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“Kayla.” He took another step toward her, wanting to offer her comfort.

She didn’t turn toward him. She just wiped her eyes fiercely with the heels of her hands. “You’d better go back inside,” she said, her back still toward him, “because I need someone to hold me, and I know that’s the last thing you want to do.”

Cal closed his eyes. He couldn’t comfort her with anything more than words—and there were no words he could say that would help. But if he so much as touched her, he knew he’d want to lose himself in her, to make love to her. And he simply wasn’t strong enough to resist her. Not tonight. “Kayla, I—”

“Hold me,” she said softly. “Hold me, Cal, or leave me alone.”

He did the only thing he could do.

He left her alone.

         
11
         

Kayla didn’t see it at first.

It wasn’t until she had stepped out of Tomás Vásquez’s expensive car, until she’d gone a few steps into the underbrush.

And then, there it was. The bus. A twisted shell of burned and rusted metal.

There wasn’t much of it left. She wasn’t even sure she would have been able to identify that thing as a former mode of public transportation.

She couldn’t speak. Cal, too, was silent, hands jammed into the front pockets of his jeans, a muscle working in the side of his jaw as he gazed at the wreckage.

According to the news accounts Kayla had heard at the time, forty-eight people—mostly women and children—had been instantly killed when the bomb went off.

Someone had planted flowers around the metal skeleton. They moved slightly in the late morning breeze, brilliant shades of red and orange; life among the death.

Cal turned and looked at her, and she could read his thoughts as clearly as if they were telepathically linked. Was this the place where Liam had died? If it was, then at least he’d gone quickly, immediately—no long-drawn-out, painful death by torture and malnutrition and God knows what.

She ached to pull Cal into her arms, but she knew he would only push her away.

Cal thought his brother was dead. Kayla could see it in the tightness of his jaw and shoulders, in the expressionless set to his face.

Kayla turned away as Vásquez cleared his throat. Today he wore chinos with a faded indigo blue polo shirt. It was the kind of faded color that cost seventy-five dollars new.

“There is something you both need to know,” the man said quietly as they walked closer to the wreckage.

Vásquez touched the flaking rusty metal of the bus, then carefully brushed his hands clean, clearing his throat again. “I told you several days ago that I was unaware of any rumors concerning your brother’s death. But this morning, when I checked into it…” He took a deep breath. “Mr. Bartlett, I now have reason to believe that your brother was not on this bus at the time of the deadly explosion.”

Kayla couldn’t move. Her feet had rooted her to this spot. She glanced sidelong at Cal, and saw that he, too, hadn’t even blinked. But then he glanced at her, and she saw a flash of wildness in his eyes.

It was the closest thing to a plea for help that she’d ever seen or heard from him, and she didn’t know what to do. She knew he didn’t want her to touch him. He’d made that more than clear last night.

But then he surprised her. He reached out and took hold of her hand, breaking his own unspoken rule. And Kayla knew he did it as much for her as for himself.

He took a deep breath. When he spoke, his voice was deceptively calm. “Then where the hell
is
he?”

Vásquez didn’t make any excuses. He looked first at Kayla and then directly in Cal’s eyes as he spoke. “As far as I can tell, your brother was abducted by rebel forces and taken into the mountains prior to the explosion. From the information I’ve been able to gather, he had just interviewed the San Salustiano minister of defense. The assumption is that the guerrillas were hoping to uncover some military secrets. I’ve read a number of SFP memos, and it seems the situation was thoroughly out of control. The officials attempted to cover up the snafu by claiming William Bartlett had been on the destroyed bus. I think they fully expected the rebels to kill him.”

“Did they?” Kayla asked.

She felt Cal’s fingers tighten around hers as they waited for Vásquez’s response.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I will do my best to find out more for you, but right now I just don’t know.”

“I don’t believe him,” Kayla muttered under her breath as they walked from the elevators to their hotel rooms.

Cal shook his head sharply, giving her a silent message with his eyes. Wait until they got inside the room, until he’d turned on the radio and covered up the camera lens. Then they could talk.

Still, Cal knew exactly what Kayla was thinking. Why would Vásquez tell them something that was potentially damaging to his organization and his very government?

But why would he lie? Unless he were deliberately feeding them false information. Or unless someone else might be deliberately feeding
him
false information…

He could feel Kayla’s frustration—he was feeling similar tension himself. He wanted some answers.

If the rebels had kidnapped Liam the way Vásquez had claimed, then who was the blond Americano that Kayla’s San Salustiano refugee had seen in the government’s military prison? Unless the mysterious American Navy SEAL who had allegedly been killed four weeks before looked remarkably like his brother…

But what was it Vásquez had said? He didn’t believe in coincidence. Well, Cal didn’t either.

He unlocked the door to his room.

“What’s that?” Kayla asked. She started to reach down to pick up a folded piece of paper that had been shoved under the door, but Cal quickly covered it with his foot.

“Go onto the balcony and put your feet up while I get you something to drink,” he told her.

She glanced up and saw that once again the “maid” had been in the room. The bed had been made, and the towel had been moved off the TV. The entire television console had been swiveled slightly, so that the camera hidden within was aimed toward the door.

As Kayla moved across the room, temporarily blocking the video camera, Cal dropped his key, then quickly bent and picked up both the key and the piece of paper. Concealing the paper in his hand, he moved to the bedside table and turned on the radio.

Someone—the maid no doubt—had put a fresh bucket of ice on the desk, with several bottles of mineral water chilling on top. He opened a bottle and poured some into a clean glass. Then he crossed toward the balcony, moving out of the camera’s range.

