by Anne Stuart
He moved his hand away, and she took in deep breaths of the black night air. “You want to get off me?” she inquired tersely.
“Not particularly.” He was still lying on top of her prone body, crushing her into the concave mattress. He rolled partway off, enough to allow her to turn on her side, facing him in the narrow space, but his hands were still keeping her close. Imprisoning hands, rough hands, she told herself. It was only the darkness that made them welcome.
“Why did you do that?”
“Do what, Maggie?”
“You half strangled me …”
“Maggie,” he said wearily, “I didn’t half strangle you. I was just trying to keep you from screaming and waking half of Beirut. I’m sorry if I frightened you. Are you all right?”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” she answered, her whispered voice matching his. “I love being awakened by a man smothering me.”
He ignored her carping tone. “We didn’t mean to be gone so long. Why didn’t you ask Mabib’s wife for a flashlight?”
“I don’t speak Arabic or Lebanese or whatever.”
“I’m sorry. I should have thought of that.” His hand moved up her arm, cupping the back of her neck, and his long fingers massaged the tension away as he carefully pressed her forehead against his shoulder.
“I was fine,” she muttered against his shoulder, not bothering to fight it.
“Sure you were.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can,” he said, his voice somber. “There are times when I wish you weren’t so self-sufficient, that you needed someone, anyone, just a little bit.”
She closed her eyes, closed her heart, fought against the need to clutch at him with desperate hands. “I need people,” she said, no longer sure it was true. “I just don’t need you.”
The words hung between them in the blackness. Maggie lay in the shelter of his arms, wondering if they were the truth or more lies, and wondered if she was going to betray Mack. Randall was warm and strong and comforting beside her, and she was so very cold, so very alone. And she knew that sooner or later, she would.
“Ian told me who his contact was,” Randall said finally.
“Big of him. He must have finally decided he didn’t like being set up. Who is it?”
“You’re not going to like this,” he warned.
“I never do. Who is it?”
In the darkness she could feel him shrug. “He has a phone number he calls in London. Different people answer, giving him information, but it all comes from one source.”
“Okay, Randall, who’s the source?”
Randall took a deep breath. “He told me it was Bud Willis.”
For a moment Maggie felt her heart contract, contract with hatred, despair, and fear. “It couldn’t be,” she said flatly. “He’s dead. I watched him die. I watched all those machines stop beeping. There’s no way he could still be alive.”
She could hear his sudden sharp intake of breath. “You were with Bud when he died?” he said. “In Washington?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” He sounded no more than casually curious, but Maggie told herself she wasn’t fooled. His hands were still gentle on her tense body, holding her against him, but the tension was running through him, matching hers.
She considered it for a moment. “He had a deathbed confession for me,” she said finally. “You know Bud; he couldn’t resist getting his final licks in.”
“I hope you didn’t believe him.”
“Why shouldn’t I? You think his last words were going to be more lies?”
“Bud Willis’s last words are bound to be the most malicious and evil that his malicious and evil mind can think of. Truth would have nothing to do with it.”
“Why are you talking about him in the present tense? Don’t you think he’s dead?”
“You saw him die, Maggie. I didn’t. I never believe anything I don’t see with my own eyes.”
She shivered. “He couldn’t be alive. And if by any chance he was, he’d be in some hospital somewhere. We both know he’d been pretty well smashed up from that three-story fall onto a concrete floor. I don’t think he’d be roaming the world selling information. Someone must be using his name. Someone who knows how it would affect us.”
“Someone with an odd sense of humor, perhaps? Flynn’s definitely a strange one.”
“Probably Flynn himself,” she agreed. “Did you learn anything else?”
“We’ve got two possibilities. Flynn’s cutting short his little vacation and heading back to Europe. He’s either gone into the mountains near the Syrian border, or he’s gone to Rome. We’re going to have to split up.”
Maggie shifted in the narrow bed, and his hands tightened on her for a moment, until he realized that she was simply settling herself more comfortably, not trying to pull away. “Dare I ask how we’re going to separate?”
“Ian and Holly will head toward Rome.”
“And we’ll go into the mountains?”
“It seems the logical thing to do,” he said, and his breath was warm and soft on her upturned face.
“What if Holly and I go to Rome and you and Ian head into the mountains?” she countered.
“Forget it. What would you do if you found Flynn?”
“Kill him,” she said flatly.
“Maggie, I know as well as you do that you’ve never killed anyone in cold blood. Even if you could do it, you’d be bound to hesitate, and that’s all Flynn would need. I’m not going to give him the chance to kill you too.”
“How many times do I have to tell you—”
“That you can take care of yourself?” he finished for her. “Are you willing to gamble your sister’s life on that?”
She opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. “All right,” she said finally. “We’ll go into the mountains. We’d better get some sleep. I don’t suppose you feel like sleeping on the floor?”
“Neither of us is going anywhere, Maggie.”
She considered denying it, but he was making no advances. He seemed content merely to hold her and she hated to admit it, but she was content to have him hold her. Just for now, just for the duration of this cold, dark night. She sighed, and some of the tension left her body. “You’re a pain in the butt, Randall,” she murmured sleepily, nestling against him.
