by Julie Miller
The silence on the telephone line worried her. When Dimitri began to speak, she worried even more. “My darling Anastasiya. While it pleases me to hear you offer yourself so freely, you must remember that this is not my decision alone. The man I work for does not overlook those who would cheat or deceive him. You should be counting your blessings that your father is still alive.”
“But the king does not even know my father—”
“The king,” he emphasized, “has put me in charge of this project and has granted me discretion to handle it as I see fit. I will not take the chance that you would seduce one of the American infidels in order to bring about your escape. By keeping Anton close to me, I’m confident you will keep the men there at a distance.”
Tasiya quietly gnawed her lip until his outburst dissipated. “I have no intention of sleeping with any man here,” she stated quietly. She had no intention of sleeping with Dimitri, either. But that was another trial she would deal with when—and if—she survived this one. “Will that be all? I must attend to my duties here before I am missed.”
“Tell me again about this note you read in Boone Fowler’s office that upset him. I do not want him to be distracted from his purpose, either.”
Though the name Cameron Murphy meant nothing to her, apparently it had some significance for Dimitri. With the clock ticking toward eight o’clock and the bile rising in her throat at every slimy innuendo from Dimitri’s lips, Tasiya answered his questions. She dutifully repeated his instructions for listening to tomorrow’s American news reports, ignored the kiss he blew across the line and rang off.
BRYCE STOOD ON TIPTOE in the darkness with his hand fisted around the bar at the window. He’d dug enough mortar from the base that he could twist it back and forth now, starting the painstaking process of loosening the bar from its upper mount. Removing one bar still wouldn’t create a space large enough for him to crawl through to the outside, but the bar itself would give him a weapon, a tool.
The digging would go faster. He could pry himself out of these chains. He could defend himself if he got the opportunity to make a run for it.
It would give him the first advantage he’d had since getting tossed into this place.
He froze at the muffled sound of footsteps in the passageway. Ignoring the tender twinge that ached along the right side of his ribs, he breathed in deeply, silently—mentally and physically bracing himself for another visit from his captors.
Then he heard the distinct metallic clank and rattle of Tasiya’s food cart bouncing across the paving stones.
Make that his second advantage.
The wary tension in Bryce’s muscles eased at the familiar sound. His breath seeped out on a slow exhale and he dropped flat on his feet, brushing away and hiding the evidence of his handiwork as he turned to wait for her arrival. He was almost grinning with the keen anticipation of seeing her again. But a scratch at his whiskers on the unscarred half of his jaw gave him a sobering reminder that while her face might be a sight for weary eyes, his was not.
The rattle of metal cups and rhythmic thump and bump of the cart fell silent before she reached his cell. She’d stopped several feet away, near the turn in the passageway. Or had she been stopped?
Bryce’s senses buzzed on alert, listening for some other sound in the shadows. Items moved, shifting on the cart, as though someone was searching among the napkins and baskets. Son of a bitch. He clenched his hands into fists and crossed to the door of his cell, wishing he was a super hero so he could pull the bars apart and go help her.
“Tasiya?” he whispered, so softly that his voice was swallowed up by the shadows.
If Fowler or Smith or some other yahoo had stopped her…if they suspected she’d used their rations to feed more to the prisoners, that she was doing something kind for him…if they’d chosen a dark corner so far removed from the rest of the prison that no one could hear her scream…
He heard a soft gasp. The grind of metal. The tinkling shatter of delicate glass breaking. A word in another language he could only describe as a curse.
“Tasiya!” His voice boomed off the rock walls. Hell. Let Fowler’s men make a connection between them. If she was getting into trouble, then it was his fault. They should punish him. “Tasiya?”
He peered into the darkness, unable to make sense of the moving shapes. And then a sharp pain pierced his retinas. He had to blink and turn away as an unexpected light flooded the hallway.
After so many days and nights in relative darkness, the artificial light reflected off the smooth stone walls, filling the space in front of his cell with a cold, harsh glare.
