Love On the Run Read online

  Fred had barely hung up the phone when another call came through, this one from London. “One of our agents guarding the Landines called from Portugal,” he was told. “The cabin was attacked. The Landines and the boy aren’t there, and he’s not sure what happened to them—he was unconscious for a while. TC Brohaugh is there, however, but he’s dead. That’s all we know.”

  He broke the connection, feeling stunned. With Brohaugh dead and Donelli in a plane over the Atlantic, who was responsible for the attack on Jared and Cassi? The fact that Donelli was headed to Portugal was not in his favor. Obviously, the mob boss knew more than he had let on. But where did the woman calling herself Laranda fit into all this? And where was Brooke?

  Fred thought for a long moment and then called Justin into his office. “I’m turning this investigation over to you.”

  “What?” Justin blinked several times in amazement.

  “You heard me. It’s about time I take a vacation like those up the line have been ordering me to do for the past five years. I’m entitled. And you’re more than able to take care of this case.”

  A sudden understanding smile played on Justin’s lips. “I take it you’ll be flying to your destination?”

  “You got it.”

  “You’ll keep in touch?”

  “Of course. But that means I’ll need one of those global satellite telephones.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” Justin typed something into the new mini hand computer he now carried in his pocket, the information kept private by a series of key words. Never again would someone steal his notes. “So I guess I know where you’re headed.”

  Fred smiled grimly. “I’ve always wanted to visit Portugal. Now, what kind of permits do I need to take my gun? Maybe that new contraption you’re carrying in your pocket can tell me.”

  * * *

  IN THE SANTOS CABIN, CASSI felt warm and comfortable. But Sampson’s color was worse and his breathing more difficult. “Look, we really should get him to a doctor,” she said to Marisa.

  “No doctor here. In Alvito you will find one. But not until the morning.”

  Cassi glanced at Jared in frustration. It was now in the early hours of Saturday morning. A few more hours, and it might be too late.

  “I think we should try to wake him again,” Jared said. “To get his circulation going. And after he wakes, liquids should help get that drug out of his system faster.”

  Marisa and José watched with interest as they tried unsuccessfully to wake Sampson. Finally Marisa asked, “Why no let him sleep?”

  Cassi hesitated a moment. “Some bad men chasing us gave him a drug. It made him sleep. We are afraid he won’t ever wake up.”

  Marisa translated for her father, who nodded in understanding and said something in reply. For the first time, Cassi noticed what a beautiful-sounding language Portuguese was—like a fluid melody.

  “My father say he has something to help,” Marisa said.

  José went to a corner of the cabin and took a black bottle with a thin neck from a shelf. He handed it to Cassi with a soup spoon and motioned for her to give it to Sampson.

  Cassi stared at it, realizing the thick bottle was brown, not black, but the liquid inside was so dark that it made the bottle black except for the half-inch at the top where no liquid reached. “Jared, I don’t know about this.”

  “What is it?” Jared asked Marisa.

  “My father make it. It is called anti—” She broke off and went to the shelf where a few schoolbooks were stacked. There, she searched in a small Portuguese-English dictionary. “Plague. Do you say that way?” She showed Jared the word.

  “Yes, plague.”

  “It is anti-plague formula. It cures almost any illness.”

  “This drug was injected into him,” Cassi said.

  Marisa spoke again to her father, who was adding wood to the fire. “He say it will help.”

  Cassi shook the bottle. Could it really help? Or would she be endangering Sampson even more? She met Jared’s eyes. “I’m not sure we should risk it. Maybe we should say a prayer.” She’d been praying all along, but maybe one more would bring the answer she craved.

  They prayed together aloud, but Cassi could hear the worry in Jared’s voice.

  José nodded his approval. “He say it good for you to pray to God,” Marisa said. “But now you also give medicine. It is good to use herbs of the earth that God has gave us.”

  Cassi continued to hesitate, but Sampson seemed worse every second. She slowly uncapped the anti-plague formula and sniffed. The smell made her eyes water and her stomach want to retch. She handed it to Jared. “What do you think?”

