by Rebecca York
“Please don’t destroy your life.”
“Chambers’s father already did that!”
“At least let me keep Ariadne safe.”
He cupped his hand around her shoulder, the bony fingers pressing into her flesh. “When you and the little girl have played your part in luring Chambers here, I’ll consider what to do with you.”
His rough touch made her tremble. They were alone in the darkened hall. Yet he bent down, and he brought his lips close to her ear, speaking so that only she could hear. “If you don’t cooperate, I will be forced to do some very unfortunate things to the little girl. She’s so sweet. It would be a shame to punish her for being born, don’t you think? That would bring me down to Aristotle’s level.”
Irena cringed away from him.
“Answer me!” he demanded, the sticklike fingers anchoring her to reality.
She swallowed hard. “I’ll help you,” she promised, silently praying that she’d get another chance to take the child and run.
In the next moment, he dashed her hopes. “And I think we’d better make sure you don’t try to sneak away. I picked this villa for a reason. There’s a wine cellar in the basement—with a nice sturdy door and a stout lock.”
Chapter Fourteen
As Zeke led Elizabeth through the quiet streets, he was watchful and alert for signs that they were being followed. Although none of the people out and about at this early hour seemed interested in their presence, she didn’t relax until they reached their destination. It was a warehouse on the edge of town, which looked like it could have been in use since Roman times. Several men were finishing loading plastic drums and buckets into a small truck. The vehicle was different from anything on the roads at home. The design was pretty much like an American van, but the rectangular storage area in back was both longer and wider. There were two seats in the front. Behind them, the cargo area was crammed with drums and covered buckets stacked in double rows, with barely room enough to squeeze between them.
“I thought you were coming alone,” the foreman said to Zeke.
He shrugged. “My girlfriend won’t be any trouble.”
After a bit of persuasion and some more cash on Zeke’s part, the man agreed to let her ride along.
After they’d pulled away, Zeke turned to her. “Can you handle one of these things?” he asked.
She watched him shift from first into second. “It’s kind of like the truck on my uncle’s farm, when we went there in the summers.”
“Good.”
“Aren’t you going to drive?” she asked in a puzzled voice.
“I am planning on it.” He looked down at his hands, which were wrapped around the wheel. “But every time I think I have things under control, something unexpected happens.”
“What do you think could go wrong?” she asked, her voice coming out too high.
He shrugged. “I wish I could give you a good answer. About the only sure thing is that Sebastian isn’t coming back from the dead.”
Elizabeth felt her chest tighten, yet she responded with a weak smile. Zeke had planned on leaving her behind, and she’d insisted on coming. Now she didn’t have the right to make things worse for him by acting frightened. Still, when he shifted into low gear and pulled onto the shoulder, she looked up nervously. “What are you doing?”
“Let’s switch for a minute.”
After he set the emergency brake and cut the engine, Elizabeth moved into the driver’s seat and fumbled for the lever that adjusted the distance of the seat from the wheel. It took a moment to find it, but once she did, she was able to reach the clutch.
Zeke climbed into the passenger seat, watching closely as she put the transmission in first gear and started to move forward. When the truck bucked and stalled, she muttered an unladylike curse.
Concentrating on getting it right, she started all over again. This time the old skills came back to her more quickly.
Zeke didn’t let her quit until she’d shifted through the four gears and taken the vehicle up to fifty miles an hour, which wasn’t so bad on the four-lane road leading out of town.
“Okay,” he finally said. “It looks like you can handle it. Pull over and we’ll switch back.”
The whole exercise had made her so nervous that when she started to climb out, she realized she’d forgotten to set the emergency brake.
At least Zeke made no comment as he jerked the lever up.
A minute later, they were on their way again. Only now she was too tense to sit back in her seat and relax.
