Dana Marton (15 page)

“I think so.”

But she wouldn’t have been that way for long, a fact that became obvious when Piotr began to twitch on the floor, his eyes going wide, drool running out of his mouth. He wouldn’t have done that from the shot. Somebody had just released nerve gas in the air.

“Let’s go.” He pulled Kate up and grabbed her by the arm, glanced back when she hobbled.

“What’s wrong with your leg?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to hold me up,” she said just as another explosion shook the building. “I can limp along.”

“Not fast enough.”

He picked her up in his arms, looking for blood again and still not finding any. So she hadn’t been hit by a stray bullet. She must have torn a tendon or dislocated her ankle. No time to stop and look at it.

The smoke in the hallway was blacker and thicker than just minutes ago. He saw open flames to his right so he turned left.

“Hang on tight.” He could only support her with one arm; the other he needed to hold his weapon.

The conditions in the building were deteriorating fast. They needed to take the shortest way out. One floor down and through the main lobby.

His left arm was still bleeding, not terribly so, but he had lost enough blood by now to make him feel weaker. Add to that the lack of food and sleep and he knew he wasn’t in top shape. It would come down to seconds and to his last ounce of strength. He pushed forward with everything he had.

One rebel was running up the main staircase. His first shot at Parker went wide. The second didn’t go anywhere. He was out of bullets. He was a young guy, without a mask, the fear on his face distorting his features.

Parker lowered his weapon and ran by him on his way down the wide stairs.

Then they were in the main lobby where four rebel soldiers held the main entrance, barricaded with desks and chairs and whatever furniture they had been able to find. One of them was wearing a TNT belt.

Their attention was focused outward so Parker had a split-second chance to step behind the row of metal detectors to the side. The Russian embassy had a pretty decent system to scan entering visitors.

Kate must have been thinking the same because she asked, “How do you think the rebels got in here in the first place?”

“Could be they had inside help.” Ivan came to mind. Could be he was Piotr’s connection. “I figure Piotr gave the rebels Ivan and a way in, and in exchange the rebels brought him along, giving him a chance to take out Victor, who was pretty much guaranteed to be here.”

Piotr was the only Russian among the attackers, a man with connections everywhere. Ivan was also Russian. Could be he hadn’t even fully known what he was doing when he’d compromised embassy security for Piotr. They’d had a deal. That was why he was the only embassy guard the rebels had left alive.

“I am sorry about before. When I left—” Kate said out of the blue as he slipped her to the ground.

He’d been focused on the rebels so her words caught him by surprise. His heart thumped. He wished they didn’t have to have the masks on so he could see her eyes.

“I’m sorry, too.” The words broke free from deep in his chest.

He’d been a fool. And why in hell was he holding back still?

“I was crazy to let you go,” he said the words out loud. Well, more like in a whisper, although there was enough fighting going on in the building to cover the sound of his voice. But if ever there was a time to lay all his cards on the table, this was it.

Possibly their last chance, although he preferred not to dwell on that.

She nodded slowly. “If we don’t make it—”

He pulled her into his arms to silence her, although the same thought lay heavily on his mind. To hell with that. They
were
going to make it. They had to. He was not going to lose her again. He’d be damned if he died just when he finally got her back. So the deal was, both of them were going to make it. He would accept no other outcome.

“I want to have dinner with you tomorrow night,” he said, and wished he could kiss her, but they couldn’t afford to take their masks off even for a second. So instead, he caressed what little of her face was uncovered.

Then he turned to fight. But she held him back.

“Give me one of the guns.”

He hesitated only a split second before handing her the Russian-made Makarov he’d taken off Piotr.

They opened fire simultaneously. His first shot hit its target, hers missed by inches. The remaining three rebels scattered as they shot back, running for cover.

He aimed for the one with the explosives and brought him down. The man fell behind a makeshift barricade, so Parker couldn’t tell whether he was injured or dead. He focused on the other two. Kate did, too, and finished one of them off. The remaining guy, however, managed to give them a fair amount of trouble.