But when the reassuring thump of the cart resumed, Bryce shaded his eyes with his hand and forced himself to look. It wasn’t that bright, really, but it took several moments for his eyes to adjust before he focused in on Tasiya, wearing jeans and the long, cream-colored sweater she’d worn the night of their first encounter. She appeared to be alone, unharmed—and well beyond arm’s reach.
Bryce’s concern for her petered out on a resigned sigh. He was still standing at the cell door. He’d been imagining the worst, frantic to get to her, to save her from whatever had gotten its hands on her. But he was still the monster she feared.
A little frisson of useless resentment fired through his blood. He looked beyond her to the lone lightbulb, weakly shining from its mount at the end of the passageway. He purposely challenged the caution in her eyes by wrapping his fingers around the bars and staying put.
“I thought someone was after you.”
Loose black curls danced across her face as she turned to glance over her shoulder, just now realizing how her scuffling sounds in the darkness and the clumsiness of a broken lightbulb might sound. She quickly turned back to him and tucked one of those curls behind her ear. “I am all right, Bryce Martin,” she stated. “Even Mr. Fowler would not begrudge me a light to illuminate my path.”
Bryce continued to lean against the bars, and Tasiya still kept her distance. But his resentment was gradually replaced by acceptance. It had always been this way, and Tasiya’s misgivings about him weren’t gonna go away just because he seemed to be developing an overzealous sense of protection where she was concerned.
She looked mighty pleased with herself over changing a lightbulb. And while that added bit of confidence was a welcome change to the fear that had haunted her expression last night, Bryce felt compelled to remind her of the risk she had taken, and the danger she might be in as a result.
“You ever think maybe they want to keep me in the dark?”
“Yes.”
Startled by the bluntness of her reply, Bryce looked deep into her eyes. Hell. She was dead serious. She got the whole torture thing. Maybe she wasn’t as naive about the dangers surrounding them here as he’d originally thought.
“Well,” he released the bars and retreated, giving her the distance she needed, “it doesn’t bother me none.”
As soon as he moved, Tasiya began assembling his meal. “It should bother you. It is wrong for one man to have so much power over another. You have no shirt, no blanket, no shoes. They treat you as if you are…”
She pinched her lips together, searching for the right word. But Bryce could translate for her. “Not human?”
Her pitying gaze locked onto his and she nodded. She set his bread and water on the floor and backed away. Bryce rattled forward like the ghost of Jacob Marley in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, dragging his chains along with him. They were a visual and aural reminder of the burdens he carried through life, a reminder that Fowler and Smith—and even Tasiya, with her reluctance to get too close—saw him more as a monster than a man.
But it wasn’t a topic he cared to discuss at the moment, despite the polite need to apologize he could see dancing through Tasiya’s shifting feet and the stricken expression in her eyes. Pity was an emotion that had never done him any good. He’d rather deal with her fear, or have her ignore him altogether, than waste his limited emotional experti
se trying to ease the guilt of someone who pitied the way he looked or was treated.
So, Bryce silently retrieved his meal and settled on his cot. He broke apart the crusty loaf and saw that, true to her word, Tasiya had added some wheat bran to the processed flour, and filled the inside with moist red and blue bits his nose quickly identified as cranberries and blueberries.
But even if he was done talkin’, Tasiya had more to say. “In my country, they treat political prisoners this way. The king would break down his people’s spirits so that they do not complain about poverty or the bullying police. We are not allowed to speak out or better ourselves unless we…” Her voice and gaze trailed away to a distant place, and Bryce wondered if she was remembering some event in particular or if this was a philosophical argument. “In Lukinburg I could not even have this conversation with you. If someone heard me say these things…”
“No one can hear us back here.” On his short walks from his cell to the interrogation room and back, he hadn’t passed any occupied rooms or cells, so there was no one around to eavesdrop. He’d heard the hum of generators through layers of walls and locked doors. But whatever they were running on all that power, it wasn’t listening devices or video cameras. Security at this end of the compound, at any rate, was all iron and stone, without one high-tech doodad in sight. “Say what you want. I won’t tell.”