But Kayla stood in the doorway, shaking her head. Putting a finger to her lips, she pointed underneath the white wicker table that was out on the balcony.

Sure enough, a new wire had been planted there, hidden against the intricate legs of the table. It was damn good that she’d looked. He handed her the glass of water and sat down at the table. “I’m hungry,” he said for the benefit of the ears listening in. “Do you want me to order room service for lunch?”

“That would be nice,” Kayla said, playing along. “Will you ask what the catch of the day is? I’m in the mood for fresh fish.”

As he silently opened the piece of paper that had been left in his room, Kayla came to look over his shoulder.

At first Cal felt a flash of disappointment. It was a flyer from a shop downtown, nothing more than an advertisement announcing a sale. But then he realized which store it was. It was the store where they had bought the radio.

Another coincidence? He doubted it.

Kayla obviously doubted it too. “On second thought,” she said, meeting his gaze, “why don’t we go into town and have lunch at one of those little cafés by the harbor?”

Cal was silent as they walked into town. Their motorcycle had been appropriated the night before by the Special Forces Police and there were no cabs to be found. Kayla knew he was impatient to talk to the shopkeeper who had sold them the radio, but he was purposely shortening his stride so that she could keep up.

She didn’t know how he was able to keep from running to find out what, if anything, the old man had discovered. “Do you suppose he’s heard news of Liam?” she finally asked.

Cal glanced at her. He didn’t answer right away, the hard soles of his cowboy boots making a soothing rhythm on the sidewalk.

He gazed out over the harbor as he spoke. “The summer before I turned eighteen, my granddad died.”

It appeared to be a non sequitur, but Kayla knew if she waited long enough and heard him out, it would all make sense. “You mean the one who was your guardian.”

He nodded. “Uh-huh. Although he didn’t do much looking after us—didn’t do more than sit and listen to the radio. He’d lost part of one leg to diabetes a few years before my father died, and…” He smiled. “He lost more than a few marbles at about the same time. The old man was a sly one though. Most of the time he didn’t know where he was or who he was talking to, but he could fool you really well. Fooled the social services folks into granting him guardianship of Liam and me, which was just fine with me. But then, of course, Granddad went and died nearly six months before I was old enough—according to the eyes of the state—to care for Liam on my own.”

He fell silent for a moment, remembering, lost in his past. And what a past it had been. He’d raised a child, starting at age fifteen, while putting in the long, grueling hours of a working cowboy. He was, without a doubt, the strongest man Kayla had ever met, both physically and spiritually. His power was written on the lines of his face, in the muscular curve of his shoulder, in the quietness of his gaze.

Kayla realized she was staring at him, but he didn’t seem to mind or even notice. His eyes were distant, as if he were far, far away—or somewhere back in time.

“I still remember her name.” He was talking more to himself than to her. “Corinna Pinter. She worked for the state, and she came out to the ranch and she took Liam away. Just like that. Took him to some lousy foster home clear across the county.”

He was quiet again, and the only sound was the click of his boots on the sidewalk.

Kayla couldn’t keep quiet. “What did you do?”

He glanced at her and smiled. “I turned eighteen, that’s what I did.”

“You mean you waited until your birthday and then—”

“Hell, no. I didn’t wait for anything. One of my cowhands had done some hard time down in Kansas, and he knew a guy who knew a guy who dabbled in something he called the ‘creative altering’ of official documents. We took a little road trip south and my birth certificate, along with my driver’s license and an entire slew of authentic papers were ‘creatively altered.’ Instead of being born November seventeenth, I now had proof that I’d come into the world in January of that same year. I was instantly eighteen. The Asylum town clerk backed me up, saying that it was her mistake—a typo. She said she’d added an extra number one to my month of birth on the papers that Corinna Pinter had gotten from the town files.”

“So you got Liam back.”

“Yeah, I got the kid back.” His smile faded. “It doesn’t seem likely, does it, that I’ll be that lucky twice in one lifetime?”

Kayla didn’t speak. There was nothing she could possibly say. But she prayed with all her heart that the old man in the shop had good news for them—that he’d found out where Liam was hiding, that Liam was still alive.

Cal lengthened his stride as they crossed a road, and Kayla realized that they were approaching the shop.

Glass crunched under their feet. The small restaurant across the street had suffered a broken window. It had been broken from the inside, since the glass had sprayed outward, into the road.

All those soldiers had been in town last night. No doubt that little café had been the scene of a brawl.

Cal opened the door to the shop, holding it for Kayla, and they both went inside.

The old man was behind the counter. He greeted them by reaching down to a hidden shelf and pulling out a small box. He opened the box, taking a small gold object out and placing it on a black cloth spread on the counter in front of him.

Liam’s journalism ring.

Kayla reached for it, but then stopped. It was dirty, the inlaid letters caked with some kind of mud or…

Blood.

“I didn’t clean it,” the old man said quietly. “I thought you would want to see it as it is.”

“Thank you,” Cal said. His voice sounded tight. “Where did you get it?”

“Last night many soldiers came into Puerto Norte on leave,” he told them. “An old friend of mine likes to relieve them of their pay by engaging them in games of chance. My friend won this ring from one of the soldiers. This soldier told him he had cut it from the finger of a dead prisoner some time ago.”

Cal didn’t move. “Dead.”

The old man nodded. “Yes. I am sorry. It appears I was wrong about the Americano. He was quite real.”