by Julie Miller
She laid her head in her hands and let the tears fall. But for only a minute. There was little allowance for tears in this place. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffed through her stuffy sinuses.
“What did you mean, Papa? My highest regards to your friend.”
He didn’t know Bryce Martin. He’d been trying to tell her something. That he approved of her having feelings for a man he’d never met? Or was it code for something else? Was his rebellion against Dimitri an echo of her defiance against Boone Fowler? Maybe it was his way of giving her his blessing to side with the prisoners instead of the captors she’d been spying on.
“Be safe, Papa,” she prayed. She slipped the basket handle over her arm, calmed her outward appearance with a steadying breath and forced one foot in front of the other.
She just hoped that hadn’t been another man she cared about trying to say goodbye.
“IF I HIT YOU, I get to kiss the pretty lady.”
Bryce perched on the edge of his cot and aimed the crumb of stale bread at his mouse buddy snuffling around in the corner.
He’d created his own version of Bull, the damn dumbest game ever, devised by his former platoon mate and buddy at Big Sky, Jacob Powell. Powell knew a lot about bull, to Bryce’s way of thinking. But the guy’s mouthy sense of humor grew on a fella after a while. His chatter filled a lot of the silences Bryce was known for. Powell’s daredevil ways had caused Bryce more than one headache over the years, but he had to give the guy his props. He knew how to make even the dreariest of nights pass by a little quicker.
And this one was goin’ way too slow.
Tasiya was running late tonight. Or maybe he was just more anxious than usual to see her.
With the steady, chilling rain falling outside, blotting out the moon and stars and muffling the sounds of sentry movement, it was impossible to keep track of the time. He’d had all day to think about what crazy notion she’d get into her head after her vow to help him escape. As much as he appreciated her promise, as much as he could use her help, it had been tearin’ him up inside, worrying that she’d gotten caught where she shouldn’t be. Maybe tossed into a cell herself. Interrogated by Marcus Smith.
Or something unspeakably worse.
“C’mon, mousie.” He had to get rid of those waking morbid thoughts that haunted him every bit as much as his nightmares. “Ready, aim…” He closed one eye and chucked the bread.
Normally the game involved a dart board, a stupid dare and a lot of macho bravado. Hit the bull’s-eye and everything was cool—miss and you had to pay up.
“Damn.” He was payin’ up tonight.
Now he had no excuse, lame or otherwise, to put his hands on Tasiya. It was tough to swallow, though he knew it was for the best. The sparks flyin’ between them were definitely more than comradeship. But it wasn’t a romance. It wasn’t goin’ nowhere—relationships with him never did. This was some gratitude-turned-attraction thing that had gotten out of hand because of these crazy circumstances. Shared danger, close quarters, lonely nights—they could play with a person’s mind and make him or her think things were real that weren’t.
In the real world a woman as kind and gorgeous and resourceful as Tasiya would be beatin’ handsome, sociable—normal—men off with a stick. Away from all this, she’d see him for the scarred slow-talkin’ hick he was, and move on to somethin’ better.
Nah, it was just as well that he’d lost the bull game. It was harder to concentrate on business when Tasiya was around. And the hard truth of it was that, outside these bars, business was all he was good at. He was just askin’ for trouble if he couldn’t remember that. Better to distance himself now, so that soft spot inside him wouldn’t be payin’ an even heavier price later.
At least his mouse buddy would get some dinner. The mouse stuffed the crumb into his twitching cheek, climbed up the wall and disappeared through the window to dine al fresco in the rain. Bryce and his roommate were gettin’ to be regular pals now. Maybe he could tie a note around the mouse’s neck and teach it to swim. He hadn’t come up with any other brainstorms yet on how he could contact Colonel Murphy at Big Sky to put together a rescue.
“Bryce Martin.”
Bryce jumped inside his skin at the hushed call of Tasiya’s voice. How the hell…? When was the last time anybody had gotten the drop on him? Just went to prove how his useless feelings for her were messin’ with his head. But, showing no outward sign of being startled, Bryce set aside the little do-it-yourself project he’d been tinkering with and rose to meet her.
