by Jade Kerrion
Zara ground her teeth. “He’s fucked up.”
“Yeah,” Klah agreed readily, to Zara’s surprise. “But then again, most of us are, one way or another. Danyael wasn’t hurting anyone though, and for an alpha empath of his caliber, it was more than most people expected of him.”
“That’s it?” Scorn infused her voice. “He doesn’t hurt people, and that’s enough to win applause? So many of us start out with less and struggle against crazy odds to make more of our lives, while he gets full credit for minding his own business and being nice?”
Klah jerked to a stop. “You have no idea what it’s like for him, do you?”
She stared at him, her chin raised. “No. Do you?”
Klah lowered his gaze. “No, I don’t. I’m just a minor empath. I don’t know what it’s like to be an alpha, and I’m glad. I never want to know. Once I caught a glimpse…” His voice trailed into silence and he straightened his shoulders.
“Glimpse of what?”
“Nothing.” His jaw tensed. “As you say, this isn’t about Danyael.”
“You made it about Danyael.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Are you always this combative?”
“Why settle for less than you can be?”
Klah laughed, the sound infused with genuine amazement. He shook his head and murmured, “Only Danyael.”
Zara bit back the obvious question. Only Danyael what? The sooner she got Danyael out of her head and heart, the better off she’d be. She pushed past Klah as they approached a junction. “This way.”
“Where does this go?”
“Back to the surface. We’ll catch a cab to Baalbek.”
“Looking like this?” He glanced at the large case in her hand. “Carrying that?”
She smiled. “You just have to know which cab.”
The tunnel narrowed until there was scarcely enough room to walk two abreast. The silence hung heavy, broken only by the repetitive slap of their boots against the packed dirt floor of the tunnel. Even the air felt sluggish.
“Do we have a plan?” Klah asked as he fell in behind her.
“I was hoping you had one. The cab will get us into Baalbek largely unobserved; we’ll blend into the flood of day-trippers from Beirut, but if you’ve got any ideas on how to move forty-nine girls back to Beirut, I’d like to hear it.”
“The U.S. embassy was going to supply armed escorts and buses.”
“I don’t trust them.”
Klah inhaled deeply. The breath he released trembled on the edge of a sigh. Apparently, his trust in the government would take longer to grind away. Zara reached into her pocket to grip the two dog tags she had acquired from the women guarding Lila. Had they left behind families, husbands, children? She gritted her teeth against the prick of discomfort. It was ridiculous, not to mention sexist, to feel guilt over killing women but not men, but there it was. Apparently, she wasn’t nearly as progressive as she imagined herself to be, even though she was living proof that a woman could kick ass as hard as a man.
“Could we take them away, a few at a time?” Klah suggested.
“Do you think they’re safe just chilling out there while we make three or four dozen round-trips?”
He scowled. “No.”
“Then we move them all at once. Separate vehicles, perhaps? Get the villagers to help.”
“Will they?”
“I…don’t know. Maybe. It’s not their fight.”
“Those girls could as easily have been their daughters.”
“In a school where tuition is several times their household income? I don’t think so. The social divide in Lebanon is larger than the religious divide.”
“Really?”
Zara shrugged. “It’s easier to change religions than to change social class.”
His brow furrowed on a faint frown. “I guess you’re right, but you got the villagers to help anyway.”
“I went to the village matriarch. She was once my mother’s friend.”
“You must look a lot like her.”
Zara jerked to a stop. “What?”
“Your mother.”
She closed her eyes briefly to allow the darkness to steady her. “Yes, I guess I do.”
“What was she like?”
“Complex. She loved art, loved painting, but she also could take apart an AK-47 in minutes.”
“And you saw her do it.” It was not a question.
“Of course. Like mother, like daughter, right?” Instinctively, she pressed her hand against her stomach. A girl, Dr. Maria Hill had said. Like mother, like daughter.
Was this really the life she wanted for her daughter? Traipsing through old war tunnels, armed with a sniper rifle, assault rifle, handgun, and a dagger or two. No, three—Zara included the one tucked in the side of her boot.
At least it was more fun than attending social galas with her daughter’s father.
Too screwed up. She shook her head sharply. “I don’t know if the villagers will help. I wouldn’t count on it.”
“Then who would you count on? You were supposed to be the one with countless contacts in Lebanon. Is there anyone you trust?”
“My contacts aren’t the issue,” she hissed. “The question is how many of them am I supposed to sacrifice to fix someone else’s problem?”
“Those girls—”
“Are not my problem.” She spun around and glared at Klah. “I was sent to take out Nakob. I did my job.”
He stared at her, and then conceded with a nod. “You’re right, and now I need your help to do my job. I can’t do it alone.” His voice was steady, but his eyes screamed with raw anguish.
Zara did not need any more reminders that Klah’s team—his brothers-in-arms—lay dead on a hillside in southern Beirut. An entire SEAL team. When was the last time something like that had happened? It was too tragic to be coincidental.
“What do you want?” Klah’s voice cut through her thoughts.
“You’ve already said you’d help me find my friends.”
“That was my condition. What do you want?”
