Blue Moon (20 page)

“Now what?” Jeanne gasped as Gabe backed away from the flying glass.

Beyond him, Juan swayed forward and back, groping at his head. This was not going well at all.

“Now we run before he collects himself.” Gabe reached into his pocket and tossed two five-hundred peso notes on the waitress's tray. “Half for the bar and half for you and Big Juan. Promise,
querida
?”

As she nodded, the siren of the town's police truck shrieked outside, its red and blue lights flashing through the cantina's front windows.

“Out the back door,” Gabe decided aloud. Eventually they could talk their way through this, if everyone told the truth. But that was a risk Gabe was not willing to take, not with Jeanne along.

Seizing her by the wrist, Gabe circled the continuing fray and made straight past the restroom doors marked
Damas
and
Caballeros.
With luck, they could circle around and get to the van before too many people started talking.

It would have worked, too, if not for a very angry dog that held them at bay at the length of his chain in the back lot of the cantina.

“Lord, help us, what now?” Jeanne said, her voice choked with alarm. “Are we going to end up in jail?”

“If you'd stayed in the car—”

“If you'd not taken so long without letting me know—”

“
Señorita
!” someone called out from the shadows.

Hand tightening on Jeanne's wrist, Gabe squinted in the dark in the direction of the voice. This day had gone from bad to worse to sheer disaster. If she'd just given him a few more minutes, he'd have found out where Milland was.

“
Señorita
!”

Beside him, Jeanne collected her wits. “Tito?”

Gabe mulled the name over in his chair-mauled mind as the young man who'd snatched Jeanne's purse emerged from the shadows and into the wan light of the half-moon shining overhead.

“Calma
,” he snapped at the dog. To Gabe's surprise, the dog silenced and dropped at Tito's side, obedient. The young man motioned for them to follow him.
“Señorita,
this way.
Ahora!”

Jeanne hesitated. “Why can't we just tell the police what happened?”

“If you want to be held up by the bureaucracy for days,” Gabe warned her, “not to mention pay a hefty fine—”

“Tito know—how is it said?” the youth asked. “A little cut?”

“Shortcut?” Gabe ventured.

Tito nodded.
“Sí, un
shortcut.”

Gabe narrowed his eyes at the boy. “How do I know this is
ver-dad
. . . the truth?”

“Not for
you
,” Tito retorted, pointing to his scrapes. “You do this.”

Gabe chewed his tongue. The kid had scraped himself up trying to get away, but was still milking the situation for all the sympathy he could get.

Tito nodded at Jeanne. “But for her, only the truth.”

Jeanne looked over her shoulder at the cantina, where shouting and the scraping of furniture still dominated, clearly torn between running through the yards of the ramshackle backside of the town or facing yet another delay on her project. Or worse.

A church bazaar was probably the closest thing to a brawl she'd ever seen, Gabe realized. But the drunk had thrown the first punch.

“Señorita,”
Tito implored, fishing out the cross that she'd lectured him on earlier. “I help you because you help me. Because of Jesus.”

Gabe watched surprise turn to peace on her face. A hint of a smile played upon her mouth. The muscle in her arm relaxed in his grasp.

“Muchas gracias,
Tito. Show us the way.”

At her questioning glance, Gabe shrugged. “Looks like I'm taking a leap of faith this time.” Not that he had much choice.

If Jeanne had worn pantyhose, they'd have been in shreds by the time they reached Tito's home. They'd been through what looked like junkyards of rusted cars and overgrowth where the jungle tried to reclaim them. Dogs barked at them. Cats scattered. Finally, they reached a dark block and a thatched-roofed house with a tiny walled-in garden.

“Stay here,” Tito told them. “It is best that
mi madre y padre
know nothing of this. Papa sleeps early because he goes to the
ranchería
tomorrow before the sun is up to work.”

“Where are you going?” Gabe protested.

“To get my older brother.” Tito held out his hand. “But for that I need keys to the automobile.”

Gabe balked. “I don't think so.”

Jeanne put a hand on his arm. “He's helped us so far,” she reminded him.

After a long pause, Gabe handed over the van keys.

“Mi hermano
—my brother—and Tito will bring the car here, away from the cantina.” Tito gave them a sheepish grin. “I do not drive but for the bicycle. You stay.”

“We stay,” Jeanne said as Tito disappeared into the dark house. A moment later, he emerged with an older young man smoking a cigarette, its tip glowing in the dark.

“It will cost,” he said to Gabe.

“What doesn't?” Gabe reached in his pocket and peeled off a bill. Whatever denomination it was, it pleased Tito's brother.

After they left, Jeanne took a seat on a bench made from a plank and two concrete blocks set on end. She was tired, not so much from the exertion as from the emotional roller coaster of the day. With a long sigh, Gabe dropped down beside her.

“They could be going to get the police,” he said, staring at a moonlit dirt patch through beds of flowers. “And for what it's worth, I swear that all I did was grab the kid. His momentum and struggle to get away caused his injuries.”

The dejection in his voice clipped the last strand of peeve that Jeanne had held on to.

“I don't think they'll get the police, given Tito's aversion to them,” she assured him. Besides, despite everything, God kept coming to the rescue. Who was she not to do her part for Gabe? The part of her that wanted to strangle him waned by the heartbeat.

“And I believe you about his injuries,” she added with an involuntary shiver. When the sun went down, it took much of its heat with it. She rubbed her arms to warm them and chuckled softly. “I will say one thing for you, Captain: life is never dull when you're around.”

“I'll take that as a compliment. I'm getting desperate.”

“We both are.” Although Jeanne considered her desperation more about impatience for God to wind up this horrible evening than about despair that He'd abandoned them in a stranger's yard in the middle of the Yucatán.

