Darkness at Dawn (31 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Jennings

Tags: #Romance, #General, #Suspense, #Contemporary, #Fiction

BOOK: Darkness at Dawn
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The general bent down to Paso, his face very close to hers.
“I don’t like your attitude, Princess. Perhaps you have been coached in rebellion by your American friend, eh? I’m going to go tell her to mind her own business. You should know better than to listen to outsiders. After tomorrow night, she’ll be gone. And you will be my wife.”
He released Paso suddenly. She staggered, gasping.
The general turned on his heels and left the room, his soldiers following. A cold, evil wind blowing out the room.
The instant the huge heavy door closed behind him, Paso ran around the bed, falling to her knees. “Hurry!” she cried, tugging at the black sleeve of Mike’s jacket.
Lucy felt the same remorseless bite of urgency. She pushed at Mike’s shoulders. He rolled out from under the bed, pulled her after him and stood.
“What?” Mike looked from Paso to Lucy. She took a split second to look at the king, lying on the bed unconscious. Jomo. At seventeen, he’d felt keenly the weight and responsibility of being a future king. He’d treated the two girls, one his sister and the other a beloved foreigner, as children.
But he’d always been kind, and she was certain he’d been a very good and responsible king. This was the last time she’d see him on this earth.
“No time, Lucy!” Paso gasped. “You must go, now!”
Lucy ran to the windows, Mike on her heels. She turned to him on the enormous dark balcony. Rain started spitting out of the black night sky. “Changa’s on his way to our room. We have to hurry! He can’t catch us out of the room!” Lucy translated the Nhalan for him.
Mike was already throwing up the grapple, tugging when it bit. “No time for belaying.” He bent at the waist. “On my back.”
She didn’t hesitate, climbing onto his back, twining her arms around his neck, trying very hard not to choke him.
“Legs around my waist.”
Lucy’s heart was pounding.
Hurry hurry hurry!
drummed in her head. How could they possibly make it in time? If he found an empty room, Changa wouldn’t execute them—would he? But he would certainly imprison them.
It was freezing out on the balcony. The temperature had dropped, and a harsh, sleety rain had begun, pounding so hard she could hear the heavy drops splash on the stone tiles below. When Mike swung out over the balcony, they were exposed to the full force of the sleeting rain, falling so hard the drops actually hurt the top of her head and her back.
“Hold on tight.” He started climbing, slowly, steadily. Against her front, she could feel his steely muscles at play as he climbed the narrow rope as steadily as a machine.
She couldn’t even imagine the strength it took to pull them both up an entire tall story, hand over hand. She hugged him more tightly, head tight up against his neck, knees and thighs hugging his hips, on the theory that anything that anchored her to him would help.
Hand over hand . . .
Surely the rain made the rope slippery, made his job harder? And yet he gave no sign of distress, just kept climbing.
What could she do to help? Nothing. Nothing physical, at least. Mentally, she mapped the route back so they could take it at a dead run instead of checking corners.
The general was walking the internal corridors right now, warm and dry, arrowing straight to their room.
She sharpened her ears, sent her senses out for any hint of danger. Two soldiers’ voices rang out, one a command, one an answer.
“Check this wall.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mike,” she murmured directly into his ear. “Soldiers coming around the corner.”
He gave only a grunt in answer, but speeded up, muscles bunching. Though the rain was freezing on her back, Lucy was warm wherever she touched Mike.
Five holds to go. Four, three, two, one.
With another grunt, he reached the top of the portico balcony and heaved them both over. They tumbled to the floor, splashing in a pool of icy water.
Down below, the soldier reported back.
“All clear, sir.”
Mike lay on his back, eyes closed, breathing heavily, big chest bellowing, rain bouncing off the dense, complex material of his ninja suit. His eyes opened, stared into hers.
Lucy reached down and gave him her hand. He grabbed her hand but got up under his own steam, without pulling at her at all.