Danyael. She squelched the immediate response and gave the answer she expected of herself. “I don’t want, or need, anything.”
Klah’s dark-eyed gaze bore into her. “What is your price?”
“What’s yours? How many lives do you intend to sacrifice to bring those girls home?”
“It’s my job.”
“Yes, you signed up for it. These villagers didn’t. I can’t ask more of them.”
“But—”
“I screwed up when I brought you back to my home, when I put my resources out for your use.” She fisted her hand in his black uniform. “Now Mahmoud, Fatima, and their children are missing. I should never have gotten them involved.”
“You blame me?”
I blame myself. “They would never have—” Shock chilled her. Her dagger flashed into her other hand, and she pressed the edge of the blade against his neck. “My Beirut home wasn’t in my NSA file.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re the only one who knew about my Beirut home, because I took you there.” She swallowed the curse. How stupid had she been? She had compromised her friends’ safety, and all she had to show for it was the soot from a grenade blast in her bedroom. “Who did you tell?”
“I debriefed Grass. The entire team happened to be around, listening.”
“That’s convenient. Blame them. They can’t defend themselves. They’re dead.” Her grip tightened. “How do I know you’re not lying to me? Maybe your team isn’t dead.”
Shock widened his eyes, but she went on, the soft purr of her voice in stark contrast to the steadiness of her hand. The edge of her dagger parted his skin. A drop of blood glistened against the silver blade. “And if they’re dead, maybe you killed them.”
16
Klah’s harsh breaths punctuated the silence. Neither moved.
Their eyes met. Why wasn’t he doing anything? Or perhaps h
e was. Zara bared her teeth in a silent snarl. Klah was a goddamned empath!
She increased the pressure on the blade. A second drop of blood and then another trickled down the steel of her blade.
Klah’s breath caught and held.
His dark eyes—like Danyael’s, and not like Danyael’s—met hers.
Her gaze flicked to the slow trail of blood. Once, Danyael’s blood had flowed down that blade too.
The night after he raped me.
She sucked in a deep breath. No, it was time to face up to the truth. She had not been in full control of herself, not after the shock of inhaling isoflurane and halothane. Her fuzzy mind hadn’t been able to separate intellectually wanting Galahad and emotionally craving Danyael. Perhaps she hadn’t been clear on whom she had slept with that night, but she knew who she wanted—really wanted.
Danyael had not raped her. They had made love that night, and she had attacked him the following morning. It had been easier to blame him than to face up to wanting him. Frustration bubbled out of her. “Stop screwing with my emotions.”
“I’m not.” Klah’s voice caught her off guard.
She recoiled. Had she been subconsciously hoping to hear Danyael’s quiet, melodic tenor tell her what she needed to hear—that her emotions were her own, and that she had not been manipulated into caring for him?
Focus, damn it. She glared at Klah. “You’re an empath.”
“A minor empath.” His voice was scarcely a whisper. His throat shifted against the blade as he spoke, and he winced. Another drop of blood trickled down the dagger. “I only sense other’s emotions. Can’t control them.”
“How can I believe it? What proof do you have?”
Klah swallowed, the motion turning the slow drop of blood into a faster trickle. He said nothing.
“You’re an empath. You’re liars, all of you.”
The flicker of anger in Klah’s eyes gave her only a fraction of a second warning. He shoved her hand—and the blade—away, and lunged forward to tackle her against the wall. Zara went with the momentum instead of standing her ground. She sidestepped around Klah and spun into a high kick. Her boot slammed into the back of his neck. He stumbled forward but broke his fall with his hands. In the same motion, he pushed away from the tunnel wall and turned to attack.
There was something innately satisfying about a man who fought back. Zara blocked Klah’s attacks; he parried hers. The brutal impact of flesh against flesh elevated physical battles into the same, raw intimacy of making love. Knowing your enemy, anticipating his moves, thwarting them—
The rolling echo of firing guns nearly deafened her. Dirt sprayed off the tunnel wall.
Zara turned her back on Klah, dropped into a roll, and came up in a battle crouch, her handgun aimed at the cluster of a half-dozen or more shadowy shapes in the distance. Her fingers tightened on the trigger—once, twice, thrice.
Above her, Klah’s gun also fired three times.
A hundred feet away, shadows crumpled into heaps on the ground.
“Cover me,” Zara ordered. She ran along the tunnel wall. Ahead of her, someone stirred, but before she could raise her gun, Klah fired again, and the body slumped back to the ground.
She reached the pile of bodies. All dead, she confirmed. The six men, dressed and armed like the ones who had been in her house, did not have dog tags, but they had the bearing of military men. They had darker skin tones; they could have been Middle Eastern, South American, Native American, or just had an excellent tanning salon.
Footsteps approached her. “Any IDs?” Klah asked.
“None. Don’t suppose you recognize any of them?”
Klah shone his flashlight over the faces and shook his head. “Not much to see. Do you always shoot people in the face?”
“Only when I think they’re wearing body armor, which they are.” She gestured at the three men Klah had taken down, their faces similarly shattered and blood-splattered. “You didn’t hesitate either.”
“Training.”
“Me, too.”
