Wild Orchids Page 9

  They passed through the village of Cafeta, and then drove for a while along the shores of a gorgeous blue lake, which could just be glimpsed through the trees. Lora was lost in its untamed beauty when a sudden, savage curse from the man beside her brought her head swinging around.

  “Slide over here. Come on, hurry up.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a goddamned roadblock. I can’t turn around, they’ll wonder why. So slide your ass over here and be damned quick about it.”

  “But—”

  “Do it!”

  Lora didn’t know quite how she managed it, but she did. The fierce tone in which he had flung the last order at her told her she’d better figure out a way. As she squirmed over the gearshift, he caught her and pulled her onto his lap, setting her hands on the wheel and letting her feet find the pedals before sliding out from under her. The car lurched as she took over the pedals, but she managed to keep it on the road and in gear as he slid over into the passenger seat. Once there, he reached in the back for the disreputable sarape, pulled the gun from where he had thrust it inside the waistband of his jeans, and placed it on his lap with one hand on it and the folded sarape neatly hiding it from view.

  “I’m your husband, Brian Harding, math teacher. If they want to see my papers, I left them back at the hotel. We only thought we’d need yours, since you’re doing the driving. Those two kids are ours. Got it?”

  Lora nodded, darting an alarmed look at him. To think she had once again been on the verge of forgetting that he was an armed desperado who had abducted her at gunpoint. She had almost been liking him—and now the criminal was back, hard and tough and at bay, willing to do anything—including, she thought, murder her—to save his own skin. She switched her attention back to the road, swallowing.

  “This pistol will be pointed straight at your guts the whole time. Say anything else and I’ll blow you in half.”

  Lora nodded again, jerkily, feeling sweat starting to form on the palms of her hands. Suppose the police should recognize him and start shooting—or she should slip up and say the wrong thing, or . . .

  “Don’t forget what I said.” It was a harsh warning.

  “I—I won’t.”

  “Good. Now be careful.”

  Lora could feel her heart pounding against her breastbone as she pulled into the line of cars that were being let through the police checkpoint, one by one.

  VII

  By the time the car in front of them had passed through the checkpoint and driven away into the distance, Lora was afraid that she might have a heart attack, her heart was pounding so wildly. Just why she should be so afraid, she really couldn’t pinpoint. After all, she hadn’t done anything wrong, the police weren’t after her. But her companion’s grim face and taut mouth, the steely glint in his eyes, the tension that seemed to emanate from his body like heat from the sun, all had their effect on her. To say nothing of the gun that was pointed squarely at her midsection. Though she could not see it beneath the sheltering sarape, she felt it with every tiny hair on her skin. The question was, would he, in a pinch, pull the trigger? The answer was, she did not want to find out.

  Then it was their turn, and Lora had no more time to worry. She pulled the car up to where the uniformed policeman waited beside one of the two police cars that partially blocked the road, and rolled down her window with what she hoped was an enquiring smile.

  “Buenos tardes, señora.” He bent to look in the car, his brown eyes lighting on her companion and running over him. Lora could feel her captor’s tension like electricity in the air, but when she risked a quick, apprehensive sideways glance at him she didn’t know whether to be relieved or sorry. He looked completely relaxed, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Even the folded sarape on his lap looked totally innocuous.

  “Señor.” The policeman nodded politely at him, then turned his attention back to Lora, who smiled nervously. “What is your business in this part of the country, por favor?”

  Lora felt the truth rush wildly to her tongue, and swallowed it. She had almost blurted it out—but nothing else came to mind. Horrified, she realized that the policeman was waiting for her reply. And her mind was absolutely, totally blank.

  “My wife and I are American tourists, señor. We wanted to see some of your beautiful country.” He lied so smoothly that Lora almost believed him. She nodded her agreement, relieved and annoyed at the same time. Couldn’t the dratted policeman see that the unkempt thug beside her could not possibly be her husband? Couldn’t he sense her fear—and her captor’s tension? Darn it, there was a huge loaded gun pointed at her midsection—or possibly at the policeman by now, she couldn’t be sure—and the man didn’t seem to have the slightest inkling that anything was wrong. Columbo would have sensed it, Lora knew.

