The Other Half of Your Heart Read online

  She would have spoken then, but their driver put the vehicle into gear and all of a sudden all conversation became impossible.

  “How long?” she shouted at last.

  “About an hour,” Dave shouted back. “We should hit the highway in another ten minutes... Easier...”

  He couldn’t wait to be rid of her, Cara decided in a melodramatic fit of pique. The jeep’s frame made a solid, noisy impact with the ground and leaped upward. He was just another man whom she had allowed to use her in exchange for a few pretty words, who took what he wanted and then shoved her away.

  No! cried her heart, but was drowned out by another loud bang.

  “Down!” Dave shouted as he roughly shoved her head toward the dash.

  For most of her life, survival and self-defense had been nothing more than abstract concepts to Cara. These last few days, however, she had gained a greater understanding. She whirled to face him, only to stop with her mouth open.

  The young driver was hunched over, half in and half out of the jeep. Dave was spread on top of him, lying over the top of the seat with both hands on the wheel.

  “What...?” Cara shouted, but her voice dwindled as she saw blossoming red spreading across the young soldier’s side.

  “Get down!” Dave roared. “And get his foot off the accelerator!”

  It wasn’t easy. Cara had to undo her seatbelt in order to reach the young soldier’s leg. He was skewed to the side, which wedged his leg between the dash and the gearbox and almost welded it and the accelerator to the floor. There was no resistance as Cara wrenched it free and she knew with a sinking heart that the young man was dead.

  “Brake! Slowly!”

  The jeep fought like a live thing, but between the two of them, at last it came to a shuddering stop. Dave didn’t spare the driver a glance; he didn’t have to. Even Cara could tell he was gone.

  “Come on!” Dave grabbed her arm and hauled Cara out of the jeep.

  Not again, she thought, but he said it anyway.

  “Run!”

  At least, Cara decided with unseemly levity, this time she was properly dressed for a run through the woods.

  “Stop!” cried a voice. There were men around them, men on foot and men in a battered jeep, and it seemed each one of them was pointing a gun straight at them.

  All Cara could hear was each gun cocking one by one.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Sit!”

  Dave sat back down. They had been sitting for a long time. Cara had had ample time to inspect every detail of the largely featureless room. Square and made of roughly smoothed concrete, it had a dirt floor, a couple of raw wooden benches and a plank door. Period. There was a small, barred window set high in one wall through which nothing could be seen but hovering leaves.

  There was one other thing in the room, a man in jeans and a violently colored polyester shirt. He was pointing a rifle at them, and had been since Cara and Dave had been thrown inside. Cara’s nose was itching violently from the dusty floor, but she couldn’t scratch it. Both she and Dave had had their hands tied tightly behind them when they were captured. At the moment, Cara wasn’t sure she even had hands any more.

  “I just wanted to stand up a minute...”

  “Sit!” It was the only word he had used so far.

  “Okay, okay...”

  “Who are these people?” Cara whispered on the barest breath.

  “Maybe some of Arvisu’s men who haven’t heard the news,” Dave whispered back.

  “Why don’t you tell him?”

  Dave gave her a scathing look. “Because they strike me as the kind of people who believe in killing the messenger!”

  Their guard barked, “No talk!”

  “At least he’s expanding his vocabulary,” Dave whispered.

  “No talk!” the guard repeated, this time punctuating his words by jabbing Dave in the stomach with the rifle muzzle. “No talk!”

  If he didn’t like Dave talking, Cara wondered a trifle hysterically, how he would feel about me screaming?

  The rickety plank door flew inward as if kicked, slamming against the wall with a bang. Even the guard jumped.

  “Well, you two certainly seem to lead charmed lives.” Lithe and deadly as a panther, Señora Arvisu stalked into the room, followed by a cadre of four dark-suited, sun-glassed muscle men who could have been straight from the CIA.

  Her dress, Cara noted, was pure Paris. Made of creamy raw silk, in these primitive surroundings, it was as startling and out of place as a space suit.

  “Señora,” Dave said politely. He didn’t even sound surprised.

