didn’t even have a body to bury. Your parents flew in from Nepal.” Her eyes filled with tears and she turned away to hide it.
Gathering her composure, she continued. “I’ve mourned you, Tucker. You don’t know how much I’ve grieved over you. And now…you’re here. Alive and waltzing into the house as though nothing has happened, asking me if I’m surprised to see you.”
Perching on the edge of the couch, she gestured for him to take a seat in the overstuffed chair he’d always claimed as his own. “I don’t understand. Explain this to me. I don’t even know what page you’re on.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, sounding both bewildered and sad. “I’ve been through so much. I’m confused and recovering. But I swear to you, no one told me you thought I died.”
He took a deep breath and blew it back out again. “I was in pretty bad shape. The ones who rescued me, they were mostly concerned with making sure I didn’t really die to tell me anything.”
Again with the odd, sketchy references.
“Once they got me back to health, they had questions of their own that they wanted answered,” he continued. “Too many of them to remember. And yes, I’ve been told I was gone over a year, though time passes differently when you’re in that sort of situation. In this, I had no choice in the matter.”
“I still don’t understand. I guess you think what you’re saying is clear, but it makes no sense to me.”
Slowly, he nodded. “I’m sorry. Let me start over.”
Crossing her arms to keep from touching him, she caught her breath as she belatedly realized exhaustion showed white around the edge of his mouth. Despite his tanned skin and corded, muscular arms, he was thin as a rail, too, though his shoulders were still as broad.
And he was just as beautiful.
“Start at the beginning,” she offered.
“Okay. Let me tell you as much as I remember,” he said. “One minute I was striding through the Mexican fields with the man I went to meet. You remember. His name was Carlos, and he claimed to have grown a completely new and fantastic strain of coffee beans.”
He’d gone to obtain samples to see if his company, Boulder’s Best Brew, would be interested in distributing them.
“I felt a blow at the back of my head like an explosion,” he continued. “After that, I regained consciousness chained and was trussed like an animal, with a headache the size of Denver.”
His eyes were haunted as he paused. “I had no idea where I was. I’d gone down in the wilds of the Mexican jungle. Carlos, the two employees who’d traveled with me, as well as my Spanish interpreter, had vanished—either dead or captured, too. I was a prisoner, with no way to contact you or Sean or even the American embassy. Worse, I had no idea why.”
Though he paused as if inviting comments, Lucy didn’t interrupt. Holding her gaze, he swallowed and continued.
“They tortured me enough to put me on the tattered edge of crazy. Without my interpreters, I couldn’t understand most of what they asked me, though after a while I realized they thought I’d stolen something. Instead, I tried to figure out a way out of there, a way home to you. I began making up lies to keep them from torturing me more. But no matter what they did to me, I couldn’t tell them what they wanted because I truly didn’t know.”
“They? Who were they?” she asked, her throat aching at the haunting look on his face. “Who did this to you?”
He winced as he shrugged. “As best as I could tell, I was held prisoner by a major Mexican drug cartel.”
“Did you tell them that they had the wrong person?”
“I tried. But since my Spanish is extremely limited, the explanation I tried to give them fell on deaf ears.”
“You’re lucky they didn’t kill you.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “At first, I dreamed of escape, of home. After a while, I mostly dreamt of death. I wanted them to just go ahead and kill me. Get it over with. But they wouldn’t end my suffering and let me die.”
His voice broke and he looked down briefly before continuing. “I still don’t understand why not. Drug cartels like this one are ruthless. They usually kill spies or anyone who pissed them off without blinking. You’ve heard the stories of the mass graves found near the border, where they lined their enemies up near a shallow ditch and shot them in the back. But not me.” He sounded bitter, but this time, she understood why.
“For whatever reason, they kept me alive, using me as entertainment. Bored? Go torture the prisoner. Can’t sleep? Then make sure the prisoner doesn’t, either.”
She shuddered at his words, aching, wanting both to stop him and let him go on, hoping maybe once he’d told the story he could purge the horror from his system.
“I hated them with a passion,” he continued. “Though I was careful not to reveal the depths of my rage. As it became more and more clear that they had no intention of killing me, I knew I had to get out. If I could escape, I could try to get home.
“I tried to formulate a plan, but came up with nothing. The only thing I knew for sure was escaping wouldn’t be easy. My captors fed me just enough to keep me breathing, no more. Weakened by starvation, I could barely walk, never mind hike through miles of jungle to search out civilization and rescue.”
“Oh, Tucker. I’m so sorry.”
He went on talking as though he hadn’t heard her. “Basically, unless there was a miracle, I knew I was a dead man. I’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. My luck had finally run out.”
“How’d you escape?” she asked.
His gaze cleared and he dipped his chin. “A rival drug faction ambushed my captors. The ensuing shootout left several dead, many more wounded, while the rest fled. I was left, alone and forgotten in my jail cell. By then, circumstances had extinguished even the smallest flicker of hope. I simply waited to die of starvation and neglect. I hoped I wouldn’t linger—after all, how long could my body hang on by the proverbial thread?”
He went silent.
“But you were rescued. By whom?” she prompted.
“The DEA had someone undercover. Apparently, they learned of my capture and got me out. After that, everything was a blur. The next thing I knew, I found myself in a hospital in San Antonio, Texas, under heavy guard. I was questioned by some military-looking types, who’d claimed to be DEA. My repeated attempts to contact my family had been met with refusal. I was told only that making any outside contact could endanger my life. I was so heavily guarded that I felt like I was a prisoner again.”
“But they finally let you go?” she asked. “Do you have any idea why?”
“No. But once my fever was gone and I could keep solid food down and stand unassisted, they finally released me. They even arranged for transport, driving me here in one of those nondescript, law-enforcement type vehicles and dropping me off.” He flashed her a smile, a shadow of the carefree grins she remembered. “And here I am.”
“And
