by Kay Hooper
It was like a sudden storm that blew up out of nowhere, battering her until she couldn’t even fight to save herself, until she was left bruised and bewildered.
“You think you know the worst of me, don’t you, Sara?” he muttered against her throat. His big body shuddered once, and he held her tightly. “But you don’t. And you don’t know the best of me.”
Dimly Sara realized that her arms had somehow wound around his waist, and the knowledge that she was holding him with what strength she could muster was a distant shock. She had to stop this, had to—
“I could take you now.” He lifted his head, staring down at her with eyes that burned even in the night. “I could, Sara. You wouldn’t stop me. You wouldn’t even try. And with this between us, you couldn’t bring yourself to hate me in the morning. You know that, don’t you?”
She stared up at him, hearing the voice that had moved a country. Hearing the voice that moved her and tugged at everything she was. “Yes,” she whispered finally. “Yes, I know.”
THREE
THE ADMISSION, MADE with bitter reluctance, quivered in the air between them. She forced her arms to release him, let them drop limply to her sides. Even now, with full knowledge and understanding of the consequences, she couldn’t stop him. And it wasn’t only her body that demanded his with an aching insistence; her heart, too, longed for a consummation that, if not complete, would at least leave her with something when all this was over and she was alone again.
Andres’s hands rose slowly and framed her face. His eyes still burned, but his voice was suddenly gentle and deep, and his hands trembled against her flesh. “I know. Heart of my heart, I know. But you must know the best of me now, my love. I could never, would never, hurt you that way. I could never take from you anything you were reluctant to give me.”
“You said it yourself.” Her voice was soft, still, lost somewhere. “I couldn’t stop you, wouldn’t even try. And I wouldn’t hate you for it.”
“No,” he agreed, touching her lips with his in a fleeting tender kiss. “You wouldn’t hate me. But something between us would be damaged beyond repair. Trust, perhaps. My love, I couldn’t bear it if you gave me only a part of yourself.”
Sara swallowed hard, a dim and instinctive terror stirring inside her. “You want everything, don’t you, Andres?” That darkness, that blackness in him swallowing her …
He made an odd, rough sound. “Don’t. Don’t fear that, my love. Don’t fear me.”
She wondered vaguely if she had stiffened physically, or if he had become even more adept at reading her face, her thoughts. And it was, finally, the bewildered fear inside her that found a voice for itself. “You want too much,” she whispered. “You ask for everything from me, yet you—No. I can’t.” She felt cold inside, and frightened, and she struck out because there was no other way to fight him. “I won’t give my soul to the devil when he hasn’t one of his own!”
Andres flinched as though she had slapped him. He stepped back, his hands falling from her face, and turned away from her in a jerky motion.
“I’m sorry!” The words were torn from her in horror; she felt sickened by her own cruelty. “That was … unforgivable.”
“Do you really think me a devil?” he asked, low.
“No. No, of course not.” Sara had her arms folded protectively against the sudden chill of the night. She was conscious of the hot trickle of tears down her cheeks, and it felt as though some vital barrier inside her had ruptured. “Please … please, Andres, stop this. Stop me. Let me go.” She wasn’t even sure what she was saying, except that it had nothing to do with leaving the island, but she was at least sure of the knowledge that they could hurt each other so terribly.
“I can’t.” His voice was strangely calm.
“You have to.” Her recognition of the awful power they held over each other made her voice shake. “Don’t you understand? I’m like an animal in a cage trying to tear my way out. I—I’ll hurt you without meaning to.”
“Sara …”
“I can’t give you what you want! There’s too much between us, too much I don’t understand, too much I’m afraid of.” She dimly wondered where her anger had gone. Now there was only this sense of desperation, this terrifying recognition that they were both somehow connected—and caught up in something that neither could control. “I don’t have the strength for this!”
Andres slowly turned back to face her, though he didn’t step closer. In the dimness of the garden he was a shadowy presence, big, curiously featureless. “You have the strength,” he said in a deep, still voice. “You must have it. I can’t stop this. I can’t let you go. You haven’t realized … Heart of my heart, the love I have for you is the best of me. And what will I be if I lose that?”
Sara couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. His words shocked her, frightened her, moved her unbearably. The understanding that she was so terribly important to him was a burden, and she staggered under the weight of it. “No.” Her voice almost wasn’t there. “No, don’t say that.”
“I have to. You must know it.”
She realized she was backing away from him only when she felt the jab of a bush behind her, and when she put her hand back automatically, the pain caused by thorns was barely noticeable. He had forced from her the admission that she wanted him too badly to be able to fight him, or even to hate him afterward; she had shown him her own vulnerability where he was concerned, had given him the power to hurt her dreadfully.
But Andres had stripped away his armor as well, with a single, jarring admission of his own, and with that admission he had given her the power to all but destroy him.
“Sara …”
She was running, and she didn’t stop until her bedroom door was closed behind her. But she didn’t escape him. She couldn’t run away from him this time, she knew. This time there had to be an ending between them.
