Eye of the Beholder (3 page)

Puffs of dust burst from the ground on either side of them. Glenna felt something whiz past her ear. They were almost at the fence when she felt the man jerk. A shudder went through his body and his grip on her slackened.

Desperately Glenna clung to his neck. Would this nightmare never end? Had she put her trust in the wrong man again? “Please. Oh, please, don’t leave me now. We’re nearly there.”

He grunted. “I’m not leaving you, princess,” he said. “I’ll keep you safe.”

Behind the black mask, his expression was invisible, yet his eyes shone with determination. He spared her only a glance.

It had the same effect on Glenna as before.

He managed another three limping steps before his leg buckled in midstride. He shifted as he fell, taking the impact of their combined weight on his back, then rolled over, rose to one knee and thrust Glenna behind him. While she pressed as close as she could to his body, he unslung his rifle from his shoulder and faced the trucks full of armed men that were bearing down on them.

Chapter 2

A
fter the heat of the day, night brought a creeping clamminess that chilled straight to the bones. The air was thick with the musty odor of damp cement. Glenna hunched her shoulders and huddled closer to the motionless man on the floor, as much to share her warmth with him as to draw comfort from his.

No more than a sliver of lamplight came through the crack beneath the door. It was enough to distinguish shapes and outlines, but the shadows swallowed any color. For that, she was grateful. She didn’t want to see whatever small creatures were making the scurrying noises in the corners. She didn’t want to look at the swelling on her ankle. And she didn’t really want to see the blood that seeped onto her hand.

The bullet wound in her rescuer’s leg had opened up again when their captors had tossed them onto the floor of this storeroom. In the darkness, she wouldn’t have discovered he was bleeding if she hadn’t felt the sticky warmth on her palm. She had done what she could to help, ripping up her suit jacket to wrap around his thigh as a makeshift bandage, but her knowledge of first aid was minimal. For lack of anything better, all she could think to do was press her hand to his thigh over the bandage to help stop the bleeding.

Even slack with unconsciousness, his body was rock solid. He emanated an aura of strength that was as tangible ahis warmth. Whoever he was, he must be in superb physical condition to have survived the treatment he’d received. It had taken seven men to overpower him and knock him out when the trucks had reached them. Glenna suspected that if it wasn’t for her, he never would have allowed himself to be captured. Despite the wound in his leg, he probably could have made it to the fence and gotten away from the airport altogether, but he’d remained by her side, willing to risk his life for a complete stranger.

What kind of man did that?

Her gaze moved to the pale blur of his face. His black mask, along with some kind of radio headset, had been removed when he’d been dragged onto the pickup truck, but he’d been lying facedown during the trip here, so all she had been able to see was the back of his head. The transfer to this room had been short and rough—she hadn’t gotten a good look at him then, either.

He had carried her in his arms. He had sheltered her with his body as bullets had hissed past them. Yet she didn’t know his name. And if she passed him on the street, she wouldn’t recognize his face. After what they had been through, it seemed…wrong somehow.

Keeping her palm on his thigh, she lifted her free hand to his face. His skin was taut, with a hint of roughness from the day’s growth of his beard. She ran her fingers along his jaw, exploring the contours. It wasn’t enough to build a picture in her mind, but it did reinforce the impression she already had. He was lean, hard and uncompromisingly male.

A smooth ridge of skin interrupted the sandpaper beard stubble on the right side of his jaw. It had to be a scar, she thought, tracing the ridge to his cheek. The scar branched there, scattering into a network of furrows and more patches of raised skin that curved upward to his right temple. She swayed closer, curious, running her fingertips over the pattern. She didn’t need to see it to realize how bad it was. He must have suffered horribly.

Was he a policeman? A soldier? Did he storm hijacked planes and rescue women for a living? Had he obtained these scars while he was being a hero for someone else?

Whatever had caused it must have happened years ago—the skin had the firm smoothness of an old injury, like the tiny line on her own index finger that was a souvenir of a childhood mishap with a crystal water glass. She felt a surge of sympathy for him. What courage he must have, to continue to brave danger despite the pain he must have endured.

