The Moon That Night

by Helen Brenna

  As Ally’s thoughts apparently turned to friends, her eyes watered.

  “Scared, huh?” Kate smiled. “Me, too.”

  Ally looked away.

  “Honey, it’s going to be okay.” Riley put a hand on his daughter’s shoulder, but she shrugged back and went to Jenny’s side.

  Riley clenched his jaw and said, “We’re breaking out of here tonight. One way or another.”

  “How?” Kate asked.

  “I’ll take care of it.” He turned toward her. “By the way, I think March is bluffing about your niece. I don’t think his men have her.”

  “Tessie? How do you know?”

  “On the way to the museum earlier tonight, he was on the phone. I didn’t understand the one-sided conversation at the time, but now it makes sense. From what I heard, apparently your niece didn’t go to school today. She was sick. So as long as we get out of here tonight, you’ll have time enough to warn your sisters.”

  Footsteps sounded in the hall. They were coming for him.

  Riley focused on Kate. “Sit tight, and wait for me. Don’t do anything. I mean it.”

  The door opened and three guards stood in the hall. “Time’s up.”

  Keeping his distance, Coben pointed his semiautomatic at Riley. “Let’s go.”

  Riley studied his daughter’s face, clearly looking for any sign of warmth, any crack in Ally’s tough veneer. When the young girl stiffened, his shoulders imperceptibly sagged. He glanced at Jenny and silently mouthed, “Tonight” before leaving the room. The door shut after him and a lock turned with a resounding click.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Monday, 1:05 a.m.

  “IF YOU ASK ME, THE word tonight implies before midnight.” Unable—unwilling—to sleep, Kate paced the length of the large bedroom, her patience, what little she normally possessed, long since gone. She glanced at her watch. “So unless he’s stuck in another time zone, your brother-in-law is late by more than an hour.”

  “James will do everything in his power to get us out of here,” Jenny said quietly.

  The woman had more confidence in Riley than Kate was ever likely to have in any man, her own brothers-in-law excluded. “Well, I’m sick of sitting around waiting. What do we need him for, anyway? There’s got to be something we can do to get out of this place.”

  “Like what?” Ally sat up in bed, hope lighting her eyes.

  “You got any ideas?”

  “They have us locked down tight,” Jenny said politely. “It’s not happening.”

  With that vote of confidence, Ally hung her head in defeat.

  “Besides, James told us to sit tight,” Jenny went on as if she hadn’t said enough already. “He’ll come for us.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “James says what he means and means what he says. He must be waiting for an opportunity.”

  “See, that’s my point. What if an opportunity never presents itself?” As far as she was concerned, they were on their own. “Maybe we’re the ones who are going to have to save Riley,” she said, stopping in front of one of the windows to glance outside into the chilly fall night.

  They were being held on the second floor. Through the bare branches of a tall maple she found Connecticut Avenue stretched out below them, a few of its townhomes already bright with lights in preparation for the upcoming Christmas holiday. Cars zipped back and forth. A lone man, head down, walked his Doberman along the sidewalk. She jumped up and down. Waved. Nothing. She could stand there naked and it wouldn’t make a difference.

  She tried opening the window. Nailed shut. If she broke the glass, the guard would hear. Getting more pissed off by the minute, she stalked across the room. For the fourth time since they’d taken Riley away a couple of hours ago, she yanked on the doorknob, and for the fourth time, the door didn’t budge.

  “Damn it!” She pounded on the solid wood. “Let us out of here!”

  “This is your last warning,” said the guard stationed outside in the hallway. “Shut. Up.”

  “Or what? You going to come in here and make me, tough guy?”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Jenny whispered from where she sat on the bed. “There’s no point in making them angry.”

  “Maybe not, but it sure does make me feel better.” Kate eyed the room, taking it apart piece by piece. A clock. Lamp. Picture frames. Books. None of it of any use. They hadn’t cleared out the room before throwing them in here probably because they didn’t see three females as much of a threat. They probably weren’t, but she had to try. “There’s got to be something in here I can use as a weapon.”

