Wiser Than Serpents

by Susan May Warren

  He turned left at a 7-Eleven, and Yanna covered her nose at the smell seeping from the building. “What is that? It smells like rotten eggs soaked in gasoline.”

  “Tea eggs,” David said, pulling up next to a sweet potato stand, turning off the bike. “They’re a specialty, and all the 7-Elevens here sell them. They boil the eggs in soy sauce all day. They’re supposed to be delicious, but I can’t get past the smell.”

  Yanna climbed off the back of the bike while he parked it. “I might have lost my appetite.”

  “You’ll find it again in a second.” He reached out for her, grabbed her hand. She looked startled.

  “Just so you won’t be tempted to go on your own private excursion.”

  “Why, sea dog, don’t you trust me?” She grinned, and he narrowed his eyes at her, trying to stifle a smile.

  It seemed the city never slowed, regardless of the hour, and the hum had long invaded his pores, become a part of him.

  He pulled Yanna toward an open-air stir-fry café. Around a horseshoe-shaped counter patrons sat, watching the cook in the center fry their food on a giant wok the size of a kettledrum.

  Yanna settled on the wooden stool. “I don’t know how to order.” She looked at the menu glued to the countertop. “It’s all in Mandarin, and, well, I’m not fluent in cuisine.”

  “Look at the picture and point to the item you want. They’ll figure it out.” David caught the chef’s attention and pointed to item three. Shrimp in fish sauce.

  Yanna ordered the same and watched with a sad smile as the chef flipped her food with a flourish. “Elena would love this.” She put her hands on the counter. They were dirty and chapped from the seawater. David resisted the urge to cover one with his. Because she wasn’t his captive at the moment. “She loves to travel.” She ran her hands through her long hair, closing her eyes when it caught on a snarl. “Why did she think she had to be married?”

  David had no answer to that. He’d never even considered marriage—his career, his commitments to his job left little room for relationships. But sometimes, when he returned home from an assignment to an empty apartment with dead plants, he wished for more.

  Even his partner, Chet, had a girlfriend. He didn’t know who, but it certainly hadn’t hurt his will to live.

  Maybe if Chet could figure it out, David could, too.

  He lifted his hand to cover Yanna’s, then put it down. Had he lost his mind? Yanna and he could never be together.

  And not just because they lived on different sides of the world.

  The chef served up their bowls of shrimp, noodles and bok choy, and handed them each a set of chopsticks.

  Yanna stared at them. “Uh, and how am I supposed to work these?”

  David peeled the paper off. “Hold one chopstick stationary against your thumb, the other moves against your pointer finger.” He demonstrated.

  She stared at him. “I’m too tired for this.”

  He motioned to the chef. Thankfully, they kept forks below the counter.

  “Vakoosna,” she said, halfway into her meal. The next time he looked over at her, she’d finished.

  “Did you inhale it?”

  Yanna held up her bowl, looking at it longingly.

  “Don’t lick it.”

  She put it down. “Thanks. That was delicious. I guess you’re not entirely a jerk.”

  “Oh, yes I am. But I’m a jerk who feeds you.” He finished the last of his noodles. “Let’s get you to the safe house. By the way, I’m still waiting for an apology.”

  She simply grinned at him. He refrained from holding her hand on the return to the scooter, but kept her close enough to grab if she should decide to make a dash for it.

  Surprisingly, she didn’t. And wrapped her arms back around him when they got on the bike. “I might be a little sorry.”

  They rode in silence through the streets, David’s mind on Kwan and his whereabouts. He knew of Kwan’s contact on Taichung—he’d start there, and see if he could find out where Kwan had holed up.

  David had no doubt he had a target on his head. But perhaps that could work in his favor. Like Yanna said, if Kwan had taken Elena, then eventually, perhaps, he could lead them to her.

  And he meant to keep his promise to Yanna. He would find Elena.

  He reached down, clasped her hand and squeezed.

  Leaving the main road, they drove back through the alleys and streets of a neighborhood. The safe house sat back from the street, a three-story apartment once used by missionaries. An office building acted as camouflage for the various people who moved in and out of the complex.

