by Olivia Gates
She interrupted. “And once they’re desperate, it will get really ugly?”
“Probably. But this isn’t the damage he’s counting on. He mentioned something spectacular, alluded to how he controls the situation, and will detonate it when he deems it appropriate. I believe he has someone on the outside ready with a remote-control detonator.”
Gulnar looked at their captors, cross-referencing his new information with what she’d gathered on her own. “They’ve been saying that the security forces outside can’t help us—when the times comes we’ll all be destroyed. At the time I thought they meant that they intend to go down for their cause, taking everyone with them.”
“That’s what Molokai intends to say when no one is left to talk. He intends to claim that his valiant warriors have laid their lives down for their cause. But I’ve learned from long service in chronic conflict areas that so-called suicide mission volunteers are invariably both conned and doped. Look at their eyes. They are addicts without even realizing it.”
Gulnar’s eyes followed his line of vision. “I’ve always wondered about that. And they have been smoking and snorting stuff.”
“Drugs are spread throughout most rebel armies, touted as uppers and stamina boosters. The leaders enhance their men’s malleability and subjugation with mental manipulation. Vengeful against a faceless enemy they’ve been bred to hate and coveting a higher status within their outfit are mixed with the inescapable chemical dependence to make the perfect mindless killing machine. They have no clue they’re like thousands before them, just pawns who’ll be used to spread chaos, then be disposed of.”
He saw the certainty of doom sinking into her. None of the desperation, anger or horror were for herself. Her eyes didn’t fix on him with an entreaty to choose her as one of the lucky two he’d save.
Not even momentarily to clamor for a chance to survive? Someone in the bloom of youth and beauty? How could she not have a shred of fear, an unreasoning desire to cling to life? It was inconceivable!
But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she had someone here she would place far above her own life—without hesitation. A lover, perhaps.
His heart closed on a grating sensation. Disappointment? Bitterness? That Gulnar would die for another when Roxanne hadn’t even been able to bear discomfort on his behalf?
But it wasn’t bitterness. Roxanne, his family, everything and everyone in his past were long insubstantial, non-existent. None had a bearing on the present, on this moment. Gulnar filled those. A soul like he’d never encountered, one he had to preserve at any cost. He grasped her arm, urgency and a hundred other conflicting emotions boiling over inside him. “Gulnar, I want you to rise now, slowly, then we’ll walk out of here together.”
She pulled her arm back, slow, adamant. “I had a feeling you’d say that. Thank you, but, no, Dr. Dante. Save two of the injured.”
He grabbed her arm again, pulled her towards him, kept her in place when she would have pulled back once more. “What makes them any more worthy of rescue than you?”
Her eyes squeezed shut. When she opened them again they were decided. Serene. “OK, so whomever you decide to save, the decision is skewed and the whole thing is just too macabre. But I don’t want to be the one you rescue. I’d rather someone else survived this. I’ll take my chances with the rest. If we’re to die, as you said, maybe it’s now my time.”
“It isn’t your time.”
“How do you know that? It’s not death but more abuse and torture that I’m afraid of. Save someone else.”
He let go of her arm. He just had to press both hands to his head before it exploded with impotence and frustration and futility. “I want to save you all…”
“But you can’t. And there’s no telling when Molokai will detonate the explosives. So get out of here now, while you at least and two of your choice still can. This is a catastrophe and whatever you salvage out of it is better than nothing. Don’t tempt fate any more.”
So she understood how much he’d already tempted fate. Her insight was astonishing. The insight of someone who’d done her share of fate-tempting?
He had walked into the rebels’ territory, expecting to be gunned down at any moment. When he’d reached Molokai in one piece, he’d just let him have his undiluted disparagement. He’d thought it would be the last thing he did.
Still, his gamble had paid off and it had gotten him here. And here he was, doing what he lived to do, giving people solace and reprieve, easing their pain and their degradation.
It was no longer enough. He couldn’t do what he thought he had to. He, too, had thought two lives saved were better than none. But now he’d seen those people, now he’d tasted their desperation and resignation, now he’d touched Gulnar’s life and power and selflessness, he knew he’d been wrong to settle for what he had, to bargain with the devil.
He wouldn’t any more.
Decided, he sighed, drew Gulnar’s swaying body into the curve of his. She flowed into him with no hesitation, burrowed deep. Hunger for access to her, for a connection, rose inside him like a tidal wave. He took her lips fiercely in brief, deep communion.
She didn’t have a lover. He just knew it. She wouldn’t fit into his flesh, merge with his fervor like this with an existing connection occupying her heart and tethering her senses. His heart lifted with the conviction.
How weird. To feel so upbeat at a time like this. When in a few minutes they’d probably all be dead.
CHAPTER FOUR
“ARE you ready to die, Gulnar?”
Gulnar’s lips vibrated with Dante’s words. Then her mind echoed with them.
Are you ready to die are you ready to die are you ready…?
She couldn’t have heard right, could she? His words had mixed with their harsh breathing, her booming heartbeats. He couldn’t have said that. Asked that.
But if he had, what did he mean? Was he saying goodbye? Or could he…?
