Flame's Dawn (2 page)

“Yes sir,” she and Barnaby chorused as the general rushed off.

Thick air buzzed with the rhythm of the off-balance fan punctuated by gunfire and more shouts, louder now.

Wouldn't surprise him if Satan himself rode up the steps of the embassy. Knowing Barnaby's luck, that could literally happen. He chanced a glance around the room and sniffed for brimstone. Nothing more than the humid air that made a man earn each breath.

“Come on. We're going to the basement,” he said.

“No, I want—” The communications station crackled to life. She held up her hand and turned a knob while he gritted his teeth. Snapping out coded instructions in English and then switching to Vietnamese, she sent information with a calm confidence that Barnaby had come to crave. She paused to jot down data in the steno pad, then flipped a knob and gave out more terse information.

After she finished, Jane pinned him with a determined expression that made him want to both salute her and wind his arms around her. “I can't leave.”

“I don't care. You have to get out of here.” He stopped short of grabbing her arm and pulling her bodily out of the room.

“What about the troops who need information? Don't you have friends fighting?”

“Yes. But they can take care of themselves, trust me.” He cringed. “Uh, they're pretty tough.”

Another explosion went off, this time louder. Z'wounds, he had to get her out of this place.

Paling, she glanced at the ceiling light fixture as it swayed. “The guys out there. That's why I have to stay.” She wiped the sheen off her forehead. A whump of helicopter blades increased until it drowned out the shouts in the street and louder bursts of gunfire.

Shite, how he wanted to kiss those quivering lips.

Now was not the time to woolgather. He needed to keep this woman safe, despite herself. What kind of woman served in Vietnam in the first place, much less volunteered to stay at her post and risk death?

A woman with fire in her belly and some kind of mission to accomplish, damn it.

During a lull in the noise, her quiet voice filtered over him, like lace brushing against his ear. He stifled a shudder.

“Aren't you worried?” she asked.

No. Because I cannot die.

“I've got nothing to worry about,” he said.

She homed in on him with her teal stare. “You didn't answer my question.”

“You're feeling cheeky, then?” Unable to resist inciting a quirk of her eyebrow, he smiled.

“Sorry, but I'm not able to make jokes at a time like this.” She swiveled around and went back to work.

Shame settled like a plastic sheet over his warm, damp skin.

The street noise, engine noise, and blades increased in volume. Gunfire erupted, louder now. The shouts of—whom? VC, U.S. troops, South Vietnamese?—filtered through the window.

The warning instinct flared. Faster than an eye blink, he shifted as the window behind her head shattered. He flinched as the bullet winged him and plugged the plaster wall. Damn, it hurt, but if he waited a few minutes, he'd be right as rain.

He'd trade a gunshot wound for the chance to wrap his arms around Jane's soft frame any day.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, squeezing his forearm as he snaked it around her upper chest.

He tightened his arm, keeping his torso between hers and the window behind him. A rush of warmth followed by a burning hunger to protect her upended his equilibrium and fogged his brain. When had he last felt so strongly about anyone else? God's wounds, not since Bess. How in heaven's name could a wound fester for hundreds of years?

How could the simple act of holding Jane soothe those same wounds?

With one last squeeze, he groaned as he pushed her out of her chair so she knelt on the floor with the chair partially obscuring her from the window. He pulled his sidearm and crouched down as well, but Barnaby plus a chair offered scant cover from a determined VC with a rifle.

When she turned around, her ocean-blue eyes filled her paper-white face. She darted a glance at his arm.

“You're hit! You need a medic.”

“It's nothing.”

“Let's get out of here.”

He grinned. “Now that's the best idea you've had all evening.”

Damn it, the light still swung in the room, illuminating their position for anyone outside the window to see. Barnaby slid with her in front of him toward the door, far enough to reach up and click off the light. Then he scooted her back under the desk while he gathered his wits. His heart pounded. Unusual, considering he didn't fear for his life.

