She’d heard sporadic gunfire all day, and constant shelling, though none near the market—the ironic bonus of being so close to the General’s troops. There was no telling who controlled the sector surrounding the market now—Nationalists, Separatists, Fundamentalists, or some oddball-coalition. The UN safety zone controlled by the Ukrainians had been pierced. Which meant that even if she and Ellsworth somehow escaped from the market, they might meet the Nationalists again at the next corner.
“Bren—?
She jumped, startled by Ellsworth’s whisper, and turned at once, alarmed by the distress she’d heard in that single word. Her eyes took a moment to adjust from moonlight to the dark gallery. When she saw him, fear rustled through her.
He was in agony. Grunting with each breath, silently fighting pain’s choke-hold.
The van crash, the explosion, the hours of immobility had caught up with him.
“You got any ibuprofen?”
She shook her head. Ibuprofen wouldn’t touch this.
“You ever have a bad reaction to morphine?” she whispered. Not that she had alternatives to choose from.
“Morphine? You have morphine?”
She opened her jacket and pulled her turtleneck out of her pants. Reaching beneath her shirt, she fumbled with her traveler’s belt and extracted a small vial and a 3cc syringe.
“Mm-hmm,” she replied, holding the syringe cap between her teeth while she punctured the vial. “How much do you weigh?”
“One-eighty-five.” He put his head back again.
She rapidly calculated what she should draw into the needle, estimating the difference between her weight and dosage, that her brother James had calculated for her, and his, rounding downward to keep the dose light in case concussion and morphine didn’t mix. She wasn’t sure. But if his pain took him over the edge and commanded his voice, they would be discovered.
“Undo your pants.”
He rolled his head in her direction and gave her a look.
“This goes in your hip.”
“You have a license to practice?” he asked between chattering teeth. His fingers clumsy from the cold, he fumbled with his belt buckle, unfastened the top button of his jeans, eased his zipper down, and leaned forward.
“No license,” she said, pulling his jeans and silk boxers down enough to feel the fleshy part of his hip. She eased the needle into the firm muscle and smoothly discharged its contents. “But lucky for you, I have a good hand.” She let his clothes slip back into place. “It’ll take a few minutes.”
Half an hour later, the last of the soldiers straggled toward the passageways, and left the yard silent.
This was her chance to move Ellsworth away from the railing. Even with his pain abating, he was still shivering. She needed to warm him up.
“We need to move to the back now,” she told him, pointing toward a dark corner twenty feet away. “The soldiers might return at any moment. If I help—you think you can get there quietly?”
He nodded.
Taking a final glance over the railing, she knelt up, her legs stiff and prickly beneath her. She massaged her thighs trying to get her circulation going, while Ellsworth did the same beside her.
She slid a hand under his armpit, leveraging him off the floor.
He wobbled to his feet. If they felt anything like hers, they were numb. He teetered momentarily against the column, slid his arm over her shoulder.
She guided him to the corner and helped him down to the floor. Knees raised, he cradled his head on his forearms. He looked about two seconds away from woofing his cookies. He needed water. Unfortunately, she had none. She hadn’t gotten to the hotel yet, to trade out the stateside supplies for the items she needed day-to-day.
“Back in a sec—” she said. Staying close to the back wall, she returned for the camera. She’d left it at the column, the footage of the century still inside it.
Her fingers found the card slot, popped out the memory card, and tucked it into one of the hidden pockets in the back of her jacket. If they had to run—if they got a chance to run—she could always abandon everything else.
On her return, camera and bags in tow, she scooped up a few old newspaper sheets gusting on the balcony. She folded them over on themselves until she had two long rectangles and laid them on the floor, parallel to the back wall. The Sunday Times would have made a better pad, but even these few sheets would help insulate Ellsworth from the freezing floor.
He watched, eyes at half mast, shudders convulsing him.
She made a small flourish over them. “Your bed,” she whispered.
