Wiser Than Serpents

by Susan May Warren

  Every cell in David’s body recoiled. But he swallowed, met Kwan’s gaze. “I want Yanna.”

  “And I want answers.”

  David frowned. “Okay, the Red Sox finally won the World Series, the Democrats took over Congress, the price of oil has dropped this quarter, and you’re a dead man.”

  Kwan shook his head, smiling. “I find you intriguing, Mr. Ripley.”

  “I think you’re about as interesting as toe slime. So, why don’t you get to the point, Kwan?”

  Kwan backed away, nodded.

  And now came the pain, another swift explosion, this time to his kidneys. David groaned, despite himself, and tried not to fall over. He fought to catch his breath, breathing now through gritted teeth. He looked up at Kwan, blinking back stars.

  “You’re a fool, David Curtiss.”

  David blinked at his use of his name.

  “Major David Curtiss. Special Ops, I think?”

  David stared at him, hating Bruce with everything inside him.

  “Because what you don’t know,” he smiled, “is that I’m not Kwan.”

  David had known Kwan wasn’t really Kwan. Just known it. How desperate did it make him that he wanted to pump his fist into the air and say, I knew it! “Oh?”

  “And my boss, he’s a nervous man. He wasn’t real happy that you got away.”

  “What a shame. ’Cause I was thrilled.”

  “Yes, I told him that you were a flea, that it didn’t matter, but he’s a demanding man. And he doesn’t trust anyone.”

  “Don’t see why not. You’re such a prize.” David’s words came out more like a grunt.

  Kwan smiled, the scar from his jaw to ear stretching up his face. “He wanted me to kill you. But I knew you’d be helpful, although stupid. You did know I would be watching the teahouse, didn’t you?”

  David said nothing.

  “I just wanted to confirm that you were working with Agent Andrevka. And then, when she joined my party…” Kwan actually pushed his tongue between his lips. “Yum. I can see why you want her to yourself.”

  David mentally had his hands around Kwan’s throat, squeezing.

  “Believe me, she’ll forget about you sooner than you think.” He stood. “Unless, of course, you tell me what I want to know.”

  David swept from his mind every image that Kwan had tried to conjure. “I’m not telling you anything.”

  Kwan drummed his fingers on his arms. “I disagree.” He took a step back and David expected another nod, another kick to his kidneys. But Kwan only smiled.

  A sharklike, nasty smile. David had the urge to head-butt him right in the teeth.

  Kwan ran his hand over his chin, and David noticed again his ring, the one with the ruby stones set as snake’s eyes. “You might have guessed that I’m not the only one my boss is grooming for the job when he retires. Unfortunately, Kwan likes to keep us guessing.”

  “What, you have a pension plan, a retirement community that Kwan fades off to while you helm the ship?” But behind his words, David’s mind whirred. Kwan wanted to know who might come looking for him, should he take out his boss.

  Suddenly this all made sense. Why Kwan hadn’t just taken David out with a head shot, or hidden in a back alley. He wanted David face-to-face so he could get an inside glimpse at the bigger picture. Apparently, the good guys weren’t the only ones who were struggling to pin down the identity of the Twin Serpents.

  “You want to take out the competition.”

  Kwan smiled. Shrugged. “Who is the other man?”

  “I have no idea.” However, despite the tone and texture of his words—something that every good interrogator would know screamed truth—Kwan didn’t believe him. He gave another lethal nod.

  And this time, David found himself cheek first in the grime. Please, don’t let that be old blood, because he’d now ground it into his skin, right next to his bleeding nose. HIV, TB, the list started to form in his head.

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he said, fighting a groan. And he could say that because he actually didn’t know. David knew that the Serpent’s organization stretched from one side of the globe to the other, but he certainly didn’t think they had conventions or a company newsletter. If David ran the Twin Serpents, he wouldn’t tell one hand what the other might be doing, either.

  Because it kept them all scared.

  Obedient.

