It was getting close to five-thirty and the waiters were banging china around in the dining room, when Olivia appeared at the lounge bar doorway, escorted by an armed guard.
Daniel didn’t need to look up to know it was her. Just the murmured whispers, the turned heads and the elbows in ribs were enough to tell him she had arrived.
He kept his head down, scanning the three-month-old Times.
“She looks weird,” Jenny said, getting up from the table next to him. “They must have really worked her over this time.” She hurried away.
That jerked his head up. Olivia would have come through the dining room to reach the bar so he scanned the back end first.
She stood alone, looking for a place to sit. The guard had already left her there. He was heading back to his post. Daniel could glimpse him through the arches, passing through the dining room.
For a moment, Daniel’s heart stopped. So did time. Sound muffled down.
Olivia was wearing jeans. He didn’t know she even possessed such things. On her, with her legs, the jeans seemed to go on forever and ever. They were not just any old jeans.
At the beginning of the diplomatic junket, when the Insurrectos had been on their best behavior, there had been social occasions arranged, including tours to the local markets and commercial districts and the precious silver mines. They had been designed to demonstrate the Insurrectos had established peace and were maintaining it. Olivia must have brought some of the local clothing while she was on those tours.
Oh my God, Daniel breathed in his mind, looking at her wearing them now. Vistarian women had a way with jeans that Daniel personally preferred to the latest fashion that clung to a woman’s leg all the way down to the ankle. These clung everywhere, too, sort of. They were low cut, rising only as high as her hips, making a man wonder how a woman held them up, even as he admired the hips the jeans were clinging to. They were a distraction to a man, especially if he happened to be behind a woman. He was lost if she was walking away from him.
The jeans were designed to go over boots, so they were gently flared over the calves. Vistarian women did something to them that included some of the beautiful black lace that came from up in the mountains around Pascuallita, so that when she walked, the jeans flared out and the lace was displayed. It gave a glimpse of slender ankle and calf beneath. Daniel didn’t care how much flesh might be on display elsewhere—give a man a hint of flesh that was supposed to be covered up and he was intrigued. Vistarian women’s jeans were the most distracting, disarming garment Daniel had ever seen for such simple workmanlike clothes.
On Olivia, they turned into a seductive enticement that might leave him stuttering along in her wake.
She wore proper Vistarian boots beneath them, making her even taller. Black boots, with the right heel. In those heels, she would be able to look him in the eye.
There was a black belt threaded through the belt loops of the jeans and one of the elaborate filigree silver belt buckles that the country had begun to produce before the revolution had shut down all the silver factories. Where Olivia had got it from was a mystery. Perhaps Serrano had forced a factory open at gunpoint just to impress the diplomats. The filigree lace matched the lace on her jeans and the lace of her camisole. She wore a camisole as her top and nothing else, except for one of her light summer jackets.
Daniel swallowed.
No one else in the bar would know that what she was wearing was lingerie. No one else would know that she habitually went without a bra. It meant that she must have dressed this way for him. To tease him. To drive him mad.
It might work yet.
She was wearing sunglasses to help with the illusion that she was still recovering from the harshness of Serrano’s questioning session. Daniel wanted to hug her for remembering to play it as if she were weak and pathetic. The more Serrano thought he had pulled all the stuffing out of her the less he would consider her a threat.
She had also left her hair down. The fast clean and air drying last night must have ruined her usual attempts to get it all twisted up into one clip and the clip itself was possibly still in some dark corner of the room where she had been questioned. She had brushed her hair, but it was anything but straight. It tumbled and curled and bounced down to her waist, a sea-foam-colored glorious mane that made his hands itch to plunge themselves into it and hold her head still while he did all sorts of wicked things to her.
Daniel realized that his whole body was held taut as he stared at her, while his thoughts tumbled through his mind like water over a cascade. Wild thoughts. Impossible thoughts.
His heart creaked with the strain of some of them.
She’s perfect, came the whisper.
Olivia pulled the sunglasses down to the end of her nose as Jenny threaded her way through the tables, heading for her. The blue eyes fixed on him, direct and uncompromising. Her expression didn’t change because she knew everyone was watching her but he knew she was acknowledging him.