Their gazes locked—her violet eyes to his dark eyes—challenging, testing.
He knows Danyael. Danyael trained him.
No one could know, truly know Danyael, and remain unchanged. She knew that fact firsthand.
Zara broke the silence first. “I still don’t trust you.”
“You don’t trust anyone.” A muscle ticked in Klah’s cheek. “The issue isn’t your instincts; they are dead-on accurate. The problem is you’re paranoid. When your instincts don’t match what you want the facts to be, you immediately assume someone’s screwing with your thoughts or emotions.”
Zara conceded the truth with a shrug. “I’m frequently surrounded by telepaths and empaths; it’s a perfectly rational assumption. And for what it’s worth, Danyael confessed that he manipulated my emotions.”
“I don’t believe it. Danyael would never do it. Not deliberately.”
“Intent doesn’t change facts.” Zara inserted a fresh clip into her handgun and slid the gun in her holster. She stripped the men’s weapons of ammunition and added them to her stash before stepping over the men’s bodies. “This way.”
The narrow shaft led up to a hatch installed in a maintenance shed. Zara winced as the hinges squeaked, but apparently, no one was around to hear it. She scrambled up, reached down for the gun case Klah handed up to her, and stepped aside for Klah to exit. As he emerged from the tunnel, he glanced at the sloping piles of slate roof tiles stacked on three sides of the hatch. The only opening was a small gap against the wall of the shed, just large enough for a person to squeeze through.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Kantari. Northeast Beirut.”
She looked him over. Dusty, bruised, and bloodied, he looked like he had been in an explosion and a fight. She suspected she didn’t look any more respectable, but she could conceal herself from head to toe in the conservative garb worn by the religious sects. A few quick twists turned her carryall into a black robe.
“Stay here. I’ll find us a cab.”
“You don’t have to take your gun case with you.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t trust you that much.”
Zara made her way through the narrow streets to a small apartment complex and pressed the buzzer for apartment 6-D. No answer. She allowed a minute to pass and buzzed it again. Static crackled. “Who is it?” a male voice slurred in Arabic.
“Zara Itani.”
“Mistress Zara?” The voice sounded considerably more awake.
Thank God, Idris worked the late night shifts. “Will you take me to Baalbek?”
“Of course.”
She sighed. “Ask why, Idris.” She had been trying to drum streetwise cynicism into him for five years. From his response, she was not succeeding.
He laughed. “Why bother if it’s not going to change my answer? Do you want to come in and wait?”
Best not to draw too much attention to where her friends lived. “I’ll wait out front.”
“Okay, I will bring my cab around the front in ten minutes.”
He managed it in eight and a half, but by then, she was already mentally drumming her fingernails against any available surface. A cab stopped in front of the building, and a man hopped out of the driver’s seat. Idris, the street urchin Zara had yanked out of poverty five years earlier and settled with a foster family, had grown into a lanky young man with a grin that stretched from ear to ear. He scurried forward, stopping several feet in front of her to touch his right hand to his head and his heart in a gesture of greeting and respect.
Zara inclined her head, acknowledging the gesture. Beneath the veil, a smile tugged up at the corners of her lips; Idris had always had that kind of effect on her. With effort, she kept her voice stern. “Always ask why.”
He shrugged and gave her a sweet smile. “With you, I don’t have to. Where to?” he asked.
“To Baalbek, but we need to make one quick stop first to pick u
p another passenger.” She gave him directions back to the shed.
As Idris took off, Zara glanced out the window but saw nothing to raise her hackles. “How are your studies?”
“I…study hard.”
She arched an eyebrow.
He sighed. “I don’t like school.”
“I didn’t either.”
“Oh!” Idris brightened.
“But I went anyway.”
Idris’s shoulders slumped again.
Zara chuckled under her breath. If he had been looking for validation to cut school, he wouldn’t get it from her. “I would prefer if you went back to university.”
“Then I wouldn’t be able to drive.” Idris caressed the dashboard with more care than Zara had seen some men touch women. He turned down a narrow alley and pulled up in front of the shed.
Zara’s quick glance confirmed that the passersby on the main street paid little attention to what was happening down the alley. Her fingers wrapped around the grip of the handgun concealed in her robe, Zara stepped out of the cab. The door of the shed opened, and Klah strode out. He must have found a source of water; he had washed off most of the dirt and blood, although he still pressed a thick cloth against the side of his neck. His flashing gaze took in his surroundings, and then he slid into the cab behind Zara.
“Idris will take us to Baalbek,” was all Zara said by way of introductions.
Chewing on his lower lip, Idris nodded at Klah’s reflection in the rearview mirror before taking off for Baalbek.
For several minutes, Zara observed traffic patterns until she was certain they were not followed. Only then did she relax in the seat.
“We should rest while we can,” Klah spoke aloud the thoughts in her mind.
“We don’t have a plan.”
Klah chuckled. “Never stopped you before.”
“True.” Zara pressed a hand against the flutters in her stomach, and got a hard kick in return. Go figure. The kid already has an attitude. How much of her life would have to change if she—no, it was out of the question. She shouldn’t even contemplate it.