  “It would have been so much easier had you died in a jeep wreck...” She sounded annoyed, as if weekend guests had missed a connection.

  “A jeep wreck? Not very original,” Dave said ruminatively, “and obviously hard to control.”

  Her magnificent dark eyes flashed. “I do not appreciate levity, Señor Burkhart!”

  “I’m not trying to be funny. For example, how were you going to explain the bullet hole in the driver?”

  The señora was not happy, and that question only made it worse. “There was not supposed to be any hole in the driver! That fool was supposed to shoot the tire, not the driver. That’s what comes of expecting a man to do things properly!”

  “I’ll bet he gets it right next time, huh?”

  “You may be assured,” she replied, biting off each word with strong, white teeth, “that he will have no next time!”

  Cara tried to swallow, but her mouth was completely dry. “Is he...?”

  Without taking his eyes from the magnificent, maddened woman, Dave warningly nudged Cara’s knee with his own.

  Cara ignored it. “It was you all the time, wasn’t it?”

  The señora’s gaze swept to impale Cara with its icy glare, as brilliant and as overwhelming as a searchlight. “Of course it was I. If I hadn’t taken things in hand, Jaime and I would be enjoying his retirement in a tiny apartment in some Mexico City slum!”

  “But you’ve killed people...”

  “Only when necessary.”

  “And your husband just let you?” Cara persisted, unable to reconcile this Paris-clad killer with the woman who unflinchingly obeyed her husband’s edict forbidding trousers.

  “Poor Jaime!” The señora snorted. It was small, elegant, and very chilling, but nevertheless, it was still a snort. “He was always such a baby. Did you know he had one of the most promising positions in the government, but would he profit from it? No! There was this movement towards honor in government...honor does not buy groceries! I was the one who had to arrange things. I was the one who had to see that the appropriate ‘contributions’ were made regularly. I was the one who had to see that the proper rewards were given...”

  “How did you explain the money?”

  “Investments,” the señora said lightly, making a telling gesture with her fingers. “Just good investments. And some special business deals.”

  “When did you get into drugs?” Dave asked.

  “The way to start a fortune, Señor Burkhart, is to find a product people want desperately that you can produce at very little cost. At first we merely leased the usage of some of our land...All the rest simply followed.”

  “And how did you ensnare Buck? How was he involved in that filthy business?”

  For a moment, the señora looked startled, then she laughed. Like everything else, her laugh was exquisite, filling the room with a bell-like sound as delicate as shattering crystal. “That marecon! He would never have the courage to...You still do not know, do you?” She eyed Cara with a perverse delight.

  “Know what?”

  That laugh again, only this time it grated on the nerves. “Then far be it from me to enlighten you. Perhaps in the short time left, you can figure it out.”

  A hoarse shout in Spanish came from outside and all the laughter died from Señora Arvisu’s face, leaving it dark, harsh, and cruelly businesslike.

  “The
army,” she said shortly. “They are moving again. It appears I shall not have the pleasure with the two of you that I had anticipated. You will die in a jeep crash after all.”

  Two of the suits-and-sunglasses boys each grabbed Dave and Cara and in no-nonsense grips ushered them outside. Little of the afternoon sun penetrated the towering trees, but there was more than enough for Cara to see quite clearly that they had just walked out of an undergrowth-covered hill.

  Coming in she had been too frightened to see much of anything except the guns pointed straight at them. Now she looked around with interest. They stood in a small thin spot in the trees, no bigger than an average city lot and hardly grand enough to be called a clearing. There were perhaps half a dozen men in rough work clothing, all with rifles, in addition to the señora’s personal guard. Over on the rough track that masqueraded as a road were the two jeeps that had brought them in, the señora’s Mercedes and, Cara gulped, the jeep Capitan Fonseca had given them.

  “Almost invisible, even when you’re on top of it...obviously one of their storage drops,” Dave whispered in her ear, then, theatrically cowing his head, spoke to the guard with the rifle and dreadful polyester shirt. “I know, I know...No talk!”

  “Are you always so irreverent, Señor Burkhart?” Señora Arvisu asked without curiosity.