Suspicion turned to conviction in a heartbeat. Terrible and insupportable, it cascaded through her, lurched her away from him. She had to read his intentions.
But she couldn’t. She found herself gasping for their connection, for his breath. Horror, suspicion, the militants—nothing mattered. Resistance and caution were non-existent. She pressed back into the safest place she’d ever been. Him.
Yes. Whatever he meant. Yes. As long as he was here, she was ready to die.
Then he was no longer here, jerking away from her. Separation jolted through her, harder this time. A militant’s heavy hand had landed on Dante’s shoulder, pulling him away, ranting at him that he’d done what he’d come to do, to just wrap up and get out.
Gulnar’s blood stopped in her veins at Dante’s expression. Just do what he says. Just get out. It wouldn’t take much now to drive the militant to defy his leader’s orders, to negate Dante’s special status. It would take far less than what Dante intended to do.
But maybe her suspicions were invalid. Maybe she’d superimposed her fears and a far-fetched meaning on his words.
His next words told her she hadn’t. “Listen to me, Gulnar. I am this situation’s last chance of resolution in something less than total loss. I have the best chance of doing something without being shot down on the spot. While their orders not to harm me still hold, I have to act.”
God, no. He did mean to do something suicidal. Her cry for him to save himself was aborted by a harsher knowledge. His mind was made up. There was no changing it. Words scraped her on their way out. “What do you think you can do?”
“Anything is better than nothing.”
“And two lives are better than nothing! Don’t be crazy.”
“I was crazy to even consider honoring that sadistic agreement. Two lives are not better than nothing, Gulnar. This way that monster makes me an accomplice in everyone else’s deaths. It isn’t happening. Everyone here gets an equal chance to survive. Or not. I can’t—I won’t choose.” He cupped her cheek in his large palm, contained her agitation. She turned
her face into it, her lips, drank deep of his conviction. “Will you help me, bella mia? I wouldn’t have asked if you haven’t already said you were unafraid, even willing to die. Now, if we do…”
She clung to his arms. He just had to listen to reason. He had to! “We don’t have to do anything. You can walk out of here. Please, Dante…”
“No more Dr. Dante?”
“Oh, give me a break.”
He pulled back, his black eyes devoid of intensity, obsidian wells of serenity, a tinge of almost-humor deepening their beauty. He continued as if she hadn’t interrupted him. “If we do die, it will count for something, because we’d go out as fighters, not victims, and we’d probably end up saving far more than two lives. What do you say?”
So simple. So calm. As if he was asking her to take a ride with him, a ride with a very pleasant surprise at the end. What a man.
Oh, why hadn’t she met him before? Why did she have to meet him now? Find out that he existed just a couple of hours before they had to die?
The possibility of violent, irrevocable loss had always been a fact of her life. She never got close, never let anyone close, expecting people to go away, to die or worse. Expecting herself to.
But she would have made an exception for Dante. She wouldn’t have cared how soon he would have disappeared from her life. Or how. She would have taken her fill of him, fulfilled all fantasies, assuaged all hunger, if she’d only had a day with him. But she didn’t have a day. Not even an hour.
She’d have nothing of him!
No! She’d already had. A lot. He’d given her so much. Much more than she had ever had. Solace. Strength. Wonder. Affirmation. And he would now give her the ultimate gift. He wouldn’t leave her to die alone.
If she had to go, what better way to go than with him by her side?
She willed her lips to move in answering resolve and lightness. Anything seemed possible with him there, seemed worth it. Anything at all. And then some.
“So do we just charge them or do you have a plan?”
“I have a plan.” He paused, his lips twisting. “Sort of.”
“Reassuring!”
His lips spread in a smile. “It’s still forming as we speak. Feel free to make amendments and suggestions. Here it is. We load all the Valium we have into syringes. Then I’ll pretend that I have decided to leave. You will translate for me that I have chosen you and that guy over there to take with me.”
Her heart picked up, sensing an emerging significance. “Anyan?”
“If that’s his name. He’s unable to move on his own and he’s big enough that it’ll take three men to carry him to the door for me.”
It probably would. “What if they get suspicious? Ask why him specifically?”
He frowned. “You can say he means a lot to you—or something!”
Oh? “But will they believe me? I haven’t come near him ever since I splinted his fractures.”
His frown deepened. “You’ve been busy trying to tend to everyone’s injuries. You are a nurse after all.”
“I see. OK. And then?”
“You and I will hover around them, pretending to help, and while they struggle to lift him we will stick the Valium syringes into them.”
Then it would all hit the fan. “And when they shout out, or decide to shoot us before they lose consciousness?” He had asked for amendments and suggestions, hadn’t he?
He nodded, sighed. “I guess all we can do is make sure we inject the whole thing in one go. If we manage to hit a vein or an artery, they’d drop in a second. Otherwise, we have to be ready with pads of cotton to stifle their shouts with.”
OK again. Maybe. A very shaky one. “What about the others? Where would they be while we’re doing all that? Conveniently oblivious?”
