Doc curled a knuckle under her chin and tilted her face to his. "As soon as we get out of here, my darling, we'll generate a whole different kind of excitement. Enough to last us through this lifetime. And the next. And the one after that."
When he bent to brush a quick kiss across her mouth, Paige almost forgot his bleeding shoulder and her slowly receding terror and the two still forms just yards away. His mouth was warm and hard and tasted of David. Her David.
She closed her eyes, savoring that brief kiss. An image of the man she loved imprinted itself on her every sense. She felt the strength and the gentleness in his touch. She heard his rasping, indrawn breath. She drew in the salty tang of his sweat, or perhaps it was his blood.
She didn't need any visual imaging wizardry to see him in the mirror of her mind. Tall and broad-shouldered and incredibly handsome, his brown hair disordered for once, his steel blue eyes filled with an emotion that set her heart thumping painfully. She ached with the need to hold him, to feel his body against hers, to arch her hips into his and take him into her.
She stepped back, breathing heavily.
"I was wrong," she admitted, with a ragged sigh. "I'm ready for whatever excitement you care to generate."
She couldn't know, of course, that she'd regret those rash words not two minutes later.
David planted another hard kiss on her lips, then strode to the console. "Let's insert that bug, then get the hell out of here. Swanset's too smart not to have at least one, perhaps more, backup systems. We don't want anyone accessing them before we can locate them and shut them down."
Still shivering from the force of her own reaction, Paige blinked at his swift transition from lover to secret agent. Half-naked, his bare upper torso streaked with blood and bound by a ragged strip of green satin, he looked like a character out of one of Victor Swanset's movies. The muscles in his shoulders rippled as he leaned over the console and punched one of the keys. The screen flickered back to life.
"Good. The program's still active. I recorded his access code, but it looks like I won't need it."
With swift, sure confidence, he keystroked in a series of commands. A few moments later, he straightened.
"There," he murmured in satisfaction. "Anyone who tries to—"
He broke off, his dark brows snapping together, as he studied the monitor. From where she stood a few feet away, Paige could see some kind of a message flicker across the screen.
"What?" she asked. "What's wrong?"
"There's a posthumous message here from Swanset."
"There is?" she squeaked.
"The bastard knew he was just a heartbeat away from a coronary. He must have coded in this message months ago and triggered it somehow just before he died."
David's eyes scanned the print that painted across the screen. "Damn it all to hell!"
"I don't think I want to hear this," Paige said in a faint voice.
He whirled and grabbed her hand. "Good—because there isn't time to explain. We've got to get out of here. Fast!"
Yanking her along behind him, he raced to the elevator. He stabbed the button, his breath harsh as he waited for the door to open. When nothing happened, he stabbed it again. And again.
When the door refused to open, David slammed the heel of his hand against the wood panel, listening intently.
"It's reinforced with some kind of alloy," he snarled. "The damn thing's sealed tighter than a drum. The whole lab probably is."
Spinning on one heel, he scanned the room. "Look for another exit. There has to be one."
"How do you know?"
"Swanset told Peters to escort you 'next door.' For a historical tour of the dungeons, remember?" "Oh, God! Yes!"
His eyes met hers. "We have approximately ninety seconds to find that door and get the hell out of here."
They found it in less than sixty.
Actually, Paige found it. By the simple expedient of scraping her nails along the far wall as she ran the length of the lab. When she encountered a slight depression, she screamed for David. He was at her side in seconds. Endless heartbeats later, he uncovered a concealed latch. Yanking the handle upward, he slammed his shoulder against the panel.
Paige could imagine the pain that must have caused him. The green bandage darkened with a fresh spurt of blood as David turned and shoved her through the opening ahead of him.
Darkness and cold, dank air surrounded them like a smothering shroud.
These were definitely the dungeons. As they raced down the narrow corridor, Paige caught a glimpse of barred cells cut from solid rock. A rusted implement of some kind dangled from a hook on the wall. She almost tripped over a discarded tool, the use of which she didn't even want to guess at.
