by Jami Alden
His own daughter would be fourteen on her next birthday, only two years younger than Marie Laure. Katie’s world was all about malls and boys. Or at least it had been the last time he’d seen her over a year ago. That’s the kind of life a beautiful young girl should live. Going to school, chasing boys. Not kidnapped, raped, impregnated with her enemy’s child.
He paced up and down the alley, his brain racing with the pieces and parts of this story, which was getting crazier by the day. Just last night another odd bit had appeared, an interview with Alyssa Miles in some women’s rag his friend Charlie had sent in a link. Everyone was quoting the story because it contained Alyssa’s first public commentary about the beaver shots that had shown up on the Web a while ago.
But Martin didn’t give a shit about it. Another subhead caught his eye. Alyssa had said she thought she may have seen someone that night. Was it possible? Could she have seen something that night and not realized it, something that would prove his hunch that Van Weldt’s death wasn’t the result of a wife pushed too far?
Maybe he needed to rethink his strategy. Instead of taking Alyssa down as collateral damage in this story, she could help him fill in the missing pieces. She was an outsider in her family, but she still had access. He’d felt it before, but now he was certain. She was the key. The link that tied together this godforsaken place and her glittering, meaningless life of luxury.
He was still trying to wrap his throbbing brain around everything when Marie Laure appeared. Martin tried not to wince when he took in her condition. Her left eye was still swollen nearly shut, and her right arm was suspended in a ragged sling. Her right forearm and hand were swollen to nearly twice their normal size. From the way she moved carefully, taking shallow breaths, he knew she had a couple broken ribs.
In her left hand she carried a small satchel. All her worldly possessions fit inside.
“We have to hurry,” he said, ignoring her wince when he grabbed her left arm and steered her down the alley. Two blocks away a jeep waited. The UN driver would take them to the meeting point where the helicopter would pick them up, along with twenty-five others lucky enough to make the list this time around.
“Monsieur—my brother, you have a spot for him, too?” Marie Laure’s breathing was labored, both from the pain in her side and the fast pace he forced her to keep.
“Sorry, kid, I couldn’t swing it.”
She tripped. Martin’s grip on her arm kept her from going down. “I promised him. I cannot go without my brother—”
He yanked her to a halt and gave her a little shake, ignoring her cry of pain. “I didn’t promise shit. I told you I’d try. Your brother is a soldier for Mekembe. You knew it was impossible.”
He took off again, dragging her behind him. The jeep idled half a block away. He shoved her in and climbed in next to her. Though hardly anyone was about this early in the morning, he had a tight, anxious feeling in his gut telling him to get the hell out of Dodge before his luck ran out.
He put his hand over the zipper pocket in his cargo pants, and his finger traced the outline of the computer flash drive. The proof he needed, the risk Marie Laure took, was right there on that small piece of hardware.
The jeep bounced along the rutted excuse for a road, and Martin swallowed back vomit. Fuck, he needed a drink. He felt the anxiety ease a degree when he saw the helicopter waiting.
Soon. He’d be in Kinshasa, in a hotel that stocked a full bar, and then on a plane enjoying all the complimentary booze he could handle.
A line of people waited to board, refugees anxiously checking in, ensuring their names were still on the list. Poor souls who actually believed they were going somewhere better. A crowd formed around them, yelling, shoving, trying to convince the aid workers to take them, too. They were held at bay by heavily armed guards keeping a tenuous hold on the crowd.
Martin grabbed his backpack and duffel from the back of the jeep and motioned Marie Laure to walk in front of him. They were among the last to arrive. Most of the other passengers had already boarded the helicopter. The rotors started a lazy spin, kicking up red dust. Martin held up his hand to protect his eyes.
Suddenly a vehicle came screeching around the corner—a rusted-out Hummer Mekembe had converted into a makeshift tank, complete with a machine gun mounted at the top.
Martin’s blood went glacial when he saw Mekembe himself in the driver’s seat.
Seated next to him was Marie Laure’s brother, Charles.