It was as if someone had taken a cleaver to his chest. If he hadn’t been sitting down, he would have fallen.
He knew he should look away, but couldn’t. With Olivia dressed in those clothes—his clothes, Vistarian clothes, his mind amended—it was as though a door had been trundled open in his mind, revealing a whole room of understanding. She’s a woman I want in my life. He took a breath that burned on the way down. Maybe for a long while. Maybe forever.
Water and ice cascaded down the back of his shirt, ripping his attention away from Olivia more thoroughly than a slap across the face. He leapt to his feet and spun to confront the barman, who placed an empty glass back on his tray.
“I’m so sorry, sir,” the barman said stiffly, in slow English. “Please forgive my clumsiness. I leaned too far forward to pick up your glass.” Yet he looked neither contrite, nor afraid.
Daniel drew in a breath. It didn’t burn this time. His hand was still shaking. He tried another breath. Calm was returning.
Behind him, he heard Olivia’s contralto, murmuring. Jenny’s lighter voice. Male bass. Olivia was sitting with another group.
Daniel settled himself on the chair next to the one he had been sitting on, for that one was wet, now. “No, it’s all right. I wasn’t paying attention, either.”
The barman picked up Daniel’s empty soda glass. “You were paying too much attention, sir,” he said quietly.
“Thank you,” Daniel said just as softly.
“I will bring you another soda, sir.”
“Thank you.” Daniel cleared his throat. “My thoughts are bad companions tonight. I think I’ll seek out better company.”
“That would be a good idea, sir,” the barman replied, with a small incline of his head.
Daniel looked around the bar for someone else to sit with. Most of the tables already had groups of two or three or more. He frowned. When had everyone got so chatty?
Since Olivia had taught them to thumb their noses at the guards.
He could hear half-a-dozen different languages. After Olivia’s questioning, they were even more determined to stick it to the guards, Ibarra and Serrano in any way they could. This was one way they could get back at them with impunity and they were doing it at full charge. Every back was put firmly to the guards. Every head was down.
Jenny’s face turned to Daniel. She waved to him.
Daniel hesitated. He could not afford to be drawn into Olivia’s group in public.
Then the Austrian, Oberstz, sitting at the head of that table, lifted his hand and gave one peremptory beckon with his fingers, before dipping his head back into the closed circle to keep talking.
Daniel sighed and walked over to the table and lowered himself into the empty chair. Olivia didn’t even look at him. She hadn’t removed the sunglasses. Jenny had her hand and was holding it in her lap, sandwiched between both of hers.
Jenny smiled at Daniel. “I couldn’t leave you sitting there alone.”
Daniel felt rather than saw Olivia’s glance at him. You give to get back. He heard her voice in his mind and for a second he hated it. He didn’t want all that touchy-feely mumbo jumbo shit in his mind, cluttering up clear thinking.
Too late. The cynical whisper breezed like distant laughter.
Then, because he knew Olivia was watching him, he shrugged and looked at Jenny. “Thank you,” he told her. “It was feeling chilly out there in that vacuum, I admit.”
Jenny’s smile back was incandescent. Warmth bathed him. He felt as if he was standing inside a beautiful golden sunrise at the start of a knockout June day. He was left blinking at the impact.
Jenny turned to Oberstz and spoke swift, fluent German, something about lunch and Olivia. Daniel didn’t know enough German to put it together, but knew it was trivia. Chatter. He let his attention wander from the conversation.
Olivia seemed to be following along just fine, which left him on his own. He leaned back a little so they knew he was not participating.
There was something happening in the foyer and he leaned back a little bit more to get a better view.
He saw a man hoist a professional-looking outside broadcast TV camera onto his shoulder and put his eye to the viewfinder to test it. Another was testing the light on the top of it. A third was setting up a mobile microphone and boom rig hanging off his shoulder.
A fourth was threading a microphone into Ibarra’s shirt.
Ibarra was talking to a man in a suit and tie. The man was standing in profile to Daniel, but even so, he looked familiar.
