by Kay Hooper
Sara waited until he was at the door, then said, “Andres?” And when he half turned back to her, she said, “Tomorrow things won’t be different.”
His expression changed then, and for a flashing instant she thought of defeat, of something beaten. Then he was expressionless again. “I know.”
She looked at the door for a long time after he left.
A considerable distance away from the tensions of Kadeira, a massive and dangerous-looking man moved with inherent grace through the shadowed streets of a large East Coast American city. No casual stroller of those streets would have seen him, but the petite, red-haired woman standing patiently under a streetlight spoke to him even before he left the concealing shadows and joined her.
“Well, did you meet your mysterious contact?”
“I met him.” Unexpectedly, Zach Steele’s deep voice was rather soft. “Anybody bother you, honey, or did that misbegotten hound pretend he was a guard dog?”
The “misbegotten hound,” who was an Irish wolfhound, and who, at a hundred and fifty pounds, far outweighed his mistress, woofed softly in response to this aspersion on his character and thumped his tail lazily on the pavement. The redhead patted him consolingly and addressed her husband.
“Three men passed, and all of them scraped their elbows on that wall to walk around us. Wizard smiled at them. With all his teeth. Zach, did you get answers?”
He took her hand and they began moving down the quiet, shadowed sidewalk, Wizard pacing at their heels. “Interesting answers,” he affirmed, his deep voice still soft. Then, as if continuing an old argument, he said, “You should have stayed in New York, Teddy. This trip has been so rushed, you haven’t gotten any rest at all.”
“I’ll rest on the jet going back.” And then, apparently addressing Wizard, Teddy Steele said dolefully, “One of these days he’s going to find out that I was never meant to be wrapped in cotton or put under glass.” Wizard woofed in doubtful agreement.
“Dammit, Teddy.” Zach’s voice roughened a bit. “It’s only been a couple of months since …”
Teddy’s voice softened. “I’m fine, Zach. Really. Now, what did you find out?”
After a moment, and after a reassuring squeeze of her hand, Zach explained what he’d found out.
“It looks like Hagen’s goons snatched Sara about two jumps ahead of someone else. Two men, Latinos; they stuck out a bit in this neighborhood, so they were noticed.”
“Sereno’s men?” Teddy asked, then replied to that herself. “No, that doesn’t make sense, not if he’d asked Hagen to bring Sara to him; he wouldn’t have sent his own men after her as well. So who were they?”
“Hard to say for sure,” Zach told her broodingly. “But I’ll bet that if we backtracked, we’d find that Sara’s been running from two different … parties—all this time. Sereno’s men, certainly. And somebody else’s.”
Teddy, who was extremely intelligent and very quick at reading between the lines, exclaimed softly. “An enemy of Sereno’s, maybe? Practically the whole world knows how he feels about her, knows she’s his … one weakness. Could it be someone who wanted to get his hands on Sara to—to use her against Sereno in some way?” She remembered when it had happened to them, when an evil madman had used her as bait in an attempt to destroy Zach.
Zach’s hand tightened around her as he, too, remembered. After a moment he said, “Could be. Kelsey said it didn’t fit otherwise that Sereno would move all of a sudden after nearly two years—and that makes sense. If he found out somehow that his enemy was closing in on Sara …”
They walked in silence for a little while, and then Teddy spoke soberly. “You’re worried Josh is going to go down there.”
“I know he will. Hell, we’re all suckers for love.” The words were flippant, even sardonic, but his tone wasn’t. “And those two should have a chance; it’ll be hard enough for them without some bastard trying to use Sara to break Sereno. They should have a chance. Josh’ll go down there—Derek, too, I’d bet. Josh owes Sereno, and if this is all because he’s trying to protect Sara, then I’m sure Josh wants to help.”
Quietly Teddy said, “You can’t wrap him in cotton, either.”
“Yeah, I know.”
