“What happened to the other contractor? Why were you the one who survived?”
Cullen watched her face as the question was asked, saw how her eyes grew blank with memory. Why had she agreed to this interview? She must have had a reason. Was she doing it to spite her father? Him? To gain popularity? Money? What?
“I—I don’t know why….” He saw her swallow. Her eyes lowered.
“It must have been terrible.”
Sabine didn’t respond to what Cullen thought was a lame attempt to get her to talk. After a few seconds the anchorwoman gave up and tried a new approach.
“Did you see what happened to the other contractor?” Cullen tensed with the question.
“I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it. I just can’t.” She shook her head and he knew she was struggling with her emotions. Her hands were gripped tightly in her lap.
“Was he tortured?”
Sabine moved her eyes to look at the anchorwoman. The slight quiver of her hair told Cullen she was starting to tremble. He wanted to reach through the television and choke the anchorwoman for asking such a difficult question. Obviously, she had seen what happened to the other contractor, and it had been horrific.
Sabine turned from the anchorwoman and looked into the camera that was focused on her. For an instant Cullen felt as though she were looking right at him, and it arrowed straight into his heart.
“Can you tell us what happened to Samuel? Samuel Barry.”
A photo of Samuel smiling with his wife appeared on the screen.
Tears visibly pooled in Sabine’s eyes. Cullen’s hand curled into a fist, and he realized he’d moved closer to the television, oblivious to Penny and Luc.
“I’m sorry,” the anchorwoman said. “I know this must be hard for you.”
He watched Sabine fight for control of her crumbling emotions. “I can’t...talk about that. You agreed not to...” A tear slid down her cheek.
“I understand. How about you tell us what happened when you were rescued, then?”
Sabine took the tissue the anchorwoman extended to her. Her eyes had that haunted, faraway look of someone who’d seen horrors no one else could imagine. Or ever wanted to.
“Who was it that organized the mission?” the anchorwoman asked.
Sabine stared at some point in the studio and answered absently, “I don’t know.”
“If it wasn’t the U.S. military, then who was it?”
Sabine’s head turned slowly toward the anchorwoman. “I wouldn’t know anything about how my rescue was planned.”
“Your father owns a company called Executive Indemnity Corporation, with headquarters in Miami. There have been reports on some of their activities. Your father’s company is a private military company, isn’t that right?”
Sabine didn’t comment.
“Was it your father who organized your rescue?” the anchorwoman asked.
“My father abandoned me before I was born.”
“So you’re saying it wasn’t your father who organized your rescue?”
“No, I’m saying my father hasn’t been a part of my life. Ever.”
“But he must care about you or he wouldn’t have helped to free you from your captors.”
Sabine said nothing, but Cullen could see she was torn, as though she wanted her father to care about her but didn’t want to believe or couldn’t bring herself to believe he did. Even though he’d arranged her rescue.
“Did your father hire the man in the Washington Daily photo? Does he know the man shown in that picture?”
“I don’t know who rescued me.” A true enough statement, Cullen thought with a pang of regret.
The anchorwoman smiled too shrewdly for his comfort. “What happened that day, Sabine? How were you rescued?”
Sabine sighed and cleared her throat, sitting rigidly in the chair. “A soldier broke down the door and told me he was from the United States and that he was going to get me out of there.”
“A soldier? So he’s U.S. military?”
“That’s what I thought. I—I mean, that’s what I assumed. He never said who he was.”
“Is he the man in the photo from the Washington Daily?”
The stirrings of anger appeared in Sabine’s eyes. “The man who rescued me was part of a team of several other men. I was flown to an airstrip, where a plane was waiting to fly me to London.”
A very brief explanation of what had actually occurred. Cullen was impressed. She’d also avoided answering the woman’s question.
“Your helicopter crashed before you made it out of Afghanistan, isn’t that correct?”
Sabine wondered if that piece of information had gotten out along with the plane crash.
“Yes, but another one arrived shortly after and took us to an airstrip.”
“Where was the airstrip?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t aware of much except the fact that I was getting out of Afghanistan.”
“What happened once you were on the plane?”
“I was flown to London.”
“Didn’t the plane crash?”
Sabine didn’t answer the anchorwoman. He could see she knew as well as he where this line of questioning was going. Hadn’t she considered this possibility when she’d agreed to appear on national television?
“We have it from a reliable source that your plane crashed on a Greek island.”
Sabine’s anger fired hotter in her eyes. She pinned the anchorwoman with a warning stare. “One of the men on the team was forced to crash-land the plane. We didn’t know where we were at the time. We knew we were on an island somewhere in the Mediterranean, but it wasn’t until we walked to a nearby village that we knew it was Kárpathos.”
Cullen cringed at her use of the word we after referring to “one of the men.”
“When you say, ‘we,’ do you mean you and the man in the Washington Daily photo?”
Sabine blinked twice but didn’t lose her cool. “No,” she lied.
“Why did both the helicopter and the plane crash?”
“The plane didn’t really crash. It was more of a rough landing.”