  Ally picked up the brocade coverlet on the bed. “We could throw a blanket over them, like a net.”

  “Good idea, Ally, but we’re not tall enough or big enough to hold them down.”

  “What about this table?” Ally asked.

  Kate glanced at the ornately carved wooden legs. “Too heavy, I think, but wait a minute.” The photo frame on the bedside table caught her eye. Metal. She snatched up the picture, took the frame apart and broke it at the corners. The resulting point was quite sharp.

  “You made a knife.” Ally smiled.

  Kate was beginning to really like this kid.

  “What are you doing?” Jenny asked.

  The sister-in-law, on the other hand, had no spine as far as Kate was concerned. “I’m going to try and get out of here.” She wasn’t deluding herself into thinking she could take down the guard outside their door, but she could distract him.

  “Be careful,” Jenny said.

  Kate would rather be dead than careful. “I’m going to draw the guard into the room and create a diversion. You two take off out the door.”

  “What about you?” Ally asked.

  “Don’t worry about me. Flag down a car as soon as you get outside and call the police.”

  “But I can help,” Ally said. “I need something I can use to hit him.”

  “Ally, don’t you dare,” Jenny whispered. “You stay out of this.”

  “Just because I’m thirteen doesn’t mean I can’t help.”

  “But you could get hurt,” Jenny whispered.

  “Kate can’t do this alone,” Ally insisted.

  “All right,” Jenny said. “Find something I can hit him with, but you stay out of this, Ally.”

  “That’s not fair.” Ally glared at her aunt. “It was my idea.”

  “Ally, sit,” Jenny ordered. “On the bed.”

  Kate wholeheartedly disagreed with Jenny treating her niece as if she was helpless, but it wasn’t Kate’s call. “The chairs in here are too heavy.” She stalked into the bathroom and spun around. “A towel rack. Yes!” After yanking the rod out from between the two brackets, she handed it to Jenny. “When he comes through the door, hit him over the head or on the back.”

  Kate hid the makeshift knife behind her and pounded again on the door. “Hey!” she called. “Let me out!”

  “Okay, that’s it,” the guard mumbled. A key sounded in the lock.

  “Get ready,” Kate whispered, but Jenny looked scared stiff. She might be beautiful and congenial, but Kate had a feeling the woman was going to be useless.

  “I told you to shut up,” the guard said, coming toward Kate.

  Jenny didn’t move. Kate was going to have to do this alone. Quickly she swung her arm out and jabbed the corner of the picture frame into the guard’s gut. The metal grabbed.

  “Son of a bitch.” Disbelieving, he looked down at his stomach. Blood seeped through his shirt.

  “Jenny, hit him!” Ally called out.

  “No, go!” Kate yelled as the guard lunged toward her.

  Jenny grabbed Ally and tugged her toward the door.

  Kate swung again at the guard. He grabbed her wrist, wrapped his other arm around her and yanked her to his chest, immobilizing her.

  “Leave her alone!” Ally pulled away from Jenny and jumped on the guard’s back.

  “Stop right where you are!” That was
Coben’s voice. “Or Jenny’s dead.”

  Kate stilled and glanced up. Coben had a gun pointed directly at Jenny. Kate dropped her makeshift knife. “Ally,” she whispered. “It’s over.”

  The other guard knocked Kate to her knees. “The bitch stabbed me!”

  “Serves you right.” Coben pushed Jenny to the other side of the room. “You. Troublemaker.” He pointed at Kate. “Get up and come with me.”

  ON EDGE AND CHILLED nearly to the bone, Riley eased himself up from a sitting position on the damp concrete floor and stretched out his stiff legs. He glanced through the barred egress window facing the alleyway. They’d taken him down into the garage level and locked him in one of the back rooms. Judging by the position of the nearly full moon, it was probably around the 1:00 a.m. mark. Too soon to attempt anything.

  Voices sounded in the hall and he grabbed the length of metal he’d dislodged earlier from one of the shelving units and positioned himself to take advantage of any opportunity for escape. Keys sounded in the lock, and Riley cocked his arm as someone was pushed through the partially open door and into the dark storage room.

