A Wanted Woman Part 54

"Reported stolen from Miami."

"Pilots?"

"Not Trini. None carried identification."

"Our rings?"

"They vanished from our men's fingers. Every ring vanished."

"Looters. Thieves."

"Robbing the dead. A disgrace."

Roosters crowed outside the window.

Diamond Dust looked into the yard. "The Kiwi stayed here?"

"She did. Had been here for over a month."

Diamond Dust looked at every wall. From roof to floor, in every room, in the same handwriting, the same message had been written with a black marker. f.u.c.k YOU, JOHNNY PARKER.

Large and small, it had been written a thousand times a thousand times.

She dismissed the madness. "Why here? Why was she brought here?"

"No idea."

"Take me to the other place. I am ready for the meeting with the Barbarians."

She took her husband's hand, squeezed it over and over.

He asked, "Thoughts?"

"I will cover for you. I have to spend the rest of my life covering for this mistake."

"I did what would have garnered us more political power."

"Your f.u.c.king decision cost me my brother. Cost my children their uncle."

"He was my cousin. He was my brother. We will talk."

"If the Kiwi had been killed at the bank, I never would have known."

"Whisper that, and only to me."

Her jaw tightened. "RSCI."

"What about the Barbarians?"

"Our men should be there now, ready to have a business meeting."

"Wife, you went ahead and ordered my men to America unbeknownst to me?"

"Be glad that you are the father of my children; be glad that I live for New Trinidad."

"Just stick to what you do. You have style. You make speeches. You have a flair for that, have an instinct, the ability to mesmerize and have legions of people follow you. No matter what you do, they follow you. I carry the guns and do the heavy lifting. This went bad, and bad things will happen. Mistakes will be made along the way, but that comes with progress. I do the military strategizing, not you."

"What are you without me? Nothing."

"Quite the opposite. You are a speech maker, not a warrior. You put on s.e.xy shoes and vain women want to be like you. Do what you do best; continue the creation of what you want to become-a gynarchy. You can eventually rule all of Trinidad, but it will never be done with a petticoat government."

"Did you forget how I earned my name? I have blood on my hands as well. Much blood."

"Know your place. Know your limitations. I will not make a call and reverse that order to attack RCSI because it will make you look bad, would make me look like I was not in control, would make it look like we are falling apart, so I will support you on that, no matter how it goes, but I tell you this and I tell you this one more time, so f.u.c.king hear me: You don't give executive orders. Do nothing without consulting me. Remain a talking mannequin and woo the people with your charm and fas.h.i.+on sense."

"I should have chosen Appaloosa as my number one."

"You didn't."

She said, "Only one of us is replaceable, and that is not me. I am this movement, not you."

"Kings chopped off the heads of old queens and found a new one. They find a younger, prettier queen and the people forget about the old queen. When the king goes away, so does the kingdom."

She reached for his hand. He took hers.

They left the safe house.

Across the field, on the roof of an unpainted block house, there was a reflection. It was but a flash that came and went. Diamond Dust paused, looked across the field, to the roof of that structure, a two-level located one neighborhood over, far removed, but in plain view of the front of the safe house.

War Machine asked, "What's wrong?"

"Do we have other men out in this area?"

"No. Why?"

Diamond Dust looked at that roof again, then said, "Nothing."

Graeme Hall Nature Sanctuary was shut down due to the storm and the power outage. Only the Sanctuary Cafe and Lakeside Lawn and deck area had been open to the public; the interpretive walkways, aviaries, and exhibits were closed to the public due to some issue with the government. Diamond Dust followed her husband and four other men through the closed section, beyond the captive flamingos, exotic birds, and parrots from St. Vincent, took the winding pathway to the back side of the sanctuary and the mangrove swamp. Two Barbarians waited for her arrival. They had waited for forty-eight hours.

