Once they crossed Highway 307, the van’s engine groaned on its uphill climb into the town of Akumal, set away from its seaside hotel zone. On the right, they passed a market, a lavandería where women folded clothes while their children played on the side of the road outside. Nearby was a restaurant where a man grilled chicken on the walk. The smell wafted on the air enough to make Jeanne’s mouth water, even though she’d just eaten a delicious meal.
Awash with mixed emotions, she replayed Arnauld’s intrusion on their meal. She’d not missed Arnauld’s smug demeanor as he lorded his success over Gabe, nor could she help but feel for the captain, outspent in the tangle of maritime law after he’d invested everything. Most of all, she didn’t like the way Arnauld had rubbed salt in the wound every chance he had. It had been a struggle to curb the impulse to counter Arnauld’s smoothly delivered disdain.
Protective instinct? She barely managed to keep from rolling her eyes. She was obviously misguided beyond reason. Gabe definitely needed no protection—or defense for that matter—from her. Gabe had a lot of good in him . . . but when he was bad, he was very bad.
Lord, who is this man? she wondered as they passed a police station with a white pickup marked Policía in red lettering parked outside its green door. And how can I feel both anger and compassion for him at the same time, not to mention the urge to beat some faith into his thick head with my fists?
She studied the residential dwellings to the left of the main street, predominantly made of concrete block with thatched or corrugated tin roofs. Since the coming of tourism, concrete—which held up better against the hurricane—had rapidly replaced the wattle and daub thatched cottages with their bellied gable ends.
But here and there, between the block houses, were a few traditional Mayan casas with stick sides—kitchens perhaps. Many yards had neat gardens beyond stone walls and iron gates, but most were parched, with more dirt than grass.
“Now, if I remember correctly, the Cantina Loca is one of his favorite hangouts,” Gabe said as he pulled to the right side of the main road and parked. As he got out, he sized up the faded pink building across the street.
From her seat, Jeanne did the same. An awning of thatch sheltered the iron bars protecting its windows—from tropical storms, she hoped. Over it was painted a happy, mustached hombre in a sombrero, lifting a bottle in grinning, toothy delight. Lettered in cactus green and black on the brim of his hat was the name Cantina Loca.
“I think you should stay here in the van,” Gabe said after some contemplation. “The music has already started.” He seemed surprised.
Jeanne dubiously studied the window bars with their artfully knotted middles. There were people idling on the street, including the chicken cook, but the thought of being left under the dim street lamp did not sit well with her, and it showed.
Gabe rushed to assure her. “I won’t be long.”
Jeanne nodded reluctantly. “Although,” she said, arguing with herself as much as Gabe, “it’s my responsibility to discuss the project with him.” She wasn’t thrilled about going into the dingy cantina.
Gabe held up his hands to reassure her. “Agreed. But I have to find him first. Since he owns part of the cantina, I expect to find him here. I’ll be back in a flash.”
When Gabe’s flash had run close to an hour, Jeanne’s patience was at a flash point. It was too dark for her liking, despite the streetlight overhead. And now a group of men had gathered in front of what looked like the Mexican equivalent of a Dollar General, smoking, chatting, and drinking from a bottle in a paper bag. From time to time they stopped to stare, making Jeanne squirm in her seat.
Although Gabe had locked his door and hers was already locked, Jeanne prayed that the side door was also secure. But to turn around to check it might make the men think she was afraid or suspicious of them—and she was, but she didn’t want them to know it.
What was keeping Gabe so long? She glanced at her watch. If he’d taken it upon himself to pitch her share to Milland . . .
The men burst into laughter, shoving one of their group toward the van. Jeanne’s pulse jumped. If she got out now, she could walk across the street to where Gabe was before the man could do . . . whatever it was he had in mind. After all, she’d read about some pretty rough stuff that happened to unsuspecting tourists who traveled off the beaten path.
And this was definitely off the beaten path. She slid to the driver’s side of the van and slipped out the door before the man was anywhere near. Head held high, she crossed the street in a brisk walk, trying to act nonchalant. The click of her heeled sandals snapped in concert with the bass tattoo of her heart with every step. At the cantina’s open door, she saw from the corner of her eye that the man who’d made her feel threatened had passed the van and now walked into some sort of shop with shaded windows.
Feeling a little foolish for letting her imagination run away with her, Jeanne stepped into the cantina. The stench of cigarette and cigar smoke assailed her nostrils. A waitress with a tray of bottles bounced by as music played over hidden speakers, modern rock with trumpet flare and a Spanish beat.