He lifted the grapple from where it had stuck to the ancient wood, and quickly coiled the rope.
“We have to run now,” Lucy said. “He’s on his way.” She met his eyes. “I’ll go first. We can’t stop to check at corners. If we come across someone, I’ll duck.”
Mike’s jaws worked as he bit back the words that were undoubtedly burning in his chest. He wanted to be first, “take point” as he called it. But only Lucy could actually lead them back at a dead run. Mike would hesitate, check his bearings.
Lucy took off.
She didn’t even try to run quietly, she simply pounded down the long wooden corridors, sleety rain blowing in her eyes, soaking her jacket, her pants. Somewhere she’d lost her knit hat. The wind whipped wet strands of hair around her head. Mike was behind her, but though he was much heavier than she was, he was making a lot less noise.
She was gasping by the time they finally made it to the spot just above their room. She bent over, hands on thighs, struggling to breathe. With a sharp downward slash, Mike stuck the grapple to the top of the balcony, the dark wood swollen with rain.
Now that she wasn’t running flat out, Lucy was freezing, the very core of her chilled. She didn’t have gloves on and her hands felt numb. Her face was numb, too. Her brain was obviously numb as well, because when Mike crouched at her feet, she simply stared at him stupidly, wondering what he was doing.
He caught her hand and turned around, still crouching, that hugely broad back to her. “Come on, honey. Hop on. We don’t have much time.”
He tugged, and her mind unfroze for just a second, just long enough to understand what she had to do. Nothing much, really. Just hang on to Mike like a barnacle. She was so cold she couldn’t possibly have done what he did, which was step up onto the top of the balcony and cast himself off into the cold, sleeting darkness in what felt for a horrible second like a free fall.
The scream of terror died in her throat when she realized that it wasn’t an uncontrolled fall at all. That he was simply going down the rope as fast as was humanly possible, faster than she’d imagined it could be done.
In an instant he had them on their own balcony. A huge gust of wind blew rain over them. It was like being pelted with buckets of ice water. Mike made it over the balcony and rushed them into the warm room. Lucy stood, frozen and trembling violently, the sudden heat painful.
Outside, the rope swung gently.
Mike was moving fast. He stripped her of her wet clothes, stuffing them into a nearby cabinet, and rushed her to the bathroom door. “Hop into the shower, honey. When Changa comes, we need an explanation of why you’re wet.”
His words came from far away, from another country. She wasn’t sure she understood, but then he was nudging her into the hot bathroom, grabbing a towel, turning on the shower. Steam rose almost instantly. When he pushed her under the shower head she nearly screamed at the sudden heat on her frozen skin.
She was standing under the shower, turning slowly, feeling heat returning to her body, thoughts starting to resurface in her head, when there was a loud rap on the door to the room and General Changa and his soldiers marched in.
Goddamn!
Mike thought. He’d stripped in an instant, freezing sodden suit, wet boots, socks kicked under the bed, but his hair and face were dripping wet.
Pretend you’ve just come out of the shower.
Nothing to do but bluff it out. He brought the towel he’d grabbed from the bathroom and draped it around his hips, knotting it as the general walked toward him.
“General Changa!” He put some bite into his voice. Nice American guy, usually friendly and polite. But really—charging into someone’s bedroom was very uncool. “I’m sorry . . .” He lifted his hands, looked around. “Did you forget something? Because we’re ah, well, we’re about ready to go to bed.”
Thank God he’d had cold weather gear on. He’d been protected from the cold. Otherwise, he’d have started steaming the instant he stepped into the warm room. Steam had already started rising from Lucy when he’d shoved her toward the bathroom.
The general would have instantly recognized the source of the steam. A body that had been out in the cold suddenly come into the warmth. He’d have been suspicious, started questioning Mike and Lucy.
General Changa was
not
going to slap Lucy around. It had been bad enough watching him with Paso. It was not going to happen to Lucy. Mike would fight the entire fucking Nhalan Army if Changa so much as touched her.
