Shades of Gray (7 page)

But Andres had stripped away his armor as well, with a single, jarring admission of his own, and with that admission he had given her the power to all but destroy him.

“Sara …”

She was running, and she didn’t stop until her bedroom door was closed behind her. But she didn’t escape him. She couldn’t run away from him this time, she knew. This time there had to be an ending between them.

Late the following morning, Captain Siran, who had remained in his small boat that had been tied up at the dock overnight, sat on the cramped bridge writing a short note. He was ready to leave Kadeira and head back toward Key West, and manners required that he inform his host of his intentions. Manners, and the fact that Sereno’s naval fleet took a dim view of boats leaving the harbor without proper permission.

Siran would have used his ship’s radio to inform the president, but Sereno had sent word that his enemy could intercept radio transmissions now because of recently acquired equipment, and that it perhaps would be wiser to tell Lucio as little as possible. Captain Siran had no problem with that—except for one small thing.

That morning Hagen had radioed a very brief message.

Out of habitual caution the federal maestro had coded his message, but Siran was still bothered by the possibility of interception. Chances were good, of course, that Lucio wouldn’t have understood the message even if he managed to decode it. But if he
did
understand …

Hagen, Siran reflected, had made a bad mistake this time. The situation could be defused if he’d only tell certain people things in order to placate them—but Hagen was notoriously unable to be open and aboveboard about
anything
.

Siran didn’t like any of it. But there was nothing he could do about the situation, and he had his orders. So, along with his intentions of leaving, he added a brief message to Sereno: “From Hagen via radio this morning: Please be advised Long and company very distressed over disappearance of Miss Marsh. Their intentions unclear at this point. Past actions demonstrate they may take the matter into their own hands. Yacht
Corsair
projected to be in your area.”

Siran went out on deck and beckoned to a
nearby lieutenant. “Can one of your men take this note to President Sereno?”

The burly man nodded agreement. “Teo has been our messenger since the president forbade radio contact; I have a message to send as well. Leaving, Captain?”

“On the tide.”

“Good fortune.”

Siran nodded. “Thanks. And to you.” He watched the soldier stride toward a group of men near the warehouses, continued to watch as a younger soldier climbed into a battered jeep and drove away. Then, sighing a little, Siran turned back to his preparation to cast off.

Thinking of the lieutenant’s good wishes, he muttered, “May fortune favor the foolish.” But nobody heard him.

Colonel Durant was frowning a bit as he handed the slip of paper back to his president. “Long? I didn’t realize he knew Sara. It was the other one he knew, the woman who looked so like her.”

Andres shook his head. “I shall have to ask Sara, but I believe Long and his friends became interested in Sara’s well-being after Rafferty and his wife visited here. Of course they’d be concerned when she vanished, particularly if they know or suspect that she was brought here against her will.”

“Nevertheless,” Durant said, “what could they hope to do? Impossible to reach the island without our knowing—”

“They did once before,” Andres murmured.

The colonel was silenced but only briefly. “Under cover of a storm. And Long himself didn’t risk coming to the island.”

“The Final Legion was here then. It isn’t now.”

Durant’s frown deepened. “But the revolution exists; he would be in danger, and men of his wealth are cautious.”

Sereno smiled just a little. “Vincente, in an hour or so Joshua Long could raise his own army—by comparison to which both mine and Lucio’s would be pathetic.”

“He wouldn’t. International law—”

“International law aside, no, he wouldn’t. But
he could, if he chose. And a man such as he could, I imagine, find his way to Kadeira in caution and relative safety.”

Accepting that, Durant asked, “We expect him, then?”

“We won’t be surprised if he arrives.”

Durant studied his old friend in silence for a moment. This new threat to the island was worrisome enough; Vincente was concerned over Sereno himself. The president seemed very tired, drained emotionally rather than physically. He had said nothing when Sara had failed to appear at breakfast, but his eyes had strayed often to the place that had been set for her.

The colonel had seen Sara slipping out into the garden a few minutes ago, and she had looked as drained and haunted as Andres did. Clearly there had been a confrontation of some kind between them, and just as clearly, it had resolved nothing. And Vincente was worried because if they both showed such strain after less than twenty-four hours …

“I need to ask Sara about Long and his
friends.” Andres’s voice was slow, almost reluctant.

Durant understood the hesitation, and it didn’t surprise him only because he, more than any other, knew just how strong Andres’s feelings for Sara were. So he understood now that Andres was diffident about approaching Sara alone, even with so innocuous a reason, after whatever confrontation had so shaken the both of them. But perhaps, Durant thought, it was just what they needed—an impersonal topic to discuss.

“Shall I find her for you?” he asked.

Sereno was concentrating on a munitions inventory before him on the desk, and didn’t look up when he answered in a low voice, “Thank you, Vincente.”

