In Enemy Hands (24 page)

“Bleaaaah,” she said. “Tastes like chocolate covered sawdust.”

“Gripe, gripe, gripe. You really are a princess. Next time I get stuck in the desert, I think I’ll take Waynie with me instead.”

Nadia snorted. “Yeah, you just do that. You think
I’m
a whiner … he’d have never survived that first slide down the hill.”

“Yeah, you’re a whiner.” Dante tossed a small, foil wrapped packet to her. “Here you go, whiner. Just for you. Freeze dried chocolate.”

After a hesitant nibble, Nadia popped the square into her mouth and moaned with exaggerated ecstasy. “Oh, man. That’s more like it.”

Dante leaned back on his elbows to watch her, and she frowned.

“What’s the matter with you? Why are you all the way over there? Afraid I’ll bite?”

“I’m thinking I’m pretty safe, since I’m not made out of chocolate or anything.”

Dante gazed up at the rolling black thunder clouds. They were going to get rained on soon. He was grateful for the cloud cover anyway. Without those clouds, the heat would be pretty miserable at this time of day. It was still hot, but not unbearably so. He cleared his throat.

“Nadia, there’s something I need to get off my chest.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Hmmm, like that shirt, maybe? Because it’s a shame to cover that chest up. I’m getting kind of fond of it.”

Dante laughed. “Cut it out. I’m trying to be serious here. I feel like I owe you an explanation, for taking you to Vandergriff.”

Nadia took his hand and he stared at her. She was so beautiful, so dazzling … Dante wondered if he would ever be able to look at her without feeling a little spark. He tucked a lock of her dark hair behind her ear and she smiled.

“It’s okay, Dante. You already told me. I know he tricked you. He lied to you.”

“I made it easy for him. I should’ve been more careful. But the truth is …” He paused. “I wanted this case.”

“Why?” Nadia’s voice was quiet. Dante thought he saw a flicker of apprehension in her green eyes.

“It reminded me of my own situation. Of my own child.” Nadia blinked and swallowed hard. “You, uh … you have a child?”

“Yeah, a little girl. Lara. She’s six now.” He dug his wallet out of his back pocket and removed a picture from it. Handing it to her, he said, “This is an old one. She was only a baby there.”

“She’s beautiful.” Nadia stared at the picture, then turned her face away. “Do you also have a wife?”

“Not anymore.”

She shot him a curious glance. “What happened?” Dante shrugged. “She decided she could do better.” Nadia traced her finger in the dirt beside her. “Your ex-wife must be the biggest idiot walking the planet,” she said. “Waking up with you every morning doesn’t sound too traumatic to me.”

Dante laughed. “She never woke up with me. We were married about three hours. Well, technically, it was a little longer, with the paperwork and all, but it was pretty much over instantly.”

“Whoa! Worse than Britney Spears.” Nadia lifted her eyebrows. “What happened?”

“Her father. I got a job driving for him right out of high school. The first thing he said to me was, ‘Boy, stay away from my daughter.’ But you know how it is when you’re eighteen. Forbidden fruit and all that. Plus, Sharon started hanging around the garage all the time. One thing led to another …” He shrugged and Nadia nodded.

“She came to me one day and told me she was pregnant. We were both scared, but I told her everything would be all right. Her mother was out of town and Sharon wanted to wait until she came back before we told them, but it all blew up before then. Her old man caught us kissing. He ranted and raved and fired me on the spot. He and Sharon had a big fight and she told him about the baby. He went ballistic, and had me escorted off the premises. We ran away that night.”

Shame burned his face. It still hurt to talk about that night, but somehow it didn’t feel awkward with Nadia.

“We were married in this cheesy all-night wedding chapel. We both had a little money saved up and decided to just take off, hoping some of it would blow over by the time we got back. We’d stopped to spend the night at a motel off the interstate when her father caught up with us. He had a couple guys with him and they held me down while he talked to her. He told her what a miserable life she’d have, married to a working class guy like me, how we’d have to scrape to get by. He was begging her to go with him, I was begging her to stay. In the end, she decided to go with him.”

“Oh, Dante!” Nadia sighed. “I’m sorry. What about Lara? Do you get to see her at all?”

