Fatal Honor: Shadow Force International (24 page)

He stopped rubbing her hands, but still held them inside of his. “I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but…”

A tightness crept into Charlotte’s stomach as his voice trailed off. “But what?”

He sighed, tilted his head back down to look at her. “I left you a note in that book before Petit took me away.”

“A note?”

His eyes shifted to the right. He released her hands. “I didn’t understand why you’d left me there without saying goodbye. Petit gave me the song and dance about how I should just be grateful you’d saved me and contacted him. That people, especially my family members, were going to be thrilled to know I was still alive. They all thought I was dead. He said you weren’t coming back to the cabin—that you’d told him little, only that you had to leave and wouldn’t be back. It was time for me to go home.”

Snow crunched under his feet as he took a step away, stared up at the mountain they were climbing. A few miles farther east, on the other side of the ridge, was the spot his helicopter had gone down. “I didn’t think of America as my home so much anymore. I didn’t want to go. I was angry, confused. I wrote you a note and stuck it in the book, believing if you ever did come back, you’d find it.”

The tightness in her stomach moved up to her throat. “What did the note say?”

“That I… I hoped you’d change your mind about us. And if you did, to call me. I left my contact information in the note, along with some details about our time together. What it meant to me. How I didn’t want to lose you, and, well, you get the idea.”

A love note? He’d left her a romantic, if upset, love note?

Had he told her he loved her? Her heart thrummed in her ears. “I’m sorry I never got it.”

He met her eyes. “Me, too.”

They stayed that way for a moment, lost in the quiet of the forest and each other’s gazes.

The moment passed too quickly when a bird overhead squawked at them and a shadow moved over the sun. “We better keep moving,” he said.

She wanted to call him back, to hold onto that moment. Her heart hurt inside her chest watching him walk away, and she put a hand on a nearby tree trunk to steady herself.

The tree trunk was solid, enduring. She looked up at the leaves fluttering overhead. Y
ou should have said it. I love you. It’s three words.

Three words she hadn’t said to anyone in years. The last person had been Lanny, her brother.

Patting the tree trunk, she wished something in her life would endure with the same tenacity these mountains had. Hauling herself up the embankment, it was hard to think about her missing book and why CB would have taken it when all she could think about was the words Miles had written in that note. He couldn’t bring himself to say he loved her now, what made her think he’d actually said it then?

Words, she learned a long time ago, didn’t matter. Actions did.

They trudged on, the snow beginning to slow their steps as it got deeper, but they were close to the cave entrance. She checked her map again. The tunnels went through this part of the mountain from one side to the other, but they also went deeper down, where the safe was hidden.

“My younger sister, Cricket, is a Harry Potter fan,” Miles said a few minutes later, breaking the silence between them. “She grew up on the books and movies and was totally in love with Harry. She dressed up as Hermione every year at Halloween and slept in robes.”

An invitation to talk about something except their current situation—an olive branch? Charlotte wasn’t used to talking about the past, but talking passed the time and made the climb less daunting. “When I was in the mental hospital, I dreamed Hagrid would show up and break me out. I wanted to believe I was special, like Harry, and someone somewhere would see the good in me like my mother had always done before she was murdered. That they would take me away to a new life.”

He grabbed one of her hands, clenched it as they climbed side by side. “You
are
special.”

If only that were true.

“The magic of Harry Potter is in that belief,” she said, enjoying his steadying presence on the rocky path. “That each of us is the chosen one, and no matter what happens in the real world—the Muggle world—we know there’s another enchanted world out there where magic is real. We want to believe we’ve been chosen for a great purpose, and that love will keep us safe in the end, no matter what evil we face. I clung to that idea all through my childhood.”

The forest thinned and they walked into a clearing. Her teeth were chattering and her toes felt numb. “There.” Charlotte pointed.

Miles followed her outstretched finger, squinted, and sounded baffled. “There what? I don’t see anything but brush and rocks.”

Her lips were cold, but they could still form a smile. “Exactly,” she said, a buoyant feeling invading her chest. There was still the next daunting obstacle to get over, but she had a plan to ensure success. “That’s the cave.”

Chapter Sixteen

_____________________

______________________________________________________

H
E’D
N
EVER
R
EALIZED
when they were snowed in at the cabin, just how far it had been from the helicopter’s crash site. “How in the world did you get me through these tunnels all the way down to your cabin when I was unconscious?” Miles asked.

Charlotte was a few steps ahead of him, her flashlight’s beam bouncing over the walls. The tunnels curved and twisted, intersecting here and there like snakes slithering over each other. At points, veins of ice ran through the walls and stalactites hung down, while at those warmed by nearby hot springs, moss covered the walls.

Even with his extensive training, he couldn’t make heads or tails of them, yet Charlotte seemed to have no trouble at all.

Every once in a while, Charlotte’s light would land on a notch in the cave wall or a cleft or scratch on the floor and she would say, “this way” and take him off into another tunnel. They’d been going downhill for the past fifty yards or so. “I had a little help,” she said.

Help? Her soft voice seemed at odds in the harsh, rocky environment. He heard the trickle of water up ahead, but the low-hanging ceiling played havoc with sounds. The caves had a different type of quiet than the forest. A tight, airless quality that resonated with the earth and what was long ago buried here. Even the sound of his own breathing seemed to echo back at him.

He kept his own flashlight beam on the floor so he didn’t trip from the stalagmites that seemed to pop up when he least expected them. They hadn’t met up with any of the cave dwellers she’d told him about and that was just as well. The fewer people who knew they were in these parts, the better. “What kind of help?”

