What if you threw your life away and the world threw it back? If you found yourself in credit to the value of one life? Would you spend that credit on a worthy cause, if fate offered up the chance?
...
There were times, usually after a herbero or two, when he missed the land of his birth. The baking heat of the Mediterranean sun in summer, the narrow alleyways of the Barrio del Carman, the tapas and the paella and the pinchos and coffee such as the Americans could only dream of.
How easy it would have been to stay there. Back where it all began, in the heart of the empire his father had built. Power, privilege and a corner office in a Valencia highrise, with a grandstand view of the port and its endless tide of freighters and cargo ships and all the riches they delivered.
Ah, yes. So easy. And if he had the slightest interest in 'easy' no doubt he would be wasting away in that office, pushing papers and growing fat while outside a world of opportunities went begging.
Easy, he reflected, as his limousine pulled up alongside him, was for the lazy and the fools. Opportunity—and its rewards—came to those prepared to pursue it. While he might miss the old country from time to time, there would be no return. For America, despite its innumerable flaws, its idiosyncrasies and its frequent sheer, bloody-minded illogicalities, was the land of opportunity.
Oops! Această imagine nu respectă Ghidul de Conținut. Pentru a continua publicarea, te rugăm să înlături imaginea sau să încarci o altă imagine.
"A dare?" Shaking her head, Mica glanced up at the neighbouring skyscraper, from the lofty heights of which her rescuer claimed to have jumped to her building. Without a rope. Or a parachute. Or, as far as she could tell, any good reason. "Are you crazy?"
"W-w-w-well, I-I-I—" laboured Nick, in a manner that didn't help to refute the possibility. He swallowed. Why he cared what this woman he'd only just met thought, he wasn't sure, but in any case, there was no easy way to say, "Nah, I'm not crazy—just finding the whole being alive thing a bit of a challenge." Particularly if you were him.
He settled for, "Office p-p-party. Few too many d-d-drinks. You kn-kn-know how it is."
As a good Catholic Filipino girl with the strictest of upbringings, Mica very much didn't know how it was. But she knew now wasn't the time to find out. And regardless of whether this strange, inarticulate man was some kind of reckless idiot (and the verdict on that seemed clear), right now he was all she had. She'd hoped for a police detective or a federal agent or somebody with at least a gun and a clue, but in the absence of any of the above she'd just have to make the best of what fate had provided.
"Okay, fine. Now, we need to find a way off this rooftop."
Nick shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Uh...there k-k-kind of isn't one." It dawned on him he hadn't thought this whole help-the-mystery-lady thing through.
Mica became very still. "What do you mean?"
Nick swallowed. "I've looked. No f-f-fire-escape." He pointed at the door on which he'd made his abortive shoulder charge. "Locked." He shrugged. "Th-th-that's it."
"That's it?" Mica advanced on him. "That's it?" she repeated, jabbing him in the breastbone. "If you didn't have a way for us to get out of here, then why on Earth did you break that window?"
