by Gayle Wilson
As did his.
If the bastard was still alive, he was down there. And for the first time in a situation where the odds were not so overwhelmingly in his favor.
His men were occupied with the invaders. Abdul Rahim would have retreated to one of his secret bunkers deep in the mountain. Although he would still have his personal bodyguard around him, he would be vulnerable in a way he’d never before been in the course of their acquaintance.
“Landon?”
He nodded, so caught up in the anticipation of settling the score that he had forgotten she couldn’t see the gesture. When he moved out of the entrance to the low cave, however, Grace followed.
Two birds with one stone, she had said. If he could again find his infamous luck, during the next few hours both of the missions he’d come to Afghanistan to carry out would be completed.
THE VILLAGE HAD BEEN eerily quiet as they approached. The scattered gunfire they’d heard earlier had faded as they made their descent, but smoke from the numerous fires the gunship had ignited hung over the low buildings like a pall.
Landon had left her hidden behind the rocks at the bottom of the slope as he’d moved slightly ahead to scout out the situation. She had watched until he disappeared, slipping like a ghost through the darkness. He was back in less than five minutes, easing down beside her as noiselessly as when he’d left.
“Rangers. And they’re looking for you.”
“You talked to them?”
He shook his head. “They’re rounding up what’s left of Abdul Rahim’s men and questioning them in the center of the compound.”
She didn’t feel the elation she should in hearing the news. Instead, the same emptiness she’d experienced every morning during those terrible weeks after she’d issued her ultimatum settled like a cold stone in her chest.
Which was insane. No one could want to be on the run in Afghanistan. Certainly not in this wild and lawless region.
She turned her head, looking at Landon. In the flickering light from a burning truck, she could see the contusion at his temple. His unshaven cheeks seemed leaner because of their darkness, they and the black patch again making his appearance sinister. If she hadn’t known him so well…
But she did. Intimately. As he had known her. With his hands and his mouth and his tongue. Nothing hidden. Nothing forbidden. And nothing ever forgotten.
“Why can’t you let it go?” she asked.
“Could you?”
Of course, she thought. Of course.
That was the difference between them. Whatever Abdul Rahim had done—and she had no doubt, given the kind of man Landon was, it had been horrific— Landon had survived.
Now the possibility of so much happiness lay ahead. For both of them. All he had to do—
“We need to go.”
He was anxious to get her off his hands. Anxious to turn her over to the Special Forces and let them take her back to Kabul and from there to the States. As for him…
“Come home with me.”
She hadn’t known those words were in her head before they were in her mouth. She didn’t regret saying them. She hadn’t begged before. She had gathered her pride instead, holding it before her like a shield as she’d presented her ultimatum.
And for seven empty years she had lived with the consequences. This time she at least didn’t intend to be haunted by “What if…”
“I can’t.”
“Whatever he did to you—”
“Don’t,” he said softly.
It wasn’t a command, but it had the force of one. The single word was edged with so much pain her eyes burned with tears she would never let him see her shed.
“It doesn’t matter, Landon. Not to me.”
“But it does to me.”
She ached to touch him. To put her hand against his cheek. To pull that proud dark head down against her breasts and cradle it against her heart. And yet she knew he would hate nothing more than her pity.
“And when he’s dead?” she asked. “Will you come to me then?”
He took a breath, deep enough to be audible in the predawn stillness. “If I can. But…if I can’t, Grace…” His voice faded, so that he was forced to begin again. “If I can’t, try to forgive me. And know there’s nothing in this world I ever wanted more than that.”
“Nothing except Abdul Rahim’s death.” Deliberately she let her bitterness show.
This was a choice. His choice. And again he hadn’t chosen her. He had never chosen her.
“I’ve lived with this for five years. Why do you think I didn’t contact you after I left the Agency?”
“Are you saying that…if it hadn’t been for what happened here, you would have come to find me?”
“I didn’t have to find you. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t know where you were.”
That was a confession she had never expected to hear. One that should have been a balm for the pain of those long, lonely years. Instead, it made her furious.
It hadn’t been that he didn’t love her enough. It hadn’t been any of the things she had once believed. It had all centered on that fat bastard with his ruby rings and his perfumed beard and his yellow silk pajamas.
Whatever Abdul Rahim had done to Landon, she knew with a cold certainty she couldn’t undo. Whatever she said would go unheard. He had already made up his mind about what he needed to do to be free. Knowing him as she did, she knew that nothing less would suffice.
And once again all she could do would be to wait.
THE FIRST FAINT LIGHT of dawn now touched the tops of the mountains, painting the deserted streets with a pale half-light.
“Stay close,” Landon whispered, turning to glance at her over his shoulder.
She knew that for her these few minutes before they encountered the Special Forces were the most dangerous part of this. If they didn’t recognize her, despite her coloring—
“Ms. Chancellor?” She turned at the sound of her name, finding a Ranger pointing his weapon at them, his face blackened for last night’s raid.
