goat fluster. You really want to take a chance with your life?”
“You’re as bad as my father. He wants me to come home, as well.”
But she couldn’t leave, even if he paid her. Frustration bit her because she suspected Jarrett was right, but she was trapped here. Lacey fished her mobile out of her backpack and thumbed it on. “You don’t like it here? You need to book the next flight out for yourself? Use my credit card.”
He ignored the jab. “Tell me what’s been going on with the locals where you live. Any hot spots?” He lifted his right hand and pantomimed a gun and trigger. “Bang bang much?”
“There’s been hot spots in Danton, the city closest to us, but there’s always hot spots flaring up.”
Mango and palm trees flanked the road as they drove south, past hand-painted signs advertising auto part repairs, billboards in French for local hotels, past the small concrete “banks” where lottery tickets were sold. They passed a herd of motorcycles, their riders waiting for passengers. He glanced to the right and noticed the gas station with its bright yellow-and-green sign remained open.
Calm. So calm. But she knew the peace could shatter as quickly as a fired shot.
Jarrett glanced at her. “Why don’t you get some shut-eye while I drive? You’re nodding off.”
She didn’t want to admit he was right, but he was. Lacey closed her eyes and dozed off.
When she opened her eyes, he was turning onto the unpaved road leading to her compound lined with dusty mango trees. A few dump trucks loaded with rocks rumbled past.
Sitting up straight, struggling to snap to attention, she pointed to a turnoff. “Turn at the sign that says Mangoes For Sale. There’s a quarry not far from here. Reason why the road is so bad. But we got the land very cheap, and it’s right off the main highway to make it easier to find us.”
The vehicle bounced up and down as he drove. “Bounce factor,” he mused. “Makes you feel like a bobble-head doll.”
“You get used to it.”
He gave her an amused grin, pushed down his sunglasses to peer at her. An impish look of mischief and sex gleamed in his green eyes. “I give great massages to work out the kinks in your body.”
A shiver raced down her spine. Jarrett did give great massages, and the smooth glide of his big hands over her naked skin had always been so arousing, leading to him getting naked, as well, and then...
“I have a vibrator,” she shot back and then flushed as his grin widened.
“A BOB doesn’t substitute for the real thing, Lace.”
“I didn’t mean a battery-operated boyfriend kind of vibrator. I meant a massager. For my neck.”
“Still,” he murmured.
He drove toward the handmade sign, passing several mango and palm trees. Small wood houses peeked through the trees, as goats grazed in the scrub. An abandoned building came into view. Painted on the building was a mural of rows of corn, with happy children peeking out among the stalks.
“Originally that wall had a mural of a young woman being led on a chain before the devil. The man leading her clutched her beating heart.” She sighed, remembering all her hard work to convince the locals she was committed to staying and helping them. “I found the artist, paid him to paint the cornfield because the mural kept spooking people. This farm kept spooking people. They said hoodoo rituals were conducted here, ones where a man cut out a woman’s heart for good luck. We’ve managed to overcome some of the tainted superstition, but it’s been a long process, with lots of patience and working with the locals.”
“You always did have a lot of patience.” His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “You did with me, especially when I was gone so much. Maybe if I hadn’t been gone all those times, we’d still be together.”
Lacey had wondered the same at times, wondered if he had stayed that one time and given her the support she needed, would they have worked out their problems? But she’d vowed to not regret the past.
“Maybe. Or not. You can’t go back, Jarrett. We’ve both changed and moved on.”
Jarrett drove until reaching a tall concrete wall with an imposing red gate. Lacey’s heart went still. Panic clogged her throat as she stared at the gate.
“You were saying something about hoodoo?” Jarrett turned to her, his expression grim. She’d been gone only a day, and this was bad news. Lacey had thought the other little things that had happened, like the graffiti warnings, were just some kids fooling around. Not this.
The white, hand-painted sign reading Marlee’s Mangoes had been obscured with a splatter of crimson paint. But it wasn’t the vandalism that worried her.
It was the dead chicken impaled on the iron spikes of the gate. The bloody entrails were draped over another spike, along with a clear warning painted on the gate in French.
American, go home before you end up like this.
Lacey swallowed the bile rising in her throat. She beeped the horn and a man in gray trousers and a blue shirt came out, opened the gate. Pierre waved at her, twirling the shotgun in his hands as if it was a baton.
“That’s your security?”
She bit her lip. “I told you, it’s peaceful out here.”
“And that dead chicken and the sign are a welcome home?”
Ignoring him, she rolled down the window and spoke in rapid French to the guard, who stared at the dead chicken. “Pierre, when did this happen? Did you see anything? Hear anything?”
He shook his head, his eyes wide in his face. “Nothing, miss. I was here all night.”
She nodded. “Get some help and clean this up right now. I want it all gone before the kids come home from school.”
Jarrett drove through the opened gate, and looked into the rearview mirror as Pierre shut the gate behind them.
“How long has he worked for you?”
“He’s the cousin of one of the women I’m helping. He’s been here about two months. I don’t pay him much.”
Her budget had already been strained with fixing the outdated irrigation system and the other unexpected expenses.
“It shows. Your security sucks, Lace. He doesn’t even look old enough to shave, damn it.”
The thinly disguised anger in his deep voice fueled her own anger. “My compound is respected by locals. They know the farm provides jobs and teaches skills to women.”
Jarrett snorted. “You call a dead chicken respect?”
“It was probably a prank.” Lacey’s stomach tightened. If he found out about the other incidents, she’d never shake him loose. She couldn’t be certain it was locals causing trouble, or worse.
Jarrett drove into the loose gravel drive, flanked by tall mango trees
