Merrick's Eleventh Hour

“You don’t need to thank me. Not after all the years you’ve been so good to me. Come on.”

Zeta gripped Callia’s hand, and together they left Kerkyra. They changed planes in Athens at 1:00 p.m. and thirty minutes later they landed in Hora, the largest coastal city in Naxos.

“There’s a taxi.” Zeta pointed.

Callia led the way. The cabdriver opened the back door for them, and once they were inside and he was behind the wheel, Johanna said, “The hospital, please.”

“No aposkeves?” the driver asked.

“No luggage.”

He pulled away from the curb, and the car quickly slipped through the airport congestion. Callia said, “I wish I had time to see Sonya, but my plane leaves in a half hour to return to Corfu.” She squeezed Zeta’s hand. “You have my phone number and the extra money I gave you?”

“Ne.”

“Call me later and tell me how Sonya is. Tell her I’m praying for her recovery.”

Zeta hugged Callia as the car pulled to a stop in front of the hospital. She got out of the cab, stood in the open door. “I’m sorry, Callia.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. Call me in a few hours. I’ll be home by then.”

Zeta nodded, then with tears streaming down her cheeks, she closed the door and walked away.

“Back to the aerothromio,” Callia told the driver.

“The airport,” he repeated. “Amésos. Right away. No problem.”

On the ride back Callia noticed that they were taking a different route and the cabdriver was pushing the speed limit. “Piyene pio sigha.”

The driver didn’t slow down. She saw him pull his dark sunglasses off and toss them onto the seat. He ran his hand through his silver hair, and this time when he spoke his island accent was gone. The deep baritone voice sent a cold chill up her spine—the voice as recognizable as the piercing gray eyes that now stared at her in the mirror.

“Hello, Johanna. Or would you prefer I call you…Callia?”

She was two feet from him, and he could reach out and touch her. Merrick quelled the urge—the urge to turned around and wrap his hands around her neck.

From the moment Melita had told him Johanna was alive he hadn’t allowed himself to believe it entirely. Not until now.

“I’ll say one thing for your housekeeper, she knows how to follow instructions. Of course, I did give her incentive.”

“Zeta knew? Where’s Sonya?”

“The girl is waiting for her mother in the hospital lobby. I suppose you could say her accident was running into me. When I spoke to your housekeeper a few hours ago on the phone, I suggested that she take her daughter and disappear as quickly as possible once she’d delivered you to me. If she’s smart she’ll do it. Otherwise Cyrus will kill them both for betraying him.”

“He would never hurt Zeta and Sonya.”

Merrick glanced into the rearview mirror. Her delicate features were strained, her voice full of fear. A fear that was directed at him, not the threat of violence from Cyrus against the hired help.

He swung the taxi into a crowded parking lot at Hora’s busiest seaport and killed the engine. When he looked into the mirror again, he found Johanna’s fear still glaringly evident. Her anxiety had altered her breathing, and it reminded him that she was asthmatic.

“I always knew one day you would come,” she said. “Cyrus said you never give up on a mission.”

“What mission would that be?”

“I know it was you who tried to kill me in Washington. Cyrus told me everything.”

Those beautiful hazel-green eyes were as accusing as the tone in her voice. Sharp and on the attack. Whatever game she was playing, he was about to change the rules.

“I’m going to get out while you stay put. Move your ass into the center of the seat.” When she didn’t move, he said, “Rule number one. Never piss off the man who holds your life in his hands.”

She slid left a few inches, and he opened the car door, slipped his sunglasses back on, then climbed out. He was dressed in jeans and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up in the island heat. He tossed the keys onto the front seat, then opened the back left door and climbed in next to her.

He remembered everything about her, even the way she smelled. He found it ironic that she hadn’t changed even her perfume.

“Did you kill the taxi driver?”

“He’s taking a nap in a hotel room.” He took her purse from her, opened it and dumped it out in her lap—cell phone, wallet, one lipstick, asthma inhaler. The inhaler made him aware of the shortness of her breath. He glanced at her chest, her sunbaked cleavage as smooth as satin.

Another memory came blasting through his controlled anger and he looked away, pocketed her cell phone and opened her wallet. Money, a passport that claimed she was Callia Krizova, one picture—a group photo of her and Cyrus with a young boy, maybe sixteen. They looked very happy.

He handed her purse to her, kept her wallet. “Take the inhaler, that’s all you’ll need.” Then he reached up and jerked the clip from her hair releasing the thick knot. When she reached up in protest, he noticed the marble-size diamond ring on her finger.

She dropped the lipstick into her purse, set it in the seat next to her and kept the inhaler.

“Did you file for a divorce?”

She looked up. “What?”

“You heard me. Did you divorce me?”

She shook her head.

“Then that ring on your finger doesn’t belong there.” Merrick pulled the small envelope from his pocket. “Give it to me.”

She looked down at her hand, but she made no effort to take off Cyrus’s rock.

“I could cut off your finger. Should I?”

She took off the ring. He opened his hand and she dropped it into his palm. He shook his ring out of the envelope—a two-karat emerald-cut diamond set on a white gold wedding band wrapped with more diamonds.

“Put it on.”

“Where did you get that?”

“Put it on.”

She took the ring and slid it onto her finger.

Merrick pulled the white card Cyrus had left at the cemetery from the envelope, then dropped his garish four-karat diamond inside and slid it into his pocket. He reached down inside his boot and came up with his Nightshade. When she saw the knife, she clutched her hands together as if anticipating losing her finger.