Point of No Return (8 page)

He closed his mouth. Shoot.

“I can't believe… You know, I just
knew
you weren't telling me everything, Chet. But I sort of thought it might be something like, I don't know, that you were married once before. Had a wife or something. Something, maybe, normal in the scope of real society. But no, you're
wanted by a terrorist.
You've got a price on your head. Someone is going to shoot you, and you'll die in my arms.”

In her arms?

“Mae—”

“Let's just find Josh.” Her voice sounded strange, as if she might be trying not to cry. “And Darya. And get them both to safety. And then I promise, I'll walk out of your life, and you won't need to worry about trying to protect me or upsetting me. You can just go on living in your private world, telling me only the information you think I want to hear.”

“Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't like the unedited me.” He didn't care that the sharp edge of his tone might cut her.

She gasped, loosening her grip on his arm.

Okay, maybe he did care.

“Is that what you think?”

It was what he knew. Because if she knew the real Chet, and the crimes he hid—the ones committed right
here in Georgia… No, he liked her thinking of him as the person he'd created for her. He, in fact, liked that person better, too.

He cleared his throat of the emotion rising inside him. “Chiatura is west of here, about a day's ride on these roads. If we can get a car, we can probably intercept the train. It doesn't travel fast, and if we go south, we can probably catch it up in Khashuri. Luckily, that's outside the no-man's land of South Ossetia.”

She said nothing for a long while. Finally, in a voice that trembled just slightly, she said, “Clearly, it doesn't matter where we go. You have enemies on both sides of the border, Pancho.”

He winced. “Thank you for pointing that out. And you can stop with ‘Pancho.' It was a call sign, not a nickname.”

“What's it stand for?”

“Nothing. Just…”

“Pancho Villa, maybe? The rebel leader?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Stop please, Mae. No one is going to recognize me—”

“Are you kidding me? We had tea with one—count 'em, one—Georgian woman!” Her voice rose to anger again and lost all traces of pity. He wasn't sure which tone he preferred. “And yet she knew exactly who you were and could be on her way to warn this Bashim guy right now. I half expected a shot in my back as we rode away.”

“She wouldn't have shot you,” he said quietly. Although fear nearly choked him at the thought. Yes, it would be just his luck that he'd live and she'd get caught in the cross fire.

Just like Carissa.

Don't go there.

Mae held tighter as he urged the horse into a canter. “No, you're right. She would have just shot
you.
” She made a little disgusted noise that tightened his gut. “Big, big difference. Puh-
lease.
” He could feel the top of her head resting against his spine. “What was I thinking?”

So he'd been right. She'd gotten a good, up-close look at him, and it only made her sick.

He tried to swallow back the acid in his throat, his wild hopes of mending their friendship—or whatever it was between them—dashed.

Shoot.

“Let's see if we can get some wheels. I think our ride here has about had it.”

She said nothing as they trotted toward Burmansk, and left their ride just outside town with a local farmer.

A few blocks into town, they unearthed a rusty white Lada parked next to a charred house, weeds folding over the hood. Chet cleared the grass from the tires. They looked firm, but they'd recessed into the dirt. “It looks like it's been here a couple of years.”

Mae opened the gas tank and took a whiff. “Ew. It smells like paint thinner. I'm not sure this gas is good. If it even starts, it'll run rough.”

Chet opened the door and slipped into the front seat. “Let's see if she'll start.” Of course, no key dangled in the ignition. He checked the visor, the ashtray—nothing. And the steering was locked. Thankfully, the steering column lay exposed—good, practical Russian engineering—and a single nut held the steering wheel tight.

“You don't have your Leatherman, do you?”

She handed him the tool through the window. “Pop the hood,” she said.

He reached in under the dash and released the latch with a click. Mae eased the hood open, the metal whining against her efforts while he found the power wires, exposed them, then touched them to the starter wire. He heard a click.

At least the battery had a hint of life.

“I checked the oil, and the radiator has fluid, but the distributor cap is loose,” Mae said from under the hood.

He got out and found her checking the greasy wires. “They might have been in a hurry to leave—”

“Or something else happened.” She nodded toward the house. Fire had scorched the windows, char spreading out from the broken panes, and at least half the roof lay inside on the floor.

She lifted off the distributor cap. “The rotor is corroded and the spark can't get to the plugs. Let's see if I can clean the corrosion off. Then maybe we can get this thing started.”

