His family.
Such a small, strong word.
And the psych-eval profile had stated, very clearly, that The Woodpecker was equal parts scared of and intrigued by change. The notion that when news of his having a sister leaked out and reached him through appropriate channels and he wouldn’t react, was slim to none.
Harold and Krivi were gambling on his curiosity and his paranoia to provide that last little push to get there.
Yes, Ziya would be bait, but there would be a team of trained commandos guarding her from the minute she left the compound and rode out in the hired car to Heathrow, took a sixteen-hour flight to Kathmandu, Nepal and from there, got her special permission tag sorted that would help her gain entry into Lhasa, Tibet.
She would check into the luxurious Lhasa Hotel, right on the very prestigious Beijing 8 Road. The Beijing 8 Road was also incredibly accessible by road and rail, something that Harold had insisted on.
Always have your exit strategy in place.
Her cover story was ridiculously simple. And contained several nuggets of truth.
Ziya was bored with life in the Indian sub-continent, the job was not as challenging as she had thought it would be and, more important, she had lost close friends in a horrific accident. So, wanted away from anything that could remind her of that.
She was going to contact an old ex-colleague who was currently Vice President at Allegro Organic Chemicals, her previous company before she managed Goonj, whose office just incidentally happened to be located thirty blocks away from her hotel.
It was entirely plausible - all of it - because Krivi’s name and face had been kept out of every news broadcast making the rounds about the horrible bomb explosion that took place on Portobello Road.
Ziya Maarten was the sole witness, except, her name had not been revealed to the public either.
Another string pulled by Harold Wozniacki and his team of invisible puppeteers.
The plan was bound to be successful because, even if using Ziya as bait did not work when they went fishing, there was also the hangar meet happening on January third.
Two days from today, New Year’s Eve.
Here, Harold’s informant had promised a positive ID if someone could guarantee The Woodpecker’s presence at the meeting being held at the warehouse near Lhasa Gonggar Airport.
Another reason why Ziya was perfectly positioned to make her appearance here in,Tibet.
Krivi had reasoned, and reasoned correctly, given the proximity and propinquity to the woman who was supposed to be his sister, no one, least of all a terrorist, would give up the chance to at least contact her, if nothing else.
And, the idea of meeting one’s sister would be enough to bring The Woodpecker to Asia.
Where, even if he wasn’t aware of the bomb auction, he would become aware, as his underground intel network was as powerful and extensive, if not more, than Harold’s. And he wouldn’t resist making an appearance to get his first look on this beautiful piece of destruction.
Ziya and the bomb auction.
The bomb auction and Ziya.
The plan had two heads and both of those heads had one common target.
The Woodpecker.
As Krivi left Mission Control, his final list of orders all ready to be carried out at daybreak, it was an hour to midnight…the New Year.
~~~~~~
Ziya had already emailed her friend Jack Hagen wanting to meet and catch up for old time’s sakes. And Jack was going to meet agreed for drinks at The Tibet Hotel on January first, which had a whole book written about it.
She had a whole day to sightsee and soak in all the sights before heading out for her meeting, by which time, The Woodpecker would have had ample time to scout out Ziya and move in for a meet himself.
If he so wanted.
And she would be at the most fancy, most secure restaurant in all of Lhasa.
They couldn’t hope for anything simpler than this and Krivi didn’t want to spoil a good thing by cluttering the plan with unnecessary details.
But, he wasn’t thinking about the plan or nailing his nemesis right between the eyes as he walked the half a kilometer through the obstacle course and into the living quarters’ compound.
Snow fell in thick drifts in the silent night, as he trekked on. It didn’t even feel like New Year’s, even though raucous music and shouts of revelry could be heard from several of the Quonset huts. Everyone had someone on New Year to kiss and hold. To bring in the next year with.
With some surprise, Krivi knocked on the door of the hut he shared with Ziya and realized, for once, in a very long while, so did.
He had Ziya.
And he was going to send her into battle tomorrow, unarmed and defenseless without telling her how she made him feel.
What she had done to him just by existing.
And, if he didn’t tell her tonight, he was never going to be able to.
The time, Krivi knew, for hiding behind his cowardice was past. This year had to end, and the year had to be brought in.
~~~~~
Ziya zipped her matching luggage that one of the agents had so generously offered her, closed. She looked at the hut that had been home for the last days of the year.
The kitchenette was tinier than the kitchen in the safe house in London, and the bed was a lot cramped than she had been used to. Krivi managed to keep a scrupulous distance, sleeping on his back at the very edge, so she still got most of the space to sleep in, after her exhausting, punishing training.
The last time he had touched her was the day she got the tattoo.
It was as if, after that night, a switch had flipped on in him and he had gone back to being the uncaring, indifferent asshole she had first met in Goonj. And, under other circumstances, she could comfortably hate that man, but she knew the real Krivi that lurked underneath that bullet-proof exterior.
That man was kind and gentle and he cared; when he really cared about you.
That man had loved a woman named Gemma and was still grieving for her.