“That’s a step up from whatever it is you’ve been thinking of me,” he replied. “No, don’t tense up again. You’re right, we need our sleep. Let’s not fight any more.”
“Okay,” she said, yawning.
“Just tell me one thing.”
“What?”
“What was Bud’s deathbed confession?”
eight
Maggie lay in the narrow bed, watching the morning light filter into the room through the cracks in the shuttered window. She didn’t move, didn’t alter her breathing, she just lay there, pressed between the plaster wall and Randall’s sleeping body, and cursed her stupidity.
She hadn’t told him what he wanted to know. She still wasn’t quite sure why. Sooner or later she’d have to confront him with Bud Willis’s claim that Randall had paid him to murder Mack. But not now, not when she wasn’t ready to face his answer. If he lied to her she’d know it. If he told the truth she might not be able to bear it. So she was being a coward, hiding from the truth when she prided herself on her ability to face anything. And the most foolish thing of all was that she’d spent last night hiding in his arms.
It was pure human nature, the survival instinct that made her want to edge closer and wrap her long legs around him. Waking next to a warm body, when all your defenses are down, naturally made you want to make love. She could have been lying next to anyone and woken with that urge.
So why wasn’t it vanishing in the cold light of day? Why did she have to fight the temptation to slide her hands beneath the rumpled cotton shirt, to move her head a fraction of an inch so that her mouth could brush against his strong, tanned neck? Why t
he hell couldn’t she shove him out of her bed and onto the hard stone floor?
Stupid, stupid, stupid, she railed at herself, not moving. She knew now that even if the worst were true, even if Randall had paid Bud Willis twenty thousand dollars to kill her husband, she couldn’t return the compliment. The best she could do would be to keep as far away from him as possible. In the few short days she’d been around him he’d proven just how irresistible he could be to her. Not once had her mind forgotten the horrible probability, even as her body responded to his.
Damn, they had to find Flynn soon! She had to get away from Randall before she made a bigger fool of herself, before she became sucked up in a mindless vortex of hating and loving and wanting and hurting. She had to get away while she could still call her soul her own.
Randall shifted in his sleep, and the length of his body pressed more intimately against her. She could feel his arousal, and telling herself that it was a normal male hormonal reaction with very little to do with her didn’t do much good. He was hot and hard against her, and she was hot and damp and ready, and her palms began to sweat. Maybe she could just …
“Maggie!” Holly’s voice bellowed through the shattered building, and Randall’s eyes flew open to look directly into hers. They stared at each other, for a long vulnerable moment. And then his head moved, his mouth touched hers, lightly.
She held very still. His blue-gray eyes darkened for a moment, and then he moved, pulling her underneath him on the narrow bed, and his mouth moved over hers—wet, demanding, his tongue capturing hers as he kissed her with a sudden desperation that bordered on panic. She lifted her arms to twine them about his neck, to pull him closer, when Holly’s voice split through the sound of heavy breathing and rustling bedclothes.
“Maggie!” she yelled from just outside their bedroom door. “Wake up, for God’s sake. It’s after nine!”
He was off her before the door opened, standing with his back to the door, staring out the shuttered window, only the rise and fall of his strong back attesting to the last few moments of passion.
It took Maggie a moment longer to regain her sanity. She was just sitting up when Holly burst into the room, and if her clothes were still decently around her, her expression must have been nothing short of dazed.
Holly came to a screeching halt. “Did I interrupt something?”
“No,” Maggie said, but her voice came out husky and breathless.
“Because I can go back downstairs and argue with Ian some more. I just didn’t think there was anything going on between you two.” She started an awkward retreat.
“There isn’t,” Maggie said.
“You could have fooled me.” Holly’s artless tongue once more tripped her up.
Randall moved then, abruptly, and he cursed. A moment later he was gone from the room, without a backward glance. Maggie watched him leave with mingled relief and regret.
“Okay, Holly,” she said wearily. “I’m awake. Where the hell did you get those clothes?”
Holly grinned, doing her best model’s slouch. She was wearing ill-fitting khakis, obviously belonging to Ian. Her thick black hair was in braids, she wore no makeup at all, and her only jewelry were the diamond studs Sybil had given her years ago, studs she never took off except for modeling assignments. She looked absolutely beautiful. “Do you like them? Ian’s been ditching my suitcases every chance he gets. All I’m left with is lingerie and evening dresses. He keeps getting pissed off so I thought I’d give him the natural look.”
“Did he appreciate it?” Maggie pulled herself out of the concave bed.
“I’m afraid not. He said he couldn’t see the difference and stomped from the room in a foul temper. Somewhat like your friend Randall.”
“Possibly they suffer from the same affliction,” Maggie suggested, running her fingers through her tangled mop of hair. “Are you all set to fly to Rome?”
“I find I’m longing for civilization once more. When Ian finally deigned to tell me we were going I almost kissed him. I’ll call the hospital the moment I get there. Maybe there’ll be good news.”
Maggie managed a brief, weary smile. “Let’s hope so.”
“I hate jeeps.”
