Paradise Burning (31 page)

“
You’re joking, right?” Mandy declared,
eyes wide.

“
That’s the way it works,” Peter
explained patiently. “The city cops are also going to look for our
car. If we’re lucky, maybe it’s still around and we can drive
ourselves home.”

“
What about fingerprints?” Mandy
mumbled as she licked bacon crumbs from her fingertips.

“
Oh, shit!” Peter groaned, swiftly
turning to apologize to their hostess, who was hovering between the
stove and the table, anxious to keep her guests fed yet not miss a
word. “You’re right. If the car isn’t at the club, then it will
have to be dusted for prints and God knows what else.” Peter
winced. “Can’t you just see the look on Brad’s face if we arrive
back at his precious Amber Run in a patrol car?”

Mandy choked on her coffee. When she could
talk, she shook her head. “It’s worse than that. My car is at the
campground. Can’t you just picture it? Ed, Glenda, every last one
of the senior citizens who have nothing better to do than sit
around and watch their neighbors. They’ll be lined up like
spectators at the Roman coliseum waiting for the lions to munch out
on the Christians.” Mandy put down her coffee, head sinking into
her hands. “Maybe we should just get on the next plane out.”

“
Fine,” Peter agreed with remarkably
restrained sarcasm. “If we had any money, credit cards,
identification . . .”

But humiliation and poverty were only the
beginning of their day.

“
So what were you doing at
the Club Nautico, Mr. Pennington?”

“
I told you, it was right
there on the road home after the ballet. We stopped for a
drink.”

“
Oh . . . yeah.”

“
Had you ever been to the
Club Nautico before, Ms. Armitage?”

“
Okay, Pennington, if it was
a mugging—like you told County—how come your cash and credit cards
were still in your wallet? All neatly laid out on the front seat of
your car?”

“
As I said, I thought it was
a mugging—that’s what I told the Sheriff’s Department—until we got
back here and found out you’d discovered everything intact. We’re
extremely grateful . . .”

“
So you don’t have any idea
why . . .”

In the end, of course—after realizing they
were in imminent danger of being considered suspects in a drug deal
gone sour—they were forced to invoke the name of Special Agent Doug
Chalmers and the possibility the Manatee Bay police were
endangering an on-going FBI investigation.

So they all sat in glum silence—the two
Manatee Bay detectives audibly grinding their teeth—until Chalmers
came and rescued the bedraggled and beleaguered kidnapping
victims.

It was, Mandy decided later, a good example
of that old expression about jumping from the frying pan into the
fire. Although, after getting a good look at them, Doug Chalmers
toned down his sharp lecture, clearly he was not a happy man. They
had been exceedingly stupid, he told them, bringing their troubles
on themselves. They were damn lucky they weren’t dead.

Amen
, Mandy
breathed.

Fortunately, Doug was gentleman enough to
drive Mandy home first and allow her to change her clothes before
launching into a full interrogation. And, to Mandy’s consummate
relief, his car was an anonymous tan sedan, which raised no
eyebrows at Calusa Campground.

Yet everything had changed. She no longer
felt safe in her wonderful house on wheels. Her great gesture of
independence. Her defiance of all those years of being cocooned,
protected . . .

Stupid, stupid,
stupid!
One little glitch and she was toast. But last
night was a warning. She
had
seen Karim Shirazi, and he’d seen her. Here, in a campground
of sleeping seniors, she was a sitting duck.
Not
being scared was the stupid
reaction.

Okay, so that last trip upriver was a
screw-up. The Iranian had spotted them. And so had the FBI.
Chalmers had a right to be angry. He’d told her not to go back, and
she’d defied him. With a heartfelt sigh Mandy stepped into a pair
of comfortable old jeans.

It was nearly supper time when they finally
arrived at Amber Run. Peter disappeared into his room to change,
leaving Mandy to phone for pizza. She fixed scotch on the rocks for
the men, scotch and water for herself, then slumped into a heap on
the French blue leather of the family room sofa, managing a wry
grin as Doug Chalmers’s murmured that he was “off the clock” as he
accepted his drink.