The men had been captured, stripped naked, stripped of wet and battle-worn suits. Dormeuil and Zenga had been placed in narrow rowboats, hands bound to one end, feet bound to the other end. The rowboats were small and the extremities of both men extended beyond the boat. They had been cut a thousand times, small cuts, so the blood would attract bugs, and each man had been force-fed milk and honey until their bowels loosened. Honey covered their bodies, saturated their t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. They had been smeared with more honey, force-fed milk every hour. More cuts had been added, not enough to die, only enough to make them beg for death. For two days, both day and night, they had attracted every insect imaginable. In pain, s.h.i.+tting without pause inside of the boat, attracting more insects to feast on their bodies, floating in the sun, in the brutal sun with their eyes to the sky. Their eyelids had been removed. Wasps stung the men, insects burrowed into their flesh. Diamond Dust watched, wis.h.i.+ng that one had been the Kiwi in front of her with her flesh rotting away and being devoured by worms.

She asked, "What did they reveal?"

"They were in New York. They were in Miami. There were more, but they were there."

She motioned. "These are two of the men who engaged you here?"

"Others are dead. These are the last two."

"The Kiwi was with them in New York and Miami as well?"

"No. They were on the teams that attacked our s.h.i.+pments in both New York and Miami."

"Did they admit that? So that means they were part of the disruption here."

"The muscular one shut down. He manned-up and shut down."

"The other one?"

"Hasn't said a word."

"Not a word in two days?"

"Hasn't screamed. Has s.h.i.+t out loud and suffered in silence."

Diamond Dust's cellular buzzed.

She looked at her phone and said, "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. What the s.h.i.+te?"

War Machine said, "What's going on?"

"Someone sent me pictures."

"Of?"

"Us. Pictures of us dressed as we are now."

It was pictures of them at the airport, arriving. Then a picture of a middle finger from the inside of a nondescript airplane, a picture of a middle finger, high above Barbados, the island as clear as it had been when Diamond Dust had landed, only with light clouds in the background.

She said, "It came from a Trini number, from the phone of one of our men."

"Which?"

"One who is on this mission, one who is still missing."

"Someone has his phone. We can a.s.sume he is dead."

She read the message. "To the vain, the capricious, the horribly insecure."

It was from the Kiwi. She had his cellular. They had pa.s.sed her at the airport.

The Woman of a Thousand Faces had pa.s.sed right by them. She had stood at the airport, in the heat, maybe near Chefette, watching them. The first picture made it look like she was but ten feet away. The second picture showed that she was at thirty thousand feet in the sky.

Diamond Dust said, "She had to be leaving when I arrived."

More pictures came. It was photos of them at the safe house at Six Roads.

The photo was of Diamond Dust looking directly into the faraway camera.

That was the reflection she had seen. Someone had been on the roof photographing them through the lens of a sniper's rifle. Maybe it was the Kiwi, but it couldn't have been.

The message was clear. She was gone. They had failed.

She looked at the Barbarians. It could take seventeen days for them to die from starvation, dehydration, and septic shock. She would love to see the gangrene set in to their extremities.

Diamond Dust ordered, "Kill them. They are of no use to us."

War Machine nodded at his men, confirming both his power and the order of execution.

As she walked away, as War Machine followed her presidential fury, two guns fired.

Green monkeys ran, fish jumped, and a hundred species of birds flew from the trees.

He asked, "What do you want me to do?"

"Come home. Your children miss you."

"Do you miss me?"

"Don't ask me that."

"Do you love me?"

"You know I love you."

"Do you like me?"

"No."

An hour later, she was back on her private plane, between Barbados and Trinidad.

Diamond Dust glowered at the photos from the Kiwi.

A dozen flights had left since they had arrived in Barbados. That was a dozen planes the Kiwi could have boarded. Flights to other islands. Flights to Miami. Flights to England.

War Machine said, "We'll capture her again, then bring her home."

Diamond Dust shook her head. "No, just kill her. Just kill the b.i.t.c.h."

War Machine said, "She's using his phone."

"We'll track the phone and start the facial recognition again."

War Machine said, "Already started."

"We will know where she lands before we put our children to bed."

They kissed. She straddled him. She pulled her gray skirt up, pulled her thong to the side. She raised her hips, gave him room to unzip his pants and remove his erection.