  He poured a tiny bit on his finger and tasted it. “Ugh!” he said with a grimace. “That’s the most terrible stuff I’ve ever tasted!” He glanced at Sampson. “But I don’t know that we have any other choice. He doesn’t look good.”

  Cassi knew José’s homemade remedy might well harm Sampson, but there was nothing else they could do. They were miles from help, and she was almost certain they wouldn’t get him to a doctor in time. “How much do I give him?”

  “Two of the spoons,” said Marisa after conferring with her father.

  “I’ll hold him.” Jared sat on the floor where Sampson lay on a blanket. He lifted the boy’s head. “Pour it slowly.”

  “Yeah, I don’t want to drown him.” Cassi measured the foul-smelling liquid and lowered it to Sampson’s lips. She let a thin stream flow into his mouth. He immediately choked, then swallowed convulsively. His head jerked to the side, checked only by Jared’s hand. In the same manner, Cassi gave him the rest of the dose. His eyelids fluttered as though in silent protest.

  “Well, that’s it,” Cassi said. “Now what?”

  “We wait.” Marisa stood near Cassi’s shoulder. She had a dented metal bucket in her hands, and Cassi wondered what she planned to do with it.

  For an hour they kept vigil over Sampson. There was no change in his condition. Then all at once, his body twisted and writhed. Marisa knelt beside him and held the bucket near, just in time for Sampson to begin to vomit repeatedly. Jared held the boy’s head, while Cassi tried to keep his twisting body from overturning the bucket. She was unsure if Sampson was fully aware, but his eyes had opened a few times. Was this a good sign?

  At last Sampson lay still, his head on Jared’s knee. His eyes opened weakly. “Am I dying?” he asked. “I feel awful.”

  Tears filled Cassi eyes. “No. At least I don’t think so.”

  Sampson heaved again twice more, then lay back and shut his eyes. His breathing was steady and strong.

  “That was some medicine,” Jared said.

  Cassi looked at José, who sat in a large chair with his arms folded across his large chest. He smiled and said something in Portuguese. “My father say,” began Marisa, “that the medicine always works. You get so sick you want to die, but then you get better.”

  Sampson was asleep again, but his color was good and his breathing continued regularly. Cassi felt sure that José’s medicine had helped save his life. Cassi picked up the bottle of black herbs. “We should get the recipe. I’ll bet we’d make a million or two.”

  Jared smiled. “I don’t think Americans would get past the taste. Besides, we already have a million or two.”

  Cassi kept forgetting that Linden had left her the gallery, not to mention the newly-bought mansion where he had been shot. They were selling the mansion because of the unpleasant memories, but the gallery that carried Linden’s name they would keep for as long as they lived. Ironically, Cassi had once dreamed of owning her own gallery and also the security money could give her, but now she would much rather have her friend alive. She gripped Jared’s hand hard. He and Sampson were most important to her now. She couldn’t lose them.

  They sat by Sampson’s makeshift bed until the early morning light streamed through the curtained window. Cassi judged it to be near five in the morning. Marisa and José came out of the bedroom where they had slep
t briefly, and Marisa began to make breakfast. José picked up a bucket by the door and left the cabin, presumably for water. Soon, a delicious smell filled the air.

  Sampson’s eyes opened and groaned. “What happened? I had a dream that someone was twisting my insides.”

  “How do you feel now?”

  “Pretty hungry.” Then his eyes grew haunted. “What happened last night?”

  They told him briefly. “I guess it’s lucky I was wearing a life jacket,” he said. The pain that had been almost constant in his eyes since his father’s death was back in full devastating force.

  “We’re hoping to get these people to take us into town,” Cassi said. “Hopefully soon, since I’m afraid someone will be watching for us. But I don’t know how willing they’re going to be. They’ve already done so much, and we don’t have any money to pay them. My purse is back at the cabin, and Jared’s lost his wallet.”

  Sampson felt for his back pocket. It took him a moment to work it out of his still damp jeans, but he held up his wallet, wet but intact. “We’ve got plenty of cash and my credit cards.”

