She loved him.
Even as the mind-numbing aftershocks continued to pummel into her, she knew it was true. Finally. For ten long years she’d managed to convince herself that what she felt for the man standing across this darkened room with his back to her, staring out that window, was infatuation. Even during this past year, ever since that murder-for-hire case had forced them to pose as man and wife, she’d still managed to avoid the truth, chalking up this familiar feeling in her heart to a searing case of lust. It was both. And neither. It was love.
And maybe, just maybe, he’d hung around so long, not because of her father…but because he was in love with her, too. Oh, God, she hoped so. Prayed so. The mere thought made her knees tremble, her stomach churn. But she had to know. Tonight. Now. Before they walked out of here and into that barn. She needed to know if Jack loved her, too. She crossed the floor silently as the smoke from his third drag filled his lungs and then the room, reaching out to close her hand over his as he brought the cigarette back for a fourth.
“You don’t smoke.”
He stood there for a moment, silent amid the music still blaring out across the room. Still staring out the window at the barn. At C’emal, who was doing his best not to pace as the man waited for his lover to finish her chores so he and Zorah could leave…and she and Jack could begin.
He finally sighed and turned. “We have to talk.”
She nodded. He was right, they did. He opened his mouth, but instead of words coming out, his sigh filled the space between them. She waited as he shook his head and crossed the room, recognizing the distance he was putting between them for what it was and not some concern about his status as a guest who cleaned up after himself as he stopped at the nightstand to grind the cigarette out in the ashtray. He retrieved his Beretta, released the clip and checked it before slapping it home. Then he just stood there and stared at it.
Maybe she should say it first? God knows she’d made this hard enough on him as it was. She stepped out to follow him, only to halt as he finally spoke.
“Dani…if I don’t make it toni—”
“No.” She shook her head as she stepped out again, grabbing his hands as she reached him, clamping his fingers into the cold steel of the Beretta’s barrel. “Don’t start like that. Start any other way. Just don’t start like that.”
“Dammit, just listen to me.”
She dropped her hands. Swallowed hard. “Okay.”
He sucked in his breath. “If something happens to me tonight, I want you to promise me—” He broke off. Drew in another breath, this one deeper. “I need you to promise me…”
What, dammit? That she’d remember he loved her? That she’d move on, find someone else? Bull. She’d do neither. Nor could she do this. She could not stand here and look into that expression on this man’s face. She’d rather go another round with Youssef than stare into that torture. She opened her mouth, took a deep breath, and said it for them.
“Jack, I—l—”
“Promise me you’ll talk to your father.”
What?
She blinked. Waited through an entire verse of that god-awful folk song until, finally, somehow, she managed to speak. “Tell me you didn’t just ask me what I think you did.”
But he nodded.
She stood there, for what seemed like eons as she struggled to absorb the blow. The heart-wrenching disappointment. The iron fist of truth. Memories slammed into her. The past, the present. A future she was so stupid to believe could ever be. Just like that, she was sixteen and yet twenty-six, standing in front of both those doors at the exact same time. Listening to both those men. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to slug the man standing in front of her for daring to make her dream. But most of all, she just wanted to curl up into a ball. In the end, she just did what she’d always done. She turned away. Only this time, he knew she was there—and he stopped her.
She whirled around, wrenching her arm from his. “Don’t.”
“I have to. honey, you don’t understand—”
“Oh, I understand. You’re still doing his dirty work.”
She could make out the fire smoldering within his gaze, despite the dark. “Wrong, I’m trying to help.”
“Well, guess what? We don’t need help. I don’t need it. Neither does he. Hell, he doesn’t even love me. I’ve known that from the time I was twelve. One day, the man just shut down. I guess I must have used him up because all I’ve gotten from good ol’ Daddy Dearest since is ice-cold silence. You, on the other hand, got to become the surrogate son. The Chosen One. You got to go fishing with my father, have dinner at his house any damned day you wanted, gather his professional pearls of wisdom. And, of course, you got to hear firsthand how I never belonged in his man’s Army and how I never would.” With that she spun around. But again, Jack grabbed her. This time, with both arms. And this time, when he twirled her around, she couldn’t break loose.