“Marie Laure!” Mekembe shouted.
“Don’t stop. We have to go.”
“Shoot her!” Mekembe shouted. “You wanted us to stop her, so shoot her yourself.”
Martin tried to hurry Marie Laure to the helicopter, but she wouldn’t move.
“Charles!”
Charles held his AK-47 loosely in his hand, aimed to the side, his eyes wide as Mekembe held his own gun to the boy’s head.
“Kill her,” Mekembe said. “You wanted me to keep her from escaping. Now show me you are loyal, or I’ll kill you and her next.”
“I didn’t mean for you to kill her,” the boy said, starting to cry. “I don’t want you to go, Marie Laure.” His body heaved with sobs; mucus ran from his nose. Despite the lethal weapon in his hand, in that moment he was nothing but a boy who wanted to stay with the sister he loved.
Marie Laure lurched toward the vehicle, but Martin kept a tight grip on her uninjured arm. “We have to go, or you’re both going to die.”
Mekembe was screaming at Charles as he sobbed, “No, no,” over and over again.
The soldiers guarding the helicopter hefted their weapons, warning Mekembe to lower his weapon, or they would open fire.
The helicopter rotors sped up as the pilots, anxious to flee the quickly unraveling situation, prepared to take off.
Martin yanked Marie Laure’s arm, dragging her, screaming, to the helicopter.
Gunfire erupted, barely audible over the helicopter blades.
Marie Laure’s screams turned to wails as her brother’s body crumpled.
The crowd scattered as the soldiers opened fire on Mekembe’s vehicle. Bullets pinged off the sides as he whipped the Hummer into reverse and sped back in the direction of the mine. Charles was shoved from the moving vehicle, his lifeless body rolling several feet before it came to a stop in a heap in the middle of the mud road.
Martin wrapped his arm around Marie Laure’s waist, dragging her the last few feet to the helicopter. The rotors drowned out any noise, but he could hear Marie Laure’s screams echoing in his head. He shoved her into the helicopter and climbed in after her just as the runners left the ground.
Marie Laure curled herself around the ball of her belly, silent now as tears flowed down her face. Martin strapped himself in several feet away, shutting out the voice that told him he should have tried harder to get a spot for Charles on the helicopter. It didn’t matter. He was just a boy. It didn’t matter that he’d been no more willing to kill for Mekembe than Marie Laure had been to share Mekembe’s bed.
He’d been a soldier. Way down on the totem poll when it was decided who got a spot on the evacuation flight. Martin had kept his promise to Marie Laure and gotten her out. She had no right to expect anything more.
As the helicopter climbed, Martin focused on the thrum of the rotors, the pain in his head, trying to block out Marie Laure’s wails as she sobbed beside him.
Alyssa forced her grainy eyes open. The room was almost completely dark, and her heart jumped to her throat as she realized she didn’t recognize any of the dim features. She shivered, her bare arms and legs breaking out in goose bumps, both from fear and from the near-arctic temperature of the room.
Where was she? How had she gotten here?
The mattress shifted next to her, and she froze as she sensed a presence next to her. Holy crap! Had she had too much to drink and ended up in some strange guy’s bed?
Panic gripped her chest as the evening’s events pieced back together like disjointed fram
es of a movie. The benefit. Feeling suddenly so dizzy and sick. Going up onstage to make her speech. The bright lights.
Her angry uncle Harold. Kimberly’s look of disappointed disgust as Alyssa made a public spectacle of herself.
Then strong arms carrying her. A deep voice telling her to stay with him, that everything was going to be okay.
A muscled arm slid around her waist, pulling her against a solid-rock wall of a chest.
Alyssa’s fear evaporated like mist as she snuggled eagerly into the warm body against her back.
Derek.
Now that she realized where she was, she could pick out familiar features of the dim room. The gooseneck lamp mounted to the wall above one side of the headboard. A tall chest of drawers across from the foot of the bed. The shadowy lump of an armchair piled high with laundry.