But knowing it wouldn’t stop him from trying, Teddy knew. She had known that from the first, had known that Zach would instantly and without thought or hesitation place his own large body between danger and anyone he loved. So she mentally began to gather her arguments, because Zach wasn’t going to Kadeira without her; he just wasn’t.
“Teddy …”
“The Corsair,” she said serenely, “is very comfortable, after all. And I love islands.”
“Dammit, honey …”
Sara was up and about the next day despite Andres’s objections, sporting a white bandage just above her left temple but feeling much better physically. Emotionally she was still a bit raw, accepting what she felt, but still confused, still afraid that in the end she wouldn’t be able to understand and love what she thought was the ruthless core of Andres, the part that gave him much of his enormous strength.
As for him, he avoided the “discussion” he’d said would take place that day. Obviously he was still tired and drawn, and his eyes, when they rested on her, were watchful, wary, and yet somehow anguished as well, hurting. Sara was disturbed and worried, but she didn’t press him, knowing that they needed time. There was so much between them, so much tension, so many feelings, so much pain. They were, she thought, afraid of that pain, both of them. Afraid of hurting each other even more. They were careful.
They were still being careful when Andres came looking for her sometime after dinner that night, finding her in the library, where she was trying to find a kind of peace among the poets. He sat down across from her in a chair and, asking her permission with a lifted brow, lit one of his thin cigars. She wondered only then where he had acquired his curiously old-fashioned manners, but she didn’t ask.
She didn’t ask because she was suddenly and rather bewilderedly coping with a stinging surge of feelings and sensations. The physical awareness between them had always been powerful, but since she’d returned, the strong emotions had partially masked—or even overwhelmed—desire. But it seemed now that the aborted kidnapping, or its disturbing aftermath, had changed that.
In the eternal instant during which he concentrated absently on lighting the cigar, she found herself looking at him as if she’d never seen him before. He was graceful even in his stillness, handsome in his weariness. The physical strength of him was a tangible thing, a vital force cloaked in fleeting quiet.
And in his eyes, those dark, intense eyes, were emotions that compelled, intrigued. Behind the shutters, underneath the wariness and the caution, the pain and the love, was the stillness of a man who had lived too long with danger. He looked at her then, and in the unguarded moment when their gazes locked, she thought she glimpsed his soul. It shook her to her own.
Love, instant and intense. Pride. Pain. And there was something else. Held in an iron grip, with the kind of desperation only a wounded soul could know, were the last tatters of illusion, the final, fragile tendrils of a cherished dream.
She tore her gaze away with an inner gasp, staring blindly down at her book. Too late, too late! It was always too late.… Embedded in her heart, as close as her own soul. If she hadn’t come back, she still would have loved him all the days of her life, angry and afraid. But she was here, and the anger was gone, the fear turned to confused uncertainty.
“I wanted to talk to you about something, Sara,” he said rather abruptly. “About Joshua Long and his friends.”
She was a little surprised and welcomed the distraction. Laying her book aside, she said, “There isn’t much I can tell you about them.” Her voice was steady.
“You’ve met?”
“Face-to-face only once,” she answered readily. “It was a little over a year ago, months after I left Kadeira.…” She hesitated then, frowning a little.
Dryly Andres said, “I’ll make it easier for you. You were contacted by an American agent—either by a man named Hagen or by Sarah Cavell herself. Sarah was to take part in a very covert assignment here; she was part of a team sent to rescue another American agent I was holding as a political prisoner. It was believed that her similarity to you would make it easier for her and Rafferty Lewis to get in and out of Kadeira safely. And successfully.”
Sara was staring at him, a little puzzled, a little tense. “You—Did you know that … then?”
Andres hesitated, then nodded. “I knew. As soon as I saw her, I knew what Hagen had intended.”
“You turned your back and let them escape, even though you could have stopped them,” Sara said very slowly, remembering what Sarah Cavell had told her, gently, over the phone a few days after that escape.