“Is that why they beat you?” she asked, in a soft, hesitant voice. “To get you to tell them things?”
“I won’t tell,” he reiterated, closing the subject. If he could keep Big Sky secrets, he could keep hers, too.
He pressed his nose to the bread’s soft interior and savored the rich aromas. His grandma would have served it slathered in butter or honey or both. But he didn’t feel he’d been deprived of anything when he sank his teeth into the first delicious, crunchy, chewy bite. He moaned in his throat at the first real flavor that had enriched his life since he’d been taken prisoner.
He opened his eyes and sought Tasiya’s gaze. This he could discuss. “You made this?”
She nodded and drifted closer to the bars that separated them. “I am a cook in my home country.”
Bryce took another bite. “You’re a damn good one.”
“Thank you.”
He had to look away and concentrate on the second half of his bread. If she smiled that prettily at one lame compliment from him, just think what she might do if a more charming man plied her with a bunch of the right words. Thoughts of escape, ever present in his consciousness, surged to the front of his mind. How would she respond if he could come up with the right words?
“Anybody give you any grief over doctorin’ up the recipe?”
She wrapped her fingers around the bars and leaned closer. He could see they were long and dexterous fingers, blunt tipped and businesslike in their practical elegance. He could also see she hadn’t quite gotten his question. “I am not sad to do this for you. I enjoy preparing food.”
“No, I meant…” Bryce gave up on that line of discussion. “I appreciate you doin’ it.”
She rested her cheek against the steel bar and smiled again. “You like to eat?”
Two hundred forty pounds of muscle and bulk wasn’t an obvious indication? “It’s one of my favorite pastimes.”
That line of confusion furrowed between her eyebrows.
Pastimes. Yeah, this was goin’ real well. Communication was so not his area of expertise. He rubbed his palm over the scars and stubble of his jaw, searching for a simpler way to rephrase. “My grandma was an excellent cook. I enjoy it when I find food as good as hers.”
“Your grandmother was a cook?” That seemed to interest her.
He nodded. “Not a professional. But we ate better than just about anybody in the Ozarks.”
“The what?” He’d lost her again. “Oze…?”
Yeah, right. Try explaining the bastardization of a French Arcadian word about a tribe of Indians to a woman who spoke whatever Russian dialect it was they spoke in Lukinburg.
Time to change the subject if he was ever going to get this messenger thing to work. He popped the last bite into his mouth and picked up his mug. “So what brings you to this place? Is there some kind of trouble at home you’re trying to get away from? Can’t be much better in this place. I know Fowler doesn’t cotton much to foreigners.”
“Cotton much?”
She shrugged, narrowing her eyes in a quizzical frown. Her stiff, self-conscious posture pulled her sweater taut and thrust the curve of one small breast between the bars. Of course, he had to notice that. Too damned observant for his own good. Look away, Sarge, he warned himself as his blood thickened and pooled behind his zipper as if she was dressed to seduce and that innocent movement had been some sort of intentional come-on.
Closing his eyes to break the spell she seemed to cast over him, Bryce stood up to get his common sense circulating again. “I wouldn’t think he’d want a woman around here.”
“He doesn’t mind if I am serving him.”
Bryce swallowed the last of his water in one long gulp, doubting if Boone Fowler made any distinction between a servant and a woman who was subservient to his needs. “So what does a gig like this pay?”
“Gig.” The line between her eyes deepened. “I do not understand.”
Shaking his head, Bryce turned away. He was getting as frustrated with the language barrier as she was. But, refusing to surrender just because a task was tough, he faced her again. “How much money does he pay you to work for him?”
“Money?”
“You know what money is, right?”
“I know.” Her porcelain cheeks flushed with color. Her eyes were looking everywhere but at him now. “He does not pay me.”
