He didn’t answer her question, just held out his hand. “We need to find Neve.”
DESPITE TASHYA’S SPATE of tears or maybe because of them, her mind seemed sharper than usual. She fully realized that Hunter hadn’t responded to her question about his sexual needs. Sometimes he could be uncommunicative. But then she recalled how he’d held her so gently, rocking her in his arms while she’d sobbed, and she realized there were hidden depths to the man that strangers would never see.
During the days and nights they’d spent together, he’d rarely spoken about himself. She knew nothing about his life, his family, or his work, but she suspected that he must work for one of the U.S. intelligence agencies. Of course, he could be a mercenary for hire—but his code of honor seemed too strict for that. He’d shared so little of himself, and yet she felt she knew the important things about him. He was dedicated to his mission and capable of intense, single-minded effort, capable of putting his life on the line for her or for children he barely knew. He believed everything must be done “right” and his strong moral code wouldn’t allow him to deviate from his chosen path. She didn’t know what that path was, but it probably shut out all possibility of any meaningful future together.
Tashya certainly hadn’t burst into tears on purpose, yet she didn’t regret her moments of weakness—not when her lapse had brought her back into Hunter’s arms. Physically, he’d wanted her. His body had told her so, and she was pleased. She just wished he hadn’t had the strength to pull away.
She needed some of that strength, needed to believe they would find her little brothers alive and unhurt. Needed his strength to believe the threats to her family would end.
Of course, now was neither the time nor the place for a dalliance. Although Neve was not around to interrupt their privacy, once again Tashya had to put her own wishes on hold. Going out to a pub with friends, then strolling through a park—just a simple date where a couple could exchange information about themselves—had never been an option for her. And maybe it never would be.
However, despite Hunter’s reluctance to make love, she was determined to learn whether he had real feelings for her. She knew her thoughts always centered around him. Half conscious from the bomb’s blast, her first concern upon opening her eyes had been for his and the children’s safety.
He’d repacked his duffel, dusted off her backpack and offered it to her. She stood and slung one strap over her shoulder, prepared to follow wherever he led, whether it be back to examine the site of the explosion, to their car, or further into the woods to look for Neve.
“We need to break the cycle,” Hunter told her.
She frowned. “What cycle?”
“The kidnapper phones us and we come running—right into a trap. First the phone booth at the National Museum, then the cabin. We have to be smarter.”
“Okay. What do you think we should do?”
He circled the area, obviously looking for signs of Neve while he spoke. “We have several options. We could go public with the boys’s kidnapping and offer a reward leading to their safe return.”
“I don’t think the kidnapper is after money.”
“Neither do I. However, I believe the men in military uniforms who have your brothers are merely taking orders. They may not even realize they’re doing something wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“Suppose they’re honest soldiers who have been told by their superior to protect the boys from a terrorist attack?”
“You think they’d realize they’d been duped and come forward for a reward?”
“It’s possible. We could inform the press, radio, television, newspapers. Millions of your citizens would be encouraged to report suspicious activity.”
“But?”
“The danger is that the kidnapper might panic and…”
“Kill them to avoid being caught?” She asked the question, knowing the awful possibility had to be considered.
“I’ve also considered bringing in more help from the States.”
“I’m slowing you down, aren’t I?”
“With more help, we could have a crack team of investigators monitoring the phone lines, mail, running down leads. But the more people we bring in, the higher the probability of leaks.”
She sighed in frustration. “Which will put the boys in even more danger.”
“Exactly.” He paused and looked over his shoulder. “You’re rather good at considering all the angles.”
She grimaced. “Life at court is always full of intrigue. It’s just usually not so dangerous. How long have you been working…for whoever it is that you work for?”
“Sorry, that’s classified.”
She tried again. “So tell me why you got into this line of work.”
“It’s—”
“Classified.” She finished for him. “Isn’t there anything you can tell me about yourself?”
He remained silent for so long she didn’t think he was going to say anything. Finally he asked her, “Does it matter if I’m from Alabama or California? If I’m an orphan or if I have a family? Why do you want to know?”
“It’ll take my mind off the itchy mosquito bites,” she muttered sarcastically.
“I have anti-itching lotion in my duffel.”
He wasn’t going to tell her one damn thing about himself. Irritated, hot, sweaty and tired from walking in the noonday sun, she kicked a root in frustration. “You seem to have brought along every necessity in the world. Who taught you to pack?”
She looked up and saw his shoulders twitch with the beginnings of laughter. “Don’t tell me, it’s classified information.”
“Sorry.”
He did sound sympathetic, but that only incensed her all the more. He wouldn’t share anything about his life with her, and he wouldn’t share his body with her, either. She’d never met such a stubborn man, and her frustration boiled over.
“Tell me one thing.”
“If I can.”
“Do you have any condoms in that pack?”
He halted, turned around and crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes, I do. But we aren’t going to use them.”