“But what caused both the helicopter and the plane to go down?”
“The helicopter was shot down during the rescue.”
“And the plane?”
“I’m not sure, exactly.”
“Do you think it’s possible terrorists held you captive and tried to kill you when you escaped?”
“Yes, that’s possible.”
“Could it have been anyone else?”
A brief pause. “I don’t see how.” Cullen saw the doubt in her eyes and wondered if anyone else could. Her vague answers were enough to raise curiosity.
“It’s ironic that you were forced to land where you did. What was it like to find yourself in the middle of paradise after surviving such a terrible ordeal?”
Cullen felt like cursing loudly.
“We were very lucky to make it to an island. We could have crashed into the sea.”
“Very lucky, indeed.” The anchorwoman nodded, her accompanying smile knowing. She let a second or two pass. “We spoke with one of the villagers in Kárpathos, where the destroyed plane was discovered.” Cullen inwardly grimaced, knowing his predicament was about to get much, much worse. “A woman who recognized you from this photograph—” she held the cover of Washington Daily up into the camera’s view “—told us she saw a man carry you through the village to a local pension. She described you as newlyweds whose private plane had crashed on the island. She said you were alone with this man and didn’t leave your hotel room for two full days, and when you did finally leave it, the two of you walked down to a secluded beach, where you spent more time alone together. She invited you to her taverna, which
she said you accepted and shared a romantic dinner. Octopus, I believe, is what she said you both ate that night.”
Sabine’s green eyes were wide with shock, and her face flushed a telling shade of red. She stared at the anchorwoman with her lips slightly parted, no doubt to accommodate for the rapid breaths he could see she was taking. She might as well admit defeat now. Every inch of her body communicated without words that everything the anchorwoman said was true. Damn her. Didn’t she know the media would focus on all the speculation surrounding the plane crash?
Cullen closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, wanting to groan.
There was a poignant silence on the television, and he was certain millions of Americans were riveted by this new turn of events.
“Was the man you were with one of your rescuers? The man in the Washington Daily photo?”
Cullen looked over his fingers at the television and Sabine’s flushed face.
“I can’t...comment on that.”
The anchorwoman smiled. “Did you have an affair with him?”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Are you still?”
“No!”
Cullen ran his hand down his face with a rough sigh. She was killing him.
His uncle grunted a derisive laugh. “You might as well kiss that company of yours goodbye, son.”
* * *
Sabine parted a section of the wooden blinds on her living room window and saw the white minivan still parked down the street. It was after 10:00 p.m. The throng of reporters that had swarmed her bookstore after her appearance on Current Events had dwindled to this single man. Minivan Man, she was going to start calling him. He was an annoying, persistent little fellow, waiting like a dog frothing at the mouth for a chance to catch her with her secret lover.
Disgusted, she let the blinds go and carried her glass of iced tea toward the stairs. After the Current Events broadcast, the news had buzzed with curiosity over Cullen’s identity and romanticized what had mushroomed into their torrid affair on a Greek island. The hype disturbed her, mostly because it made her think about Kárpathos—and Cullen—too much.
She stepped down the narrow stairway and emerged into the bookstore office. Flipping on lights as she went, she entered the main area of the bookstore. She passed a section of tall empty shelves where boxes of books were scattered and put her glass of iced tea on the checkout counter near the front of the store.
The books she’d ordered had arrived earlier that day but she’d waited for the cover of night to begin unpacking them. She’d dipped into her 401(k) to buy a collection of general fiction, literary fiction, nonfiction, children’s books and touristy books about the region to stock her shelves. The front corner of the bookstore was under renovation and would be a coffee counter with a few quaint round tables near the front windows. Maybe she’d plant flowers in pots on the sidewalk in front of the building this summer.
A noise in the back of the store made her go still. Holding three hardcover books in her hand, she looked toward her office. Rows of shelves formed a hallway that was slightly offset from the office entrance, so she couldn’t see it from where she was. Was someone in there?
Her heart started to beat faster. She put the books down and stood. Moving to the checkout counter, she pulled out the 9 mm pistol she kept on the shelf under the register. Buddy from the liquor store had taught her how to use it after she’d come home from Afghanistan. Inserting a loaded clip, she moved out from behind the counter and headed for her office, holding the pistol with both hands and pointing it ahead of her. The hallway of shelves allowed her to keep out of view of the doorway leading to the office.
The sound of the back door opening made her jump into the space between the last two shelves near her office door. She closed her eyes and willed herself to have courage. Someone had broken into her bookstore. Blood drained from her head and she fought the rise of an all-too-familiar fear.
Footsteps shuffled. It sounded like more than one person. One grunt accompanied another. She leaned around the corner of the shelf. Two men crossed the doorway, locked in a fighting struggle. Both held a gun and both gripped the other’s arm to prevent either from taking aim. She recognized her bodyguard, the smaller of the two. The bigger man tripped him and he fell.