“Sharon kept in touch for a few months, without her father’s knowledge, but I think we both knew whatever we’d had between us was over when she walked out that night. I tried to call her, tried to see her to find out how she was, but I could never get past Martin’s people. Then one night, out of the blue, Sharon calls and asks if I could meet her at the park near my mom’s house. She had Lara with her. She’d been born two weeks earlier and I hadn’t even known it.”

Dante smiled, remembering how small she’d been, how soft and beautiful. “That was the only time I’ve ever held my daughter. But Martin somehow found out about it. He had some guys come visit me. They threatened my family, my mother and my brothers, if I didn’t stay away. He was a powerful guy. Next thing I knew, I was fired from my new job, and nobody seemed to be hiring. I was only a kid myself; I didn’t really know what to do. The next time Sharon called, I told her I was joining the Marines. I was going to save up my paychecks and get us a house someplace far away from her father, where we could be a family.”

“What did she say?” Nadia asked quietly.

“She went along with it. She’d write me, I’d write her and send the letters to one of my brothers and Sharon would pick them up from him. A few times, she even sent me pictures of her and Lara. Then, the letters stopped. I was going crazy, afraid something had happened to them, but I was in a foreign country and couldn’t get home. About seven months later, I got a letter from her. She said she was marrying someone else, a senator’s son, and he wanted to adopt Lara.”

“Oh, no.”

“That’s what I said. Oh, no, he’s not adopting my kid. I was mad, threatened to sue Sharon for custody, but we both knew I was stuck in the service for another year. Plus, I wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance, but that didn’t stop me. As soon as I got back, I went looking for them.”

“Did you find them?”

“Yeah. They’d moved to Alabama—that’s where his family was from. They live in a mansion outside of Scottsboro. I figured they wouldn’t be too happy to see me, so I parked on the street and walked up the driveway. I saw them playing in the yard. Sharon’s husband was rolling around in the grass with Lara. She was giggling and screeching ‘Dada’ and it just kind of stopped my heart. Sharon was sitting in a lawn chair, watching them with this content smile on her face. I think it scared her to death when she looked up and saw me.

“She and I talked for a long time. I even talked to her husband, but in the end I walked away. This guy loved Lara, and he could give her all the things I never could. That’s all I want for my daughter, to be happy, but I think about her all the time. She should be in first grade now and I don’t know anything about her. Not a day goes by when I don’t wish I’d done things differently, but so much time has passed.”

“I’m sorry.” Nadia’s voice was soft, sincere.

Dante gave her a rueful smile. “I am too. But I know she’s being taken care of and that will have to be good enough. That’s why I took Vandergriff’s case. Here he was, giving me this situation that was so much like my own and I was thinking, ‘What if it was Lara?’ If she were in danger, I’d do anything to protect her. In a way, returning his daughter to him felt a little like getting mine back, you know?” He shook his head. “Man, I can’t believe I fell for it. The story he fed me was so close to mine. I should’ve known it was fishy. He really played me.”

Nadia squeezed his hand. “Vandergriff is like that. He’s a master manipulator, and he has no boundaries. I wonder sometimes how different my parents would be, how different
I
would be, if we’d never heard of Gary Vandergriff.”

Dante shot her a sympathetic look. “I bet it wasn’t easy growing up in your house. Did your parents even let you out to go to school?”

“No. I was always home schooled.” She paused and gave him a funny smile. “Well, that’s what they tell me, anyway. But I remember things … the green and blue plaid uniforms we wore, a little girl I used to play with named Kim.”

“I don’t understand,” Dante said softly.

“Vandergriff kidnapped me once,” she said in a ‘no big deal’ kind of voice. “I was probably five or six years old. About the same age as Lara.”

Dante’s breath left him. He reached for her, but Nadia held out a hand to stop him. Her face flushed and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “No. I’m okay, really. It’s only …” She swiped at her eyes. “You’re the first person I’ve ever told about this. Please don’t tell my parents.”

“Your parents?”

“I act like I don’t remember. It’s easier on them like that. Now they act like they don’t remember either.” She frowned and scratched her head. “And I really
don’t
remember much, so it’s not like I’m lying. Only little flashes of stuff. I remember a root cellar, one of the old kind that was dug into the earth. I was a kid, right, so it was just this faded gray door built into the ground. I didn’t know what it was, or where I was. That’s my first memory of Gary Vandergriff … of him yanking open that door and lowering me into the hole. He told me there were snakes in there, and that they would find me if I moved or screamed for help. Then he locked me inside.”

