Читать книгу 72 Hours - Dana Marton - Страница 8

Chapter Two

Kate braced a hand against the wall and realized at once why they were slipping. The brick was covered with slippery powder. She could make out some cobwebs in what little light filtered through the metal grid. She didn’t want to think of the number of spiders that would be living in a place like this. She put the hand back around Parker’s neck.

He slipped another inch.

Oh God, oh God, oh God. Please, please, please. She held her breath, expecting a fall any second. How high were they? And what was waiting for them at the bottom? Too dark to tell.

“Parker?”

“Relax,” he whispered; he could probably feel the tension in her body.

She loosened the death grip she had around his neck. Whatever he was doing to save them, he could probably do it better if she didn’t cut off his air supply.

He was slipping even though he had both hands and feet braced on the side walls. But they had a slow, controlled descent; he was able to achieve at least that much. After the first few moments of sheer panic, she unfolded her legs from around his waist and stuck them out, hoping to take some of her weight off him and help to slow them even more. The less they slipped, the shorter their climb would be back to the opening once the rebels moved away.

She succeeded, but only marginally. They were still steadily going down.

At least they weren’t crashing. She concentrated on the spot of light that was getting closer and closer, coming from the next cover grid on the floor below them. An eternity passed before they reached it.

Hanging on to the cast-iron scrolls, Parker was able to halt their downward progress temporarily.

They listened, but could hear no voices from outside.

“Can we get out?” she whispered.

“Maybe.” He waited a beat. “Looks deserted out there. We still have to be careful. I’m sure they secured every floor.”

“They can’t have people in every hallway.” At least, she really hoped they couldn’t.

“They don’t. They’re set up in strategic control positions.” Parker pushed against the grid, his muscles flexing against her.

The metal didn’t budge.

“Want me to get your knife out of your pocket?” she offered, although his pocket was the last place she wanted to be moseying around.

“Screws are on the outside. Can’t get to them.” He made another attempt at rattling them loose without success. “The offer is tempting, but I’ll pass for now.”

She bit back a retort at his teasing. She could and would let things go. She had learned over the years. “What do we do now?”

“Get to the bottom and find another way up.” He didn’t seem too shaken by their situation.

She, on the other hand, was going nuts in the confines of the tight space. “What is this place?” Her muscles tensed further as they began sliding again.

“The building used to belong to some nobleman back in the day. This is where the servants pulled up the buckets of coal from the basement for the tile stoves that heated his parlors.”

“And you know this how?”

He couldn’t shrug in their precarious situation, but made some small movement that gave the same effect.

Their shoes scraped on the walls that were less than three feet from each other, but the old coal dust muted the sound. She let go with one hand again and tried to find support. Carrying their combined weight had to be difficult even for a man as strong as Parker.

“I think I can do this on my own.” She’d seen rock-climbing done at the gym before, how those climbers supported their weight with nothing but the tips of their fingers and toes.

“We came from the second floor. With the twenty-foot ceilings these old palaces have, the drop to the basement could be fifty feet or more,” he said. “You stay where you are. If you slip, you die.”

She was perfectly clear on the hundred and one ways she could die in their given situation. She was trying hard not to think of them, thank you very much. “What can I do to make this easier?”

“Stop moving.”

She stilled and kept silent for a while before she realized she could probably move her lips.

“How did you get in here? Don’t tell me it’s for a story.”

“I quit that job. I work for the government now.”

He always had been dark and mysterious, something that had drawn her to him at the beginning of their relationship but had ended up driving a wedge between them eventually. Mysterious was fine in a sexy stranger. But when you were trying to build a life with someone, there were things you needed to know. There had come a time when she had realized that he was never going to let her in fully.

“You’re a marine?” The U.S. embassy was protected by marines. She had expected them to come after her eventually. But Parker wasn’t part of that team. He was probably too old for enlistment at this stage. She thought the age limit was twenty-eight. He was four years older than her, which made him thirty-six.

“Something like that,” he said, and in typical Parker fashion, wouldn’t elaborate.