“Evenin’.” This little exercise in control was good for him. It’d help keep him centered and focused on the job instead of the woman. He turned toward the ribbons of light and shadow in the passageway and saw why she’d been able to sneak up on him without a peep. “Where’s your cart?”
Though she’d visited him late at night without the clanking metal monstrosity, she’d always used it to deliver dinner rations to the prisoners. Bryce squeezed the chain between his wrists in uneasy fists. That wasn’t the only thing different tonight.
There was a jerky awkwardness to her normally capable hands as she unlocked the cage, without prepping his bread and water first. “Too noisy. I make basket.”
Her broken English was another clue that something was wrong. His gaze slid to the woven grass basket on the floor, then back up to her red-rimmed eyes. An unwise need to make whatever was wrong right for her again simmered in his veins. “Tasiya?”
She knelt in front of him to unhook his leg irons, and he jerked the chain between his wrists, battling the urge to pull her back to her feet. “Honey, talk to me.”
Dammit. No honeys. No touching. He could keep her safer, do her more good, if he focused on the job, not her. But she was pressin’ her lips together so hard, Bryce worried she might bite through them. “What happened?”
She had difficulty getting the key to fit his wrist manacles. But before he could help, she’d yanked them off and dropped them where she stood. Then she fisted her hands in the front of his shirt and tugged him forward, burying her nose in the open collar at his neck. “Hold me, please. Just…hold me.”
Jeez, Louise. Her cheek was cold as an ice cube against his chest. And if that stuttery hesitation was a sob, he was in real trouble. “Tasiya?”
And then he felt the heated moisture singeing his collarbone. Hell. She was cryin.’
So much for keepin’ his distance.
Bryce closed his arms around her and gathered her as close as he dared without crushing her. He dipped his nose into the silky crown of her hair and rocked her back and forth, soothing her the best way he knew how.
“Hush, honey,” he whispered, absorbing her distress through every fiber in his body. “Nothin’s this bad, is it?”
Her hands slipped beneath his shirt, headed around his waist. His skin caught fire at the frantic touches, and he didn’t think he’d even mind if she accidentally grasped the welts on his back. But with something like a curse in her throat, she pulled her hands back between their bodies and snuggled impossibly closer.
Damn. Boone Fowler had pulled another gun on her. Marcus Smith had put his hands on her. Bryce rubbed big, frictional circles up and down her spine, as much for his own comfort as hers, as his imagination took off and pictured a dozen ugly things that could have gone wrong in this place.
“Don’t stop talkin’ now. Did somebody hurt you? You gotta tell me what happened.”
“My father. I think…” Her noisy sniffle was followed by a quiet sob that vibrated through her entire body and made mush of any effort at emotional detachment. “He might be dead.”
His hands stilled their massage. “You never mentioned your daddy before.”
“I heard a gun on the phone. He was trying to tell me something.” Gun? Phone? Father? This nut-house had just added a new dimension of craziness. “There is a chance he is all right. But I have no way of knowing until tomorrow night.”
He went with the flow
of conversation, still not quite sure of the problem. “What’s tomorrow night?”
Instead of answering, she crushed his collar in her fingers and turned her nose into the crook between his neck and shoulder. He had a feelin’ if he wasn’t so beat up, she’d be huggin’ him good and tight. He reckoned her consideration of his injuries was a good sign. That meant she was thinkin’ clearly. Or it could just mean she was thinkin’ about pullin’ away.
Bryce wasn’t ready for that yet.
He backed up until his thighs hit the edge of the cot. Then he sat down and pulled her between his legs into his lap. “C’mon, honey. Tell me what this is all about.” He smoothed aside the curls that stuck to her damp skin and palmed her cheek, letting his fingers massage her nape, holding her as close as she was willin’ to be. “You know you want to. I’ve never met a woman who enjoyed talkin’ as much as you do.”
