Not Without The Truth

“I do not believe you are ready. Your strength is much better but traveling to where the bridge is located…” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I do,” she said stubbornly. “I’ve been exercising and I want to go. If you won’t take me, then I’ll find a way to get there on my own.”

Their gazes met and this time the impact was even more noticeable. Armando wasn’t a man who could be ignored but Lauren couldn’t allow physical attraction to dictate her actions.

“You are a very stubborn woman,” he said.

She looked at him unblinkingly. “Will you take me?”

He gave a Latin sigh, then spoke with resigned acquiescence. “All right. You win. We will go in the morning. Wear pants and bring a sweater.”

ARMANDO CALLED MEREDITH that night on his encrypted cell phone and told her about the upcoming trek. She quizzed him about Lauren, asking why she simply didn’t come home now that she knew her true identity.

He repeated Lauren’s comment.

“What does that mean?” Meredith demanded. “Why would she feel there are ‘more answers’ for her in Peru? Answers to what?”

Armando spoke with uncharacteristic hesitation. “I’m not sure. She said something else that concerned me even more.”

“And that was?”

“She said she didn’t believe in coincidences.”

“So?”

“I think she came here for a reason, Meredith. I have a feeling her magazine article was just a cover for something else.”

“And I think you must be getting paranoid on me.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, “but I agree with her. I don’t believe in coincidences, either. She did not come to Peru just to wander about the ruins and write some pretty essay.” He’d given the facts a lot of thought and he’d decided there was only one real reason for her appearance. He told Meredith that reason now. “We’d be foolish to think her mother’s death has nothing to do with her trip here.”

Meredith’s pause echoed down the line, her voice puzzled when she spoke. “You don’t think she suspects you had anything to do with that, do you? Wasn’t she shot by an intruder?”

“That was what the embassy’s press release said but I always wondered. My gut feeling told me something else went on there that night.”

“But how could Lauren have been involved? She was…what? Ten years old?”

Armando closed his eyes but the image in his brain didn’t go away. “She was ten. Officials in the States believed there was a mole inside the Peruvian embassy and they thought Margaret Stanley might be it. I was sent there to eliminate her.” He paused until his pulse steadied. “But I arrived too late. She was already dead, supposedly killed by a burglar. No one was ever arrested and eventually the matter was dropped. The press moved on to its next tragedy.”

“That’s convenient. Was Margaret Stanley the mole?”

“The problems at the embassy stopped after her death, so it was assumed so,” he answered. “The father took Lauren and departed the country right after Margaret’s death. I had developed a contact on the inside, but he had no idea who I really was, of course. I couldn’t call him up afterward and ask.”

“Who was he?”

“His name was Daniel Cunningham. He was Margaret’s attaché. I arranged to play squash beside his court one day and we struck up a conversation. He invited me to the embassy’s Christmas party and that’s how I gained access.”

“Who do you think killed her? And why cover it up?”

“Why is any crime covered up? To hide another one, I would presume. As to who actually pulled the trigger, I don’t know, although I always wondered about the father.”

“He is a nervous fellow, kinda strange.” Meredith’s voice lightened. “Then again, he is a psychiatrist. You guys are all pretty weird.”

“Cunningham had said the man was little more than a fixture but Stanley definitely had the motivation if he’d wanted to kill her. He was very unhappy. He didn’t want to be in Peru and I could understand why. He’d had a large practice back in the States and he’d sacrificed it to come with his wife.”

“Could he have been the mole?”

Everything had pointed to J. Freeman Stanley as the guilty party, but to Armando that fact alone was enough to make him suspicious of any conclusion. “I wondered about that, too,” Armando replied, “but no one wanted my opinion on the matter. I was only the hired help.”

Promising Meredith another report when he had more to tell her, Armando hung up a few minutes later.

Lauren was waiting early the next morning, a backpack at her feet, when he stepped outside his bungalow. Gazing out over the valley beyond the clinic, she seemed unaware of his presence until he crossed the grass that separated them. As she turned at his approach, Armando hoped, just as he had sixteen years previously, that her father hadn’t been involved with her mother’s murder. To a child, a loss like that was overwhelming. A betrayal on top of it would be impossible to accept, even after all these years.

He put aside his concerns, his attention diverted by her clothing.

She’d dressed as he’d instructed but something didn’t seem right about her pants.

Seeing his puzzled expression, she tugged on one baggy leg. “Recognize them?”

He frowned and looked closer, then raised his eyes to hers. “Are those mine?”

She grinned. “Zue stole them for me. I didn’t have anything else.”

“They fit you a lot differently than they fit me.”

“Thank goodness they do,” she said. “If they didn’t, I’d be worried.”

He started to argue. If she hadn’t looked so great, he wouldn’t have been quite as distracted as he now found himself. Forcing his eyes away from her curves, he tried to concentrate on the upcoming task. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yes.” She set her tea cup and saucer on the nearby patio table. “I’ve been up since daylight. I guess I’m nervous.”

“You might be in for an unpleasant time,” he warned. “Do you understand?”

“I do,” she said, “but it doesn’t matter. I need to see.”

He hadn’t expected to convince her otherwise, but he’d had to try. “All right, then. Let’s go.”

She grabbed her bag and they set off toward the barn. He’d told Zue last night to see that the BMW was ready and the tank topped off, and as always, she’d followed his instructions to the letter. Leaning just inside the opened doors, the bike was ready, the bags packed with water bottles and food.

Behind him, Lauren stopped. “Hey! I thought you said we had to hike—”

“I said it was a half-day hike. I didn’t say we had to go that way.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Life isn’t fair here. We could break down, we could have an accident, we could be ambushed…a million things could happen to us, all of them bad. If you didn’t have the strength to walk out on your own, then you weren’t prepared. I don’t operate that way.”

He expected her to argue, but her gaze narrowed and she stared at him instead. “You’re right,” she conceded. “I wasn’t thinking straight.”

He nodded once, then threw one leg over the seat. She joined him, and a moment later, they headed for the jungle.

LAUREN WOULD HAVE CUT OUT her tongue before she complained but she was definitely relieved when Armando slowed the powerful cycle. For more than an hour, they’d been riding over what was basically a path, and she was ready to take a break. Every rut and bump had made itself known and she was aching in ways she’d never before experienced. Even worse than the roughness of the ride, however, was the impact of Armando’s nearness. She wasn’t accustomed to the sensations he was creating within her and she didn’t know how to deal with them.

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