She had a few guesses as to why. So her ex was some kind of special commando. “Something like” a marine. A picture was beginning to take shape in her mind. “Did you know I was here?”

She made sure to hold her elbows in, and her knees, although that wasn’t an easy task since her legs were wrapped around his waist for support. She couldn’t hold herself up by her arms alone any longer. On second thought, her brilliant idea of going down on her own might have been overly optimistic.

She tried hard not to think of the countless times her legs had been wrapped around his waist from the other side. Slow breath in. Slow breath out. The stifling air of the stupid coal chute seemed unbearably hot.

“I’ve been briefed,” he was saying.

He? What about the rest of the commando team? And in that moment, she knew without a doubt that there were no others. The embassy wasn’t being liberated. She was. Through some crazy plan, he was here to rescue her, and they were about to leave all those other people behind.

As if she would ever agree to anything as insane as that.

They were just reaching the landing, had to get down on their hands and knees to crawl out, touching each other way more in the process than she was comfortable with. He had always had an instant, mind-melting effect on her. There should be a vaccination against men like him, something that would give the recipient immunity. She’d be first in line at the clinic.

A dim security light burned somewhere, enough to see that they were both black, covered in hundred-year-old soot. He looked like some Greek hero, sculpted from black marble instead of white. She glanced down at her own clothes, stifling a sigh. She looked like an Old West horse thief, tarred and waiting to be feathered.

“Come on, we don’t have much time.” He moved forward, gun in hand. “I came in through the roof, but we’ll see if there’s a way out through here. Maybe some connection to the neighboring building. Like a secret emergency tunnel for the embassy staff.”

She thought of Anna, who had risked her life to melt the cuffs off her, and the kitchen staff who’d risked their lives to conceal her identity. She thought of Tanya and the two small children, and Ambassador Vasilievits, who had been separated from the others by the rebels.

“Did anyone make it out of the building?”

“No,” Parker said without turning around.

He was a dozen feet ahead before he realized that she wasn’t following and turned around. “What’s going on?” His eyes flashed with impatience.

She had a feeling he was about to get even more unhappy with her. “I’m not leaving,” she said.

WHAT in hell?

“You’re leaving, babe, believe me. You’re leaving if I have to carry you.” His blood pressure was inching up. For some unfathomable reason, she didn’t comprehend that every second counted. Odd really, because Kate Hamilton was one sharp woman.

“I’m not leaving the rest of the hostages to die. As soon as someone goes into the gym and realizes what you did, they’ll be massacred.” She was shooting him an accusing look, standing tall like some movie heroine.

Oh, man. She had that stubborn determination in her fine eyes, the same rich green color as the highland forests of Scotland. And he knew from experience that meant nothing good.

“I left them armed.”

No way was he going to stop to have a fight about this with her. He scanned the basement instead, which seemed closed to the outside, the only exit being a staircase that led up to the ground floor. He could see a few spots on the brick walls where at one point in the past there had been basement windows to the street, but they were walled in. And since the building was an old one, the outer walls were close to three feet wide, solid brick and mortar. They couldn’t even dig their way out.

“They are admin staff and people from the kitchen.” Kate wouldn’t let the subject drop. Her full and delicately shaped lips were set in a strict line of displeasure.

“The rebels won’t kill them. They need someone to negotiate with.” He eyed the stairs and calculated.

“They can negotiate with the ambassador,” she countered, backing away from him as he began stalking her. “The rebels have him someplace else in the embassy. He was taken away from the rest of us at the beginning.”

He stilled.

“Parker? What happened to him?”

And when he didn’t respond, she asked with horror in her eyes, “They killed him? That’s what the gunfire was about, wasn’t it?”

He said nothing.

Her tanned hands flew up to cover the lower part of her face until only her big, luminous eyes showed, glinting with moisture. Her shoulders drooped with defeat.

“Tanya…” Her voice sounded as if she was fighting for air. “How about his wife and the—” She didn’t seem to be able to take in enough air to finish the sentence.

“No idea.” He felt remorseful, but undeterred. “We are leaving. Now.”

“No. It’s my life.”