  David drove around back and secreted the scooter in a metal shed.

  A palm tree cast blades of shadow over the courtyard. Overhead the sky was clear, stars bright, the moon full and too illuminating. David grabbed Yanna’s hand and pulled her to him under the palm tree. “Wait.”

  She stood there, quiet beside him as he watched the house. Lights on the second-story windows reflected in elongated squares on the grass. The outside lights bathed the front walk and the opposite street. “They know we’re coming. They’ll turn the lights out, then we’ll go in.”

  Yanna tucked herself in close to him, her hand behind him propped on the scaly bark of the tree. “How do they know?”

  David scanned the windows, looking for movement. Strange. When he had spoken with Bruce, he’d said he’d have the lights off by ten.

  Reaching into his pocket, David pulled out a cell phone. “Bartered for it on the way up.”

  “Bartered—is that what you’re calling it?”

  David slipped it back into his pocket. “They’ll be reimbursed.” He knew his job demanded creativity, but he couldn’t help but feel as if he might be losing his footing. Ever since he had shot Chet it seemed as if his moral lines had blurred, smudged by frustration and urgency.

  Instead of wanting to see Kwan and his operation captured, the web of weapons smugglers and suppliers destroyed, he just…he just wanted to see Kwan dead.

  And he didn’t like that feeling, not at all. Or rather didn’t like the fact that, yes, he did.

  Sometimes, David longed not to be him. Not to be the guy who lived by an invisible set of rules that seemed foreign to the rest of the world.

  Not to be the guy who wouldn’t put his arm around the intoxicating woman beside him and kiss her like he had ten years ago…only this time, not stop.

  Sometimes it felt…and he hated to say it, hated to think it, hated that it felt like betraying everything he stood for, but…sometimes it felt, indeed, like good guys finished last.

  How could one man, by doing what was right, have even a smidgen of hope to slow the rampage of evil in the world?

  So maybe he hadn’t always done what was right.

  He blew out a breath.

  “You okay?”

  David ran a hand through his long, grimy hair, over his scraggly beard, wishing all that gone, too. The lights flickered off in the upstairs windows.

  “Yeah. Let’s go—”

  “Someone’s coming,” Yanna whispered.

  He leaned back against the tree, his breath low. He reached for his weapon, which of course, he didn’t have.

  So, he snaked his arm in front of Yanna, put her behind him.

  A man appeared from around the side of the house, out the darkened side entrance. It didn’t take David long to figure out that this man wasn’t Bruce’s contact. Maybe it was the clothes—all black and dressed for stealth. Maybe it was the way he stopped at the edge of the house, looking back, checking for a shadow.

  Or the way he then edged out into the lawn and vaulted the fence.

  “I have a bad feeling about this, David.”

  “Me, too,” David said in a barely audible voice. “Stay put, I’m going to check on—”

  “Nyet. I’m on your tail like glue, like you said before.”

  Of course she was. “Quickly, then.” He went to the gate, punched in the four-channel code, and it
opened. Sliding through, he left it ajar and ran for the house. Yanna, true to her word, stayed one step behind him. He reached the back door, opened it and went in first, pulling Yanna in his shadow as he froze in the entry, listening.

  The moon filtered in through bamboo window slats, across a terra-cotta tile floor and wicker furniture. Beyond this room, he spotted the kitchen and, even farther, stairs.

  He pointed to the stairs. Yanna nodded.

  They were across the room in seconds, and he took the stairs on his toes, crouching at the top.

  Moonlight streamed out of one of the upper bedrooms. The other, on the opposite side of the hall, contained only darkness.

  He glanced at Yanna.

  She wore her fight face, the one that said, Don’t mess with me, or someone’s getting hurt.

  He should have heeded that warning long, long ago.

  David stood, crept down the hall toward the moonlight-bathed bedroom, the one they’d been watching when the light went out.

  He froze at the door, a word he rarely used on his lips. Their contact lay on the floor, hands bound, throat slit from ear to ear.

