by Gayle Wilson
When she entered the dark kitchen, she walked over to the sink and opened the cabinet above it. The glasses were still there, standing upside down in the same sentinel-like rows her aunt had always placed them in. It was not until she picked one up and turned toward the refrigerator that her sleep-dazed brain remembered. All the perishables would have been thrown out.
She went back to the sink, turning on the faucet and letting the water run a few seconds before she put the glass under its stream. When she lifted the water to her lips, the first sip was as familiar as the kitchen, the taste faintly metallic. She turned around, leaning back against the edge of the counter. She lifted the glass again, her eyes drifting across the kitchen.
There were two men standing in the doorway that led onto the back porch. Watching her. Even in the darkness, she could see the gleam of the white robes they wore, although their faces were dark and featureless.
This is the nightmare, she thought. It had to be. They were totally out of place in her mother’s kitchen. Out of place in this life. Nightmare, she thought again.
Yet some more rational part of her knew it wasn’t. They were undeniably real. She could see the two shapes building out of the darkness, robes billowing slightly as they walked.
Coming toward her, she realized. She seemed paralyzed by her fear, caught in that same icy terror in which one waits for the horror of one’s own nightmare to become reality.
Then, suddenly, that paralysis released. She raised her hand and threw the glass at them. In the same motion she turned, running toward the door that led to the hallway and the open windows of the bedroom. She knew she didn’t have a prayer of reaching those windows before they could get to her, but she also knew she had to try.
She heard the glass shatter half a heartbeat before the first shot sounded. That bullet struck the frame of the door in front of her. She felt flecks of broken wood, which had splintered under its impact, strike her face. She threw up her arm to protect her eyes, the action only a reflex.
She seemed to be moving in slow motion, a journey through a nightmare. Two more shots followed the first, so rapidly one seemed an echo of the other. Then, finally, she was through the door and into the hall. She must have hit her arm on something. She felt it as she skidded around the corner, but despite her awareness of the blow, there was little pain. Just an aftermath of tingling nerve endings.
The bedroom doorway loomed suddenly before her, dark and inviting. A minute more of safety. She slid into it, bare feet seeking traction on the smooth wood of the ancient floor. A hand grabbed at her as she came through the opening, and she fought against its grip.
The hard fingers, closing tight as a vise over her wrist, didn’t loosen even as she twisted her arm, prying at them with her other hand. It did no good. Instead, she was pulled to the side and slammed against the wall, her captor’s body pressed against hers, holding her prisoner.
At least she’d tried, she thought, trapped behind the solid strength of the man who had caught her. She should have known there would be more of them. That they wouldn’t let her get away this time. They had let that happen once, at the hotel. They wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Her head hurt from where he had slammed her against the wall. And the arm she had hit coming through the kitchen door was beginning to burn like someone was holding a blowtorch to the back of it. The man leaning against her was too close, deliberately pushing his body into hers so she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. The hard muscles of his back ground into the softness of her breasts.
She eased a shallow inhalation into her starving lungs. Despite her fear, the automatic physiological functions hadn’t stopped. Precious air. Maybe one of the last breaths she would draw. Precious, life-sustaining air that smelled like...
She opened her eyes and frantically pushed her head up a fraction of an inch, forcing it up against the back of his muscled shoulder, trying desperately to see. Trying not to hope, not even to imagine...
The man whose body was glued to the front of hers didn’t make any verbal response, but suddenly, unbelievingly, there was more pressure. He was pushing her more firmly into the wall, but she had already managed to lift her head far enough that she could see his arm. Outstretched. And in his hand...
She took another breath, this one savoring. Because she had been right. The fragrance she had recognized was the faint scent of the hotel’s soap and underlying that... She had to snatch another breath before she could even complete the thought. Underlying that was the very masculine, somehow familiar scent of his body. Closer even than it had been yesterday when he bent to kiss her.
She could feel against her cheek the slight coarseness of the knit shirt he wore. Could see the pale blue of its sleeve. And at the end of that, a corded arm and a hand whose long brown fingers were wrapped around a very big gun.
And that outstretched arm was as steady as it had been yesterday morning, waiting now for those men to follow her through that doorway. With his other hand, the man with the cold blue eyes reached behind him and found her arm, the one she had hit on the frame. He gripped it, right above the elbow, and squeezed gently.
She wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be reassurance or a question. But she nodded, head moving against the back of his shoulder, able to move only slightly because of the pressure he was exerting to keep her there. Behind his body. Safe.
He squeezed her arm again. Silent communication. For the first time since she had seen the robed men in the kitchen, hope flooded her heart. Her almost mindless terror eased. She didn’t know why he was here, a miracle as inexplicable as finding him in the hotel had been, but somehow she knew he’d keep her safe.
He had his whole concentration fixed on the doorway that led to the hall. Still waiting for someone to come through it. Suddenly he moved. His left arm came around to the front, its hand fastening under the right, which held the big gun, helping to cradle and support its weight. Then she heard what he had heard. Footsteps. Coming toward them down the hall.