  Only, bad news for Kwan-who-was-not, because even if David did know anything about the other Serpents, or Serpents-in-training under investigation, Kwan wouldn’t have to waste his time trying to dig it out of him. If one terrorist took out another, the score was still down one, right?

  And, if said terrorist then took out the current Big Kahuna, then wouldn’t that make David’s—perhaps, not David’s because he didn’t expect to live longer than the next hour, but someone in his line of duty—job a thousand times easier? At least they’d know who to watch.

  So he looked up at Kwan, and gave a sort of wicked smile.

  “Here’s the thing. I might know what you’re after. But you forget—just like you guessed, I’m a highly trained soldier, conditioned to withstand anything you do to me. I don’t care what it is.”

  “Even killing your girlfriend?”

  David didn’t even flinch, expecting that. But inside, everything tightened into a fist. Somehow he kept his voice from quivering. “Especially if you kill her. I know that if I tell you now, I don’t have a prayer of her getting out alive. But—” he wrestled himself back to a kneeling position “—if you let her go, right now, I will tell you. Everything you want to know.”

  He’d made an impact. Kwan stared at him, eyes sharp. “I won’t let you go, you know. You’re a dead man.”

  David didn’t move a muscle, didn’t blink. “I know.”

  Kwan looked up at the man behind David and nodded.

  “They took away my passport as soon as I got to Taiwan. And then they brought me to the teahouse and put me in that room.”

  Elena had talked all through Yanna’s experiment, maybe to cover her nervousness, maybe because she was so glad to see her that she couldn’t stop. Or maybe because she feared losing her, and never telling her what had happened.

  Yanna let her talk, relishing her sister’s voice.

  “What happened to Katya?” Yanna asked, wanting to know how Elena’s friend had ended up in a Korean morgue, thankful that Elena hadn’t joined her.

  Elena curled her arms around her skinny waist. “She fought them. She didn’t eat supper. I figured out later that some sort of drug was in my dinner, but Katya stayed back in the room, and I don’t think they expected her to put up such a fight. When they came into our room, she freaked out, and one of them slammed her against the wall so hard it knocked her out. I never saw her after that.”

  Yanna looked up at Elena. Then she didn’t know…

  “Why?” Elena asked. “Did you find her?”

  Yanna sighed, held up her contraption. “I hope this works.” The battery to her nifty GPS had shorted out, but thankfully one of the girls still had her watch. She’d pried the diamond off her earring backing, and lifted out the destroyed battery. She blew on the inside gadgetry, just to make sure that it had dried out from its bath in the ocean. Then, she disconnected the battery from the watch.

  She’d come up empty on the gum, but when she got creative with her requests, found a girl with a bobby pin. A little rubbing against the cement, and she removed the lacquer, the plastic, and broke the bobby pin in half, creating two pieces. She put the battery sideways between them, then touched it to the contacts inside her earring.

  Then, she’d plucked two long strands of hair, winding them round and round the end with the battery, until it had been secured in place. She repeated with the other side.

  “What are you doing—”

  She looked up, and gave the voice in the darkness a look that said, in any language, Zip it.

  While everyone watched, she climbed up
on the wooden bunks and set the transmitter on the window. She pushed the backing into the works to activate the panic button, climbed back down and stared at it.

  She had no way of knowing whether it might be working, well, except expertise, and hope.

  Lots of hope.

  Please. And this time, she knew exactly who she might be talking to.

  Please, God. If You are listening, if You care…help.

  That’s as far as she got, because the door lock slammed back. Yanna turned and grabbed Elena, sitting them down on the bed. “Not a word,” she whispered. “Not…one…word.”

  She didn’t have to worry. Elena drew up her knees and scooted back on the bunk, way back.

  Which was what Yanna should have done, because the man who entered flashed his mag light across the room, at the haggard, terrified faces of the girls, one by one, working his way down, searching.

  Until he came to Yanna. He grabbed her by the arm, and yanked her to her feet.

  “Yanna!”

