by Gayle Wilson
“Meaning?”
“When your chopper went down, it was an answer to more than a few prayers.”
Surprisingly, Grace laughed. “I won’t argue that there weren’t people at Langley who celebrated. I just can’t see why they’d go to the trouble of getting someone to kill me. My testimony’s a done deal. There’s nothing they can do to change it.”
The expletive with which Landon expressed his derision was blunt, as well as colorful. Or maybe Grace really believed that, he realized. If so, she hadn’t seen the dirty underside of the Agency that the members of the EST had been exposed to.
“How can they change what’s now a matter of public record?” she demanded, reacting to his ridicule. “A very public record.”
“The reason your testimony carried so much weight was because of who you are. A highly respected, female intelligence analyst with a spotless record. One who had, moreover, made it to the top echelon of a very engrained, old-boy-dominated organization.”
“Thank you.” Amusement once more colored her voice.
“So maybe they can’t change what you said, but they can change the public’s perception of the person who said it. And that kind of revisionism is always easier if the person being deconstructed is no longer around to protest.”
“‘Deconstructed’?”
“In your case, I don’t know what they’ll come up with to accomplish that. Maybe that most of the intel failures you cited can be traced back to you.”
“Considering the extent of those failures, I think that’s going to be a hard case to make. I didn’t have the power to influence policy.”
“Then maybe you advised the people who did.”
“Except those people are already gone.”
They were, Landon acknowledged. Long before Grace gave her testimony, those at the top of the Agency deemed responsible for its failures had been forced to resign.
“Then maybe they’ll claim you had a personal vendetta against one of them. Or that you were taking bribes. Even that you were working for the other side.”
“Nobody who matters would believe any of that,” she said. “It’s all crap, and you know it. So would ninety-five percent of the people at the CIA. And those who didn’t…”
“Maybe you’re right,” he conceded when she hesitated over the characterization of the rest. “But those ploys have been used at one time or another to discredit people.”
“By the CIA?”
“By some government agency or another. They all operate on the same principle, Gracie. It’s called ‘cover your ass.’”
“Is it also called murder?”
“You tell me where that first shot was aimed today. If you hadn’t already taken a step away from the jeep, that bullet would have struck the back of your head instead.”
He didn’t look at her, but he was aware of the depth of the breath she took. As brutal as this truth was, it was something she needed to understand. Until she grasped the reality of her situation, she was vulnerable to another trick like Reynolds’s promise to help her find Stern.
As far as Landon was concerned, that wasn’t a priority. The colonel was on his own. Stern was a career soldier, someone who had been in this country for several months. A chance to escape was all he felt he owed the man, and he’d given him that.
Landon had come to Afghanistan to find and rescue Grace Chancellor. He didn’t think Griff or Dalton had been under any illusions about that, and they were the only people to whom he owed an explanation.
“Wherever that bullet was aimed, even if it was at me, that doesn’t mean Reynolds planned it,” Grace said.
“No, but the fact that his men didn’t react by returning fire does. At least, it goes a long way toward proving it to me.”
“Which wouldn’t be too hard, would it? You didn’t like him from the first.”
“This isn’t about liking or disliking. I didn’t trust him. Today he justified my distrust.”
“I think you’re blaming him for something that was beyond his control.”
“It was his meeting. His arrangements. His responsibility. And he blew it.”
“So what do we do about Stern?”
He knew he hadn’t convinced her, but apparently she had decided that arguing with him about Reynolds wasn’t going to get her anywhere. So they were back to what seemed to him her near obsession with rescuing her fellow prisoner.
“It was obvious those clowns didn’t have him.”
“I know. I understand that. But…someone does.”
Or—and far more likely in my opinion—he’s dead.
Landon knew there was no point in saying that, either. Since he couldn’t prove it, Grace was unlikely to accept it. Or accept that, even if Stern were still alive, they didn’t owe him a thing.
“Maybe without you around, whoever’s holding him will put him into the hands of the coalition.”
“Without me around?”
“The only explanation that makes sense for the fact that the guys who brought down the chopper hadn’t tried to negotiate for your release is that someone doesn’t want you returned to the States. Apparently, they’ve made that clear to the interested parties.”
“Or maybe my captors were trying for better terms. You can’t know that they weren’t dealing with…someone.”
She had expected to end up in the hands of a terrorist group. If not Al-Qaeda, then one with close ties to them. Maybe even one of the groups operating on the other side of the border.
Based on the promise she’d demanded of him, that seemed to be her greatest fear. And he understood that was not because she was afraid to die, but because she didn’t want the public spectacle of her death to be used against her country.
He could sympathize with her feelings. He would have expected no less from her. That didn’t explain why no attempt had been made by her captors to sell her to someone.
“In this part of the world,” he said, “you make use of the bird in the hand before it can fly away. Especially when so many people are looking for that particular bird.”
And especially when life here—any life—is so damned fragile.