Damn him. Damn the both of them. She renewed her struggle with a vengeance.
“Stop. Dani, just listen to me for once instead of shutting down. And quit running away. The two of you are so alike it’s not even funny. There are things you don’t know. Things I didn’t know, let alone understand until last month. Until this week—this case. But I know now. I understand. But that’s not enough. You need to understand. All I want you to do is promise me you’ll talk to him. Ask him about your mother.”
Her mother?
Just like that, the fury she’d held on to for so long with this man—that she’d been using to shield herself from him—just shattered. Rippling fear replaced it. She couldn’t explain, let alone understand the chill that slithered down her spine before snaking into her belly—simply because he’d mentioned her mother. And when the frustration bled out of Jack’s gaze, and the fear slid into him, she wasn’t sure she wanted to explain it. She had no idea what to say, so she just said the obvious. “Jack, my mother was killed when I was three. I barely remember her.”
“I know.”
He did. She’d told him in that café. She’d described her one and only memory of her mom. A hug. And then she told him how her mom got into her car and came home in a box. “Then what are you trying not to say? Please, I want you to be the one to tell me, not my dad. What do you suddenly understand?” Instead of answering, he released her wrists. He cupped her face, the torture locking back into his gaze as he smoothed his fingers over the bruises he’d gently kissed one by one on that bed not more than twenty minutes ago. “Jack, please. You started this, now finish it. Tell me what my mother’s murder has to do with my father and me.”
“Everything.”
She opened her mouth—and froze instead. So did he.
The door! She hadn’t so much as heard the tentative knock over the music, as felt it. And then she saw them. The keys. Whether she wanted it to be or not, their conversation was over.
Because it was time.
The howitzer was in the barn. She could sense it.
They both could. Dani waited until Jack slid the door shut before she risked turning on his red-filtered mini Maglite. A moment later, he slipped the flashlight from her hand and snagged her elbow, drawing her along with him as he took off across the moldy straw. Even without the red illuminating their path, the acrid stench of gunpowder and diesel would have led them right to the roughly 25-foot-by-10-foot artillery piece. Though slightly narrower in girth than a tank, the howitzer’s massive, towering gun barrel hung over the front of the tracked wheels by another ten feet, forcing Rurik to run the rear scooped stabilizer almost flush with the back of the barn.
Dani stopped with Jack as he swept the scarlet wash in front of the metal beast and pointed. “There. To the left of the gun barrel, at the base of that narrow door.”
She saw them. Nine bags of pre-measured gunpowder, the size and shape of one-pound coffee cans. But it was the two-by-four-foot wooden crate behind the pyramid that held their attention.
“Here.”
&nbs
p; She took the flashlight from Jack’s hand as he hunkered down, bathing the oversized bullet with red as Jack removed the lid. Unfortunately, she couldn’t make out the colored band near the base of the round. Jack flicked his gaze to hers. The tension that’d been winding through her gut ever since that unfinished conversation in the bedroom five minutes earlier fisted tighter as he shook his head.
“I can’t tell, either. We need white light.”
Great. She wasted precious seconds unscrewing the filter from the flashlight, then flashed the Mag again. A split second was all it took for both of them to blanch—and curse.
“It’s a nuke.”
Jack nodded as he stood. He took the flashlight from her and quickly reattached the filter before pressing the lighter as well as his switchblade into her palms. He kept his Swiss Army knife for himself. “Go see if you can crack the track’s control panel open and disable the battery. I’ll take the warhead.”
“You sure you know how?”
“In theory, yeah. In practice?” His grin flashed amid the red light washing the scruff covering his cheeks and jaw. “We’re about to find out, aren’t we?”
Or not.