Overcome with the need to pee, she slid from the bed, careful not to disturb Derek. Her head swam when she stood, and she steadied herself on the bedside table. She carefully padded to the bathroom and took care of business. Her head was still fuzzy, but nothing like before. She had a headache and felt a little urpy, like she had a slight hangover. And her mouth felt like someone had sucked out every last drop of moisture from her tongue. She drank two glasses of water and brushed her teeth with her finger and wondered how she could go from being so sick, so fast, to on her way to recovery. Unease snaked around her spine. Maybe there was something really wrong with her.
She made her way unsteadily back to the bed and lay down a few inches from Derek. His big body took up more than half the bed, his broad chest expanding and contracting with his deep, even breaths. Alyssa moved as close as she dared, not wanting to wake him.
She closed her eyes in bliss when he reached for her again and pulled her back against him, his warmth settling over her like a down comforter.
She didn’t remember drifting off, but when she woke up again light filtered through the beige curtains. Her headache was gone, and her gaze wandered around the room, taking in details she’d been too distracted to notice last time she was there. Her impression was…beige.
With an occasional splash of brown for color.
Derek’s room was simply, tastefully decorated but had no personality whatsoever. With its putty-colored, pictureless walls and heavy wood and leather furniture, it might as well have been an above-average hotel room.
There was no art, no decoration, save for a black-and-white photograph on the dresser that she couldn’t make out from this distance.
Oh, and the two-foot pile of magazines on the bedside table. Looked like Derek was a heavy reader of The Economist and Information Week.
No wonder he’d had no idea who she was when he first met her.
Derek’s arm was still an iron-hard band around her middle, and sometime in their sleep he’d hitched his thigh up so its hair-roughened hardness rested between her legs.
Warmth, chased by the first tickle of desire, settled in her belly as memories of the last time she was in this bed bubbled into her consciousness. In the past week since he’d bulldozed back into her life, she’d tried to shove all the memories of that night back into the vault, never to be revisited. But each day it became more difficult. After the interview for Bella, she’d felt his sympathy. He was loosening up, millimeter by millimeter, almost as though he liked her.
And the way he’d come to her rescue when she was sick…Okay, so he was being paid to keep tabs on her, but still. He didn’t have to bring her to his house and tuck her into his own bed.
Maybe he was starting to care a little.
She tilted her ass back to snuggle more firmly into the cradle of his hips. His hand tightened on her waist, sending a pulse of heat between her legs. What was wrong with her, getting so turned on by a guy who didn’t even seem to like her much?
But unlike Derek, Alyssa wasn’t the best at controlling her impulses, and she couldn’t control the primitive reaction of her body whenever he got close. Heat shimmied through her, tightening her nipples into hard points. As if sensing it, Derek slid his hand to her stomach, flattening his palm against her abdomen as he drew her more fully back against him.
His breath was a hot sigh on the back of her neck. Her skirt had hitched up, leaving her behind bare in her thong panties. She wiggled closer and felt the unmistakable bulge of his erection against her butt, the stretchy fabric of his gym shorts doing nothing to hide the heat and dimension. Anticipation shot through her. In the weeks after she’d been with him, she’d tried to convince herself she’d embellished his size, his skill, her body’s devastating response to him. Now, with his long, thick cock rising urgently against her, she had to admit she hadn’t embellished a bit. And her memory didn’t come close to doing him justice.
She turned slightly and looked at him over her shoulder. In sleep, his chiseled features lost their harsh edges, giving him an almost boyish look. She looked ruefully at his dark lashes resting against his cheekbones. They had a length and thickness it took her three coats of very expensive mascara to achieve. His full lips were soft and slightly parted, and dark stubble dusted his jaw. But there was a faint tightness in his forehead, a thin line forming between his brows. Even in sleep Derek Taggart couldn’t completely let down his guard.
