Elizabeth Lowell - The Wrong Hostage

Room service had been uncommonly quick. A handful of plates covered with tin hats sat on the table. An ice bucket on a stand held six long-necked bottles of Corona beer.

Faroe looked over his shoulder as she walked up behind him.

“Better,” he said. “Food will help even more.”

“Stop mothering me.”

He stepped close to her, close enough to stir her hair with his breath. “I don’t feel a damn bit motherly toward you.”

Her eyes widened. “It’s just the wind.”

“What is?”

“The wind reminds you of the time when we were…together.”

“Amada,” he said, breathing in her scent, “there are few things on the face of this earth that don’t remind me of you.”

For an instant she was certain he was going to kiss her. Then he stepped away.

“There’s chicken, steak, and cold lobster,” he said. “Eat.”

He went to the table, opened two bottles of beer, and lifted lids off plates. Three kinds of protein. Baskets of small flour tortillas and a bowl of fresh salsa. He took a tortilla, forked a few bites of roasted chicken into it, and added salsa. Then he folded the tortilla neatly, rolled it in a napkin, and offered it to her.

“Do you have to do everything so well?” she asked, irritated all over again.

“You pay for the best, you get the best,” he said, still holding out the food. “Eat. Like I said before, you’re a high-octane woman and you’re running on empty. If you won’t eat for yourself, do it for your son.”

She took the burrito. A single bite told her that Faroe was right. She was so hungry she was weak.

No wonder my emotions are all over the place.

Quickly she ate the burrito, looked up, and found another burrito under her nose. Lobster this time, marinated in cilantro and lime, so succulent she almost drooled. She dove in and didn’t come up for air.

Watching Grace without appearing to, Faroe ate a few pieces of lobster meat dipped in salsa. Then he made himself a fat steak burrito and added a couple of jalapeno peppers from a separate plate. He grabbed a beer, took the burrito to the balcony, and watched the restaurant.

Grace scooped more lobster into a tortilla, made a defiantly messy burrito, and went out to the balcony.

Four stories below, two workmen were busy inside the restaurant’s high fence. There was a pile of flagstones that the men had lifted out of the walkway.

“That’s another irritating thing,” she said.

“Workmen moving flagstones?” Faroe asked without looking away from the men.

“No. You. You’re always multitasking. Eating and talking and watching, yet still completely focused on the job.”

“Steele would drive you nuts. He’s twice as bad as I am.”

“Are those two men really that interesting?” Grace mumbled around a bite of lobster.

“Short of digging foxholes under live fire, I’ve never seen two men work harder in my life. This is manana-land, yet they’re acting like someone is holding a stopwatch on them. I find that curious.”

Especially when Hector Rivas Osuna is expected to appear at this very restaurant tonight.

Grace leaned against the railing, licked her fingers, and looked down. Anyone who wanted to watch the men would have to be above them. They were hidden from ground-level people by the high wall and heavily decorated wrought-iron gate. Both men were dressed in coveralls and carrying toolboxes. A pickup truck parked in the alley behind the restaurant held more tools.

One workman tilted a large flagstone on edge and braced it with his body so that the other man could dig in the sandy soil beneath.

“They look perfectly ordinary to me,” she said. “You’re just paranoid. You’ve lived in this hellish world too long. Everything sets you off.”

“Could be,” Faroe said.

And kept on watching with the intensity of a hungry wolf.

“What do you see that I don’t?” she asked finally.

“There’s some sort of official decal on the side of the truck.”

“So?”

“Even in Mexico, city or state employees don’t usually work on private property.”

“Maybe they’re repairing a sewer leak,” she said.

“Ensenada’s sewers run the other way, a straight flush to the bay.”

“Remind me not to go swimming here.”

Faroe went back into the suite and returned with his binoculars. He dragged a chair over to the railing and sat down, peering between the rails with the binoculars.

Grace snuck some of Faroe’s beer and waited.

Silence.

“Well?” she prodded.

“Don’t go swimming here.”

She didn’t know whether to smile or smack him. “Do you see anything interesting?”

“They’re wearing coveralls, but one of them is wearing a white dress shirt underneath,” Faroe said. “In short, they aren’t your average dirt-poor Joses living off their brawn.”

He offered her the glasses and the chair. She put aside his beer and sat down. The little binoculars were astonishingly strong and clear. Their power magnified the tremor in her hands, visible proof of her underlying tension. She rested her hands on the railing to steady them.

The two men jumped into focus. They looked too soft to be manual laborers. Sweat ran down their full cheeks. One man was indeed wearing a white dress shirt and a heavy gold wristwatch whose diamonds flashed even in the overcast light. He handled the shovel like he wasn’t sure which end to use. The second man glanced jerkily around the grounds as he balanced the broad flagstone on its edge.

“Okay,” she said softly. “Point made. Shouldn’t we be hiding or something? The lookout is twitching like a flea.”

“He’s at ground level so he’s watching at ground level.” Faroe took a swallow of the beer, which was barely cool now. “He’s an idiot. Anyone with half a brain looks at balconies and roof lines as well. You’d be amazed how many dead idiots there are. Mother Nature’s way of chlorinating the gene pool.”

“You’re just full of good cheer.”

“Thank you.”

“Here,” she said, handing him the glasses. “Even if they’re idiots, spying on them makes me nervous.”

Faroe switched places with Grace, put the glasses to his eyes, and crouched to look through the railing again.