“Shit,” Daniel said and sat forward. He put his hands flat on the table. “Don’t move, anyone.”
His heart was racing. Thoughts tumbling, but not in the same way they had just been chasing their tail about Olivia. This was cold, hard, professional data.
It was here. The time was here.
Everyone was looking at him.
“What is wrong, Daniel?” Jenny asked.
Olivia took off her glasses. “It’s happened, hasn’t it?” she said. “The shit is about to hit the fan.”
Daniel nodded, moving his head just a little.
Hans looked at Olivia sharply. “You ‘ave a better grasp of this situation than I, then.”
Daniel pressed his palms together. “Do you have the gun with you?” he asked Olivia.
She shook her head ruefully. “I hid it just as you did.”
“Gun?” Hans squeaked.
“I knew it,” Jenny said, looking from Daniel to Olivia. There was a sparkle of tears in her eyes. “I knew you two had something going on.”
The murmuring from the foyer was coming closer. Daniel leaned back enough to sight around Hans’ ample back. The film crew and Ibarra and his guards were moving down the long foyer now. His time to develop a plan of action was running out.
Hans tapped Daniel’s shoulder. “What zhit will it be, when it ‘its?” he asked. He was calm now he’d had time to absorb the shock. As one of the senior diplomats here, he was trying to rally himself and figure out how to manage the situation.
“There’s nothing you can do about this, Hans,” Daniel assured him. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what Ernesto told them. He could have given them just one American. He could have spent the night selling us all out. We just have to strap in and hang on, because it’s going to be very ugly indeed.”
“Daniel…” Olivia breathed.
He let himself look at her. One glance. The glance lingered as the guards marched into the bar and their tramping shook the glasses in their overhead brass runners, while everyone else in the bar who hadn’t got the warning Daniel had given his table sat up with shocked gasps. When they saw the film crew and Ibarra’s dress uniform, the gasps turned to fear, for they sensed that everything was about to change.
Olivia kept her wonderful eyes on him, instead. He saw her fear there. Her sadness.
It tore at him. He wanted to climb over the table and pull her into his arms and promise her that nothing would ever touch her again and then spend the rest of his life working to make sure that nothing ever would.
She shook her head. “No,” she said softly, just loud enough for him to hear. “Don’t do anything, Daniel. Please.”
It was only then he realized that he was coiled and tensed. Ready to spring. Ready to take action.
Hans glanced at him. “They will kill you, boy. Keep your seat.”
Daniel made himself relax.
The interviewer was circling the room, his eyes widening as he checked off names on a list on his clipboards. “Lars Nass, Hans Oberstz, Olivia Davenport, Jennifer Egstrom. Jesus, Mary mother of Christ, they’re all here. Daniel Castle, Erin Johnston—”
The list went on.
Everyone. They had everyone. Ernesto had a phenomenal memory for names and faces, being a diplomat, which they must have hooked up to the landing papers and diplomatic red tape to cross-match IDs. It would have taken them all night and most of the day.
All it needed was one confirmed American among them.
Fear was a huge lump sitting like an anvil on his chest. Daniel watched the reporter move around the room, followed by the camera crew, who were filming everything. Then he noticed the big radio pack attached to the camera and his heart hit the bottom of his stomach. This was going out live.
He focused on the reporter and realized where he had seen him before. It was Ciro Solos, the Mexican investigative reporter who had won international awards for his news coverage. He worked for MNTV, the Mexican national media network.
A live broadcast, with only Ibarra present, meant that something bad was going to happen and Serrano wanted to be far enough away from it that if it went wrong, later he could pretend he had nothing to do with it. Ibarra would get to wear the blame for all of it.
Daniel pushed his chair out a little farther from the table, giving himself room to move if he needed it. The sick feeling wasn’t going away, though. He had no gun and no allies in the room. There were five officers with Sig Sauer pistols and thirty-two guards carrying HK21 machine guns. There were twenty-five civilians and one of them—God help him—one of them was Olivia.
What the hell was he going to do?
* * * * *
Minnie burst into the potting shed, slamming the door up against the back of Nick’s wooden chair with an impact that made everyone in the room except Nick wince.