  “Get your hands off me!”

  Great. Just what I need.

  At the sound of Kate’s voice, Riley lowered his makeshift weapon. The door closed and the lock was quickly turned. Not only had he been offered no chance to take out one of the guards, but he was also now saddled with Miss Mouthy.

  “Is someone in here?” she whispered, her vision likely not yet adjusted to the darkness of the room. “Behind you.”

  She spun around, wrapping her arms around herself. “Riley?”

  “Who else were you expecting?” He leaned the bar against the wall. “Let me guess. You tried to escape.”

  “Hell, yes!” With her hair disheveled, one braid all but out and the other seriously frayed, she looked wild. Moonlight flashing in her golden eyes and highlighting her full lips only added to the effect. “I’d attack that guard again, too, given the opportunity.”

  It shouldn’t have surprised him. “I asked you to sit tight.”

  “Like a good little girl?” She huffed, her left eyebrow arcing and a pair of dimples popping as she flattened her mouth. Pulling off the dangling binders holding together what was left of her braids, she ran her fingers through her dark shoulder-length strands. “Like that’d ever happen.”

  Suddenly she looked a lot more dangerous than at seventeen. The obstinate gleam in her eyes brought to mind a disturbing—at least for him—occurrence from years back when he’d acted as her bodyguard.

  Late the first evening they’d been settling in for the night at her and her sister’s apartment in D.C. Clearly forgetting he was present, Kate had come out of her bedroom in only a bra and thong, stopped dead in her tracks on seeing him, and stood there for a moment before brazenly continuing on her way into the bathroom.

  She might have been only a teenager back then, but the girl had more balls than a lot of men he knew. Try as he might, Riley hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her, and he’d ended up feeling like the scum of the earth for it, too. He’d been pushing thirty at the time, so the very last thing that should’ve been on his mind was a seventeen-year-old woman child.

  Unfortunately he still remembered the exact blue hue of her undergarments and the way that color had perfectly offset her creamy skin and dark auburn hair, her pink lips and rich amber eyes. Not to mention perfectly matched the sexiest set of tattoos he’d ever seen. Tiny, bright blue butterflies in various stages of flight not only encircled her left wrist, but a cluster of them stretched from under her breast along her side and onto the edge of her back.

  He swallowed, pushing aside the memory.

  “So now instead of a nice cozy bed and warm covers,” he said, “you’re treated to cobwebs and cold concrete. Satisfied?”

  “I’d be more satisfied if you’d made good on your promise to escape tonight.”

  He’d surely never met a more contrary and infuriating female, so why did he have the urge to—God help him—silence that mouth with a kiss? He shouldn’t be attracted to her. And he sure shouldn’t be bothering with the verbal sparring. It was getting him absolutely nowhere except possibly turned on.

  He shook his head, hoping to knock some sense into his brain. “For your information, Kate, the night is not over. It so happens one against five ain’t the greatest of odds. Even for me. I’m waiting for the guards to settle in.” He went back to the corner he’d previously been sitting in and crouched down to stay warm. “I suggest you make yourself comfortable and get some sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s time to move.”

  “There’s no way I can sleep.” Rubbing her arms, she paced.

  He stared at her left wrist, wondering if he might get a glimpse of those butterflies. Not happening. She wore a leather-banded watch that hid every single last one of them.

  “It’s too cold in here,” she breathed.

  He sure hoped she didn’t expect him to do anything about that particular problem. Talk about a recipe for disaster. A grizzled old soldier like him, brushing up against the nubile likes of her. In the dark, no less. Then again, a guy could dream, couldn’t he?

  “I’m sure the second-floor bedroom March claimed is plenty cozy,” he muttered.

  “Whose house is this, anyway?”

  “Who knows? March more than likely simply took over a vacant location that suited his needs.” He tried to avert his gaze from her silhouette, but since she was standing in the stream of moonlight, it was hard not to notice the way her cargo pants hugged her bottom or the way her tight green T-shirt formed perfectly to the curve of her small breasts.