She snapped off the rotor and scraped the tip on a rock nearby, as if she were filing it. Then she snapped it back on.

Reaching along the lip of the hood, she unlatched a small pouch.

“What's that?”

“Tool kit.” She opened it. Inside lay a pair of pliers, a screwdriver and a spark-plug wrench. “Handy.”

“Oh, those Russians are always thinking ahead.”

She took out the flathead screwdriver and scraped the metal terminals inside the distributor cap.

“You're pretty handy, too.”

She ignored him. So much for making friends.

She put the assembly back together, then stuck her hand down beside the carburetor.

“What are you doing?”

“On these old Russian cars, there's a lever on the side of the fuel pump.” As she said it, she began to pump.

“Want me to do that?”

She ignored him. “Let's see if it will fire. It's got fuel, and it should have spark and I cleaned out the carburetor so it'll have air.”

She wore a mark of grease on her chin, and it took everything inside him to refrain from wiping it off. But he had to admit a swell of pride at her mechanical abilities.

And shame over so quickly dismissing them.

He sorted through his memory of Russian engineering. “This is one of those crank starts, right?”

She leaned over the front, pushing away the tall grass. “Looks like it.”

“Let's see if we can crank it over.” He opened the trunk and took out the tire jack. “Put this in there.”

Mae took it from him and fitted the jack in the crank. She gave it a turn. Nothing.

Another turn. Not even a cough.

“Are you sure you checked the spark plugs?”

She cranked again, giving him a dark look. “Just let me work here.”

“Maybe I should crank.”

She held up the tire iron. He stepped back, hands up.

“Let me know if you need me.”

Her beautiful red hair fell over her face as she gave it another good round. The engine popped once. Sputtered. Died.

“Are you sure you don't want to let me have a whirl?”

She glanced up at him and sighed. “Fine, grease monkey, have at it.” She handed him the jack. “Clearly, I'm just in the way.”

She leaned against the side of the car, arms folded while he gave it a good crank. The engine popped again.

“You know, I was just trying to—”

“I know, protect me.”

He turned the crank again. It was harder than it looked. “I don't know what's…so…bad about that.”

She shook her head. “You know, I probably wouldn't be so angry about your not telling me about your outlaw status if it didn't prove my initial assumptions. You don't respect me.”

“What? Where do you get that?”

She air quoted her next words. “‘I can't let you fly for me. It's too risky.'”

He clenched his jaw as he cranked.

“And then there's the ‘Don't go to Georgia, Mae, you'll just get hurt.'”

“There's a war going on, if you hadn't noticed.”

“How about the small matter of the need-to-know basis?”

“Plausible deniability.”

“Whatever. And then, of course, there's ‘I'm pretty sure you wouldn't like the unedited me.' Do you really think I'm that shallow? That I expect you to be without scars or flaws? When did I ever give you that impression?”

He couldn't look at her. Because, well, she hadn't given him that impression. Ever.

He'd taken a good look at himself and made that call all on his own.

“The truth hurts, but it all boils down to the fact that you can't bear to let me make my own decisions. You feel compelled to protect me, which makes me feel about three years old and hardly allows for teamwork, let alone respect.”

“We're a team now.”

“I'd hoped we could get there. But apparently not. Because you have to be able to trust your teammate. And clearly we also have issues in that area, too, because people who trust each other tell each other the truth.”

“I trust you,” he muttered. He cranked again, sweat beading on his forehead. The car popped and shook, and for a second, caught.

“Give it some gas—”

Mae was already inside pumping.

The car died.

“Crank it again.”

He turned, hard, and the car growled to life, popping, sputtering, coughing. “Sounds like the timing is off. Hear that pinging?”

“It's just the old fuel. But it'll run.”

“I'll push you out of the weeds if you put it in Reverse. But please don't drive away on me.”

A dangerous look glimmered in her eye.

Maybe he didn't trust her after all.

But, miracle of miracles, she waited for him as he muscled the car out of its moorings. She didn't, however, climb into the passenger seat to let him drive.

They took off down the road, her jaw tight, her hands white on the steering wheel.

Sheesh,
did a guy have to tell a woman everything?
Did she require him to open up his chest and reveal his entire life story?

He had his reasons for all of his decisions—keeping her in the dark, not involving her in his company—and they were good ones, too. A couple even had to do with her.

