On Thin Ice (2 page)

And the third time was the charm.

There were five other hostages in their current camp high in the Andes: a German engineer, the spoiled movie star’s son from California, two Guatemalan businessmen and the old nun. He couldn’t take them all when he left. The nun was too old to make it down the mountain; she was barely surviving the high altitudes. The Guatemalan businessmen were on their way to having their ransom paid, so there was no reason for them to risk it. Hans Froelich, the engineer, had offered him a tidy fortune to take him out of there, and Dylan Hamilton would be worth millions to his grieving family in California. Unless they were smart enough to celebrate his disappearance. Dylan was a major pain in the ass, and if he didn’t have the potential to be an asset, MacGowan would have killed him just because he was so damned irritating. But he was pragmatic enough to consider taking them with him, just in case.

He took another drink of the warm beer. He wasn’t sure whether it tasted more like piss or skunk, and he didn’t particularly care. Two more days and they were out of there, and if the Guiding Light decided to kill the hostages who remained, then so be it. He’d learned long ago that he couldn’t save everyone. He could only save himself.

They’d been in their current camp for three months now, and they’d be moving them soon. MacGowan couldn’t afford to put it off much longer. They weren’t watching him closely, and he’d done a damned good job of looking whipped. They had no idea.

The one who called himself Izzy came and sat down beside him, grinning up at MacGowan. “Poker? I can beat you this time.”

Since Izzy was half stoned on the crap he took, MacGowan doubted it, but he gave him a lazy grin anyway. “You can try,” he replied in the same Spanish dialect. “You need to put your money where your mouth is.”

Not that money would do him any good, and Izzy and the rest had very little to barter with. American cigarettes, cans of Coke, the occasional bottle of real beer were about it. But what they could barter was small bits of freedom. He’d lost the leg shackles thanks to three queens a few months ago, and a full house had given him private bathroom breaks. He didn’t particularly care whether he was taking a dump in front of an interested crowd, but it gave him a precious few moments of being unobserved and he was going to need that when he took off.

Today he had every intention of getting rid of the handcuffs, and he wasn’t going to rely on the luck of the draw to do it. The followers of the Guiding Light were young, stupid, and addicted to
bazuco,
or bazooka, the crap left behind when you made cocaine. It was child’s play to cheat, to take their money. The only problem was the bazooka made them trigger happy and wide-awake, and this time he couldn’t afford any screw-ups. They wouldn’t let him survive another escape attempt, particularly if he took people with him.

He still couldn’t figure out why they hadn’t put a bullet in his brain years ago. They dragged him from place to place when he had no intrinsic value, and these men were very focused on money. The revolution had left the building years ago – kidnapping was about cold hard cash and the Guiding Light was nothing more than gangsters in camo.

Porco, Izzy’s friend, and two others squatted down by the fire as Izzy dealt the cards. MacGowan had gotten good at reading the signs, and there was an edginess to all of them that signaled a coming change. He was going to have to move fast.

By the third hand Porco was unfastening his handcuffs, the fire had burned down low and the chilly night air was seeping in around them, but no one seemed to notice. “What’s up?” MacGowan asked casually as he dealt the next hand. “You guys seem on edge.”

“They’re bringing someone new,” Porco said, never the brightest. “We’ll have to break camp tomorrow morning so they can’t trace her.”

“Shut up!” Izzy snapped, grabbing his cards from the packed dirt that served as a table. “He doesn’t need to know anything.”

“What’s he gonna do?” Porco said defensively. “He knows there’s no way he can escape – he tried it twice already.”

MacGowan picked up his own hand. Nada. He let a small, satisfied smirk play at the corners of his mouth. Bluffing with a bunch of stoned teenagers was always a challenge – if he overplayed it they’d get suspicious, if he underplayed it they wouldn’t notice. “I like it here,” he said, putting the cards face down in front of him with the demeanor of a man well-pleased with life, or at least with his poker hand.

“Then you’re loco,” Izzy said. “You sleep on the dirt, there’s no pussy, it’s cold and rainy. Englishmen like their comforts.”

