by Anne Stuart
“Al!” Shari wailed. “You promised I could watch!”
“I’m not going to do anything now, bitch,” Al snarled. “Get away from her. I don’t trust her.”
“She’s tied up. What could she do?”
“Have you looked in her eyes? They’re devil’s eyes. She sees things no one should see.” He crossed the room, caught Elizabeth’s cropped hair in one rough hand and jerked her face up. “See? She knows things. She knows what we’re doing, and no one could have told her. Unless you . . . ?”
“No, Al! I promise, I didn’t—”
“It wouldn’t do any good.” He released her, but she turned her head, staring at him, putting all her rage and despair into her gaze. “She can stare at me all she wants with those witch’s eyes. It won’t do her any good. She’s going to die, and if any of her friends are lucky enough to find where she is, they’ll die, too.” He took Shari’s arms, his long cruel fingers digging in painfully, and Elizabeth knew where those bruises had come from. “Come on,” he said, yanking her to her feet. “There’ll be time enough to play with your new toy.”
He flicked the light off as they left, shutting her back in the darkness, and through the heavy door she could hear their footsteps disappearing. She sank back, exhausted, horrified, shaking with reaction. She had never felt so helpless in her entire life. It made no sense that Shari could know those things, but she did. It made no sense that a group of crazy terrorists would be able to pull off such an atrocity, but she knew that they were very close to doing just that. And there was nothing she could do about it.
Her only comfort was that Sam wasn’t going to die. He’d be half-crazy by now, combing Venice for her, but he’d never find the house. In the darkness the faded blue paint looked muddy, and tomorrow she’d be dead, and Al and Shari would be gone. The best Sam would come up with was vengeance. But vengeance would keep him alive, would keep his blood from staining this horrible red dress they’d put her in.
Minutes passed into hours, and time ceased to exist in the numbing-cold darkness of that room. It wasn’t until the first pale streaks of dawn lit the sky that she could see they’d left the window open to the chilly night air. She shivered, looking out at the disappearing stars, and wondered whether she ought to try to cross that expanse of room and end up in the canal. She couldn’t even try to swim with her arms and legs bound, but at least she’d be spared the treats Al had in store for her. And if he wanted to find out where Sam was, there would be no way she could keep that information from him if he was determined. She wanted to be strong, indomitable, but she’d never been good where pain was concerned. And Al appeared to be an expert.
She’d have to think about it. Have to consider it from all angles before she did something as desperate as taking her own life. It might be the only form of revenge she could have against the two ghouls who’d left her tied up in this room. Depriving them of their sadistic thrills seemed a small enough triumph, but it might be all she could hope for. She inched forward, testing her mobility, when a shadow darkened the window opening.
She held herself motionless. Whoever had come in the window couldn’t be any worse than Shari and her murderous companion. If someone wanted to dispatch her sooner, then it would probably be all the better. That way the choice wouldn’t be up to her.
She thought of making a noise but couldn’t bring herself to do it. The room was still shrouded in shadows, so dark that whoever had climbed over the balcony probably wouldn’t be able to see her. Whoever it was dropped lightly onto the floor, moving across the empty room with a disturbingly familiar grace. Moving directly toward her, with dark blue eyes that could see in the dark, and she wanted to scream in rage and despair as Sam’s hands reached her face and pulled the gag from her mouth.
“I ought to let them kill you,” he said coldly. And then his mouth replaced her gag, kissing away the dry, dead taste of silence.
Chapter 20
ELIZABETH’S MOUTH came alive beneath his. She wanted desperately to reach for him, but the numbing bonds on her wrists kept her still. She wanted to scream at him, to tell him to run, to leave, before they killed him, too, but her mouth was too busy answering his. She was balanced on her knees, leaning into him, when suddenly her tenuous balance disappeared, and she toppled back on the thin pallet, taking him with her.
His big body covered hers, and there was a light of amusement in his eyes. “This really isn’t the time or place, Elizabeth,” he said, pressing into her. “Though I grant you, danger can be an erotic stimulant.”