But he feared for Jane's.

Basement. Get to the basement.

Duckwalking and shielding her while additional pops of gunfire impacted the wall behind them, they reached the doorway to the office.

As they scrambled awkwardly out of the office, a door at the end of the hallway burst open. Vietnamese shouts filled the air. Then English words poured from the other end.

And gunfire filled the center of the hall. Right where they crouched.

Hallway. Escape. Not going to work.

Barnaby yanked her back into the dark office and looked around. The window? No. Shots and yells came from the other side of the shattered glass.

They'd have to wait this one out.

If they were lucky.

Bloody hell, he would keep Jane safe or die trying.

The supply closet. Might work.

“Come on,” he whispered, holstering the gun as he pulled her along.

Already the wound on his arm had stopped dripping blood. Pain still pummeled him like a pugilist's blows, but at least he could tolerate the discomfort now.

They half crawled, half ran across the room and dove into the office supply closet.

Barnaby shut the door and scrabbled around, working blind in the scant light from the hallway and outside the window that filtered under the closet door. There, he found a mail bag.

He frigging hoped this idea worked.

“Get in here.”

“Get in where?” she whispered.

“In this bag. I'm going to tie up the top and tuck you behind the rack, in the corner.”

“What?”

“Trust me, Jane. You'll be safe.”

After a gut-wrenching delay where she didn't move for a full five seconds, she replied. “Okay.”

She blindly patted his arm and worked her way down to his wrist, where he held the bag open. Her soft hands on his skin ignited parts of his body that had been long neglected, and he bit back a curse.

He refused to think of anything besides her safety.

A mere shadow in the darkness, she stepped into the empty canvas bag and crouched down. Her leather pumps brushing over his hand made his groin tighten.

Voices and footsteps traveled down the hall.
Stop thinking about your libido and concentrate on keeping Jane alive.

Footsteps. Louder. Damn.

The unbalanced fan continued to whir, its ineffective blades seeming to murmur for him to go faster.

More gunshots. The entire canvas bag jumped as he cinched the drawstrings over her head.

“You have to hold still, Jane. Even if someone comes in here, whatever you do, hold still,” he whispered.

A muffled response served as assent.

The steps slowed.

Barnaby shoved her into the corner, crammed between the back wall and the end of a metal shelf.

Opening another canvas bag, he stepped into it.

Damnation, letters filled the bottom third of the bag.

The fan whirred. The strains of Herman's Hermits' “There's a Kind of Hush All Over the World” straggled into the closet.

The office light clicked on, pale yellow illumination sliding beneath the closet door.

Barnaby sweated as he worked fast to clear that canvas bag and set the mail on a shelf. He couldn't be bothered to make it look like properly stacked postal products. His hasty shelving job would have to do.

Another footstep. Then two.

As quietly as he could, Barnaby clamped his jaw shut against the twinge in his arm as he opened the bag. He stepped in, but his body didn't completely fit.

Bloody hell.

Glass crunched outside the closet door.

Barnaby shoved his six-foot frame down as far into the bag as possible and raised the top of the bag.

When he cinched the top, it stopped just above his brows. His buzzed scalp stuck out.

The doorknob rattled, and Barnaby's heart stopped. He bent toward Jane, hoping to heaven that the top of his head wouldn't be visible in this position.

After a shout in Vietnamese farther away, whoever stood outside the closet replied with foreign words.

The metal door creaked on worn hinges. Barnaby froze.

He was so close to her, Barnaby could hear Jane's short, sharp breaths, muffled through the canvas, like she had her hand over her mouth. Her body shook, and he wanted to drag her into his arms and soothe her trembling.

The door swung open, and whoever stood there muttered something in Vietnamese.

One step, then two, closer to their hiding spot. Jane twitched, and Barnaby prayed the person at the door didn't notice.

At another shout from down the hall, the person in the office barked back. Crunching treads faded toward the front lobby.