He hesitated again. “Her resemblance to you made it easy for me,” he said finally, tension evident in his voice. “No one was surprised that I couldn’t allow her to be harmed.”
Sara was trying to make sense of it. “But if you knew Hagen, knew why they were coming here—and Vincente said something about you having called in a favor from an American agent in order to get me here—then Hagen was returning the favor you did him, wasn’t he? The favor of helping him to get his agent out of here safely. You planned that.” She shook her head, adding softly, “Sarah said you did, that you were helping them, even though it wasn’t supposed to look that way.”
“It was for my benefit as well,” Andres said, apparently unsurprised by that other Sarah’s perception. His voice was suddenly flat. “Kadeira’s benefit.”
He’s showing me, Sara realized, something inside her tightening. Showing me a little of the darkness. She found that her eyes were fixed almost painfully on his face, her ears straining to catch the shading of every word. And there was something else, something she sensed in him. This was important, so important.
“The last thing I needed,” Andres said, his voice still hard, “was the United States as an active enemy. The terrorists wanted Kelsey; they would have killed him. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the U.S. wouldn’t have liked that. It was all to the good, as far as I was concerned, to get Kelsey out of here as soon as possible. Without, I need hardly say, angering the Final Legion any more than necessary.”
The last statement was, she thought, uttered with deliberation; Andres still wasn’t prepared to “apologize” for having allowed the terrorist group a base on Kadeira. She nodded slowly but made no comment.
Abruptly the darkness was gone; having allowed her to hear motives that he had flatly maintained were largely selfish and self-serving ones, Andres veered to another subject.
“At any rate, you were going to tell me what contact you’ve had with Long and his friends.” His voice was quiet and calm again, his face less masklike, curiously relieved-looking.
“It wasn’t much. I talked to Sarah, of course, before they came here. And a few days after. It was—oh, I guess it was a couple of months later when they found me.” She smiled suddenly, ruefully. “Your people and, for that matter, Lucio’s, could take lessons from Josh Long on how to find people who don’t want to be found. I was feeling pretty safe at that point and was staying in a small hotel on the West Coast. I never even sensed I was being watched, but I must have been, because Sarah Cavell—Sarah Lewis by then—just appeared at my door one day.”
“And?” Andres prompted when she fell silent.
“She was very kind.” Sara cleared her throat. “She said they were concerned about me. That Josh and Raven Long, and their security expert Zach Steele, wanted to talk to me. She took me to another hotel, a big one, and that’s when I met the others. Rafferty was there too. They offered to help me. Josh said it was possible to build a new identity for me so nobody would ever be able to find me, if that was what I wanted.”
After a moment Andres said, “You would have been safe.” His mouth twisted suddenly. “I thought I could keep you safe here, and within twenty-four hours you were taken from me. You should have accepted Long’s offer, Sara.”
She felt an abrupt surge of anger. “I should have? And just become someone else, like changing clothing? It was my life, Andres! My name. I might have run, but I always knew who I was. And I won’t let anybody take that away from me!”
Her outburst seemed to have shaken him; his eyes were shuttered again, his face expressionless. And his voice was quiet when he said, “Of course not. And I’m sure they knew that, understood that.”
Sara snatched at calmness, held on to it. Careful, she had to be careful. But she felt unsettled, and from more than the burst of anger. “They knew. Especially Raven, I think. Raven is Josh’s wife. I thanked them but told them I didn’t want that. They weren’t surprised. They asked me to keep in touch, let them know how I was from time to time. And for a while I was in touch with Sarah. But not recently. Not since somebody—I don’t even know who it was now, your men or Lucio’s or Hagen’s—almost caught me. I just ran after that.”
“I see.”
She looked at him, feeling puzzled again. “Why did you ask? Is it important?”
“Perhaps. I was alerted yesterday that Long and his friends are troubled over your disappearance and may take it upon themselves to act.”
“Come here, you mean?” Sara frowned. “It doesn’t seem likely. They hardly know me, Andres.”