“I’m not English,” he said pleasantly, steel beneath. “I’m Irish. From Northern Ireland.”

“What’s the difference?” Porco asked, blinking as he tried to focus on his hand.

“Trust me, there’s a big one,” MacGowan said in an easy voice. “I’ll explain to you a bit of our history this winter. Assuming you’ll continue to keep me alive that long.” Of course, he wasn’t going to be anywhere around in the coming winter, but they wouldn’t know that.

“You’ll be alive,” Izzy said. “We’re supposed to keep you that way if we can. We had orders when we took you.”

Which didn’t make sense. If Madsen was responsible he never would have bothered with the expense of keeping him on ice. So why the hell was he still here, and still alive?

He simply nodded, dealing new cards to those who asked for them, standing pat on his miserable pair of twos. He could hear them coming from a distance, but his poker buddies were too caught up in the game to notice. He drained his beer, then looked up with all the innocence of a hungry puma. “You want to call?”

“I want. . .” Izzy began, when the newcomers broke through into the clearing, and everyone jumped, scattering cards and cigarettes and beer bottles in their wake.

There were five of them, a little higher on the food chain than Izzy and Porco and their friends, though in two years MacGowan hadn’t learned their names, plus a new kid who looked small and nasty. He knew what they were capable of, though, and he stayed where he was. If they saw he was missing his handcuffs they’d do something to remedy that, and he wasn’t about to take that chance. The others only showed up when they moved camp, and this was his last chance.

They’d brought something with them – it looked like nothing more than a pile of fabric and bones, and someone dumped it on the ground. It was either a skinny kid or a woman, and it had been so long since he’d gotten laid he didn’t care which.

“They’ll be looking for this one,” the one in charge, a man MacGowan thought of as Redbeard, said, giving the bundle a little nudge with his foot. “We break camp tonight.”

Shit. He’d been hoping for a couple more days, just to make certain Hans and Dylan would be up to it. Maybe he should say the hell with it and go alone. They’d probably be more of a liability than an eventual asset. But he did like money, and it was going to take a fair amount to get back to England.

“Who’s this?” Izzy had approached the pathetic bundle on the ground, sniffing like a dog who’d found a bitch in heat.

“Leave her alone. You already killed one of the nuns,” Redbeard said. “This one is worth a lot of money, more if she’s in good shape.”

Izzy glared at the older man. MacGowan could remember the screams coming from the shed that had held the nuns. Two of them originally, now only one was left. If he had a chance before he left he was going to take care of Izzy, as a favor to the dead nun.

“She’s mine.” The new kid was a little bit younger than Izzy, but MacGowan didn’t make the mistake of thinking he was harmless. “I’m the one who took her.”

Redbeard looked at the kid with contempt. “She belongs to the Guiding Light now. No one touches her,
comprende
?”

Okay, this was going to work out fine. They’d be so busy keeping the jackals from the new female flesh that they wouldn’t have time to notice as he slipped away. Froelich and the kid were going to have to fend for themselves.

They weren’t guarded the way he was. The members of La Luz knew that neither of them had the skills or the determination to escape, and they had more freedom than he ever had, including bathroom breaks. He’d leave the prearranged sign in the latrine, and if they saw it and followed him to the meeting place, fine. Otherwise he was better off on his own.

“Put him back in his hut,” Redbeard said. “We’ll move at first light.”

MacGowan rose, keeping his wrists together so they wouldn’t realize the handcuffs were gone, and Izzy shoved him in the direction of the hut that had been his home for the last three months. He allowed himself one glance over his shoulder before stumbling into the darkness, long enough to see Redbeard pull the hood from the woman’s head.

And she was a woman all right, with a spill of long, golden hair in the firelight. Unconscious, and better off that way, he thought, turning back to the narrow path. She was going to be keeping all of them busy tonight, and he was going to be able to get out of there because of her.

Too bad there was no way to help her, but he had his own skin to think of. He just hoped he got far enough away before she started to scream.

CHAPTER TWO

The world was still whirling, the noise in her head unbearable, and Beth sank back down on the hard earth, praying for it all to go away, praying to wake up back in her tiny cell at the mission, knowing that no matter how hard she prayed, nothing would change.

