Read Online Scorpion by Ken Douglas - Free Book Online Page B

gone,” she said.
    “ I have baggage, but I imagine I can get it tomorrow or the next day,” he said. Then he followed her toward the phones.
    “ I’m sorry about your girl.” They were at the phones.
    “ Thanks,” he said. He turned and faced her for a second with mist covered eyes. The pain there was real and it looked like it cut deep.
    “ I’ll make the call from the hotel,” she said. Earl could wait. “Are you going to be okay?” she asked as they made their way to the street.
    “ Sure,” he said. Then he raised his hand for a taxi.
    A rusty Toyota pulled up to the curb. The car was fifteen years old, but the tires were new. “You want a taxi?” the driver said. His rich baritone and dark ebony skin conspired to hide his age, but the gray hair and wrinkled hands gave it away. He was old and he reminded Maria of her own father.
    “ Yes, to the Hilton Hotel,” Broxton said.
    “ I’m your man,” the driver said with a smile in his voice.
    He opened his door and started to step out of the car, but she stopped him, saying, “That’s okay, we don’t have any baggage.”
    “ Makes it easy on these old bones,” he said. Broxton opened the front door and put his carry-on bag on the front seat. Maria unclipped her small bag from the trolley and laid it next to his. Then they climbed into the back.
    “ Dependable Ted, at your service.” The driver turned and handed her a card. “You need a taxi, anytime, day or night, you call me, hear? I’m dependable, like my name, the name on the card, Dependable Ted.”
    “ I’ll be sure to do that.” Maria handed his card to Broxton.
    “ Now you sit back and enjoy the ride. I might not be the fastest taxi in Trinidad, but I’m the most dependable.” Broxton laughed for a second, then he turned glum. On the plane he seemed bulldog-strong, now he was puppy-dog meek. She needed to get his mind off that girl.
    “ Very lush here,” she said, making conversation as the taxi started winding its way along the access road, heading for the highway that would take them into Port of Spain, about a half hour away.
    “ Your first time in the tropics?” Broxton asked her.
    “ This is my third flight out of Miami, she said, so I guess you could say I’m new to the tropics, if you don’t count Texas. You?” He chuckled and she took that as a positive sign.
    “ I spent a year in Mexico,” he said, slipping the driver’s card into his shirt pocket.
    “ Looking for drug smugglers?” she asked.
    “ Hardly. All I do is process the paperwork. The most exciting thing that ever happens to me is when the computer crashes. Even that scares me.”
    “ Then why did they pick you to protect the prime minister?”
    “ Because of who my future father-in-law is, or rather who I thought my father-in-law was going to be.”
    “ I can’t believe that,” she said with a smile in her voice.
    “ It’s true,” he said. “I’m sort of like an analyst. They give me the data and I try to put it all together in my trusty laptop. Some days I never see the outside.
    “ That explains why you can live a year in Mexico and still be so white,” she said.
    He laughed, and she felt like she was definitely making progress.
    “ Hablas Españiol,” she said, using the familiar form.
    “ Claro,” he answered.
    “ Most Americans don’t bother. They expect us to learn their language.”
    “ Us,” he said. “You have a slight Mexican accent, but you’re American.”
    “ How can you tell?”
    “ It’s in the way you walk and talk. Like you’re sure of yourself. Like you’re an American.”
    “ I don’t understand.”
    “ Americans stand out, wherever we go. We can’t help it. Black, white, red or yellow, we’re all the same when you start comparing us with the rest of the world.”
    “ I don’t know if I can believe that,” she said.
    “ I’ll give you an example. Years ago, when I was a child, I was in Nairobi with my parents. It was the first anniversary of the