They must have heard it—or rather them—at the same moment because he grabbed her arm, hauling her with him as he spun around. A split second later, light flooded the barn, blinding them. By the time they’d blinked off the effects, Rurik stood ten feet away, just under the howitzer’s barrel, the phony cross still hanging around his neck. Youssef stood several feet to the right, Zorah in his arms…and a Makarov pistol to the woman’s head. One look at the agony in her brown eyes and Dani no longer wondered where C’emal was. It didn’t matter. The guard was dead.
While her heart and nerves were still screaming in concert, Jack had already reverted back to cool. He reached down and casually shifted his hand behind him, retrieving the switchblade from her fingers. She clamped down on the lighter as he tucked the blade into his back pocket and spoke, “I guess this means Isha Du’a has been canceled for the night, eh?”
Rurik laughed. Youssef scowled.
Zorah all but fainted. “I am sorry, Dani. I tried to warn you with the knock. They—” She received a vicious knock of her own for her efforts, compliments of the pummel master himself.
Dani stepped forward without thinking—only to run smack into Jack’s torso as he shifted to block her path. She took the hint and pulled herself together. Jack, meanwhile, capitalized on her mistake, slipping the sealed pack of cigarettes into her fingers. She hadn’t even realized he’d palmed it from his pocket. He shifted again, covering her movements as he nodded to Youssef. “I see you’re still hiding behind a woman’s skirt.”
The man stiffened. “Neist!”
“Silence!” Rurik smoothed out his scowl as he faced Jack. “And you, my friend, be careful. I do not need you anymore.”
“You never did.”
That decaying grin spread wider. “Very good. Correct, as well. But when you stumbled across my path, I could not turn down the opportunity. I should thank you. Your sacrifice will ensure my name is exalted all the more long after you and I—and naturally, all of Sarajevo—have passed from this earth.”
“But why, brother? Why kill so many? Your own people now?” Dani winced as the pummel master rewarded Zorah’s impertinence with a harder whack. They wore matching split lips now.
“Dammit, leave her alone!”
Rurik ignored his sister—herself too, continuing to focus on Jack. “You know why.”
Jack kept his gaze on Rurik as he nodded, but he answered Zorah. “Your brother hopes to unite the Muslim world. He thinks if he murders half a million Muslims and makes it look like a Catholic Croat and an American soldier are to blame, that ought to do the trick. Maybe even kick off World War Three.” They both even knew why the man had been careful to keep up his slave trade until the bitter end—so he wouldn’t arouse suspicion.
For an insanely calculating monster, Rurik’s shrug was remarkably sheepish. “A lofty goal, yes.”
But one that might come to pass…since Dani couldn’t seem to get the pack open. The irony of fumbling around with a pack of cigarettes six inches from Jack while trying to look cool about it bit into her. But this time, he wasn’t about to lean over and snag it from her hands and help her out. Relief seared though her as she finally located the tail of the plastic strip embedded in the cellophane. She peeled it off and wrenched the pack open, shoving her right fingers into the box to feel around for the switch as Jack shifted to maintain his block on Rurik’s view. She was almost there when—
“You stupid, bitch!” Youssef dragged Zorah with him by her braid as he vaulted towards her. Before Dani could blink, he had his free hand locked to her wrist. “What are you doing?”
She blushed as Jack turned and settled his cool gaze on the pack and lighter in her hands. She went with her jangled nerves, used them to make her stammer real. “I—I need a s-smoke.” She welcomed the downright amused brow that followed. The one that asked, Now? It succeeded in firing the temperature in her neck to roasting—and let him know that, no, she had not had a chance to throw the switch. “Sorry. I guess I’m a little nervous.”
“Hell, Rurik. Let her have one. I could use one myself. ’Specially since it’ll be the last smoke and all.” He pointed his chin toward the far side of the howitzer. “We should probably take it over there, though. Away from the powder.”
Rurik’s grin should have startled her, but it didn’t. He really should have melted that cross down and capped those teeth a long time ago. “A last cigarette to go with the last screw? To repay the debt for a careless bullet in Mostar?”