  David turned, grabbed Yanna by the elbow. “Go. Go.”

  “What—?”

  He was pushing her now. “Go!”

  Yanna whirled and headed for the stairs, her feet thundering as she ran down. David took the steps two at a time, then pushed her toward the front door, grabbing her up before she could run out onto the lawn.

  And good thing, too, because whoever he was must have anticipated their rapid exit.

  David yanked Yanna back just as a form launched at her. David caught a dark flash of light right before the assailant took him down onto the tile floor.

  “He nearly killed you!” Yanna snapped as David pulled her by the shirtsleeve away from the heavy drama and mess inside the so-called safe house. Her mind reeled, sorting through what had just happened.

  “But he didn’t, so move!”

  But she couldn’t, caught in the moment they’d nearly been ambushed by a knife-wielding bad guy who would have stabbed right in the center of her chest had it not been for David’s quick thinking.

  Instead, David had taken the hit, or nearly taken the hit, because with all that Black Ops, or whatever training he had that made him faster than a speeding bullet, he dodged, and managed to land on top of said bad guy.

  Who, sadly and inconveniently, also landed on his own blade. David had given him about ten seconds of sketchy medical intervention before he jumped to his feet, turned and pulled Yanna out the door behind him.

  She noticed that he had confiscated the knife.

  “Through the gate. C’mon!” David opened the gate, pulled her through and yanked open the garage door. Climbing onto the seat, he pulled the scooter upright and started the motor.

  He backed it out. “Get on.”

  Get on? Her brain seemed to be stuck in slow motion, but thankfully her body still responded to commands. She leaped on behind him, and it was a good thing she had a decent hold because he gunned it without her even seated.

  Apparently, Mr. Cool was a little freaked out, too.

  She hunkered down, her arms around his waist, feeling the beat of his heart against her chest. Yes, definitely rattled.

  They sped through the streets, cutting through alleys, down obscure streets, David barely slacking his speed as they took corners. He finally braked in the shadow of a Buddhist shrine.

  He cut the motor, then just sat there, breathing. In, out, in, out.

  She felt his hand grip her arm. Then he pulled her off the bike and around to face him.

  The light from the still-flickering candles inside the shrine illuminated his face. “You okay?” His voice sounded rough, as if just barely holding back emotions. And truly, his eyes said it, too, that their close call had shaken him. It was moments like this, when she saw a chink in his cool exterior, when all those carefully guarded emotions simmered right below that layer, that she realized how much she loved him. Loved him for his passion and his control, for the good that seemed so much a part of him. Loved him for his strength and his friendship, and even loved him because he couldn’t seem to let her go. It took her breath away.

  It didn’t help in the least that the past two hours had almost felt like a date. Had she really raced through the streets of Taichung, with her arms wrapped around David, leaning against his strong back, feeling for the first time in days, no, probably years, safe?

  With his scruffy beard and his long hair, he appeared downright dangerous, rough and anything but safe. But the way he looked at her, concern in his blue eyes, she knew without a moment’s doubt that he would have given his life for her.

  Then why didn’t he love her? At least the way she loved him?

  She reached out to touch him, and he grabbed her hand. “You’re okay?”

  She nodded. “You scared me.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” His words came out clipped. “I’m starting to see a connection to my activities and Kwan’s ability to ambush me.”

  “How do you think he found us?”

  “I think I’ve been trusting the wrong person.” He rubbed his forehead with his hand. “I think I found the so-called CIA mole, and his name is Bruce. Or rather, I knew it and tonight just confirms it.” He gave her a look that seemed connected to whatever scenario played in his head. “We need to get someplace safe.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  He pulled her close, arm around her neck, more of a relief hug than anything. And she put her arms around him. “I’m sorry, David. Really sorry.”

  His embrace tightened. “That’s enough of that,” he said. “It’s not your fault—”

  “No,” she said, pulling away. “I’m sorry that I didn’t trust you. That I took off. That I didn’t listen to you.”