Panting with fear and exertion, Paige thought she caught a faint glow of moonlight ahead. She twisted around, intending to tell David, when an ominous rumbling sounded in the laboratory behind them.
"Run!" David shouted.
Paige ran.
The rumbling grew to a roar, then exploded in a blinding wave of light and noise. David threw himself against her, knocking her to the stone floor and covering her body with his. Her head smashed against the stone, and she must have lost consciousness for a few seconds or minutes or hours.
When her eyes opened, she was trapped between David's weight and the unyielding stone. Paige couldn't breathe, couldn't move.
Neither could David, she discovered.
He was unconscious. His breath rasped in her ear, and his body lay sprawled over hers. Paige felt his warm blood soaking through the back of her gown and wanted to scream with terror. Instead, she wriggled and scratched and snaked her way forward until she'd cleared enough of his weight to twist free.
With the last of her strength, she dragged at his good arm until she had him turned over on his back. She refused to cry, refused to let the blood seeping down his chest reduce her to the quivering mass of hysteria she knew she was.
Dragging the gold bag still chained to her wrist into her lap, she fumbled for the switchblade and sawed another ragged strip from her skirt. If—when!—they got out of here, she'd find some way to thank Henri for the gift he'd pressed on her. The knife had been his most valued possession. At this moment, it was hers.
Hands shaking, she folded the heavy satin over and over again, then pressed the pad against David's wound with both hands. She held it there for what seemed like hours, murmuring his name, pouring out her love.
When he stirred, she wanted to cry in relief.
When his eyes fluttered open, she did.
"Paige!"
She barely heard his raspy whisper over the sound of her own gulping sobs. "Paige, send... signal." "What?" "Send... signal."
"To Maggie?" Paige wiped the back of her sleeve across her nose. "Can't she hear us?"
"Alloy... seal... lab. No emissions."
"You mean she couldn't hear us the whole time we were in the lab? She doesn't know what's happened?"
"Send..."
"David!"
His muscles slackened under her hand, and he slumped unconscious once more.
Moaning, Paige pressed the pad against his shoulder with one hand and reached for the crystal eardrop with her other. To her horror, it was missing.
Trying not to jar David more than she had to, she dragged him a few inches to the side. Frantically she brushed her fingers across the stone where she'd hit her head, sweeping the area over and over again.
She found the earring. Or what was left of it. The crystal drop had shattered upon impact with the stone, as had the tiny device it concealed.
Paige stared at the bits of glass and plastic in her hand in disbelief.
She wouldn't panic! She wouldn't!
She pushed herself to her feet. One glance told her she couldn't go back to the lab. It wasn't there. The explosion, or implosion, had dumped tons of stone into the subterranean chamber.
Her feet dragging, Paige turned and stumbled toward the opposite e
nd of the dark tunnel. Toward the faint glow that she hoped, prayed, was moonlight.
It was.
'Thank God!" she whispered.
She wondered fleetingly why the small, square window wasn't barred, as the cells were. As soon as she leaned over the sill, she understood why.
Given her difficulty with numbers, Paige couldn't have said whether the cliff dropped for two hundred or two thousand feet straight down. She only knew that it was a long, long way to where the sea crashed against the cliff's base.
She twisted in the small opening, scanning the sheer rock on either side. There was no path, no ledge, no outcropping of stone of any kind. Nothing but a perpendicular wall of granite.
Her heart sinking, Paige realized that this tiny opening wasn't a window at all, but rather a ventilation hole. It didn't need bars. No one was going out through that opening. Not alive, anyway.
Slumping back against the wall, Paige felt her knees buckle. She sank to the floor in a dejected heap.
David seemed to think Maggie didn't know what had happened. Even if the OMEGA team stormed the villa, it would be days, maybe weeks, before they cleared the lab and found this narrow subterranean tunnel.
She couldn't wait, not for a day, not for hours. David needed medical attention. Now.