Nick reached around the chair to steady Minnie, who was hanging onto the door, catching her breath.
“You. Better. Come. See.”
“Minnie, we’re conducting a meeting—” Duardo began.
Nick dropped his pen and stood up. “She’s gone gray!” he said, picking Minnie up around the waist as she sagged tiredly over.
“Waste bin!” one of the officers called helpfully.
Duardo, stuck behind the cramped table, reached out with his long leg and kicked the metal garbage tin toward Nick, who propped Minnie’s head over it.
She retched desperately into it.
Duardo rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling, sitting ramrod straight and stiff, while the officers chuckled.
There was another set of pounding footsteps along the covered breezeway. Then Calli burst into the room, her face pink from running. “Now! Come now!” She looked around the room. “Ibarra has the UN diplomats as hostages on live television right now and it doesn’t look good.” She glared at them as they stared at her. “Move your asses, gentlemen!”
They moved. There was a scramble for the door and they slid past Calli, murmuring apologies and pleasantries as they did so.
Duardo came last, after plucking a limp Minnie from Nick’s hands and hoisting her into his arms. Minnie lay with her head against Duardo’s shoulder, white and drained. “I hate being fucking pregnant,” she groaned. “What about the garbage can?”
“You’ll get used to it,” Duardo assured her and kissed her forehead. “We’ll clean up later. This is more important.”
Nick closed the door of the room and locked it, pocketing the key. “We’ll get back to this. You’re right, we need to see what Serrano is up to. This doesn’t sound good.”
“It doesn’t look good at all. Those people look terrified, Nick.”
“If they have been there for nearly five weeks, then they are most certainly terrified,” Duardo said over his shoulder as they turned in to the house proper. “They can be nothing else. Serrano knows human psychology too well to let them linger there and not play games with them. If this is going out live and he is not there himself, it is not going to be pleasant.”
“Plausible deniability?” Calli asked.
Nick nodded. “We should be ready, Duardo, just in case.” They moved through the front foyer, heading for the formal lounge room where there was a big screen television from where they could watch the broadcast.
“Just in case of what?” Calli asked reasonably. “You have no idea what’s going to happen.”
“That is the problem with Serrano,” Duardo said. “His mind doesn’t work under the same mental laws us ours, which makes him unpredictable.”
“Doesn’t that also make him dangerous and difficult to kill?” Calli asked in an undertone as they stepped into the room where everyone else was assembled.
Nick sighed. “Unfortunately, yes.”
* * * * *
Solos and Ibarra stood in the middle of the bar and the big light fell on the pair of them. Daniel moved a few inches to the left so Hans’ shadow fell on his face. That would keep his features obscured in any shots the camera caught him in.
Solos was counted down by his network director and cut in. He gave a polished introduction and said that he was standing in some undisclosed location and that he had been invited here by the current Vistarian governing body.
That tightened Daniel’s gut. The delicate phrasing, given the people sitting around him, meant that Solos was just as aware of the political ramifications and potential crisis happening in this room as they all were. It seemed that Ibarra and Serrano were the only ignorant ones.
Or were they? Were they trying to commit some complicated form of political suicide and go out in a blaze of historical glory?
Daniel discounted that immediately. Serrano didn’t have that sort of panache. He was a third-rate thug. The only reason he had got this far was because he had been able to lean on the minds of brilliant strategists like Torres, Zalaya and even Ibarra for a while.
But Ibarra was crumbling fast. If he was about to do what Daniel thought he was going to do, Ibarra had lost what little original thought he’d once been capable of.
Solos finished his preamble and introduced Ibarra, who stepped up in front of the camera. Alone.
Daniel clenched his hands together. Solos had stepped aside. He wasn’t even going to interview him. Ibarra had full control of the camera.
This was bad.
“I am speaking to you on behalf of the glorious nation of Vistaria and the government that leads it.”
Daniel blinked. Ibarra was speaking formal Spanish, but he had named the country informally, Vistaria. The full name of Vistaria was La Vistaria de Escobedo. Daniel hid his smile. The Insurrectos, it seemed, would do a complete whitewash if they ever came to full power. Every trace of the previous power-holders would be wiped from existence, including their name.