He took a long swallow, fisted both hands
around his glass and bent his head. Still furious? Mandy wondered.
Or simmering down to resignation? Not that she could blame him. He
was just trying to do his job. She could scarcely deny they’d gone
back to see Nadya one last time.

It was all her fault, of course. She’d
insisted on seeing Nadya, and Peter wouldn’t let her go alone.

At the time the trip across the river seemed
worth the risk. Why should Nadya suffer, not knowing that the vast
power of the federal government was being organized to come to her
aid? One short trip by rowboat, that’s all it was.

Or so she’d thought. Until she found herself
stark naked, face to face with a lizard. She’d let sentiment
override reality, and screwed up. Big time. She’d thought she was
so clever, sneaking around a hornet’s nest at the crack of dawn.
Until it exploded into a nasty, dangerous place. One that stung,
but had not killed.

So far.

At the moment she and Peter might be fully
clothed, warm, comfortable, and safe. But what Doug Chalmers was
going to tell them, grind into them, yell at their thick skulls,
was that it wasn’t going to last. He was going to repeat, “Stand
back and let the feds handle it.”

But Mandy could feel the shadows closing in.
It was already too late.

They were in trouble. Peter closed the door
on Doug Chalmers, leaned back against the cool etched glass and
shut his eyes. He had never intended to get quite this close to his
book’s subject matter. Bangkok had been bad enough. But
tonight—after Chalmers had vented more steam than Vesuvius—they’d
rehashed every nuance of the situation for two solid hours, and
come to the conclusion there was only one reasonable explanation
for such a startling attack. The Club Nautico, Chalmers said, was a
hub of the local drug trade. That its owners were involved in other
kinds of trafficking was scarcely a surprise. He and Mandy must
have been seen, an investigation begun, their identities and
residences located. It was possible the Iranian had followed them
to the club but, more likely, it had been coincidence. Karim
Shirazi was there for a conference with his cohorts, had seen them
and taken advantage of the moment. He was angry, they were
vulnerable . . .

Damn!

It could have been worse, Peter knew. Much
worse.

He walked back into the family room,
collapsed onto the blue leather couch on the opposite end from his
wife. How to tell her he wasn’t going to let her go home to an RV
in the midst of a bunch of decrepit seniors?

Easy.

“
Uh, Mandy?”

“
Our only transportation just drove
off.”

Mandy went very still, probably more upset
over realizing her usually steel-trap brain had let Doug get away
without taking her home than with relief she didn’t have to return
to the vulnerability of her RV. “There’s no way around it, Mouse.
You can’t go back to the trailer.”

“
RV.” Her chin jutted out in defiance.
He could see her searching for an argument. Any
argument.

And then she found it.

“
What a chameleon you are,” Mandy
hissed. “Peter the Great offering me bed and board when once upon a
time you couldn’t wait to leave me. You were practically dancing on
tippy toes.”

“
Sure I wanted to go. If I had to put
up with Eleanor another day, I was going to kill her.”

“
I seem to recall some rather
devastating remarks about dirty tricks and industrial espionage,
not to mention the danger of starting World War III.”

“
Yeah, well, if I impugned the
reputation of the country’s cleverest little private spy business,
I’m sure I beg your pardon. I told you then, and I tell you now,
it’s all yours, baby. I still don’t want any damn part of
it.”

“
And what about your pert little
editor? You surely wanted part of her.”

Peter’s grabbed his head in both hands.
“That was a lethal mix of heady success and hormones. I was a damn
fool, but I’m fresh out of ways to apologize. The only thing I can
add is that it will
never
happen again.”

“
The basic problem remains,” Mandy
pointed out, unrelenting. “Our goals in life are
incompatible.”

Shit!
“Now
look, Mouse . . .”

“
I’m too tired to look at anything,”
Mandy wailed.

“
Oh, God, Mouse, I’m sorry. It’s been a
hell of a day. We’re sniping at each other over ancient grievances
when we’ve got the Russian mob on our necks.”