As he watched her manhandle the car up the rutted dirt road, it occurred to him that she hadn't,
not once,
asked for his help. At least not since he'd set foot in the country.

“Listen, sweetheart, it goes both ways here. You want to be on a team, but that means you have to trust
me,
too. Even when you don't have all the facts. The truth is, you always have to be in charge, always have to save the day. But—and brace yourself because the truth hurts—sometimes you get in over your head, Mae. It's like you don't even
care
what happens to you. How many times have I watched your pal David sink to his knees in white-knuckle prayer, hoping you won't get killed? You're impulsive and—”

“Hey, my impulsiveness has saved lives—”

“—reckless, too. Could it be I was just watching your back?”

“I don't want anyone to watch my back.”

“Clearly. Especially a man.”

She shot him a look, but he knew he'd touched on the truth.

“And why is that, Mae? I'm just wondering, because suddenly I'm thinking I'm not the only one who may have edited myself a little. Why do you always have to save the day? Why can't you let people help you? Why does it scare you so much to rely on me? I don't think I'm the only one who hit the eject button in Moscow, Mae.”

“That's not fair. You said you didn't want me.”

“I didn't want you to
work
for me. As I recall, you filled in the rest.”

She blinked, and a tear spilled down her cheek. She didn't even bother to wipe it away as they drove past the smoking mission and south along the road to Khashuri.

“A
re you trying to take out the axles, or are you just unfamiliar with actually having tires on the ground?”

Mae ignored him. Although that last bump…well, she may have banged her head on the roof.

They'd escaped the war zone, with the Russian soldiers scurrying over the hills and the carnage of war—burned houses, the road churned to rubble—everywhere. In a few sections, she'd had to veer off the road to traverse the mess. It took longer than she'd hoped and the sun was practically swan-diving into the horizon, washing the car in gloom.

Why do you always have to save the day?

Chet's words thrummed in her head, even as she wrangled the car around potholes, sweat slicking her back.
Why does it scare you so much to rely on me?

Because he'd let her down, that was why. Because that was just how she was built—men disappointed her. It was like some sort of defect in her programming. Regardless of what she did, or probably because of everything she didn't do—like fawn over them and call them her hero—once they got close enough, they turned and ran. Like Olympic sprinters.

Take Chet, for example. Or Vicktor, her college
boyfriend. No, she and Viktor, although they'd been in a study group together in Moscow University, had never been a good match—not with their first-born mentalities. She never did understand why her friend David set her up with his roommate Vicktor. And, seeing him with Gracie, the way she allowed him to rescue her—to save her from a serial killer, and even a human trafficker in Seattle—yes, Gracie and Vicktor managed to find true love.

Mae wasn't sure she'd recognize if it tackled her to the ground. Not that she'd stick around long enough to get caught. Her father taught her that.

Chet came alive beside her. “The way I figure it, we'll hook up with the train just north of Kashuri. There's a little village about twenty miles from here where it makes a pit stop. We can sneak in there and jump aboard while the passengers are disembarking for roadside goodies.”

“I used to love that tradition,” Mae said, keeping her voice light, as if she weren't still reeling from his accusations. “When I'd travel to Khabarovsk, where Vicktor lived, sometimes we'd take a train to Vladivostok. It would stop in all these tiny villages, and we'd buy fresh
vareniki
or a delicious torte filled with caramel.”

“Stop, you're making me hungry.”

Chet sat with one foot braced against the floorboard, his right hand iron-fisted around the door handle. He had long since stopped trying to hold in his grunts when she managed to bottom out the car in a pothole, or slam him against the door in an attempt to avoid said potholes.

Yes, she missed the sky. Her plane.

In fact, she'd do just about anything to be airborne right now. Alone.

Just her at the controls of her plane, no one telling her—

“Sheesh, Mae! Do you think I could keep my teeth on this trip?”

She wrenched the wheel around the next pothole. “Sorry.”

He sighed beside her. “I guess I wouldn't be doing any better. It's not like this road is made for travel over thirty-five miles an hour.”

“I'm going thirty.”

“Right.” He gave a small chuckle.

“What's so funny?”

“Oh, I was thinking about Artyom and his lousy driving. He's this new guy I hired—”

“I know him. He helped us break Roman out of the gulag.”

He glanced at her. “I'd forgotten about that. He posed as one of the guards.”