  Cassi nearly laughed. “I forgot all about your wallet.”

  “I assumed it was lost like mine,” Jared said. “After all we’ve been through. Now maybe we can offer something to our host, then find a hotel or something to hide out in until the police arrive.”

  Marisa came from the stove, where she watched the food far more adeptly than any American eleven-year-old Cassi had known. In fact, better than Cassi—and she was twenty-nine.

  “Finally you wake,” Marisa said, tossing her long dark hair behind her with a shake of her head.

  Sampson stared. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Marisa. It is nice to know you. I like America. Tell me about it.” Her dark eyes flashed in anticipation.

  Cassi and Jared withdrew slightly and watched the young people interact. Sampson, for all his education and wealth, was at a considerable disadvantage to the gregarious Marisa. For the moment, at least, he seemed to forget his pain.

  “I think he likes her,” Jared said.

  “She’s a beautiful girl.”

  “Just like another dark-haired beauty I know.”

  Cassi grimaced and brought a hand to her hair. A few weeks ago her hair had been down past the middle of her back, but she had cut it as part of a disguise when she had been running from Big Tommy’s thugs. She missed the hair now, and knew Jared was fascinated by the tight, natural curls. But it would grow back. Already it had grown an inch.

  Jared’s face came closer to Cassi’s, as though he wanted a kiss, but an odd sound coming from Sampson drew their attention. “What? You know how to speak Portuguese?” Cassi asked.

  He looked up at her from the blanket where he sat on the floor with Marisa. “No, not really. But I speak Spanish, and a lot of Portuguese words are the same, except with a different accent and some of those French nasal sounds thrown in. The sentences are said the same way—kind of backwards from English. It’s easy.”

  “I give him my book old,” Marisa said.

  “I gave him my old book,” Sampson corrected. Then he said something in Portuguese and Marisa corrected him. They laughed.

  “I better check the food.” Marisa rose gracefully to her feet just as her father rushed into the cabin. He spoke in rapid Portuguese, and the color drained from Marisa’s face. “Quick,” she said to them urgently. “Men are coming. My father say they look for you. You must hide.”

  They followed Marisa into the bedroom, where she removed a carpet from the bare wood floor. Under it was a trap door. “Hurry,” she said. “My father will try to make them leave.”

  Jared descended the rickety ladder first, followed by Cassi and an unsteady Sampson. Before Sampson had reached the rock floor, utter darkness fell over them.

  “Where are we?” Sampson asked in a whisper.

  Cassi felt for his shoulder. “From what I saw, it looked like a cellar.”

  “Under the house?”

  “What better way to have it handy and protected?” Cassi said. “My parents have some neighbors who made a cellar under their shed out in their backyard by their garden. In a pinch, I bet they could hide in theirs, too.”

  Jared sniffed the stale air. “I bet they have stuff like dried meats and potatoes here. They probably have a garden out back and raise a lot of their own food. And this is the way they preserve it.”

  Sampson moved away from Cassi’s hand as if intending to search the small cellar. “It might be better if we don’t move around too much,” Jared told him. “If they come inside the cabin, they may hear us.”

  “I just think we ought to move out of the way of the trap door,” Sampson said. “That way if they search here, they won’t see us right off. There’s room for all of us over here behind the ladder, if we squeeze.”

  “Seven years bad luck,” Cassi muttered. “It’s a good thing I’m not superstitious.”

  Sampson snorted. “Like our luck could get any worse.”

  She wanted to remind him that they were still alive, but with all he’d lost, she doubted he would see that as a blessing. Maybe if they got out of this mess, she could make him understand that there could be happiness after such loss.

  They huddled together under the ladder. Some strands of light did make their way inside the cellar, and gradually their eyes became accustomed to the dimness. Cassi could make out vague shapes of vegetables and dried meat. Above them, everything was still. Then they heard footsteps, too heavy for Marisa’s and too many for José’s. They froze, awaiting discovery. Sampson’s hand found hers, and Cassi blinked back the tears the gesture brought to her eyes.