  “Only when I’m about to die,” Dave replied with what Cara thought was a ridiculously calm flippancy. She herself was just about ready to go off into the screaming meemeeies. “You still haven’t told me how you’re going to explain the bullet in the driver.”

  “Your question only proves the uselessness of men when it comes to anything practical.” Now she sounded more annoyed than usual. “There are several ways, the most obvious is that you and he were struggling for the gun and it went off.”

  “While he was driving like that? Not very credible.”

  This is not an intellectual problem, Cara wanted to scream, but she was out of both of their consciousnesses. Dave and Señora Arvisu were staring at each other with oddly respectful antagonism.

  “Then there will be no driver found. Just...” she snapped her fingers,”...gone. There are many ways a body can vanish in the jungle.”

  “A funny kind of accident, if we both have our hands tied...”

  A frosty smile flitted across her face. “This is not one of your American movies, Señor Burkhart. You will not be able to save yourselves, nor will you keep me talking until the cavalry arrives. There will be no cavalry, not for you.”

  Cara stared. Those were almost the same words Murchison had used. Were cheesy old Westerns required viewing for villains down here?

  “I didn’t think there would be...I’m just curious.”

  In spite of her protestations, the señora liked the sound of her own voice. “There is a cliff not far from here. It is not a very high one, but it is directly over the river. The river is very rough here....”

  “And you expect people to think I’m stupid enough to drive off a cliff?” Scornfully.

  “What people think,” the elegant lady answered in icy tones, “will not concern you in the least. And do not plan on some wild escape. My people will stay until they are very sure you are both dead.”

  Cara’s stomach flip-flopped itself into knots again after she would have sworn it couldn’t be any tighter. “But I still don’t understand why. What have we done to you?”

  The señora’s glance was contemptuous; the kind one gave a bothersome underling or annoying bug. “Nothing, really, but you have gotten in my way. Now...”

  “But why?”

  “None of it concerns you any longer, Señorita...Waters, is it?” That arrogant gaze flipped away from Cara as she spoke to her minions in staccato Spanish.

  This is it, Cara thought. We’re going to die...

  They were going to die and she still didn’t know how Dave Burkhart felt about her. For that matter, she didn’t know how she truly felt about him, but it would be wonderful to spend time finding out. Her heart lurched at the thought of the two of them together, loving and being loved, of a true blending of mind and spirit and body...

  “It’s not fair!” she screamed.

  A spatter of bullets whizzed through the air like a swarm of angry bees.

  Only bees didn’t kill, Cara thought blankly, not like that, with bloodied bodies and dark, irregular holes.

  The señora screamed what was probably abuse in guttural Spanish, but the part of her private army still left standing sheepishly and quickly put down their arms. Everyone but the señora had their hands raised, but the single figure holding the automatic rifle still shot one or two more, presumably for effect. Cara would have raised hers, too, out of pure instinct, but like Dave, hers were still tied.

  “Buck!”

  “So you aren’t dead after all,” he said with a grin, a travesty of the loving smile, which had so captivated Cara what seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Capitan Fonseca was obviously not as good a shot as his father believed, for beyond a bloody patch, crudely bandaged, on his left shoulder, Buck looked remarkably undamaged. Dirty, yes; ragged, yes; triumphant, yes; angry, definitely, and all his anger seemed directed at Cara.

  “I’m so glad,” he went on and so did his horrible smile. “That means I get the pleasure of killing you all over again.”

  “Buck...”

  “Look here, Tarrant...”

  He paid no attention. “Only this time I’m going to do it real slowly, and I’m going to enjoy it. And I guarantee, you won’t come back this time.”

  “Was that necessary, Señor Bucknell?” The señora appeared collected and relaxed, but her voice was as tight as a violin string.

  “Probably not.” Buck glanced at her with a deliberately appealing look, as a little boy caught in a prank. His voice, though, was like a spray of cold, dirty water. “Our deal, Señora Arvisu?”

  She shrugged, elegantly of course. “The circumstances have changed...”

  “Not while I’m holding this.” Buck caressed the rifle as he would a lover’s hand.

  “Very well,” Señora Arvisu replied in a brittle tone. “Do you have the merchandise?”

