Miami Midnight (28 page)

“Honey, you don’t want to interview me.” The figure in the all-encompassing black gown and hood had a definite baritone Florida drawl. “But I’d appreciate it, Miss Collier, if you’d let me keep you in sight.”

Gaby stepped back. For the second time that night she was speechless.

The domino took her by the elbow, moving her out of the way of a group of strolling minstrels carrying mandolins and guitars. “I have to keep looking for the top of that pretty curly head,” he said in her ear. “The way you’re ducking in and out of this crowd, it ain’t easy.”

“Harrison?” He was the same size and shape, but with the concealing folds of the black domino Gaby couldn’t be sure.
“Harrison Tigertail?”

He pushed back the mask, his copper features impassive. “Just stay around where I can keep an eye on you, hon,” he said in his rumbly voice. “I don’t want to have to send the whole Miccosukee nation out into the everglades looking for you.”

Gaby could do nothing but stare, open-mouthed. What in the name of God was the roofing contractor doing at Vizcaya at a glitzy fancy dress ball? Telling her not to move around too much? So he could keep an eye on her?

“Harrison?” She couldn’t stop repeating it, it was so bizarre. But the big man was already moving away. In seconds, the tentlike black shape of the domino disappeared in the crowds.

Gaby looked around, still shaken. The floodlit gardens, the surreal make-believe revelry reinforced a return of the horrible feeling that she was being followed—and watched! She put a trembling hand to her forehead. She could never be completely sure she wasn’t going crazy. That was one possibility she’d never rule out.

A couple headed for the dancing jostled her to get past. Someone spilled champagne down the front of her costume. She didn’t even hear the apology. She whirled around, stumbling on her skirts, suddenly filled with a compelling need to see Dodd. As always, she needed his reassurances, his strength; she needed him to take her in his arms and just hold her for a few minutes. She needed him to reassure her about her sanity!

Getting through the crowd to the foot of the terrace stairs was a major undertaking. As Gaby stepped out of the flow of people into the shelter of the clipped-hedge entrance to the maze, the crowd parted for the governor’s party. They were coming from the reception with a wake of reporters, press aides, and television cameramen, headed for the stage where there would be opening ceremonies at nine o’clock. Gaby spotted Dodd’s blue satin
condottièro
costume on the periphery of the group.

“Dodd!” She knew she didn’t have much time. Crissette was probably waiting for her by now behind the casino. She moved along with the governor’s party and when Dodd got close enough she grabbed him by the sleeve.

He had had more than a few drinks that evening. Gaby could smell the liquor on his breath. But he looked devastatingly handsome, big and broad-shouldered and rather swashbuckling in the bright blue Venetian soldier’s costume.

It was impossible to talk to him now, she saw, disappointed.

“Will you call me at the newsroom?” she yelled.

She lost her grip on his arm as the governor’s bodyguards cleared a way toward the show area. Dodd turned, walking backward a few steps. “Ill be late,” he said apologetically. “I’ll call your house when I get through. Midnight?”

She nodded and waved her hand. She was left just outside the yew arch as the crowd followed the governor’s party and the TV cameras. For the first time she saw a tall man in a white ruffled shirt and red satin military coat standing a few feet away, inside the maze. He’d apparently been watching her.

The light was dim. At that moment they were the only ones near the clipped green hedges of the labyrinth. As he walked toward her, Gaby couldn’t tear her gaze from his leanly powerful body, magnificent in the tight-fitting breeches and scarlet coat. He stopped in front of her and she looked up, straight into the black gypsy eyes of James Santo Marin.

“Why can’t you do what Harrison Tigertail told you to do?” he asked in exasperation. “Stay where he can watch you. Dammit, if anything happens to you I’ll...”

He left it dangling, staring at her with an expression of angry frustration. He looked tense and edgy in spite of his brilliant costume; the dark smudges of fatigue under his eyes were more pronounced than she remembered.