She watched as he eased away from the wall, his movements soundless. Unlike whoever had been in the kitchen. But then, they didn’t know they had anything to fear. They thought only she was here. Only a woman, hiding in the darkness.
When they came through the doorway, it was worse than anything she could have imagined. The size of the room magnified the sound, and the flashes from the muzzles of the guns, spitting into the darkness like lightning, terrified her. She slid down the wall, putting her hands over her ears.
It seemed to go on a long time, but she knew it lasted only seconds. When it was over, she waited, the total and complete silence left behind almost as frightening as the noise.
Nothing moved in the dark room. There was no sound except her heart, beating in her throat so loudly that it seemed if anyone were left alive after that barrage of gunfire, they would be able to hear it. Finally, she couldn’t stand not knowing. She lowered her hands and slowly raised her head.
The man with the blue eyes was still there, standing just where he had been before it all started. The gun he had held was still supported by both hands. His knees were slightly bent, his attention focused on the doorway leading out of the bedroom.
There were no more footsteps there. And she found herself hoping, more fiercely than she had ever hoped for the fulfillment of any of those impossible dreams she had had when she used to sleep in this small dark room. Hoping that the men who had come into her mother’s kitchen were dead.
She didn’t know how she became aware of movement at the window. She was still looking at his back, the light shirt that stretched across his broad shoulders palely visible in the darkness. Suddenly she saw, peripherally and almost subliminally, that something was at the window. She turned her head, eyes wide, straining against the outside darkness. The flash of motion was white, and so she shouted a warning her brain didn’t formulate, her outcry primitive. Instinctive.
“Behind you.”
She must have pointed before she sc
reamed. She must have made some betraying movement, because the bullets that sprayed the wall above her head seemed to come almost before her warning. She dropped to the floor, curled into a fetal position, hands attempting to protect her head as pieces of the wall and ceiling rained around her.
The deep cough that answered that assault was familiar now. She had heard it during the earlier exchange, firing steadily, the crack of its echo reverberating in the enclosed space. His gun, she thought. Tyler made herself open her eyes. She could still see the pale blue shirt. He had pivoted to face the new threat, squeezing off shots as evenly as he had before.
Two or three. Maybe four. She lost count. But the last one put an end to everything. Whoever had been outside fell into the open window, his body draped limply over the sill, half in and half out, the trailing gutra touching the hardwood floor.
Again the silence that fell after all the noise was too profound. She watched the blue-eyed man turn, focusing the gun on the hall again and then swinging it back to the windows. There was no more movement. No footsteps in the hall. No sound in the silence except their breathing. His and hers.
Finally he walked toward her, footsteps crunching over the debris the automatic weapon had cut from the wall and blown across the room. She watched him, long legs in worn jeans materializing out of the darkness. Slowly her gaze climbed upward to his face. His pale blue eyes seemed luminous in the predawn shadows. Her own, pupils wide, were finally able to see him clearly. Same harsh features. Slightly crooked nose.
“I thought the South was famous for hospitality,” he said. His tone was prosaic, infinitely calm and touched with amusement.
Hot moisture stung her eyes. Whoever he was, he had saved her life. Again. And he acted as if what had just occurred was a minor inconvenience in what was supposed to have been a visit to a sleepy little Southern town.
She blinked back the tears, ashamed to cry in the face of his nonchalance. His acceptance of the violence that had exploded around them. Of the deaths he had caused. But then, he was used to this, she thought, shivering. Accustomed to death? He must be, to do what he had just done.
He was dangerous. She had known that yesterday. And he was fully capable of dealing with all this. With these people. She was not. Nothing in her life had prepared her for what had happened to her the last two days.
“Are you sure that’s all of them?” she asked, holding on to the calmness in his eyes. Wanting his reassurance that this was over. She wanted it all to be over, but she knew it wasn’t, of course. At least he was here. And as long as he was... As long as he was here, she thought again, she would be safe.
“The two of them who came in the back and the driver,” he said. “He was the one at the windows. He just got here a little quicker than I anticipated.”
Slowly she realized the unmistakable implications of that. “You watched them?” she asked. “You watched those men come into my house?” If he had seen them come into the house, why hadn’t he done something about it before they had started shooting? Why hadn’t he—
“I wasn’t sure why they were here,” he said. “After that garbage you told me yesterday, I figured they might have just come to woo you back for another attempt at a wedding.”
His tone was mocking. She had lied to him yesterday, and he knew it. She had told him she had nothing to do with what had happened in front of the hotel. That hadn’t been true, of course. And now...
“I think you and I should talk,” he said softly, almost as if he had read her thoughts. “And I think this time you should tell me the truth.”
“About what happened yesterday?” she asked.
“For starters,” he agreed.
“I saw them,” she whispered. She had told him that before, but only at the end. And she had lied about all the other, at least lied by omission. “I saw the assassins,” she continued, making her voice stronger, determined now to tell him all of it. “They were standing on the balcony looking down into the street in front of the hotel. I heard the shot. Then they turned around and...they saw me. I let the door close, and I ran.”
