To The Lions - 02 (28 page)

The
guard pointed to the cage-covered clock above the doors. “Yeah, and your twenty
minutes started six minutes ago.”

His
mind still occupied by what had happened with the satellite phone, Gage followed
the guard’s instructions, walking ahead of him through a series of bright
yellow doors.
 
He was made to enter a
holding cage and told to back to the bars on the left side with his hands
clasped behind him.
 
There his ankles and
hands were shackled, quite tightly, before the far door slid open.
 
A voice from the shadows told Gage to walk
forward and to sit in the third cubby.
 
When he did, the guard walked behind him and slid a musty curtain over
the space.
 
There was a screened hole in
the thick glass in the front of the cubby and, on the other side, a gray stool
inside of an identical space.
 
Particles
of dust settled slowly through the air, lit by the harsh light above the cubby.

One of Navarro’s people?
 
Surely not Justina.
 
Not yet.

After
a minute of waiting, listening to snippets of muffled conversation from the adjacent
prisoners, a light flashed on the other side of the thick glass and in she came.
 
It was, indeed, his Justina, a lone peony in a
field of scraggly weeds.
 
For an almost
uncontrollable instant, Gage wanted to scream a protestation over his inability
to touch her.
 
Instead, he bit his tongue
and drank her in, feeling a tremor pass through his body.
 
She was bronzed, wearing the same clothes
she’d bought in Tossa de Mar, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
 
When his moment of agony had passed, Gage forced
a smile, watching as Justina’s smile faded to concern, then something akin to
horror.

“My
God, your face,” she said, pointing.
 
“And
your shoulder, is that dried blood on your shirt?”

“Shhh,”
Gage whispered, shaking his head.
 
“Not
here.
 
Not here.”

“But
what happened to you?”

“Remember
my name?” he asked, arching his eyebrows.

“Gregory
Harris.”

Winking,
he lifted his chin.
 
“I’m going to be
fine, okay?”

Justina
looked unconvinced, continuing to look at his shoulder.

“And…”
he said, drawing it out, “I’ve told
them
to pull me out.”

Justina’s
green eyes widened.
 
Her lips parted and,
though she looked very much the part of someone who wanted to be dissatisfied,
glee overcame her as she clasped her hands.
 
“Are you serious?”

“Quite.”

“When
will that be?”

“I’m
not sure, exactly.
 
But I can’t do
anything about the situation here.
 
My
being here is pointless.”
 
He decided it
best not to inform her of the threats against his life.

“Will
you make it until then?” she asked, looking at the blood.

“I
went through a little trouble at first, but that’s been taken care of.
 
Don’t you worry about it, okay?”
 
Wanting desperately to touch the glass, Gage
wrestled with his cuffs.
 
“Would you want
to go back home, back to where you’re from?”

“I’m
not leaving here.”

He
shook his head.
 
“Not now…when I get
out.”

“I
just want to be with you.”

“Think
about it, okay?
 
Anywhere you want to
go.”

“Anywhere?”

“Anywhere
but here.”

They
chatted about a number of things, mostly about what she’d been doing with
herself, Justina growing more relaxed as the conversation flowed.
 
She told him all about “Señora”, and how
they’d spent nearly every evening together.

“Her
daughter died and she goes on and on about how I act like her.”

“I’m
glad you made a friend.”

The
guard stepped behind Gage, sliding the curtain open.
 
“Two minutes.”

“Have
you gotten my letters?”

“One.
 
I loved it.”

“There
should be more on the way.
 
I’ve written
one, two, sometimes three a day.”

“I
will treasure every word.
 
Now, listen,”
Gage said, leaning forward and turning serious.
 
“When you leave here, you make sure you aren’t followed, okay?
 
Find a long road that gives you a view for at
least a kilometer behind you, and make sure there are no other cars.
 
If there are, you drive as fast as you can,
never once stopping, to the police down in Manresa, okay?”

“I
remember all that you told me,” she said reassuringly.
 
“So what happened to your shoulder?”

Gage
dipped his head.
 
“When I arrived, two
men tested me.”

“And
since then?”

“No
one has bothered me and I’m certain no one will.”

They
studied one another for ten more of their precious seconds.
 
Before the guard arrived, Justina said, “Be
careful,
Gregory
.
 
I feel like you’re not telling me
everything.”

“I
will make it out of here.”

Just
then, Gage was lifted by his arms, watching as she touched the glass and
mouthed her love.
 
The guard jerked
Gage’s cuffs and led him away.

* * *

Justina
sat in the cubby until she was retrieved.
 
She was numb on the walk back to the car.
 
She didn’t even check the road when she
crossed it, earning a blaring horn from a passing car.
 
As Justina drove away, recovering her senses,
she thought about her brief meeting with the man she loved.

Though
his reassurances had comforted her a little, she was very much unnerved by his
appearance.
 
He’d said he’d gotten into a
fight when he arrived, but some of the cuts and bruises on his face were fresh.

And
the quantity of blood on his shirt was far too large to have come from a
regular fight.

Justina
was also unnerved by something else, though she couldn’t quite put her finger
on it.
 
It was just something she sensed.

She
was right to be unnerved.

* * *

Navarro
pushed the bedroom door open.
 