What was she going to do? Paige asked herself in desperation. What could she do?
She could send a signal, as David had instructed. But how? A fire, maybe. Or a flash of light from the other earring, when the sun came up. Or...
Paige's heart leaped into her throat. Scrambling to her feet, she ran back to where she'd discarded her little gold evening bag. Tearing at the clasp, she dumped the contents on the stone. The mascara. A lipstick. And the compact! The diamond-studded compact!
With the introduction of the crystal earrings, the compact had been retired from active service as a communications device, but Paige had kept it for its more mundane and utilitarian purpose. She'd powdered her nose with it only an hour or so ago in the throne room.
She snatched it up and raced back to the opening, fumbling for the square stone in the center.
Dear Lord, how did the thing work? Once to transmit, twice to receive? Or was it once to receive, twice to transmit?
And what was the damn emergency signal? One-one-three? Three-one-one? Three-two-two?
Paige swallowed a groan and reminded herself this was for David. Her David.
She could remember the code! She had to! All she had to do was concentrate. Think of the alley behind the tobacco shop, she told herself, emptying her mind of everything else. Think of David's instructions as he'd cradled an unconscious Maggie in his arms. Think of Henri hopping up and down on one foot in impatience as he repeated the instructions in a near shout.
Not half a mile away, a fleet of five black-painted helicopters skimmed the surface of the bay. Rotor blades whirring, they raced without lights or directional signals toward the high peak that housed Victor Swanset's aerie.
Maggie hunched forward in the copilot's seat of the lead aircraft, scanning the darkness though high-powered starlight-vision goggles. Beside her, Adam worked the controls with a skill that had astounded her when they first took off. She'd had no idea he could pilot a craft like this, but she hadn't wasted time arguing with him.
Maggie had made the decision to launch immediately after losing contact. Her instincts had told her that the broken transmission wasn't the result of any equipment malfunction. Wherever that elevator had taken Doc and Paige to had been shielded to prevent emissions. Although Doc hadn't signaled for help, hadn't called for backup, Maggie intended to be within range if and when he did.
They were only minutes away from the target area. Sheer cliffs loomed in front of them, looking much like a wall of chalk through the night-vision goggles. Adam pulled back on the stick and began a smooth climb to the central, highest peak.
Maggie spun the dial on the aircraft's digital radio, hoping, praying, for a signal. She'd tried every emergency frequency, every satellite channel, on the system at least a dozen times during the short flight.
She had just reached for the dial to spin to another frequency when static cackled through her headset. She froze, her hand in midair.
More static filled the earphones, then a voice filled with quiet desperation.
".. .can't remember the code, but we need help."
"It's Paige!" Maggie shouted over the helo's intercom.
Adam lifted a hand from the controls to give her a thumbs-up.
Maggie pressed the radio mike to her throat to activate it. "Jezebel, can you hear me?" Evidently not.
"... dead, and David's hurt," Paige continued, in the same desperate tone. "He said the wound wasn't bad, but he's bleeding heavily and unconscious. Uh, we're in a tunnel beneath the villa. It ends at the cliff face, in a small hole that overlooks the sea."
Maggie's heart sank as she peered through the helo's Plexiglas windshield at the endless stretch of chalky white cliffs below. Even with the goggles, it was going to be tough to locate a small opening in that indented, snaking wall.
Paige's voice faltered, then resumed. "I hope this is transmitting. I pressed the stone once, but I may have the sequence wrong, so I'm going to press it twice and try again."
"She's using the compact," Maggie breathed. "Do it, Paige. Do it! Press the stone twice, so I can talk to you."
A static silence hummed through the earphones. Maggie spoke slowly, clearly, into the mike.
"Jezebel, this is Chameleon. If you pressed the diamond twice, you should be hearing me. Now press it once, and acknowledge my transmission."
The helicopter swerved to one side, caught in a sudden updraft. Maggie ignored the violent movement and Adam's smooth corrective action. Her entire being was turned inward, focused on the mike pressed to her throat.