“So…is that where we’re going? To find the people you keep saying are looking for me?”
“Just as fast as we can,” he promised.
The trek across the mountains into Pakistan was no longer an option. Too many people were aware that Grace was traveling with him. And like the cliché he’d just beaten to death, far too many of them would like nothing better than to take her away from him.
“And when we find them…? Exactly how will you know you can trust them?”
Another question he didn’t have an answer for. When he’d started this, that part had seemed simple. He would find Grace and smuggle her across the border. Once in Pakistan, he had believed he could get her onto a plane for Washington before anyone was the wiser.
Now, given the fact that they’d literally had to fight their way out of what could only be considered a second captivity, he couldn’t be sure that the “powers that be” on both sides weren’t aware of what was going on out here. If they were, then they would all be looking for him and for Grace. The good guys—and the bad.
“The same way I’ve always figured out who to trust. Gut instinct.”
She laughed again. “Now that’s a logical response. Is that how Griff’s vaunted External Security Team operated?”
“Sometimes.” He knew that she was mocking him, but what he’d said was the truth. “Griff was always a believer in trusting his operatives. I don’t know one of us who hasn’t acted strictly on instinct during the course of some mission.”
“That’s why I would have made a terrible field agent. My instincts about people haven’t proven to be all that reliable.”
He glanced at her again. She had placed her hand over the makeshift bandage on her arm. Although he knew she must be aware he was looking at her, her eyes were determinedly focused on the road ahead, her lips tight.
Wa
s she talking about their relationship? If so, he couldn’t blame her.
After all, seven years ago he had given her every indication that he loved her. Because he had.
At that point in his life, however, loving someone—even someone like Grace—hadn’t been enough to make him give up the work he was doing for Griff. And he’d known that’s what she wanted.
A house in the suburbs. Maryland. Or Virginia. Commuting into Langley together so they could sit behind a couple of desks all day.
There had been nothing appealing to him about any of that. Nothing except Gracie.
There still was nothing in that scenario that particularly appealed to him. Like it or not, however, it wasn’t far from what his life was like today. Except it didn’t include the woman who, as he’d acknowledged all those years ago, might have made it bearable.
He’d made a conscious choice then, and it hadn’t been what Grace had wanted. Now that what he had chosen had been taken away, it didn’t seem fair that he’d get a second chance with her. Not even if she’d been prepared to offer him one. And so far there had been no indication she was.
“If you’re talking about what happened between us—”
She turned, looking at him with what seemed to be genuine amusement in her eyes. “What in the world would make you think that?”
He studied her face before he pulled his gaze back to the road. “We have to talk about it eventually.”
“I can’t imagine why. It’s over and done, Landon. I promise you that.”
He nodded, surprised to discover how much her casual dismissal bothered him. As if he were the only one who felt regret over the way they’d left things.
In any case this was something else he didn’t intend to beat to death. Maybe she really was no longer interested. Seven years was a long time to carry a torch for someone.
And I should know…
“We need to stop and take care of that,” he said, tilting his head toward her injured arm. It seemed time to change the subject from one that was uncomfortable to both of them.
“I would like to try to get it clean. After watching what happened to Mike—”
She stopped suddenly, drawing his gaze to her again. Her lips had closed over the pilot’s name. She turned to look at him, something in her eyes he couldn’t quite read before she turned her head to look out through the windshield.
Maybe she was worried that the same thing that had killed Mitchell, a wound gone septic, might happen to her. Although the situations weren’t the same, after what she’d been through, he couldn’t blame her for that concern.
“I have to ask you something,” she said, her tone entirely different from the almost caustic one she’d used when discussing their previous relationship. “And I want you to tell me the absolute truth, Landon. This isn’t the time for lies. Not between us.”
“The truth about what?”
“Something Reynolds told me.”
“About me?”
She nodded. “And Mitchell’s death.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He said Mike didn’t die of the infection. I know it would have killed him eventually, but…he said you did that because you knew you couldn’t get him out of there alive.”
“He told you I killed Mitchell?”
“When they went down there, they found bloodstains on his shirt. It didn’t fit with what I’d told him. So…they opened it. Someone had stabbed him in the heart.”
“And you think I did that.”
“I think that if you thought that was the only way to get me to leave him there… And since it was obvious he was dying anyway. I think maybe…you would have.”
He didn’t answer immediately, dealing with the fact that she believed him capable of that. And then dealing with the question of whether he was or not.
Maybe at one time he would have been, but now… Still, Mitchell was clearly going to die that night, even if they had managed to get him out of the encampment. Would it have been better for him to have died in agony while they dragged him across the mountain, perhaps slowing them down enough that her captors caught up with them? Besides, wasn’t the swift, clean death Reynolds had described to her the same merciful ending she had begged for herself.
“You wouldn’t let me go back and see him,” she said into his silence. “And no one else came into the cave that night. Not after I said good-night to him.”