“Along with David.” Who, although he was supposed to have been working undercover in an undisclosed country, went off the radar long enough to help his best friend escape death. Something the army had conveniently never discovered.

As if Mae could read his mind, she asked, “What were you doing when David was rescuing Roman?”

Chet chuckled under her breath. “Trying to keep his junket off the books. We were supposed to be meeting with high-and-mighties in D.C. about our next mission. I show up at David's apartment only to discover that he's AWOL. Not even a note. I got hold of him in Anchorage, right before—”

“He met me. We took a cargo flight to Khabarovsk, then another to Siberia. He never let on that he was on a mission.”

“He didn't have to. I had his back.”

I had his back.
Chet said those words so easily, but they opened another rip inside. No one had been back home in Alaska watching
her
back, keeping her name below the radar. No, she'd returned home to a near court martial. Only the fact she'd been on leave had kept her from ending up at Leavenworth.

In fact, she wasn't sure anyone had
ever
had her back.

Her realization should have been accompanied by dramatic music, because at once, she saw her life in a wide-angle view. She didn't see any of her friends— Roman, David, Vicktor, even Yanna—rushing to Georgia to help her find her nephew. No, they all had lives. Or better sense than to risk their lives for a love-struck teenager. And his overzealous aunt.

No, only she dropped everything and ran off to save the world.

The truth hurts.
Maybe she did have a savior complex.

Her eyes blurred, and she wrenched the wheel again before she hit another bump.

Chet slid his hand over her arm. “I can drive if you want.”

She gritted her teeth and looked down at his hand. Gentle, firm. Capable.

Chet. Chet had dropped everything and come to Georgia to help her.

Why did you come back?
Her words, shouted at him in the woods only this morning—wow, it felt like a couple of lifetimes ago—barraged her.

You can't figure that out, Mae?

She hadn't really let herself think about the fact that
he'd kissed her—oh, how he'd kissed her. And that she'd responded with more of herself than she should have.

For a blink in time, in his arms she felt…safe. So safe. As if she could breathe out, uncoil the failures and fears that held her so tight some days she thought she might suffocate. For that second, she felt as if she didn't have to rush in and save the day, as if she might be enough, just as she was. Without her red cape.

She glanced at Chet's hand on her arm, then up at his face. He was watching her with those devastating blue eyes that seemed to be able to see right through her, all the way to the fear inside—of not being needed.

He looked tired and a little bit on edge, with the husk of whiskers on his face, and dirt on his denim shirt and the knees of his black jeans.

She tapped the brakes and scooted over to the side of the road.

“What are you doing?” He pulled his hand away as she put the car into Park.

“Would you like to drive?”

“Are you serious? This isn't because you're angry about my side-seat driving is it?”

She rubbed her aching hands on her pant legs. Fatigue suddenly pouring through her, and not only from the past three days, but maybe from the past three decades. She swallowed and shook her head. “I'm not mad at you. I'm just.…ready to let you drive.”

If she wasn't mistaken, a smile edged up the side of his face—something sweet, especially when she factored in the strange, almost compassionate expression in his eyes. “Okay, then. Scoot over, baby. Chet Stryker's at the wheel.”

 

Mae was letting him drive. She was
letting
him drive.

Ho
-kay, it wasn't as if he'd been asked to guard the president, or won a peace prize or saved the world from nuclear disaster. But it felt as if he had. Miss
Get-outta-my-way-while-I-save-humanity
was letting him
drive.

And she'd hadn't once freaked out about it or hovered over him, gritting her teeth as he—yes, it seemed the potholes actually opened up under his tires—bounced them through pocks in the road.

“Sorry,” he said as the car squealed, righting itself.

She had reclined the seat, folded her arms across her chest and closed her eyes. “I still have my teeth,” she said.

What happened? The last coherent thing he'd said to her—right before losing his temper and decimating his hopes that she'd ever talk to him again—was something about how she scared him with her savior tactics, how she always had to be the boss, how he longed for her to be his teammate…or maybe that last part was just a conversation he'd had in his head…

Good grief, the woman got a rusty old car running. It's about time you woke up and started realizing you need her.

And so what do I do—hand her a gun, let her blaze away as Akif and his thugs hijack us?

She's probably got pretty good aim, having been in the military for over a decade.

And what happens when she gets shot—or worse, Akif gets his grubby paws on her?

Sadly, that was where the conversation ended, with a fear so powerful it nearly devoured him whole.