“Of course we aren’t. I wouldn’t dream of stopping in the middle of the woods, taking off my clothes and making love to a man who can’t tell me one thing about himself without violating some…some…”
“Code of ethics?”
“Code of stupidity.” She placed her fists on her hips and shot him her best dagger-like glare. “You deserve more than living your life among strangers, risking yourself for people who know nothing about you.”
He cocked one supercilious eyebrow. “So you don’t want me to try to rescue your brothers?”
“I didn’t say that.” She would have stomped her foot in a temper tantrum if she hadn’t realized how silly she’d look.
“What are you saying?”
She smiled at him then, realizing she had been going about this all wrong. Butting heads with such hardheadedness would only give her a headache. So she smiled and bit her bottom lip and watched his eyes focus on her mouth. “I’m saying nothing. Absolutely nothing. The concussion must have rattled my brain. Don’t worry about it. I have absolutely no idea what I’m saying.”
“Fine.” He nodded slowly, but she could see confusion in his expression.
Good. He needn’t have everything his way. She was going to give him a little of his own medicine. She knew how to play the silent game. Except she intended to add a few twists, diplomatic twists.
But her plan would have to wait until after the boys were found. She intended to ask Nicholas to make a political request to the Americans to order Hunter to remain in Vashmira until they settled what was between them. She wouldn’t have him going off on another mission with so much between them left unsaid and unfinished.
“It looks as if Neve headed back to the car,” Hunter told her.
“You think she ran after the explosion and she’s waiting for us to return?” Tashya asked.<
br />
Hunter held a branch away from her face. “Or she did her job leading us to the cabin and rejoined the kidnappers.”
“You don’t have much faith in humanity.”
“That’s how I stay alive.”
“But is this how you always want to live?” she asked, curious. If he couldn’t tell her about his past, he could certainly tell her about his hopes for the future.
“After my mission here, I’ve been promised a dream assignment. It’s what I’ve always wanted.”
He hadn’t given her one detail, but he’d just confirmed her worst suspicions. Unless she could change his mind, he fully intended to move on and leave her behind.
“What happens after your next mission? Don’t you ever want a wife and kids?”
“Shh.”
He waved her to duck and continued forward. A bullet thudded into the tree close to where her head had just been. Dropping into a crouch behind some bushes, she crawled behind a huge tree.
She realized they’d made it back to the barn and the car. Had he spotted Neve? Who had fired at her?
Tashya peeked from behind the tree to see Hunter leaning over a woman’s body. A young woman with long dark hair.
Tashya’s stomach clenched into a savage knot. “Neve?”
Chapter Twelve
“She’s dead.” Hunter removed his fingers from Neve’s neck where he’d been searching for a pulse. Gently he closed the nanny’s eyelids. “Stay where you are,” he ordered Tashya, then dashed to the car, started it and drove straight to her, placing the vehicle between Tashya and the shooter.
Hunter slammed on the brake, shoved open the door, and Tashya dived onto the front seat, slamming the door behind her. Bullets pinged off the car, but Hunter just kept driving. Finally, he tapped her shoulder. “It’s safe to sit up now.”
He turned to Tashya, concern for her feelings evident. He reached over and put an arm around her shoulder, lending her strength. “We’ll call the local police, and they can have the authorities perform an autopsy.”
Hunter’s voice sounded methodical and cool, almost as if he’d expected to find the nanny dead, but his hand on her shoulder was warm, supportive. And, before he’d dashed to the car, he’d flung his jacket over Neve’s body, showing a respect and care that had made Tashya’s heart ache.
Tashya hadn’t known the nanny well enough to call her a friend. Like so many people in the palace, Neve had done her job and then gone home to her own life at night. She had truly seemed to love the boys, and they her, making it difficult for Tashya to believe the young woman would have betrayed them.
Even if Neve had been disloyal, she’d been too young to die, barely out of her teenage years. She would never know what it was like to marry and have children of her own. She wouldn’t be there to help her mother with a difficult recovery when she came home from the hospital. Nikita and Dimitri would miss her terribly.
Tashya didn’t have any tears left. But sadness invaded her bones, settled in her heart and sapped her strength. Hunter didn’t seem to have that problem. He drove fast and hard.
“How did Neve die?” Tashya asked.
“From the greenish-blue tinge of her lips, I’m guessing the medical examiner will find a needle mark in the base of her skull and that she died of a poison injection.”
Uneasy with the creepy shadows from the trees and the possibility of the killer following, Tashya peered into the forest around them, but saw nothing to indicate that they weren’t alone. Still, the bushes in the area were dense and could have hidden a dozen murderers, so could the huge tree trunks.
Hunter spoke with authority. “We have to go on. There’s nothing more we could have done for Neve. We have to find the boys.”
Weary, sad and full of pain at the loss of a young woman’s life, Tashya felt restless in the passenger’s seat. While Hunter phoned the local authorities, she went over the events of the last couple of hours—the explosion, the phone call from the kidnapper, Neve’s death—but she couldn’t make sense of it all.