“Who are they?” he asked.
“Two of them... I think they were bodyguards of my fiancé. There were so many of them that I never learned all their faces, but I had seen these two before. I didn’t know the other man at all. He was...I think he was a Westerner. At least, he wasn’t wearing a robe. He’s the one who had the rifle.”
Her rescuer nodded. The approaching dawn touched his fair hair with a shimmer of light. “Who sent you to get me?” he asked.
“Sent me?” she repeated. “Nobody sent me. I was...terrified because I’d seen them. I was trying to get away.”
“Just an accident that it was my room you entered?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
She knew as she said it that he didn’t believe her. That was in his tone; mocking again. And even she thought it was strange that she would have chosen the room of this man. A man who had his own gun and knew how to use it. A man who knew how to get her out of a hotel that was surrounded by a million cops.
“Nothing like that ever happens by chance,” he said. “Not to me.”
But going into his room had, Tyler thought. His had been the nearest door. She’d had a passkey. And she’d been terrified. It had been...happenstance. Random choice. Chance.
“First you just walk in on the assassins, and then you come straight to me?” he said, his voice full of sarcasm and disbelief. “You’re going to have to do better than that. Like explaining where you got a passkey.”
From the beginning, she thought. Maybe if she told him all of it... “I was supposed to get married,” she said, her voice trembling with the need to get it out. “To Sheikh al-Ahmad’s son. But...I realized I had agreed because I was afraid. I’d just let Amir talk me into it. And suddenly I realized that everything about my life would be so...”
The hesitant explanation faded because she knew he wouldn’t understand what had driven her to Amir’s room yesterday. She hadn’t understood all her reasons. She had just known, almost instinctively, that what she was about to do was wrong. But that part wasn’t important to him. It wasn’t the truth he had demanded.
“I realized I couldn’t go through with it without talking to Amir. Without making him promise...” She shook her head, knowing that wasn’t relevant, either. “I knew his father was due to arrive, but I needed to see Amir before the ceremony. So I went down to the men’s floor, and Malcolm Truett, Amir’s secretary, said I’d just missed him. That Amir had already gone down to meet his father. He implied I shouldn’t be there. That the sheikh wouldn’t like it if they came back upstairs and found me on that floor.”
She took a breath, thinking about what had happened next. “But I hadn’t brought the key to my room with me, and Malcolm was in a hurry to run some errand Amir had sent him on....”
She paused again, remembering that chain of events. If Malcolm had known what was going on, surely he would not have given her that passkey. It would have been too dangerous. So he couldn’t have known, she realized.
“And...” the blue-eyed man prodded.
“He gave me a passkey,” she said softly, still trying to make sense out of what had happened.
“Why would he have a passkey?”
“He arranged the hotel reservations. He was in charge of the rooms. I don’t know why they would give him a key, other than convenience. Or security, maybe.”
“And instead of going upstairs and using the key to get back into your own room...” her rescuer suggested, apparently having followed her disjointed narrative.
“I opened Amir’s door.” She hesitated, realizing that she had only assumed it was his, because Truett’s eyes had moved to it when he’d told her Amir had gone downstairs. “The one Malcolm indicated was Amir’s door,” she corrected. “And I saw them on the terrace. I saw what they were doing.”
“And they saw you?” There was no inflection in his voice.
“They saw me,”
she agreed softly. “I let the door close, and as it did, I heard the elevator. Malcolm had punched both buttons while we were talking. I didn’t know which elevator had arrived, but I got on and when it started down, I realized I couldn’t go to the lobby. I didn’t know who they had shot, or even, at that point, if they had shot anybody . I thought it might be some kind of security thing. Protection for the sheikh. I didn’t know, but by then, I had realized I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t marry Amir, I mean. I couldn’t live like that.”
The spate of words stopped again. He wouldn’t care about that. About her reasons. He just wanted to know why she had pulled him into what had happened.
“So you got off the elevator...” he said.
“I slapped at the buttons, hoping it would stop. Hoping I was in time. When it did, I don’t think I even knew what floor I was on. I ran toward the exit at the end of the hall. But then I heard the elevator again. The bell. I heard it behind me. I thought they were coming, so I used the passkey. I slid it into the nearest door, and...that was your room.”
He said nothing. Although the room had lightened, she couldn’t read his face well enough to know whether he believed her. “I wanted to tell you what I’d seen,” she said. “I tried to tell you in the restaurant.” And instead of answering, you kissed me. Somehow the remembrance of that kiss seemed even more intimate, here in the darkness of her bedroom, than it had then.
“I didn’t want to get you involved,” she said. “I didn’t want to pull someone else into that, but you seemed to know what you were doing. You seemed so capable. So...”
Dangerous. The word echoed in her brain. It was what he had seemed tonight. He had saved her life again. She didn’t know why. Or why he had followed her here. But she did know he had dealt with the situation tonight with the same cool competence he had used to get her out of the hotel. Despite Amir’s men and all those cops.