by Janzen, Tara
“And I speak the truth. There is a difference.”
Lois stared at him for a long moment, like a mother looking at a recalcitrant child she couldn’t control. Then she began shoving folders, papers, maps, folios, and everything else into her briefcase. “When you reconcile the two, give me a call. I’m the one footing the bill. Thomas, let’s get this stuff into that rented tuna boat you call a Cadillac.”
Kristine saw them out after all the boxes were loaded, but she didn’t wait around to see who won the argument on how to conserve archaeological sites. She was angry and trying not to be hurt. People fell in and out of bed all over the place, she knew. She also knew, if given the chance, she’d fall in bed with him all over again. She had to be nuts.
She needed to think everything through, find a bit of contemporary panache to put sex in the right perspective. She would still have her published credit, but the university had promised her that, not Kit. She’d still have a ton of information on the Kāh-gyur itself, but that wasn’t what he’d promised her. He’d pledged a legend, Chatren-Ma, and that was what she wanted. She wasn’t a scientist; she was a historian. She dealt in spans of time and spreads of men and culture. She needed the authentication of the artifacts to confirm the ideas behind them. She needed the location of Chatren-Ma to prove it existed.
And damn it all, she needed him. No amount of panache could change what she felt. No amount of confusion could smother the hurt.
Nine
She’d talk to him, Kristine decided. That was what she’d do. She’d talk to him and explain how she felt.
No, she wouldn’t. Only a fool would expose herself.
She threw another handful of party trash into her garbage bag and bent down to pick a napkin up off the floor. If he loved her, if he was everything he’d led her to believe, he wouldn’t have disappeared into the garage after Shepard and Stein had left. He would have read her mind and come back inside, come back to her with reassurances on his lips and comfort in his touch.
She’d be cool. That’s what she’d be. Cool, calm, and collected. Mature. Sophisticated.
She knelt down to retrieve a cashew from under the coffee table. She’d be so cool, he’d need a polar jacket to keep his blood above freezing.
No, she wouldn’t. Too much cool was overkill, a dead giveaway, even supposing she could pull it off. She’d be reasonable, she told herself, scooting farther under the table after a cracker crumb. Reasonableness would drive him crazy.
No, it wouldn’t. She sighed. Nothing could drive him crazy. The man had serenity down to a fine art, and she was a mass of doubts and conflicting emotions without an ounce of serenity in sight.
But he hadn’t been serene when he made love with her. He’d been warm and wild, as hungry as she for the pleasure they’d created. Of course, making love with him again couldn’t exactly be construed as a strategic move, not by anyone’s standards, not even with her most convoluted logic.
Too bad. The regret whispered across her mind. She immediately squelched the wayward thought. Making love with him again, indeed. What did she think she was made of? Steel? How much did she think her heart could take? She already felt a little mangled around the edges.
He’d given her one thing, though. He’d proven John Garraty wrong. Lord, what a painful lesson it might turn out to be.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a flickering shadow crossing the deck, and she quickly backed out from under the table. The last place she wanted him to find her was crawling on the floor. She had to avoid such an abject display of her feelings for as long as she could hold out.
Anger was what she needed, unbridled anger, fiery with the cause of justice. He’d made a promise.
So where was it? she thought in disgust, waiting for even a spark of rage to light up her misery. There wasn’t any rage to be found, only the heartache she felt in anticipation of his leaving. How in the world could she have done something as stupid as fall in love with him?
Ah, there it was, the first flame of fury, and in the nick of time. She heard the outside door to her office open, and fleetingly wondered why he hadn’t used the front door or the back. Both were closer to the garage than the office door.
She studiously ignored his approach, busying herself with tidying up. If his tread sounded a mite heavier, and if his presence seemed a shade darker behind her, she discounted it for one moment before he grabbed her.
With the first touch of his hand she knew it wasn’t Kit, but as that hand was firmly clapped over her mouth, and an iron-hard arm was squeezing the very breath out of her, she could do little more than struggle in silence and pray she didn’t faint.