  For a long time they waited, terrible visions of what could be happening to José and Marisa playing through Cassi’s mind. Would they end up like Anderson and Worthington, who had only been doing their jobs?

  What seemed a long time later, the trap door was pulled back. Next to her, Cassi felt Jared’s muscles tense as he prepared to defend them. “They are gone,” came Marisa’s melodic voice.

  Each let out a sigh of relief. Sampson scrambled up the ladder first. “What happened?”

  “They saw my father come so quickly inside. They thought you were here. My father let them look around. They did not find you, and they left.”

  She led them out of the bedroom. In the main part of the cabin, Jared walked up to José and held out his hand. “Tell your father he has saved our lives twice. We are grateful.”

  Marisa translated. “My father say he does the will of the Lord. But now he must go to work. He and his partner have many sheep. He must take care of them. Please eat, and he will take you into town before he work.”

  “I’m afraid those men may be waiting there for us,” Jared said. “Do you have a police station?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do you know of someone who rents cars?”

  Again she shook her head. “Not many here have a car. We are very lucky. But there is a store.”

  “Isn’t there a bigger town nearby?” asked Jared. “We need to find a police station and a hotel.”

  Marisa thought for a moment and then conversed with her father. “My father say if we hurry, you go into Alvito with his friend. His friend will take his vegetables to market, but he leave very early. We must go now.” She scooped thick slabs of the meat she had been cooking and put them inside large chunks of bread. She distributed the food to each person. “We eat in the car.”

  “So they have a police station?”

  “Oh, no. They have the national guard. The places here are small to have a police station, except Évora and we go not there today. But the guard will know what to do.”

  Cassi and Jared kept a close eye on the terrain as José drove along a narrow dirt road. They couldn’t risk running into the men, not when they had come so far. José drove with abandon, and from the way Marisa clutched the back of the seat, Cassi suspected that he normally drove at a more sedate pace.

  “T
his is good meat,” Sampson said, chewing hardily.

  Marisa smiled. “It is sheep.”

  “We call it mutton,” Jared said.

  Sampson made a face. “I never liked mutton before, but this is good.” He took another bite.

  “Our sheep feed on the best grasses,” Marisa informed them. “I cooked this meat two days ago with the last olive oil and salt. Today I cook it more. It is very soft.”

  “It’s excellent.” Cassi looked at Jared. “Maybe you ought to get the full recipe.”

  Sampson laughed. “Yeah, Mrs. Landine,” he said in falsetto. “Maybe you should get the recipe.”

  Undaunted, Jared turned to Marisa. “I love to cook. Please tell me exactly how you do it.”

  Marisa explained about onions and salt and cooking temperatures in terms that meant nothing to Cassi. She sat back and enjoyed the meat and bread, feeling more relaxed with each minute that passed. Once they arrived at the national guard, she planned to wait there until Fred sent someone for them. More than anything, she wanted to go back to the United States. Maybe there Fred could protect them properly.

  Then there was Sampson. What would happen to him? What relative would claim him now? As Cassi thought about it, she felt uneasy. She was already attached to Sampson. There was something about him, something great, and she wanted to be a part of it.

  When they arrived at the small farm, José’s friend, Rui, already had his ancient brown truck loaded up and ready to go. Cassi had never seen the sides of a truck built up so high with a lattice of wood, or so many home-grown vegetables. As they approached the truck, the clean, earthy smell filled her with a sense of peace. José’s friend was a short, wiry man with skin darkened and wrinkled by hard work in the sun. He was apparently a man who loved the land, and whom the land loved and gave her bounty.

  José quickly explained the circumstances, and Rui consented to take them with him. “You will sit in the front with him and his daughter,” Marisa told Cassi. “Jared and Sampson will ride on the back with his son.”

  Cassi and Jared thanked the man profusely, and bid a heartfelt farewell to José and Marisa. The girl shoved her old textbook in Sampson’s hand, her eyes large and friendly. “You study and come back soon. We will speak Portuguese. And we go fish.”