The Warrior (37 page)

Alicia rolled over, then sat up on the side of the lounge and pulled her knees up to her chest, as if bracing herself for what was coming.

John saw her eyes shimmer with the sudden onset of tears, but her voice was calm when she asked, “And?”

“The wallet belonged to your father. They want you
to come to Savannah for a DNA test so they can compare it to the flesh that was found.”

“Oh my God,” she said, and then put her head down on her knees. “Oh God…oh God.”

John sighed. Did he tell her what he knew, or leave her to grieve unnecessarily? He laid a hand on her shoulder. It had to be said. Then she could do with it what she chose.

“Alicia.”

She looked up. “He tried to kill me. Why am I crying?” When John didn't answer, something told her there was more. “What aren't you telling me?”

“You won't like it.”

She reached for the beach towel at the end of the chaise, then stood up, wrapping it around herself sarong-style before facing him.

“There are a lot of things I don't like, but you're not one of them, so say what you need to say.”

“You remember when I told you that I could sense when the Spaniard's soul was reborn?”

Alicia nodded warily. “Yes, I remember you telling me that.”

“And do you remember that I also said I knew when the soul's current body was dead? That I felt an emptiness inside me?”

She nodded again, even more warily.

“I don't care what the DNA test shows. I don't care what the Feds say. I am telling you now that your father is not dead.”

Alicia wanted to argue. But to do that was to call John crazy or a liar, and she couldn't bring herself to do that. Not anymore.

“Maybe the DNA tests will prove you're right,” she offered.

John shook his head. “I doubt it. I don't know how he did it, but I can guarantee that your father ran a scam. We'll go take the test. And the Feds will tell you whatever they tell you. But he's not dead, and you're still not safe. Just know that, and know that I won't let him hurt you.”

Alicia wanted to cry, but this time for John. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him and just held on.

“I love you, Nightwalker,” she said softly. “So much. So much.”

He knew she didn't buy his story, but at least she wasn't going to fight him on it. For now, it was the best he could hope for.

“When do we have to go to Savannah?” she asked.

“I told Joshua I'd have you there by 1:00 p.m. tomorrow. There will be someone from the agency at the hospital to take the sample. I guess they don't trust the regular channels on this one.”

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“For what?” John asked. “You've done nothing wrong.”

“I know, but as long as you're stuck with me, you keep having to deal with this kind of mess.”

“You still don't get it, do you, baby? I'm not stuck with you. You're the one who's stuck with me. You couldn't lose me if you tried.”

She smiled, but it wasn't a happy smile. “Unfortunately, our homecoming celebration has been sidetracked.”

“Not for long. We'll go to Savannah, then be back here before you know it.”

“I know. And I know I have you to thank for so much.
But if my father is dead, at least we won't have to worry about him trying to have me killed anymore.”

John didn't comment. No need repeating what he'd already said. She obviously hadn't believed him the first time. Saying it again wouldn't change her reaction. But it didn't matter. Richard Ponte might have fooled the Feds, but John Nightwalker was the one person who would always know the truth.

 

They'd had dinner served en suite. Richard waited until they were finished and the dishes had been removed before he broke the news of his next plan. He went to a drawer, took out a ticket and handed it to Dieter.

“Pack your suitcase before you go to bed tonight. Our flight leaves at ten-fifteen tomorrow.”

“Great,” Dieter said. “I'm ready to get back to Austria.”

“We're not going back to Europe just yet.”

“Why not?” Dieter asked. “I thought once this was over, we'd return to our new identities.”

“That's what you get for thinking,” Richard snapped.

“Then where are we going?”

“The States.”

“Hell no!” Dieter said, and leaped to his feet, threw down the ticket and glared at Richard as if he'd lost his mind.

“Sit down and
calm
down!” Richard ordered.

“I'm not sitting, and I'm sure as hell not calm. If you aren't willing to pay for my ticket back to Austria, I'll buy it myself.”

Richard strode forward until he was only inches away. He was so pissed, his voice was shaking. “Remember who you are,” he growled. “You do not threaten me.”

“I know who I am. I also know who
you
are. You might just as well shoot me now, get rid of your last witness and save the Feds the trouble.”

Richard was stunned. He hadn't considered that Dieter might balk like this. He'd
always
obeyed.

“I'm not going to shoot you, for God's sake, so stop being so dramatic.”

Dieter glared. “I'm not being dramatic. I'm being serious.”

“What would it take to make you take the risk?” Richard said.

Dieter shook his head. “Not until you tell me why you're going.”

“Revenge.”