  Yanna turned and shot her sister a look that should have stopped her cold. But Elena apparently didn’t care anymore, or maybe she knew something Yanna didn’t, because she threw herself at Yanna, holding on with a grip that the man couldn’t break. Even when he slapped her. Elena screamed but didn’t release her death hold.

  Yanna stepped in the second time, cutting off his slap with a self-defense block. “Nyet.” She put her arms around Elena. “We go together.”

  The man stared for a moment, debate in his eyes. Yanna stared him back without flinching. She wasn’t leaving her sister, not again.

  He pulled her out of the room, and Yanna grabbed Elena’s hand and dragged her along. Yanna didn’t know if she should be leaping for joy or calling herself a fool. Especially as the door closed behind them, locking her nifty GPS unit, working or not, behind them.

  Please…

  She followed Kwan’s man down the hall—hard not to since he still had her by the arm. As if she might make a break for it…okay, maybe.

  He stopped before another metal door, opened it.

  And there, kneeling on the floor, looking battered and beautiful and as if he’d done everything that she’d feared—David.

  His eyes lit up when she walked in, just for a second, like maybe he knew something she didn’t. And the smallest of smiles touched his lips.

  It was the smile that hurt the most. Because she knew, oh, she knew, just what he’d done for her.

  “Oh, no…David.” She let Elena go and ran to him, putting her arms around him, holding him, burying her face into his shoulder. “Oh, David, what did you do? What did you do?”

  The door closed behind them.

  “Listen to me,” David’s voice whispered into her ear, soft and urgent, and it just about broke her heart. “Kwan’s going to let you go. And I’m going to buy you time. They want to know who the other Serpent is, and you know how that’s going to turn out. But you gotta run, and I mean run. Don’t wait for Roman. Just get to Taipei, and get out of the country and then I want you to disappear. I’m not kidding you, Yanna. I want you to bury yourself so deep in Siberia no one ever finds you.”

  What? He expected her to leave here without him? “I’m not leaving you here!”

  “Don’t be stupid.” He pulled away from her. “You are leaving here with your sister.”

  He looked as if he’d been fighting his emotions, and his face twitched, even now, as if to hold them back. She touched his handsome face, ran her hand down it, over the bruises, the whiskers, and everything inside her broke. “What have you done?” she whispered.

  Now, tears did glisten in his eyes, and one dripped down, onto his cheek. And she lost it. Really lost it. “I can’t let you do this.”

  “You can and you will. Honestly, Yanna, if you care anything about me, you’ll take this window of freedom and run. You’ll get out of here. Because I can’t watch them hurt you, and they will. I promise you, they will. And they’ll do it slowly, in front of me, just to tear me apart. Please, go.”

  He looked away. “I’m so sorry, Yanna. I totally screwed up. Here I was thinking I was going to be some sort of big shot, save you and find your sister, and prove to you once and for all that men weren’t the way you saw them. That you got a raw deal when you were a kid, and I hated that so much, but I couldn’t go back in time and kill the jerks who did that to you, so I thought if I could just prove to you that…that men could be counted on, that maybe I could be counted on, then…” He swallowed and closed his eyes and another tear ran down his face, and he was shaking.

  It made her shake. Only not from fear, or even cold, but at the desperation of his concern and care.

  “Then…what? If you could prove it to me…then what?”

  He opened his eyes and gave her the saddest, most pained look, as if the words hurt, even more than what Kwan had done to him. “Then maybe you’d believe, deep inside, that God could be counted on, too. That He cared. That He loved you. A thousand times more…”

  She held her breath.

  “Than me.”

  Than him? Everything inside her went still. But only for a second because then she was really crying. Loudly.

  Because, she did see. Everything. All the truth David had been trying to tell her for years.

  She looked at David, his incredible eyes, the way he put everything he was into what he did. She felt the truth burrow deep, right down to the middle of her soul.

  Maybe God did love her.

  Because He’d given her David Curtiss. A man who would believe in her. Run after her.

  Love her.

  “David, don’t give up on me. I do want to believe. And not because you’re a superhero and willing to do this, but because…because I want to believe in a God who would give me a man like you. You make me believe that God loves me.”