“This isn’t a jeep,” Randall pointed out with maddening correctness. It was several hours later, with the two of them heading up into the mountains of the high Lebanon, and the atmosphere was more than mildly strained. He’d pushed her too far, he knew it, but he had no intention of stopping now. “It’s a very old Bronco,” he said.
“I don’t give a damn what it is. I hate four-wheel drive armylike vehicles with flimsy roofs, lousy seats, rotten suspensions, and noisy engines. I hate jeeps, Broncos, Land Rovers, and everything like them. How come Mabib couldn’t come up with a nice Jaguar? Or a second-hand Peugeot? Even a Ford?”
“This is a Ford.”
“It’s got to be a bastard cousin,” Maggie grumbled, squinting into the bright sunlight.
“We couldn’t drive into the mountains of Lebanon in anything less than a four-wheel drive. They don’t go in much for paved roads around here, and those that were in decent shape have been bombed out of existence.”
She leaned back in the uncomfortable seat, sighing. “Do you think we’re going to find him?”
“I don’t know. Our sources are pretty damned good at this point. The Children of God don’t like Flynn’s friends any more than we do—they’d have nothing to lose and everything to gain by screwing them. I’d guess that Flynn’s planning to fly to Rome from a pickup spot near the border. With us on his trail and Ian and Holly at the other end we should have him neatly trapped.”
“Maybe,” she said doubtfully. “Somehow I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.”
“Nothing ever is.”
They rode on in silence. It was late morning and the rough dirt roads leading into the mountains of Lebanon were deserted. Mabib had promised to see the still-battling Holly and Ian off on the next flight out of Beirut, and now that they were separated from the other pair an uncomfortable silence had reigned between Maggie and Randall.
“So what makes you think we’re heading in the right direction? How do you know Mabib’s informant isn’t the same slug using Bud Willis’s name?”
Randall looked over at her in the bright sunlit morning. “Mabib knows who to trust in Lebanon,” he said slowly. “He wouldn’t still be alive if he didn’t. This isn’t the world’s most peaceful country, Maggie. You know that as well as I do. And like me you’ve learned who you can trust and who you can’t.”
That distant, closed look shuttered down over her face again, and he wanted to slap the steering wheel in frustration. As usual he banked down his reaction, keeping his own expression impassive.
“Have I?” she murmured. “I’m not sure about that.”
“You know better than to believe anything Bud Willis would tell you. Particularly if it was about me.”
She looked up then, her eyes wary. “What makes you think he told me anything about you?”
His smile was cynical. “Instincts, Maggie. We weren’t on the best of terms when we parted in Chicago, but you didn’t hate me. You hate me now.”
He waited for her to deny it. He was pushing her, goading her, hoping for some tiny bit of information, some explanation for the desolate expression in her eyes and the grim anger around her mouth.
But he should have known Maggie wouldn’t be pushed. “Randall, I’m tired,” she said, ignoring his statement. “If you don’t need me to keep watch I’m going to try to sleep. It’ll be hours before we reach the border, right?” She slouched down in the seat, closing her wonderful aquamarine eyes, clearly determined to ignore him.
“Hours,” he agreed with a touch of asperity. “Okay, Maggie. You can run away again. But sooner or later you’re going to have to face me.”
Her eyes flew open. “I’m not running.”
“Aren’t you? Then why won’t you answer a direct question?”
She open
ed her mouth, and he waited, patiently, a faint trace of hope stirring within him. But she shut it again, glaring at him, and slid back down on the seat. “Wake me when we’re getting close,” she snapped.
He considered pulling over to the side of the deserted road and shaking her. For a brief moment he indulged himself in fantasy, playing with the idea of shoving her into the back of the Bronco and forcing her to respond to him, to drop her defenses. It would be all too easy to do. He knew how to move her, knew what she reacted to, knew just what to do to make her helpless and quivering in response, where she’d deny him nothing, not her body, not her soul, not the answers he wanted.
But the idea of rape disgusted him, and that was the only way he’d get her pliant enough to accept him. No, it was going to have to wait. It sometimes seemed like he’d spent half his adult life waiting for Maggie Bennett. He was a man with limitless patience, but that patience was running out.
It was getting dark when Maggie awoke. Her entire body ached, her eyes were gritty from sleep and dust, and her mouth felt like fuzzy cotton. The damned Bronco went over another bump, and she bit back a moan of pain. She looked over at the man beside her, the man concentrating on driving over the narrow mountain track.
Lines of weariness bracketed his thin mouth, his eyes were dark and shadowed, and his strong, narrow hands held the steering wheel with deceptive ease. He was dressed in rough khakis, and above the open shirt she could see the cords of tension in his neck, betraying the calm, detached expression on his face.
He was driving very slowly, very expertly, somehow managing to keep the noisy engine of the Bronco at a relatively quiet level. “I was about to wake you,” he said, and his rich warm voice grated on her nerves even as it moved her. “We should be less than half a mile away.”
“Do we have any plan of action? Or are we just going to go blazing away like Rambo?” She pitched her own voice low to match his.
“I suppose it’s a possibility. We’ve got two Uzis, a Sten, and a couple of Colt handguns. What the scenario lacks in finesse it makes up for in effectiveness.”