Vistaria Has Fallen (The Vistaria Affair/Vistaria Has Fallen #1)(42)
She thought of the gun in his jacket. How could she underestimate Vistarians when the gun proved that Nicolás would not take any chances? “I won’t.”
“Good. Now, you should scale whatever wall you scaled to reach me and go give Duardo his orders.”
“Then what?”
“Enjoy your trip to Pascuallita.” He walked her towards the door, his hand on her waist.
It was moving too fast. “Wait,” she said, turning. “What happens after that?”
“I will find you.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t feel that way. Nick, I’m afraid that if I step out of this room, I’ll never see you again.”
He didn’t dismiss her fears as foolish. “Do you trust me?”
She answered honestly. “With my life.”
“Yet you still believe I will not come to you. Hmm.” He thought about it for a moment. He reached into his pocket as she had seen him do a hundred times since she had known him. His hand emerged, snarled with a gold chain. He lifted it up, so the pendant attached to it swung clear. “St. Christopher,” he explained. “Patron saint of—”
“Travelers,” Calli finished. “My grandmother was Irish.”
“My mother was Irish, too. This pendant traveled with her father through Europe during the war. She wore it until the day she died and swore it saved her life a hundred times in Northern Ireland. She gave it to me and I have carried it with me ever since.” He held it out to her.
“No, Nick, I can’t.”
He shook his head and turned her around. “Your hair. Pull it aside,” he told her.
She pulled her hair aside and watched as the pendant descended in front of her. It settled on her chest. He turned her back to face him. “Believe that I will come for you,” he said and kissed her.
Chapter Ten
They traveled by train, a slow, picturesque journey through the mountains. The train stopped at every station along the way. At every stop dozens of people got off and three dozen more squeezed on.
The windows remained wide open throughout the trip. Fresh air bathed their faces as they sat on the wooden seats facing each other, their luggage piled up on the seat next to Calli. Duardo, she noticed, did not give Minnie any of the overt signs of affection she had seen in the city. As he approached home base and his family, did he grow more wary of his reputation? She didn’t speak of it, yet worried that while he had been in the city Minnie had provided a nice distraction. Now he was forced to bring her back home, he was putting distance between them.
Minnie did not seem to notice the difference in his behavior. She had accepted with serene calm everything that had happened since Calli had shinnied back down the bricks of the Presidential residence last evening.
Calli had found them sitting on the lawn at the base of the flowerbed, Duardo’s arm around her and their heads close together. When her vision adjusted to the dark of the night, she saw that only a few dozen paces away, a soldier stood with his rifle resting across his hips. He did not overtly watch them yet he hovered, just the same.
Calli dropped to the grass in front of them and told Duardo what Nicolás had said. Duardo listened with his head cocked. It seemed he read more into Nick’s instructions than she did for he accepted the news with a sober expression, the twinkle of merriment in his eyes fading.
“I’d like to see Pascuallita,” Minnie said.
They traveled back to the apartment, catching the last streetcar of the night. There, they packed hurriedly. Calli finished before Minnie because she had less to pack. Minnie and Calli discussed the pros and cons of telling Joshua what they planned, then decided a note would delay the delivery of the news until they had left the city. They’d written a jointly authored letter, assuring him they were snatching a last-minute chance to tour the north of the island. They promised to phone him from Pascuallita.
Then on to the house where Duardo had been staying while he was in the city, this time by taxi, which they hailed from the main street that ran below the apartment. Duardo quartered in a small, older house with a distinct lean, tucked away off the main square. Four or five army people shared the house. Duardo packed while Minnie and Calli sat on the front stoop to wait for him. He had explained it would not be appropriate for women to go inside a male-only household. He slipped out through the door barely fifteen minutes later, an army issue suit bag over his shoulder and a Nike sports bag in his other hand.
They walked to the train station, at the bottom of el colinas, passing through silent streets where it seemed everyone slumbered. At the train station they curled up on benches and dozed with their heads on their luggage until the ticket office opened an hour before the train departed.
After the tickets were bought, Duardo disappeared into the men’s room with his luggage and returned, shaved and clean. He also wore a light windbreaker, protection against the pre-dawn chill.
Now they were on the train. Despite the heat of the day and the collective humidity of a dozen bodies squashed in around them, Duardo had not removed his jacket, although he had pushed up the sleeves. He left it zipped a third of the way up, too, which prevented the jacket from falling open.
Calli waited until they approached the next station, then sat on the edge of her seat and twisted around, as if she inspected the view out of the window beyond their luggage. When the train came to halt with the shudder and jerk she had been anticipating, she let herself fall sideways, her shoulder landing against Duardo’s chest.