She made a sound that was half sniffle, half laugh, and the music of it eased Bryce’s worry a fraction. She pushed herself up in his lap and threw her arms around his neck. Now she was holdin’ on. “How can you have such a big heart after everything that has been done to you? I do not think I can be so strong.”
He was less aware of the pinches of pain on his upper back than of the supple hip wedged squarely against his groin. Who was he kiddin’? With Tasiya in his arms, sayin’ sweet things and squeezin’ up against him like she didn’t want to be anywhere else, Bryce finally admitted he’d made the supreme tactical error.
He’d let his guard down. He’d started to care.
He would put his life on the line for this woman. He’d give her whatever she needed or wanted from him.
Anything.
Despite the fact his heart was gonna get ripped up one way or another, he couldn’t help the way he felt about her.
She might give him a couple of weeks out of gratitude, like Maria had back in San Ysidro. But then she’d go home to Lukinburg and forget all about the beast who’d befriended her. More likely, she’d reject him once she got a good, hard look at him in the outside world. Or she’d die in this damn hole. No. Hell, no. That option he wouldn’t allow.
Leaning back enough to put some space between them, Bryce studied the cautious faith shining in her eyes and then captured her mouth in a quick, sweet kiss. He wasn’t sure if that was for her benefit or his own. But it startled some healthy color back into her cheeks and sealed his silent vow to keep her safe.
“We’re as strong as we need to be, Tasiya. My grandpa used to tell me that when I was growin’ up. You’ll find whatever you need inside you.”
“That’s how I got through losin’ my folks when I was a kid.” He shoved up his left sleeve. “A lot of these scars come from that. My colonel reminded me of my strength and helped me get through months in the hospital, after a minefield exploded on me.”
“The rest of the scars?”
He nodded.
“You found the strength to stand up to the beatings here, too,” she whispered.
“Yep.”
That answer earned the glimmer of a smile. “And you think I have such a spirit inside me?”
“I know you do.” He picked her up off his lap and set her on the cot beside him. Then he reached for her keys. “May I?”
She quickly pulled them from her wrist and handed them over in an extraordinary gesture of trust he didn’t intend to betray again. “Where are you going?”
“Not far.” Bryce checked the passageway, then unlocked the door and picked up her basket. He poured a cup of water, dabbed the corner of a napkin in it and sat beside her to wipe away the crystallized tears that had dried on her cheeks. “Now, tell me about your daddy.”
He pushed the cup into her hands and watched her take a drink before answering. She stared down into the water, and Bryce wondered if she was searching for words or doin’ the I’m-not-good-enough-to-look-you-in-the-eye routine again. “You will think less of me.”
He nudged her gaze back up to eye level. “Try me.”
She handed him the cup and insisted he drink and eat first. He knew it was a stall, but he gave her the time she needed. He was licking the crumbs from his fingers before she spoke again. “Several nights ago you asked me why I was here. In America.”
“You said you were workin’ off a debt.”
“It is not my debt.”
He picked up the crude radio he’d been working on and started to tinker with it. He was pretty much to the point where all he needed was a power source to activate it, but his hands needed the distraction to keep from reachin’ for her again. “I know you’re not here voluntarily. What does Fowler have on you?”
Tasiya hesitated, watching him wire a battery port behind the walkie-talkie transceiver that would hopefully allow him to send and receive messages, at least over a short distance. He could see her curiosity about his work, but she didn’t ask. “I am the payment. From a man in my country. I am the militia’s reward for capturing you.”
Bryce nearly snapped the plastic housing in two. “Reward?”
No wonder Smith couldn’t keep his grubby paws off her. The security chief thought she was some kind of toy who’d been sent for him to play with. But Fowler preached ethnic and nationalistic purity. He wouldn’t allow Tasiya to prostitute herself with his men. But then, he had the marks on his back to prove that Smith didn’t always follow orders.
Oh, man, he was practically shaking with anger and self-loathing. “You mean you’re only here because we were too damn careless and got ourselves captured?”
