He’d rounded the corner before Rebel could think of an appropriate response. With another moue of distaste she retraced her steps. She didn’t mind getting grungy in the line of duty. If she’d had any squeamishness about that left after four years at the academy, her subsequent Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training would have eradicated it. And even SERE paled in comparison with some of her less savory experiences as an OMEGA agent. Like that never-to-be-forgotten belly crawl through an oil-polluted swamp glutted with dead fish.
Grimacing at the memory, Rebel made her way back along the length of the building. Its elevation gave a clear view down the slope leading down the gray slag mound. Behind her, the long rows of boarded windows and barred doors seemed to mock her brief spurt of optimism.
Just enough of that optimism remained for her to edge closer to a window and squint through a crack in the boards. She couldn’t see a thing. Stepping back, she eyed the rusting nails holding the boards in place and decided she had nothing to lose by giving one of them a yank.
Except her dignity, she discovered when nails screeched and a rotting board jerked free in her hands. Light poured into the dark interior. A second later, bats poured out. Big, nasty, flapping, whirring, squealing bats.
Rebel yelped and dropped to her knees. She stayed there, protecting her head with her arms, while the seemingly endless black cloud battered and bruised the air above her.
Chapter 8
Once the cloud of bats whirred off, Rebel felt brave enough to pry off a few more boards. Not brave enough to climb through the window, however, until Blade returned. Maybe not even then.
She fished out her comm device, switched on its high-powered laser, and aimed the beam around the interior. The light barely penetrated the gloom. After several futile minutes, she switched off the beam.
Hopefully, Blade would find traces of rail tracks buried in the weeds at the rear of the building. They wouldn’t prove anything, of course. Just raise the interesting possibility that the curators of the heavily bombed Königsberg Castle could have trundled the priceless Amber Room panels out here to the Yantarny Mine for safekeeping.
“Find anything?” she asked when he reappeared.
“No railroad tracks, but something almost as interesting.” He eyed the gaping hole in the window. “How about you?”
“Winged creatures.” She couldn’t quite repress a shudder. “Lots of them. They burst out in swarms.”
“Which begs the question,” he said thoughtfully, “of how they got in. I’ll take a look.”
She was tempted to let him swing a leg over the sill and go it alone. The idea he might disturb another screeching, flapping dark cloud seriously creeped her out. She could almost feel nasty little claws tangling in her hair. All those sharp, rabies-carrying fangs sinking into her skin. Wondering why in the world devotees of vampire novels thought those bloodsuckers were sexy, she edged to the window and gave herself a muttered pep talk.
“You can do this. You scared them worse than they scared you. They’re gone. Not coming back.”
Besides, she couldn’t let her partner go in without backup. Or worse, let him see this girly side of her. Not that Blade would hold her bat-o-phobia over her. Or maybe he would. She wouldn’t put it past him to exploit this tiny chink in her armor.
The memory of their subtle and not-so subtle clashes over the years got her through the window. But the reassuring sight of his broad-shouldered figure fired a rush of more recent memories. Most notably those moments tangled in the sheets back in the St. Petersburg hotel and the lingering aftershocks of their kiss on the beach a little while ago. Ricocheting back and forth between her feelings toward the old and the new Blade, she followed him into a dark, dank cavern as long as a football field.
The stink was stronger inside. Sulfur, Rebel thought, her nose twitching, overlaid with damp and years of rot. Barely enough light came through the window to illuminate the layers of gray dust coating the entire interior. Blade switched on his beam, Rebel did hers, and still they could make out only dim shapes and shadow. The building had obviously been stripped of all usable or recyclable equipment, but they spotted what looked like the remains of a conveyor system toppled over onto its side. Above it was a series of rusted metal vats, some with crooked spouts hanging from them.
“This must have been a processing area,” Blade guessed. “Probably where they used chemicals to wash the sludge off the amber brought up from the mine shafts.”
Rebel nodded, too occupied with checking the rafters above the vats for hanging critters to comment.
