but Maria. He stared deep into her eyes, felt her sweat mingled with his, felt her heart beat racing and rippling through her to him, tingling his skin and his soul. They were trapped and taped to each other as one, and he felt all the love he had to give flowing through him, passing into her.
She picked his arm up again and he shook his head. She didn’t have to slap him anymore to get his attention. He was awake now and he was thinking. He looked past her to the clock on the nightstand beyond. Two-thirty, two-and-a-half hours to prevent an assassination, but first he had to get free.
Then he remembered something he thought about as he fell back into unconsciousness He knew how to get free. The phone. All he had to do was get a message to the operator and help would come running, but first he had to get the message to Maria. They had to work as one or they’d never get free.
“ Phone,” he tried to say through the tape, but it came out as ome. “Ome, ome,” he repeated.
She shook her head, indicating no. She didn’t understand.
“ Hone,” he said, empathizing the H part of the sound.
She shook her head and he raised his and looked beyond her, at the nightstand, the clock and the phone. Then he looked back into her eyes, then beyond her, then back into her eyes, then beyond her again. She blinked and scrunched up her nose. She understood, he wanted her to see something, to see what he saw and then her eyes lit up like a kid’s in school and he knew she got it.
“ Phone,” she said and he heard her distinctly through the tape. He wondered how come she could talk better than him and then he saw it. The tape over her mouth wasn’t on very well. He stared at it. She saw the direction of his eyes and blinked several times letting him know she understood.
She moved her head forward and he ran the side of his face against the tape, pulling it down with his chin and his cheek. One sweep of his face and the tape started to peel away, two and it gave way some more, three and it was hanging off her mouth and she could talk.
“ Help,” she screamed. Help us.” Her voice was loud and full of desperation and it was the sweetest thing he’d ever heard. “Hurry, help us, help us,” she screamed again.
“ It’s going to be okay,” she said to him. “Someone must have heard me. We’ll be free soon.”
He blinked at her.
“ They’re going to kill the prime minister at exactly five o’clock.”
He blinked at her. He remembered her husband saying that.
“ Help,” she screamed out again, but nobody came.
“ Ome,” he hummed through the tape.
“ Yes, the phone,” she said. She was breathing hard, panting heavy, like she’d just finished a race. “Let’s roll toward it and see if we can’t knock it off the hook. Ready, now,” she said, and he rolled with her toward the right side of the king-sized bed.
He was on the bottom now and she stretched her neck, trying to reach the telephone. Then she stopped. “It’s unplugged,” she said, staring at the wire dangling over the nightstand.
He sighed, breathing out through his nose. Any minute his bladder was going to cut loose and he didn’t want to do that.
“ My husband’s gone off the deep end,” she said. “I think he’s going to kill us.”
Broxton nodded. He wasn’t surprised.
“ The tape on your mouth isn’t like it was on mine. It goes all the way around, two or three times. It looks tight, that’s why I couldn’t understand you, but I think I can get it off. Hold still.”
He felt her teeth on his cheek as she bit into the tape that was wrapped around his neck. After a few attempts she had a firm grip and he winced as she worked the tape downward. It was tightly wrapped, but it stretched and he felt it pull away from his mouth. Then it was down past his upper lip and he drew in a great gulp of air. She wasn’t able to get it past his chin, but his mouth was halfway uncovered and he could talk.
“ Thanks,” he said, his voice a raspy whisper.
“ Now what?” she said. She was on top of him and they were both looking at the phone they couldn’t use. He felt her flex her fingers and then she squeezed his right hand with her left.
“ It wasn’t a dream?” he said.
“ No, it wasn’t,” she said.
“ I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“ You were drugged.”
“ He didn’t tape our hands. If we had something sharp we could cut our way free.”
“ Like a broken glass,” she said. They were both looking at the nightstand and the glass sitting next to the phone. The same glass that not so long ago washed the pills down Maria’s throat.
Broxton ran his tongue over his parched lips as he looked at the little bit of water left in it. “Think we can reach it?”
“ If we turn sideways, maybe,” she said.
“ Yeah,” he said, eyes locked on the water in the glass.
“ Which way?”
“ Feet over the side of the bed, I think.”
“ Okay,” she said, and together they squiggled around so that they were on their sides and then they gradually slid, like two slippery snakes, over the side of the bed until they were both struggling to keep their legs dangling in the air and themselves from falling over.
“ You roll on top,” she said, and once he was over he stretched his arm, bringing hers along with it, but he was inches short.
“ We have to get closer,” he said.
“ All right,” she said, and they slipped and scooted sideways until Broxton was able to grab the glass with two of his fingers.
“ Got it,” he said, and he clamped his fingers together and raised it up.
And dropped it.
“ Shit,” he said. The glass landed and rolled onto the carpeted floor.
“ Over we go,” she said, and without giving him a chance to think she rolled and twisted, jerking him along with her, and then he was falling.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dani surveyed the site. The street below was teeming with the usual early noon crowd. People were pouring out of the buildings, grabbing an early lunch. Others were hunting for that hard to find parking space, still others were rushing to the stores for some quick shopping or doing a myriad other things that make an active city like Port of Spain bustle even in the heat of the day.
And the city wouldn’t sleep until long after the sun went down. Bars, restaurants, jazz clubs, rock clubs, calypso clubs, whorehouses, movie theaters and fast food joints all stayed open late to service the throng that entertained itself along the Brian Lara Promenade.
Brian Lara. Dani smiled at the thought of the new name for the Promenade, a wide walking park that could be counted on to be full of people out walking their dogs or themselves, greeting their friends, playing chess or checkers, or just people watching from the benches, all out enjoying the evening and the night. Brian Lara was Trinidadian and arguably the best cricket player in the game today. She loved it that the Promenade was named after him. She loved it because George hated it. Ten years ago he was the best, and today he was the attorney general and the most popular politician in Trinidad. He’d had his friends argue that the Promenade should bear his name, but popular as he was, he was yesterday’s hero. Brian Lara was today’s.
Looking down from her perch atop the Caribbean Bank Building, she held her arms out straight, palms wide, facing downward, thumbs extended toward themselves, the way a movie director might frame a scene. She imagined she was holding the rifle. She’d only get one shot, but it’s all she’d need. Ramsingh would be in her sights at five o’clock, by five-oh-one he’d be dead.
She’d get him before he said a word about the new treaty with the United States, before he had a chance to praise the efforts of the DEA in Trinidad, and before he spoke about the drug-fighting efforts of the Trinidadian
