The Girl with the Golden Gun

She shut her eyes tightly like a child forced to take medicine she feared would taste worse than poison.

Seconds ticked by as she waited for him to kiss her.

Instead of doing so he pushed her roughly away.

“I am not a snake,” he yelled, with the pain of one mortally wounded. “Who do you think you are? Who are you, Angelita? This woman who control me? Me, Tavio Morales? A princess?”

“I am Angelita.”

“Who helped you today?”

The silence was so vast between them she could almost hear the desert wind through the walls again.

He circled her throat with his hands. His touch was gentle. Even so, she sensed his deadly strength.

“Nobody…nobody…. I swear it!”

His fingers tightened. “You lie. I will find out with or without your help. If you set up my brother, I will kill you myself.”

Letting her go, he picked up a chair and hurled it. Then he stomped across the broken bits of the chair and left her room.

When his door banged, she sank back onto her bed and lay under her sheets, feeling limp and helpless, and cold, so cold, even though it was a hot night.

Too wired up to even close her eyes, she lay there, staring at the ceiling for hours.

She had to get out of here.

Finally she slipped into a fretful sleep. At first she dreamed of a little girl with brilliant blue eyes and down-soft black hair. The child was holding a rusty spade and digging in the soft, tilled flower bed in the shade near the big house.

Mia tossed her head back and forth and cried out for Shanghai. Suddenly he lay beside her. They were in Vegas. She neither touched nor kissed him even though she ached because she was waiting to see if even once, he’d make the first move. Finally he bent his dark head, and his lips caught hers at just the right angle.

The heat of his mouth made her sigh in surrender and say his name aloud again.

“You shouldn’t have come here. We can’t be together—not ever,” he said. But he kissed her again, and that one kiss turned his words into lies and was everything she’d ever wanted from him and way more.

In her dream she relived how he’d made love to her all night, so tenderly, so sweetly, and so passionately. How he’d given her countless climaxes, and still she’d begged for more.

He’d been tough loving, tender—and sexy. Oh, so sexy.

But he’d rejected her the next morning as if their night together had been nothing.

Next she was on Tavio’s yacht shivering, and Tavio was wrapping her freezing body in blankets and telling her in Spanish that she would be all right.

Her dream changed. She was sleepwalking on Tavio’s yacht. Only was it Tavio’s? She’d found pictures of a blond family buried in a drawer in the stateroom Tavio had locked her in.

In her dream her stateroom door was unlocked, and she wandered out onto the deck and made her way shakily to the stern where she saw a thick chain attached to a huge cleat. An object bobbed that was being dragged in the white frothy wake behind the boat.

The moon was full and the transom light bright. As she leaned over the railing and stared at the thing dancing on the thick chain in the heavy seas behind the boat, trying to make sense of it, she suddenly realized it was the skeleton of a human being, and there was still some flesh on the torso.

Suddenly the skeleton turned into a giant rat and hopped onto the boat. She began to scream and scream for Shanghai to save her.

But Shanghai didn’t come. When she turned, the monster chased her straight into Octavio’s arms.

As always when she had this nightmare, she woke up screaming. And as too often was the case, Tavio was there, holding her.

“It’s all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said gently, pressing her against him as he sat beside her on her bed.

He was so hot, he felt like he had a fever. Even though she was still shaking, she quickly pushed away from him. Gathering the sheets to her neck, she shrank against the immense headboard.

“I’m all right. Please, just go.”

He hesitated longer than he usually did, and she knew he was remembering the lustful rage he’d been in earlier. “I still want you. No matter what you’ve done.”

“And all I want is for you to let me go.”

“Who is this Shanghai?” he growled. “Did he love you even half as much as I do?”

His question made her eyes burn.

His white smile flashed across the darkness. “No?”

Sensing she had to tell him something, she said, “He’s dead.”

“If you lie and I ever meet him, I kill him, Angelita. Maybe I kill you, too, if you don’t choose me.”

“Please, just let me go to my country. This isn’t going to work. I don’t understand your life. You could never understand mine, either. You can’t make people love you. Believe me, I know!”

“I throw my wife away for you. Already my men are laughing at me because of you. You try to run away. Some traitor help you. Maybe an informant. They say I am weak because of a woman. Me? Tavio! I have to be strong, or they will cut me to pieces and throw me to the dogs. Every day this Terence Collins, he write more bad things about me, and Federico, he publish these lies because he hate me. The DEA wants me. They put pressure on the authorities here. Do you understand? Intiende? They demand drug busts like tonight. I think Collins and Federico cause Marco to die. And maybe you know who tell them these things about me. Maybe they hate me so much they help you.”