She reached down and covered the hand he’d flattened against her stomach, tracing the veins and tendons and the strong length of his fingers. His fingers twitched under her stroking, and she held her breath as his hand slid up over her rib cage. The heat of his skin burned through the thin silk of her dress, and heat pooled between her thighs. She sucked in her breath as his hand slid another few inches, his fingers dipping into the deep vee neckline of her dress.
The knot of arousal tightened between her legs, sharp and hot and almost painfully intense. His hand cupped her breast, his thumb brushing over and around her nipple. Her breath hitched, and she arched into him, craving a firmer touch. She ground her ass more firmly against his surging cock, hitched her leg higher over his so the hard muscle of his thigh pressed against her mound.
She felt his breathing change. His hand stilled on her breast, and she knew he was awake. Heart pounding, she turned her head to look at him. His eyes were dark slits as he stared down at her. She tilted her head, parted her lips in invitation.
His hand tightened on her breast, and he licked his lips. Alyssa tipped her chin higher, bringing her lips to within a millimeter of his.
With a groan he bent his head and covered her mouth with his, his tongue sliding between her lips to rub against her own. He was hot and musky, tasted even better than she remembered. She turned in his arms, shivering with need as he pulled her down on top of him. Her knees rested on either side of his hips. One of his hands slid up her bare thigh, up her skirt to rest on one bare cheek.
Alyssa wanted him so much she shook with it, every nerve ending firing on all circuits as she cupped his face in her hands and kissed him like she was starving, sucking, biting, pulling at his lips. “Derek,” she whispered.
He stiffened under her, and his hand froze on her butt. His eyes popped open, and he shoved her off him, sending her sprawling on her back, his move so swift and sudden it took her a few seconds to get her bearings.
She sat up and shoved her hair out of her face. He was already up and off the bed, breathing hard as he paced and raked his fingers through his hair.
“What the fuck is wrong with me,” he muttered almost to himself. Then he focused on her, eyes dark with torment. “I’m sorry, Alyssa. That was totally unprofessional and inappropriate.”
She felt her jaw drop toward the floor. She was a ball of unfulfilled arousal, one hip twitch away from orgasm, and he was worried about professionalism? “Derek, it’s fine. Really. I didn’t mind—don’t mind.”
Her stomach got tight as his face lost all traces of tenderness or arousal, and his usual closed expression took over like a garage door dropping into place.
“I can’t believe I even touched you, with the shape you were in.” Disg
ust laced his voice. For her? For himself?
“But I’m fine now,” she protested, pitifully close to begging but unable to help herself. Her body had gone cold at the absence of his touch, and she needed that warmth back, needed it like she needed air. “Whatever was wrong seems to have passed, just one of those twenty-four-hour things.” She still couldn’t shake the fear that something was seriously wrong with her, but she didn’t want to dwell on that. Right now she wanted Derek, back on the bed, his hands all over her. And despite his self-recriminations, judging from the huge erection tenting out the front of his shorts, he still wanted it, too.
His mouth pulled in a tight line, and his eyes narrowed. “A bug? Why don’t you cut the crap, Alyssa?”
She sat back on the bed and crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly feeling very naked in her flimsy cocktail dress. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But of course she did. He thought she was a drugged-out mess, just like everyone else.
“What are you on?”
“Nothing,” she said curtly and slid off the bed, as eager now to get away from him as she’d been for him to touch her. “Where are my shoes? I want to go home.”
“Tell me what you’re on,” he said, grabbing her arm in a grip that stopped just short of pain.
“Nothing,” she repeated through clenched teeth. “Why is it so hard for everyone to believe that I was sick? That maybe I had a virus?”
“Right,” he scoffed. “A virus that totally fucks you up but you feel fine in the morning.”
“It happens,” she said, hands on her hips, chin thrust out. She felt small and insignificant, like a little kid standing up to his bulk.
“Twice in the same month?”
“Maybe there’s something really wrong with me,” she said, an edge of fear creeping into her voice as she shrugged off his hold.
“When you can’t control your addiction enough to keep from getting high in public and making an ass of yourself, yeah, I’d say there’s something really wrong with you.”
