Brian Garfield by Tripwire Page B

forward. She bent down and he tasted her mouth and then she slipped her face away to guide his lips down her throat.
    They took a long time making love.
    Then he lay on his back, belly rising and falling with his breath, and she laid her head back against the hard muscles of his thigh and spoke in a voice drowsy with spent passion: “I think we have both been too long without this.”
    She turned and curled up with her fists together against him, one knee hooked over his body. He ruffled her hair. “I feel hound-dog lazy.”
    â€œWere you a slave?”
    â€œWhen I was a little kid.”
    â€œSo was I. In a way.”
    He turned his head to look at her. She said, “Pablo has not bought me and he does not own me. He knows that.”
    â€œI thought you were married to him.”
    â€œI am. But he has told me I may leave when I wish.”
    â€œBut you’ve stayed.”
    â€œHe needs looking after.”
    â€œYou’re a good woman.”
    â€œI think I am,” she said. “When I said I was a slave I meant before, when I was a girl in the city. I was bought and put into a house there.”
    â€œHe told me about that.”
    â€œDid he also tell you he bought me from the madam?”
    â€œHe didn’t say that.”
    â€œBut I had a choice. I could have run away from him. I knew he wouldn’t try very hard to get me back. Not that he did not want me, but he has never forced me to do anything unless it was what I wished.”
    â€œHe loves you.”
    â€œHe has never said that,” she said, and it made Boag remember the same conversation with Don Pablo.
    â€œThis gold,” she said. “Do you really expect to take any of it away from that man?”
    â€œWell I expect to try.”
    â€œIs it enough to die for?”
    â€œHe owes me something else besides gold. There was a friend of mine.…” But he didn’t go on about Wilstach; it would probably make no sense to her. “He needs killing.”
    â€œBut how will you fight him if you find him?”
    â€œDirty.”
    Her head stirred. Boag said, “There’s no difference between one way of fighting and another. The winner is the man still alive afterward.”
    â€œIf we could help, Don Pablo and I .…”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œâ€¦ Do you think you could try to recover Pablo’s money as well?”
    Well there had to be a reason, he supposed bleakly.
    She read his mind; she sat up. “That is not the reason I came to you tonight. Did you think it was?”
    He made no answer of any kind; his silence argued with her, however, and in the end she got off the cot and reached for her clothes. “I suppose it is what you must believe. I was foolish, I should have said nothing.”
    â€œAll right. Forget it.”
    â€œI shall try to. I hope you will also.”
    He reached for her. “Come on then, let’s do this again.” In relief he laughed till his stomach hurt. And when they had made love he kissed her thoroughly on the mouth. “That’s to be sure you won’t forget me right away.”
    She teased him. “I have a very poor memory.”
    He kissed her again.
    He had been a soldier all the years; in the Army you learned not to think about women except when there were women within reach. Either you had women or you did not, and if you did not have them there was nothing but pain in thinking about them. But he knew he was going to think about Dorotea. They had not had much time together but it was enough to make him wish there was more.

7
    There was nothing dog-in-the-manger about Don Pablo Ortiz. He summoned Boag to his chambers in the early morning and when Miguel had left the room the young Don said, “Are you a man of means, Señor Boag?”
    â€œDo I look it?”
    â€œYou look like a penniless black gringo to me. But I have learned something about appearances.”
    â€œI am what I look