The light from the window didn’t pierce the inky darkness at either end of the long building but did show what looked like abandoned offices across from where they stood. Doors hung crookedly on hinges eroded by the salt air. A faint spear of light came through a central door that obviously gave onto the outside.
Blade squinted at the gloom to his far left, then right. “We need to come back with higher-powered flashlights. But you have to see this before we go.”
Whatever “this” was. He steered her around the toppled conveyor toward the outside door on the far side. When he raised a foot and sent the door back on its hinges, Rebel instinctively hunched her shoulders. No squeaking, eeking swarm descended. Even so, she didn’t draw a full breath until she was through the door and back in the sunlight.
Her breath whooshed out again at the sight that greeted her. They were standing almost on the rim of a monster crater. It wasn’t deep, but looked to be several miles across. Stunted trees with bare, twisted limbs dotted the ridge and sides of the bowl. A sea of gray sludge coated its bottom.
“This is it,” she breathed. “This is the pit where they bored down into seabed to bring up amber.”
She followed the crater’s circumference and spotted the rusted remains of what might have been an excavator tower about a quarter way around. A little beyond that was the gaping mouth of one of the pipes that carried waste down to the sea.
She turned in a slow circle, still following the circumference. She’d almost made it back to where they stood when she gasped. There, nearly obscured by weeds, was a caved-in section of the crater’s wall. Beyond the crumbled section Rebel could just glimpse rotting, tilted timbers.
“Is that a tunnel?”
“Looks like it,” Blade confirmed.
She edged closer to the rim and peered over the side. “It had to have led to this building.”
“That would be my guess. We can check it out when we come back with those flashlights.”
The old soldier was gone when they descended what Rebel now knew was the sloping wall of the Yantarny Mine crater. Too bad. Although he hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to be friendly, she would have liked to ask him more about the mine.
When they neared the smattering of hotels and restaurants, she saw the crowd wading through the surf had thinned out, as well. Many must have decided to thaw out in the hotels’ bars and restaurants. Or so it seemed when Rebel and Blade walked into a two-story hotel fronted by a sagging wooden veranda.
The cloud of cigarette smoke flavored with the tantalizing scent of onions and fried fish made her realize the Baltic’s long summer days had given her a false sense of time. It also made her stomach sit up and take immediate notice. A warning rumble reminded her it hadn’t been fed since the ham-on-rye sandwich aboard the train.
“I’m starved. Let’s eat here.”
Blade eyed the thick smoke and shrugged. He’d eaten in worse places. So, evidently, had Rebel. She held up two fingers to the aproned waitress who came to seat them and smiled her acquiescence when the woman showed them to a table by the window. Blade started to do the same but caught himself just in time. Face set, he slid into his seat.
Dammit all to hell! He couldn’t believe he’d let Rebel’s pointed remarks about his nonverbal signals sneak into his psyche. Thoroughly irritated, he glanced up and caught her smirk.
“What’s the matter? The waitress isn’t your type?
”
“Keep this up,” he snapped, “and I’ll be forced to show you exactly what my type is.”
She laughed at the threat, which only added to his annoyance.
“Want me to order for you?”
He nodded, in no way ready to admit she’d dinged his subconscious. She was ready when the waitress came back with menus. The woman didn’t so much as glance at Blade.
“What are we having?” he asked when she departed.
“I broke one of my own rules and ordered the local beer along with two servings of Königsberg klopse. Meatballs boiled in salt water,” Rebel translated, “then cooked in a sauce with onions, white pepper and capers. I heard about them when I was stationed in Moscow but never got to sample the originals.”
The originals, they discovered a short time later, more than lived up to their hype. The succulent meatballs were served with boiled potatoes and the inevitable beets. Even those, Blade had to admit, tasted pretty good when washed down with the local beer. The lager’s dark gold color reminded him of the riches mined from the restless sea outside the windows.