There was no sign of Gabe at the bar, the most well-lit part of the place. Which meant he had to be sitting at one of the tables where the only light was a stub of a candle stuck in a beer bottle. None of the patrons sitting in the near-dark possessed Gabe’s height or Romanesque profile. Maybe he was in a back room.
Summoning her nerve, she approached the bar. “Perdón,” she said, as the bartender approached, a bland expression on his round face.
“Sí, señorita?”
“Sí, sí, señorita,” one of the men growled, closing her in at the bar. There was enough alcohol on his breath to make Jeanne dizzy, if she weren’t so alarmed. What had she done? A lone gringa walking into a hole-in-the-wall bar . . .
“Dónde está Gabriel Avery, por favor?” she asked.
The men exchanged a bemused look.
She tried again. “Capitán Gabe Avery?”
Recognition quirked on the bartender’s otherwise bland face. He nodded slowly, but offered no information.
“Dónde está?” she repeated. “Where is he?”
“I am in love,” the man behind crooned into her ear.
Jeanne jerked away from him as one of his companions rattled something off at him in Spanish too fast for her to fathom. From the tone, it was an admonishment. One that fell on deaf ears.
Instead of backing away, he seized her by the waist and pulled her to him with bare, snake-tattooed arms. “Para bailar La Bamba,” he sang out of sync with the song and key.
Jeanne shoved against his chest, shaking her head and speaking through a fixed smile so as not to antagonize the man. “No baila, gracias. No dance.”
“Señorita linda”—pretty miss—“baila, baila, baila—”
To Jeanne’s dismay, she found herself dragged along the floor in a semblance of dance, trapped in the arms of the inebriated Romeo. She managed to wedge her arms between her chest and her partner’s to avoid intimate contact, but his embrace was like steel about her waist. She couldn’t break it.
“Por favor, no baila,” she repeated through clenched teeth. Why didn’t one of the staring men at the bar do something? This guy was squeezing the breath from her. And where was Gabe?
Jeanne flinched and turned her head away as the Mexican tried to kiss her, his breath rank enough to wilt flowers. “Put me down,” she demanded, resorting to English in her growing panic as he spun her around. To emphasize her point, she kicked at his shins, but merely grazed his leg, making him spin her even faster.
Suddenly, Gabe materialized in the whir of scenery like a guardian angel and clamped a heavy hand on the drunken man’s shoulders. “Fácil, amigo, easy . . . ”
To her horror, the man’s hands left Jeanne’s waist and came up fisted, one shooting straight for Gabe’s jaw.
Jeanne winced at the impact of knuckle on jawbone. Heavenly Father, she prayed, scrambling out of the way as Gabe recovered and caught Romeo’s second blow with his hand. The movement was fast, but suddenly the man was on the floor with his arm twisted behind his back—and swearing a blue streak if the sound of his voice was anything to go by.
This was the last thing she wanted, and she’d caused it. “Come on, Gabe, let’s go. He’s drunk.”
“Basta, amigo?” Gabe said, not the least rattled or in a hurry. “Enough?” The man continued to curse him, so he twisted the man’s arm a little more. And his friends joined the fray.
Soon the crowd divided into watchers on the edge and participants in the middle. Gabe did not fight alone; some at the bar felt he’d been justified in taking the drunk down.
Backed against a wall next to the door, Jeanne watched in disbelief as a table cracked beneath a man Gabe tossed off his back just in time to block a punch from another.
Lord, please, do something. Just get us safely out of here with no one hurt.
Her furtive prayer came to a halt as the biggest man Jeanne had ever seen rose behind Gabe like Mr. Clean on steroids. Head shaven, he brandished fists the size of hams. A massive dragon breathed fire from one of his bulging biceps as he slung a table out of the way to get to Gabe.
“Gabe!” Jeanne looked about, frantic for some way to help him. Uncertain what to do, she grabbed a chair and tossed it at the behemoth, who promptly caught it and smashed it over Gabe’s head and shoulders.
Staggering away, Gabe dropped to one knee and grabbed a table to keep from going down. “Oh, right,” he said with grimace. “Give him a weapon, why don’t you?”
Gabe’s head thundered with alternating pain and pulse. Through the fog of his vision, he saw Jeanne point frantically behind him. Licking blood from a gash on his lip, he gripped the small round table with both hands and back-kicked for all he was worth. Big Juan, as his assailant was known locally, caught the blow in the solar plexus and reeled backward a few steps—enough to give Gabe a chance to mount a second offensive. Table in hand, he charged the oversized man, a diver with whom he’d lifted many a bottle on less violent occasions.
