Chapter Two
Early the next morning, Jennifer rented a car and drove into the Hato Rey district. It had been foolish not to have done that right away, but then everything she’d done yesterday had been foolish. She’d gone waltzing into the Campbell building as if she’d been playing junior detective.
And she’d got off easy.
The man who’d accosted her—the chief of security or whatever he was—was not anyone she wanted to confront a second time. Last night, as she’d undressed for bed, she’d paused in front of the mirror, half expecting to find the imprints of his fingers on her shoulders. But the skin had not been bruised; still, in her imagination the steely pressure of his hands was all too real.
A little shudder ran through her as she approached the Campbell building. Whatever happened, she didn’t want to run into him again. It had been a minor miracle that he’d let her go—not that there’d been grounds on which to detain her. But he looked like a man who wouldn’t give a damn about laws and regulations, a man who lived by a code that was harsh and unforgiving.
There was a little park almost directly opposite the Campbell building. Jennifer pulled the car over to the curb, shut off the engine, and settled back in he
r seat. She had a positive feeling about today. She just knew, in her heart, that things were going to go well. She refused to think about the rest of it, that things had to go her way today. She’d only just learned, at breakfast, that the day after tomorrow was a holiday. All the island’s businesses would be closed until Monday—which was also the day that she was due to fly back to the States.
The morning passed slowly. At a little past noon, workers streamed from the Campbell building in little groups of two and three. There were some men, but none that resembled the grainy photo in Jennifer’s purse. She didn’t see the security officer, either, which meant that he didn’t see her, and that suited her just fine.
Some of the women clutched brown paper sacks. They drifted into the park and settled onto the benches where they sat chattering in a mixture of Spanish and English while they ate their lunches. Jennifer had stopped at a market for some fruit and crackers, but the thought of eating it in the warm, cramped confines of the car wasn’t very appealing.
She took a floppy brimmed sun hat from the back seat, twisted her dark hair into a quick topknot, then jammed the hat on her head. A quick glance in the mirror was reassuring. Between the drooping brim and her oversize sunglasses, her face was barely recognizable.
The women didn’t even give her a glance as she strolled toward them. She chose a bench that gave her a view of the street through a flowering shrub, ate her lunch, then pulled a guidebook from her shoulder bag and settled in for the long afternoon.
The hours dragged and the warm, flower-scented air made her drowsy. After a while, she closed the book and made a game of people watching. The tourists were easy to spot. The women and the men, too, were dressed much as she was, in casual cotton. The locals were mostly leathery-looking old men who sat with their faces turned up to the sun just as they did in the courthouse square back home.
Jennifer tried not to think how conspicuous she must seem, sitting here hour after hour. If she had to return tomorrow, she’d have to come up with a better plan—but she tried not to think about that. The day wasn’t over yet.
At a few minutes past six, workers began streaming from the Campbell building. She waited until the last straggler had hurried up the street and then she got to her feet, disappointment lying heavy as stone in her breast. So much for the fruits of her surveillance, she thought, as she trudged disconsolately toward the park exit—and then, suddenly, a sleek black car swept around the corner and pulled up in front of the building.
Jennifer’s breath caught. She hung back, telling herself it might mean nothing.
A uniformed chauffeur stepped from the car. The doors of the building whooshed open and a man hurried out. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles, he had a receding hairline—
“Yes,” Jennifer said. “Oh, yes!”
A woman pushing a baby carriage looked at her strangely. Jennifer smiled.
“It’s him,” she said. “It’s—” The woman smiled a little nervously, and Jennifer shook her head and laughed. “I’m sorry—perdón—I just…”
Was she crazy? Here she stood, babbling like an idiot, and Campbell was already climbing into the back seat of the limo. Quickly, she dug her keys from the depths of her shoulder bag and flew toward her rental car.
“Come on,” she whispered as she slipped behind the wheel and turned the key, “dammit, come on!”
The black car was already pulling into traffic. Jennifer took a quick glance at the mirror, then jammed her foot on the pedal and swung into a U-turn that sent her car squealing across the center of the road. Her tires bounced over the curb, then hit the blacktop, and she stepped on the accelerator again.
She’d found the man she’d come thousands of miles to see, and she wasn’t going to lose him now.
* * *
Staying behind the car wasn’t easy.
Traffic was heavy, the streets choked with vehicles and people. Cars edged in and out of their lanes, horns blared, lights blinked all too swiftly from green to red. Somehow, she managed to keep the vehicle in sight even though it meant ignoring the angry glares of other drivers and twice sailing through intersections after the light had changed.
Eventually, they merged onto a wide highway that led south, away from the city. The black car picked up speed and Jennifer did, too, although she was careful to stay back. There was no point in pushing her luck.
She followed as the car veered off at an exit ramp. A right-hand turn, then a left, and suddenly water glinted ahead. A sign appeared. Club Náutico.
Even Jennifer’s high-school Spanish was enough for that translation. They were heading toward a yacht club.
A handsome white and pink stucco structure, probably a leftover from the island’s colonial past, came up quickly. But the black car swept past it, stopping at last when it reached the docks where sleek-hulled pleasure craft bobbed gently on the blue-green water.