There were glimpses of that man every day when he ran with Ziya or trained with her in the Phys. Ed room. When he sat next to her at dinner and silently claimed her as his so that none of the other jocks could lobby for her attention and make things awkward in this largely male bastion.
He was Krivi.
It was the only way she could explain it with any degree of success.
He was brooding and surly, silent and uncommunicative and he gave every indication of not having any feelings for her anymore but, he was a hero and he was brave and conflicted and damaged and he had helped her when she had thought she was beyond help and she wished…
She just wished he could be here tonight.
It was New Year’s Eve.
It was her last night here in this safe place, this sanctuary.
She wanted to spend it with him, these last few hours she had. Before she was left out in the open for a predator to scent her on his trail.
It was her choice, she couldn’t make any other, but that was for tomorrow.
Tonight, she wanted Krivi.
She wanted to hold him, to have him hold her and pretend that they were all right. That it was just the night before New Year’s Eve and they could kiss at midnight, like they would every year from now, they could be together…grow together, see the world without the shadow of the dead and the fallen hanging over them.
She was, Ziya acknowledged wryly, wishing for the moon.
She placed the two pieces of luggage, one mid-sized suitcase and the hold-all, neatly next to the foot of the bed and looked at the time.
It was eleven pm.
One more hour to midnight and her date with fate.
There was a knock on the door.
Krivi.
Ziya straightened her spine and, keeping a deliberately neutral expression on her face, went to open it.
~~~~~~
Krivi knew he had something important to say. He had understood that as
soon as he started running, covering the last few hundred feet to their quarters.
But, everything, his mind was wiped clean as he saw Ziya standing on the other side of the door, looking at him like that…like she would a stranger. Her lake-grey eyes revealed nothing, the purity of her features revealed in the fluorescent bulb lighting provided in these huts.
She wore shorts and a cotton tee shirt in deference to Nepal’s balmy weather and she had on ridiculous pink UGGS that should have been incongruous with her outfit.
It only made her look hotter.
Between her flame-tipped hair and her bunny footwear, Krivi grew instantly hard.
Something must have flashed in his eyes because Ziya stepped back, without saying a word.
She walked back to the bedroom, and he was entranced watching the sway of her hips in the stretchy shorts and the way the pink boots made her slim legs look slimmer.
He had visions of taking her, just grabbing her by those slim hips and taking her against the wall, rough and necessary till all this infernal need that was inside of him, relentless and always, could go away.
“Ziya…” His voice was scratchy, as if he hadn’t spoken in hours, when in fact, the opposite was true, so he tried again. “Ziya.”
This time, she heard him so she gave him an enquiring look over her shoulder. “Yes?”
He couldn’t understand how he found that gesture provocative and sexual.
“Did you…” He cast about for a suitable question to ask her. “Did you have dinner?”
She didn’t answer, just folded down the bedclothes on the pathetically small bed, which kept him awake most nights as much as the nearness to her luscious body did.
He couldn’t touch her without seeing that tattoo and the purpose behind it, and the chip that was nestled at the base of her spine. And he was deathly afraid of what would happen to her… of what she wanted to do to herself.
And he was even more afraid of what would happen to him if anything should happen to her.
So he had tried to stay away, distance himself because it seemed like the smarter thing to do.
Don’t get involved.
Don’t get hurt.
Don’t fall in love.
Love?
Krivi stared at Ziya’s perplexed expression and so he asked her, again, “Did you have dinner, Ziya? I wasn’t there at the table because I was prepping the Alpha team who would go with you tomorrow.”
“I know. Harold told me.” She smoothed some sort of lotion onto her hands.
His eyes hungrily followed the movement, the scent faintly drifting towards his nostrils, making his very molecules expand with desire, rampant and urgent desire, until his skin felt stretched tight and he couldn’t take a step without it being in her direction.
“There are three teams.” Ziya walked over to the bed and started refolding the sheet. “Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie, A, B and C. The first is to be stationed near me at all times within a sixty feet radius with a plain clothes cover of six men and women. The second team provides comm-link to me; inside a vehicle that is at a distance of five hundred yards to me at all times. Three men, on six-hour rotational basis. I have to be in sight at all times, even though the chip will locate me ASAP. And the last team—"
“Sniper cover,” he ended simply.
She gave him a sharp look, dropped the sheet she had been folding into a precise square. “Yeah. Sniper cover. For whoever might be following me and wants to take me out.” She was deliberately wry.
“No one is going to take you out.”
~~~~~~
Ziya shrugged and turned to look sightlessly around the room.
“Ziya.” His voice was quiet, commanding. “Look at me.”
She looked at him; he was still standing in what was the living and eating section of the hut. Next to the kitchenette. The width of the entire hut was between them.
And he wanted her to see him…know how certain he was when he said the words. “No one is going to take you out.”
She smiled; a sad little smile “The whole purpose of this exercise is to make sure that someone identifies me and takes me out, Krivi. Don’t play dumb.”
“The whole purpose of this exercise is to draw the bastard out in a bloodless way if we can manage it,” he corrected her. “That’s it.”