Having observed him in a fight once, Gabe realized that punching Big Juan was useless. The key was to stun the man, at least until Gabe could make the giant realize that he was on the wrong side. Plowing into Juan table first felt like running headlong into a mountain of granite. But the four legs protruding from the table stem struck Juan full in the chest and drove him against a wall, where he hit his head upon, and shattered, a flashing Corona Gold sign.
“Now what?” Jeanne gasped as Gabe backed away from the flying glass.
Beyond him, Juan swayed forward and back, groping at his head. This was not going well at all.
“Now we run before he collects himself.” Gabe reached into his pocket and tossed two five-hundred peso notes on the waitress’s tray. “Half for the bar and half for you and Big Juan. Promise, querida?”
As she nodded, the siren of the town’s police truck shrieked outside, its red and blue lights flashing through the cantina’s front windows.
“Out the back door,” Gabe decided aloud. Eventually they could talk their way through this, if everyone told the truth. But that was a risk Gabe was not willing to take, not with Jeanne along.
Seizing her by the wrist, Gabe circled the continuing fray and made straight past the restroom doors marked Damas and Caballeros. With luck, they could circle around and get to the van before too many people started talking.
It would have worked, too, if not for a very angry dog that held them at bay at the length of his chain in the back lot of the cantina.
“Lord, help us, what now?” Jeanne said, her voice choked with alarm. “Are we going to end up in jail?”
“If you’d stayed in the car—”
“If you’d not taken so long without letting me know—”
“Señorita !” someone called out from the shadows.
Hand tightening on Jeanne’s wrist, Gabe squinted in the dark in the direction of the voice. This day had gone from bad to worse to sheer disaster. If she’d just given him a few more minutes, he’d have found out where Milland was.
“Señorita!”
Beside him, Jeanne collected her wits. “Tito?”
Gabe mulled the name over in his chair-mauled mind as the young man who’d snatched Jeanne’s purse emerged from the shadows and into the wan light of the half-moon shining overhead.
“Calma,” he snapped at the dog. To Gabe’s surprise, the dog silenced and dropped at Tito’s side, obedient. The young man motioned for them to follow him. “Señorita, this way. Ahora!”
Jeanne hesitated. “Why can’t we just tell the police what happened?”
“If you want to be held up by the bureaucracy for days,” Gabe warned her, “not to mention pay a hefty fine—”
“Tito know—how is it said?” the youth asked. “A little cut?”
“Shortcut?” Gabe ventured.
Tito nodded. “Sí, un shortcut.”
Gabe narrowed his eyes at the boy. “How do I know this is ver-dad . . . the truth?”
“Not for you,” Tito retorted, pointing to his scrapes. “You do this.”
Gabe chewed his tongue. The kid had scraped himself up trying to get away, but was still milking the situation for all the sympathy he could get.
Tito nodded at Jeanne. “But for her, only the truth.”
Jeanne looked over her shoulder at the cantina, where shouting and the scraping of furniture still dominated, clearly torn between running through the yards of the ramshackle backside of the town or facing yet another delay on her project. Or worse.
A church bazaar was probably the closest thing to a brawl she’d ever seen, Gabe realized. But the drunk had thrown the first punch.
“Señorita,” Tito implored, fishing out the cross that she’d lectured him on earlier. “I help you because you help me. Because of Jesus.”
Gabe watched surprise turn to peace on her face. A hint of a smile played upon her mouth. The muscle in her arm relaxed in his grasp.
“Muchas gracias, Tito. Show us the way.”
At her questioning glance, Gabe shrugged. “Looks like I’m taking a leap of faith this time.” Not that he had much choice.
If Jeanne had worn pantyhose, they’d have been in shreds by the time they reached Tito’s home. They’d been through what looked like junkyards of rusted cars and overgrowth where the jungle tried to reclaim them. Dogs barked at them. Cats scattered. Finally, they reached a dark block and a thatched-roofed house with a tiny walled-in garden.
“Stay here,” Tito told them. “It is best that mi madre y padre know nothing of this. Papa sleeps early because he goes to the ranchería tomorrow before the sun is up to work.”
“Where are you going?” Gabe protested.
“To get my older brother.” Tito held out his hand. “But for that I need keys to the automobile.”
Gabe balked. “I don’t think so.”