“No. I…”

“In the desert, the weak die. I never, not in all my life, have feelings for anyone like I have for you. My wife, she do nice things for me. She nice woman. But I do not love her. Is different with you. Is fate. You are strong woman. I am strong man. I would make you my queen.”

“You’re a drug lord.”

“If I wasn’t, maybe then…you could like me a little?”

“But you are. You torture people.”

“So do the police.”

“Collins says you kill people. Many people.”

“Bad people. Children look up to me. I am a hero.”

“Maybe that’s what I hate the most.” She stared at the shadowy walls. “I hate this life and everything it means. Poor people are forced into this business.” She was thinking of Julio. “I hate the power you have over me…to keep me here. Of course, I try to run away.”

“I do not rape you.”

“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?

Three

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.

His business had grown, sí, and soon he’d had to fight off competitors. To expand he’d entered into an ever-changing, complex relationship trafficking cocaine for the Colombians. In time he’d been forced to kill many people to maintain control of what was his. He did not enjoy killing, but it was part of doing business.

Too late, he’d learned what a vicious, deadly game he was in. When he killed, he made more enemies, and he’d had to become tougher to survive. His best men, like Chito, were those he could trust the least because they wanted to take over. The rules of his business were as simple as those the desert animals lived by. Win—or lose. Live—or die. Kill—or be killed. When you lived like that long enough, it changed you.

When he’d been young, he’d thought he’d retire with a big ranch in northern Mexico. He was now rich enough to retire, richer than he’d ever dreamed of being. But if he ever quit he would have to leave Mexico. Then many of the people he protected would die.

So what? The little people always suffered in Mexico. But as long as he was alive, certain people in the business would be nervous. Hit men would try to track him down and kill him. So, he stayed, and to stay, he had to be strong.

He hadn’t thought of leaving the business for a long time. Not until Angelita. She made him think of Paris or London or maybe a Caribbean island or South America. Never her country, America, because he was a wanted man there.

He still desired her, more than ever, even after tonight when she’d turned him away when he’d been crazed with anger and fear and desire. Even during saner periods, when he was alone, his blood would pulse as he thought of her in one of those thin nightgowns he’d bought her that had cost enough to feed a family of peasants for a year.

How much longer could he play this waiting game when his men were taking bets on how many nights it would take him?

Angelita was afraid of him. Always before he’d liked the edge fear lent to sex. It was like a spice to make a dish hotter. But not with her. He did not want her afraid. She was an intelligent creature of light and love, and he wanted her to stay that way.

He remembered going into his white father’s mansion as a small, impressionable boy. His father’s white wife had seemed like a queen.

Tavio wanted to know Angelita and for her to know the real him. He wanted her acceptance and her trust, and he had no idea why these things mattered or why she mattered. They just did. He did not want to believe she’d had anything to do with Marco’s death.

Disgusted with these thoughts, he ripped off an ostrich-skin boot and flung it on the ground. Then he yanked off his other boot. Next he whipped his leather belt out of the loops. Last of all he took off his thick gold Rolex. Without bothering to remove his jeans or shirt, he dove into the icy water and swam to the bottom to where the caves began, willing to brave the freezing spring in an attempt to kill the molten desire that was devouring him.

His head broke the surface again, and he stared at her window, which was dark now. He had never loved anybody before. He knew that now. Not enough to sacrifice everything for them. He’d admired his father. He’d longed to love him and be loved by him like little Federico had been loved, but it hadn’t happened. No matter how hard Tavio had tried, in the end his father had refused to claim him as his son. When his father had disowned him in favor of Federico, who was weak and spineless, walls had grown around his heart. He’d never intended to let anyone make him feel that needy again.

He stared at his mansion. He had so much. How could not having this one woman care about him matter?

He loved his golden gun that had been a gift from a former president and his machine guns. He loved his prized Polish-Arabians. He loved his rancho and his trucks. He loved his planes. He loved the power he had over other men. He loved the way their eyes glazed over with fear when he got a certain edge in his voice. He had loved his little brother, too.

So many things made him feel big and powerful as he had not felt when he’d been the bastard son of a rich man. He loved the pale-brown desert and the barren red mountains.

He liked animals, even Angelita’s good-for-nothing, scrawny black cat. But other than Marco and his own sons, he had never loved people much.

Who was she, this woman who so possessed him? She kept her secrets. Never before had he felt such a visceral link with another human being. He thought that lack was what made him strong. Now he thought he’d been a dead man all his life.