He drained the rest of his beer and slid his hand in his pocket. He fingered the piece he’d scavenged, imagining how it would look set in silver and draped around Rebel’s throat. Or mounted on a wide bracelet that would lock around her wrist. Better yet, her ankle.
He could see her naked, wearing nothing but his cuff on one slender ankle. So proud. So defiant. Refusing to admit he’d marked her as his. The atavistic image speared in him like a hot poker.
It was still burning in his gut when the taxi dropped them at their hotel an hour or so later. He knew that was no excuse. Knew he should ride up in the elevator with her, leave her at her door and walk away. And he would have. He was sure of it. If she hadn’t spotted the amber display in the window of the hotel’s tiny gift shop.
“Look! There’s a piece about the same size and shape as the one you found.” She had to stop for a closer look. “Good grief!”
Blade still might have managed to keep his hands to himself if she hadn’t hooked her hair behind one ear and pursed her lips in a low whistle.
“You wouldn’t think this stuff would be so expensive here in Kaliningrad.”
He gave up the fight at that point. In profile she looked sea reddened and wind tossed, minus any kind of makeup or war paint. He didn’t fool himself into thinking that meant he was seeing the real Victoria Talbot. He knew she possessed layers she hadn’t shared—couldn’t share—with him. Nuances to her personality he hadn’t yet experienced. But the laughing, carefree woman he’d glimpsed on the beach this afternoon had delivered a powerhouse punch to his solar plexus. And the one he wanted to adorn with amber was shredding what was left of his common sense.
He didn’t jump her. He gave himself credit for that much, at least. He walked her down the hall to her room and waited until she keyed the lock to make his move.
“You remember our discussion on the train this afternoon? The one about waiting to pick up where we left off in St. Petersburg?”
Her eyes went wary. “I remember.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“About which part?”
“The waiting part.” He laid his other palm against the door, caging her. “I told you the next time I got you naked, I wasn’t going to keep one eye on the clock. We don’t meet with Bauer’s cousin until tomorrow afternoon.”
His voice roughened. He let her hear the desire, wanted her to see it when he smiled a slow challenge.
“We’ve got all night, Talbot. All morning.”
She cocked a brow. “Is that your subtle way of letting me know you can last all night? And all morning?”
His smile widened. “Try me.”
The sheer arrogance of that grin took Rebel’s breath away. She ached to knock the male smugness off his face. And what better way to do it than by taking up his challenge? She recognized how pitiful that rationale was even as the erotic possibilities exploded inside her head.
“You’re on.”
That was all he’d been waiting for. All either of them had. Blade was the one who thrust her into the room and kicked the door shut, but she was already attacking his shirt buttons. She had them half undone when he backed her against the wall. His hands were rough as he anchored her head. His mouth ground into hers.
Something hot and reckless came alive in Rebel. She reveled in the taut, muscled body pinning her to the wall. Thrilled to the savagery of his kiss. A distant corner of her mind shouted a warning. Some inanity about the danger of rousing a sleeping tiger. She ignored the shout and thrilled instead to the beast she’d roused behind his zipper. The hard bulge pressed against her belly, demanding attention.
She gave it. Hooking her calf around his for balance, she wedged the heel of her hand against his rigid length, slid it down, up, down again. His breath hissed in. His stomach hollowed. Beneath the shirt she’d half opened, his muscles felt like heated steel against hers. He caught her thigh, lifted it higher, rubbed himself against her core until Rebel went wild with need. Tearing her mouth from his, she gasped an urgent command.
“Let’s have…the first demonstration of your…staying power.”
Blade was ready, willing and so eager he hurt with it. Somehow he managed to keep them both upright while he freed himself and she shimmied frantically out of her jeans and panties. Just enough blood remained in his brain for him to remember a condom. Retrieving it one-handed from his back pocket proved to be another tricky maneuver.
“What are you doing?” Rebel demanded.