  He touched her cheek, ran his thumb along her chin. His eyes fixed on hers, and her breath clogged in her chest. She traced his face, and remembered, oh, how she remembered, what it felt like to be in his arms, kissing him with everything she felt inside. Probably she betrayed that memory in her captured breath. And maybe even he was there, too, in the past, because he swallowed and his jaw tightened. “I forgive you, Yanna. After all, what are friends for.”

  He let her go. “Get on. I’m going to call Roman.”

  She tried not to show her disappointment as she climbed on behind him. For a wild second, she’d hoped that maybe the concern in his eyes was more than simply concern. That he still loved her like he had years ago.

  But maybe he hadn’t really loved her then, either. Distracting, he’d called her.

  As in, distracting him from what he really should be doing—saving the world.

  In fact, it was worse than that. Regardless of what language was spoken, “friends,” meant “just friends.”

  “Here’s hoping my new phone has an international calling plan.” He dialed Roman’s number and she wondered at how he had it committed to memory. How many times did he call Roman, really? Because, and she shouldn’t forget, Roman was David’s friend, too.

  “You’re not going to believe where I am,” David said into the phone. “Or who I have with me.”

  Yanna sighed, closed her eyes.

  “You’re kidding,” David said with a laugh that Yanna couldn’t interpret. “Then I guess I don’t have to kill you. Now, tell me you have someplace safe for Yanna and me to hide.”

  “Apparently, one of us is a righteous man, because our prayers have been heard and answered, my friend,” Roman said, snapping the phone shut. “You’ll never guess who that was.”

  Vicktor stood away from where he’d been holding up the wall in the passport-control office, showing Elena and Yanna’s pictures to various control agents. So far, they’d had no hits, but with the traffic that came through in a twenty-four-hour period, no surprise there. They did confirm, however, that both Elena and “Olga” had entered Taiwan.

  And vanished, of course.

  Until…now?
“I’m tired, Roman. Too tired for games.” Vicktor desperately wanted to talk to Gracie. He kept looking at the clock, wanting to wait until at least six in the morning before he woke her. But everything inside screamed to call her now, just to hear her voice.

  Just to tell her that he loved her, too. And that he’d back off. But calling at four in the morning certainly would communicate “giving you space” loud and clear, wouldn’t it?

  He hated time zones and distance and even, at the moment, his cell phone.

  “That was David,” Roman said.

  “You’re kidding me.”

  Roman stood and turned his attention to the director of passport control, who’d had an eagle eye on them for the past two hours. “We found her,” he said, reaching out his hand. “Thank you.”

  “We found her?” Vicktor eyed Roman who shot him a smile. He followed Roman out of the office. “We found her?”

  Roman headed into the lobby. “I gotta make a few calls.”

  Vicktor grabbed him up by the jacket. “You’re going to have to fill in the blanks for me, Roma.”

  Roman dialed, held the phone up to his ear. “I don’t know how David got into all of this, but he has Yanna. And needs a safe spot to stay while he—Zdrasvootya, it’s Roman. Can I talk to Pastor Yee?”

  Vicktor moved away while Roman waited, lifting his own cell out of his pocket. He plugged in Gracie’s speed-dial number, waited. Then, couldn’t stand it and pressed Send.

  The phone took an eternity to connect. Vicktor closed his eyes, imagining Gracie turning on her bedside light, groping for the phone. Maybe hitting it and it falling onto the floor. He smiled at the image of the woman he loved all tousle haired and sleepy eyed—he couldn’t wait until they were married and he woke up every day to that. The phone rang once and clicked over to voice mail. Vicktor hung up, then pressed redial. Maybe she was on the other line.

  Voice mail, again. Vicktor shot a look at Roman. He was off the phone. No, redialing. Roman looked at him, grinned, as if amused.

  Vicktor didn’t see the humor. Roman’s girlfriend lived in Russia, where he could see her every day. It was true that Vicktor did let his everyday life spill out into his worst nightmares. It was hardly likely that Gracie, safe, conservative Gracie was going to get into trouble of the sort he saw every day. Maybe, occasionally, she’d lock her keys in her car, but the girl he knew and loved didn’t go looking for trouble.