That wasn’t the only thing Gaby remembered.

For the first time, as she stared at James’s handsome face, the full realization of where she’d been with the
iyalocha
and what she’d done on board the luxurious yacht, with
him
, flooded over her.

She’d managed to bury it all in the back of her mind somehow so as not to think about it. Now it popped out. Every detail. Inescapable.

“It was some sort of
trick
!” The words spilled out of her. “The party, the clothes, the weird ceremony and chanting. It was all to get me in bed with you,” she cried. “When I didn’t even know what I was doing!”

“Gabriela, look, don’t let’s argue about anything right now, especially not what happened that night. I’ll explain it to you later.” He seized her wrist, pulling her to the maze’s entrance. “You’ve got to go back where Harrison can watch you. It’s important.”

“I don’t have to do anything? Her wrist felt as though it would break, she was twisting so hard to get free. She was close to weeping with rage and humiliation. “What a rotten thing to do to get sex! Did you pay the
iyalocha
to slip me something in all that rum?”

“Will you shut up?” He wrapped strong arms around her, holding her still as she fought him. “Listen to me, Gabriela, this is all my fault. Jesus—you don’t know how much I blame myself! I would never have done this to you. It wasn’t my idea.” His voice cracked. “Say that you believe me, for God’s sake!”

She was too amazed by his vehement words to say anything. She tilted her head back and looked up into his anguished face with alarm.

“Please, my darling,” he murmured, lowering his head, “do what I tell you.”

When he kissed her, his desperation marked her with soul-destroying power. It was as though he was claiming her for all eternity, fiercely branding her with his overpowering need. Gaby, whimpering under his blazing onslaught, was too confused to respond. She felt the skin on her lip part, painfully.

She used both hands to wrench herself away. “What are you trying to do to me?” she cried. She put her fingers to her mouth.

He stepped back, his face drawn. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“I don’t think you mean to do anything,” she hurled at him. She dabbed at her sore lip. “I don’t think your friends do, either. But that doesn’t mean I’m crazy enough to put up with any of this!”

“Wait a minute.” He started for her as she turned away. “Gabriela, go back to Harrison and stay with him,” he ordered. “I can’t explain. Just do it!”

But she’d had enough. “Get out of my life!” she yelled, flailing at his hands as he sought to grab her. “Stay away from me!”

She broke and ran, holding up her skirts with both hands, racing into the night as though her very life depended on it.

If James followed her, Gaby soon lost him. At the water pools she paused long enough to look back, and he was nowhere in sight.

At the back of the casino a green lawn swept down to a small waterway, partly choked with water lilies, that led to the outer bay. The lagoon had been designed originally to bring one of James Deering’s yachts to the little pleasure house at the end of the gardens to pick up guests after an afternoon’s tea and card playing.

Gaby lunged over the grass recklessly, filled with a hurting, thwarted despair. She couldn’t stay in Miami knowing that James Santo Marin was there, appearing anytime, anywhere, to haunt her with—oh, God—the memory of what it was like to love him! She couldn’t make any sort of life for herself with Dodd Brickell, when the ghost of someone she could never love again was always there to confront her!

She stepped on the edge of her gown, heard it rip, and halted. Several television vans were parked under the trees. Except for one portable floodlight pointed at the threatening sky, the space was dark.

Where was Crissette? she wondered. The back of the casino was so dark there was little chance of finding anyone.

Gaby had just turned to retrace her steps when she saw the familiar satin coat and blue knee breeches of Crissette’s
cisisbeo
costume coming around the far side of the casino. The photographer had obviously gone around one side just as Gaby had gone around the other.

“Gabrielle?” the other woman called to her. “What are we doing back here in the dark?”

Gaby opened her mouth to answer, then caught her breath. A shadow was following Crissette. A large, stumbling figure, indistinct, that the other woman couldn’t see.