"Press the stone once," she repeated calmly. "Acknowledge my transmission."
"This is Jezebel. I can hear you!"
"Yes!"
Reining in her wild elation, Maggie jammed the mike against her throat.
"Search Doc's pockets, Jezebel. See if he has the receiver on him. The one that homes in on the tracking chip you were fitted with. It looks like a small flat calculator with a liquid crystal display."
Maggie held her breath until Paige replied.
"I've got it."
"Good! There's a small switch in the upper left-hand corner. Push it to the right, then read me the coordinates. Slowly!"
"Do you mean these numbers in the display? I—I can barely see them."
"Yes, those numbers. We need those coordinates to find you. Read them to me. Slowly!"
She did. Slowly and accurately, repeating them over and over until Maggie locked them into the helicopter's global positioning unit.
Within moments, Adam had the aircraft hovering two hundred feet above the crashing sea and a powerful searchlight trained on a small square opening in a sheer rock wall. With a skill learned long ago and kept finely honed, he held the platform steady while one of Maggie's team members fired a titanium-tipped steel anchor dart from a shoulder-held launcher. The dart shot through the night, trailing a snakelike nylon line, and buried itself in the rock just a few feet above the opening.
Adam kept one eye on the instruments while Maggie and the wiry Santorelli strapped body harnesses on over their black jumpsuits. Rushing wind whipped through the belly of the helo as they pulled open the side hatch.
"Have you used this rig before?" Santorelli shouted to her over the noise from the chopping rotor blades.
"No, not this one!" Maggie yelled back. "One similar to it, though!"
"Roger! Let's go!"
Adam made no comment as they rigged a lifeline to the specially designed lift that swung out over the open batch. But his jaw was so tight it ached as Maggie snapped the lifeline to her harness and stepped toward the hatch.
"Okay, Jezebel," she said into the mike, her hoarse voice filled wit
h a breezy confidence that made Adam's fist clench on the control stick. "We're coming in. And once we get back to Cannes, we'll have to hit the boutiques. Don't you have a wedding dress to shop for? I saw just the thing. All white silk and silver sequins."
Paige's shaky laughter floated over the headset. "No sequins. Please, no sequins."
Chapter 17
Paige sat at the ornate rosewood dressing table and towel-dried her hair. While she rubbed the squeaky-clean strands through the thick cotton, she went over the arrangement she'd made for the ceremony scheduled to take place thirty minutes from now.
As weddings went, theirs would be a relatively small affair. Only a handful of people would attend—just the immediate wedding party, the deputy from the American consulate who'd act as an official witness, and the French magistrate hurriedly contacted to perform the ceremony.
Paige had refused to wait until more of their friends and family could gather in Cannes. She was determined to join her life to David's today, scant hours after swinging out of a dark tunnel and dangling hundreds of feet above the sea while she was winched aboard a hovering helicopter. Today, before Maggie and Adam got called back to OMEGA for some crisis or another. Before she and David flew to Paris with Henri to arrange his passport and visa for an extended stay in the United States. Before any of them began any new adventures!
It had taken most of the night to sort through the aftermath of their mission. Luckily, Maggie's extraction team had included a skilled paramedic who patched David up so neatly that he was able to conduct a detailed debrief on-site with Maggie and Adam and the rest of the team. That done, they'd evacuated the servants, sealed off the villa and left guards in place until the French authorities arrived to excavate the laboratory.
Dawn had feathered the skies with gold and painted the sea a deep wine red by the time they returned to the hotel. Too wired from the night's events to sleep, they'd all feasted on the breakfast Henri ordered from his friend the head chef.
After that, Paige had taken charge. With a ruthless assumption of authority, she'd directed an amused but compliant Adam to use whatever influence was necessary to take care of the legalities. Henri was put in charge of the wedding supper. David was told to rest and recuperate. And Maggie... Maggie had gleefully accompanied her on the promised shopping expedition. They'd found exactly what Paige wanted in the first shop they entered.
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