And his breath caught, because that had been the last thing she had told him before she’d left. It’s my life, Parker. I’m sorry. I have to do what’s best. And he had stood there, without a word, without trying to change her mind, and watched her walk away.

Letting her go had been the single most selfless thing he had ever done in his life. He knew she was better off without him. He was darkness and she was light.

But it had still hurt like hell.

He blinked hard, waited for the tightness in his chest to ease. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“None of your business,” she snapped at him. “I’m not going. I’m serious.”

So was he.

“Kate.” The word came out in a low growl of temper. He hated how quickly she could make him lose his cool. He was frustrated that she wouldn’t give him her full cooperation.

She hesitated another long second. Damn. There had been a time when she had told him everything, had laid her soul bare and shared it. Well, the trust was gone now. He should have expected that.

“I am considering adopting a child from Russia. Tanya has two adopted children. I had some questions about the process and the orphanage she used,” she said with a defensive set of her chin and a hint of vulnerability around her.

That wasn’t the answer he had expected. The words cut him off at the knees. There had been a time when he was looking forward to Kate having his children, although he had tried to tell her that the time wasn’t right just yet, that they would probably have to wait a couple of years. He didn’t want to miss anything. He didn’t want to be an absentee father on active duty. Not that he’d been able to tell her that. He’d had to cook up some stupid story about how he needed a lot of time at that point because he was fighting hard for his next promotion.

A tidal wave of regrets slammed into him. He couldn’t think about all that now. He had to get her out of here.

But she wasn’t done fighting yet. “Listen to me. Chances are they would have let the hostages go at the end. Now that you shot their men, they are going to kill the people we left behind. Because of me. I can’t live with that. I’m not that kind of person. I can’t.” There was urgency and desperation in her voice. “Please,” she added with her unique mix of vulnerability and determination.

She wasn’t a delicate woman. She was vivacious. She had lively eyes, a full mouth and a stubborn jawline. She laughed from the heart and cried from the heart.

He still had a crush on her. The realization caught him off guard. That rush of attraction, the magnetic pull. A crush—that was all it was. He imagined there wasn’t a man who could go within ten feet of Kate Hamilton without developing a little crush on her.

He could disarm a nuclear warhead. He should be able to neutralize some leftover attraction.

“Parker?”

She wouldn’t give up. She wasn’t the type. When someone needed help, Kate Hamilton was your gal. She’d charged to the rescue of neighbors, friends and coworkers alike, making time to find homes for strays she picked up on the street. Which made her a fine consul, he supposed, since part of her job was to assist U.S. citizens who ran into trouble here in France. She could manage a problem like nobody’s business.

“Please?”

Those eyes were going to be the death of him. Oh, hell, when had he ever been able to resist her?

He drew a deep breath, recognizing himself for the fool he was. “Okay. I’ll get you out. Once you’re safe, I’ll come back to see what I can do for the others.” And the Colonel was probably going to fry his ass. A freaking barbecue.

“How can you even think about taking only me?” She was outraged and not bothering to hide it.

“Because that is precisely the order I got.” He kept his voice deceptively low, although his blood was fairly boiling.

“From whom?”

He stayed silent.

“Some orders need to be questioned.”

She’d never met the Colonel. “Maybe you question too much,” he said.

“We should go back for them right now.” Her voice had a lot of steel in it.

Something told him Kate had toughened up a lot since he’d last seen her. Or maybe that core of steel had been there all along, and he’d just never seen it because he’d been too busy running from one mission to the next, never having enough time for her, always leaving her behind.

No wonder she had walked out.

He watched her in the dim light and fought against the tide of emotions. No regrets. Not now. He walled off the memories. They could reminisce once they got out of this hellhole.

But first he had to placate her and gain her cooperation. Her cooperation! He was here to save her, dammit. She was supposed to jump into his arms, misty with gratitude. If he’d had more time, he would have spent a moment or two enjoying that fantasy.

“How about this? I’ll neutralize as many rebels on our way out as I can, evening the odds for the hostages whom we are temporarily leaving behind.” Even though a silent exit would have been by far preferable and had been specifically requested by the Colonel. “I’ll do whatever I can for the hostages on our way out as long as it doesn’t put you in jeopardy. That’s nonnegotiable.”