“Revenge? On who?” Then it hit him. “Not only no, but hell no. I'm not going to kill your daughter. I'm not even going to try. I've met the Indian, remember? You, on the other hand, are blithely oblivious of how deadly he is, but there's no amount of money you can pay me, because I wouldn't live long enough to spend it.”

“Five million.”

Dieter grunted, then scrubbed his hands across his face in frustration. “You bastard.”

Richard grinned. He had him. All he needed to do was reel him in.

“What, exactly, are you asking me to do?” Dieter asked.

“I want you to help me find out where she is. I'll do the rest. But I need a driver. Someone who'll be waiting in the wings, so to speak, to get me out of the vicinity quickly.”

Dieter began to pace.

“Look,” Richard said. “The authorities are already of
the opinion that I'm dead. You won't be on anyone's watch list anymore. Besides, you have clean papers and a completely new look. I don't see a problem.”

“That's because
you
don't
have
a problem being recognized.
I'm
the one with the problem, damn it. That Indian
will
kill me.”

Richard sighed.

“Six million.”

Dieter stared at Richard in disbelief. “You are insane. First, because you're willing to kill your own flesh and blood, and second, because you're willing to pay me six million dollars just to find out where she is and drive a fucking car.”

“Ten.”

Dieter sank down onto the sofa. “You no longer have access to the Ponte wealth. Does Anton Schloss have that kind of money?”

Richard was insulted. “Of course I have money. I'll always have money.”

“How the hell would I know?” Dieter objected.

“Will you do it?”

“Only if the money is in my account before we leave this damn hotel.”

“Get your laptop,” Richard said.

Dieter dragged his feet all the way across the suite to his bedroom. He had a bad, bad feeling about what he'd just done, but at least he'd learned something about himself. He'd always heard that, no matter what someone was asked to do, if the price was right, they would do it. Now he knew it was true—and he knew his price. His only saving grace, if there was such a thing, was that he hadn't sold himself cheap.

A few minutes later he watched the money go into his account, then stared at it in disbelief. It didn't even look real. But he'd done it. Now he was committed.

 

The next morning, Dieter's demeanor was cool, even distant, but Richard didn't care. He'd gotten what he wanted. They'd breakfasted early and called down for a bellman to get the bags. Now they were just waiting for one to arrive.

Soon there was a knock on the door of the suite.

“That'll be the bellman,” Richard said. “Take your bag and get out of sight until we're out of the room, then you can follow. From now on, we no longer appear together in public unless it looks like a coincidence.”

Dieter nodded, then stepped into his bedroom as Richard let the bellman in.

“There are four of them,” Richard said, pointing to the bags beside the door. “I'll be needing a cab to the airport, as well.”

“Yes, sir. There will be one waiting for you outside,” the bellman said as he loaded Richard's bags on the cart.

Richard followed him down, leaving Dieter to come on his own, carrying his own suitcase. Even though there'd been no backlash regarding the shark incident, this was not the time to become lax.

Outside, as the cab pulled up, Richard turned to Dieter. “Excuse me, sir, but are you by any chance on your way to the airport?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Would you care to share my taxi?”

“Yes, thank you,” Dieter said.

Richard waved to the bellman. “Put all the bags in my cab,” he said.

Two hours later, they were in the air and, to Dieter's regret, on the way back to Miami.

J
ohn hadn't been back to Savannah since getting caught up in the attempted bank robbery. He loved the old city, and wished they were going there for fun and not a meeting with the Feds. Alicia was tense, fidgeting through the entire drive north, but it was an emotion he understood. She was facing the possibility of being told her father's death was a reality. Even though he knew that wasn't so, he expected the DNA to match. He didn't underestimate Ponte for a moment. The man was obviously capable of anything and had the money to make it happen.

The big problem was going to come when the Feds made Ponte's death official. That was when the search would be called off. After that, the man would be free to roam the world at will. If he was smart, he would quietly disappear and live out his life in whatever guise he'd chosen, but something told John this wasn't over. Ponte wasn't a man who failed, and he'd tried and failed twice to end his daughter's life. That had to be eating at him in a major way.

John reached across the seat and took Alicia's hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“We can do this,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “And you know why?”

“Why, baby?”

“Because you make me believe anything is possible.”

John tightened his grip on her hand. “Since you came into my life, I'm beginning to believe the same thing.”

She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes, letting the hum of the wheels on the pavement and the sound of passing traffic lull her into a brief but welcome sense of calm.

By the time they reached the Savannah city limits, she was ready to get out of the car and get this over with.

