Page 29 of Prisoner of War
Chapter Seven
Minnie bit her lip to stop herself commenting as Calli moved her queen’s rook forward three squares. It was a bad move, but it was Calli’s game.
Minnie put her chin back on her forearm, which was resting across the back of the dining chair. She had pulled the chair up to the game board and reversed it, happy to let her mind drop into neutral as she watched the game.
From thearm of the big sofa in the corner, Carmen gave a breathy wheeze of laughter, quickly muffled. Minnie glanced at her. The woman was wearing a perfectly respectable pair of cut-offs. Her shirt was somewhat see-through, but she wore a bra beneath. For the last three days, Carmen had been behaving herself, but Minnie was still wary of her.
She returned her chin to her forearm. The scratches on herarm were already healing. Only her lip gave out the odd twinge now.
Minnie’s father winced and moved his queen. “Checkmate in four, I’m afraid,” he told Calli, looking at her over the top of his glasses.
“Three, actually,” Minnie said.
Her father stared at the board. “Yes, three,” he agreed.
Calli sighed and laid her king down on the board. “I guess I just didn’t learn it young enough. Orpractice enough.”
“I don’t get much practice either,” Carmen said, pushing her hands into the pockets of her cut-offs. “And I’ve only been playing a few years.”
Calli bit her lip. She was weighing something up. “Would you like to play a game, then?” she asked Carmen. It was a form of peace offering. Minnie wasn’t sure what had happened after the fight in the kitchen, but the air between Carmenand Calli had been strained since then and Minnie’s gut told her it wasn’t all because of the fight. Something else had happened afterward.
Carmen stood up, showing mild interest. “A game against you?”
“I wouldn’t play her,” Nick said from behind the file he was reading at the desk. “Not unless you like being humiliated twice in an afternoon. Carmen was Harvard’s grand champion four years ina row. She’s selling you a dummy.”
Carmen shoved her hands back into her pockets. “You ruined a perfectly acceptable bluff.”
“If you’d tried to bluff Josh, fair enough,” Nick answered. “But Calli? You just wanted the pleasure of annihilating her in two moves. Ego, pure and simple.”
“¡Mierda!” Carmen hissed.
Nick lifted his head and just looked at her.
After a few moments, Carmen looked away.
Josh, standing at the window, cleared his throat. “The beach sentries are coming up to the house,” he said mildly. “They’re carrying someone.”
* * * * *
The woman was in her early twenties but looked twenty years older. All her exposed skin was raw, red or blistered. The house doctor diagnosed severe dehydration, too. The damage had been delivered by three days in a one-man sailboat with nowater, relying on prevailing winds and currents to get her across the strait from Vistaria to Mexico.
It was the cuts and bruises around her face that aged her and they had not been delivered by the crossing. When she was examined in the tent that served as a hospital, they learned that the bruises covered most of her body and were concentrated around the abdominal area.
The doctor treated herand with great reluctance allowed Nick, Josh and General Blanco to question her, though he issued a stream of warnings, cautions and conditions.
When Nick tried to prevent Minnie, Calli and Carmen from entering the tent with them, Calli placed her hand on his arm. “We’re grown women, Nick. We can stand it. We deserve to know what she has to say as much as you.”
Minnie caught his glance at Carmen,who stood shoulder to shoulder with Calli, her arms crossed, her gaze steady. He sighed and reluctantly nodded his head. One day soon, she must to sit Calli down and find out what had happened between the three of them.
The woman lay on a stretcher. She had an intravenous drip in her arm and thick gel covering her burned skin. Her dark eyes were surrounded by flesh that looked as bruised as therest of her face and they were clouded with pain. She was alert and she recognized Nick immediately. “SeñorEscobedo, thank God,” she said in a strained voice. “I was hoping I would find you. I must warn you.”
Calli leaned toward Carmen. “‘Advertirle’? Does that mean warning? Who is she warning?”
Nick touched the woman’s hand gently. “You’re safe now,” he assured her.
“I must tell you whathe is doing to Vistaria. I must tell you and you must stop him.”
Carmen whispered back. “She’s warning him, asking him to go back to Vistaria and stop it.”