Ibarra didn’t take long to get to his grievance. The next breath, in fact. He held up a long, slender finger toward the camera. “The refusal of the United Nations to extend full diplomatic status to my beloved country is causing hardships and difficulties for our wives. Our children. Our loved ones. We cannot let this insult pass. Third world nations that have less stable governments than ours can sit at your political tables and pass laws. Why can we not?”
Ibarra spread his hands wide, palms up. The reasonable man. “We tried simple negotiations. You would not listen.”
Daniel looked over at Solos. The man looked worried. He was glancing down at his clipboard. This clearly wasn’t what they had promised him would go down. They had lured him and his team here under false promises. Of course they had—Solos would not be here for this sort of circus, otherwise.
The journalist reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. The alarm was going up now. Would they cut the feed? Daniel surely hoped so. It was one way to prevent this disaster from going ahead and Solos would know that. Take away the feed and they took away Ibarra’s microphone, too.
Ibarra shrugged, a Latinate expression that no one else in the world seemed to be able to pull off. “We tried a more rugged form of persuasion and still you would not deal with us.”
He means blackmail. Holding us hostage didn’t work, Daniel thought. Although, that something else Ibarra couldn’t say on national television. Or was it international television? MNTV had contra deals with US and Canadian networks, internet stations and some Asian Pacific-rim nations including China, and Europe. Just how far was this broadcast being sent?
Daniel felt sweat pop on his temples. It didn’t matter. The studio would be taping it anyway. If it was dramatic enough—and Ibarra was building up to something big, so that was in the bag—then even if the international networks weren’t interrupting their regular broadcasts, they’d find time to run this later, sure as sheep frolic in the meadow.
Solos had to cut that feed. Now. It would be playing into Ibarra’s hands if the cameras kept rolling.
Solos turned away, tapping on his phone with his thumb, bringing it up to his ear slowly, so he wouldn’t alarm Ibarra.
Ibarra lifted up his hands toward the camera, once again the reasonable man. “What are we to do?” he asked. “We have run out of options.”
Daniel didn’t like that phrasing. But then, this was always going to be the no-win scenario.
Ibarra must have given that phrase to the guards beforehand as a cue, because Daniel didn’t see him give any physical signal. Two guards stepped around their table and picked up Jenny’s arms and hoisted her out of her seat and almost off her feet. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened.
Olivia’s hand fell away from Jenny’s.
Jenny screamed.
So did others in the room as the girl was brought struggling over to where Ibarra stood in front of the camera. There was a ratcheting sound of submachine guns being cocked, all around the room.
One of the guards pulled out his sidearm and put it against Jenny’s temple.
Olivia moaned, clutching the back of her chair. She looked as though she wanted to surge out of the chair and go rescue her friend, but was holding herself back. Her knuckles were white.
Jenny stood still between the guards. Her face was paper-white under the camera light, but her chin was up.
Solos was talking fast and softly into his cell phone now.
Hurry, Daniel begged silently. He hoped Solos’ director understood the vast difference between politics and ratings.
“Tell them your name,” Ibarra said, pointing to the camera.
“Jenny,” she said softly.
“Speak louder,” Ibarra said. “Your full name, please. We know it all now. There is no longer any need to hide anything.”
“Jenny Egstrom,” she said, more firmly, but her voice shook.
“And your nationality?”
Her face crumpled. Tears welled in her eyes. Jenny had spent five weeks carefully preserving this secret.
“Your nationality!” Ibarra demanded, his voice strident.
“A…American,” she stuttered and sobbed.
Olivia closed her eyes and bowed her head.
“You work with the World Health Organization, yes?” Ibarra said.
Jenny nodded, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“You came here as part of the diplomatic task force to determine if the Vistarian government was stable enough to be granted diplomatic status with the United Nations and the revolution that had been raging here could be officially called over, yes? Then all the aid and justice and trade could flow back to this wonderful nation once more. That was your role, yes?”
She nodded again.
Daniel glanced at Solos again. The man was talking hard, frowning. He looked up at the roof, rolling his eyes. Then he threw up his hands. “Just cut the fucking feed!” he screamed into the phone.