Jeanne put a hand on his arm. “He’s helped us so far,” she reminded him.
After a long pause, Gabe handed over the van keys.
“Mi hermano—my brother—and Tito will bring the car here, away from the cantina.” Tito gave them a sheepish grin. “I do not drive but for the bicycle. You stay.”
“We stay,” Jeanne said as Tito disappeared into the dark house. A moment later, he emerged with an older young man smoking a cigarette, its tip glowing in the dark.
“It will cost,” he said to Gabe.
“What doesn’t?” Gabe reached in his pocket and peeled off a bill. Whatever denomination it was, it pleased Tito’s brother.
After they left, Jeanne took a seat on a bench made from a plank and two concrete blocks set on end. She was tired, not so much from the exertion as from the emotional roller coaster of the day. With a long sigh, Gabe dropped down beside her.
“They could be going to get the police,” he said, staring at a moonlit dirt patch through beds of flowers. “And for what it’s worth, I swear that all I did was grab the kid. His momentum and struggle to get away caused his injuries.”
The dejection in his voice clipped the last strand of peeve that Jeanne had held on to.
“I don’t think they’ll get the police, given Tito’s aversion to them,” she assured him. Besides, despite everything, God kept coming to the rescue. Who was she not to do her part for Gabe? The part of her that wanted to strangle him waned by the heartbeat.
“And I believe you about his injuries,” she added with an involuntary shiver. When the sun went down, it took much of its heat with it. She rubbed her arms to warm them and chuckled softly. “I will say one thing for you, Captain: life is never dull when you’re around.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. I’m getting desperate.”
“We both are.” Although Jeanne considered her desperation more about impatience for God to wind up this horrible evening than about despair that He’d abandoned them in a stranger’s yard in the middle of the Yucatán.
At her confession, Gabe cupped her face gently in his hands. Jeanne couldn’t see his eyes, but she felt them, probing, as if hungry for the feelings that rose in her chest of their own accord.
“I’d meant this to be a special day together, without the multitudes cheering or jeering us on.”
“Me too.” She meant it. There was a part of her that had looked forward to the day in spite of her misgivings. “Then, all of a sudden, everything went . . . so wrong.”
“Maybe not.”
Ever so slowly, Gabe drew her into his embrace. He was going to kiss her. She knew it. The heart that thudded against her breastbone knew it. The pulse scampering through her veins knew it. And even though warning bells sounded from all corners, she let him.
Sweet, warm, and heady, it had all the attributes of a good wine and more. A wine could not embrace from both within and without. A wine, once consumed, was gone forever, but Jeanne knew that she’d never forget this kiss. So complete, so involving, she had to take part in it. She had to let go of all that had happened between them to make room for the sensations running rampant in her body, now clasped tightly against Gabe’s chest—a wall of hard flesh with a thundering heartbeat that called out to her own.
Never mind that they might wind up in jail. Never mind that Tito’s parents slept just beyond the door separating the house from the moonlit patio. Never mind that, like too much wine, this might leave her full of regret in the morning. The morning would have to take care of itself. Moments like this came only once in a blue moon.
A chance like this came once in a blue moon, and if Gabe Avery thought he was going keep it to himself, he had another thought coming. Marshall Arnauld punched the number of his attorney in Mexico City into his cell phone. He’d given Dr. Madison a way out of her dilemma, and she’d turned him down, sweet, but cool.
But he had friends in high places who knew people in even higher ones. Now that he was certain there was something worth going into that reef for, he’d have his team all over it . . . with proof that he’d found it first, of course.
After ringing entirely too long for Arnauld’s strained patience, the phone was answered by a maid at the attorney’s home.
“This is Marshall Arnauld. I need to speak to Señor Gargon immediately.”
“But he is entertaining guests and asked not to be dis—”
“I don’t care if the president of Mexico is there. Tell Gargon I want to speak to him, and now.”
For what Arnauld paid him, he owned the man. Arnauld knew exactly what needed to be done, and Gargon was the man to do it. Nervous, Arnauld lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the bed. The plan would be the same as before—grab the excavation rights before Genesis. Granted, there might be a few complications with Montoya’s connections in CEDAM, but it was a first proof, first rights business. Even without first proof, everyone had a price down here. There was always someone higher up to bribe into seeing things his way, Arnauld mused.
He inhaled deeply on the cigarette, savoring it as though savoring the victory almost within his grasp. Since Dr. Madison wouldn’t let him play, he’d see to it that she had no game at all.