“
Crying tired. Stupid tired. Lucky to
be alive tired. How we got from the FBI and Nadya to the
Armitage-Pennington conflict I have no idea.”

“
We’ll solve that one too, Mouse. Just
not tonight.”

Mandy’s response was a vague mumble.

“
O-kay.” Peter lowered his hands to his
knees, eyed his wife with something between wariness and hope.
“Since you’re stranded here, may I offer the commodious
accommodations of my kingsize bed, Mrs. P?”

“
Do you have enough strength to get me
off this couch? I think I’m embedded.”

Peter levered himself to his feet, held out
his hand. “You grasp, I’ll pull. First step toward making this
marriage a mutual effort.”

“
Sneaked that one in, didn’t you?”
Mandy peeked at him from under her lashes, making no effort to
repress a lascivious smirk. “What about strength for another kind
of mutual effort, or should we stop for a little blue pill on the
way to bed?”

He jerked her to her feet, bent his head,
nose to nose. “Just what I like,” he murmured, “an insatiable
woman.”

“
Just nuts,” Mandy sighed, “but what a
way to go.”

Nadya and three of the other girls in the old
house in the woods—Tama, Anya, and Kai—huddled in front of the
television, frowning at the rapid spate of English pouring over
them from a late afternoon talk show. Kai muttered something in her
native Thai, threw up her hands, and stalked out.

“
Stay!” Nadya ordered the remaining
two. “Learn English or stay a whore. Tell me, which life do you
want?”

Tears rose in Anya’s eyes. Tama gulped,
shuddered, and turned back toward the television screen. Toward a
world so foreign, so far away, it might as well have been on the
moon. Nadya continued to glare at Anya until she, too, turned her
attention back to Oprah.

Nadya sighed, the runaway flow of English
drifting over her head. Could she really believe that Mandy and her
friends would rescue them? And even if she did, was being free just
another futile dream? A few moments of relief, followed by
deportation and disgrace?

A hand clamped around her arm, tight enough
to leave a bruise. She gasped as her body flew off the sofa. As
Tama and Anya cowered in their chairs, eyes wide. Karim’s anger was
so great, his speed so fast, Nadya stumbled, tripping over her own
feet, as he dragged her down the hall, pushed open the door to her
room and flung her toward the bed. She sprawled on the bedspread,
bounced back to a sitting position, hands braced at her sides. This
was not good. Defiantly, she lifted her chin and stared straight
into black eyes lit by a fury worse than any she’d seen before.

“
I should kill you. It is
my job
to kill you,” Karim hissed.
With the stiff movements of an automaton, he began to unbuckle his
belt. “What have you told your fine American friends, Nadyenka? Do
they know all about our operation here? Are we about to be raided?
Come, come, speak up.” He wound the end of his leather belt around
his hand. “Well? Have you betrayed us all? Should we expect
visitors any minute?”

Crack!
The belt
buckle hit the old dresser with a vicious snap, digging a gouge in
the wood. Nadya shivered, but didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

“
Do you know what I have done . . .
because of you?” Karim asked through slitted teeth. “I have lost my
touch, gone soft like a jellyfish. Did I tell Misha why I wished to
play a joke on the rich Americans? Ah, no. I said they were
neighbors I did not like. Arrogant American pigs who needed to be
taught a lesson in humility. I
lied
, Nadyenka. I seized on the futile hope of
scaring them off, and I lied. When I should have instantly chopped
off your head, and moved the rest of us to a new and more
hospitable place.”

Bozhe moi!
Shivers engulfed her. Nadya’s teeth chattered. Karim had seen
Mandy and her friend. No other explanation was possible. But what
did he really know? Only that she had spoken with them.
Briefly.

Struggling past the bile in her throat, Nadya
managed, “They were just people passing by in a boat, being
friendly. If you saw them, you know our meeting was brief. I told
them nothing.”

“
And I am to believe this until the FBI
sends a battering ram through our gate?”