Zach started the engine, and I hopped back on the seat which was hot from the sun beating on it. I didn’t have much choice. How could I get away? Who could I trust?
I had not told Yannis where I was heading for fear the police would force his hand. I didn’t want to implicate him more than I had already. He could get sucked in by knowing me. So much of the nightmare was by implication.
“You can’t be cold,” Zach said, as I rubbed my upper arms. He took his eyes off the road long enough to give me a quick once over. “You are cold.”
Goose bumps stood out on my flesh.
“It doesn’t have to do with the temperature,” I said.
Zach kept his eyes on the road that climbed into the mountains.
“I’m not a thief,” I said.
“I’d like to believe that,” he said, his face unreadable. “But understand that the conditions of your aunt’s stay on this island are suspicious. You’re implicated in the crime by being her niece and coming to help her.”
“What’s my motive?”
“Money, power, excitement, notoriety. Pick any one of those. People do strange things.”
“Have you run a background check on me?”
I grabbed the hand strap above my door window as we lurched over a pothole in the road.
“Yep.”
“And?”
“Clean.”
“So at my age, having my own successful business with an impressive income, with a cushy loft at a nice address in Boston, I turn to antiquities smuggling? C’mon.” I shook my head in disgust. I could have worked myself up into a good raging anger, if I hadn’t been so scared.
“Maybe for you it’s the excitement.”
I snorted real unladylike, but who cared? “I have all the excitement I can handle. I don’t need to create international excitement, particularly one that has a prison term attached to it.”
He was studying the road behind us in the mirror and eased up on the gas, slowing down as the road got rougher. “I think we lost them.”
I wasn’t sure that was a blessing.
He glanced at me. “What if I told you I know where your aunt is and who sprang her from jail? Would you be willing to cooperate?”
My eyes widened at the turn of the conversation. “You can’t be serious.”
“Would you cooperate?” He enunciated each word.
I exploded. “I’m telling you I don’t know a thing about smuggling nor does my aunt so there’s nothing to cooperate.”
“Okay, okay. Calm down.”
We drove on in silence, and the knots in my stomach turned into waves of nausea. I felt dizzy, and it wasn’t the increase in altitude. I had to get away. I peered over the side of the car into the chasm we drove along. Rocks and dry brush peppered the canyon. The area around us looked like the desert country of New Mexico. I considered jumping from the car but where would that leave me? Dead, probably, or badly broken and bruised, if I were lucky. My aunt would still be at the mercy of unknown assailants. She must be terrified, simply terrified. She was the type that screamed at mice and cockroaches. She’d probably have a heart attack. Then where would we be?
Zach tapped the master lock on the door, and the door locks clicked. “Don’t even think about it,” he said.
“It wouldn’t work. I’m not much good to my aunt dead.”
“Smart girl.”
I studied his profile. He said he knew where my aunt was and who had taken her. I could pretend that I knew something and try to negotiate a deal, buy some time.
“What kind of cooperation do you want?” I decided to play along and hope that I wasn’t digging myself in deeper than I already was.
“Names, places, plans, contacts. Can you supply me with that?” He hadn’t missed a beat in his response like he knew all along I was a thief and would fess up to save my skin.
“And if I could?”
“You would get off easier than the rest of your operation. I could try for reduced jail time for you and your aunt.”
There was that word jail again that made my stomach sick and my head hurt. I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation. Then again I couldn’t believe where I was, what I was doing, and who I was doing it with.
I watched Zach, but he kept his eyes on the road, head straight, neck rigid, maybe refusing to think about the fact that there was a red-blooded woman sitting on the seat next to him, and he was talking to her about going to jail. The same woman he had promised to help.
The liar. I wanted to slap him. Instead I said, “You operate in some pretty powerful circles, if you could pull off a reduced jail sentence.”
“I have good connections.”
“I would have to see my aunt first. I need to know she is okay.” I hoped this crazy scheme to play along worked.
Zach nodded. “That can be arranged.”
We turned off the rough road onto an even rockier one. Zach kept taking right turns up the mountain. We climbed in a great circle. Cedar and cypress trees lined the road. Gray dust sprinkled the ground cover.
My cell phone went off, and I pulled it from my hand bag and glanced at the incoming number. Yannis. Before I could hit the talk button, Zach reached over, snatched it, and flipped the case shut.
“You don’t need a phone.”
I was getting the distinct feeling I was a prisoner.
The road leveled off, and Zach turned into a lane that led to a clearing where a solitary house stood. He pulled in front of the house, switched off the motor and sat looking around, a perplexed look on his face.
“Something’s wrong,” he said. “It’s too quiet.” He looked at me. “Can I trust you to wait here?”
“I don’t know where I would go even if I could.”
“I’m going to look around. Can you shoot a gun?”
“My Dad was a hunter. He taught me to shoot a rifle.”
He pulled his bag from the back seat, extracted a heavy, black gun and checked the ammunition.
I was struck dumb. I thought the bag held his overnight gear, not heavy metal. He pulled out a second smaller pistol, checked it and handed it to me. The thought crossed my mind that now was the time to shoot him. Then where would I be? Would killing a cop get me life or the electric chair? On Cyprus they probably gave life sentences without possibility of parole. I’d look it up later.
“No, you aren’t going to shoot me,” he said.
The guy was uncanny.
“You need someone on your side. I just might be that person. Remember that. Now I’m going to look around. Normally, my friends would be out in the yard on a day like this. Maybe they went into town, but I don’t like the feeling I have.”
So he worked on intuition, too. I’d have to ask him what his intuition was for me. He trusted me enough to hand me a gun.
He nodded toward a half open window in the front of the house. A lace curtain fluttered in and out. “They don’t ever leave a window open like that. The wife is too fastidious.”
His eyes locked on mine.
“Don’t leave the Rover. Stay right here and cover me. And please, don’t shoot me in the back.”
“I couldn’t do that. How would I ever find my way back to town? Besides, you know where my aunt is.”
He smirked. The first time I saw him come close to a smile since Pafos. “Smart girl.” He eased open the door of the Land Rover, stepped cautiously out, and headed toward the front of the house, gradually circling to the back.
I watched from my post in the Rover and studied the yard and the house. To the left was an open shed that held what looked like wood working tools. A saw, shovels, tools hung in rows above a workbench. A wash line strung from the house to the shed held three men’s work shirts, pinned upside down and blowing in the hot breeze. Beyond the shed and house was a vegetable garden surrounded by a wire fence with a gate. I could see plump, red tomatoes hanging from the vines. The gate was open.