Knowing her, she’d built a travois to carry his bruised and broken body, but navigating these tunnels and then the forest outside while pulling him behind her couldn’t have been easy. In fact, he’d wager it was downright impossible.

She rounded a bend without answering, disappearing out of his sight momentarily. “Come on,” he heard her call. “It’s up here.”

Well, that had been easier than he’d thought if they were already to the spot she’d hidden the USB. Once they had that, he’d get Charlotte back to the plane, send Beatrice a copy of the video and see if she could get a positive ID on the terrorist and his last known location. With any luck, the man was still somewhere in these mountains. Either way, Bourean would know. Once Miles had Charlotte safely back with Jax, Jax could take her to London and let her clear her name. Meanwhile, Miles was going back for Nicolae Bourean and his accomplice. He had a score to settle.

Miles went around the bend and nearly conked his head on a stalactite hanging down from the ceiling. The tunnel grew smaller so that he had to scrunch over to keep going, the echo of Charlotte’s footsteps shepherding him forward.

He caught the slightest whiff of fresh air. Light flickered on the ground, stronger than what Charlotte’s flashlight could give off. As Miles went down on his hands and knees, hunkering down even tighter to squeeze through another, even smaller opening, he wondered if there was a hole in the ceiling far above them, allowing light and air to circulate.

Which meant he just had to hold his breath, squeeze a little tighter, shift his shoulders to the left, and…

He dug his heels in and gave a push, angling his body at the same time. With a grunt, he popped through the tunnel hole and landed on his right shoulder.

Light met his eyes as he rolled over. Above him, Charlotte’s face appeared as he sucked in a deep breath and let his chest expand to normal size again.

“Hi.” She smiled down at him. Her face was bathed in a golden glow, not from an overhead skylight, but from sconces burning on the walls that had opened up. “Glad you could make it. You looked like Santa trying to get down the chimney.”

“You didn’t tell me I’d have to squeeze through a pin head.”

One of her gloved hands reached down. He grabbed it and let her help him up. He stopped short when he saw a man with a scraggy beard, long hair, and a tattoo on the left side of his neck, staring at him.

The guy was a giant, at least two-fifty, his arms and legs the size of tree trunks. He stood with arms crossed over a massive chest and belly. He wore a scraggly beard and his long hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

Miles automatically went for his gun. “Who the hell is that?”

“The help I told you about earlier?” Charlotte said, a quirky smile dancing over her lips. “This is Moose. Moose, you remember Miles. You two have already met, but Miles, you were unconscious at the time.”

The man’s gaze was on Miles’ hand where it hovered over his weapon. The name Moose fit him, but Hagrid might have been a better one. “Do you need the silverware?” he said low under his breath.

She patted his arm. “Not yet.”

Moose spoke to her, but it was in a language Miles didn’t understand. There was Romanian and broken English mixed with what he suspected was Gypsy
jibs
, a dialect of words Charlotte had told him about.

Charlotte replied, also in a mix of languages. Then in English, she asked, “How is Renalda?”

The man’s gaze bounced away, back to Charlotte’s face. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down sharply. His voice fit his body. “She is…unwell.”

“She didn’t have a change of heart about the chemo, I take it?”

He shook his head, looked down at the floor.

“Renalda is a distant aunt of my mother’s,” Charlotte explained. “She has lung cancer. Her whole clan lives in the caves during the winter when it’s too harsh to live outside.”

Although the caves were interesting, why anyone would want to live in them was beyond him. “She’s related to you?”

“I knew when I took this assignment I would have the chance to return to my mother’s birthplace, to possibly find a part of my family’s history. The whole time I was here, I never got anywhere with my research until the day I hid in this cave and watched Bourean’s men shoot down the plane. Renalda and her clan heard the crash, came to see what had happened and discovered me. They started to chase me away, but Renalda recognized something of my mother in me. My aura, she says, but I’m guessing it was my eyes. I have my mum’s eyes. They look like Renalda’s own. I told her I was a mixed blood Gypsy, who my parents were, and explained my situation. She and her clan are the guardians of the safes inside this cave. The family has been entrusted for centuries with the wealth and valuables hidden down here. The cross necklace you’re wearing belongs to her. The USB is in Renalda’s own personal safe.”

The secrets this woman had. “And why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Would it have made a difference?”

He supposed not. “Why not just call her and ask her to send you the USB?”

Charlotte chuckled. “There are no phones here. No electricity. This section of the cave is heated by a natural spring not far away from where they get water. It’s said to have healing properties, and Renalda believed it would be enough to heal her.” She glanced at Moose. “Apparently, it wasn’t.”

“Why not come directly here after you escaped Bourean?”

Moose grunted and said something in that hybrid language that made Charlotte smile. “Yes, he does ask a lot of questions, but he has the right to know.” She spoke to Miles. “I needed the key.”

“She’s your great-aunt. Are you telling me she wouldn’t open the safe unless you gave her the cross back?”

“There is only one key that fits the safe.” She pointed to his chest. “That one. It’s been in the family all these centuries and is hailed as having both a blessing and a curse as part of its makeup. It protects those who are worthy and protect it in turn. Anyone who misuses it or doesn’t respect it is cursed with bad luck.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

Another grunt issued from Moose, his belly jutting out at the sound.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe, Miles. It’s the Gypsy way. Renalda is leader of this clan and she bestowed a gift on me. She set your leg and gave me the salves to heal your cuts and bruises. She hid my valuables in her own personal safe and trusted me with a family heirloom to open it. I owe her a great debt. Now that we’re here, we can return the necklace, retrieve the USB, and I can try to talk some sense into Renalda about the chemo. If she doesn’t go to the doctor, she will die.”