The bathroom door opened, and perfumed steam billowed from the open doorway. Lucy stepped out, wrapped in a big towel, another big white towel around her hair. She looked rosy and beautiful, the towel showing just the tops of her soft breasts.
The eyes of the four soldiers behind Changa widened.
“General Changa!” Lucy exclaimed. She looked bewildered, a half smile on her face. Trying to be polite, but embarrassed. She tightened the towel around her breasts, but in order to do so, she had to loosen it for a second, showing a touch more of her breasts. “This is . . . most unusual. Has something happened? To the king or to the princess?”
Shit, she was
perfect
. No one on earth could have possibly guessed that only a few minutes ago she’d been frozen and terrified and winded. Anyone looking at her would take the situation for exactly what it looked like. A beautiful young woman emerging from the shower, a little upset, a little exasperated.
“The princess is well,” the general growled. “Have you spoken to her recently?”
“The princess?” A perfect frown creased the smooth skin between Lucy’s eyebrows. “No, I haven’t General. You asked me that at the lab. After which you yourself accompanied us to our room where,” she let a little anger show, just a little, “where we were locked in.”
Lucy waved her hand at the huge tray holding the remains of their meal. To wave her hand, she had to let the towel slip for another moment. The four soldiers were focused like laser beams on her.
“We ate our meal and took our showers because we are both very tired. We. Are. Ready. To. Go. To. Bed.” Each word emphasized, tone severe, the closest a lady could get to telling a boor to fuck off.
General Changa didn’t budge. Which was lucky for him. One bad move and he was dead.
If Mike had to, he could take them all down before they could draw their firearms. The soldiers’ sidearms were holstered, and the holsters were snapped shut. He mapped it all out in his head.
First step—the brass letter opener embedded in the general’s eye.
Mike was good with knives. The letter opener wasn’t a knife, but it would do. If he could hold the general still, he’d be able to find the exact spot to slip it into the man’s black heart. But at a throwing distance, the chances of it bouncing off a rib were too great.
So letter opener to the eye, where it would penetrate the cortex. Before the general even hit the floor, Mike would hurl any of the ten heavy bronze, hand-sized statues of Buddha straight at the heads of the men behind him, using both hands. He’d once had a baseball he’d thrown clocked at 90 mph. Once they were down, he’d grab their weapons and make sure they stayed down.
Then a fast exfil from the Palace with Lucy. Dress, rappel down, quietly make their way to the motor pool. Hot start the engine of an all-terrain vehicle, drive away.
Doable.
He didn’t want to do it, because there could be a firefight and he wanted Lucy far away from anything even resembling a firefight. But if it came down to it, if they were fighting for their lives, he could do it. He could get himself and Lucy to safety.
The general stared down at Lucy for a long, long moment, gaze black and hostile. The only sound in the room was the icy sleet pinging against the windows.
Please God, don’t let him see the rope hanging outside the balcony
, Mike thought.
Then all thoughts flew out of his mind as the general stepped closer to Lucy. A danger alarm clanged in every cell of his body. He became an animal made up exclusively of instinct. Only one thought in his head.
Do not touch my female.
Mike had taken a step toward the general to rip his fucking head off his fucking body, when Lucy shook her head slightly.
Back off.
He clenched his jaw, breathed heavily, didn’t move.
Fucking general made one move to touch her, all bets were off.
The general looked down at Lucy, eyes narrowed, skin tight over his cheekbones, nostrils flared. Cold, aggressive, commanding.
“You will finish restoring the manuscript by tomorrow evening, Dr. Merritt, when you will present it to me and to the princess at the opening ceremony of the Feast of the Snow Dragon in the Great Hall. At the ceremony you will speak to no one, especially not to Princess Paso. You will be escorted back to your room after the ceremony, and the next morning, you and your
fiancé
”
—
he spat the word—“will be accompanied to the heliport and flown back to Thimphu. Is that clear?”

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