The four-lane highway quickly narrowed into a two-lane road as they started into the mountains. The surface was only in moderate repair, which made the vehicle bounce, and Elizabeth wondered how she’d do if she had to drive up here. But there was no reason that was going to happen, she assured herself, as she ordered her muscles to loosen up. It was a beautiful, sunny day with mild temperatures. And she might as well enjoy the ride. As she stared at the rugged mountains and blue water, she tried to return to the fantasy that she and Zeke were on a pleasure trip.
But the ploy wasn’t very successful. Zeke sat with his hands firmly on the wheel and his eyes on the road, as if he were alone in the truck.
Elizabeth wanted to lay her hand on his arm and ask him to talk to her. It didn’t have to be anything personal. Maybe he’d even tell her about a movie he’d liked. Or a book. Yet she was very conscious of having strong-armed her way on this expedition. Small talk might distract her, but it wasn’t Zeke’s style. So she kept her mouth shut and watched the scenery. The vegetation was sparse, the ground rocky, and she wondered if there were any cash crops on the island besides olives.
There were no other cars on the road, which wound steadily upward. When she craned her head back, she had a spectacular view of the town and the harbor.
Soon they left the coast. As the narrow highway turned inland, she spotted another one of the miniature buildings she kept seeing along the shoulder. When they rounded a steep curve, she saw two more of the curiosities. They were a bit like dollhouses supported on three-foot legs, with glass panels on the front and sides through which she could see various objects such as candles and pictures. The first one coming up was quite ornamental, with an elaborate peaked roofline. The second was old and weathered, with the glass on one side cracked.
“What are those?” she asked, pointing as they drew near.
“Shrines,” Zeke answered. “When someone dies in an automobile accident, the family puts up a memorial at the spot where it happened.”
Elizabeth swiveled backward to catch a better view of the ones they’d just passed—and the long downward slope where she could now see the remains of a rusted car. When she turned, she was facing another monument. “There must be a lot of accidents around here.”
“Well, they’re not big on guardrails,” Zeke observed. “A lot of cars go over the edge.”
He wasn’t helping her nerves. Maybe he was unconsciously trying to make her sorry she’d come along. She found she was watching for the shrines, trying to judge the relative safety of each stretch of the twisting road.
She was looking over her shoulder at another death spot, when she heard Zeke make a sharp exclamation. Jerking forward, she saw that someone had dragged a wooden barrier across the pavement. A sign in Greek said, Road Closed.
Zeke began to slow down. “Now what?” he asked.
The apprehensive feeling that had been building all morning intensified as she looked from the roadblock to the hills. Although this seemed Just like any other patch of what passed for an expressway between the coast and Dubina, something didn’t feel right.
As the truck approached the roadblock, a man with a red flag stepped from around the bend. He was wearing a plaid shirt, jeans, sunglasses and a yellow hard hat that hid the top part of his face. Something about the cocky way he stood made her pay particular attention to him. As they drew closer, she struggled to take in more details and saw that he had a large ring on the hand holding
the flag. A big ugly ring, with a skull instead of a stone.
Elizabeth sucked in a sharp breath. That ring had burned itself into her brain. It belonged to Cydon, the man who had attacked her on the ship. The skull had scraped her hand when she had tried to fend him off.
“No,” she shouted. “Zeke, don’t stop. It’s Cydon. It’s a trap.”
They were close enough now, so that she could even see the scar on his cheek.
“Cydon!” Zeke spat out the name as he stepped on the accelerator, aiming for the man with the flag. He jumped back when Zeke swerved onto the shoulder, the truck’s fender taking off the left edge of the wooden barrier as the vehicle sped past. Elizabeth looked back, watching Cydon wave his clenched fist as the truck whipped sharply around the curve.
Zeke’s exclamation brought her facing front again. Three more men were hidden around the bend. She couldn’t hold back a gasp as she recognized Captain Icarus, Tyrone and the other crewman waiting expectantly by the side of an old Chevy. Apparently they’d reached land safely and lost no time making plans. Maybe the man who was following her and Zeke last night had been working for them.