  “May I see your papers, señora?”

  Lora swallowed and reached into the back seat for her purse. A large tanned masculine hand was before her. Calmly, he handed her purse to her and watched while Lora fished through the assorted paraphernalia for her billfold. She extracted her Kansas driver’s license and her passport and handed them to the waiting policeman. He seemed to study both documents carefully, then lifted his head to fix suddenly severe eyes on Lora. Her breath seemed to stop as she met his gaze.

  “And have you insurance for this vehicle, señora?”

  Lora felt her breath expel like a deflating balloon. “Yes, I—the car is rented from my—our—hotel. Insurance was included in the price.”

  “You have proof of this?”

  “I—I have the rental papers.”

  “May I see them, please?”

  Silently, Lora extracted them from her purse and handed them over. The car was rented in her name—and her name alone—and the papers clearly showed this. Would he then deduce that her companion was not her husband, and demand an explanation? And when the explanation was unsatisfactory, as it surely would be to anyone with a modicum of intelligence, would he then ask them both to get out of the car and detain them while he determined the truth? To judge from her captor’s tension, he had good reason to believe that the police were looking for him. Surely it would not take them long to determine that “Brian Harding” was in reality the man they sought. . . .

  “These do not seem to be quite in order.” Lora stared up at the policeman, her eyes widening. He was looking back at her severely.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There is a little matter of an unpaid tax . . . for driving in the interior, you understand.”

  “But—” The people at the hotel hadn’t said anything about a tax. Surely. . . .

  “How much, señor?” Her captor broke in curtly. Lora looked at him in surprise. She was sure there was some mistake.

  “One hundred pesos.”

  “Just a moment.” He fished in his jeans pocket, withdrew Lora’s cash, and counted out the necessary bills. He held it out to the policeman, who accepted it with a smile.

  “The problem is now solved. Gracias, señor, señora. Have a good trip.”

  To Lora’s surprise, the policeman handed all her papers back to her with a nod and another smile, then stepped back from the car and waved for them to proceed as he deftly pocketed the money. Lora gaped from him to the documents in her hand. She couldn’t believe that she was this close to rescue, and yet was not going to be freed. She couldn’t believe . . .

  “All he wanted was a bribe!” The realization rose with bubbling outrage to her lips. He had not been interested in her companion at all. He had not been interested in her. All—

  “Drive on, woman!” The fierce hiss brought her eyes jerking around to him. He glared at her, motioning forward with one hand.

  With a feeling of fatalism, Lora depressed the clutch and shifted into gear. The car didn’t even lurch as it moved off down the highway. Lora didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry as she watched through the rearview mirror as the policeman stopped car after car. Then the VW swung around a curve and the r
oadblock was lost from sight.

  “You lie about as well as you drive. Was that on purpose?” He sounded disgruntled.

  Lora shot him a quick look as she eased down the visor that shielded her eyes from the glaring sun. He was frowning heavily at the road in front of him. The scowl made him look extremely forbidding.

  “No, I was—just nervous,” Lora said, and it was the truth. She had not stumbled over her answers in a purposeful attempt to alert the policeman. Her stuttering had been a natural reaction to fear. The man beside her grunted, folding his arms over his chest and staring out through the windshield. Lora looked at him for an instant, then returned her attention to her driving. He did not speak again, and neither did she.

  They drove for hours, stopping only once for gas at a delapidated Pemex station at the edge of a tiny village. Her captor bought Cokes and candy bars at an ancient vending machine—with her money, of course—and they both wolfed them down as they drove along. The candy tasted as old as the machine had looked, and the Coke had a peculiar tang to it, but Lora was too hungry to care. She had not eaten a meal, a real meal, for more than twenty-four hours, and she was ravenous. Talk about a crash diet . . .