“No feather comforter?” His lower jaw clacked as he spoke.
“Alas. But I do have a heat-generating device.” Her fingertips tapped her chest above her breasts. She extended her hands and cradled the side of his face with her palm. “Lie down.”
She helped him make the transition to the floor, ensuring he lay squarely on the papers. She stretched herself out beside him on the hard tiles. “Head under my chin,” she instructed. Most body heat was lost through the head. She pulled her jacket over him and drew him against herself until the full length of his body pressed so snugly against her she felt every masculine contour.
A wave of pure physical memory washed through her.
Ari had once lain this vulnerably in her arms. Not from war, but from love-making so intense it had left both of them shaking and exhausted, so scared they thought they would shatter.
Her eyes slid shut, the recollection of that night overwhelming her.
Before Ari, the men had all been mistakes, a succession of pretenders who fucked her fast before she changed her capricious mind. She knew they didn’t care about her. She was a trophy—the Envoy’s daughter, one of the Reases, America’s Royal Family. She was no more to them than a sexual conquest to be publicly crowed about after the fact.
But still, she had taken them to her bed.
After her mother’s death, she’d been isolated from affection. For years, no one touched her. No one held her. No one stroked her for the simple pleasure of human contact. So she took what she could get—touch without affection, sex without connection—and she kept her heart sequestered.
Ari was the only man who noticed its absence.
One night, frustrated by her distance, determined to break her habit of separation, he demanded her complete surrender, insisted she relinquish her heart and soul to him, that she stop guarding herself. Give yourself to me, Brenna. I swear before all those who have gone before me that I won’t let you down.
He took her on the most frightening journey of her life, moved deeper and deeper into her, past every barrier, making love to her with such tender ferocity that her defenses finally collapsed and on the wings of her voice she handed him her heart.
And here she was, three years and twelve-hundred miles away from that marriage bed, her arms enfolding another man’s body, the hollow wound in her chest inexplicably bleeding all over again.
A spasm of grief caught in her throat.
Ellsworth stirred. His hand slid down the outside of her leg to the back of her knee. He lifted it and inserted his thigh deep between hers, rocking forward until they were pressed tightly together. “Shh,” he murmured. His hand trailed up her hip to her lower back. Softly, gently, he caressed her, until the morphine pulled him under again. Shh.
Come day, if they saw it, he wouldn’t remember. It was just the habitual kindness of a long-married man who thought he was sleeping with his wife.
She lay in the darkness for a long time, listening to his breath ease, feeling him relax as her body heat spread through him and his shivering subsided.
So far as she could tell, the Nationalist soldiers did not return to the yard. Could they have left? She cradled Ellsworth’s head and settled him on the floor, extricating herself from the tangle of their thighs. It was time to scout.
“Wha—?”
“Stay here,” she whispered. “I’ll be right back.”
He
nodded and pulled his knees up.
She took her time checking for sentries in the yard, saw none, and crouched along the back wall, staying away from the railing.
The nearest, western, staircase consisted of a single flight down. No turns, no landings, no place to hide. At the bottom, square iron gates with vertical prison-style bars torched into the once-graceful Turkish arches were chained together and padlocked. It might be possible to squeeze through the gap at the top, but it was useless as an escape route. The stairs led to the passageway, not directly to the street.
She expected the eastern gates would be the same, but she wanted to assess them. She moved silently around the perimeter and ended up diagonally across the square from Ellsworth. The eastern stairs were identical to the others. Straight shot down. Padlocked.
However, off to the side of the top landing, a narrow archway led her to an additional set of stairs, that went upward. She crept up in the pitch-black, blindly finding the steps with her boots. At the roof, there was a gate. She tested it. It wasn’t locked.
She stood in the frosty dark, listening. The distance held the usual noise—artillery, intermittent gun fire, the occasional rumble of heavy engines. After so much time in Kavsak, it was auditory wallpaper, as familiar a backdrop as crickets to a stateside family.