He was a good shot, the best of the bunch, and the quickest. Parker swore as a bullet grazed his knee. He couldn’t let his legs get injured. He had to carry Kate out of here.

He waited and took his time, held back until he saw a flash of movement through the cracks in the piled-up furniture. He took the shot. There was no responding hail of bullets.

“We’d better—” Kate was moving forward already, limping heavily, but he held out a hand to stop her.

He went first, slow and cautious, rifle aimed at the spot where he had fired his last shot. No movement. He walked toward the side instead of in a straight line. In another two steps, he could see the motionless body on the floor.

“Okay.” He went back to Kate and picked her up, but still kept his weapon handy. He held her tight. “You cover me from the back.”

She looked over his shoulder and brought up the Makarov. “You bet.”

He made his way through the barricade, kicking chairs aside, stepping over a lifeless body. Then he was at the outer door.

Wow. He was seeing two. Double vision. Not a good sign. The blood he was losing through his latest injury was pushing his already damaged body over the edge.

Just a little more.

“We can’t go out armed.” He dropped his rifle, hating being unarmed.

Kate’s Makarov clattered to the marble behind him. He opened the door that, thank God, was unlocked. The rebels probably hadn’t been able to figure out the electronic lock mechanism or override the program’s password.

He was blinded by the floodlights that immediately hit him. Pain pulsed in his arm and leg, his vision growing hazier, even though there was no smoke out here. But he could make out a police cordon and more barricades—triangular cement boulders with dozens of armed men behind them. He staggered that way, holding on tightly to Kate.

Then an explosion shook the ground and a wave of fire shot out from the door behind him to claim them.

T
HAT WAS
the picture that made the front page of
Le Figaro
the next day, as well as the front page of most major newspapers around the world. Parker lurching forward in the moment of explosion, Kate in his arms, the flames obscuring most of the building behind them.

“A rescue-team member saves one of the hostages,” the caption said in dozens of languages. Neither their names nor nationality were mentioned. The gas masks had kept their faces covered.

As it turned out, they didn’t have dinner the next night, or the night after that. Parker was immediately recalled to the U.S. for treatment and debriefing. Although the Colonel had been able to pull enough strings to keep his identity secret, the Russians were more than interested in the hero the surviving hostages were talking about. Not to the press, though. The survivors said little to the army of reporters. A gag order had been issued regarding the incident.

The official story was that the rescue had been carried out by internal embassy security.

Good enough for him, Parker thought as he drove down the Avenue de la Bourdonnais two weeks later, too nervous to enjoy the early-twentieth-century architecture of the upscale seventh arrondissement. It had taken him this long to get back into Paris. The Colonel had refused to let him go until his wounds healed.

The first gunshot, that little scrape, had given him the most trouble. The wound itself hadn’t been bad, but since it had gone untreated for a while, he’d managed to develop a nasty infection. All better now, save for the slight limp he still had from the third shot, which he did his best to hide.

He found the building he was looking for, a gorgeous villa in the nicest section of the avenue. He parked right in front of the house, allowed to do so by the security guard. He was expected.

His heart beat an expectant rhythm as he stepped out of his rental Renault Mégane convertible, or cabriolet, as they called it around here. Not a bad car. Might have to consider one for his collection. He grabbed the ridiculously large bouquet of pink roses from the passenger seat.

He ran up the walkway, nodded back to the security guard who opened the door for him. The hallway reflected Kate’s taste, classy but with a swirl of heat. The antique furniture was French to match the historical building, the art modern and full of fire. He recognized a few pieces from the condo they had shared together: the four-foot-tall, red Murano glass vase, prints of the bold paintings of Raoul Dufy that Kate collected.

Then everything else disappeared as he looked up and spotted her at the top of the wide curving staircase.

“Hi.” She gave a shy smile, stealing his breath.

She wore shimmering black silk that hugged her body, her hair swept up to leave her graceful neck free. She wore the earrings he had long ago given her.