  “Look, would you please tell me where we’re going? I’m tired of jolting through potholes that would make the Great Salt Lake look like a puddle and driving through miles of smelly jungle without having any idea of where we’re going to end up. For goodness sake, I’m not going to tell anybody. There’s nobody here to tell.” Hunger was making her peevish, and a fierce glare at him accompanied her words.

  He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then shook his head. “You don’t need to know. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  His reply didn’t surprise her, not really. She had not truly supposed he would tell her anything so concrete as where they were going. He was too secretive for that. What had he done anyway? She had no idea, couldn’t even begin to guess, although she suspected that it must be something pretty awful. He looked the type to do something awful. . . . He, he, he! He had taken over her entire life, and she didn’t even know his name! For some reason that infuriated her almost more than anything else, and she said as much, spitting the words at him.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any harm in telling you that much,” he finally said after some moments of silent deliberation. “You can call me Max.”

  “Just Max? Is that it? I’ve had dogs with longer names!” Her tone was as nasty as she could make it.

  He frowned, slanting a look at her with those obsidian eyes, and Lora could see that she had managed to annoy him. The way she felt at the moment, annoying him was something to do for sport, like bear baiting, but she was afraid that the results might be similar as well. And she would be the one who would end up hurt. . . .

  “All right, Max it is. At least it’s an improvement on Hey, you!”

  “Right,” he answered curtly. “Now, could you please shut up and keep your eyes on the road? You’re a bad enough driver under the best circumstances.”

  Lora cast him a fulminating glance. “And you’re a—a—” Words failed her. At least, she thought of several that were appropriate, but at the last moment she decided that discretion was the better part of valor and refrained from using them.

  Highway 307 had long since turned into Route 186, which cut due west through the states of Quintana Roo and Campeche. This was wild jungle country, and dense green walls of trees and vegetation crowded in on both sides of the narrow roadway. Craterous potholes abounded. Lora was forced to slow to a crawl, and when the obligatory afternoon downpour came she had to stop altogether. Her captor—it was hard to think of him as Max, although she thought the hard, cruel-sounding name with its shades of the Third Reich suited him to a tee—was not agreeable to merely waiting the deluge out. In consequence, he took the wheel, and Lora got some little satisfaction from watching him negotiate at a snail’s pace the road which soon more nearly resembled a roaring river. He didn’t seem particularly concerned about her trying to escape, and looking out the windows at the pounding sheets of rain Lora could understand why: she would drown if she were foolish enough to leave the protection of the car. And even if she waited until the rain stopped—which it would, as abruptly as it had started—she shuddered at the thought of being alone and on foot in jungle country. The twisting trees and vines looked both forbidding and inpenetrable. She knew that the rain forest was almost completely uninhabited—by humans, at least. Just before the downpour had started, Lora had braked to avoid hitting a large, flat black furry creature that at first glance had seemed to be no more than a spot on the road. Then one thin leg moved, to be followed by another and another. . . . Steering around it, she had frowned at the creature curiously, trying to determine what it was, when Max casually identified it as a tarantula. They were quite common in these parts, he told her with a grin, obviously relishing her convulsive shudder. No, she thought, remembering, it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t seem to fear an escape attempt. She wouldn’t set foot outside the car for a million dollars. Even he was preferable to a close encounter with a tarantula!

  At the tiny village of Francisco Escárcega, which was scarcely more than a collection of huts, nature’s call overpowered hunger as her primary discomfort, and she managed to prevail upon Max to stop. Again he didn’t seem worried about her getting away from him, and as she climbed out of the car to be surrounded by a swarm of Indian women and children she began to understand why. None of the villagers spoke English—at least, none that she heard—and the village was so small that there was no way she could have hidden from him even if she had tried to run. There was a rusty looking pay telephone in front of a larger cinderblock building that she understood from the picture of an envelope out front to be a post office, but the thought of trying to place a call through a Mexican operator in the limited amount of time she was sure to have before he caught up with her boggled the mind. Besides, she didn’t have so much as a penny to her name. That unspeakable man had robbed her of every cent she possessed.