Hunter drove away from the barn and back down the dirt road. Clouds of dirt rose around them, choking out the sunlight, turning daylight into a ugly dust cloud that encapsulated the car until it reached the paved road leading back to town.
“You think the kidnapper sent someone to murder Neve after she led us to the hut, don’t you?” Tashya asked Hunter.
“Yes.”
“But since she cooperated and did as they instructed, why did they plan to kill her?”
“Dead people don’t talk. I suspect Neve worked for them, but they didn’t ever really trust her.”
Hunter knew too much about the lack of trust. When Tashya had asked, he hadn’t been willing to share one thing about his past with her. In the world he lived in, he was simply protecting himself, but he was also keeping himself at a distance that seemed to grow wider with every mile that passed.
And he unilaterally made decisions, too often not bothering even to explain why. However, she didn’t have to let him get away with keeping so many secrets.
Hunter had plugged his cell phone into the recharger the moment he’d started the engine. The tracer sat between the seats almost mocking them since the kidnapper never stayed on the line long enough for the device to pinpoint his location.
She wished staring at the phone would make it ring. The waiting was horrible. She wanted the boys back safe with their mother. She wanted a bath. Tromping through the woods, sweating and rolling in the dust made her feel as if she might never be clean again.
“What are you thinking?” Hunter asked.
“About a bath. A Turkish bath in steamy water. Soaking until the skin on my fingers and toes ripples.” She laid her head wearily against the seat. “My father restored the bathhouse at the palace and another at our beach house. He once told me that—”
The cell phone rang. Since Hunter had already connected the tracer, he put the phone on speaker and answered on the first ring.
“Hello?”
A child’s voice spoke softly, “Who is this?”
“Dimitri?” Tashya’s adrenaline surged at the sound of her little brother’s voice.
“Tashya?”
“It’s me, sweetie.”
“I wanted to call my mother, but I hit the wrong button.”
“Dimitri, don’t hang up.” Hunter pulled over to the shoulder of the road but kept the car running. “You must have hit the redial button. Can you tell us where you are?”
“In the palace. The old—”
The line went dead.
Tashya’s heart battered her ribs. “Oh, God, we lost him. Can we call him back?”
“The tracer doesn’t have the full number. However, the first three digits match the palace area.” Hunter pulled back onto the road and stepped on the gas. “Don’t get your hopes up too high.”
Was he crazy? Dimitri had just told him where he was. “What are you talking about?”
“The kidnapper might have told him to call us and what to say.”
Anger flared in her that the kidnapper would use a child, possibly threaten Dimitri. She had to restrain her impulse to raise her voice. “Must you be such a pessimist? Dimitri has always been good at sneaking away from supervision. There’s no reason not to think he succeeded again.”
“You have a point. Besides, I’ve always thought the kidnapper was headquartered at the palace.”
“Because when Sophia called us, her call was traced from her end?”
“Actually there are several reasons. No one saw the kids leave the palace. That’s why I asked the guards to search before we left.”
“They would have only searched the renovated section. Why else do you think the boys might be there?”
“When I demanded that the kidnapper let me speak to Dimitri to prove he was alive, I heard several clicks before the final connection. I could be wrong, but the clicks sounded like an extension inside one building rather than from one location to another.”
“Yo
u can tell all that from a phone’s click?”
He nodded.
“So there’s a chance that the boys really are at the palace?” Tashya turned and stared at Hunter.
“It makes sense. To avoid detection, it would be easier to move them from one part of the palace to another than to sneak them out.”
“But Neve said the boys were in the hut with her.” Tashya sighed in frustration. “She lied?”
“Probably. But we had to play it out as if she was telling the truth.”
“All this time that we’ve been running around in circles, the boys were at the palace?”
“The possibility first crossed my mind again when I saw that the video camera had been looped and that no one had seen the boys being carried out, but I’ve never been sure. I’m still not sure.”
“Then why didn’t you ask Nicholas to search again? Because the phones are tapped?” She answered her own question.
“Didn’t you tell me that only part of the palace has been renovated?”
“They must be in the old section. I think that was what Dimitri was trying to tell us before he was cut off.”
“You mean inside the old walls but not in the renovated palace?”
“There are hundreds of ruined buildings behind the restored palace. Archaeologists from the university are always asking for permission to excavate.”
“Look, it’s possible Dimitri turned off the phone before the kidnapper caught him. But it’s just as likely that the kidnapper knows he called us. They might move the boys again. But I suspect they’ll wait until dark. We can be there in less than two hours.”
Filled with hope, the weariness slipped away. “You could hide an entire regiment in the old palace and no one would know. The crusaders built the palace inside walls with gates that closed and that could protect an entire city from attack. But in modern times, we’ve had no need for so much space, never mind the expense of bringing in electrical wiring, plumbing and heating.”
“Does Alex have any interest in archeology?”
“I’m afraid not. Why?”
Royal Ransom Page 15
