The Finishing School

52

DAN’S CHEAP plastic watch had one thing going for it. The display lit up if you pressed a button, so he could see it was almost eleven, just about five minutes to showtime, and professional drug dealers tended to be prompt. He swatted another mosquito, looked up to see dozens of large bats swooping in and out of the tree he was crouching behind. The PR cops had a good laugh about that. He understood enough Spanish to hear them joking around before, when he took up position under the níspero tree, where the bats roosted at night. Like Dan could give a shit about a few bats. This was the best vantage point. From here he had a dead-on view of the eerie stone swimming hole and the patch of cleared path beyond that was the only possible place for a hand-to-hand. These Puerto Rican guys were just actors pretending to be cops, Dan thought, not the real deal, or they would’ve understood that he picked his spot for a reason. They should try working narcotics in New York, see the vermin you ran across there.

Dan was trying to figure out if this was a setup or not. It wasn’t like he was so high on himself, but he did trust his own gut. And something about this deal didn’t feel right. He hadn’t said anything to Melanie because he didn’t want to upset her, but Trevor’s voice in that message before did sound stressed, in a bad way. He wondered if the kid was okay. Shit, Trevor could be dead by now, and they would never know. How many times had a government witness just up and disappeared off the face of the earth? Guys like Jay Esposito always had a favorite dumping ground. The Flatlands. The Gotti Graveyard. The city was full of ’em. Dan hated to think how Melanie would react if something happened to that kid. That was what really got him about her-unbelievably smart and beautiful, yeah, but she had a heart.

A beam of white moonlight was shining straight down on the water in that big stone pool. It was so hot and misty out here that Dan drifted into a momentary fantasy about swimming naked with her, what they would do in the warm water. The sex was intense. If he thought he couldn’t stay away before, now he was really hooked. Everything in his life just felt like waiting to be with her again, to touch her, to taste her. When they were together again…

Who was he kidding? If. If, not when. Dan didn’t scare easily, but being under Melanie’s spell had him fucking petrified. She just might take it into her head to decide they weren’t right for each other or she was too busy or had too many responsibilities. Some fucked-up shit like that. And not because she didn’t care about him either-he knew she did-but because that’s just how she was. What would he do then? The thought of it made him want to punch the tree or pull out his nine-millimeter and shoot some bats. What could he do? He was sunk. Done.

He heard a rustling in the leaves and moved his hand to his gun.

“It’s me,” Bridget whispered. Her blond hair was hidden under a Mets cap.

“Jeez, you gotta be careful. I could shoot you in the dark like this.”

“Better than Pedro feeling me up.”

“Seemed to me you looked pretty happy over there,” he teased.

“No thanks. Those guys have been around the block too much for my taste.”

“Well, cops are dogs everywhere.”

“Not you,” Bridget said.

Her eyes in the dark stood out clear and blue, and she looked very young. Now why couldn’t he go for a nice average girl like this, who’d say yes in a New York minute to what he was asking of Melanie? Bridget would never hurt him. She wouldn’t want to, and he wouldn’t care enough to let her. But his emotions were beyond his control; his body, too. He was obsessed, nothing he could do about it. And if his relationship with Melanie felt like heartbreak waiting to happen…well, he had a sneaking suspicion that was part of its allure. It had a dark magic he couldn’t seem to fight. Plus, at some level he did set a high enough store by himself that he figured he’d win Melanie in the end. How sweet would that be?

“I’m trying to figure out if we’re being played,” Dan said to Bridget.

“Really? That never occurred to me. What should we do?” Bridget asked.

“Wait and see. If this is for real, it won’t be long now.”

She moved in closer to him, whipped out a pair of binoculars, and trained them on the swimming hole. Bridget was very petite. Dan wondered how a little girl like her would measure up as a partner. She’d probably be pretty fast, maybe even quick on the draw, but how would she ever manage to pull some two-hundred-pound animal off him in a dark alley? Not like a partner had never been called on to perform that service. It’d happened, all right, about five years back. Randall Walker had proved he was still one tough son of a bitch that night, with some spark left in him, and because of that, Dan was still walking around. Okay, Bridget smelled a damn sight better than Randall, but realizing that only made Dan long for Melanie, so it wasn’t much reason to join forces.