It was obvious she’d been thinking about this for a while. Adding up evidence of his guilt without giving him a chance to explain.
“Landon?”
“You asked me for the truth. I’m trying to decide exactly what that would be.”
“How can you ‘decide’ what the truth is?”
“Mitchell was dead when I went to the back of the cave. I swear that to you on—” He stopped abruptly, his lips flattening before he opened them again. “On the only thing I hold sacred. Mitchell died of his infected wound, Gracie. Nothing else.”
“If that’s true,” she began again, “then why would you have to think about it?”
“That’s exactly what happened that night. But that isn’t the only thing you asked me.”
She had suggested that perhaps he’d realized the only way to get Mike out of that situation was to kill him. In other words, what would he have done if Mitchell hadn’t been dead when he’d gone to the back of the cave?
“And if he had been alive?”
“I don’t know. I came here to get you out. That’s why Griff approached me. Because he believed I’d do whatever it took to accomplish that. Would I have ended Mitchell’s life quickly and painlessly rather than put him through hours of unnecessary agony to achieve the same result? I honestly don’t know. But I do know, from the little you’ve told me about him, what Mitchell would have wanted me to do if he’d been given that choice. Thank God, he wasn’t. He was dead when I found him, Grace. And that is the truth, whether you believe it or not.”
“I believe you.”
He couldn’t tell from her tone whether she really she did. At least she was giving lip service to trusting him that far.
“Good. Because that’s what happened. And as for the other… There’s a first-aid kit in the back.” He’d noticed it back there on the way to the rendezvous. “There’s probably some antibiotic salve, maybe even some tablets. You think the bullet’s still in your arm or did it go through?”
He hadn’t had an opportunity to examine the wound. He’d stopped to tie the scarf around it as soon as they’d gotten a few miles from where they’d left Reynolds. All he really knew was that Grace had called the injury minor and that it hadn’t seemed to bleed very much.
Maybe that wasn’t a good thing, however. He remembered reading somewhere that a strong blood flow could carry fragments of cloth and debris out of a wound.
“It’s just a gash from a splinter of metal off the jeep. If there is salve in the kit, that should take care of it.”
Landon glanced in the rearview mirror, which reflected the long empty road behind them. He had no idea where they were, only that they were traveling east, the direction in which he knew they needed to be headed.
If it would make Grace feel better, there didn’t seem to be any good reason not to stop and clean the wound. When he’d done that as well as he could, he’d put a proper dressing on it.
It wouldn’t take ten minutes all told, and at the same time he could add another can of gasoline to the truck’s tank. Then they’d be on their way again, both of them with a little more peace of mind.
There was not a lot of shelter from the sun here—only endless miles of the same barren terrain. Which wasn’t likely to change any time soon, he admitted. He allowed the truck to begin to slow.
“What are you doing?” Grace asked.
“I’m going to stop and take a look at your arm.”
“It’s fine. At least until we get somewhere—”
She stopped suddenly, seeming to realize, as he just had, that in the vast u
ncharted emptiness of this wilderness, this was as much “somewhere” as they were going to find.
Chapter Twelve
Landon didn’t even bother to pull the truck off the road. He shut off the engine and then got out to retrieve the first-aid kit.
When he started to jump down from the bed, he realized that Grace had also gotten out and walked around to the back of the vehicle. She’d already begun to unwrap the strip of cloth he’d placed around her arm.
Landon laid down the metal box containing the first-aid kit, marked with its distinctive red cross. Then, using one hand on the tailgate for balance, he jumped down. Grace looked up as he landed beside her, her fingers hesitating in the act of removing the bandage.
“You want me to do that?” he asked.
“I can manage.”
As she returned to the task, he slipped the knife Reynolds had returned to him from his belt. When he snapped open the blade, however, her eyes immediately came up. Widened, they focused on the knife before they lifted to his.
“I’m just going to slit your sleeve.”
“But these are the only clothes I have.”
It was such a totally feminine thing to say that he almost laughed. Without asking permission, he reached out and put the palm of his left hand under the injured arm. Then he inserted the point of the knife into the opening of the placket where her cuff buttoned.
He took a breath and then began to apply pressure against the opening in the sleeve. The razor-sharp edge of the blade split the silk effortlessly. He moved it upward until he reached the place where blood had glued the shirt to the wound.
He glanced up, trying to gauge Grace’s reaction, but her face was averted. Afraid he might hurt her in attempting to split that section of the sleeve, he laid the knife on the tailgate.
Without looking at her again, he lifted the edge of the cloth that was plastered to her skin and began to pull it away. Although he didn’t jerk the fabric up in one motion, once he’d started applying pressure to it, he didn’t stop.
He heard a sharp inhalation as he peeled the last of the material from the wound. Ignoring the sound, he gripped the sleeve he’d just freed with both hands, continuing to tear along it the split he’d begun with the knife all the way to the shoulder seam.