He desperately wanted that to mean something.

She had said she regretted the past. Said it when she’d thought they’d both be dead the next second. He wasn’t sure how much stock he could put in that, although he wanted it to be true.

“Come on up,” she said with a smile. “We’ll be having dinner on the balcony.”

He took the steps two at a time, feeling embarrassingly eager. Then they were on the same level, her jewel eyes shining. At him. He handed her the roses, still unable to say a word.

“Thank you.”

“Sorry I couldn’t come earlier.” He leaned forward, not sure what to do. In the end, he brushed his lips over hers.

She didn’t pull back. “How is your arm? How is your leg?”

Did she notice his limp? “Better. Great.” He swept in for another kiss. “You taste like strawberries,” he said.

She smiled. “I just tested our dessert.”

“You ate my dessert?” He tried to sound outraged, but couldn’t pull it off.

“A tiny taste. Quality control.”

“A taste for a taste.” He lowered his head again and this time kissed her as though he meant it.

She opened to him, letting him take what he wanted, taking what she needed in return. She gave him back all that he had thought he’d lost.

“How is your ankle?” he asked a while later.

“I tore a ligament when I fell. It’ll heal. Anna has been released from the hospital.”

He knew. The Colonel had told him when he inquired about the hostages. Turned out Anna was the inside man, well, woman in this case, for the French. Every embassy in every country has inside men-slash-women, sometimes several: admin staff hired in the host country to observe and report to their own government on the comings and goings at the embassy.

“She called me to see if I could tell her how to reach you. She wanted to thank you for going back in for her.”

“No thanks are necessary.” He didn’t remember much of that part of the night. He’d been half unconscious from pain. He’d left Kate with the French police at the ambulance, then had charged back in through the fire with a commando team to show them where he’d left the injured young woman.

To his surprise, they’d found Ivan, too, still alive, and brought out both of them. The hostages had broken his neck, but he would survive—a paraplegic. He had given a full confession already, confirming Parker’s suspicions about his connection to Piotr.

A Tarkmezi warlord had apparently put out word that he needed someone with a connection at the Russian embassy in Paris. Piotr, who needed the warlord’s favor on some gun deal, made a point of finding a “friend” via blackmail. Then, when he realized what the warlord needed the connection for, he got himself on the team, knowing that it would allow him to meet the leader of Russia’s antiterrorist unit—the man who’d killed his father. Meet him and take him out. A tangled mess of private agendas.

“I heard the girls are back in Russia,” he said.

Kate smiled. “With their aunt. They have a brand-new baby in the family. Katja is very excited not to be the smallest. I called them.”

He smiled. She was the type of person who would. She’d make sure the kids were happy and if not, she’d do something about it.

He lifted her into his arms, not because she seemed to still favor the bad ankle, but because he wanted to hold her as close as possible. “Which way?”

“Second door on the right.”

He was there in seconds, making his way in. “This doesn’t look like the balcony.” He grinned toward the sprawling bed in the middle of the room.

“Oh dear, did I get turned around again?” she asked, all innocence.

He felt his blood run a little faster. He walked with her to the bed to lay her on the silk sheets. He wanted her now, fast and hard, but he wanted even more to do everything right this time. There were still things he wanted to clear up between them.

“Before we—I want to come clean about one more thing. I’ve said before that my uncle and aunt had raised me because my parents were gone. That’s not completely true. My mother is still alive somewhere.”

He drew a deep breath. He had never told this to anyone. He expected the Colonel knew, that it was in some background check in his file, but the Colonel wasn’t the type of man to bring something like this up.

“My mother was a showgirl in Atlantic City, ran by the name of Ruby Russel back then. My father was a cabby, stupid in love with her. She’d leave us from time to time for another guy, always came back in a week or two.” He blocked the emotions that came with the memories. “Then, when I was about eight, she left for good. Left for Vegas. About six months later, my father was late coming home. He was always late, no big deal. Sometimes he went to sit at the end of the pier near our apartment and drink a beer, staring at the water.