Until Angelita he had been going through the motions of living. When he had pulled her out of the gulf and she’d been so white and cold in his bed, whimpering and shivering as she’d slept for long hours in his arms, a tenderness he’d never known before had taken possession of his heart. Even when she’d been weak and defenseless, he’d sensed her strength and fierce independence. When she’d opened her eyes and looked into his, she said, “Shanghai,” and had smiled with an infinite yearning that had melted his heart. Then she’d snuggled closer and clung to him, repeating that name again and again.

He had wanted to be that man. He wanted her to say his name and look at him that tenderly.

Estela, his wife, was an easy woman, who got what she wanted through sexual manipulation and feminine wiles. She did as she was told. It had been pleasant living with her until he’d brought Angelita home. Estela had never minded his other girlfriends. She’d understood he was simply a man. But from the first when she’d seen how he was with Angelita, she’d gone crazy with jealousy. Even now she screamed at him on the telephone if he called his sons. He felt bad to cause her so much pain, but he couldn’t help himself.

Angelita was fate.

The sound of boots stomping across the hardpacked dirt broke into his thoughts. When he saw it was Chito, he swam for his gun. They hadn’t seen or spoken to each other since their fight and the bust, and he didn’t trust him.

“I’m sorry about Marco and the plane and the cargo,” Chito said. Then he threw a bunch of newspapers and a videotape onto the ground.

“What are those?”

“More articles written by that pendejo, Terence Collins. And a videotape.” Chito lit a cigarette. “She throw you out, no? She’s the reason you’re swimming in a cold pool at night, eh?”

“Shut up. What’s Collins up to?”

“Take her. Force her. Get it over with. Break her, like you would a horse. Find out what she knows. If she had a hand in Marco’s death, you must kill her, so the men will respect you again.”

“She had nothing to do with Marco!” Tavio wished he knew that for sure. “I have heard there are new ways of breaking horses. Gentler ways.”

“You scare me. Don’t go soft. If we get soft, we die. Don’t let her change you.”

Live—or die. Kill—or be killed.

“I came looking for you for another reason,” Chito said. “There’s been a second drug bust on a ranch north of El Paso. We lost Paulo’s plane, too—the crew, the pilot and the load.”

Tavio let out a stream of obscenities.

“Juan just flew in with these latest newspapers from Ciudad Juarez. Collins wrote an exposé on you and some of the politicos we pay for protection. He aired this videotape on a local news show in El Paso. There’s some footage of you with Garza in Colombia. And some of you and me paying off Lopez in Chihuahua City. Your brother ran it in Ciudad Juarez on his television station.”

“Collins got all that on film?”

Chito nodded grimly. “Something big is going on. Lopez is under house arrest. I called Comandante Gonzales to see what he knows, and he wouldn’t take my calls. Somebody’s feeding the DEA and Collins a hell of a lot of information.”

Tavio frowned. Federico had always been jealous of him. Was he in the middle of this? “But who is selling me out?”

“Any one of the bastards. If the price is right.…We must find this traitor and kill him. If you have to kill ten men to get the rotten manzanas, you must do it.”

Kill—or be killed.

Tavio was silent for a long time.

“Maybe we don’t have to kill so many. Maybe just one or two—to set an example.”

“But—”

“You’re right.”

“Who do we go after first?”

“Angelita knows who helped her. Rape her. Threaten to cut her. Make her tell you!”

“Bastardo, did you hide her in that plane?” Tavio demanded, knowing the answer.

Enough pesos would buy almost anything. In the end he had not had to rape Angelita to find out who’d hidden her. He’d simply put up a reward for the information. Three peasants had come forward with different versions of the same story.

Julio’s thin form shook with fear as he stumbled ahead of Tavio through the brush-studded sand hills at the foot of the red mountains.

“Tell me, and I’ll spare your life.”

The boy said nothing.

“Did she let you fuck her?”

The boy ran faster. “No! I never have nothing to do with her.”

“Who pays you? How does he contact you?”

The boy fell on his knees, mumbling incoherently.

“Get up!”

When they were far enough from the compound so no one could see what he was about, Tavio stopped and raised his golden gun, taking careful aim at the middle of Julio’s thin back.

Not wanting the details of the boy’s death to get back to his father, Tavio slowly lowered his gun. The kid was too young. His father was a hardworking peasant and devoted to Tavio. The boy hadn’t wanted to work for Tavio, but his father, whose face and body were wrinkled and worn beyond his years, had forced him because the money was good and there were so many mouths to feed. Tavio hated himself for not having the balls to shoot the kid in the back.