“Oh, so you think he is just going to join me for a ginseng chaai latte at the local café? Introduce himself as the world’s most notorious terrorist who wants his hands on the bomb that god fears and tell me I’m his sister?”
She was scornful now, but he heard the thread of hurt running under it. He heard it, because he knew her so well now. His brave, prickly Ziya who would walk into battle to avenge her family, who would tell him she loved him even though he couldn’t return the feeling, who was…
Everything.
With a sickening drop of his stomach, he realized that this woman, with her pink boots and sad eyes was everything to him.
She meant the whole world to him and she didn’t even know it.
Krivi walked further in to the hut, standing at the doorway that separated the so-called living room from the bedroom. This was just a bed, a wooden cupboard in which they had stowed their bags as is, and a miniscule excuse for a shower and commode.
“You’re not a terrorist’s sister,” he said, conversationally.
Ziya shrugged. “I know; I am not.”
~~~~~~
He came forward in three strides and tackled her to the bed in a lightning quick movement.
Krivi trapped her hands in an iron-hold, as he parted her legs and she was forced to crawl further up the bed or risk getting squashed under his considerable weight. He surrounded her, enclosed her and…
With a terrible kind of feeling that had her heart jumping back to her throat, she realized, he wanted her.
Terribly.
She arched away from him, straining against his hold, knowing that she couldn’t move unless he willed it and hating him all the more for it.
“This is beneath you. Let me go, Krivi.”
Ziya made her voice deliberately calm, because giving into any emotion right now would be the end of her. She would sob or kick or scream…lose all control.
She had already lost her heart to him; she couldn’t give him her pride too.
“I’ll move if you really want me to but hear this. You are not a terrorist’s sister, Ziya. You never have been, and you never will be, even if you share DNA with him.”
The quiet conviction in his deep voice, undid her further.
She turned her head to the side and whispered, “You don’t believe that. You first came to me because you thought I was a terrorist’s sister. You were going to fuck me to find out if I was.”
“No.” He shook his head, his eyes hell-dark with his belief. Strong and bottomless…so that she wanted to look into them and just fall. “No, I wasn’t. I was going to fuck you because I wanted to so badly.”
“But you didn’t,” she reminded him.
“Because I realized you deserved someone better than me. Someone not,” he hesitated as he groped for the right words. “Broken on the inside. Someone whole. Someone happy who could keep you happy.”
“You keep me happy.”
Her eyes were wide, vulnerable, her heart visible on that lovely face. The heart she had given him. The heart she wanted him to have, instead of the black hole that existed inside of him.
“I am not even able to make myself happy, Ziya. I have forgotten how.” He was nothing if not brutally honest.
She smiled; another sad little smile. “I know. You love only once. I understand that.” Her voice was whisper-soft, sigh-soft. And one tear slipped out of the corner of one grey eye.
“But so do I, Krivi,” she admitted. “So do I.”
“Don’t cry, Ziya,” he said, thickly. “I can’t stand it when you cry.”
Ziya opened her legs and held him closer. “I can’t stand it when I cry either.”
“I can’
t stand to think of you leaving here tomorrow. Going to Lhasa…going to be bait. I can’t stand to think of it.”
The raw agony in his voice made her open her eyes and look at him in astonishment.
“What?” Ziya was uncertain.
“You want to know what I thought, when Noor and Sam…the car exploded. I thought, thank God, it wasn’t her. It wasn’t Ziya. I was ashamed of it later, when I remembered it, but it was my first thought.”
He kissed her neck, and rested his head there, his hair tickling her jaw, her shoulders.
“You were my first thought. And my last. Every night, when I go to sleep, every morning when I wake up. I think to myself, she is safe today. She is here today. Even if I can’t hold her and kiss her. Even if I can’t pour myself into her and stay there for kingdom come, it’s enough that she’s here.”
He raised his head and gave her the truth, the truth that shone bold and bright in his black, black eyes.
“You’re here,” he repeated softly. “You’re everything, Ziya. I can’t lose you. I don’t know what will happen to me if I do.”
Hearing those words, that rough confession, eased something inside of Ziya.
So she tugged her hand away from his hold and cupped his rough, stubbled cheek in her palm. He didn’t move away from her touch, but he didn’t lean into it either.
So it was Ziya who tugged him closer with her fingers so their eyes and mouths were aligned, so they could breathe each other they were that close and she kissed him.
Softly, sweetly, with all the love she felt for him. Had always been waiting to feel for him. For this broken, damaged hero.
Her broken, damaged hero.
And he kissed her, with a flavor that was desperation, running his hands over her supple curves, not wanting to move, not wanting to breathe if it meant leaving her side.
She tugged at his clothes, undressing him with a haste that would have been laughable, if he wasn’t doing the same to her.
The tee shirt went, so did the shorts and he found all woman, underneath.
Ziya reared up and bit the delicate skin between his shoulder and neck, marking him, branding him so that he would feel the pain, feel her. He surged a little into her as the exquisite sensation made him lost a little more control than he already had.
Warrior Knight Page 27