Everyone jumped, except Ibarra, who was sweating. His hand was lifting, the finger up.
Daniel clenched his chair. His heart was pounding with the tension. It was coming. He could feel it coming and he couldn’t let it happen.
Then he saw Olivia looking at him again. There were tears in her eyes and running down her cheeks. She shook her head at him. Her lips formed silent word. “No.”
The gun fired.
* * * * *
“Oh my dear sweet Christ,” Calli breathed.
Minnie went staggering for the door, clutching her stomach.
“Everyone, just sit down and shut up!” Nick shouted as the room broke out in shouts and screams. “We have to see whatever else they broadcast, so shut up and watch.”
“Please tell me someone is recording this?” Duardo murmured.
“Yes.” Calli clutched at Nick’s arm. “He’s mad. He’s quite mad.”
“Yes,” Duardo said. He was staring at the screen, frowning. Absorbing it.
* * * * *
Olivia found herself on her feet, almost there in time to catch Jenny as she fell. She already knew it was too late. That didn’t stop her body and her feet from moving her forward to try to take back this awful thing.
She was brought to a halt by steel against her temple, a hand on her arm yanking her back with cruel fingers digging in almost to the bone.
Ibarra was watching her. Ibarra, whom she had always thought had held a small pocket of humanity inside him, protected from Serrano’s excesses. Somewhere in the last few days he had lost it. She looked into Ibarra’s eyes now and saw nothing but the same blank monster eyes that Serrano reflected back when she looked into his.
The corner of Ibarra’s mouth lifted. He looked into the camera. “If Vistaria is not given full diplomatic status and a seat at the United Nations in twenty-four hours, we will repeat this exercise again with another American citizen—perhaps Ms. Davenport here. That is all.”
He ripped the clip-in microphone out of his dress uniform shirt and threw it at Solos. Solos made no move to catch it and it fell to the floor. The battery pack Ibarra unclipped from the back of his jacket and tossed onto the table in front of Daniel and Hans.
Then he strode away.
Whoever had a grip on Olivia’s arm let go. The gun was removed. Olivia fell forward onto her knees next to Jenny. The girl was lying huddled on the floor. A pool of dark blood was forming around her head, but she was utterly peaceful.
Olivia wasn’t sure if she wanted to cry, throw up, or lock herself in a padded room for a month. None of those things would help Jenny right now or anyone around her. There was enough screaming, enough hysterics. It was making what guards were left far too edgy and jumpy. They’d had to watch this happen, too.
Olivia closed Jenny’s eyes.
She heard Daniel’s voice, low and dangerous, on the far side of the room from where they had been sitting. “Turn off your fucking camera now.” He was speaking Spanish and he was clearly speaking to one of the film crew, or perhaps the journalist.
“Of course, of course.” The man seemed dazed. Bewildered.
The blazing camera light cut out.
Olivia looked up and saw Hans sitting, stunned. She reached over and tugged on his trouser leg. “Hans,” she called loudly.
He stirred and looked at her. She saw the track marks of tears on his face.
“Go and get a cloth for Jenny. A big one. Perhaps two.”
He wiped at his face. “I…all right.”
“Make them dark cloth, Hans, okay? So the blood doesn’t show.” She gave him a big smile and patted his knee as he stood up. “Ask the hotel staff, if you can find anyone.”
Hans nodded, his jowls wobbling. He tottered away, looking relieved to have something to do. Olivia looked around. “Theresa,” she called.
The brunette was huddled in her chair, hugging her arms around her. She, like Hans, had been crying. Now she lifted her brown eyes up to look at Olivia, careful not to look at what was lying at her knees.
“Can you find me a pillow for Jenny’s head? A cushion, anything soft?” Olivia knew it didn’t matter for Jenny, or even for many people here, but it would give Theresa something to do and it would help some people look at Jenny’s body more directly, until they could move it away.
Olivia picked up Jenny’s hand. It was already cooling. That surprised her, that the body lost heat that quickly. She held onto her hand anyway, and she wiped her own tears as they fell, which they did regularly as she sat quietly waiting for the requested items to arrive, while the hysteria around her swirled and frothed.