  “Do you have the money?”

  The señora nodded, and one of her sun-glassed hunks, his hands raised, moved very carefully to the Mercedes. At Buck’s watchful nod, he opened the trunk in slow motion and with two fingers delicately lifted an elegantly tooled leather briefcase.

  “Open it.”

  It was like something in a movie. Opening the case, Sunglasses displayed the contents as if it were nothing but everyday merchandise. Cara’s eyes goggled. She had never seen such an enormous amount of money, all banded and packed in neatly aligned stacks. The briefcase wasn’t very large, but there must have been enough cash in there to buy a small European country.

  “Put it in the jeep.”

  Another curt nod from the señora and Sunglasses moved to the side of the jeep, tantalizingly holding it just above the seat.

  “The merchandise, Señor Tarrant?”

  “I don’t have it on me. I’ll have to send it to you.”

  “That will not do...” the señora began. Then everything exploded.

  Cara didn’t see what happened after Buck began firing. Launching himself at her like a linebacker, Dave knocked her to the ground, almost wedging her under one of the jeeps and shielding her with his body. She couldn’t see anything but the knit of his T-shirt, stretched so tightly across his chest that she could see each individual stitch. Her bound hands shoved like a rock into the small of her back. He lay over her almost in a parody of the position of love, his face pressing down against her cheek.

  Above them it sounded like a war; gunfire rolled and echoed like thunder. There were screams, shouts, and, ominously, several soft thuds clearly audible in spite of the explosion of noise.

  Those are bullets, Cara thought with a kind of sick horror. This isn’t a movie, this isn’t television...those are real bullets and they can really
kill people.

  Dave’s body weighed down on her, pressing down until she could barely draw a breath. Cara gasped, ready to protest, until she realized that he was exposed to those deadly bullets. Her heart did a painful flip-flop in her chest. He was literally using his body as a shield to protect her. He could be killed!

  And, Cara knew with horrid clarity, there was not one thing she could do about it.

  The silence, when it finally came a lifetime or two later, was as thick and oppressive as a blanket. Cara could not rid herself of the thought that somehow, somewhere all that racket was still going on, and someone had just pressed a cosmic mute button.

  Without ceremony, Dave’s body was jerked off Cara, leaving her with an oddly profound sense of loss. The air clawed painfully into her lungs.

  “Come on,” said a harsh voice.

  So, Buck had survived. Somehow, Cara wasn’t surprised.

  “Dave? Are you all right?” she asked as Buck unceremoniously jerked her to her feet.

  Leaning against the jeep, an oddly pale Dave gasped for breath and nodded. “So far.”

  Buck smiled cruelly. “For now.”

  Cara studied his heavy face with a queer dispassionate detachment. Every feature was the same, but this was a totally different face from the one she had thought she loved. She had fantasized about marrying Buck Tarrant, but she didn’t know this man at all. The Buck Tarrant she had known was nothing but a complete fiction she had been stupid enough to fall for.

  So much for love, Cara thought cynically.

  Buck prodded her sharply with his gun. “Get in the jeep. They’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Why should she...?” Dave began, but Buck was not in an explaining mood. He clouted Dave on the side of his head with the rifle barrel and without ceremony shoved him out of the way. He fell to the ground, writhing.

  Cara shrieked and would have gone to him in spite of being bound, which only seemed to make Buck angrier.

  “Get in the jeep, you stupid woman!” He punctuated his words by jabbing Cara painfully in the ribs with the rifle muzzle.

  What was worse to Cara was that he enjoyed it.

  Knowing without being told he would shoot if she didn’t obey, Cara scrambled into the front seat of the jeep as he ran around into the driver’s seat. With her hands bound behind her, it was uncomfortable, but the worst part was how insecure she felt as the jeep shot forward at a dangerous speed down the rough hillside. The track, it could never be dignified with the name road, clung precariously to a steep incline, switching back and forth on itself with tight hairpin curves that made even Buck slow to a crawl. Cara bounced and lurched, never hitting the seat in the same place twice and keeping even such a tenuous balance only by using her feet and legs like a skier.