Ann Major - The Girl with the Golden Gun

“Yet.”

He laughed.

“When you do, you will kill the thing inside me you like.”

“Maybe that would be for the best,” he lashed violently. “Maybe then I kill this thing inside me and I will be free.”

Feeling weary and hopeless, she shut her eyes and willed him to go. Finally she prayed, and after a while, a sense of peace washed her even in this awful place where she felt so lost and weak and helpless.

For a long time, Tavio stayed beside her. She could feel his predatory eyes on her face and body and smell the tobacco on his breath as she prayed for help, for strength, for a miracle. She didn’t dare get up and run because she feared any movement might entice him, that he was that close to the edge.

Seconds passed.

Finally the bed groaned. When she opened her eyes again, he was gone, and she was alone and shivering in the darkness.

Then Shanghai’s deep voice said, “You are not alone.”

She felt his strength envelop her. For several seconds it was almost as if he held her in his arms. Her body grew warm.

Knowing he couldn’t be here even though she felt his presence so keenly, she jumped out of bed, her eyes searching the darkness.

“Shanghai?”

The only sound was Negra purring from her carpet under the chair.

Mia sank wearily back onto the bed alone and felt more crushed by her loneliness than ever.

Shanghai wasn’t here. He’d never been there for her.

The night when she’d pledged her heart and soul and body to him forever had been nothing more than a one-night stand to him. He’d left her for another rodeo the next day.

As always, she had only imagined that Shanghai cared.

She gripped the sheets. She was all by herself in this awful place, and if she didn’t find a way to make something happen, she’d never be free.

Julio. What would they do to that poor boy?

Marco.

Tavio seethed. Instead of the bubbling springs that glimmered like black satin in the moonlight, he saw a dozen DEA agents, their guns trained on Marco’s belly as the kid helplessly backed into that whirling propeller. The image repeated itself in Tavio’s brain and was always punctuated by Marco’s final scream of agony.

His younger half brother had been a mere twenty-five. He’d been smart and loyal. Tavio had had him educated and had taught him to fly. The kid would fly in any kind of weather with any kind of load, land anywhere, day or night. He’d trusted Tavio to take care of him.

Tavio shut his eyes. He’d had such high hopes for Marco. He’d hoped that someday he’d take Chito’s place.

Tavio kept seeing Marco and that propeller and blood. So much blood.

His head began to pound. It was the crack and the tequila. He’d smoked too much and drunk too much over too many days and nights. It was making him crazy.

Collins and Federico had stirred up a storm that had led to this. Some snitch within these walls had tipped them and the DEA off. Maybe the same person had hidden Mia in Marco’s plane. Why? Did she have something to do with Marco’s murder?

Tavio felt anger coil in his gut. Slowly he set his golden gun down on a rock, and when he did, it shot blinding silver fire just as the ripples of the pool did. He blinked. His pupils were dilated. He’d been so busy organizing the runs, he hadn’t slept for three days or nights.

He squinted. The light hurt his eyes. Things were too bright and too dark. That, too, was partly because of the crack.

When Angelita was upset, she came here and stared at the reflections of the pool for hours sometimes. Was she looking at herself or the clouds when she did that? He clenched both fists. He wanted to know, damn it. He wanted to know everything about her.

Staring into the black glitter of the water failed to calm him as it did her. In fact it made him feel even more strung-out. But then he was not like her. That was their problem.

Tonight he needed more than sex from her. That was the only reason he hadn’t raped her. He needed the comfort of Angelita’s arms around him. But she didn’t want him. She couldn’t love him, and the torment of that was driving him mad.

Estela would have held him close, but he’d sent her away for Angelita. He hadn’t touched another woman because of Angelita. He’d waited for this white woman longer than he’d ever waited for a woman, even for Estela, who’d been a teenage virgin.

He could have taken Angelita anytime. Did his restraint mean nothing to her?

He still didn’t know how he’d walked out of her bedroom two times tonight. Twice!

Any other woman he would have taken repeatedly until she learned to submit to his every demand.

She wasn’t that beautiful. But she was to him. He adored her trim body, her breasts that were in perfect proportion to her body and long legs. Her red hair had natural highlights and her skin was smooth and pale like porcelain. She was as beautiful to him as a goddess. Her full, lush lips haunted his dreams. He longed to taste every inch of her. He wanted her kisses all over his skin until every cell in his body caught fire. But afterward he wanted her to hold him in the darkness and be his tender friend. He had never wanted such things from a woman.

But she was strong and mysterious. She was egotistical in the way a man was egotistical. She knew what she wanted and what she didn’t want. He wanted to know her mind, to be her friend. He wanted her to care, but she hated his rotten business too much to see him as man, who was just like any other man. Why couldn’t she see that he was trapped just like she was in this nasty life he’d created and now hated because white men like Collins and Valdez believed he was an animal?

Valdez! How he hated Valdez!

Didn’t she know he would have preferred to be a legitimate businessman as his father had been? But he’d been born a despised bastard. In fact Federico Valdez was his half brother, his father’s most honored son, who now ran the family business. Valdez was his rich, white half brother who thought Tavio was dirt.

His brilliant father, also named Federico Valdez, could trace his ancestors to the Spanish conquistadores. He had been powerful in Ciudad Juarez. He’d belonged to an old and much-respected border family that had accumulated wealth over several generations. Tavio’s Indian mother had been a maid in his house. They had fallen in love briefly. Tavio was the result.

Since his legitimate children were years older, his white father had made Tavio a pet when he’d been young, carrying him with him everywhere—to his factories, farms and offices. This had incensed his blond, American-born wife and her white sons, especially the eldest, Federico. But their father had never claimed Tavio as his son. After all, his wife and he had six legitimate, white children.

His father had sent Tavio to a good private school, and school had been easy. Just like making money was easy if you got into the right business. Tavio had wanted to be rich like his father. When he’d graduated from college, he’d begged his father for a job in one of his companies, even a lowly one. Federico, who’d been running the business, hadn’t wanted him. Tavio had been hurt and furious but determined to become even richer than his father and brother. Drug running had seemed the quickest way toward realizing his dreams of being as rich and successful as the family that had spurned him.

In the beginning, like all young fools, the drug business had seemed exciting more than dangerous. He’d hired desperately poor people as his runners. They’d taken all the risks. When they’d been busted, he’d lost his shipment, but they’d gone to prison.

Poor women, too many of them to count who would do anything to feed their children, were sentenced to thirty years, which meant their children were orphans. That had meant nothing to him then. But sometimes, late at night or when peasants came to him begging him for favors, these things haunted him now.