“Your woman handles your financial affairs, too, senor?” The smoker’s voice, like his eyes, oozed contempt.
“Like I told you-not with my permission,” McCall said with what he hoped was unconcern, lifting a shoulder as he handed over the envelope. The smoker took it and like McCall before him, glanced inside.
“You-” That was as far as Cinnamon got before McCall got his hand clamped across her mouth.
“Shut up,” he growled, “for the love of God.” He was watching Smoker’s face, which had darkened ominously.
“Why are you trying my patience, senor?” McCall stared at him blankly. The smoker smacked the envelope down hard on the tabletop, making the cigar jump. “Where is the rest?”
The woman was squirming frantically against McCall’s side, causing his hand to shift just enough. He sucked in air as he felt the sharp sting of her teeth in the fleshy base of his thumb. Stifling shameful urges, he eased the pressure of his hand enough to allow her furious whisper, “Tell him he’ll get the rest when we meet his boss.”
McCall delivered that message in a carefully neutral voice. Mentally he was grinding his teeth and vowing that if he got out of this mess in one piece and without committing manslaughter, he was going to be faithful and true to his live and let live creed for the rest of his days.
The smoker picked up his cigar and mouthed it while he thought things over-while tension sang like locusts in McCall’s ears, and Cinnamon’s heart thumped against his side. For some reason that made McCall feel a little less ticked off at her. Maybe even a little bit soft-hearted. Damn his Sir Galahad tendencies all to hell.
Apparently satisfied, for the moment, at least, the smoker gave a little shrug and tucked the envelope full of cash inside his shirt. At the same time he pulled out another, smaller envelope, which he passed to McCall. It felt unpleasantly damp, and McCall had to stifle a fastidious urge to handle it with a thumb and forefinger.
“My boss will speak with you,” Smoker said in staccato Spanish, “but not here. Those are your instructions. Be at the designated location tomorrow evening. Come alone, just you two. If you do not…” He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at the woman huddled against McCall’s side. “Perhaps…I should take your wife with me, eh? To insure that you follow these instructions.”
The thug closest to Cinnamon grinned in anticipation, showing missing teeth. She didn’t make a sound, but McCall felt her shrinking. He jerked her around and thrust her behind him, beyond the reach of either thug. Without going through McCall first, anyway.
“That won’t be necessary,” he said easily, though his heart was pounding so hard he could hear it himself. “I will follow your instructions-I am not stupid.”
There was another tense pause, and then unexpectedly the smoker laughed. “Keep your wife, senor. I do not envy you. But take my advice, eh? A woman needs a firm hand.”
“Yeah,” said McCall, “I’ll consider it.” With a firm hand on his “wife’s” upper arm, he was already steering her toward the door of the cantina. After a nod from their boss, the two soldier bees stepped reluctantly aside to let them pass.
Outside the door he paused, cringing in the light, once again momentarily blinded, lungs in a state of shock from their first contact in a while with nontoxic air. The arm he still held had gone slack and quiescent-for the moment.
And then… “Thank you,” Cinnamon said, in a voice so clipped and prim he’d have found it comical, maybe, if he hadn’t been so damned angry.
“Thank you?” he muttered under his breath as he towed her across the sunbaked street. “She says, ‘Thank you’?” McCall couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this angry.
“You can let go of my arm now,” she breathed. She sounded winded, but he ignored that as well as the suggestion.
No longer the least bit quiescent, she struggled and tugged against his grip. “I said, let
“I will let go of you when I’m damn good and ready. Which is when and
She hissed at him like an angry cat. “What if they’re watching? They’ll think we’re quarreling.”
“Quarreling?” He didn’t know whether to laugh at her or yell. “We’re
She eyed him sideways while he pulled his crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. She kept rubbing sullenly at the marks his fingers had left on her upper arm, and since he didn’t much like looking at those marks, himself, McCall shifted his gaze away from her and fixed a narrow-eyed stare on the door of the cantina instead.
“Don’t you think we should be leaving?” she asked after a moment, sounding nervous as her gaze followed his.
He deliberately waited until he’d finished lighting up, taking his time about it, then glanced at her, eyebrows raised. “We?”
Behind the cinnamon sprinkle of freckles her skin looked flushed, though he conceded that might have been from the sun. “You wouldn’t just…leave me here.” Her voice was flat, certain.
Which naturally made him contrary. He inhaled and held it, counting pulsebeats, then blew smoke. “Don’t tempt me.”
“But…they could come out of there any minute. If they see this car-”
He pretended to be affronted. “What’s wrong with my car?”
“Well, it’s not a tourist’s car, that’s for sure,” she snapped in that crusty voice of hers. “My God, how old is this thing?”
“Ancient-probably about as old as I am,” McCall muttered, and then, bristling, “Hey-it got me here, didn’t it? Good thing for you. And it’ll get us both out of here. That’s what counts.” He planted the cigarette between his teeth and hauled out his keys.
But she was staring at the Beetle as if seeing it for the first time. “How, exactly?” she asked in a fascinated tone.
McCall didn’t think that required a reply. He threw her a withering look as he opened the door. Then for a while he stood in silence, considering the piles of paintings wedged into the VW’s every nook and cranny, including the front passenger seat.
Ah, hell. What was he going to do? Much as he’d like to have done so, he really couldn’t go off and leave the woman there. Not after what he’d just gone through to rescue her. Growling to himself, he manhandled the stack of canvasses out of the front seat and leaned them lovingly, one by one, against the weathered fence nearby. I’ll come back for you, he promised, giving the outermost one a pat.
Just then the dog, who’d been watching all this activity from the middle of the street while lethargically scratching himself, trotted over to the paintings and lifted his leg.
“Everybody’s an art critic,” McCall muttered, as Cinnamon clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle either laughter or dismay. Since he couldn’t be certain which, he just jerked his head toward the open door and snarled, “Get in.” Then he went around to the driver’s side without waiting for her.
She gave him a sideways look as she settled into the seat, which he ignored while he sent up a prayer and set about the complicated process of getting the VW’s engine fired up and running. When he had it settled down to a more or less reliable rattle, she cleared her throat and said in her Miss Prissy voice, “I really wish you wouldn’t smoke in here.”
McCall couldn’t believe it. Here, he’d just hauled the woman’s cute little behind out of the fire for the third time in two days, and she was telling him where he could smoke? He was beginning less and less to think about how cute those cinnamon freckles were.
He took the cigarette from his mouth and pointed past her toward the window with it clamped between his first two fingers. “Listen, sister, it’s my car. If you don’t like it, you can always call a cab.” Okay, he was being boorish- he did know how to be a courteous, unobtrusive smoker. But at the moment he was feeling a mite used and abused, and not in much of a mood to be accommodating.
Still, he felt a