She watched Ciro Solos carefully rebutton his suit jacket and smooth back his hair. His hand was shaking. Then he stood up. “Well, time to blow this town,” he declared. The rest of his crew stood with him.
Daniel laughed. “You don’t think they’re just going to let you walk out of here, do you?” he asked in English, heading toward him.
Solos fidgeted with the knot of his tie. “I’m an investigative journalist and a member of the press. They must let me go.”
“Speak English, Solos. Or French, or anything but Spanish. You know English?” Daniel asked.
Solos was looking confused. “Why must I speak English?” he asked in halting English.
“Because the guards here aren’t so hot on English, especially idiomatic English. They’re even worse on anything else,” Daniel said, flicking his eyes toward the sentries with their machine guns.
Solos smoothed back his hair. “Why would they not let me go from here?” he asked again.
“Because they figure you will turn around and lead the United States and the United Nations straight back here.”
Solos shook his head. “There must be freedom of the press, or we cannot do our job.”
Daniel stopped in front of Solos and pointed down at Jenny. “You really think Ibarra and Serrano care about freedom of the press, Solos? You think they’re operating with any sort of mental clarity right now?”
Solos swallowed. “This is…this is outrageous!”
“Welcome to our world,” Daniel said softly. He put his arm around Solos’ shoulder. “Come and have a drink. You’re going to need it.”
Solos wrenched himself out of Daniel’s grip. “You’re wrong!”
Daniel smiled. “Oh yeah?” He pointed behind Solos. “Here’s my proof coming right now.”
One of the more senior guards, Ibarra’s Lieutenant Gomez, hurried into the lounge. He was short, barely five feet tall, with a sharply receding hairline and luxuriant moustache. From the few hints that some of the woman had given, Olivia knew he was a cruel man that would take any advantage he could if he was alone with them.
He marched straight up to Solos. “Mr. Solos, I must request that you give to me your cellular phone.”
Solos’ face turned a bluish gray around the lips. It was a sick color. His hand pushed against his chest, over his heart. “Why?” he asked and it was a hoarse whisper. Olivia could see from the expression in his face that he already knew why.
“Your phone, Señor,” the little lieutenant demanded, his hand out. “And I demand you not leave the property, you or your men. You will be given rooms at the hotel as accommodation and supplies found for you.”
Solos’ eyes met Olivia’s over the top of Gomez’s head. There was fear in Solos’ eyes and Olivia felt a touch of pity. She’d had weeks of this and got used to it. He was starting from the beginning.
Solos reached into his pocket for his cell phone. Then into the other one. With a sigh, he unbuttoned his jacket and reached into the inner pocket. He frowned and reached into the outer pocket again.
Then he started patting himself down all over. “I don’t have it,” he told Gomez.
“Then where is it?” Gomez said impatiently.
“I don’t know. I had it a moment ago. I swore I put it in my outer pocket just after…after the thing. I’m certain of it.”
Olivia couldn’t help it. Her gaze swept around the room in a fast, all-encompassing look. Daniel was nowhere in sight.
Immediately, she dropped her chin down to hide her expression as excitement and fear swamped her. He’d taken the phone and gone. Somewhere.
Perhaps even as Jenny was executed he had been planning this. Certainly as he had been talking to Solos about his confinement here.
Olivia struggled to keep her face still and not reveal anything.
Gomez pulled out his pistol. “I want your cell phone, Mr. Solos. Pretending you have mislaid it will not work with me.”
“But I don’t have it!” Solos cried.
Gomez jerked his head at the guards. Two of them slung their machine guns and walked over and roughly ripped Solos’ jacket off his shoulders and started patting him down.
“Oh my God!” Solos moaned. From the cottage cheese complexion of his face, Olivia suspected he’d never been manhandled in his life.
When the phone did not appear the guards pushed Solos to his knees. Gomez slapped his face. Solos stared at the little lieutenant with an open mouth and big eyes.
“Where is that phone?” Gomez screamed.
Olivia wished she knew, too.