“I’m Grace Chancellor,” she said, raising her hands. “And I’d like to go home, please.”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s what we’re here for.” The muzzle of the weapon shifted its focus so that its line of sight was now centered on Landon’s back. “Halt,” the young soldier called, raising his voice enough to ensure the command would be heard.
Another couple of black-faced ghosts appeared from the alley behind him, the whites of their eyes bright in contrast to the greasepaint around them.
“That man’s a friend,” Grace said.
“We know who he is, Ms. Chancellor. If you’ll just step aside, ma’am…”
“He has some business to attend to here.”
“Nobody has any business here, ma’am. Not anymore. This village is now under the control of the coalition.”
“Then you’ve captured Abdul Rahim?”
There had been a flutter of hope in her chest at the possibility, but the long silence that followed her question provided its answer. Despite her fear for the dangerous task Landon was determined to undertake, some small part of her rejoiced in the knowledge that there was still a chance he could do what he had said he had to do. To kill Abdul Rahim. And maybe then…
“We’re still in the process of searching the buildings.”
“You won’t find what you’re looking for. Abdul Rahim left the village just before the C130 arrived,” she lied. “I don’t know if he had prior warning or if it was just a coincidence, but…in any case, unless you are searching the surrounding area, I don’t think you’ll find him tonight.”
The Ranger who had done all the talking so far glanced back at his companions. One responded with a quick lift of his shoulders.
“Get word upstairs,” the first one ordered, sending the one who had shrugged off at a run.
“And now if you don’t mind…” Grace said, “I really would like to go home.”
Come home wit
h me…
She had asked Landon something very much like that before. And just as he had tonight, he had turned her down to again put his life at risk. Then it had been for his country. Now…
Now it was personal. A score to settle.
Maybe when it had been, he would finally be free of what had happened here five years ago. Free and whole again. If not in body, then in soul.
She turned, trying to locate him in the dimness of the smoke-filled street, but he had already disappeared. Another mission. Another death. And just as she had before, all she could do was to wait until it was over.
Chapter Eighteen
“And that’s the last I saw of him. I don’t even know if he found Abdul Rahim.”
“Considering that the Rangers eventually discovered his body in a very well-equipped bunker in the mountain, one that was guarded by his personal bodyguards by the way, I would assume Landon had been there first.”
Knowing Griff’s connections within the intelligence community, Grace understood that his “assumption” probably came from field reports. That was undoubtedly how he had learned of Stern’s survival, as well.
The attack she and Landon had heard during his original rescue attempt had been carried out by Special Forces assigned to look for the survivors of the Kiowa’s crash. Colonel Stern had managed to connect with some of them during the following day.
According to Griff, as soon as he had described their rescuer to his debriefers, someone in intel had recognized the description of the man with the patch as possibly former CIA agent Landon James. From Landon’s presence in Afghanistan to Abdul Rahim had been a leap of logic that even the current analysts had been able to make.
In any case, Landon’s enemy was dead, and the commando team that had been sent in to find him and Grace hadn’t brought Landon back with them. If they had, Griff would have told her that, too. Which meant Landon was probably even now using his knowledge of the area to work his way across the mountains into Pakistan.
“So he accomplished what he went to Afghanistan to do,” she said aloud. “Maybe now…”
“Maybe now he can put those ghosts to rest,” Griff finished when she hesitated.
“And maybe you’ll get what you want, too.” She smiled at the man seated across the big desk, whose eyes were too expressive of his concern.
Apparently, the emotional fragility she’d felt since her arrival back in Washington was more obvious than she’d believed. Or Griff was more observant than most of the people she’d encountered since her return.
She hadn’t yet reported back to the Agency, but she had made up her mind about what she was going to do. One of the few decisions about which she’d had no doubts.
“Landon working as a member of the Phoenix, you mean?” Griff asked. “As much as I’d like that, I don’t expect it to happen. I think he tired of this life a long time ago. Besides, he’s made quite a name for himself as an international security consultant. I doubt he’d want to give up that kind of financial success to undertake the pro bono missions we’re increasingly involved with. I’m simply grateful he agreed to undertake this one.”
“This one was…personal,” Grace said, remembering what she’d heard in Landon’s voice.
“You’re right. It was. But if you think Abdul Rahim was what drove him back to Afghanistan—”
“Don’t,” she said, unconsciously echoing Landon’s warning to her. “I know you’re trying to help. And believe me, I appreciate your concern, more than you can ever know, but… As a friend, Griff, just don’t.”
“Don’t tell you that Landon didn’t return to Afghanistan because of Abdul Rahim? Why? That’s the truth.”
“He jumped at the opportunity. And it wasn’t because of me. Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for what he did. And equally grateful to you for sending him.”
She was. Considering the actions of her original captors and those of Steven Reynolds, it was likely that without Landon’s intervention she would never have left Afghanistan alive.
“If Abdul Rahim had been Landon’s primary motivation in going back, Grace, he would have made that journey long before now.”