She got an odd look on her face when he produced the foil packet, and Blade cursed under his breath. Despite his red hot haze, he guessed instantly she was thinking of her cheating ex. Equating being prepared to being a man-whore. He was trying to marshal a coherent argument to the contrary when she surprised him with a throaty laugh.
“Hope you’ve got a good supply of those.”
God, he hoped so, too!
He kept her backed against the wall while he sheathed himself. Rebel insisted on helping. Her hands were so urgent she damned near unstayed his staying power right there. Then the rest of his blood surged south, and he thrust up.
She closed around him, silky and tight. He’d imagined her like this, he thought before his brain shut down completely. Her face flushed, her mouth red and swollen from his kiss. With her head thrown back and her body quivering in need, she reminded him again of an untamed sea witch. A brown-eyed, amber-haired siren luring him to his fate.
Then he spotted the tiny, now-healed nick in her throat. It was almost lost in a patch of newly irritated skin. Remorse pierced Blade’s red fog, slowing his hands, stiffening his back.
Her lids flew up. Eyes cloudy with desire questioned, then demanded.
“I’m marking you,” he said gruffly. “I should shave.”
“Do it later.”
She reinforced the terse command by tightening her stomach muscles. Blade had time for a fleeting prayer of thanks for her incredibly well-toned abs before she drew him back into the vortex. Shifting her higher on his hips, he drove into her. He thought he’d choke on the effort but he managed to hold on until she came. Two heartbeats after a groan ripped from her throat, she convulsed and turned him inside out.
After that first frantic coupling, Blade dragged on his clothes and made a quick trip down the hall. His razor wasn’t the only item in his shaving kit he needed to retrieve. Resupplied with enough protection to last until the drugstores opened, he got rid of his whiskers before joining Rebel in the shower. Steam fogged the glass stall while they soaped the slopes and valleys and secret places they’d been in too much of a hurry to explore before.
They toweled each other off and adjourned to the bed. Rebel’s wet hair streamed across his chest, as soft and enticing as fingers of seaweed drifting on the current. They kept the pace slow this time, even when she pushed up on her knees and straddled him. Slow, that is, until her back arched and her outthru
st breasts goaded him into rolling over and driving them both over the edge again.
She fell asleep with her head nested on his shoulder. Blade drew her closer, wryly aware that he wouldn’t mind a few hours to recharge before making good on the rest of his boast. He was also aware that he hadn’t briefed OMEGA control on their excursion to the Yantarny Amber Mine. He needed to get Tank on that. See if he could dig up some schematics that might show a record of a railroad spur. The odds were astronomical that he and Rebel had stumbled onto a possible evacuation route for the treasures once stored in Königsberg Castle but no more far-out than any of the other theories postulated by the teams that had searched for the Amber Room panels for more than six decades. With Rebel’s breath warm on his neck and an abandoned tunnel filling his mind, he drifted into sleep.
Tank took the call just at 5:00 p.m. Washington time. A quick glance at the wall-mounted clocks showed him it was 9:00 a.m. in Kaliningrad.
The past twenty-four hours had been one of those long, monotonous stretches he’d been warned about. He’d tracked Blade and Rebel from St. Petersburg to the tiny wedge of Russian territory jutting into the Baltic and confirmed they’d checked into the rooms he’d reserved for them. He’d filled the empty hours since then by scoping out the training he’d need to complete before going into the field.
He wasn’t worried about weapons certification. His parents had taught all three of their children to shoot and practice strict gun safety. What’s more, his brother-in-law was an All-Service gold medalist and small arms tactics instructor at Quantico between missions for OMEGA. What Mike Callahan, code name Hawk, didn’t know about weapons hadn’t been invented yet.
Same with defensive tactics. Tank had served as an ADA in Philadelphia. While the City of Brotherly Love had bred centuries of noble, upstanding citizens, it had also spawned its share of scum. There were parts of Philadelphia he wouldn’t have ventured into without a weapon and the confidence instilled by brutal self-defense courses.
Double Deception Page 9