Compared to him, she had been a cringing coward, afraid to fully live, to take a chance on life.

Yes, well, she intended to change all of that.

She moved her fingers along the ridges and grooves that crossed the rise of his cheekbone until she reached the corner of his eye. The scar didn’t extend this far, or it would have showed at the edge of his mask. The only lines on his skin here were laugh lines, too fine to feel, but she remembered them perfectly.

He had beautiful eyes, so blue and piercing. Would the fine lines at the corners crinkle when he smiled? Was his laugh as deep and rich as his voice? Would she get the chance to hear it?

Before today, the sensible, levelheaded Glenna Hastings wouldn’t have wasted one moment considering those questions. What possible relevance could the sound of his laughter or the color of his eyes have to her li

But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? She was alive, and she hadn’t forgotten what she had vowed when she had believed she was going to die. Every extra minute she lived was a gift. Every detail about her rescuer was relevant. The sound of his breathing, the scent of his skin, even the warmth of his blood against her palm…at this moment those things were more important than any of the thousands of trivial details that usually filled her days.

Her knees nudged against his hip. She winced at the stinging from her scraped skin and the ache in her ankle, but her injuries were nothing compared to her rescuer’s. She moved her hand to his hair. In the shadows it was leached of color, but on the ride here she’d seen it gleam golden in the sunshine. It was cropped short in a no-nonsense style that had appeared stiff, but as she slid her fingers into it, she discovered that his hair was as fine as a baby’s. It tickled her fingertips in a caress of silk, and for the first time since she had left the airport in Montego Bay, she felt her lips relax in a smile.

It was a little thing, to be sure, but taking pleasure in the texture of a strange man’s hair was something Glenna simply didn’t do. She might do lunch with a man. Or dinner and the theater, when her schedule allowed. Nice, sensible functions with no commitment, no expectations and no messy demands. She had found the situation completely satisfactory.

But it all seemed so impossibly faraway now, another world, a previous existence.

There was a furtive scrabbling along the far wall. Glenna’s smile faded as quickly as it had formed. Her situation was worse now than it had been hours earlier on the plane. She should be thinking about ways to escape instead of mooning over her fellow hostage.

Is that what she was doing? Mooning over a man, like some teenager with a crush?

Hardly. There was nothing juvenile about what she felt for this stranger. With one hand in the sensual softness of his hair, the other slick with the heat of his blood, Glenna had never felt more intimately connected to another human being in her life.

For however long that lasted.

Rafe came awake with brutal swiftness. His leg was on fire, and someone was slamming a sledgehammer into his head. His eyes had barely snapped open when he sensed a figure leaning over him.

Why was everything so dim? Had the blows to his head messed up his vision? Either that, or night had fallen. How long had he been out? Where was he? The questions buzzed through his brain as his hands shot out to grasp his assailant’s wrists. With a twist of his torso, Rafe reversed their positions.

There was a startled gasp. “Ow! What are you doing?”

The voice was female. It didn’t take Rafe more than a second to realize that the body he’d pinned to the floor was female, too. More than that, she felt familiar. She smelled familiar, a blend of sunshine and citrus that had his nostrils flaring for more.

Rafe blinked, trying to focus on the face beneath his. It was impossible to see anything more than a blur, yet he knew who this was. He might not be able to see her, but his other senses had no trouble recognizing her. It was the woman from the plane—the tall, classy r

He knew the chances of rescuing her had been slim when he’d seen her fall to the tarmac. He should have remained with Flynn and the team to cover Sarah’s retreat with the other hostages. This woman who lay beneath him was a stranger, he reminded himself again. No less and no more important than the others…but the decision to go after her hadn’t been made by his brain, it had been pure gut-level instinct.