Zeke cursed, as he accelerated dangerously on the winding mountain road. As they whipped past, Icarus’s face contorted, and he shouted something she was glad she couldn’t hear.
Twisting in her seat, Elizabeth saw Cydon sprinting around the bend. When he reached the others, all four men jumped into the Chevy. It was pointed in the wrong direction, probably because the captain had been confident that the ruse would work.
Zeke skidded around another curve on two wheels, blocking her view.
How long would it take the men from the Amphitrite to turn the car around and come after them? She glanced frantically toward either side of the road, hoping for somewhere to hide—the way they’d done last night. But there were no side streets this high up in the mountains, and nowhere a truck could forge across the rocky terrain. The highway twisted through the mountains, with a sheer drop on one side and a cliff rising on the other. The shoulder was dotted with periodic shrines to remind Elizabeth that others had lost their lives along this route. Presumably nobody had been trying to outrun a bunch of murderous pirates.
With nowhere to go but forward, Zeke kept his foot to the floor. Still, she could hear the roar of an engine behind them. Icarus rounded a curve. He was gaining on them. Probably it was easier to drive the old Chevy on these roads than a truck full of cargo.
“What are we going to do?” she gasped.
Zeke kept driving, putting another curve between himself and the pursuers. “Got to stop them before they catch us,” he growled. “Get ready for me to slam on the brakes. I’m climbing in the back. You scoot into the driver’s seat and get going like sixty again.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to protest. She hadn’t been all that good with the truck on a straight four-lane highway. Now Zeke was asking her to drive as fast as she could on this twisting mountain road. Yet she kept the protest locked in her throat. She’d rather go over the side of the cliff, than have Icarus and his gang catch them.
Zeke brought the truck to a bouncing halt and yanked up the brake. For an instant he turned toward Elizabeth, and the anguished expression on his face stole the breath from her lungs. At least he didn’t say, “I told you so.” Then he wormed his way between the bucket seats into the back of the vehicle. Elizabeth bounced behind the wheel, pulled the seat forward and stepped on the accelerator.
The truck made a grinding sound.
“Emergency brake,” Zeke shouted.
She felt for the release as she glanced in the mirror. They probably hadn’t been stopped for more than a few seconds, but she could see the Chevy filling her whole field of vision.
Thank God, Zeke had made her practice. Her lip clamped between her teeth, she shoved the transmission into first and jolted forward.
More carefully, she shifted into second, her hands gripping the wheel as she negotiated the hairpin turns. Her heart leaped into her throat as she came around a corner and saw a sheer drop right in front of her. With a little moan, she yanked to the right and kept going, scraping the paint off the side as she veered against the rock. Probably Icarus and his men got a charge out of that. Probably they were waiting for her to mess up.
Behind her, Zeke was rattling cans of oil and buckets of olives. Sparing a glance in the mirror, she saw he’d opened the door. Wind whipped at his hair and clothing, threatening to tear him from the vehicle. Somehow, she kept herself from screaming as she plowed onward.
Zeke had already opened several of the containers. First, he dumped two tubs of olives onto the pavement. Then, he began pouring olive oil out the back door—making a mess of the road in back of them.
The truck gave a sudden jolt as it hit a pothole, almost sending him through the door again. Elizabeth gripped the wheel and tried to drive more steadily, but it was hard for her to manage such a large vehicle. With the poor condition of the road, the best she could do was keep the truck on the blacktop. In the rearview mirror, the Chevy loomed behind her, so close that she could see the murderous expression on Icarus’s face. She and Zeke had stolen his ship. Now it seemed he would take any risk to get even.
As she watched, the Chevy skidded to the right, coming dangerously close to the drop off. She wanted to cheer. But the car didn’t slow down.
In the next second, a series of loud reports made her gasp, and she realized with a sinking feeling that the noise had been gunshots. She wanted to shout at Zeke to close the door and come back into the front. If he was driving, maybe they could outrun Icarus now. But she told herself that he must know what he was doing. So she kept her mouth shut, and Zeke stayed where he was, tipping over buckets, spilling more and more olives and oil onto the twisting mountain road.