Late the following morning, Captain Siran, who had remained in his small boat that had been tied up at the dock overnight, sat on the cramped bridge writing a short note. He was ready to leave Kadeira and head back toward Key West, and manners required that he inform his host of his intentions. Manners, and the fact that Sereno’s naval fleet took a dim view of boats leaving the harbor without proper permission.
Siran would have used his ship’s radio to inform the president, but Sereno had sent word that his enemy could intercept radio transmissions now because of recently acquired equipment, and that it perhaps would be wiser to tell Lucio as little as possible. Captain Siran had no problem with that—except for one small thing.
That morning Hagen had radioed a very brief message.
Out of habitual caution the federal maestro had coded his message, but Siran was still bothered by the possibility of interception. Chances were good, of course, that Lucio wouldn’t have understood the message even if he managed to decode it. But if he did understand …
Hagen, Siran reflected, had made a bad mistake this time. The situation could be defused if he’d only tell certain people things in order to placate them—but Hagen was notoriously unable to be open and aboveboard about anything.
Siran didn’t like any of it. But there was nothing he could do about the situation, and he had his orders. So, along with his intentions of leaving, he added a brief message to Sereno: “From Hagen via radio this morning: Please be advised Long and company very distressed over disappearance of Miss Marsh. Their intentions unclear at this point. Past actions demonstrate they may take the matter into their own hands. Yacht Corsair projected to be in your area.”
Siran went out on deck and beckoned to a nearby lieutenant. “Can one of your men take this note to President Sereno?”
The burly man nodded agreement. “Teo has been our messenger since the president forbade radio contact; I have a message to send as well. Leaving, Captain?”
“On the tide.”
“Good fortune.”
Siran nodded. “Thanks. And to you.” He watched the soldier stride toward
a group of men near the warehouses, continued to watch as a younger soldier climbed into a battered jeep and drove away. Then, sighing a little, Siran turned back to his preparation to cast off.
Thinking of the lieutenant’s good wishes, he muttered, “May fortune favor the foolish.” But nobody heard him.
Colonel Durant was frowning a bit as he handed the slip of paper back to his president. “Long? I didn’t realize he knew Sara. It was the other one he knew, the woman who looked so like her.”
Andres shook his head. “I shall have to ask Sara, but I believe Long and his friends became interested in Sara’s well-being after Rafferty and his wife visited here. Of course they’d be concerned when she vanished, particularly if they know or suspect that she was brought here against her will.”
“Nevertheless,” Durant said, “what could they hope to do? Impossible to reach the island without our knowing—”
“They did once before,” Andres murmured.
The colonel was silenced but only briefly. “Under cover of a storm. And Long himself didn’t risk coming to the island.”
“The Final Legion was here then. It isn’t now.”
Durant’s frown deepened. “But the revolution exists; he would be in danger, and men of his wealth are cautious.”
Sereno smiled just a little. “Vincente, in an hour or so Joshua Long could raise his own army—by comparison to which both mine and Lucio’s would be pathetic.”
“He wouldn’t. International law—”
“International law aside, no, he wouldn’t. But he could, if he chose. And a man such as he could, I imagine, find his way to Kadeira in caution and relative safety.”
Accepting that, Durant asked, “We expect him, then?”
“We won’t be surprised if he arrives.”
Durant studied his old friend in silence for a moment. This new threat to the island was worrisome enough; Vincente was concerned over Sereno himself. The president seemed very tired, drained emotionally rather than physically. He had said nothing when Sara had failed to appear at breakfast, but his eyes had strayed often to the place that had been set for her.
The colonel had seen Sara slipping out into the garden a few minutes ago, and she had looked as drained and haunted as Andres did. Clearly there had been a confrontation of some kind between them, and just as clearly, it had resolved nothing. And Vincente was worried because if they both showed such strain after less than twenty-four hours …
“I need to ask Sara about Long and his friends.” Andres’s voice was slow, almost reluctant.
Durant understood the hesitation, and it didn’t surprise him only because he, more than any other, knew just how strong Andres’s feelings for Sara were. So he understood now that Andres was diffident about approaching Sara alone, even with so innocuous a reason, after whatever confrontation had so shaken the both of them. But perhaps, Durant thought, it was just what they needed—an impersonal topic to discuss.
“Shall I find her for you?” he asked.
Sereno was concentrating on a munitions inventory before him on the desk, and didn’t look up when he answered in a low voice, “Thank you, Vincente.”
Sara had slipped into the garden because she was getting claustrophobic in her suite. She had paced the floor all night, unable to sleep or even to rest. And now she wandered in the garden, touching a shrub here, a flower there. Trying not to think but thinking all the same.
During the long hours since she had run from him the night before, Sara had come to at least one certain realization: Whether or not she somehow came to accept Andres’s actions two years ago in allowing the terrorist group a sanctuary here, there was still the part of him she was afraid of, the darkness. And she couldn’t live with a man she feared.
“The love I have for you … is the best of me.”
If that was true … she could destroy him. Or at least destroy that part of him she loved, that charming, intense, gentle part of him. Just as she had done the previous night, she would, in her own panic, tear at him in her efforts to fight this between them, to escape him. She’d say cruel things, strike out at him. “I’ll not give my soul to the devil …” She would batter his love until it lay around them both in ruins.