Outrage kept her silent as he quickly cut through her bonds. And then the pain as the blood rushed back through her arms was so great she almost passed out, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood. He held her then, his arms infinitely gentle, knowing her pain, but helpless to take it from her. His words were soft, soothing, silly words, and she drank them in in a pain-drugged daze, too weary to tell him he was going to die.
As soon as she’d managed to catch her breath he cut the bonds between her ankles, cursing as he noticed her bare feet. “You’re going to have a hell of a time getting around Venice without shoes,” he muttered under his breath. He pushed her shoulders back gently, looking into her face. “Are you okay?”
“So far. Get out of here, Sam. It wasn’t my death I saw in my visions, it was yours.”
“Which doesn’t mean you’re safe. And doesn’t mean I’m going to die,” he said flatly.
“Sam, I saw your blood, covering my red dress.”
“Then what the hell did you put on a red dress for?” he demanded with some asperity.
“I didn’t have any choice in the matter,” she said. “I was out cold at the time. Sam . . .”
“So someone here has lousy taste in clothes. That doesn’t mean I’m going to bite the big one, Elizabeth. Can you stand?”
“Of course,” she said, letting him help her up and promptly collapsing against him. “Sam, you don’t know what they’re planning to do,” she said urgently, remembering that horrifying flash she’d had when Shari had put her arms around her.
“Yes, I do,” he said grimly. “I was able to persuade Danny to tell me.”
“You were? How?”
“For one thing, he felt guilty as hell for letting them get you. For another, I would have killed him if he hadn’t. He’s known me long enough to know I wasn’t bluffing.”
“Weren’t you?”
He looked down at her, his eyes bleak and cold. “They had you. The only chance I had of getting you back was to find out what was going on. The only person who knew was Danny. He’d seen the blue house, and he knew what was going on here. Yes, I would have killed him. Maybe because it was just as much my fault for leaving you as it was his for not getting there on time. You could have been killed. And the damned thing about it is I can’t even afford to think about that right now. I can’t even take the time to get you out of here. I’ve got to find Shari Derringer and stop things before they get completely out of control.”
She shivered in the predawn darkness. “Maybe it’s not as bad as we think. I can’t imagine how the Spandau Corporation could manage to circumvent the security of all those missile bases. If the government knows, they must have beefed up security. Surely—”
“The government knows. They just haven’t managed to tell NATO, or the countries where the bases are housed. Too embarrassing, apparently. They’re still hoping they’ll be able to minimize the disaster or cover their butts.” He shook his head. “It’s probably already too late to stop at least half of the saboteurs.” He started pulling her toward the window, but she held back, stubbornly.
“No, it isn’t. She hasn’t told them yet.”
He stopped, a grim sort of hope forming in his eyes. “What makes you think she hasn’t?”
“I looked in my crystal ball.”
“Damn it, Elizabeth . . .”
“I don’t know, Sam. I touched her, and I saw it. She doesn’t even seem to understand what she knows. I don’t
know if she’s just incredibly dull-witted, or too drugged, or what. But she hasn’t told them everything they need to know. Otherwise Al would have killed her.”
“Al?”
“The man who killed Phil. The so-called Colorado Slasher. He’s a man she calls Al.”
“What are they waiting for?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’re waiting for the proper drug.” They hadn’t heard him come in. He moved very silently, like a cat, standing between them and the window. The knife at his waist glinted in the first rays of dawn, but the Uzi in his hand looked even more efficient. “You can’t imagine our frustration,” he went on, pulling the window shut behind him and latching it. Locking their best avenue of escape. “This has been in the planning for more than five years and it’s teetering on the brink of disaster because of a few careless mistakes.”
“Al,” Sam said under his breath. “Muhammed Ali Reza.”