She looked around thoughtfully, as if taking stock of the basement, then back at him. “We bring the hostages down here. They can barricade themselves until help comes. There’s only one entrance to the basement. The rebels might not even find them down here by the time the building is taken back. Nobody gets killed because of me. That’s non-negotiable.”

She was managing the problem.

She was insane. And yet, the plan did have some merit. And damn, but he liked her pluck. Always had. He’d always liked everything about her.

All they had to do was go back up to the second floor where the gym was and make sure the hostages got to the coal chute without being seen. The hostages would come down, Kate and he would go up the two extra floors to the roof. They had to pass through the second floor anyway. Once they were at the gym, they’d be halfway to their destination.

Lightning cracked outside. He thought he heard rain.

“Deal,” he said.

August 10, 01:57

“HOW DID you get in?” Kate asked half an hour later—they’d searched the basement inch by inch to make sure there really wasn’t another exit—pretty happy about getting her way. It wasn’t every day that Parker McCall yielded to someone.

“Through the roof.” He stood at the top of the staircase, pulled out his cell phone, opened it, then swore briefly. “Doesn’t work down here.”

He looked a lot cleaner than ten minutes ago. They had spent some time brushing soot off their clothes, off each other. That had been a picnic and a half. She’d just about jumped out of her skin when he touched her. It had taken everything she had not to let him see that he could still affect her with as little as a brush of his knuckles.

“Through the roof how?”

“From the next building. The rebels heavily secured the main entrances. Can’t get in or out through there without a major fight. They were focused on that when I got here, hadn’t gotten to securing the roof yet. I’m sure that has been done by now, but we’ll fight our way out if we have to.”

Fight. Oh God. She was scared stiff. Although if anyone could get her out of here, it was Parker. Especially this new, military version.

“How many are there?”

“Two dozen, tops. They’re spread out over the four floors. Have to keep the whole building secured. They can’t spare more than a handful for the roof. And up there, it’s pitch-dark—a definite advantage.”

For Parker. She, on the other hand, was afraid of the dark, especially when it hid murderous rebels. Parker looked…almost excited, as if this was nothing but a game.

“Are you going to tell me who you really are?” she asked.

He was Parker, but not her Parker. Not the man she had fallen in love with. This Parker was a lot darker and infinitely more dangerous. He moved with feline grace and constant preparedness. He had shot people without blinking an eye. She still couldn’t process that.

He shrugged.

He’d always been darkly mysterious in a brooding-but-gorgeous kind of way, but now… “You—”

He had his hand over her mouth the next second, his hard body pushing her against the wall, into the shadows as he towered over her. But she didn’t feel threatened, not for a second, never with Parker. She felt protected, but she wouldn’t admit to herself just how much she had missed that. Voices filtered down from above.

They stood motionless, although since the stairs were made of stone, they didn’t have to worry about creaking wood giving them away. But she barely dared to breathe, feeling paralyzed all of a sudden, and unsure if it came from the proximity of danger or the proximity of the man who had the power to liquefy her knees.

Parker ran a calming hand down her arm, which she didn’t find calming in the least.

His skin still smelled the same—well, almost, plus hundred-year-old coal dust. On him, it smelled sexy. His body was still incredible, his lips still just as sensuous. He could still arouse her with a touch. The full-frontal contact was wreaking havoc with her senses.

And she panicked, because in her perfect little world, she had managed to convince herself that she was over him, that if they ever met again, she could walk by him without batting an eye. And here she was, assailed by such a sharp sense of longing it stole her breath away. It took all her willpower not to bury her face into the base of his throat and lap at the warm, smooth skin she knew she would find there.

The voices faded.

He didn’t move.

And she didn’t want him to.

No. Not again. She couldn’t fall for him again. He had never truly loved her. He couldn’t have. He had left her every chance he’d had. He had lied to her about things. She was pretty sure about that. She didn’t want to think how many nights she’d lain awake wondering about where he was.