On the
ocean side of the room, just as they had in the sitting room, the filmy
curtains fluttered in with the sea breeze.
 
The bed’s inhabitant, a young Barcelonan beauty whose name Navarro had
unfortunately forgotten, lay prone and swirled in his Egyptian cotton sheets,
her tanned rear end propped up by a pillow underneath her midsection.

“Mmm,”
she said after hearing the door click.
 
“Who says modeling is the easiest money for a
mujer hermosa
?”

Navarro
undid the belt on his robe, allowing it to fall away as he drank in the young
lady’s splendor, feeling a doleful quiver in the pit of his belly.
 
There was a time, back when ETA was
assassinating enemies in the streets—back when Navarro could win a woman like
this with nothing more than his looks and charm.
 
But now here he was, old and paunchy and
drug-aided, forced to pay ten thousand euro for a few days with a young woman
who surely was disgusted by his appearance.

At
least her willingness
seemed
genuine,
he noted with some measure of satisfaction.
 
She went to all fours, moving to him as he stood at the bed’s end while
she swept her hair back and went to work on him.
 
He touched her shoulder, rubbing it, feeling
the fine, taut skin of her back, briefly wondering if she’d ever even heard of
him.

Probably
not, he decided, satisfied as the crushed pill went to work, pushing blood into
his dear old friend.

The
dogs barked outside.

“Calla!”
he yelled, irritated at his wolf shepherds’ constant barking at any small
breeze.
 
It was this house, for whatever
reason—they always seemed on edge here.

Suddenly,
the hair on Navarro’s neck stood on end.
 
Hartline’s warning…

No,
he
reassured himself.
 
Valentin said it was impossible, as did the
aerospace scientist.
 
You’re on
edge.
 
Relax.

Navarro
took several steadying breaths, coming back to the moment.

The
girl…
Pilar!
 
Sí, Pilar
…she pulled back, sweeping her
hair to the other side of her neck in a practiced motion.

Modeling, my ass
.

Pilar
smiled up at him, her lips glistening as she said, “That feel good?”

“Yes,
darling,” he murmured, pulling her back into position, thinking back to his
heady days as an up-and-comer in Barcelona’s El Raval, when he was
 
in his early twenties, clipping rival hoods
and banging nightly beauties.

Oh, to have it all back.

Underneath
his right hand Pilar’s back suddenly tensed, showing the striations of muscle
as her skin tightened over her ribs.
 
She
pulled away.
 
Simultaneously, a piercing
scream echoed through the room, making Navarro lose his balance.
 
The erectile dysfunction tab he’d just taken
elevated his blood pressure and the sudden shock was a violent spike to his
system.

He
managed to catch the bed as he tumbled down, striking his rear end on the hard
tile floor.
 
The sharp pain from his
tailbone breaking was eclipsed by the scene from the doorway he’d entered only
moments before.
 
Standing there, propped
up by two gloved men, was his trusted friend and
asesor
, Valentin.
 
The entire
front of Valentin’s clothed body was covered in thick red blood.
 
Though he was dead, his eyes were wide open
and his partially severed tongue hung obscenely from his mouth.
 
Behind the threesome, on the white deck,
Navarro could see the remains of his wolf shepherds.

The
two men shoved Valentin’s corpse into the room with a thump as Navarro
scrambled to get away.
 
Pilar lurched
from the bed, sprinting to the open balcony door as one of the men raised a
pistol, his arm elevating mechanically.
 
An arrow of flame burst from the pistol’s barrel as Pilar fell forward,
striking the doorframe and lying motionless.

“What
do you want?” Navarro demanded, his back against the sturdy bedside table,
while his right hand climbed the side of the bed as if it were independent of
the rest of his body.
 
The men were Leones;
he could see their hideous neck tattoos.

One
man was brandishing a short shotgun, casually holding it on Navarro, watching
as the other shooter moved to Pilar’s body.
 
He clucked his tongue, telling the other one that he’d have loved to
have screwed her before he killed her.
 

Their
collective laughter could only be described as evil.

Enraged
and stunned by their impudence, Navarro could find no suitable words.
 
Instead, he chewed his lower lip to blood,
craning his head to the side, viewing Valentin, his old friend.
 
Navarro hated himself for the tears and
shudders that had suddenly erupted from his body.
 

“Señor
Navarro, we are here to kill you,” the one with the shotgun said.
 
“Eventually.”

“How
did you find me?” Navarro muttered, his mind currently too jumbled to remember
Gage’s warnings from an hour before.

The
man with the short shotgun said, “We’ve been waiting here in Cadaques for
almost a year.”

“You
knew where I was for a whole year?”

As
the one with the pistol stepped back to Navarro, his thick black utility boots
leaving marks with each step on the white floor, the one with the shotgun knelt
down.
 
Navarro got a good look at his
face.
 
First and foremost was the cruelty
of the youthful eyes, like a person who might kill tame dogs for fun.
 
The man was quite ugly, his face round and
dominated by heavy jowls, out of place for a man of his lean stature.
 
Below his pronounced widow’s peak, which both
men claimed, was a scar only a few degrees from vertical, starting at
mid-forehead, creating a valley through his nose, over his lips and terminating
at his chin.