  Shrugging resignedly, she abandoned the idea of trying to outwit her captor for the moment and allowed herself to be pointed toward a public outhouse which she thankfully made use of while her captor, she presumed, relieved himself outside. As they were leaving a toothless old woman thrust another packet of the ubiquitous tortillas into Max’s hand in return for a few pesos. He drove, for which Lora was grateful as it left her free to eat. When the last crumb of tortilla was consumed, she succumbed to the combined effects of nervous tension and her almost sleepless night and leaned her head back against the vinyl headrest to fall asleep within minutes.

  When she woke again, they had just reached a village that rivaled Escárcega for lack of size. A faded road sign proclaimed it Catazaja. Here they turned south off the main highway and found themselves on a narrow, poorly paved road that rose and fell with the increasingly mountainous landscape while twisting in and out upon itself in a way that threatened to make Lora sick to her stomach. In the aftermath of the rain, droplets sparkled like diamonds on the dense jade green of the jungle foliage. Parrots and other exotic birds squawked noisily, and plumes of steam drifted from the roadway toward the sky. The scenery was wildly beautiful, as exotic as anything from Lost Horizon. The only ugly thing was the smell. Composed of rotting vegetation and, she feared, the decomposing corpses of animals, the stench was heavy and sweet, and did her already queasy stomach no good at all.

  Finally, after more than an hour’s drive, they rounded another hairpin bend—and despite her incipient nausea Lora caught her breath. Before them, shining white against the deep green of the rain forest, was a city of temples and pyramids that looked as though it belonged on the white sands of an Egyptian desert. Surrounded by the untamed savagery of the jungle, completely hidden from sight until they rounded that last bend, the ruins dazzled with the mystery and grandeur of a lost civilization.

  “Palenque,” he said. “I thought you’d like it.”

  “
It’s gorgeous,” Lora replied as he drove along the narrow road that wound through the lower part of the town where the villagers lived in cheerful poverty. The thatch-roofed huts Max called tiendas, many bearing signs advertising Coca-Cola and Seven-Up, and colorfully dressed Indians hawking held no fascination for her at the moment. She had eyes only for the magnificence on the hill. “Can we stop?”

  There was a short silence, and then he laughed caustically. “Forgotten where you are, baby? You’re being kidnapped, remember? Hell, no, we can’t stop. You’ll have to come back another time—with your math teacher.”

  There was a distinct sneer in the last words, but Lora, jerked so rudely back to reality, did not hear it. Gazing at the ruins with disappointment as they rounded another bend and the whole town disappeared like a mirage behind a protective curtain of jungle, she realized that she had, indeed, forgotten her situation. For a moment there, he had been no more or less than any other companion, a friend who could enjoy the magnificence of the ancient city with her. The unpleasant truth came as a jolt.

  After Palenque, the jungle grew even more inhospitable. The roars of unseen beasts that he identified as jaguars or maybe wild boars could be heard from time to time over the fitful hum of the air conditioning. Lizards the size of small alligators lay sunning themselves on the warm pavement, moving sluggishly out of the way with a great deal of tail lashing and baring of teeth only after repeated honks of the horn. Monkeys—she hoped—shrieked ear splittingly from somewhere inside the tangle of trees, and winged insects, some several inches long, launched incessant kamikaze assaults on the windshield with stomach churning results. As night approached, Lora began to grow uneasy. Would they reach their destination soon? She did not relish the idea of remaining in this untamed wilderness after dark.

  Finally, about an hour after nightfall, the jungle seemed to clear fractionally, and by the beam of the car’s headlights Lora could see that they had reached another tiny village. Max drove to the far edge of the little gathering of huts and pulled to the side of the road, stopping the car. Lora, who had been about to doze off again, sat up, looking around at the dark village and the even darker jungle.