Jack held the man’s gaze. “You gonna have another chance?”
His grin actually split wider. “Why not? It will take ten minutes to ready the weapon. I have always said you should take your pleasure when and where you can. The when is now and the where must be within my sight, not the shadows. But first, your pistol if you will…and that blade you like to carry.” Rurik waited as Jack tossed his Beretta and switchblade over. The man pocketed both, then waved Youssef off. “Remember, my friend, the smoke and pleasure only. For old time’s sake. Your last supper, if you will. You and I both know an accidental fire will prevent nothing. Farid assures me the warhead will still explode. The damage may not be as great, true—” He shrugged. “But the end result will be the same. My goal will be met.”
Jack nodded as he slipped a cigarette from the pack along with the silver lighter from her hands. He nudged her toward the center of the barn, beneath the howitzer’s massive barrel, careful to keep his body between Rurik and Youssef as he stopped to light the cigarette. The scarlet tip glowed as he inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in his lungs long enough for her to locate the emergency transmitter and throw the switch.
Rurik was wrong. They didn’t have ten minutes. They now had five. She hoped. Dani forced herself not to cough as Jack’s smoky breath filled the air between them as he bent to fondle her bottom while he pretended to kiss and nuzzle her neck.
“If we have to, we torch the straw.”
She knew what he was asking. Was she with him? It was 500,000 innocent residents of Sarajevo—Muslim and scattered Christians alike—or it was the five of them. This barn. And, if they were lucky, 100,000 of those citizens. Rurik was right, a fire would engulf the warhead along with the bags of gunpowder and ignite both. A split second later, there’d be nothing but a five-mile-wide crater where the barn should be. But enough of Sarajevo and her citizens would be safe to make it worth it.
“Okay.” She clenched her fingers around the lighter, hiding it as Jack tugged her T-shirt out of her jeans. She couldn’t help it, she flinched. Surely, he didn’t actually intend to—
His breath filled her ear. “Relax. Work with me, honey.” A moment later, smoke filled her lungs as he brought the cigarette to her mouth. Piercingly aware of their audience, she let him slip the end between her lips. She’d never know how she managed not to wheeze
and choke as the smoke seared into her mouth and lungs, then out. But she did. Jack leaned down to capture the remaining puff along with her grimace with his mouth.
The kiss was pure ash at first, nasty and stifling, but then it was all Jack. Dark, heady and very smooth. Just as he had on that narrow bed he took his sweet time, delving deep inside her mouth as the howitzer’s diesel engine fired to life behind them—his slow, languid kiss matching the sluggish churn of the track’s internal hydraulic system as it turned over and warmed the pressurized oil needed to raise and aim the massive barrel. She was dimly aware of Jack switching the cigarette to his left hand as he worked her belt with his right.
No, not her belt. His. The knife concealed within. She forced herself to do as he’d asked, dragging her hands to his waist as Jack deepened the kiss and groaned loud enough for the Bosnian bastard now leering two feet away to hear.
“I should have charged you more, I think.”
Jack ignored Rurik, working the buckle loose as they continued to kiss. Her fingers finally cooperated with her brain and she managed to unbuckle his as well. She started in on the buttons beneath, praying he’d hurry up and get to that damned knife before she got to him. They reached their respective prizes at the same moment. His buttons now undone, she held his pants up for him as Jack slid the knife from its sheath with his right hand, still kissing and caressing her with his left.
His left? Then where was the cigarette?
And then she smelled it.
“Fire!” The shout ripped out across the barn as Youssef jerked the Makarov from behind Zorah’s disheveled back. That was as far as the thug got. A split second later, the blade that’d been in her belt speared the man directly above his left eye—piercing Youssef’s skull to plunge deep into his brain. He didn’t even scream. He simply fell, any thud masked by the howitzer’s engine still growling behind them. She spun around to help Jack take out Rurik. She didn’t get the chance.
An Unconditional Surrender (In Love and War Anthology) Page 9