Free Hot Schemes by Sherryl Woods

there?”
    “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But someone there will know how to find him.”
    Michael gave a curt nod of satisfaction, then rested his hand over the old man’s. “Thank you.”
    “De nada
.” For nothing. No problem.
    It wasn’t nothing, though, Molly realized as she studied the soul-weary man across from them. José López looked as if the exchange had drained him of every last bit of energy. Worse, when she gazed into his eyes, all she saw was fear.
    As she and Michael walked back to his car, she said to him, “He was afraid. Was it because you’re a policeman?”
    Michael shook his head. “I believe he is afraid that whatever happened to my uncle could happen to him.”
    •   •   •
    Michael fell sound asleep en route to his recently acquired townhouse in Kendall. Not even the caffeine in several cups of Cuban coffee could combat the exhaustion of the past twenty-four hours or so. The fact that he was not awake to argue was probably the only reason Molly was actually able to get him to go home. Awake he would have been insisting on going to assist in the rescue flights that had been taking off all morning from Tamiami Airport in search of his uncle and any other misguided rafters who might be lost on the treacherous seas.
    He groaned when she gently shook him awake to go inside. “Where are we?”
    “Your place.”
    He yawned and climbed out of the car, leading the way inside the neat cream-colored structure with its red-tiled roof. Inside the air-conditioning blasted, creating an almost Arctic chill.
    “I’ll take a quick shower and then go out to the airport,” he said, his voice still groggy with sleep. “Why don’t you get some rest?”
    Molly lost patience. “Michael, if you keep this up, you’re going to collapse. Then what will your family do? Sleep for a couple of hours at least. Then you can go to the airport and wait for the rescue flights to come in.”
    “I should be on board one of them.”
    “Taking the place of someone whose eyes are alert?”
    He sighed then. “Okay, you have a point.”
    “Remind me to mark the occasion.”
    “Careful,
amiga
, or I will find a way to silence that tart tongue of yours.”
    She grinned at him. “I’d be worried, if you weren’t asleep on your feet.”
    “There are some things a man can always find the energy to do.”
    Molly wanted very much to suggest he prove it, but concluded reluctantly that this was definitely not the time. “I’ll remind you of that one of these days. Go, get some rest. I’ll wake you in a couple of hours.”
    “You need rest, too,
amiga.”
    “I need to make a couple of calls, then I’ll lie down right here on the sofa.” She thought it was an amazingly noble suggestion considering where she’d rather be.
    To her surprise, he shook his head. “I want you beside me,” he said, though there was less amorous intent in his words than a sort of lost desolation. “Please.”
    Deeply touched, her pulse hammering, Molly nodded. “I’ll be there as soon as I check on Brian.”
    The call to Hal to exact his promise to keep Brian until the crisis with Tío Miguel was resolved took far less time than she’d anticipated, mostly because for once Hal didn’t argue with her. In a resigned, only faintly aggrieved tone, he simply agreed.
    “I hope everything turns out okay,” he said. “I saw the story this morning.”
    “Did Brian see it?” she asked worriedly.
    “No, I didn’t even open the paper until I got to the office. O’Hara’s okay?”
    “Exhausted, but okay. I’ll talk to you soon.”
    “Molly?”
    “Yes?”
    “I know you don’t want to hear this from me, but be careful. You’ve seen the extremes some of these people will go to to make a point.”
    Molly thought of the radio newscaster years before whose leg had been blown off by a car bomb. She recalled the bombs detonated to make a point about a collection of artworks that had contained paintings by artists still living in Cuba. She