Since he doubted she shared Fowler’s fanatical views on American isolationism, and she wasn’t in it for the money, that left only a handful of reasons why Tasiya could be here—and none of them were good. Bryce moved imperceptibly closer. “Why are you here?”
The question had her so agitated she forgot about keeping her distance from him. “I am paying off a debt.”
He slipped even closer. He could smell the scents of baked bread and spices that clung to her hair and clothes.
He could smell the fear on her, too.
“What do you owe Fowler? What the hell business does he have in Lukinburg?”
She snatched the mug from his grip and spun toward her cart. “I have to go.”
Uh-uh.
“Tasiya.” Bryce reached through the bars and grabbed her wrist.
She jumped at his touch, turned back and tugged and twisted for her freedom. “Let go!”
He wasn’t hurting her, but he needed her to stay and answer the question. “Just hold your horses. Please.”
Then, just as abruptly as a light switch flipping off, she went still and dropped her gaze down to his belly button. Though there was such a determined lack of focus in her eyes that he was sure she wasn’t looking at the abs or the bruises. It was a practiced pose of submission, as if she’d responded that way to a man’s touch a dozen times before.
Ah, hell. He liked this response even less than her eagerness to get away from him.
Bryce’s big hand easily spanned her arm beneath her sleeve. His sensitive fingers noted that her skin was as cool and velvety soft as it looked. And the pulse beating beneath his fingertips raced with a madness that belied her distant, aloof posture.
“Tasiya,” he whispered, giving her arm a gentle nudge. “Look at me.” Long, tense seconds passed before her shoulders lifted with a trembling sigh and she tipped her chin. Curling black tendrils fell away from her pale cheeks as she blinked her eyes into focus. “I’m not going to hurt you. I know it looks like I could, but I wouldn’t do that.”
She tried to latch on to something she saw in his eyes, but couldn’t quite bring herself to make that leap of faith. However, her wide, unadorned lips moved with a succinct articulation that could be understood in any language. “I am not sup
posed to be touched.”
Bryce instantly popped his grip open, releasing her. He took a step back, holding his hands up in apology. He imagined his questioning frown only added a fearsome quality to his concern. “Is that your rule or somebody else’s? I just wanted you to finish the conversation. I wasn’t puttin’ the moves on you.”
She understood that phrase well enough, judging by the sudden color that flushed her cheeks. But she didn’t answer the question. She was suddenly too busy organizing the empty mugs and baskets on her cart and wheeling it around.
“I am sorry. The hour is late. I must clean up and get to bed. They require that I prepare breakfast quite early.” Now that he’d let her go, she’d forced a brightness into her tone and pasted a taut smile on her mouth. But at least she had the guts to look him in the eye as she prattled on. “For Mr. Fowler’s men, unfortunately. I am sorry to mention food when I know you are hungry. I will see what else I can bring you tomorrow. Perhaps a shirt and socks as well. It is cold here at night.”
“Forget all that. Just do me a favor, will ya?”
Man, she was ready to bolt. He suspected years of polite good breeding and fear of drawing more attention to her obvious discomfort were the only things still keeping her here. “If I can.”
“Check on my buddies for me. Jacob Powell. Craig O’Riley. Aidan Campbell. Tell ’em I’m okay—”
She frowned and looked straight at the puffy, fist-size bruise on his rib cage. “But you are not.”
“Tell ’em I’m okay,” he insisted. “Find out how they’re doin’. Just tell ’em Sarge asked.”
“Should I not tell them the truth?”
She could say whatever she wanted, just so long as she got one of them talking. “I’ve been hurt worse than this. Trust me.”
Tasiya paused at those last two words, considering them, and then—though it didn’t surprise him—dismissing them.
“Good night, Bryce Martin.”
And then she was gone. A noisy, graceful wraith with ebony hair, a compassionate heart and a truckload of fear and distrust balanced on her narrow shoulders.