Free Mona Lisa Eclipsing by Sunny Page B

my head rolling on the ground right now. Why didn’t they try to hurt me?”
    He must have heard the rising note of agitation in my voice because he put his arm around me and soothed me with a soft shushing sound, gently urging my head to rest against his chest. But I resisted, the first time I’d done that. I pulled away so I could see his face. It was important that I do that, see Roberto’s face when he answered me.
    “You are a woman. I have seen other men like myself but never a woman before,” Roberto said, choosing his words carefully, making me wonder how much English his two bodyguards spoke and understood. “Of course they would wish to kill me and take you for themselves.”
    It all sounded true, reasonable, consistent with everything he’d told me. I would have been satisfied if two of our attackers didn’t match the description my landlord had given me of my four “friends” who had helped me move out of my Manhattan apartment.
    Had they—bizarre thought here—had they been trying to rescue me? If so, that would imply that they thought Roberto was the bad guy. It would also imply that I was a captive, which I wasn’t. Was I?
    “We’ll drop you off at the house first,” Roberto said, interrupting my train of thought.
    “No, the police will need my statement. I was a witness. For that matter, why didn’t we wait for the police? Aren’t we supposed to stay at the scene of a crime?”
    “Normally we would, but it was too dangerous to remain there. The men who escaped might have returned.”
    Roberto and his two bodyguards had tipped the car back onto all four wheels, roughly stowed their captive in the trunk, and taken off like a bat out of hell. Roberto could have straightened the car himself, single-handedly, but he’d asked his bodyguards’ help, likely in case anyone in one of the homes along the street were watching. As if a giant eagle turning into a naked man, and people moving at faster than human speed, able to leap an entire block in a single bound, were not strange enough.
    “I will take you to the house first. No need for you to be involved,” Roberto said in a soothing tone. “If the Federales wish to take your statement, they can come to the house to do so.” He dropped me off, leaving the taller bodyguard with me, following me inside like a looming shadow as Maria opened the door.
    I escaped upstairs to my room, very aware of the guard’s presence outside my door as I wrestled with my sudden, odd suspicions. Roberto had been nothing but kind to me so far, more so than he needed to be. And they had attacked us, not the other way around. But still, so many things didn’t add up, and my questions would not be answered unless I asked them.
    I made my decision and opened the door. “Excuse me,” I said to the guard standing outside my room. “Do you speak English?”
    “ Sí . A little.”
    “Good.” I looked up into his eyes and captured his will. Mesmerism, compulsion—whatever name you wanted to call it. I considered this my most dangerous power; as a nurse, I’d only used it to help people, to provide a momentary balm to soothe sick and injured patients.
    “What is your name?” I asked.
    “Carlos Hernandez.”
    “Come inside, Carlos.”
    He entered and I shut the door behind him. He waited for my next command, his face slack, eyes fixed on mine.
    “What type of businessman is your boss, Roberto Carderas?”
    “A ruthless one,” Carlos said, answering the question, but not in the way I had hoped.
    I rephrased it. “What type of business is Roberto in?”
    “He is a drug lord.”
    My sluggish heart started to pound. “What type of drugs?”
    “Crystal meth, cocaine.”
    Okay, definitely the illegal stuff. Even though I didn’t feel the strain yet, I knew I couldn’t keep up the compulsion for much longer and asked the next question quickly. “How did I come to be here in Roberto Carderas’s house?”
    “He shot you with a tranquilizer dart and brought you