Yes, that was about when he'd unraveled and blasted her with the part of him who could really be a jerk. He'd even made her cry. What a hero.

Now, as he glanced at her, her red hair down—she'd pulled it out of the ponytail to lean back in the seat—her body drifting into sleep, he continued his earlier train of thought.

So Akif grabs her. She's pretty tough. Are you so sure she can't take care of herself? She did wallop you hard.

Fine. Then what? We live through whatever Akif throws at us…and ride off into happily-ever-after?

Silence. Yep, that was right. He didn't get past there, ever. He was just left with a yearning so overwhelming it nearly brought tears to his eyes.

Happily-ever-after. He didn't even know what that might mean anymore.

Happily-ever-after might mean finding Josh on the train, and convincing Mae to tag along with her nephew to the safety of Turkey, or at least to some westernized country while he backtracked with Darya to Burmansk. Maybe it also included Chet sneaking out of the country without getting killed by Akif. And then what?

What?

Maybe…maybe he called Mae and asked her to move to Prague. So they could…?

He glanced at her. She'd never be happy unless she was flying. And she deserved to fly. She'd earned her wings over and over, and yes, she was probably the best pilot he'd ever find.

So, maybe happily-ever-after was figuring out a way to forget the past and start over.

Carissa's scream jerked through him and he
slammed his hand on the steering wheel, trying to clear his head.

Next to him, Mae opened her eyes. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, keeping his gaze forward, willing away the memory of her being torn from his arms, her pleading cries as—

“Hey, is that Gori?” Mae pointed to a village in the distance, now coming into view as they huffed to the top of the hill.

“I think so. It's the next stop on the map. We'll pick up the train there.”

“I hope you have some lari left, because buying Argo cashed me out.”

“Argo?”

“Our horse. It's the name of Xena's horse, on
Xena: Warrior Princess.
”

“Seriously? Are you kidding me?”

She smiled at him. “I have every season on DVD.”

“Of course you do.” He glanced at her with a smirk.

“What? There's a lot more depth there than you'd think. Good versus evil, friendship—”

“Women who are stronger than men.”

“Sometimes they are.”

“I think the men are just distracted by her outfit.”

Mae rolled her eyes, but she smiled. “Okay, maybe she has some issues, but I did like the horse.”

“I thought he was more of a Silver.”

“As in ‘Hi-Ho Silver, away'? Oh, good grief. And who was I then, Tonto?”

“Well, actually, I thought I might be Tonto.”

“Which makes me the…Lone Ranger.”

Her tone told him his words still burned in her mind.

He made a face, looking over at her. “I'm sorry. That probably wasn't fair.”

She lifted a shoulder. “Maybe it was. You might be right, you know…about what you said.”

He stared straight ahead, nearly holding his breath.

“Don't get your hopes up that I'm going to hop the first train for the border.”

Shoot. That was exactly what he'd been hoping for.

“But I see your point. I do that—drop everything, rush to fix things. Maybe I just can't get past the fear that maybe I just
think
they need me.”

“And they really don't?” He said it softly, and now glanced at her. She was looking away from him, out the window, but as he watched, she wiped a hand across her cheek.

Perfect. He'd made her cry again. “Mae—”

“No, you're right. That's…well, yeah. I am afraid they won't need me. That somehow they'll forget about me, or maybe just go on without me.”

“Like Gracie did. When she married Vicktor and moved to Prague. Or I did.” Oh, he got it now. Watching her friends, her family, go on with their lives, reach for their dreams, while hers did a slow spiral into a ugly crash.

“Or my father did.” She was staring at her hands, folding them into each other in her lap.

Her father?

“He left when I was ten. Just walked out the door of our trailer. I stood there, my feet bare on the metal steps, freezing to death in my flimsy nightgown. I think it was even raining. I watched him throw a paper bag of his clothing into the cab of his truck and climb in. He never looked back.”

“Mae—”

“The worst part about it was that my mother hadn't come home the night before. I hadn't done the dishes, and when he came home from his shift around midnight, he was furious. It took me years to figure out that he was angry at her, but of course I thought it was me. I'd let him down. He worked so hard and was always grumbling about how much his ungrateful family cost him. I know now he meant my mother, but as a ten-year-old, I couldn't tell the difference. I never felt like he really liked me, or my sister. When he left, there was a part of me that felt relief.