It was the nearness that frightened her. Fear lurked there, fangs bared, eyes intent, and limbs quivering, waiting for her to falter so it could leap out and savage her. Only her conviction held it at bay. She was not prey. She would not agree to be taken down. She would resist, as she always resisted.
Tempting as it seemed, sometimes, to just surrender.
She pushed the gate open, silently, slowly. Easing herself onto her belly, she crawled to the edge of the roof. Gradually, very gradually, she brought her head over the ledge and looked down.
The street.
Twenty-five feet to the ground, she estimated. If they could ease themselves over the edge and hang from it, it would be…what? Six-foot body length plus arm’s length, say eight feet—from twenty five…a seventeen foot, leg-breaking drop.
And once down there, even if they landed safely, who’d be waiting? She stared at the perimeter of the building, willing the abstract shadows to divulge their secrets. She grew transfixed, as transparent as the bitter night enveloping her, surveying the zone in neat quadrants. Then she saw it—a tiny orange glow, no larger than the eraser on a pencil. A cigarette.
A guard, smoking.
Stupid, she thought, keeping her head very still. She could have him in her gun-sights right now and pick him off. But he was the one holding the gun, not her. The important thing was that if there was one guard, there would be others.
Suddenly, a scream ripped the silence. A woman. Very close. Fighting. Desperately afraid. Brenna shot a confused glance at the courtyard. The scream came from inside! The guards shouted, predators beckoning the pack. Below her, the orange glow hit the pavement in a spray of sparks and the shadow abandoned his post.
Now, she thought. Now!
She sprinted down the stairs to the gallery, placing her feet carefully, her path mirroring the course taken by the sentries crossing the yard beneath her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a gang of soldiers, ripping the dress off a woman, dragging her to the ground. They must have captured her in the street. One of them already had his pants undone.
She rounded the corner, and skidded abruptly to a halt.
Jesus. Oh, Jesus.
Ellsworth. In the open. Headed for the railing!
Panic rose in her throat. She moved faster, fear at her heels, closing in for the kill. He was going to give them away, just when they stood a chance of escape! The night was coming undone.
She hurtled into him, jammed her fists around his jacket and shoved him behind the nearest column. She pinned him, belly against belly, her hand clamped over his mouth.
His eyes widened with shock.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she hissed. “You’re going to get us killed!”
He looked at her, confused.
She eased her hand off his mouth.
“You’re here? I thought it was you. In the square. I was going to help you.”
Her anger collapsed like petals from a dying bloom. He would have gone for her. She dropped her face into her hands, undone by the thought. “No,” she said, steeling herself. “I’m here.”
“Then who’s—?”
“We have to go. This is our chance to escape.”
In the yard, the men chanted like college boys in a beer-chugging contest while the conqueror pumped.
Ellsworth tilted his head in the woman’s direction. “We can’t leave her.”
“There’s nothing we can do for her.”
“Like hell.”
She turned him by the sleeve. “Look.”
The woman lay sprawled in the center of the courtyard, bare knees spread beneath a heaving guard, crying out. Two soldiers stood at her head, casually pinning her arms down with their boots, their AK-47s dangling inches from her face. Around them, three others waiting their turns.
“Six men. Armed. Fifty feet of open ground. You’ll be dead before you’re off the balcony. And after you’re shot, they’ll come up here looking for other survivors, and find me.”
Brenna concentrated on the tiny compass imbedded in her watchband. She was trying to travel northeastward, toward the hotel, where she could put Ellsworth in an APC back to Luc’s clinic at the airport. But they weren’t making progress. The compass merely pointed. It didn’t account for snipers, switch-backed streets, barricades, firefights. She’d lost track of the number of times they’d retraced their steps to try a different route.
She glanced at Ellsworth. He was keeping up with her, but she knew from his grimace that he was hurting. The morphine was long gone.