He shrugged. “I am not saying this is iron-clad, but I am counting on the total boredom with me and what I’m doing that they’ve displayed so far. They haven’t been watching us at all, and they have no reason to suddenly start watching us like hawks. I also bet they shove the hauling job onto their lowest ranking men. If they are who I think they are, we’re in luck. These men are real slow.”
Well. “We come back to the moment we inject them. Even the slowest person in the world will yell in surprise and pain if stabbed with a three-inch needle. That’s bound to get the others very interested in you!”
“Hmm.” He rubbed his two-day beard, sexy and crazy and the most wonderful thing she’d ever seen. And nonchalantly planning their deaths. “How about we create a diversion, something loud enough to drown any shouts?”
Her body throbbed with his nearness. She forced herself to focus, raised her eyebrows. “How?”
“I have no idea.” He actually grinned and she just wanted to devour that smile.
“I haven’t thought that far. I thought if we got rid of three, and only five remained on this floor, it would encourage anyone who could get up to join us in charging the militants. I thought that if the militants shot us, the gunfire would make the security forces take a chance, bring them storming in from outside, changing the plan, rattling the outside agents, who would probably hesitate to act without their leader’s order. My bet is until they inform him of the development and get his order to strike, it will buy enough time for the security forces to end up saving far more than two people.”
As plans went, this was one desperate piece of insanity. But as crazy as it sounded, it was the only thing that might end in less than total loss.
But wait—he’d said they needed a diversion, a loud one, and it had just occurred to her…If that idea could work, it would be just what they needed. And why shouldn’t it? Still, she’d better run it by him, work out the bugs together.
He was already loading the Valium into their largest syringes. She joined him. “I think I have an idea for that loud diversion we need.”
She rubbed her cheek over the nearest part of him, his shoulder. “What I’ll do is let the Azernians know that we need them to chant one of their patriotic songs. You know, pretend to be bidding us an emotional farewell. The hundreds of people around would be deafening at full blast. Now, even if they don’t have enough lung-power they will probably make enough noise to drown out a couple of shouts. Even if they don’t, the shouts may be interpreted as ones of outrage. This I can tell you, hearing the Azernian anthem will make the Badovnans real mad.”
The gleam in his eyes lit her up. “Which will also keep their attention off us.” His caressing pinch melted down her cheek to her lips. “You’re more than a genius, bellezza. This is an incredible idea. Do it. And be very clear when we need them to start chanting. We have to time it just right for it to work. The second Anyan is hauled up, they should burst into song. We probably won’t have another chance.”
He moved to continue filling the syringes and she stayed his hands. “What happens after we dispose of the first three?”
He pressed her to him for a precious moment. “If and when the others turn on us, we’ll have their comrades’ weapons in our hands and their comrades themselves in front of us as shields.”
“You expect me to hold up an unconscious man?”
“I’ll hold him up. You hide behind me.”
Her eyes traveled down his formidable proportions. In normal conditions, she’d bet he could hold up all three he was bent on knocking out. Normal conditions these weren’t. Another thing made her skeptical. “And you think it will give them pause? That they wouldn’t shoot anyway, comrades or no?”
He handed her another Valium ampoule. “I hope it will make them at least hesitate. When they do, we explain their leader’s betrayal, give them a chance to survive this. If they start shooting then, it’s back to plan A and my hope that the forces outside come charging in.”
“And what will we be doing in the meantime?”
“You find cover, you stay down, and you don’t hesitate to shoot anyone who seems to be a threat to you or to others.”
“And you?”
“I�
�ll cover you.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll do what you just told me to do.”
“We may not need all this. We may get the militants to surrender.”
“Yeah, sure. Promise me, Dante. No crazy heroics!”
He finished loading his syringes and raised warm eyes to hers. “I’ll only do what needs to be done.”
“That’s not good en—”
His thumb on her lips didn’t silence her. His eyes did. Eloquent. Decisive. Final. “Now, pretend to be doing a final check-up of the people you treated, pass your message around. Tell them to be careful not to arouse the militants’ suspicion. Then come back to me.”
The way he’d said that! Oh, God. It wasn’t fair, not having more time with him. But she’d come back to him. They’d make their last stand together. It would be all that mattered.
He gave her hand one last bolstering squeeze and she swayed up to her feet, went to deliver her message, set the stage for the showdown.
The Azernians were wary, didn’t want to antagonize their captors. She found no way around telling them what awaited them if they didn’t co-operate.
Anyan was all for it. He hadn’t been shot but beaten up. He had a fractured scapula and a shattered femur. Now loaded up on morphine, he felt invincible, and wanted to do whatever it took to take their oppressors down. She explained their plan to him, again and again. She didn’t like the recklessness in his eyes.
Too late now to change their plans, to pick someone else. She left him and headed back to Dante. Dante. Even his name was magnificent. She wondered what it meant. And now she’d never know.
He had gathered all his stuff, closed the bag and was standing there, tall and indescribable, waiting for her to reach his side again. The militants by now considered her his, were no longer keeping an eye on her.
She smiled up at Dante, way up. It was the first time they’d stood up next to each other. He made her feel so petite. So feminine. So alive. Oh, Dante…