“… what will I be if I lose that?”
If she killed it, then … then she’d see the worst of him.
Sara wondered, dimly and tiredly, if that was what really drove her. Did she strike out at him, tear at the gentle layers of his love, because her fear compelled her to know the worst of him before she could love without reservation?
He hadn’t shown that side of himself to her, whether consciously or not. But it was there. She sensed it, had glimpsed the darkness from time to time in fleeting moments. She knew it was there.
She tried to remind herself that some of the most monstrous leaders the world had known had loved passionately and even tenderly in their lives. That didn’t change them, didn’t alter what they were. So it shouldn’t matter to her that Andres loved her, that he was gentle with her.
But it did matter.
She had to see him clearly, had to understand everything he was. She couldn’t trust her instincts, because those instincts were in chaos. And she couldn’t run away again. There had to be an end to it, one way or another. This time it couldn’t just stop.
Yes or no; black or white; right or wrong. She had to see, to know and understand, the worst of him. There weren’t any simple answers, weren’t any easy solutions. And they could hurt each other so dreadfully.
“Pardon, Miss Marsh?”
Sara jumped in surprise, the heavily accented voice causing her to swing around. He was a young soldier with a shy smile and curiously flat back eyes, bobbing in an awkward bow.
She forced her muscles to relax. “Yes?”
“The president, miss. He asks that you come.”
She nodded, preceding him along the path he indicated. And it wasn’t until they’d nearly reached the corner of the house that Sara wondered abruptly why Andres would have summoned her to the area where the cars were kept parked—the only area at the front of the house that the perimeter guards couldn’t see.
“Wait a minute. What—”
She discovered quickly enough the unexpected strength of the young soldier. And the quickness with which he clapped a sickly sweet cloth over her nose and mouth defeated her before she even could begin to struggle. After that was only blackness.
By the time he had searched the entire garden, Colonel Durant was worried. It was unlikely that something had happened to Sara, but Durant preferred to err on the side of caution. And she had slipped away from these very grounds once before.
He went back into the house, asked a quick question of Maria, and, despite the negative answer, went up the stairs two at a time and rapped sharply on Sara’s door. There was no answer. He went in, quickly searching the suite. Empty.
He returned downstairs and hurried to Andres’s office, where there was an intercom connected to the guardhouse at the gate. When he burst into the room, Andres looked up in surprise.
“Vincente? What—” He broke off, his face going tight and pale. “Sara.”
Durant leaned over the desk to stab the intercom button. “Morales.”
“Colonel?” the gate guard responded instantly.
“Has anyone left the grounds in the past hour?”
“Only Teo, sir.”
Durant’s eyes met Andres’s, and both held the same realization—Teo, the trusted messenger, his uniform giving him safe passage, would have gone unquestioned through the grounds.
“Did you search his vehicle?”
“When he came in, sir.” Morales sounded puzzled, apprehensive.
“Not when he left?”
“No, sir.” Definitely apprehensive now. “But, sir, he was driving a jeep with no top; we could see inside.”
“You’re absolutely positive he was alone?”
“I—there was a tarp in back, sir. But we checked under it when he came
in. There was just some equipment, some sleeping bags.” After an instant’s hesitation Morales added stiffly, “We did wonder why he didn’t take the harbor road—”
Andres spoke harshly. “Gather half a dozen of your best men, Morales, and get up here.”
“Yes, sir!”
Woodenly Durant said. “He could have discarded the equipment out near the cars; no one would see it. If he knocked her out, hid her under the tarp …”
Andres reached for the radio behind the desk with some thought of contacting his patrols in the city but hesitated and looked at Durant. “He has no means of contacting Lucio, but if I order the men to find and stop that jeep, Lucio will know something has happened, and he’ll guess it has to do with Sara.”
Durant nodded. “You don’t dare risk it.”
There was a big automatic in a webbed holster in the bottom drawer of Andres’s desk; he got it out and stood, buckling the belt in place. And his voice, when he spoke again, was a bleak rasp. “She may have gone willingly, Vincente. She may have run away from me again.”
Durant couldn’t deny the possibility. “She must be found.”
“Yes. Yes, she must be found.” Andres’s mouth twisted bitterly. “So that I may protect her.”
Every breath Andres drew burned in his chest and caught raggedly in his throat. Every passing second was an eternity filled with anguished terror. She was gone, taken from him. She was gone, and he could barely think, could hardly feel past the numbing cold of his fear for her. He was vaguely aware that Durant protested when he got into an open jeep but ignored his old friend’s worry over enemy snipers.
The jeep all but stood on two wheels as it shot through the open gate and turned hard onto the harbor road, then shuddered with the strain when it was almost immediately turned again at right angles onto the rougher road Morales had indicated that led to the beach before swinging back inland. It was a little-traveled, treacherous road, marked by hard-baked hillocks thrown up by the mud slides of the rainy season and by eroded gullies that were invisible until a vehicle was quite literally on top of them and unable to stop.
