LITMIR.BIZ

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step—at a time.”

      * * *

      When the shadows grew long, Nick and Jace decided it was time to hike to the road above the beach and head for Nando’s house. Claire and Nita walked with Lexi between them up the curving path since they couldn’t get around the cliff to the thin stretch of shore under Nando’s home.

      “Look at that red soil with all this tobacco,” Heck said.

      Lexi piped up. “I thought tobacco was bad for people, Mommy.”

      “Cuban cigars are famous, and a lot of people like them,” Claire said only. She was exhausted. She’d taken one of her earlier meds with a gulp of water from Nando’s canteen. She hoped she’d warded off the chance of a narcoleptic nightmare, but she feared falling asleep in the middle of a step or word. All she needed was a psychotic bad dream now when reality was so awful.

      “Hate to admit it, but this is real pretty land,” Jace said. “I see patches of tomatoes and what might be coffee besides the tobacco. I could use a good cup of java right now.”

      “It’s the Castros and their cronies who are bad,” Heck put in, “not Cuba or its people—most of them, I mean.”

      They found Nando’s house just where he’d said they would. It looked like a kind of stucco with a slightly slanted, orange tile roof, but many of the tiles were cracked or broken. Nando stood in the door watching for them. Beside him stood a short woman, her long white hair in the setting sun such a contrast to Nando’s salt-and-pepper look. His skin was much bronzer than hers.

      “Maybe his mother live here too,” Heck said. “Generations, the old ones, at least, stick together, even if he said his daughter lives in Havana, goes to university.”

      Though no other houses or people on the road were in sight on this western edge of the village, Nando quickly herded them inside. Despite the warm breeze and fingers of red setting sunlight stretching through the glassless windows and door before Nando closed it behind them, Claire shivered.

      Inside, standing in the small, central room with its table and few chairs, Nando introduced them—with Heck’s help—to Carlita, his wife, not his mother. Nando whispered something to Heck, who in turn told them in a hushed voice, “Her hair go white real fast when the sharks take their only son.”

      Claire bit her lower lip and blinked back tears. Lexi had been abducted once and that had been a near-death experience for her. As different as she was from this woman, Claire immediately sympathized with her. Their names even seemed an echo of each other. Yet they were so far from home—wherever that was now—and so far from safety.

      * * *

      Sleeping on a tile floor with only a piece of canvas under him didn’t bother Jace. In Iraq, he’d been through worse, even though pilots were usually housed in the best of the worst places. His stomach was full of fish, black beans and rice, though he sure could have used a beer or something stronger than some sugary drink called guarapo, made from sugarcane juice. The coffee, though, had been home-ground, hot and strong.

      With the other men, he’d sat outside after dark on the small back patio, hearing the sound of the sea. The patio was eroding from sea salt air and age, but just a few steps away served as a urinal for the men while the women used a chamber pot inside. Nita, who didn’t speak much but to Claire, Lexi and Carlita, had told them that it was Carlita’s dream to have a toilet with running water and a drinking spigot someday soon, just like the ones in the village that had better pipes. At least they had running water from a cistern in the small kitchen. But the stunning view out the back of the little place—wasn’t that worth something?

      Jace shifted onto his side. Bronco, lying next to him, looked like he slept the sleep of the dead. Except he snored. Nick had insisted on taking the first watch. He was sitting up with his back against the wall near the front door, which had no real lock on it, just a double-hooked latch. Hell, in a way, they all had their backs against the wall.

      Claire and Lexi slept in the second small room off this main one in the Hermez daughter’s single bed. Nita was in a sort of sagging cot in that same crowded room. Clarita had fussed over Lexi, washing her hair and combing it out. Then Claire and Nita had washed their hair in rainwater from a barrel out back. All that by lantern light, though they said the village had electricity between blackouts. No wonder Nando had considered two rafts to sell on the black market a gift from God.

      Jace just hoped when the urban daughter, Regina, called Gina, showed up for a weekend visit tomorrow she wouldn’t be a flaming commie or want to turn them in. How much were people brainwashed on this island, especially in Havana? In a wood-framed photo, Gina stood before a mural of Fidel and Che Guevara with the words Viva La Revolucion!

      Jace had noticed that Heck spent a lot of time staring at the picture as if he knew her. She was easy to look at. Glossy long dark hair and flashing brown eyes. Lithe, young, sexy in trendy clothes that would have done her well on Miami Beach. Her tight T-shirt read in English I’m gaga for Lady Gaga!!! She looked like she came from another planet compared to this fisherman’s house where she’d grown up. He’d seen no photo of the lost son Alfredito or of the family together.

      The wind had picked up outside, and Jace saw Nick stand and look out the front window through the open wooden shutters. It was pitch-black outside. Keeping quiet, Jace got up and stepped over the sleeping Bronco, who would be taking the early-morning watch after him and Heck.

      Jace whispered to Nick, “I’m awake. I’ll start now.”

      Nick nodded and fist-bumped Jace’s shoulder. He moved to take his spot on the floor. Jace thought that they could almost be friends, especially since Nick, WITSEC alias his brother Jack, wasn’t sleeping with Claire tonight.

      When Nick lay down with a deep sigh, Jace did some stretching to get his blood moving and his muscles awake. How did things keep spiraling down, getting worse? It was as if they were under some curse.

      With his back to the wall, he sat on the floor and became one with the night shadows.

      * * *

      On Saturday—Claire thought she was losing track of time and her sanity—Nando went fishing since he’d lost his catch when he’d brought them home the day before. Carlita walked to the village to meet the 11:00 a.m. bus their daughter was supposed to be on. See, Claire told herself, time did not stand still, even here where it seemed it should.

      “Let’s have a powwow before Carlita gets back with their daughter,” Nick said to their group, and except for Nita, who stayed inside with Lexi, they all went out on the patio. The village of Costa Blanca circled around the fishing dock about half a mile to the east, and they could see some of it from here.

      “This girl Gina is obviously way different from her parents,” Nick began. Considering how intent and edgy everyone looked, he felt like he was making a plea in a courtroom. “Who knows what they indoctrinate students with at the university? Nando told Heck that Gina is studying to be a doctor, so she’s probably bright and as modern as it gets around here, maybe a dedicated Communist. No doubt ambitious, though Nando said doctors earn minimal wages.”

      Claire put in, “But wanting to go through all it takes to be a doctor for little money makes me think she could also want to help people. She sounds altruistic or at least a people person.”

      “Good point, forensic psychologist,” Nick said with a nod and a smile. “I’m remembering why I hired you to figure people out for me, even ones who are gone from this earth. I need—and value—all of your opinions, because we’re still flying blind here.”

      “Flying’s my gig,” Jace said. “Like you guys said, we’ve got to get to the internet somehow, so we can send out an SOS for help. And fast, before someone figures out we don’t belong and calls in the—whatever they call them here. Man, I’m starting to feel we’re on an alien planet, like in that old TV show Star Trek.”

      “Just hope it doesn’t turn into Star Wars,” Nick said.

      * * *

      Claire

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