Several things passed through Gaby’s mind in that instant with surprising clarity. Whoever was trying to catch up with Crissette was a maintenance worker or other museum employee, and no one to worry about. Then the shadowy figure staggered and nearly fell, and she thought he could be a drunk or a gate-crasher. The figure dropped slowly to his hands and knees and stayed there. At precisely that moment Gaby could see him well enough to know that the man following Crissette was David Fothergill.

Gaby started to run.

Crissette turned, astounded, as Gaby charged past her in the darkness. “What is it?” she yelled after her.

“David?” Gaby was screaming. “Is that really you?”

He was still on his hands and knees, unable to get up, just a few feet beyond the casino’s walkway. Shakily, the big Trinidadian lifted his head. Gaby gasped. Blood was pouring from David’s nose and his eyes were half closed. Behind her, Gaby heard Crissette scream.

“They came to your house,” David managed hoarsely. “There are men looking for you. Bad ones. They beat me up, they wanted me to tell where you go tonight.”

Crissette threw herself down on her knees beside David. “Oh, God,” she cried, “what the hell happened?”

“Men...” David began again. He slowly lowered himself to his elbows, shaking his head, not able to go on.

But Gaby had heard enough. “Wait right here,” she said irrelevantly, as David was in no condition to move. “Don’t try to do anything. I’ll get somebody to help!”

“Get the security guards,” Crissette shouted after her. “Around the front.”

Gaby raced across the back lawn of the casino, staggering in the soft, lumpy turf. A motor launch was coming slowly up the dark little lagoon from the bay, a small searchlight playing on the shore.

Vizcaya security guards in a patrol boat, Gaby knew, instantly relieved. She veered off and ran down to the water’s edge, waving her arms. “Over here!” she called to the boat. “He’s hurt. Over here!”

The launch slowed and the bow bumped the muddy shore. A man, indistinct in the darkness, leaned forward, peering into the gloom.

“Quién es?”
he asked.

Gaby stepped out into the mud at the edge of the grass. “Can you get a doctor? Please hurry, there’s a friend of mine who’s—”

“Es ella!”
another voice exclaimed.

Before Gaby could step back, the figure in the bow had jumped ashore. It wrapped its arms around her, one hand covering her mouth quickly to muffle her startled cry.

As Gaby stared up at the men, she realized this time these
were
the Colombians. Even in the dark. Mirror sunglasses and all.

Ya es la hora

De empezar a morir. La noche is buena para decir adios.

Now is the time

To begin dying. The night is ready for good-byes.

JOSÉ MARTÍ

Chapter 19

The River of Grass is fifty miles wide but only six inches deep. It begins as a broad, freshwater drainage from Lake Okeechobee that flows down across the everglades for hundreds of miles to the southernmost tip of Florida, where it eventually meets the sea.

Under the blazing subtropical sun the vast, crawling river appears as a giant mirror reflecting the sky, broken by islands of oaks and palm trees called hammocks, its surface covered thinly with the waving marsh grass that gives it its name.

At night, it is an endless black void of faintly glimmering swamp measured in time, not distance. It was also, as the airboat pounded and roared over it, the inescapable tunnel of Gaby’s nightmare. She sat slumped in the front seat between the two heavyset men, the airboat driver on his platform behind them. In the hours since they’d left Vizcaya, she’d experienced a slow climb back from stunned, mindless terror to frantic, fruitless plotting to escape, to a resigned attempt to try not to think, not to feel too much in order to survive.

She still couldn’t believe that she’d been dragged from the masked ball and into a motor launch without, apparently, anyone knowing what was taking place. Sometime later—it could have been an hour, or more or even less, she didn’t have a way to gauge time—she’d been transferred with her mouth taped, her hands tied in front of her, but still very much alert and conscious, to a pickup truck on a bayfront street somewhere in Miami. They’d driven miles along a highway, off onto a dirt road, and finally to a deserted launching ramp where she was half lifted, half dragged into a waiting airboat.