She had to do something. Gun raised, she emerged from the row of shelves and hurried to the office door. Peering around the frame, she saw the bigger man standing over her bodyguard, aiming his weapon. A file cabinet blocked most of his body from her. He was going to shoot the man on the floor.
“No!” Sabine shouted and fired her pistol.
But the big man fired, too, one silenced shot that hit her bodyguard. She could tell because he groaned and rolled onto his side. She saw only his chest and head, but it was enough to know he struggled to reach his gun, which was too far away.
Sabine didn’t have time to help him. The big man—tall, lean, with dark hair and eyes—swung his weapon toward her. She pivoted and ran from the office, ducking behind the first row of empty shelves, hearing a bullet hit wood. She fired her gun through the space of a shelf, forcing the man to stay behind the wall of the office. Her gun wasn’t muffled and the explosions rang her ears. She ran to the end of the row and moved up the next one, crouching low, trying to see through the mesh of shelving.
Hearing the sound of slow footfalls on her wood floor, fear cauterized her. That awful fear. She moved along the shelf. The man appeared around the edge of the row. She fired again. He jumped behind the shelf. She turned to run, heard him chase her. Before she made it to the end of the row, he tripped her from behind. She went down on her hands and knees, the gun skittering from her grasp and bouncing off the wall just ahead of her. Rolling to her rear, she kicked her leg up and connected with the big man’s hand. His gun went sailing over the top of the shelf to her left and fell to the floor on the other side.
The man unbuckled his belt and whipped it free of his black jeans. Sabine rolled back onto her hands and knees and scrambled toward her gun. She would not fall prey to anyone ever again. She’d kill this man without a second thought!
The tether of her hair stopped her. The man yanked her back toward him. Her scalp stung where he pulled. He looped the belt around her neck and released her hair. Sabine clawed at the belt as it tightened on her throat, furious with herself for allowing this to happen.
Choking for air, and getting little, she reached for something, anything that would provide her a weapon. Her pistol still lay a few feet away, too far for her to reach. A box she’d opened but hadn’t begun to empty yet was right next to her. She reached inside for a hardback Webster’s dictionary and aimed the corner at her assailant’s head. With a hard wallop, she hit something that made him grunt and loosen his hold. She yanked the belt from her throat, gagging and gasping as she crawled for her gun. She stretched her arm. Her fingers curled around the handle. Rolling onto her back, she started firing.
The man scrambled to escape the explosion of bullets. She emptied her gun.
He ran into her office. She followed but only when she heard her bodyguard fire his gun. A shout and the big man’s stumble told her he was hit, but he managed to run out the back door before her bodyguard could finish him off.
* * *
Reclining on a hammock in his uncle’s backyard, Cullen rested his head on one folded arm, his other hand on his stomach. He chewed on a straw left over from the chocolate milk Penny had given him while he occupied himself watching white puffy clouds pass over the branches of a cottonwood tree. All this peace and quiet gave him entirely too much time to think. And all he thought about was Sabine.
Maybe he should take a trip somewhere. An exotic beach resort or something similar. The only thing stopping him was his fear that he’d be recognized. He could just go home, too, but what was there that wasn’t here? A big city, for one, and he di
dn’t think that was a good place to lay low. A suburb of Washington, D.C., was nothing like the wide open spaces of Montana.
On the patio, Luc sat on his lawn chair watching a fishing show. Cullen liked fishing but enough was enough. Once a year was enough. Every day was nauseating.
As though hearing his thoughts, Luc turned the channel. Cullen felt bad for thinking bad of his uncle’s favorite pastime. Luc was getting older and couldn’t keep up the pace he’d once kept in the military.
Luc stopped surfing at a news program.
“Authorities are speculating whether the man who attacked O’Clery in her Roaring Creek bookstore was responding to her recent interview on Current Events.”
Cullen lifted his head, instantly focused on the television. His stomach muscles tightened as he rose halfway between sitting and reclining. A picture of Sabine disappeared from the screen, and the news program went to commercial.
Cullen swung his feet over the hammock and stood, shards of fear shooting through him. “What happened?” He stepped onto the patio, where his uncle had a television mounted below the eave of his house. “What happened to her?” He knew he sounded frantic. He felt frantic. And he was not accustomed to that.
Luc glanced up at him, then quickly surfed until he found another news channel. A video of Sabine being helped out of a storefront ripped through him. That haunted look was back in her eyes. She held a hand to her throat, but it didn’t hide the red and chafed skin there. Something dark and uncontrollable expanded in him. He tried to steady his breathing.
“Sabine O’Clery, the woman rescued more than a month ago from Afghanistan, narrowly escaped with her life late last night after two men broke into her Roaring Creek bookstore. One man, who reportedly tried to help her, was shot and taken to a nearby hospital. Doctors say he’ll recover, and guards posted at his room are refusing to let anyone but police question him. O’Clery said she and the injured man fired at her assailant, but he managed to get away. Local authorities are searching for the suspect and aren’t releasing the identity of the man hospitalized during the attack.”
Seducing the Colonel's Daughter: Seducing the Colonel's DaughterThe Secret Soldier Page 30