Another round of gunfire erupted. English shouts and then more footsteps pounding down the hall.

Then silence.

Jane couldn't breathe. The air had turned stale in the thick cloth bag, and her legs shook with the effort to hold her crouched position. Never mind that if the VC caught her, they'd have a treasure trove of secrets the likes of which they'd never imagined. No one, not even the major, knew the extent of her work with the CIA.

Joining the intelligence community had seemed like a good idea four years ago. But how much could a high school student really understand about a foreign country that had only been briefly covered in world history class?

Apparently a lot and about Vietnam in particular, as her indoctrination into the CIA attested. In fact, a high school student gifted in learning languages and pattern recognition could become an operative who could contribute to the intelligence efforts here in Vietnam. However, her training hadn't prepared her for what she'd seen in Khe Sanh. And training sure as heck hadn't prepared her for the real possibility of death or capture.

What about her transfer to a safer location, the embassy?

Safer. What a total joke.

She flinched at a loud rap outside the building. She'd gone from life in a tailspin to being part of a mission with the CIA to crawling out of a mailbag.

Forget about direction and purpose. All she wanted now was to get out of this insane country.

More
rat-a-tats
outside the building rattled her nerves.

And to add insult to injury, that stupid old radio kept on cranking out the American Top 40 hits as if nothing was wrong. As if VC wasn't five steps away from finding and killing her. The upbeat chorus of “Daydream Believer” taunted her on every level. Damn those space cadet Monkees.

Judging by the volume of the shouts and pops of ammunition, fighting continued but on another floor or was being repelled outside. But she and Barnaby weren't out of danger yet.

Movement from the warm body leaning against hers made her jump. The rustling of the canvas seemed way too loud.

Barnaby had done exactly as he'd promised. He'd kept her safe.

Fear and relief crystallized into a stark need for Barnaby's arms to slide around her and hold on tight.

Be careful what you wish for
. A date within two mailbags was not exactly what she had in mind.

A tendril of coolness made her gulp in fresh air as Barnaby uncinched the top of the sack and helped her out of the hiding spot. His hands, strong and sure, supported her as she stepped out of the bag.

Behind him, the closet door stood open. In the semidarkness, the office furniture loomed large and menacing, throwing shadows that could hide anything. Or anyone.

Panic clawed at her. She should have listened to the general, should have listened to Barnaby. Should have left Vietnam after Khe Sanh. But no, she'd had this warped sense of duty. If she had no purpose, she had nothing, and her personal safety be damned.

Even now, the communications equipment crackled in the office, daring her to continue doing her job.

Well, forget that.

“Are you all right?” Barnaby's whisper caressed her as surely as if he'd touched her face.

“Yes, thanks to you.”

She needed him to continue to hold on to her arm. Needed the tether of his strength to keep from going to pieces. He had become her anchor in this dark closet.

More pops and explosions, quieter now, drifted back to their hiding spot.

“Stay or go?” he asked.

“Pardon?”

“Stay in this closet or try to find safety?”

Shouts that she translated as barked VC commands came from the floor above them. Or was it down the hall? She was too frazzled to think clearly. Tremors shot through her body.

“We don't know what's out there. I'm not even sure where to run to at this point.” She cursed how her voice wavered. “But we're sitting ducks in here, if someone came back.”

“You are correct.”

The warmth in his tone gave her strength, while also making her want to curl up into his muscled frame and hide from the mad world.

“Can we stay here for a while longer?” she asked.

“That's as good a plan as any, milady.”

What was the deal with this guy? With her ear for language, she'd noted his accent and word choices slid in and out of normal patterns. This wasn't the first time she'd detected a slight English accent that he tried to hide. Who was Barnaby Blackstone?

The man had saved her life; that's who he was. Maybe he had his own secrets—who didn't?—but bottom line, he had promised to keep her safe and had made good on that promise. It was a solid enough track record for Jane right at that moment.