Mike shrugged. “Down here,” he muttered uncomfortably, “I carry a name.”
“Excuse me?”
His brows knitted and he stared down at his espresso cup. “I have a nickname….” He heaved a sigh. Lifting his head, he met her frank blue-gray gaze. “I’m sure you’ll hear it sooner rather than later, so I might as well tell you myself. I’m called the jaguar god. It’s a reputation I’ve garnered over the years. The cocaine lords started calling me that a long time ago. The name stuck.” He grimaced.
“It’s not a bad name,” Ann murmured. “Why are you so uncomfortable with it?”
Mike sat up and flexed his shoulders. “Someday, Ann, I’ll tell you more about it. More than likely my friends at the clinic will fill your ears about me, about the legend surrounding me, until you’re sick and tired of hearing that name.”
Ann frowned. “You mean there’s more to this? I wasn’t seeing things?”
Mike rose and pulled some sols from his pocket. “You’re a trained therapist. You know how sleep deprivation and emotional stress can make you hallucinate during intense moments of crisis,” he said, deciding that the truth would have to wait. He couldn’t risk her rejection of him. Not after that nourishing kiss. “Come on, that van should be ready by now and those medical supplies loaded in it.”
Chapter 4
Despite her extreme fatigue, Ann was wide awake as Mike drove the heavily loaded van from the airport to one of the poorest sections of Lima. She tried to minimize in her mind the power and influence of his hot, melting caresses, but it was impossible. It was almost as if her lips were still tingling from his branding, unexpected kiss. She tried concentrating on the road ahead of them, noticing that Mike avoided most of the major freeways and took smaller streets. He probably knew this city like the back of his hand. Even more, Ann was aware of his heightened state of alertness. He was behaving like a soldier out in the bush rather than a man driving in the relative safety of a city. It didn’t make sense and she wondered what dangers lay ahead of them.
One thing for sure, Mike was right about Lima. The city was set like a crown jewel on verdant green slopes and surrounded by the raw beauty of the Andes, which towered like a backdrop in the distance. The day was sunny, the sky a soft blue, and Ann found herself enjoying her first views of the city.
“Lima reminds me of Buenos Aires,” she said to Mike, as he turned down a dirt road that led into a poor section, what he called a barrio.
Nodding, Mike divided his attention between driving and watching for enemies. He was on his own turf now, and the drug lords had hundreds of spies throughout the city looking for him, trying to pin him down so that a hit squad could corner and murder him.
“Lima and Buenos Aires are a lot alike,” he said, distracted. “Plenty of trees, bushes and flowers all over the place.”
“Nothing like New York City?”
He grinned tightly. “That place…”
“For once we agree on something,” she teased. Moments later, the scenery changed as they crept down the dirt road, which was rutted with deep furrows where tires had chewed into the soil. The winter rains had left the area in a quagmire as usual, and the city certainly wasn’t going to waste money on asphalt paving in a barrio. Houston’s gaze was restless, his awareness acute. His eyes were scanning their surroundings like radar. Ann felt uncomfortable. Or more to the point, endangered. By what? Whom?
When Mike saw her brows dip, he tried to lighten the feeling of tension in the truck. “Hang around and you might decide I’m not the bad hombre you think I am.” He winked at her and delivered a boyish smile in her direction to ease the concern he saw in her eyes. “I’ve got six weeks to change your mind.” He scowled inwardly. What was he saying? He was loco, he decided. There was no way to have a relationship with Ann. Though he’d always known that, the truth of it hit home as he drove through the city. He couldn’t place her in that kind of danger. He simply couldn’t. The price was too high for her—and for himself.
Ann slanted a lingering glance in his direction. Houston had taken off his sport coat and rolled up the sleeves of the white cotton shirt he wore revealing his strong, massive forearms which were covered with dark hair. The window was open, allowing the spring air to circulate in the van, mixed with the scents of fires and food cooking in pots in the nearby village. “Where are we now?” she asked, sitting up and rearranging the seat belt across her shoulder.
“This is the barrio our clinic serves,” Houston said with a scowl. “My home away from home.”
“Where do you live the rest of the time?”
“Anywhere in Peru where I can find the drug lords first before they find me and my men,” he answered grimly. “Usually I stay at the BOQ—barracks officers’ quarters—up near the capital when I come in off a mission.” He took a beeper from his belt and looked at it. “Matter of fact, they know I’m here. I’ve already got five phone calls to make as soon as we get this stuff to the clinic.” He snapped the beeper back onto his belt.
Ann shook her head as she surveyed the neighborhood. Most of the ramshackle houses were little more than corrugated tin held up with bits of wood, with cardboard as siding. Huge families crowded the doorways as Ann and Mike slowly drove by. “No one should live in these conditions,” she murmured. “The city at least ought to put sanitary sewage systems into a place like this. So many children will die of infections from drinking water from open cesspools.”
“You’ve got the general idea.”
She heard the tightness in Houston’s voice and studied the hard set of his mouth. As they drove deeper into the barrio, living conditions deteriorated accordingly. People were thin and hungry looking, their dark brown faces pinched. They were wrapped in rags and threadbare clothing to try and keep warm. As Mike drove, more and more people greeted him, calling out and lifting their hands in welcome. He called back, often by name, and waved in return.
“It seems like everyone here knows you.”
“Just about.”
“Because of the clinic?”
“Yeah, mostly. Sister Dominique goes around once a week and makes house calls. She carries her homeopathic kit from house to house, family to family, doing what she can.” He shook his head. “Oftentimes it’s not enough.”
“Hopeless?”
“No,” Mike said, making a slow turn to the left, down another very narrow street lined with cardboard shacks and crowded with people. “Never hopeless.” He grinned suddenly. “I hold out hope for the hopeless, Ann, or I wouldn’t be down here doing this stuff. No, the clinic makes a difference.”
Ann admired his commitment to improving the sad conditions. “Can’t governmental agencies help you?”
“They won’t,” he said, gesturing toward a redbrick church ahead, its gleaming white spire thrusting above the mire of human habitations. “Peruvians in Lima don’t view Indians as human. We’re animals to them. Big, dumb brutes to be used as pack animals, is all.”
Frowning, Ann said, “You said you were Yaqui?”
“My mother’s part Yaqui, from Central America, and part Quechua Indian. She was born in Peru, but her family moved north to Mexico when she was six years old.”
“How did your mother meet your father?”
“When you get me good and drunk sometime, I’ll tell you,” Mike told her with a grin.
He braked the van and turned at the redbrick church, which was surrounded by a white picket fence. Despite the mud, filth and poverty of the neighborhood,