He jumped when her fingers brushed across the back of his tight, white knuckles. But like he’d told her, she was stronger than she gave herself credit for. When he would have pulled away, she laced their fingers together. Needing the tender reassurance more than he could have imagined, he turned his hand, holding hers, palm to palm.
“The only reason my father is alive—” her whisper was muted by the dulling heaviness of the rain “—is that you are here. If men like you were not fighting for your beliefs about freedom, he would have been shot dead in the street in front of our house.”
Bryce’s guilt over her being used abated as she revealed the unfortunate kindred spirit they shared. Like him, she was no stranger to tragedy.
Sensing his newfound calm, Tasiya continued. “This man—his name is Dimitri Mostek.”
“I know that name.”
“He is our minister of finance. He is in the news sometimes.” He’d more likely read the name in a few intel reports. Suspected terrorist? Foreign crime syndicate? Tasiya spelled it out. “Dimitri is holding my father prisoner. My father is an accountant. He took some money from Dimitri—we were so poor.” She shrugged it off as if the poverty didn’t matter. But her devotion to her father was clear. “To spare my father’s life, I agreed to work for Boone Fowler. I have been spying for Dimitri and the man he works for, telling him everything Fowler and his men say or do. I have a special phone to call every night and make a report.”
“Why would someone in Lukinburg—”
“They are funding the militia.”
Bryce turned and saw the truth shining in her coffee-colored eyes. “Terrorists in your country are paying Boone Fowler to commit acts of terror here in the U.S.?”
“They are hoping Mr. Fowler can keep UN troops out of Lukinburg. Dimitri and his people are very powerful and very rich. They would like to keep it that way.”
Snatching the napkin in her lap and wadding it up, Bryce rose and put away the cup and pitcher in the sturdy basket she’d brought, waiting on her the way she’d taken care of him for so many nights. “And they stuck you in the middle of all this?”
“I volunteered.”
“You were coerced.”
The frown between her eyes told him she didn’t get the word. “They didn’t give you any choice,” he explained.
“I could have let Dimitri kill my father. He wants me to become his mistress, and would have let Papa go if I had agreed to that. When I return to Lukinb
urg, that will be the condition for Papa’s freedom.”
“This just gets better and better.”
“It is not a good—”
He put up a hand to stop her confusion. “Sarcasm. I mean it doesn’t sound like it could get much worse.”
But it could. Ah, hell. He could read it in her tightly pressed lips. “There is someone else more powerful, a man even Dimitri fears. He is the one who ordered me to spy here.”
Bryce squeezed his fist around the basket’s handle as he set it on the cot beside her. Was she talking about The Puppet Master? The ultimate terrorist who’d masterminded prison escapes, sabotaged trains, organized kidnappings and murders? The man whose unknown identity kept him more than one step ahead of military authorities and a team of bounty hunters who wanted him behind bars? “Who does Mostek report to?”
“I do not know his name. It is only an angry voice I have overheard on the phone. He speaks our native language. King Aleksandr, perhaps?”
It wouldn’t be the first time Big Sky had suspected the king of being The Puppet Master.
But there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do with this information from here. Bryce had to get back to thoughts of escape and the reason Tasiya had started this confession in the first place. Moving the basket to his lap, he sat beside her again. “So what happened during your phone call tonight?”
She took a deep breath and matched his gaze. “I was telling my father I intended to help you and the other prisoners. He gave me his blessing, I believe—Dimitri does not know what we were discussing,” she reassured him, “Papa was speaking in code.
“Dimitri wanted Papa to hang up. But he wouldn’t and…” Her eyes squeezed shut, and Bryce almost reached for her before the tears started again. But she forced them open and he stayed put. “I heard the sound of a gun—the clicking, not an actual shot.”
“He loaded a bullet into the firing chamber.”
She nodded. How sad that she recognized that lethal sound. “And then we were disconnected. I do not know if he shot Papa.”
Bryce breathed a little easier now that he understood what had upset her. He couldn’t tell her everything would be okay, but he did know a thing or two about the criminal mind and how thugs like Dimitri Mostek worked.