He smiled a little, the mask easing because they were being careful again. “I met Long years ago, talked to him. And I talked to him just before Rafferty and Sarah arrived. He is the kind of man who will always intercede when wrong things happen. As far as any of them know, you’re being kept here totally against your will, possibly behind bars. He would care about that, I think, and wish to help you.”
Sara dropped her gaze to the hands folded in her lap. But they knew something Andres didn’t know, couldn’t be sure of, she thought, something that might make them hesitate in any attempt to “rescue” her. They all knew she loved Andres, she was sure of that. Softly, without looking up, she asked, “What will you do if they come here?”
“If they come openly,” he said in an even tone, “my ships will warn them off, just as they would any casual visitors.”
“Warn them off—forcefully?” She looked up then, seeing his face change as they once again approached that darkness.
But the darkness didn’t quite arrive, because Andres shook his head with a faint smile, with that same odd relief. “That wouldn’t be wise of me, would it? I can only warn politely where men such as Joshua Long are concerned. If he chooses to ignore my warning, there is little I can do about it. I could protest to his government, I suppose, but even they tend to tread warily around such men.”
After a moment Sara said, “If I could talk to them—”
“I don’t dare attempt radio communication. Lucio is able to intercept the transmissions, and above all else, he must not know that one of the richest men in the world may be en route here.”
“Damn,” she said softly. Then, realizing, she said, “You really respect Josh Long, don’t you? Not just what he is—but the man he is.”
Andres nodded. “He wields great power, Sara—far more than most people realize. And he does it with grace. He has strength and commands absolute loyalty, but never through fear. His word is known throughout the world to be his bond—no exceptions. And he is, above all, an honest man.” Andres’s smile was crooked. “Not one man in a million possesses that unique melding of positive traits. I wish …”
“What do you wish?” she asked.
In a light, faintly self-mocking tone he replied, “I wish he could teach me just one of those traits.”
“Which one?” she asked, knowing the answer.
“To wield power gracefully.” Abruptly he got to his feet, and his voice had gone flat when he added, “You’re right to fear the darkness in me, Sara. Power is a dangerous thing.” He left the room before she could respond.
After a moment she
picked up her book and opened it, gazing down on the pages blindly. Something, she realized, had happened. Something had changed.
“It was for my benefit as well.”
“Power is a dangerous thing.”
Careful; they had been careful. And yet … She had the odd feeling now that Andres had decided something the night before, had made up his mind, and was acting on that private decision. He had shown her a glimpse of the darkness in him, had spoken flatly of self-serving motives without apology. He had told her she was right to be afraid. He had never once spoken of love, had not used endearments.
“He’s pushing me away.” She heard her blank voice speaking aloud, startling her. But that was it, of course; that was what he had decided.
He was convinced she could never love the dark part of him, had been convinced all along, or else why hide it? Even now he was convinced. That was why there had been no endearments, no words of love. He was, with deliberation, with stony determination, pushing her away. And he was tearing himself up inside to do it.
Sara didn’t doubt that Andres loved her. She wondered now if she had ever doubted it. Probably not. She hadn’t wanted to face it, hadn’t wanted to accept it, but she had never doubted it. Andres loved her.
And he was trying to make it easier for her to leave him. Sometime during or after their strained discussion the previous night, he had simply decided that she would be better off without him, had perhaps come to the conclusion that she would leave, anyway, whether she came to understand him or not. And he had doubtless realized that neither of them would be able to cope with a slow, agonizing interlude before she finally left him. And this time the leaving would be final. There hadn’t been an ending between them before; Andres was going to end it this time. He would end it with absolute finality, driving her away from him so completely that no shadow of love would remain to haunt her.
That was what he thought would happen.
The question was: Was he right?
Could she love the worst of him, whatever that might prove to be? She had run before, in fear. In fear that she could love a man who could do so monstrous a thing as house terrorists and take blood money from them. The voice in her mind was clear and firm, and she listened to it in dawning realization.