At her confession, Gabe cupped her face gently in his hands. Jeanne couldn't see his eyes, but she felt them, probing, as if hungry for the feelings that rose in her chest of their own accord.

“I'd meant this to be a special day together, without the multitudes cheering or jeering us on.”

“Me too.” She meant it. There was a part of her that had looked forward to the day in spite of her misgivings. “Then, all of a sudden, everything went . . . so wrong.”

“Maybe not.”

Ever so slowly, Gabe drew her into his embrace. He was going to kiss her. She knew it. The heart that thudded against her breastbone knew it. The pulse scampering through her veins knew it. And even though warning bells sounded from all corners, she let him.

Sweet, warm, and heady, it had all the attributes of a good wine and more. A wine could not embrace from both within and without. A wine, once consumed, was gone forever, but Jeanne knew that she'd never forget this kiss. So complete, so involving, she had to take part in it. She had to let go of all that had happened between them to make room for the sensations running rampant in her body, now clasped tightly against Gabe's chest—a wall of hard flesh with a thundering heartbeat that called out to her own.

Never mind that they might wind up in jail. Never mind that Tito's parents slept just beyond the door separating the house from the moonlit patio. Never mind that, like too much wine, this might leave her full of regret in the morning. The morning would have to take care of itself. Moments like this came only once in a blue moon.

A chance like this came once in a blue moon, and if Gabe Avery thought he was going keep it to himself, he had another thought coming. Marshall Arnauld punched the number of his attorney in Mexico City into his cell phone. He'd given Dr. Madison a way out of her dilemma, and she'd turned him down, sweet, but cool.

But he had friends in high places who knew people in even higher ones. Now that he was certain there was something worth going into that reef for, he'd have his team all over it . . . with proof that he'd found it first, of course.

After ringing entirely too long for Arnauld's strained patience, the phone was answered by a maid at the attorney's home.

“This is Marshall Arnauld. I need to speak to
Señor
Gargon immediately.”

“But he is entertaining guests and asked not to be dis—”

“I don't care if the president of Mexico is there. Tell Gargon I want to speak to him, and now.”

For what Arnauld paid him, he owned the man. Arnauld knew exactly what needed to be done, and Gargon was the man to do it. Nervous, Arnauld lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the bed. The plan would be the same as before—grab the excavation rights before Genesis. Granted, there might be a few complications with Montoya's connections in CEDAM, but it was a first proof, first rights business. Even without first proof, everyone had a price down here. There was always someone higher up to bribe into seeing things his way, Arnauld mused.

He inhaled deeply on the cigarette, savoring it as though savoring the victory almost within his grasp. Since Dr. Madison wouldn't let him play, he'd see to it that she had no game at all.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The memory of last night's kiss played upon Jeanne's mind and body like a tune that one wants to be rid of and it simply will not go away. Throughout the day at Isla Codo, it had replayed with each sly wink Gabe gave her or with that bad-boy grin of his. Worse, Ann didn't give Jeanne the third degree, which only meant one thing: the effect Gabe was having on her was written all over her face.

By the day's end, the only thing that either Gabe or Jeanne had disclosed regarding their excursion to Akumal was its ultimate outcome. Tex Milland wasn't there. Gabe had been talking to Tex's partner at the cantina and was about to find out the explosive expert's whereabouts, when she'd walked in and the whole place went loco.

And then she'd gone
loco
in the garden in Gabe's arms.

They had irreconcilable differences. She'd told herself that over and over on the trip back to Punta Azul after Tito and his brother returned with the van. Yet when Gabe kissed her good night upon arriving home, she'd melted in his arms like butter in a hot pan . . . again. Between arguing with herself and praying, sleep had been intermittent at best. God had offered no suggestions, not even in the wee hours of the morning—His favorite time for waking Jeanne with some kind of epiphany when she was bothered.

Tired and a little disheartened over the loss of another day, Jeanne trudged down to the dock, while Gabe and Manolo washed down the
Fallen Angel
with a garden hose. Without their explosive expert on hand, Gabe had ventured into the mauve forest of a reef as far as he dared. With Manolo and Nick giving directions from a raised platform that had been rigged on the bow, the captain nosed the
Angel
through a maze of coral towers and walls until they'd reached a dead end. With the depth-sounding instruments registering panic, it had been nerve-wracking to say the least. At any moment, an unseen swipe from the sword-sharp reef could have cut into the ship.

At Jeanne's suggestion, they'd finally stopped and dived from the rubber raft into the section of the reef nearest the
Angel
's anchorage to find out what they could. Working shifts at two hours each, they had magged, probed, and taken photos of the reef, all efforts indicating that the main wreckage of
Luna Azul
was in the middle, where it couldn't be reached without some major changes in their plans.

Marshall Arnauld's offer of help if they needed it plagued Jeanne's mind every moment. He probably had a shallow-draft barge ready to go. But something told her that she'd have to choose between Arnauld and Gabe; and of the two, she knew and trusted the bird in her hand. At least, she thought she did.

“Excuse me, ma'am,” someone said from the bench in front of the bait shop.

Jeanne stopped, startled. She'd been so absorbed in thought that she'd hadn't seen the man who rose as if saddle-stiff and walked toward her. “That Gabe Avery's boat? Old Paco inside said he usually comes in about this time of day.”

“Yes—yes, it is,” Jeanne stammered.

He had a pleasant smile as wide as his wing tip mustache and light brown hair silvered at the temples. Wearing denim jeans, a tablecloth-red-checked shirt, and a worn leather vest with a watch chain dangling from its pocket, he looked as if he'd stepped off an ad for a dude ranch. The pointed toes of his cowboy boots stirred dust as he removed a ten-gallon hat and stopped in front of her.