Elizabeth wanted to keep her eyes glued to him, but she was going to get them both killed if she didn’t watch where she was going. So she kept her gaze forward, risking quick glances at Zeke. She had only taken her eyes from the road for a few seconds when the grade took a sudden downward turn, and she found herself heading straight toward a cluster of shrines.
Frantically, she hit the brake as she pulled the truck toward the right. Still, the left front tire left the pavement and began to bump along the shoulder, throwing the vehicle dangerously out of balance. All she could do was keep yanking on the wheel, sure that they were going to go over the side and plunge onto the rocks below. But at the last moment, she brought the truck back onto the pavement and continued her wild dash for freedom.
She had started to breathe out a sigh of relief when more shots sounded. Closer. Oh Lord, if Icarus and his crew couldn’t drive her and Zeke off the road, they were going to riddle them with bullets.
She heard a loud exclamation from Zeke, and the air froze in her lungs.
He’s been hit! He must have been hit That was all she could think.
“Zeke!” she screamed.
“I’m okay,” he called back, and she felt an enormous weight lift from her chest.
By force of will, she kept her foot on the accelerator and her eyes on the road. The last time she’d looked away they’d almost plunged over the edge of the cliff. She couldn’t stop. She could only keep going and pray.
Zeke shouted in triumph.
In the mirror, she saw him raise one hand in victory. Daring to slow down, she watched the Chevy skid to the shoulder in what seemed like slow motion. Icarus spun the wheel frantically, but the car kept sliding inexorably toward the side of the road before leaving the pavement, skidding across the gravel and plunging over the edge. For several seconds, the world seemed frozen in silence. Then from far below, she heard the sound of an explosion. Seconds later, black smoke rose above the edge of the cliff.
With a sense of unreality, Elizabeth brought the truck to a bouncing stop. Her hand was shaking as she set the emergency brake with a jerk, thinking that she wouldn’t want to roll over the edge, now that they’d dodged a hail of bullets and avoided bein
g driven into the ravine.
As she sat behind the wheel sucking in drafts of air, Zeke enfolded her in his arms and she twisted around in her seat so she could hold on to him. Neither of them moved while they caught their breath.
“You did great,” he said in a rough voice, leaning forward to press his cheek against the top of her head.
She held him tighter and moved her face against his. Now that the death ride was over, she felt giddy. “So did they teach you that trick with the olive oil in spy school?” she asked.
He gave a sharp laugh that made her raise her face toward him. His expression was bemused. “No. I remembered a scene in an old Walter Matthau movie. He was an ex-CIA agent getting revenge on his jerk of a boss. And he escaped from an FBI ambush the boss set up, by emptying a couple of barrels of crude oil from the back of his truck onto the road. The pursuers slid off into oblivion. Thank God, it worked with cooking oil.”
Elizabeth made a sputtering sound. “You staked our lives on a scene from a movie?”
“Did you have a better idea?”
“No.”
He kept his arms around her, and she heard him suck in a ragged breath. “It was a good trick, but I couldn’t have done it without you,” he finally said. “If you hadn’t been here to drive the truck, they would have gotten me. Or I would have gone off the cliff trying to get away.”
She was struck dumb—but only for a moment. “Are you admitting it would have been a mistake to leave me in town?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said in a gravelly voice.
It was another perfect opportunity to say, I told you so. But she didn’t. Instead, she squeezed his arm and leaned into his embrace.
He clasped her tightly, as if he had no intention of ever turning her loose. But finally he sighed and straightened. “We’d better put up a warning sign at both ends of this mess. I wouldn’t want an innocent bystander going over the side on my account.”
The thought sent a shiver though her as she relived the image of the Chevy skidding off the road and plunging down the cliff. “Icarus was—”