* * *
In the end Kit had compromised with Shepard and Stein. He’d promised to give them the exact location before they exhibited the pieces, which bought him a year, maybe two, to get himself back into Nepal, a year to soothe ruffled, officious feathers, a year to find a way into Tibet and return to Chatren-Ma. One glimpse had not been nearly enough. More than the Kāh-gyur rested under those stones. He’d felt something ancient and powerful.
There would be no compromise with Kristine, though. He’d made a promise to her, and he planned on making many more, all the promises of a lifetime shared.
A soft smile curved his mouth. He’d waited throughout the rest of the day for the night to come, for the moon to rise and chase the sun from the sky. Then she would be his again.
He lifted the lid on the trunk by his bed and slipped his skinning knife into his palm. With care, he pried a thin block of wood from the side panel, and with equal care caught an edge of parchment with the blade and pulled the paper into the light. His first gift to her would fulfill his first promise, the only map known to man with the location of Chatren-Ma. Her distress over Lois’s discovery had touched him from across the room. He’d underestimated the older woman’s talents, or he would have taken the time to reassure Kristine beforehand.
He lowered the lid and spread the map over the top of the trunk, his hands smoothing out the folds—then fear, stark and chaotic and distinctly Kristine’s, rushed in at him from all sides.
Too late. The truth hit him cold and hard even as he raced from the room. He grabbed his khukri from where it hung by the door and vaulted over the side railing, landing lightly on the ground and taking off again.
He passed the backdoor, loosing Mancos with a quick flick of his fingers. “Go!” he ordered.
But neither he nor the dog was fast enough. The house was empty, and so would Kit’s heart have been if not for the rage boiling up from the very bottom of his soul. It seeped into his pores from a resting place he’d long denied, consuming him. It blinded him and yanked his muscles into tight, tight knots.
Careless! The word seared his conscience. He’d grown soft, dangerously soft, in the luxury of her company.
Forcing his mind to blankness, he retraced his footsteps, swearing vengeance with every pace. He swore vengeance for her fear. He swore vengeance for the violation of her home, and if need be, he swore death for her life.
He found the office door ajar and rattled it off its hinges with a vicious kick. He whirled around and stormed out of the room, still searching.
In the living room, tossed among the clutter of napkins and glasses on the coffee table, he found what he had searched for. A bronze panther coiled flat on a three-inch disc, the Turk’s calling card; and beneath the metal plaque, his own likeness sketched on a wanted poster from Xizang, formerly the country of Tibet.
The price beneath the face left no doubts in Kit’s mind about the Turk’s motivation or his destination. The Chinese wanted him more than they wanted the Kāh-gyur. Much more.
“This they shall have,” he vowed in a low growl, pricking the poster with the tip of his blade. “And they shall pay dearly for the pleasure of my company.”
With deadly, lightninglike grace, he turned on the balls of his feet, releasing the knife at the apex of his rising swing. The blade landed with a thudding
twang, impaling the poster to a solid oak cupboard door.
The Turk would be moving fast, a stranger in an unwelcoming land. He’d avoid the embassies. The Chinese didn’t want a hostage, they wanted Kautilya Carson. The Turk would run for home, but he’d find no refuge there. He’d find he had no place left to run.
Kit packed light, taking only his chamois bag. He stopped once more at the house, levering his knife out of the cupboard door and stuffing the wanted poster in his pocket. In the laundry room, he used the blade to slash open a fifty-pound bag of dog food.
“Pace yourself, Mancos,” he suggested to the dog who followed him from room to room. “Kreestine will be back within two weeks. You know where the reservoir is. Straight down and straight back, no fooling around.”
At the front door, he knelt down to unlatch the dog door, then turned and laid his hand on the dog’s huge head, scratching him behind the ears. “Lay low during the day. Drink at night. Sleep in your own bed, and if you eat the furniture, there’ll be hell to pay. Understand?”
The dog whined, his jowls quivering.
“Don’t worry, Mancos. I’ll send her home. One way or the other, I’ll get her back where she belongs.” He slowly rose and sheathed his knife. And if the Turk denies me this, I’ll know it on his last breath. You have my promise.