“I went looking for him. He was there.” He could still clearly see him outlined against the moonlight over the ocean. “I yelled to him, but he couldn’t hear me over the waves. I was at the end of the pier when he pulled a gun.” One he had kept for protection. “By the time I got there, I couldn’t see anything but his blood frothing on top of the water.”

“Parker.” She reached for him, held him. She was crying.

He didn’t want her to cry for him. “I told you because—Back when we were—It scared me how much I needed you. I couldn’t forget what needing my mother did to my old man.”

“Needing other people doesn’t have to be bad.”

“I know that now. There were other things, too. My life is—You’re all light. I thought that the darkness I worked in would somehow suck you in, like what happened with Jake’s wife, Elaine. But I’m not going to let that happen, you know?”

He needed her. He needed her the way a dark room needed a candle. He was at a loss as to how to explain what he felt. He held her tightly and looked up, out the oversized, curved window that opened to the sky. “Even the night sky has its moon and stars.”

“Is that your way of saying that dark and light could work together?” She gave him a tremulous smile.

“Yeah. The whole yin-yang thing and all.”

“I missed you,” she said, her clear, luminous gaze holding his.

“I missed you, too.” He lay beside her and kissed her again. “But this goes beyond missing. It’s not a quick trip to the past, Kate. This is what I want and I want it forever.”

“I guess this means you won’t be satisfied with a one-night stand?” A mischievous grin played on her full lips, sending his blood racing through his veins.

“Be my wife.”

That had the power to make her go all serious.

“It didn’t work before….”

“I’m going to make it work this time. I promise.”

She didn’t say anything.

And he felt nervous all of a sudden. “I’m going to ask for domestic assignments. I’ll take on some training at the home base so I can be with you more.”

Still no word from her, the look on her face unreadable.

“I want us to get a house like you wanted before. Big yard, dog, cats, canaries, whatever you want,” he said. “I want kids. I—”

She put a finger over his lips to stop him, and finally smiled, wide and bright. “I’m okay with what you do. Really. And—Okay, okay. Yes! To everything. It was yes from the beginning. I just didn’t want you to know how pitifully in love with you I am.” Her face softened with emotion.

“You are?” His heart expanded. “I love you, too.” Never stopped, never will.

“Is there a reason why we’re still dressed?” she asked.

He was the type of guy who always rose to the challenge. He had them both naked in record time. Her soft skin felt incredible against his. He turned her on her back and came up on his elbow next to her, drew a hand downward, starting at the hollow of her neck.

“I could look at you for a week straight and it wouldn’t be enough.” He wanted to soak up this moment, the two of them together, safe, in love.

“We just made up. Are you telling me that you’re going to disappoint me already? Parker McCall, you’d better do more than look.”

He grinned and dipped his head to kiss the nearest nipple, drinking in her sigh of pleasure.

Her body was perfection, but that was the least of the attraction. She was his heart, his soul. He was never going to lose her again.

He caressed her flat abdomen, drawing his fingers to her hip bones and lower. He wanted to get lost inside her, but was holding back, equally needing to savor this moment. He kissed his way down her body and up her inner thigh, relishing the soft trembling of her muscles.

He tasted her, devoured her, needing to make her his, wanting to delete the memory of the time they had spent apart.

And when she arched her back and cried out his name, he finally pushed deep inside her. And her body welcomed him home.

Much later, when he had made love to her every way possible, they lay replete in each other’s arms, steeped in pleasure.

“So when does your next mission start?” she asked, even her voice sounding satiated.

“Immediately.”

“Oh.” She snuggled closer, as if reluctant to let him go.

He liked that.

He gathered her tight into his arms. “My main mission from now on will be to love you senseless and never let you go. We are going to make this work. How fast do you think we could be married?”

She lifted her head to look at him and smiled. “I’d bet pretty fast. We are in the city of love,” she said and pressed her lips to his.

He loved Paris.