wouldn’t be a pretty corpse. He wouldn’t even rate a body bag in this hellhole compound that was hidden deep in Mezcayan mountains and rain forest.
There’d be no military honors at his funeral. No funeral, period. No beautiful woman to weep over his grave back home in south Texas.
Suddenly a blond goddess, no a witch, seemed to float above him in the misty black.
Oh, God…. Just when he was weak, wet, shaking and puking with fear, he had to think of her—the icy, trampy witch, who’d walked out on him. Usually, the witch was satisfied to haunt his dreams. When he was awake, he was disciplined enough to keep his demons and witches at bay.
But he was weak and cold…so cold and feverish a spasm shook him…and so scared about dying he could think only of her.
Anger slammed him when her sulky, smoky voice began to sing the love song she’d written about their doomed relationship.
He jerked at his ropes, and to his surprise they loosened just a bit. “Go away! Leave me alone!” he yelled into the steamy darkness.
The perverse phantom draped her curvy body against the black wall and sang louder.
Nobody but you/Only you.
“Shut up,” he growled even as every cell in his body began to quiver as he fisted and unfisted his fingers in an attempt to free his hands.
I had to say goodbye…but everywhere I go…there’s nobody in my heart…only you….
Her husky voice had his head pounding. He dug his fingernails into his palms. Suddenly to his surprise, he jerked his right hand free of the ropes. “Damn you, shut the hell up!”
And yet I had to say goodbye, the witch crooned.
“Tramp! You’re just a one-hit wonder. You know that, don’t you?”
That shut her up, but she didn’t go away. Instead, that sad, vulnerable expression that could tie him in knots came into her eyes, which shone brilliantly in the dark. Her golden hair fell in silken coils around her slim shoulders.
Hell. She looked like a little lost sex kitten in need of a home and a warm bed. His home. His bed.
Oh, God, all she ever had to do was look at him like that and all he wanted to do was to hold her and to protect her and to make love to her. What would he give to have her one more time before he died?
Everything—
His gut cramped as he clawed his cot with his free hands. He remembered exactly how her hair smelled, how her skin smelled, how her blue eyes flashed with tears if he got too domineering. She’d had a fearsome talent for gentling him.
Escape. He had to escape.
His hands shook. He closed his eyes and tried not to remember how small she was or how perfectly she’d fit him.
Think of something else! Like getting out of here!
But when he swallowed, he tasted her. One taste, and he was as hard as a brick.
Somehow he got the ropes around his ankles loose, but when he tried to stand, the black walls spun and he fell back onto the cot. Weak as he was, his groin pulsed with desire. Hell. The proximity of death was the best aphrodisiac.
Damn Celeste Cavanaugh. He’d asked her to be his wife, to marry him. What a damn fool he’d been to do that. Hell, he’d picked her up in a bar. No. Damn it. He’d rescued her from a bar brawl. She’d been a nobody from the gutter, the prettiest, sexiest little nobody in the whole world with a voice like an angel.
He’d lifted her out of that life, given her everything, and treated her like a lady. She’d moved in with him and they’d played at love and marriage. Why the hell hadn’t she bothered to tell him about her ridiculous ambition to be a country-western star? Why hadn’t she at least given him a chance to understand it?
As soon as she’d gotten on her feet, she’d run to Vegas with another man. Phillip had come home from a dangerous mission in the Middle East where he’d gone to rescue his buddies. His homecoming had been delayed because he’d been captured and had had a narrow escape. But once home again, he’d thrown his seabag down at the door, stalked through the ranch house, calling her name. God, all those days and nights when he’d been a hostage trapped in that cell in the Middle East, he’d been burning up for her. Just like now.
She’d left him a letter on his pillow.
“I met a man, who’s going to get me an audition with a world-famous producer, Larry Martin. I’ll call you from Vegas.” She’d said her stage name was Stella Lamour.
There had been more letters in the mailbox from Stella. After he’d read and reread those letters, every word carving his heart out, something had died inside him. Maybe his feelings.
Forget her.
But he couldn’t. Seven years later, she still starred in all his dreams.
When he died down here, she wouldn’t even know. The bastardos would sling his bloody corpse into the jungle, and he’d rot. In this rain and heat and mud, he’d be fertilizer in less than a month.
You’re an ex-Marine. Forget her.
When he tried to stand again, he passed out and dreamed he was back home in Texas dancing with her at the Lone Star Country Club while his Marine buddies cheered and clapped.
He regained consciousness to heat that was as thick and dark as a sauna, to no-see-ums eating him alive. To explosions and heavy boots stomping down some corridor.
Dawn. Time to die.
Was there a weepy, pink light sifting through the single crack in the ceiling or was he hallucinating again?
Shouts in Spanish were followed by more heavy footsteps. Then the lock on the heavy door clicked. The door banged. Flashlights danced in the dark, blinding him.
“Xavier?” Westin squinted. Terror gripped him like a fist. He felt so weak and vulnerable he muttered a quick prayer.
Cobarde. Xavier’s contempt still stung.
In those last fleeting seconds before certain death, Phillip’s life flashed in front of him in neon color—his lonely childhood in his mother’s Houston mansion with all those rooms that echoed as a solitary little boy walked through them in search of love.
Nobody had ever wanted him…until Patricia, his college sweetheart. For a time she’d seemed so perfect, but in the end, she hadn’t wanted him enough to understand his determination to see the world and become a Marine.
Neither had Celeste. Both his loves had left him.
The flashlight zeroed in on his face, blinding him again. What was the use? He held up his hands in surrender. All he said was, “If you’re going to kill me, just be done with it.”
Cobarde.
“Not tonight, sir,” said a familiar respectful voice that slammed Westin back to his days in the Marines, back to the Gulf War. Phillip’s eyelids stung when he tried to stand. Once again his legs crumpled beneath his weight. The lights spun and he nearly fainted.
“Friends,” came that familiar, husky voice that made Phillip’s eyes go even hotter.
“Tyler….”
Westin blinked. Ty Murdoch, his handsome face painted black and green, his night-vision glasses dangling against his broad chest, towered above him like a warrior god.
“Tyler—”
Phillip was trying to stand but was falling again when Tyler’s strong arms grabbed him and slung him over his broad back in a fireman’s lift.
“You’re going home,” a woman said.
“Celeste?”
Before the beautiful woman could answer, Phillip fainted.
He