* * *
Let’s see, Kristine thought, fighting through a veil of disorientation. First you were in the living room, then slung over a shoulder, then nothing, then a little airplane noise, then another bigger nothing, then a whole lot of airplane noise.
And now this place. If she hadn’t been scared senseless, the smell definitely would have offended her. The dark, windowless room reeked of old fish, lots of old, dead, decaying fish. The concrete floor was wet and slimy with stuff she didn’t want to identify. She was almost glad it was too dark to see.
Voices from outside pierced the veil more clearly than her own feeble thoughts. She concentrated on them, but after a minute or two wished she hadn’t. She could read and write Chinese, a spattering of Tibetan, a little less Nepali, and understood very little of the spoken word in any of them.
But the voices told her she was somewhere in Asia, somewhere on the coast if the smell were any clue, which effectively eliminated Tibet and Nepal.
Great. She’d always loved to travel, though she usually saw a few more of the sights.
Rising on shaky legs, she tried to take stock of her surroundings and her situation. The surroundings were simple—that smell. She approached her situation a little more thoroughly.
No one in their right mind would drag her halfway around the world just to kill her. Of course, she had no reason whatsoever to believe her abductors were in their right minds, but she’d accept the point out of necessity. It was either that or sink into panic.
They’d drugged her. Nothing else explained the blanks in her memory, and that fact pushed her closer to the panic she was trying to avoid. At home she was known to have a beer or two, or a glass of wine, but that was the extent of her substance abuse. Anything else smacked highly of idiocy in her book.
And this was all Kit Carson’s fault, of that she had no doubts. He and his Kāh-gyur had gotten her into this fix. She didn’t know exactly why. Shepard and Stein had taken the artifacts, and wasn’t that what everyone had been after?
“Right,” she whispered, and discovered she liked the sound of her own voice. So she whispered some more. “They want the Kāh-gyur, not me, and all that guy with the big shoulders has to do is ask, and I’ll tell him everything I know. I’ll get him an engraved invitation to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, California.” She squeezed her eyes shut and forced her mind to think, finally coming up with a ZIP code she’d typed about a hundred times in the last few days.
“Nine, zero, zero, zero, seven. I’ll call Lois personally and put her kidnapper on the phone, let him deal with an expert instead of a nobody history professor from some obscure western university.” She paused and mentally backtracked. “Okay, okay, a not-so-obscure western university, but no ivy leaguer either. Damn you, Kit.” She edged along the wall, hoping to run into a door, an unlocked door, and maybe a car outside. A car with keys in the ignition and a map on the front seat.
“And a plane ticket in the glove compartment, a plane ticket anywhere, and food, something light, nongreasy.” Her wish list grew and grew, until she had herself set up in a Ritz Carlton with a sunken tub, expensive soap, and room service where everyone spoke English, preferably American English.
A rattling sound off to her right abruptly burst her bubble. The door she’d been nowhere close to finding swung open on rusty hinges, flooding the fishhouse with painfully bright sunshine.
Cringing against the wall, she peaked through the slits she made with her fingers, and a very unladylike expletive lodged in her throat.
The man who had broken into her house, the man she’d caught a glimpse of during one of her moments of consciousness, was more than shoulders. He was arms, huge arms, and long, muscular legs, and a barrel chest, and for the life of her she couldn’t imagine why he’d attempted to take Kit’s plait, for his own hung to his waist in a corded ebony swath.
“I am the Turk.” He smiled, a slow, barbarous smile that lit a face of indeterminate origin, making Kristine wonder just how many cultural half-breeds were running around loose on the Tibetan Plateau. “And you are mine.”
Perfect, she thought. Absolutely, grade-A perfect. Damn you, Kit Carson. I’m not sure how long I’ve been gone, but if you’re not at least halfway over the Pacific by now, somebody is going to be in a whole lot of trouble . . . probably me.