“What are they doing?” she asked finally. “And why, other than paranoid curiosity, do we care?”

“Hector Rivas Osuna will be eating at that restaurant tonight, along with some members of his family.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Why do you think we’re in Ensenada?” Faroe asked.

She opened her mouth, closed it. Idiot. Did you think he brought you here to tear up the sheets?

“You could have told me,” she said stiffly.

“You weren’t interested in talking to me, remember?”

Grace gave him a killing look, but it was wasted. His attention was four stories below.

“So you came to spy on Hector?” she asked.

“I want to talk to Hector. Whether you realize it or not, so do you. Hector is the key to this whole situation. He’s the one calling the shots.”

He’s the one who knows how much time Lane really has.

Grace rubbed her arms like the wind swirling around the balcony was cool rather than hot. “Do we have to be in the same room with that man? Can’t you just call him up or something? He scares me.”

“Men like Hector are primitive. They understand two things-in-your-face macho or ordering hits behind your back. We have to make Hector think we’re macho enough to face him and deliver the one guy in the world he really wants to see, so that Hector won’t hit us when our back is turned.”

At first Grace didn’t understand. Then she did. The food she’d eaten twisted in her stomach.

“Ted?” she asked in a raw voice.

“Your ever-loving ex,” Faroe agreed.

“But I don’t know where Ted is!”

“You just got a lead on him.”

“What?”

“Lie, Your Honor. Hector believes you’re his ticket to your husband. We’re going to help that belief along, and while we do, we’re going to make it real clear you’ll play Hector’s game only so long as he takes good care of Lane.”

Grace opened her mouth to argue, saw the flash of impatience on Faroe’s usually impassive face, and reminded herself that he was the expert.

“Kidnapping is all about the safety of the hostage,” he said. “We’re delivering Hector an in-your-face reminder that it’s an issue that cuts both ways. No happy hostage, no happy game.”

“But we can’t deliver Ted.”

“Don’t bet on it. There’s very little St. Kilda Consulting can’t do if it really wants to.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you? About giving Ted to Hector Rivas Osuna?” Grace asked in a rising voice.

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t give a handful of dirt to that creature, much less a human being. Ted might not be much, but he’s human. I can’t do this.”

“Can’t, won’t, or don’t want to?”

Grace didn’t know what to say.

Faroe lifted the glasses to his eyes again, studying the workmen and then shifting his attention to the alley where their truck was parked. Another vehicle had just pulled in and stopped behind the truck. Two more men stepped out and went to the truck.

“Your child’s father or your child,” Faroe said without looking away from the alley. “Not a happy choice, but it’s the only one Hector put on the table. You knew that from the beginning.”

Grace closed her eyes. Faroe was right. She’d known it, she just hadn’t believed it.

She hadn’t wanted to.

She still didn’t want to.

“There has to be another way,” she said.

“When you find it, tell me.”

The room went silent except for the restless wind.

“If you can’t decide,” Faroe said finally, “go north and stay there. St. Kilda will do precisely what you hired us for-get your son back. Just be damned sure not to ask how we do it.”

ENSENADA

SUNDAY, 4:10 P.M.

“GRACE,” FAROE SAID IN a low voice. “Smile at me, come nibble on my neck, and in general give me a visible excuse to get the hell off this balcony.”

The tone of his voice as much as his words told Grace that something was very wrong.

How can he tell me to set Ted up so that Lane goes free, and in the next breath tell me to be a seductive actress?

Because there’s no other choice, that’s how.

Grace moved stiffly to Faroe, bent over, sank her teeth into his collar, and tugged. She’d rather have gone for his jugular, but she knew better.

He put down the binoculars, looked at her, and smiled. His eyes were cold. “New workmen arrived. They aren’t sloppy. They look up.”

“If you had a tie, I’d pull you into the room by it.” And strangle you.

“Squeeze my butt. Same effect and it will send a message.” His smile changed, more real, and his eyes weren’t like stone. “Yeah, I know you’re wishing for claws you could sink into me.”

She reached around him, smoothed her hand over a hard butt cheek, and sank in. “Note to self. Grow claws.”

Smiling, Faroe used his body to crowd her inside.

“Close the curtains,” he said. “Make it look like a perfume ad.”

“You’re enjoying this.”

“Only part of it, amada.”

She was smart enough not to ask which part. Plastering what she hoped looked like a lusty smile on her face, she grabbed the billowing curtains and closed them like a stripper playing with a G-string.

As soon as Faroe was out of sight behind the drapes, he went to the window beside the balcony and parted the cloth just enough to give him a narrow slit. Slowly he lifted the glasses and watched.

Weary and edgy at the same time, Grace sank down on the bed. Three minutes clicked past on the digital clock on the table beside her while Faroe watched the four men from his blind. Then he lowered the glasses, stepped back, and grabbed a notepad from the drawer in the bedside table. He tweaked the curtain again, saw that the men were all in their vehicles, and eased back out onto the balcony with the binoculars.

Grace followed like a weary, wary shadow.

Two vehicles left the alley and turned onto the waterfront street. After they disappeared Faroe scribbled down notes. Then he turned to study the restaurant entrance. The flagstones were all in place again. There was nothing to show the landscaping had ever been disturbed.

Faroe lowered the glasses and stared out at the rolling, wind-whipped ocean beyond the breakwater. Finally he turned back to Grace.