He breathed shallowly a few times, striving to control his pain the way he’d been trained to do. The pounding in his head retreated. The burning in his thigh settled into a deep throb. Bullet wound, he realized. He’d been hit five yards from the fence. He replayed the final moments, searching for an explanation for their present circumstances, but he must have been unconscious while they were transported here.

Wherever “here” was.

“Where are we?” he asked, careful to pitch his voice low enough not to carry. No point alerting anyone else that he was awake.

“I don’t know.”

He put his mouth close to her ear. “Keep your voice down. Is it a house? A factory? A warehouse? How big is it?”

“It’s a house,” she whispered. “It was hard to tell how large because it was already dark when they brought us here. They dumped us in this room and left.”

She had said it was already dark. That meant his vision was probably undamaged. One piece of good news. “They? How many?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Try to remember.”

She paused. He could feel her body tremble. She was struggling for the control she’d exhibited before. Her terror was there, just under the surface, but she was fighting it down. “There might have been six or seven men on each truck,” she replied finally. “There are more in this place.”

“We’re still on Rocama then?”

“Rocama?”

“The island where your plane landed.”

“Yes. We must be.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“What is it?”

He hadn’t liked the setup of this mission from the start. This proved his misgivings had been justified. “The locals were in on it.”

“What do you mean?”

“At the airport. Had to be. How else could the hijackers have gotten reinforcements through the police cordon and pulled off a raid of this scale?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“We weren’t allowed backup. That has to be why.” He squinted in the direction of his left wrist, but he saw no sign of the luminous dial of his watch. They must have taken it along with his gun and the knife he’d strapped to his calf. “How long did it take to get here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Minutes? Hours?”

“It felt like hours.”

“Damn.”

Her breath puffed past his cheek. “What are we going to do?”

“Escape.”

“How?”

“I’ll think of something, princess.”

She was silent for a moment. “Glenna.”

“What?”

“Glenna Hastings. That’s my name.”

It suited her, he thought. It was classy and feminine, just like the woman. “Master Sergeant Rafal Marek,” he replied.

“Sergeant? Are you with the police?”

“Army Special Forces,” he said.

“You mean like SEALs?”

“They’re navy. Special Ops Delta is army.”

Another silence. “You’re from Delta Force?”

He heard the note of awe in her voice. He had Hollywood to thank for that. They had built Delta into a legend, even though the government still didn’t officially admit the force existed. “I’m from Eagle Squadron. And most people call me Rafe.”

“Okay. Rafe?”

“Yes?”

“Could you get off me, please?”

Rafe knew he should have let her up as soon as he had realized she wasn’t a threat. Sure, he’d wanted to learn the details of their situation as quickly as possible, and he hadn’t wanted their conversation to be overheard, but those weren’t the only reasons he had delayed.

He liked Glenna where she was. Her body was warm and firm and very, very comfortable stretched out underneath him. Now that she had brought it to his attention, he was aware of every inch of her. Her long legs rubbed alongside his. Her breasts pressed into his chest with each breath she drew and the pulse in her wrists was fluttering hard against his fingers.

She was a good fit. He didn’t want to let her go. It was the same possessive urge he’d had when he’d first seen her through his binoculars. And despite the ache in his head and the throbbing in his thigh, he felt a quick stirring of masculine interest.

Adrenaline, that’s all it was. Battlefield lust. It was nothing more than his body affirming that it was alive, a natural albeit primitive reaction to a brush with death and a tense situation.

Concentrate, he told himself. He had to think of the mission, not the woman. They were on the floor in an unknown location, surrounded by an undetermined number of enemies. He should be investigating their prison, assessing their options and forming a strategy.

And he should get the hell off Glenna before she felt the physical evidence of the reaction he was having no success controlling.

“Sorry,” he said, releasing her wrists. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t startle me.”

Yeah, right, Rafe thought, rolling to his side. If his face hadn’t been covered with a mask when they’d met, she probably would have gone screaming off in the opposite direction, bad ankle and all. Lucky for him this place was so dark. He sat up, biting back a groan as he straightened his leg in front of him.