John wanted to stop by his bank but decided to use the drive-through instead of going inside. The fewer people who could speak to their whereabouts, the safer Alicia would be.

Alicia woke up as John made a sharp turn into a bank drive-through. She could tell by the way the teller was talking to him that she knew him. As he drove on, it became even more obvious to Alicia as they wound through the streets to the hospital that John was very much at home in Savannah. He navigated the route with ease.

“You know something? I'm beginning to wonder if you really
are
some kind of superman.”

He smiled. “Why?”

“I hear you talking to your business partners on the phone. I see you scanning e-mail and stock market reports. You buy and sell all over the world. You fly helicopters, and you seem to cope with everything with such ease. Do you ever get lost?”

He grinned. “Hey, baby, you know a man's never going to admit it if he does.” Then he pointed to the dash GPS. “There's also technology, just in case.”

She laughed. “Lord. He's gorgeous and honest. What's a girl to do?”

“Forgive me for my weaknesses and love me in spite of them?”

“Only if you grant me the same favor.”

“Done and done. And by the way, we're here.”

The smile slid off her face as she saw the imposing edifice of Savannah Memorial. All of a sudden they were back in the real world.

“Oh Lord.”

“Don't let it get to you,” John said.

He was right. She took a deep breath and let the butterflies settle. All they wanted was a DNA sample. She could deal with the results later.

 

It took a week for the Federal government to make their official announcement that Richard Ponte, the man wanted for treason against the United States of America, was in fact dead. After factoring in the explosion of his personal yacht in Nassau, then the DNA from the flesh found inside the shark, which was a match for Alicia Ponte's, they considered this the end of the story.

Alicia was officially an orphan. Since there was nothing left of Ponte to bury, she was spared the business of a funeral. She'd moped around the house until one night John decided he'd had enough. The next morning he went looking for her and found her, as usual, on his balcony overlooking the bay.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said, tugging her up from the chaise longue.

“What is it?” she asked with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

He shook his head. “If I tell you, then it won't be a surprise.”

She managed a wan grin, then let herself be led across the hall to the room that had once been her bedroom. One that she'd begun to use as her own little nook. She had a stack of books by the chair near the window. There was a photo of her mother that she'd brought with her when she'd first run away. As she entered the room, she noticed a second frame now sitting beside the first.

“What's that?” she asked as she pointed across the room.

“It's your surprise. If you don't like it, you can get rid of it, but I thought it would be a nice way to remember that one night in Sedona, you had a heavenly visitor.”

Immediately, she knew what it was, but even so, she was anxious to see what he'd done.

The frame was small but elegant. He'd chosen black, with a black velvet backing to best display her mother's gold-and-ruby brooch.

“Oh, John. I love it,” she said, running her fingers over the surface of the piece.

She tilted it to the light, watching the tiny red stones as they winked from the reflection.

“Do you ever think about that?” he asked.

Alicia nodded. “All the time.”

“And do you
believe,
the way he told you to?”

She sighed, then set down the frame and put her hands on his chest.

“Someday, when I'm teaching my children about God, and the subject of angels and miracles arises, I will tell them that once upon a time I was visited by an angel, and that I know they are real.”

“What do you think about me…about what I told you?”

“I believe you do not lie.”

He sighed. She was skirting the issue. She didn't say she believed he was immortal. She'd just said he didn't lie. That left all kinds of room for the insanity theory, but he wasn't about to go there.

He smiled instead. “I can live with that,” he said softly, then kissed her.

“As long as you live with
me,
too, we're good to go,” Alicia said.

He kissed her again, and when she moved from his lips to the hollow at the base of his throat, he picked her up in his arms and carried her to bed.

 

The law firm representing the Ponte empire had contacted her soon after the announcement of her father's death, requesting her attendance for a reading of his will. She'd declined, and hired her own attorney to see to the legalities. She already knew she was his heir. What the rest of the world had yet to learn was that she didn't want his fortune. She'd inherited her mother's money, which was more than she would ever need. She could never have spent a penny of what she considered blood money.

When she announced her decision, through the auspices of her attorney, to sell the munitions part of her father's empire, it stirred excitement all over the business world. But when she further stated that all the
monies resulting from the sale were going to the families of the American soldiers who'd been killed in Iraq, as well as to the ones who'd come home too damaged ever to work again, the media began calling her a modern-day Mother Theresa. The money would be in the billions. It wouldn't pay for lost lives, but it might keep the surviving families from losing everything else.