* * *
Kit slid off the mare’s back and let the reins fall to the ground. He’d traveled the width of the Pacific Ocean and almost half as far again in four days, putting himself deep inside the forbidden land and closer to the Turk’s stronghold than he’d ever wanted to be again. His own home lay over two hundred miles to the south, past the Tsangpo River and the wall of the Himalayas.
He hadn’t come back to go home. He’d come for Kristine and the Turk’s throat. He’d missed them in Shanghai, and had been slipping and sliding through the authorities’ fingers since his first step on Chinese soil. Now he was beyond their reach in Tibet, long gone in the shadow of the mountains where the land stretched for mile after mile of emptiness, touched but unchanged by man.
Light played across the terrain in ever deepening shades of twilight blue and rosy pink, turning to purple and black in the net of canyons spread out before him. The ground shifted in a colored patchwork of red iron, grays, and ocher, down to the tawny dust of the canyon floors.
He sat on the cliff edge, waiting, letting the light and darkness and color wash over him, blown by the ceaseless wind. Behind him his horse snorted and tossed her head, filling the night air with the music of harness bells. All else was quiet, from the mountains at his back to the northern horizon.
Seconds melted into minutes, minutes built into hours, and the the moon rose high in the sky. Still he waited and watched, ever patient, ever angry.
Before dawn, his wait ended. He slowly uncrossed his legs and rose to his knees, setting his metal cup of tea aside. Far below on the canyon floor, lantern lights twinkled and disappeared with the irregularity of the contours of the land. It was a caravan, moving to the west and the fortress that lay there, waiting for its master and for the prey to rise to the bait.
Kit whistled softly, and the mare carefully approached the drop-off, her hooves sending up feathery puffs of dust. He stood up and pulled his rifle from the saddle scabbard, loading a single cartridge into the chamber.
Lowering himself flat to the ground, he settled the stock against his shoulder and sighted down the barrel. A moment later the echo of his shot ricocheted along the canyon walls, and one of the lanterns extinguished in a quick burst of flame. The other lights quickly followed into darkness, snuffed by the riders who held them.
The Turk
had been warned; he knew someone was after him. When he reached home he would know who, and after that there would be no more warnings.
Kit rose to his feet, sheathed the rifle, and returned his metal cup to the saddlebag. Then he swung himself onto the mare’s back and turned her toward the mountains and Chatren-Ma.
* * *
Barbarian, Kristine had quickly learned, was a relative term. Any anthropologist who shared a meal with the Turk would be hard-pressed to apply the term to Kit Carson.
The man ate with his hands, and his fingers, and his teeth, in a manner she found just short of dealing death to her own appetite. But what his table manners didn’t accomplish, his dark-eyed gaze did. He followed her every move, no matter how slight, with an intensity she was sure exposed her deepest thoughts.
He was welcome to most of them, since they expressed a loathing she didn’t have the courage to voice aloud. There were a few she’d rather keep to herself, however. The ones dreading the lustful curiosity she saw in the midnight depths of his eyes, the one verging on panic whenever he reached out with a bronzed hand to trace a path across her skin. If Kit was masculinity at its gentlest and most invincible, the Turk was masculinity in its most arrogant and brutish form, handsome in a way no single-race man would ever be.
Two days ago, when he’d taken her from that foul fishhouse in Shanghai, his arrogance had been nearly palpable. He’d all but sneered as he toyed with her hair, then tossed her a brightly colored wool skirt, cotton shirt, a black vest, and low leather boots, and told her to get dressed. They were leaving in five minutes.
She didn’t get much else out of him as they traveled by small plane across the breadth of China to Tibet. She did manage to ask him how he’d smuggled her out of the United States. She would have thought a drugged and unconscious woman, even one as slight as she, wouldn’t be that easy to hide. He’d only laughed, made some comment about greedy Americans, then told her he’d done no more than bribe some antiquity dealers in Los Angeles with various religious objects and a tapestry stolen from Buddhist shrines and temples, and they had arranged for a plane to fly him and his “cargo” to Shanghai, with no customs officials bothering to check that cargo.