Al’s smile was wide and terrifying. “You’ve heard of me. Very thorough of you, since I’ve managed to keep a very low profile over the past few years. I’ve heard of you, of course, but then, your country doesn’t know how to keep a secret. Look at that stupid American bitch downstairs. In most countries the spoiled, stupid daughter of a politician would never have been allowed anywhere near such dangerous information.”
“What can I say?” Sam said, shrugging his shoulders, his hands still tight on Elizabeth’s arms. “Her father has a number of problems that no one seemed to be aware of. My government has an unfortunate habit of covering up embarrassments, and MacDonald Derringer was one of those embarrassments. His weakness for alcohol and young boys made him a security risk. And the last person he’d be wary of was his own daughter.”
“He’s a fool, like all the other fools,” Al said, dismissing him. “His daughter was a gift from Allah, however. She already had a taste for drugs. She was introduced to a new one, with special properties. A very experimental drug, one that enabled her to carry vast amounts of information tucked in the back of her brain. Unfortunately, it overloaded other parts of her already limited intellect, but these things can’t be helped.”
“I wondered how you did it,” Sam murmured, his fingers flexing gently against Elizabeth’s soft skin. She knew what he intended. When his moment came he was going to thrust her out of the way and go for Reza. Despite the Uzi, despite the bright silver knife, he was going to try to kill him. And right then and there Elizabeth decided she wasn’t going to let him shove her to safety.
“Yes, the little American couldn’t remember her own telephone number if it weren’t for the help of drugs. The problem is, she needs another dose to bring all that lovely information out in accurate detail. And we’ve been having trouble manufacturing it. One of the ingredients is notoriously unstable. Three women have been killed testing it.”
“Pity,” Sam said briefly. She could feel the tension thrumming through him. He had a small knife; she knew that much. He’d cut her bonds with it. And she thought she’d detected a small bulge beneath his waistband, one that could be a gun similar to Danny’s miniature. Even with both weapons, he’d be no match for Reza, though.
“We think the last batch is it, though. The last person to test it survived, though she’s just now come out of the coma. We’ll test it one more time, and then give it to Shari. I doubt she’ll have any mind left at all once she’s emptied it of all her wonderfully useful information, but that’s of little consequence. We’ll make sure she survives long enough to be a great embarrassment to your country and then dispose of her.”
“Very well thought out. What makes you think her security information will still be correct?”
Al smiled. Several teeth were dark and crooked, and he no longer looked like the handsome, somewhat dangerous tourist from St. Mark’s Piazza. He looked like a hideous, flesh-eating beast, ready to rip their throats out. “A number of things, the sorts of things that have made the Spandau Corporation so successful over the past few years. A knowledge of the way the enemy’s mind works, for one thing. Luck, for another. The knowledge that we are in the right and you are decadent and evil.”
“You’ll kill a lot of children if you carry out your plan. Are they decadent and evil?”
“Blood must be shed for the greater good,” Al said, and Elizabeth could see his hand tighten on the Uzi. “Everything must be purged in the fire.”
It seemed to happen in slow motion, yet very, very fast. Too fast for conscious thought, too fast for safe decisions. As the Uzi prepared to spit out its deadly fire, Sam gave her a sudden thrust. Not to the floor, as she had expected, but directly at Al.
The man acted instinctively, throwing the gun upward as he tried to ward her hurtling body off. She knocked him over, the Uzi went scudding across the floor and the two of them were locked together, Reza’s face insane with rage, as he yanked his knife out and started slashing toward Elizabeth’s throat.
She kicked at him helplessly, and then went spinning backward, hard, against the stone floor, the breath knocked out of her as Sam leaped atop Reza’s body, seemingly oblivious of the deadly knife.
Elizabeth screamed then, terror and despair slicing through her as thoroughly as Reza’s knife would have. She struggled to her knees, oblivious to the stinging pain in her neck, oblivious to Sam’s panted orders to run. She knelt there, in the warmth and dampness, and waited for Sam to die.