The two of them together spelled disaster, she reminded herself and pushed him away. Maybe with a little more force than was strictly necessary.

“Easy,” he said, watching her with his usual unsettling intensity, as if trying to puzzle out her thoughts.

Not if she could help it. She stepped away from the wall. “Let’s go.”

He moved away from her with some reluctance. “I’ll pick the lock, you see what else you can find here that we could use.”

She moved around him and set to the task.

The opposite wall of the staircase was lined with metal shelves. He already had a length of inch-wide nylon rope twisted around his waist that he had found, and a small screwdriver in his hand that he had gotten from the giant four-feet-by-four-feet toolbox near the bottom of the stairs.

The basement was used by the Russians as a storage facility. It held everything from broken office furniture to security supplies and crowd-control posts, even a crate of sea salt in one-kilo bags.

She opened an oil-stained box and rummaged through it. “What are we looking for exactly?”

“You’ll know it when you see it,” he said. “Grab anything you think we can use.”

A lot of help he was.

But he was right. When she spotted the flashlight hanging from a peg behind the box, she took it. She was pleased to notice its metal case was heavy enough to be used as a weapon in a pinch. She flicked it on and grinned at the circle of light that appeared on the wall. “Even the battery works. Doesn’t get better than that.”

“Here we go.” He straightened.

The door stood slightly ajar. He had obviously worked some magic on the lock.

“I don’t even want to know where you learned that.”

“Of course you do.” He flashed a flat grin. “You want to know everything.”

“Fine, I do. But I’m not asking. You wouldn’t tell me, anyway.”

His mouth twitched. “Wish we had time to look around some more, but we should probably head out.” He bent his sinuous body into some SWAT-team pose.

Where had he learned that? Of course, she wasn’t about to ask that, either. Trying to pin Parker down was futile. She ought to know.

He pulled the door a little wider, peeked out then closed it again, pulling his gun up and ready to shoot.

She could hear footsteps come their way then fade into the distance.

“Is your name Parker?” she whispered, unable to take her eyes off the weapon.

He tossed her a don’t-be-stupid look that got her dander up, but then he nodded.

“You never were a foreign correspondent, were you?” Bits and pieces fell into place; a lot of things that had bewildered her in the past were making terrifying sense now.

He held her gaze. “No.”

Oh God. “I’ve been so stupid, haven’t I?” She looked away, embarrassed that she had never figured it out. He must have thought her incredibly gullible. She’d been blinded by love and lust. She would have believed anything of him. Not until the very end had she begun to see the chinks in his armor.

“You’re one of the smartest women I know. One of the reasons why I fell in love with you.”

Her heart, her stupid, gullible heart, turned over at his words. But had he really? Had he fallen in love with her, or had he been using her as some kind of a cover? He was a spy or a secret agent or something. He would probably say anything to have her cooperation so he could carry out his current mission successfully. She’d do well to remember that.

But it was difficult to remember anything when he put a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off. She didn’t need to be further confused by the way his touch had made her feel. She hadn’t been able to forget that, or anything else about him. Not for a single day, not even when she had dated other men.

“We’d better get going,” she said, trying hard to shake off the sharp sense of unreasonable longing that hit her out of the blue.

She needed to think about the hostages instead of Parker. They had to get to the gym before some rebels decided to check on their buddies stuck watching over the embassy staff. Every minute counted. Every minute could save a life.

He nodded slowly before he took his eyes off her and pushed the door open again. This time, the hallway must have been clear, because he stepped outside.

She followed. She had been a guest at the Russian embassy a half dozen times, but had never been in this part, wasn’t sure of the way.

After a moment, Parker glanced back at her and parted his lips as if to say something, but was prevented by the sound of gunfire coming from somewhere above.

Above and to the left. They were just coming to a T in the hallway. There had to be a way to get up there. Kate turned left and took off running.

More gunfire. It lasted longer this time. Long enough to have killed every man and woman in the gym.

“Oh, God, no.” She held the flashlight as tightly as she could, the only weapon she had, and ran faster, her heart beating its way out of her chest.

They had spent too much time arguing over what they should do. And now it was too late.