  He stared up at her, closed his mouth, swallowed. Then gritted his teeth because his eyes filled. “I wanted this to be different.”

  Yeah, her, too. She looked up, wiping her face. “I’m sorry. I just…”

  “I know you needed it to be different. That you wanted a happy ending, for all of us, but—” He closed his mouth, stared at her. “You gotta go. Please. Before Kwan changes his mind and decides to hurt you. Because I couldn’t live with that.”

  His words hung there between them, ugly and raw, and she shook her head, because, no, he wasn’t going to live, not at all.

  Oh, David. And then, because she had to, because she was going to leave him, but when she did everything inside her would shatter, and then there’d be nothing left, she took his face in her hands and kissed him.

  Really kissed him. With everything inside her, just like she had ten years ago, but differently, because this wasn’t about youth and passion.

  This was about her telling him that she wasn’t going to let him die without knowing that she loved him right back. She leaned away, putting everything, all her emotions, all her love right there, in her eyes for him to see. “Thank you, David.”

  He stared up at her, a broken look on his face. “Yanna—”

  She didn’t let him finish, just kissed him again. And although his arms were behind him, he leaned into the kiss and gave it all he had. And he didn’t pull away, either, not once, just kept kissing her, over and over until hands grabbed her arms, pulled her away.

  “No!”

  Kwan shoved her away, toward the door, where Elena caught her. “No!”

  David was breathing hard, his eyes on her as they pulled her out of the room and shut the door behind her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I f Kwan wasn’t going to keep his promise, David wouldn’t, either. He crouched on the floor, breathing hard, his heart beating its way out of his chest, and tried to steel himself for what might lie ahead.

  He’d heard what Kwan said when he closed the door, heard it in Mandarin, loud and clear, like a blade separating his ribs and taking out his heart. “Take them to the yacht. We’ll kill them when we get ou
t to sea.”

  David closed his eyes, tried to focus on his breathing. This wasn’t over. Not until Yanna was free. He just had to hold out until he knew Yanna was safe.

  Only, exactly, how would he know that, because he guessed that might get technically challenging with him locked in the basement, bleeding from his ears.

  Oh, Lord.

  Everything, everything, he’d done had failed. Finding the real Kwan, rescuing Elena, getting Yanna to safety. Even trying to show Yanna that she could trust in God to deliver them. Yeah, that had been a resounding success.

  Help me, Lord. Help me hold on to my faith. Because kneeling in the puddle of grime, his head pounding, knowing that as soon as Kwan returned things would get ugly, he felt himself slipping. Fast.

  Help me, Lord.

  Who do you have in heaven? Roman’s words rushed back at him and David grabbed them for all he had, gulping them in. There is nothing I desire on this earth but the Lord. He will guide me and then bring me to glory. The words from the psalm riveted into his head.

  Do you trust God, David?

  David leaned forward, head bowed. He’d grown up, his faith embedded in him, believing that God loved him, had a purpose for him. It had become the fabric of his life, the very substance that formed him.

  He heard the dripping of some far-off water pipe onto the concrete. Feet scuffling outside. Doors slamming. Heard a woman’s cry.

  He clenched his jaw.

  God, I want to trust You. I do. I…trust…You.

  And just like that, he felt it, a breath or wind or maybe a touch so powerful it swept through him, through his breathing, into his heart, his bones, his cells. He drank it in, gulping whole this feeling of strength. Of wholeness.

  He lifted his head. Breathed out long and hard. Stared at the door.

  He could do this. He could, and would stay the course. And when he died, he’d know that he’d accomplished his mission.

  Because, while he might do just about anything for his country, he would die for Yanna. And she, without a doubt, had been the mission. Kwan and his ilk would always prosper or seem to, and people like David, believers in truth, would always fight them. But they didn’t fight only an earthly battle against evil. They waged a cosmic one, for lost souls. And if David could pour out his life helping one woman—the woman—to see that God loved her, by being the face of grace to her, then…yes, this was why he’d come to Taiwan.