Mona Lisa Eclipsing

SEVEN

THE DRIVE BACK home was made in tense silence, with the prisoner gagged and bound in handcuffs—silver, I noted, not the stainless steel they appeared to be. My nose smelled the difference. The cuffs had the same sharp metallic scent as the fired bullets, and seemed to physically pain the prisoner upon contact—no sound, just a subtle clenching of his face and arm muscles. They had dumped him in the trunk of our car, and though he was out of sight, it was impossible to forget him.

For some reason, I didn’t like knowing that we sat comfortably in the car while a shot and injured man lay locked in the dark and cramped trunk space behind us. Could he breathe? Did he have enough air? He must have or Roberto would not have put him there, I didn’t think, but I couldn’t even ask Roberto. He had been on the cell phone speaking in rapid Spanish ever since the car started moving.

I had a number of questions I wished I could ask the captive. Number one was how he knew my name, my secret name that no one else knew. Mona Lisa. The second was about his companions—the big wrestler-type, the guy with an old-fashioned Vandyke beard and mustache, and Mr. Invisible. Together, with him, they made four men, half of whom clearly matched the description my landlord had given me. The other two descriptions were off, however. The poor schmuck bound and gagged in the trunk was neither movie-star handsome nor average looking, though the latter might apply to Mr. Invisible—a startling trick, by the way, turning invisible; almost as good as turning into a bird and being able to flip big cars onto their side. I felt an edge of hysteria grip me for a frantic instant and didn’t know if I was going to laugh or start crying. Thankfully I did neither, just sat there feeling my world, my reality, distorting.

Okay, deep breath. Clear thinking.

No telling what the guy in the trunk looked like with all that mountain-man hair and beard covering his face. He didn’t look movie-star handsome, but maybe he’d dressed better and hadn’t had all that facial hair when my landlord had seen him. Maybe he’d been smiling instead of tearing his way through flesh with horrific clawed hands. First impressions really did matter, you know.

Another surge of demented giggling threatened for a thin, precarious moment, then subsided.

Jesus. Maybe I was going crazy because now that I’d had time to think about that chaotic fight, a couple of things bothered me. For one, they didn’t seem to be trying to rob us as I had first assumed. My second thought had been kidnapping; Roberto was wealthy, after all. But the guy had clearly been about to kill Roberto, not hold him for ransom. I wasn’t too familiar with the profession, but I believed kidnappers generally kept the person they wanted to demand money for alive, not cut their head off, which I was pretty sure Mr. Pale Eyes had been about to do before I stopped him. He had been willing to hurt everyone but me. And what had the Invisible Man called me? My lady. Let’s go, my lady, quickly. As though he’d known me and had expected me to come with him.

I hadn’t been able to see his eyes but I wondered if Mr. Invisible might have had the same confused and surprised expression on his face as the man in the back of the trunk had when I’d thrown myself in front of Roberto and stopped his killing blow.

I had assumed Roberto had been their target, if not to kidnap him then to kill him. That seemed to be what Pale Eyes had intended, his death. But if that was their goal, then why try to take me away?

I was confused—confused and feeling something almost like dread rising within me.

Roberto ended his phone call.

“Why did they attack us?” I asked him.

Did Roberto hesitate a moment or was I just imagining it? And if not imagining it, then reading something more into it than I should?

“I told you before, querida. Sometimes others come here to try to take what is mine.”

Reasonable answer. But I wasn’t satisfied. “They were trying to kill you but not me. They did their best, in fact, not to harm me. No one shot at me, not once. And the guy in the trunk pulled his blow, the one he had intended to take off your head with, or it would be my head rolling on the ground right now. Why didn’t they try to hurt me?”

He must have heard the rising note of agitation in my voice because he put his arm around me and soothed me with a soft shushing sound, gently urging my head to rest against his chest. But I resisted, the first time I’d done that. I pulled away so I could see his face. It was important that I do that, see Roberto’s face when he answered me.

“You are a woman. I have seen other men like myself but never a woman before,” Roberto said, choosing his words carefully, making me wonder how much English his two bodyguards spoke and understood. “Of course they would wish to kill me and take you for themselves.”

It all sounded true, reasonable, consistent with everything he’d told me. I would have been satisfied if two of our attackers didn’t match the description my landlord had given me of my four “friends” who had helped me move out of my Manhattan apartment.

Had they—bizarre thought here—had they been trying to rescue me? If so, that would imply that they thought Roberto was the bad guy. It would also imply that I was a captive, which I wasn’t. Was I?

“We’ll drop you off at the house first,” Roberto said, interrupting my train of thought.

“No, the police will need my statement. I was a witness. For that matter, why didn’t we wait for the police? Aren’t we supposed to stay at the scene of a crime?”

“Normally we would, but it was too dangerous to remain there. The men who escaped might have returned.”

Roberto and his two bodyguards had tipped the car back onto all four wheels, roughly stowed their captive in the trunk, and taken off like a bat out of hell. Roberto could have straightened the car himself, single-handedly, but he’d asked his bodyguards’ help, likely in case anyone in one of the homes along the street were watching. As if a giant eagle turning into a naked man, and people moving at faster than human speed, able to leap an entire block in a single bound, were not strange enough.

“I will take you to the house first. No need for you to be involved,” Roberto said in a soothing tone. “If the Federales wish to take your statement, they can come to the house to do so.” He dropped me off, leaving the taller bodyguard with me, following me inside like a looming shadow as Maria opened the door.

I escaped upstairs to my room, very aware of the guard’s presence outside my door as I wrestled with my sudden, odd suspicions. Roberto had been nothing but kind to me so far, more so than he needed to be. And they had attacked us, not the other way around. But still, so many things didn’t add up, and my questions would not be answered unless I asked them.

I made my decision and opened the door. “Excuse me,” I said to the guard standing outside my room. “Do you speak English?”

“Sí. A little.”

“Good.” I looked up into his eyes and captured his will. Mesmerism, compulsion—whatever name you wanted to call it. I considered this my most dangerous power; as a nurse, I’d only used it to help people, to provide a momentary balm to soothe sick and injured patients.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Carlos Hernandez.”

“Come inside, Carlos.”

He entered and I shut the door behind him. He waited for my next command, his face slack, eyes fixed on mine.

“What type of businessman is your boss, Roberto Carderas?”

“A ruthless one,” Carlos said, answering the question, but not in the way I had hoped.

I rephrased it. “What type of business is Roberto in?”

“He is a drug lord.”

My sluggish heart started to pound. “What type of drugs?”

“Crystal meth, cocaine.”

Okay, definitely the illegal stuff. Even though I didn’t feel the strain yet, I knew I couldn’t keep up the compulsion for much longer and asked the next question quickly. “How did I come to be here in Roberto Carderas’s house?”

“He shot you with a tranquilizer dart and brought you here.”

My hand flew to where that red spot on my back had been, an injury caused not by a needle but a dart!

“When he shot me with the dart, was I alone?”

“Sí.”

“So the men we just fought, I do not know them?”

“The big man and the invisible one tried to help you, but Senor Carderas put a knife to your throat. Threatened to kill you if they did not leave.”

“They are my friends!” It was a stunning, devastating realization. “The man they captured . . . I have to rescue him! They’re bringing him to the police.”

“Senor Carderas did not take him to the Federales. He is taking him somewhere to be questioned.”

“And after he questions him?” I asked.

“He will kill him.”