“Hey,” Bridget whispered.

“You got something?”

“Yeah, two guys about ten o’clock. Could be the Colombians.”

“Lemme see,” Dan said, holding out his hand for the binoculars, but Bridget wouldn’t give them up.

“Definitely the Colombians. One has a duffel bag. Must be the product. And-Jeez. Shit.”

“What?”

“They got AK-47s. And dogs.”

MELANIE TOLD HERSELF this was just like any old nature trail. She was in a national park. There was a path. It led from Point A to Point B, it was slippery but only moderately steep, and it was marked. All she had to do was stay on it. Maybe it was dark, but she had a flashlight. Maybe a lot of things were flying through the air and crawling underfoot, but-

“Aaghh,” she cried involuntarily, swatting at something that knocked into her face. Jesus, it was crunchy and sinewy. Some sort of whirring insect, but the size of a small bird.

She broke out in a cold sweat and thought about turning back. The problem was, where would she go? The park gates were so far away that she wouldn’t make them by sunup. And she’d have to walk through a dark ocean of creepy-crawlies to get to them. Melanie was a city girl. A lot of things didn’t scare her: police sirens, gunshots outside her window, the ominous beating of military helicopters during orange alert. But the forest at night-forget about it! Her legs were quivering like jelly.

She forced herself to continue on, shielding the flashlight beam with her hand and keeping it pointed at the ground. Her goal was to use the weak light to avoid stumbling off the path without alerting Expo’s bodyguards to her presence. When she got closer to El Baño Grande, she’d do some reconnaissance and try to locate her team members. How, she wasn’t exactly sure, but something would come to her. It’d better.

She walked on resolutely for about five minutes more, the path sloping steadily upward, challenging her thigh muscles. She’d feel this tomorrow. If Raúl had been correct that El Baño Grande was only ten or fifteen minutes’ walk from the information center, she should be coming up to it soon. Her heart had stopped pounding; her breathing was steadier. Hell, this wasn’t so bad.

Just as she finished congratulating herself on how well she was handling the thick sounds of the night echoing in her ears, the flashlight flickered and went out, plunging her into darkness. For a moment she stood completely still, not quite believing her bad luck. Then she flipped the switch back and forth several times to no avail. Hopeless. Fucking thing was a piece of crap. She threw it into the bushes and drew a deep breath, trying to figure out what to do next. There weren’t many choices. She could stand rooted to this spot all night, till the sun came up, and hope Expo’s goons didn’t step on her on their way back down the path. She could sit on the ground and let bugs crawl all over her. Or she could wait for her eyes to adjust and keep walking. Not much of a choice-she’d keep walking.

The night was clear. Because the rain forest on either side of her was thick with vegetation, all she had to do was look at the thin corridor of starry sky overhead to keep to her route. And the moon was up, casting an unearthly white glow she could almost taste. After a moment she could see the path pretty clearly. She started walking, insides tight with anxiety, but then immediately stumbled over a tree root, tumbling to her knees, her hands lighting on disgusting, slick wetness. Ugh! Mud, wet leaves, bugs. Getting back up, she felt like bursting into tears. She hadn’t appreciated how much that pathetic flashlight had comforted her. The darkness was full of hidden threats. Damn it, why wasn’t she a smoker? Then at least she’d have a cigarette lighter in her bag. Or matches or…wait a minute. Frantically, Melanie grabbed the leather bag she’d been carrying over her shoulder and dug around its dark insides. Her fingers hit the hard metal of her cell phone. She pulled it out and turned it on. No reception, but it cast a warm, glowing light. She walked on, feeling calmer.

Five minutes later she turned off the phone. The path had ascended steeply, and now she stood on a shallow ledge overlooking a round, dark shimmer that had to be El Baño Grande reflecting the moonlight. She’d reached her destination, but now what? How would she find her people without alerting the enemy?

Directly ahead, all at once, lights flashed in the darkness. Loud pops registered in her ears, and a swarm of bats rose into the air from their perch on a nearby tree. Melanie threw herself down on the slimy path, stomach clenching with dread.

This was the place, all right. She’d wandered into the middle of a firefight.