Chapter Eight

Two armed men appeared almost instantly at Alex's side. Alex glanced with contempt at Steve's prone body. "Take him back to the villa and put him in my office," he told them, handing one of them the shotgun. As they dragged Steve away, Alex turned to Jaime. "Come here." Before she could respond, he pulled a much smaller, but still very lethal, pistol from his pocket. "NOW."

Jaime reluctantly moved to his side, and the arm that had held her so tenderly just one day earlier grabbed her in a cruelly tight embrace, the gun partially hidden as he pressed it against her stomach. His eyes, the same ones that had seemed so loving and kind, were ice-cold and angry.

"So who was that?" Alex demanded as he forced her back toward the villa. "Your real lover?" When Jaime didn't answer, he jerked back hard on the weapon, slamming her with the gun butt. "I believe I asked you a question," he said in a very low, threatening voice.

Jaime gasped for enough air to spit out her answer. "I don't believe I care to answer."

"You will," he insisted, hurling her onto the steps of the veranda with a vicious, brutal shove. "We can start with an easier one. What's your name? Who do you work for?" He was surprised to see her looking up at him with anger instead of fear, and he was thoroughly shocked when she immediately rose to her feet, facing him. Jaime's eyes were locked warily on Alex, but her ear was straining for any sign of her husband or any sounds of a scuffle.

"Why, Alex?" she asked him sadly. "What are you into?"

"Cut the damned act!" he snarled, lashing out and striking Jaime's forehead with the barrel of the gun. The force of the blow knocked her off the veranda, momentarily stunning her.

Jaime's mind flashed on the memory of Franklin Bailey hitting her with his gun, with a nearly identical swing. She'd gone down for the count that time, giving Bailey the upper hand, and she'd nearly died. No, she told herself, not this time! Jaime fought to keep her eyes open, then painfully started to stand. A large lump of dull grey steel caught her eye; it was the shotgun, or, rather, the remains of the shotgun. The wood and metal had been compressed into a cross between a pretzel and a ball. Steve! He must have managed to break away, at least long enough to destroy the weapon. Did he get away?

"You're gonna wish you'd stayed down," Alex told her, taking her firmly by the arm and pulling her into the villa. He took her through the den and into the back office. She smiled triumphantly to herself, seeing no sign of Steve. The triumph was short-lived. Alex moved a tall file cabinet aside as if it were empty, which it was. He produced two keys and opened the hidden door. "Keep walking," he ordered. A set of stairs led down to a hidden chamber in the cellar. It wasn't very big - just a hallway that was about ten feet long, with what looked like two old-time jail cells, one on each side. Steve sat quietly in one of them, conscious and fully alert.

"Maybe I should put you together," Alex mused, "but I'm not that nice to traitors." He turned to the empty cell, fiddling through his keys.

While he was fighting with the lock, Steve whispered to his wife, so softly that Alex didn't notice. "Jaime, if we're getting out, we've gotta do it now. You ready?"

Jaime gave him a nearly imperceptible nod, then turned her attention to Alex. She wrenched her right arm around his neck, immobilizing him in a choke-hold, as Steve bent the bars of his cell, pushing them aside like they were clay. Alex struggled to twist his gun around enough to fire at one of them, but Steve had his arm and when Alex pulled the trigger, he barely missed his foot.

"Now, hand it to me," Steve told him. Unable to breathe, Marcos complied, and Steve pocketed the weapon. "Let's put him in the cell," he told Jaime. She pushed Alex through the hole her husband had made in the bars and Steve bent them back into place. "Throw me your keys," he ordered, "or I'm coming in after them, and might just take your arm, too, by accident, of course. Marcos stared, stunned and still rubbing his neck. "The keys," Steve repeated.

Alex tossed the keys out of the cell, and Steve handed them to Jaime, who threw them into the second cell. "Oh, I'm sorry," she exclaimed. "There's no way to get you out now, is there?"

Alex looked at his watch, then looked straight ahead, staring blankly at nothing. "You don't know what you're dealing with here, do you?" he said, sounding almost sad. "You have no idea what you've done, the chaos you're causing..." He looked up as the remainder of his men stampeded down the stairs to come to his aid. "Call Rawson right now and tell him to GO! It's time!"