is he doesn’t give a damn about those poor people who have been snatched. Money is all that matters to him.”

“I see.” She stared off across the desert. “Then I’m glad I decided to stop cooperating with him.”

“I am too. The man's dangerous. If he’s with the CIA at all, he’s a rogue agent. They’ll be on to his moonlighting soon enough.” Sebastian paused. “Is there any way I can help you track down your mother?”

“Not unless you have pull with Interpol.”

“I suspect Interpol, if they even know the name Hidalgo, wouldn’t think very highly of me. I’ve worked hard to build my tarnished reputation.” He grinned at her.

Reaching out she laced her fingers through his and brought his hand into her lap. Mercy smiled. “The ultimate bad boy, huh?”

The simple intimacy of their holding hands set his pulse thrumming. A deep longing and intense need to draw her into his arms, to touch her, everywhere, filled him. He reminded himself that she was married. And that all of the things he was feeling for her were wrong and could go no further.

“Will your husband be worried about you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” She avoided his eyes.

“Do you love him?”

She seemed unsettled by the question. “I did at one time. I’m not so sure now.” She swallowed and blinked up at the brightening sky of morning. Her lower lip trembled. “I don’t think so. Not anymore.”

His heart soared.

“Did you love Maria’s mother?” she whispered.

“
Si
. Very much.”

“But you have had other lovers. Many, if I'm to believe the gossip. Or is that also part of your charade?” She slanted him an unexpectedly coy look from beneath long, lowered eyelashes, and he went steamy inside.

Sebastian shook his head. “Never while we were together. After my wife died—it took a while. Quite a long while, actually. Then, one day, I started noticing women again. No one has held my interest for very long. I saw no reason to take a lover seriously.”

Mercy nodded and bit down on her bottom lip, making it look as if she were pouting although he was sure she was just thinking very hard.

He suddenly was convinced he'd never take another breath if she stood up and walked away from him. He wanted her.
Now! Here!
Under the stars and with a desperation he could taste.

But she wasn’t his for the taking. Sebastian turned his head away, finding it too painful to continue looking at her.

The metal trailers and huts in the valley below caught the reflected light of Father Sun just beginning to rise. Sebastian knew he should make arrangements for his men to come for him and for the horses. He had figured out who had set him up, stranding his cattle truck loaded with people. Chico, his foreman's nephew. It had to be. And it was unlikely the young man could have done it on his own, without Luis's help.

Handing the old man over to the police would be painful. Luis had been his father’s trusted overseer for most of Sebastian’s life. But the man's disloyalty had brought untold suffering, as well as shame to the Hidalgo name. He could not protect a man like that.

Finally, regretfully, he would have to deliver Mercy back to the city and her husband. That hurt more than anything else. He didn’t want this time with her to end.

Sebastian felt her whisper something, her breath tickling his cheek. “What?” he asked.

“Hold me.” She looked up at him with glistening eyes, and he plunged into them, heart and soul, but he found he couldn't actually move. “Please, just hold me, Sebastian,” she repeated, “until I have to leave.”

He wrapped his arms around her, and she felt like a slice of heaven. They stayed that way for as long as he dared. He wanted more, so much more. “We should go now,” he whispered. “There will be time, back in the city, to talk about—”

“No,” she interrupted him, her body trembling as she buried her face against his chest. “There won't be any time for us. I'll leave Mexico tomorrow, on the first flight I can get. I don’t know when I’ll return. If ever.”

He shut his eyes against the pain.
Stay with me if you can't stay with him. Please, please stay with me.
But he couldn’t ask that of her. Not now. It would be far too dangerous. Anyone he really cared about, he must now put far away from him. The cartels would be coming for him.

“Are you leaving your husband?” he said.

“I think so. I need time to sort things out.” She stayed huddled in his arms.

He touched his lips to the top of her head.              Then she lifted her face and kissed him on the mouth. Long and hard and with a hunger he wished to God he had the power to satisfy.

He went still inside—unable to feel his own body, except for his parched throat and burning eyes and the fire down low in his belly, for which there was no cure.

“
Querida
,” he whispered.

42

A Month Later:

Mercy had left Peter in Mexico. It wasn’t as difficult as she’d thought it might be. Emotionally or practically speaking. Within a single day she’d packed her clothing, art supplies, items she’d bought at the Zocalo market stalls. She arranged for her own flight back to Dulles.

Peter had promised to leave his mistress if Mercy forgave him. Again. She thought,
What’s the point?
He had cheated on her with two different women during their brief marriage. Two that she
knew
about, that is. She now suspected there had been others.

He hadn't volunteered his current mistress’s name, and this time she hadn’t asked. When she told him she was leaving, he looked forlorn but didn’t beg her to stay. He offered to accompany her to the airport. She politely declined. He offered to arrange for an embassy car. She said she’d prefer a taxi.

As she walked out the door of their lovely Polanco house with its red-tile roof and pots of crimson geraniums, he eyed her with sad, little-boy eyes and wished her well, murmuring, “I hope you’ll reconsider your decision. Call me if you do.”

“I won’t,” she said.

All in all, their parting was reasonably civil. He’d broken her heart long ago. Once something is broken, you can’t break it again unless it first has been mended. She suspected it would take a very long time for her heart to repair itself, if it ever did. She didn’t mourn the loss of Peter’s love. She mourned the loss of her
faith
in love itself. And she grieved at having to leave a city she’d come so quickly to adopt and cherish.

A bit of Tennyson from her school-girl days had played through her mind as she boarded the plane that sunny day:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

Was it really? Better to have trusted and been deceived? Better to have shared your soul with another human being, only to find that honor meant nothing to him?

Flagged passport or not, she had no difficulty re-entering the country through Customs at Dulles. The next morning, Mercy contacted her mother’s lawyer to arrange for the legal separation. After a year, by Maryland law, he told her, she could file for divorce.

Three weeks after leaving Mexico, she called Peter late one night, when he’d most likely be at home. She wanted to arrange for shipment of her paintings that had remained at the Polanco house. He must have given Lupe the night off. Another woman answered the phone. Mercy recognized the throaty accent immediately.

Carlotta. One of the embassy employees.

Apparently Peter had recovered sufficiently from the demise of their marriage to entertain his lover in their home. She hung up without saying anything, without asking for him. The next day she sent him an email requesting shipment of her art.

Far more complicated than leaving Peter, or Mexico, was her farewell to Sebastian Hidalgo. She still hadn’t figured out whether she was in love with the man or simply fascinated by him. She knew even less about how he felt about her. They’d kissed passionately. But that was where it had stopped. There on the hillside overlooking a human warehouse, both of them wretchedly exhausted and filthy, they’d looked into each other’s eyes, questions hovering in the torpid air between them.

“Go,” he’d said. Not a rejection. More like giving her permission. Or encouragement.

And she’d stood up and walked away down the hard-scrabble hillside, silently thanking him for understanding that she had a husband she needed to lose and a mother to find. That didn’t leave much of her to spend on a lover. Not now.

Later, he’d promised to come to Washington and visit her when he could. But she knew the strength of his dedication to his own country. Mexico held his heart.

But if he did come to her and wanted to sleep with her when they next met—what then? It was a delicious fantasy, to be sure. From time to time, she thought of his striking chiseled face, struck golden by the sun. Pictured his wide-shouldered profile as he sat astride his beautiful white stallion.
Arrogant
, some people called him.
Dangerous
, too. But wouldn’t it be worth the risk to be held again in that man's arms? To know what it felt like to be loved by him.