A deafening burst of gunfire ricocheted through the narrow passageways. She ducked. He landed on his knees beside her at the base of the sandbag barrier, squeezing his temples with the heels of his palms. Concussions and loud noises didn’t mix. She held her breath, listening intently. A man shouted in the distance, then another, and the street became silent again.
“Couple streets over,” she decided. “Maybe further. Hard to tell with the echo.”
He nodded.
She got up. He struggled to his feet, swaying unsteadily beside her. She hesitated, studying him, then slid her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Come on,” she said, turning him back in the direction from which they had just come. She retraced their route to a dark doorway and motioned him into the recess. It stank of urine.
“Wait here,” she said.
“What?” He stared at her, looking stunned.
“I’m going scouting.”
“No. Not alone. Christ. Didn’t you just see that woman being raped? I’m going with you.”
She was amazed he was still on his feet. His injuries had rendered him all but helpless, but she found it touching that he wanted to protect her.
She spread her palms across his chest to hold him back. She felt the steady thud of his heart under her palms. “I’m lost,” she confessed. Old City was a labyrinth, difficult enough to navigate in full daylight. For all she knew, there was no way out. Maybe the General controlled it all. She had to find out.
“We’ll find our way out together.”
She shook her head. He’d been sucking up pain for too long already. He’d stayed steadfastly beside her, never complaining. But she knew: he was in trouble.
She pulled the camera bag off her shoulder. “I’m leaving the bags.” She didn’t want him to think she was making good on her threat to bail. “If I’m not back by daybreak, take this one with the first aid kit and the water purification unit, and leave the other one. Don’t drink water. Not a drop unless you purify it first. There’s cholera, Ellsworth. Typhus. Dysentery.”
She issued brisk orders to cover the squeeze of her heart. He was injured, he didn’t know the first thing about Kavsak, and
she was walking away—but it was the only chance she had of getting him out alive.
His eyes were glassy. He was straining to focus on her, on her words.
“If I’m not back by dawn, you’ll have to get back to the airport on your own. There are land mines—thousands of them all over the city. Stay on the pavement, don’t cut across dirt or snow. If you must, step inside the footprints of others. Don’t pick anything up—no string, no paper, nothing. If you see others walking, you walk. If they run, you run. Snipers see you day or night.”
He shook his head. “I can’t let you risk—”
“Cut through the apartment buildings. Navigate by the sun. Go west, then south around the mountain. Don’t wait for me.”
Shit. She could tell he wasn’t absorbing her instructions. His eyelids were drooping, nearly shut now.
“Here,” she said, pulling her shirt out of her cargo pants and unbuckling the leather pouch clasped around her waist. “The morphine, and some antibiotics. Drugs are as good as money. You can buy safe passage with this. If you can’t make it without more morphine, inject a cc or two, only. Not too much. You need to be clear-headed.”
He pushed the pouch back. “You need this, to stay safe.”
“Hey,” she said. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes. You’re just watching my stuff.”
She spun on her heel and strode out of the doorway, rapidly distancing herself from him. This could be a mistake, a terrible mistake. Two blocks away, she whirled around and stared down the ravaged street to the dark doorway, memorizing the landmarks so she could find her way back.
Her throat ached. If the tables turned, the hideaway would become his tomb.
Gunfire cracked loudly to her left. She jumped, ducking deeper into the shadows. Who the hell was doing all this shooting? If she knew who the players were, she could stop reacting blindly and find a way out. She broke into a run.
Chapter 9
The doorway stank of piss and the last thing Daniel wanted to do was sit in it. Unfortunately, he had no choice. It hurt like a sonofabitch to stand. He slid down the wall, eyes tight with pain, thighs protesting his descent. The cement was clammy. He pressed his bruised shoulder against the wall, held his throbbing temples, and closed his eyes. Silence closed around him. He didn’t know how badly he was hurt, but he knew he needed a doctor, a safe place to rest.
Day Three Page 10