“Get up!” Carlos was kicking at her. Carlos, the little shit who’d refused to learn English but refused to leave her classroom. Clearly he’d had a different agenda. Had they been his hands she’d felt on her breasts, between her legs, as she’d been tossed from car to jeep and onto the back of some smelly animal that could have been a donkey or a llama? She was a gentle woman, who put her money and her life where her pacifist ideals were. If she had an axe she’d cut off Carlos’s hands.

Someone hauled her to a sitting position, and she bit back her instinctive moan. They hadn’t bothered to tie her up – they would have known she’d be no threat to them – and she put her hand to her pounding head. Blood was matted there – whoever had clubbed her must have broken the skin. She tried to distance herself emotionally – did she have a concussion? It seemed likely. She was dizzy, disoriented, she couldn’t see clearly, and the blow to her head had kept her knocked out for what seemed like days. She’d have to talk to Father Pascal . . .

The sob that caught in her throat was instinctive, too late to swallow it. She choked it back, pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them to make herself into the smallest target available. And then she looked around her.

They were up in the mountains – she knew that much. As she’d slowly regained consciousness during the long, jolting trip into the jungle she’d recognized the change in elevation, the sound of the jeep engine straining as it climbed higher. She blinked, and slowly things came back into focus.

She’d lived in Callivera long enough to understand what had happened. Kidnappings for profit were everyday occurrences in other parts of the country, and while she’d done everything she could to keep a low profile, it should come as no surprise that she’d been taken. She couldn’t tell whether they were guerillas or paramilitaries, and in the end it didn’t matter. Kidnappings like this were about money, nothing more, no matter how noble the excuse the kidnappers gave.

“No one will touch you,” one of the older men said in halting English. “Your family will pay your ransom and you will be returned, unharmed. There is no need to be frightened.”

Beth raised her head to look at him. “I’m not frightened,” she said. “If you hurt me there won’t be any money. And revolutions need money.”

The man with the reddish hair grimaced. “We do what we must do.”

“Including killing a harmless old priest and two women who were only trying to help the people?”

Carlos started to push past him. “Let me shut her up,
jefe
. She needs to show respect . . .” He was swatted away like the nasty little bug he was, and Beth felt a faint surge of hope.

“The deaths were unfortunate,” the man said. “The result of young soldiers who panicked. You have my word of honor that you won’t be hurt.”

She looked past him to Carlos’s glittering eyes, and to the slightly older boy behind him. The chief’s word of honor wasn’t going to mean squat if those two had a chance at her.

She’d also been in a Latin country long enough to know that you don’t question a man’s power in front of his underlings. So she nodded, ducking her head again.

“Put her in with the Englishman,” the older man said.

A flurry of Spanish greeted that pronouncement, clearly protests, but he shut them off with a sharp wave of his hand. “Just in case any of you decide to disobey my orders,” he said. “The Englishman is a romantic – he’ll make certain you keep your hands off her.”

One of the jackals said something, then spat. The boss still spoke in English, clearly to be sure she understood. “You will do as I tell you.”

She was hauled to her feet with rough hands, and she just barely managed to keep her balance, but at the last minute she locked her knees and threw her shoulders back, standing upright. Anything to keep them from putting their filthy hands on her again.

She was hungry, dizzy, and lucky they’d allowed her a few moments in the bushes to pee a number of hours ago. The ground was rough under her feet, but she had no choice. This time they tied her arms behind her back, and she stumbled into the undergrowth, Carlos and his friend on either side of her.

She understood more than they thought she did. She concentrated on their voices and the rough footing underneath as they pushed her deeper into the trees. They were arguing, but at least the consensus was they wouldn’t touch her now. Not until something happened to
el
jefe
.

She could barely see the hut in front of her – the night was overcast, the moon invisible. She stumbled and fell against the rough wood and it creaked in protest. She heard the door open and a moment later she was sent sprawling into the darkness, landing hard on the rough dirt floor. What little light had come from the overcast sky was now gone entirely, and she was trapped in the darkness, blind, helpless.