Every talk-show host in the nation wanted her. Publishers were offering huge sums for a book deal, and Hollywood came back with a slew of similar offers for the rights to her story. She refused them all. She didn't want to be a celebrity. She wanted to forget she'd ever been born to a man she considered a conscienceless demon.

John knew she was suffering a combination of grief and shame, but there was nothing he could say that hadn't already been said. He also knew, with every fiber of his being, that Ponte was not only still alive but back in the States. The physical pain that was his clue was a dull and constant ache. It triggered an ongoing barrage of dreams about the massacre, ending, as always, just as the Spanish galleon sailed out of sight.

When John wasn't sleeping with Alicia wrapped in his arms, he was on the balcony off his bedroom, keeping watch toward the ocean, just as he'd done so many centuries ago. He could no more explain his feelings of dread to Alicia than he'd been able to convince Chief Red Hawk of the approaching danger to the village.

Alicia knew he was unsettled, but no matter what he thought, she knew her father was dead. The DNA proved it—just not to Nightwalker. And she knew when
the nightmares overtook him. She'd pretended sleep more than once as he'd wakened with a soft, muffled sob at the back of his throat. She'd seen him slip out of bed to go stand on the balcony, staring out at the ocean in the dark. And the days were no better. He let his work slide in order to stand watch. Once she'd tried to kid him out of it, only to realize the depths of his concern.

 

“Hey, John…what time does the guard change? We're out of milk and butter.”

He turned toward the sound of her voice, saw the laughter in her eyes, and was struck by how swiftly her joy could fade if he let her father get to her.

“Sorry. I knew that this morning and forgot about it,” he said. He put down his binoculars, picked up a rifle from the corner of the balcony and carried it back into the bedroom.

It was impossible to ignore the elephant in the room. “When did you break out the gun?”

“It's always been around,” he said in an offhand manner. “Do you want to change clothes before we go to Justice?”

Her slacks were still clean, but she brushed at the crease, then picked a piece of lint off her shirt and ran her fingers through her hair. She'd begun going barefoot when they were home, and the thought of putting on shoes was unwelcome. It made her realize how easily she could fall into John's habit of wearing less, not more, clothing.

“I'll get my shoes, and then I'm ready,” she said.

He watched her fly across the hall, then started to follow her, when an inner alarm gave a jangle. He turned
toward the ocean, giving the horizon one last sweeping glance, then locked the sliding doors, pocketed his wallet and met her in the hall as she was coming out.

She put her hand through his elbow, chattering happily as they walked down the hall toward the front door, while the knot in his belly continued to tighten.

 

“That bitch is giving it away!”

Richard was so angry that the veins in his neck were bulging. A fleck of spittle hung at the corner of his lips. His face was awash in bloody fury.

“Did you hear that?” He pointed to the television screen. “She's put the munitions factories up for sale, and she's donating the entire proceeds to the fucking soldiers! She can't do that! I spent my life building all that, and she just throws it away? What kind of child does that to her own father?”

“Obviously one whose father has been trying to kill her.”

Richard was so shocked by the fact that Dieter had dared to make such a comment that he was momentarily mute.

Dieter couldn't have cared less. He'd already figured out that the man he'd sold his soul to for the tidy sum of ten million dollars was the devil. This just proved it. How could Richard rant about his child and what she was doing with her inheritance when he wanted her dead?

Richard's fingers curled into fists as he stared at the man he considered hired help.

The urge to watch him die was so strong he was shaking.

“I won't let her get away with this,” he vowed.

“You can't stop the sale. You're dead, remember?” Dieter said, and then turned his back on Richard and walked to the window overlooking Miami.

He was so tired of doing this crazy man's dirty work and living on the cusp of arrest that he'd actually considered the notion of killing the bastard for real himself.

Richard flinched as if he'd been slapped. No one turned their back on him and walked away when he was talking. Ever. His gaze landed on a plaster bust of Aristotle displayed on an antique pedestal, and he actually took a step toward it before sanity surfaced. He paused, then took a deep breath. He couldn't kill Dieter. He needed him.

Dieter turned around just as the killing look passed over Richard's face.

“You want me dead? Do it.”

Richard didn't answer.

Dieter sneered. “You don't have the guts to do it yourself. I've had enough of this. I'm going out. I have my phone. Call me when you're on to your next mad moment.”

“If you walk out that door, don't bother coming back,” Richard said.

That option was more appealing than Richard had intended.

“Really?” Dieter asked.

Richard cursed. The interest in Dieter's voice was not the result he'd hoped for when he'd made the threat, so he chose to ignore it and threw another question at him instead.