  Hunks of dried clay clung to her pants and the bottom edge of her shirt. There was even a gray smudge along the edge of her cheek. Take in the entire package and there was something so…earthy about her. Earthy and solid. For some unaccountable reason, he felt a pull toward her like gravity.

  “You don’t like me very much, do you?” she asked.

  The question caught him totally off guard. At the moment he was liking her too much. “Why do you say that?”

  “From the first day I met you at Angelo’s back in Greece all those years ago, you’ve shown nothing but disdain for me. With your words, your actions, how you look at me.”

  “Let’s just say I’m not used to being…challenged.” And challenge him she did, on many levels.

  She seemed to be weighing his response, and while she didn’t appear completely satisfied, she didn’t look quite sure about how to pursue a line of attack. “You still in the military?”

  He nodded. “Marine Corps. Been on active duty for most of the last twenty years.” Probably would be for another twenty, too, unless he signed those early-retirement papers that had crossed his palms three months ago.

  That’ll be the day. Once a soldier, always a soldier.

  “Then what are you doing in D.C.?”

  “Routine rotation out of Afghanistan. Been consulting for the Department of Defense for the last several months.”

  “So if you’re such a good guy, then how do you know March?”

  Riley sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. If this topic wasn’t enough to douse the sudden fire sparking inside him for Kate, then nothing would. “I met him a long time ago. We went through boot camp at the same time,” he started. “Did our first tour of duty together in the Gulf War. Desert Storm. We ended up on the same team, wet behind the ears and looking to be heroes. It was March, Roy Abrams and me.”

  “I’ll bet the writing was on the wall even back then,” she said, leaning back against the door.

  “Actually, it wasn’t. At least not right away. But then a few months after we got there, we were in Kuwait, part of the liberating forces. March picked a fight with an Iraqi soldier we’d cornered on reconnaissance. The guy went for March, but Roy got in the way. Stabbed in the neck.”

  “Did he die?”

  “Bled out in the dry dust and dirt.” Riley looked away. “After t
hat, March started losing it one tick at a time. I don’t think anyone noticed but me.”

  “Something had to send him over the edge.”

  “That happened some years later. His little brother Alex was captured by insurgents in Iraq. We searched for him for days. Had a line on where they might be holding him, but there were too many civilians in the area to stage an all-out rescue attempt. March volunteered to go in alone, but they wouldn’t let him. Too personal. So I went. Only, Alex wasn’t there.”

  He paused, took a deep breath. “The next day we found his body hung in pieces off a bridge. March held himself together. Or so it seemed. But when they sent us to Kosovo to be part of NATO’s peacekeeping force, little by little March stopped toeing the line.” Riley shook his head. “Before I knew it, I was bailing him out of one mess after another.

  “Then one weekend, we were on furlough. In a bar having a few drinks. Before I knew it, March was gone. Out the back door. I found him in an alley a couple blocks away with four guys surrounding him. Like an idiot, I ran into the fray, thinking he needed help. Turns out he’d pilfered a couple M-16s, a grenade launcher and a sniper rifle and was doing a deal.”

  Kate stood silent, listening.

  “I figured I was dead. March, too. That’s when I met Angelo Bebel. He and a couple of his men came out of the back door of some warehouse, armed and ready for a fight. Angelo was setting up some trade agreement that apparently had gone bad. It didn’t take much to convince the arms dealer to take his weapons and hit the road. That was that.”

  “I can’t believe Angelo helped out and he didn’t even know you.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. Angelo and I might’ve become fairly good friends after that. I even spent quite a bit of time at his home in Athens and his place on the island of Patmos. But Angelo doesn’t do anything that doesn’t benefit him in some way. He figured if he helped out a couple U.S. Marines, we’d come in handy some day. March didn’t, but I did.”

  “What happened to March?”

  “They kicked him out. BCD.” At her puzzled look, he explained. “Bad conduct discharge. The only reason he wasn’t court-martialed was because they couldn’t pin any missing weapons on him. But March never forgave me for testifying against him. After that he started blaming me for everything bad that ever happened to him. Roy Abrams. The deal going bad in Kosovo. Even what happened to Alex.”