She watched it all unfold in shocked terror. Knife fights in the movies were quick and lethal, the hero ring from the corpse of his vanquished enemy in triumph. But these two men were equally matched, equally deadly, and the battle was a nauseating eternity as they rolled on the dusty floor, first Ali on top, then Sam, then Ali again, the two of them clutching that vicious knife, neither weakening, a fight to the death. She looked around her, helplessly searching for something to hit Ali over the head with. She’d smashed Kempton’s brain with little compunction, she could happily decapitate Ali, but there was nothing, and the two combatants rolled again, with Sam’ powerful hands clamped around Ali’s wrist as the man tried to slash at him, and anything she could do might backfire and kill Sam. All she could do was watch with mounting horror and pray for a man to die.
She almost didn’t notice Sam’s slight movement. Somehow he managed to lever his body a fraction away from Ali’s deadly fury, and it didn’t take much. His elbow slammed into Ali’s groin.
The man didn’t scream, didn’t seem to react, but it was enough to loosen his grip on the knife for just a millisecond, and a moment later Sam plunged that knife into Ali’s throat, not once but over and over again, blood splattering everywhere as the man finally went limp.
Sam sat up, staring at the savaged copse of the man he’d just killed, and the triumphant grin on his dark face should have horrified her. She managed a weary grin in return.
Sam extricated himself from the dead man’s embrace and moved to Elizabeth, pulling her into his arms, kneeling there in the early-morning sunlight, with the smell of blood all around them.
It took a moment for him to pull back, and there was so much blood. “You’re hurt,” she moaned. “I told you. I warned you. . . .”
“It’s you, darling,” he said gently, touching her neck. “He managed to nick you with that butcher knife of his. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig.”
She reached up and touched her neck, and her hand came away bright red with blood. Her own blood. She stared at it, dizzy with relief. “How wonderful,” she said faintly.
“Yeah, great,” he muttered, looking around him for something to stop the flow. He settled for her tattered red dress, ripping a strip off the bottom and winding it around her neck. “I don’t think he hit anything vital—you wouldn’t be looking so cheerful if he had. But I want to get it looked at anyway.”
“Sam,” she said. “What about Shari?”
Sam’s response was an instant, “Fuck! I’ve got to get out of this business. I’m so damn worried about you that I’m forgetting what I’m doing.”
Pulling away, he leaped over Reza’s prone body without a backward glance and headed for the hallway, Elizabeth close behind him. “We can’t let her get away. If she meets up with the other members of the Corporation, they can administer the drug. We’ve got to get her back to the United States, back in treatment with people who know what they’re doing. God knows what sort of quacks devised that drug in the first place.”
The blue house was deserted. The front door was open, leading onto a narrow alleyway, and Elizabeth knew with sudden, shattering certainty that it had been her terrified screams that had alerted Shari. “Stay here,” Sam said, pulling away from her and staring down the alley.
“No.”
“Damn it, Elizabeth . . .”
“She didn’t go that way,” she said with sudden certainty. “She’s out by the canal.”
“There’s no walkway on that side,” he said. “I should know. I had to scale the damn building to get to your balcony.”
“She’s on the canal side,” Elizabeth said flatly, turning and heading back through the house, not even bothering to see if he’d follow her.
He passed her before she got to the canal side, pushing ahead of her onto the narrow balcony. “You see,” he said with bitter triumph. “She’s nowhere in sight.”
Daylight had broken over Venice, a fitful, murky daylight promising more cold, more rain. In the distance Elizabeth could just make out a pale figure edging along the narrow ledge, four or five houses down.
“There she is,” Elizabeth said, pointing.
Sam was over the balcony and following in a matter of seconds. He was much faster than Shari was, moving along with the grace and speed of an experienced climber, and within less than a minute he was almost in reach. Shari looked back at him, terrified, and kept struggling across the narrow ledges.
“Go away,” she spat at Sam. “Leave me alone.”
He paid no attention, moving steadily closer. He grabbed for her, catching her arm, but she fought him off, mouthing obscenities, beating at him. He tried again, but she scratched him, and even from a distance Elizabeth could see the stripes of blood across his face.