Ransomed Dreams Read Online Free Page A

my trauma-induced hobby.”
    “They must be attractive if people buy them.”
    “They’re mediocre souvenirs.”
    A seam appeared between his eyes. The gray-green darkened to all gray.
    Her breath caught. “You knew about them, didn’t you?”
    Before his eyes went blank again, she saw his answer. Yes.
    Yes?
    “Sheridan, I needed help tracking you down—”
    “Don’t patronize me! What else do you know about me? about Eliot?”
    “It doesn’t matter. I want to hear it from you. How you are. How you really are.”
    “Tell me!”
    He gazed at her, expressionless.
    “Luke Traynor, you owe me that much for coming here and tearing apart my so-called cocoon.”
    “All right.” Still hunched forward, he spoke in a low tone as if that would cushion the emotional blows he was delivering. “I know that you regularly attend the village church. You give impromptu English lessons to local kids. You sign your paintings ‘SC’—I take it for your first and maiden names, Sheridan Cole. When Javier, the sculptor, is asked about the painter whose work he sells in his shop, he shrugs like he doesn’t understand English and says, ‘ El artista , he live Las Trojes.’ You have caring friends, like Mercedes, like that posse who watched me walk up here earlier.”
    Sheridan felt a warmth for those villagers who had begun to trust her in recent months. What would happen to that now that her past had caught up?
    Luke went on. “Eliot is a recluse. You spend most of your time with him. You’re his nurse, secretary, chauffeur. He only comes out when you drive him down to Mesa Aguamiel once every four weeks or so. You go to the bank, shops, Internet café. You pick up mail at the post office.” He paused. “Mail that’s forwarded from a Chicago PO box number.” He stopped talking.
    She pressed her lips together. They wouldn’t stay put. “You lousy scumbag.”
    She shoved his knees aside and brushed past him, her wrought-iron chair clattering against the tiles.

Chapter 6
    “Traynor’s here?” Seated on the edge of his bed, Eliot slid his arm through the shirtsleeve Sheridan held for him. “I can hardly believe that.”
    “Well, you may as well believe it.” She eyed his back, the visible ribs on his gaunt six-four frame, the nubby scar below his left shoulder blade. “He’s right outside in the courtyard, eating one of Mercedes’s egg burritos.”
    Eliot placed his other arm into the short sleeve of the guayabera, an oversize white linen shirt with pockets at the hem. He worked on the top button.
    “It means,” she said, “we’ll have to schedule exercise later.”
    Nothing about him indicated that he’d heard her comment. He disliked physical therapy so much he wouldn’t even talk about it. She suspected his pride ached more than the legs she moved about in patterns doctors had designed for him.
    Eliot said, “No surprise that he found us, though.” He was still on Luke.
    “No. No surprise.” She clipped her words and squashed a complaint about being discovered. Like the exercise comment, it would fall on deaf ears. At least Eliot was handling the news with a trace of his old equanimity. Maybe it would carry them through the meeting.
    He fastened the button and fumbled with the second.
    Sheridan sat in an armchair and tried not to remember how she used to snuggle within the confines of his well-toned muscles. She tried not to recall the strong hands that gestured confidently and elegantly as he conferred with presidents and prime ministers.
    Eliot said, “It would be easy enough to track us down.”
    “I thought we made it difficult.”
    “Any tourist could stop in at Davy’s cantina and learn, for the price of a luncheon special, something about the Americans living in the area.”
    “But why does this hypothetical tourist choose Topala in the first place?” She spoke more loudly. It sometimes got his attention. “How does he get that close to us?”
    “Perhaps through the banks.” He finished