“The State Department restricted his passport.”
Griff knew that, of course. He was the one who would have had to pull strings to get that restriction lifted.
“And you think that could have stopped an experienced operative as skilled and inventive as Landon James? With a border that porous, he could have gotten in anytime he wanted.”
“Then…I don’t understand. Why didn’t he?”
Griff’s assertion didn’t fit with the need Landon had expressed to her. The need to be free of those memories. A need he said could only be satisfied by Abdul Rahim’s death.
“I don’t know. Maybe he lacked an incentive.”
“He had one. He wanted revenge. And believe me, in this case that would be incentive for almost anything.”
Maybe Griff didn’t understand what Abdul Rahim had done to Landon. Or the effect it had had on the man he’d once been.
“I think when he learned you were missing, he realized why it was so important to regain what he lost during that last mission.”
“I don’t know what I had to do with that.”
“Why don’t you ask him to explain it to you?”
Cabot opened his desk drawer and extracted a business card. He glanced at it before he slid it across the gleaming mahogany surface. Although she knew what would be on the small rectangle of cardboard, she made no effort to reach out and take it.
“I’d give him a few more days, if I were you,” Griff said.
“I gave him seven years. It didn’t make any difference.”
“Maybe this time it will.”
SHE HAD WAITED A WEEK, her heart rate accelerating every time the phone rang. Finally she took the card Griff had given her from her billfold.
Her initial impulse was to tear it into pieces so small she would be able to read neither the address nor the phone number it contained. That inclination was almost as compelling as the one that prompted her to study the bold black lettering instead until it was too late.
She would never forget anything that was printed there. Just as she had never forgotten anything about this man.
Maybe you ought to try to get in touch with him, Mike Mitchell had said. And later, I wish I’d said everything I felt.
Life and death. The terrible reality of both had been made brutally clear to her during the last few weeks.
She no longer had Mike’s wedding ring or the dog tags he’d worn around his neck. Those had been taken from her by the women at Abdul Rahim’s compound. Still, she had flown out to visit the pilot’s widow and children yesterday.
She had shared with them the things Mike had told her. And when she had given Karen Mitchell the messages she’d been charged with, they had cried together.
As hard as that all had been, especially seeing his children and realizing that they would never know the father who had loved them so much, she knew that visit had helped. It had helped both of them. And Mike Mitchell’s legacy was the sole reason she now held in trembling fingers the card Griff had slid across his desk.
Not everyone got a second chance. Win or lose, she owed it to the memory of the friend she had made, and so quickly lost, to find the courage to reach out for this one.
Only…not by phone, she decided, as her hand hovered over the receiver.
She needed to see that beautiful, lean face. To hear the emotion that underlay whatever words he’d say. To look into that single dark eye and try to read the thoughts that moved behind it. Then, and only then, would she know if what he told her was the truth.
“THERE’S SOMEONE HERE TO SEE you, Mr. James. I tried to explain—”
Irritated by the interruption, Landon looked up from the report he’d just received from an operative in Colombia. Grace and his secretary were standing side by side in the doorway to his office.
He got slowly to his feet, awa
re that the knot of anxiety, which had formed as soon as he’d seen the pale, perfect oval of her face, had quickly transformed into something else. Something that might certainly be classified as sexual.
It was sexual, he acknowledged. Just as what he’d felt every time he’d ever looked at Grace Chancellor had been sexual. Except now that familiar, aching tightness in his groin was accompanied by another, very different emotion. This one centered somewhere in the region of his heart.
She was dressed in a plain black dress, whose simple lines caressed the curves of her slender figure. Its severity emphasized the fair hair, which today had been pulled straight back from her face, revealing its purity of bone structure.
She hadn’t lost the tan she’d acquired in Afghanistan. Nor had she regained the pounds the weeks of her captivity had burned off. And he had never seen anyone or anything more beautiful.
“It’s all right, Sandra. Thank you.” In his own ears his voice sounded strained.
His secretary arched her brows in surprise. Her head tilted questioningly, but after a moment she backed out of the office, closing the door behind her.
Leaving the two of them alone in a sunlit room high above the crowded streets of Manhattan.
“I understand from Griff that congratulations are in order,” Grace said.
He couldn’t read her tone, but it didn’t matter. He knew well enough what she meant.
And although he wouldn’t deny the pleasure he’d taken in Abdul Rahim’s death, he had known almost as soon as it had been accomplished that it wasn’t enough to change what he had become. Not nearly enough.
“Thank you.”
“Thank you, Landon. I’m not sure I ever said that.”
He smiled at her. “It really isn’t necessary.”
“It is to me. As empty as my life has been during the past few years, I discovered I wasn’t ready to surrender it.”
The same emotion he’d felt when he had looked up and found her standing in the doorway, a reaction similar to that adrenaline-driven burst of panic when a mission has suddenly—and unexpectedly—become perilous, surged through his chest once more.