Dante swore. He reached for her again, but Nadia pulled away. A choked sound rose from her throat and Dante couldn’t tell if it was a laugh or a sob. Maybe it was both.

“Please don’t touch me yet. I want to tell you this and I think if I let you hold me, I’ll cry and never be able to get it out.”

She suddenly looked much younger than her twenty-four years. Dante could see that scared little girl. The pain in her eyes made him want to take her in his arms, to stop her from reliving this, but he realized she needed to tell someone.

“I won’t touch you until you tell me to,” he said.

“It was so dark in there. Cool. Sort of like the mine shaft. Probably the only reason I didn’t freak out back there was you. I got a flash of it when I was backing against that wall, but I thought, no, I’m okay. Dante’s with me.” She winked at him, and Dante’s heart twisted.

She was so strong.

“It smelled damp and kind of funky, like rotting vegetables. My legs were tired, but I was afraid to sit down. I kept away from the dirt walls because I figured that the snakes were probably there too. My legs finally gave out, so I sat there in the dirt and listened for snakes. I guess that’s why I hate the damned things today.”

She smiled at Dante, but he didn’t know if he returned it or not. He was frozen. Hurt because she had been hurt. Angry that someone could do that to a child.

He wanted to tear Gary Vandergriff limb from limb.

“I remember someone throwing open the door, and I didn’t care who it was. Didn’t care if it was the bad man. It didn’t matter as long as I got away from the snakes. But it was my daddy.” She didn’t look up, simply kept tracing circles in the dirt with her finger. “It was the only time I’ve ever seen my father cry.”

“It’s okay for you to cry too, princess.”

She shook her head and lay on the ground. Dante stretched out beside her. He blinked when the first drops of rain hit his face.

“Nope, not yet. I don’t have any tears to waste on Gary Vandergriff at the moment.” She wrinkled her nose and smiled. “Now, what was I saying? Oh, yeah. Nick and Maria sent me to all these shrinks who wanted me to talk about it. To draw it. To act it out. And I’d always notice how upset they would both get afterward, even though they couldn’t go in with me. I figured the doctors were telling them everything I said. So, I quit talking about it and drawing it and whatever. They’d say, ‘Nadia, tell me about the root cellar’ and I’d say, ‘What root cellar?’ or ‘Nadia, tell me about the snakes’ and I’d say, ‘What snakes?’ Then it was over. They told my parents I’d repressed it, and that was about the finest news they’d heard, I’m sure.”

She studied her fingernails and said, “The guy on the plane asked me why Vandergriff never gave up. Never moved on. I think it’s because he’s used to crushing anyone who opposes him. Vandergriff could hurt my father, but he couldn’t destroy him.” Nadia shrugged and raked a hand through her hair. “But anyway, I stayed home after that. My father brought in tutors. Ronnie says that’s why I’m such a social reject.”

“You are not a social reject.” Dante smiled and squeezed her fingers.

“Maybe not, but I’m different. I know that. I don’t have real friends, other than Ronnie and Waynie and the rest of my bodyguards. The people at college think I’m crazy and fun, but they don’t understand me. I listen to them complain about their parents and boyfriends and curfews and think, is this all you’ve got to worry about?”

She laughed, a sad laugh that made Dante want to hold her, chase away her insecurities.

“I’m glad you’re different,” he said. “Because I’m different too.”

Nadia chuckled and closed her eyes against the misting rain. Dante closed his too. “You are, aren’t you? That’s what I like about you, Dante. When I’m with you … I don’t feel weird.”

“Thanks … I think.”

“You know what I mean. It’s like I’ve finally found someone like me—”

“Kindred spirits,” he supplied.

The rain came harder, and Dante sensed Nadia stand.

“Kindred spirits,” she said. “Hey, I like that.”

Dante opened an eye to squint at her through the sheets of rain. Nadia was shimmying out of her blue jeans. She stood over him, wearing nothing but a skimpy black bra and panties.

“Let’s play in the rain,” she said with a grin.

N
adia tilted her head back, letting the rain beat the dust from her face and cool her parched skin. The looming thunderhead blotted out the sun, and the thick, sweet smell of sagebrush perfumed the air around them. The desert, so arid and dead moments before, now smelled earthy and alive.