Sara had slipped into the garden because she was getting claustrophobic in her suite. She had paced the floor all night, unable to sleep or even to rest. And now she wandered in the garden, touching a shrub here, a flower there. Trying not to think but thinking all the same.

During the long hours since she had run from him the night before, Sara had come to at least one certain realization: Whether or not she somehow came to accept Andres’s actions two years ago in allowing the terrorist group a sanctuary here, there was still the part of him she was afraid of, the darkness. And she couldn’t live with a man she feared.

“The love I have for you … is the best of me.”

If that was true … she could destroy him. Or at least destroy that part of him she loved, that charming, intense, gentle part of him. Just as she had done the previous night, she would, in her own panic, tear at him in her efforts to fight this between them, to escape him. She’d say cruel things, strike out at him. “I’ll not give my soul to the devil …” She would batter his love until it lay around them both in ruins.

“… what will I be if I lose that?”

If she killed it, then … then she’d see the worst of him.

Sara wondered, dimly and tiredly, if that was what really drove her. Did she strike out at him, tear at the gentle layers of his love, because her
fear compelled her to know the worst of him before she could love without reservation?

He hadn’t shown that side of himself to her, whether consciously or not. But it was
there
. She sensed it, had glimpsed the darkness from time to time in fleeting moments. She knew it was there.

She tried to remind herself that some of the most monstrous leaders the world had known had loved passionately and even tenderly in their lives. That didn’t change them, didn’t alter what they were. So it shouldn’t matter to her that Andres loved her, that he was gentle with her.

But it
did
matter.

She had to see him clearly, had to understand everything he was. She couldn’t trust her instincts, because those instincts were in chaos. And she couldn’t run away again. There had to be an end to it, one way or another. This time it couldn’t just stop.

Yes or no; black or white; right or wrong. She had to see, to know and understand, the worst of him. There weren’t any simple answers,
weren’t any easy solutions. And they could hurt each other so dreadfully.

“Pardon, Miss Marsh?”

Sara jumped in surprise, the heavily accented voice causing her to swing around. He was a young soldier with a shy smile and curiously flat back eyes, bobbing in an awkward bow.

She forced her muscles to relax. “Yes?”

“The president, miss. He asks that you come.”

She nodded, preceding him along the path he indicated. And it wasn’t until they’d nearly reached the corner of the house that Sara wondered abruptly why Andres would have summoned her to the area where the cars were kept parked—the only area at the front of the house that the perimeter guards couldn’t see.

“Wait a minute. What—”

She discovered quickly enough the unexpected strength of the young soldier. And the quickness with which he clapped a sickly sweet cloth over her nose and mouth defeated her before she even could begin to struggle. After that was only blackness.

By the time he had searched the entire garden, Colonel Durant was worried. It was unlikely that something had happened to Sara, but Durant preferred to err on the side of caution. And she had slipped away from these very grounds once before.

He went back into the house, asked a quick question of Maria, and, despite the negative answer, went up the stairs two at a time and rapped sharply on Sara’s door. There was no answer. He went in, quickly searching the suite. Empty.

He returned downstairs and hurried to Andres’s office, where there was an intercom connected to the guardhouse at the gate. When he burst into the room, Andres looked up in surprise.

“Vincente? What—” He broke off, his face going tight and pale. “Sara.”

Durant leaned over the desk to stab the intercom button. “Morales.”

“Colonel?” the gate guard responded instantly.

“Has anyone left the grounds in the past hour?”

“Only Teo, sir.”

Durant’s eyes met Andres’s, and both held the same realization—Teo, the trusted messenger, his uniform giving him safe passage, would have gone unquestioned through the grounds.

“Did you search his vehicle?”

“When he came in, sir.” Morales sounded puzzled, apprehensive.

“Not when he left?”

“No, sir.” Definitely apprehensive now. “But, sir, he was driving a jeep with no top; we could see inside.”

“You’re absolutely positive he was alone?”

“I—there was a tarp in back, sir. But we checked under it when he came in. There was just some equipment, some sleeping bags.” After an instant’s hesitation Morales added stiffly, “We did wonder why he didn’t take the harbor road—”

Andres spoke harshly. “Gather half a dozen of your best men, Morales, and get up here.”

“Yes, sir!”

Woodenly Durant said. “He could have discarded the equipment out near the cars; no one
would see it. If he knocked her out, hid her under the tarp …”

Andres reached for the radio behind the desk with some thought of contacting his patrols in the city but hesitated and looked at Durant. “He has no means of contacting Lucio, but if I order the men to find and stop that jeep, Lucio will know something has happened, and he’ll guess it has to do with Sara.”

Durant nodded. “You don’t dare risk it.”

There was a big automatic in a webbed holster in the bottom drawer of Andres’s desk; he got it out and stood, buckling the belt in place. And his voice, when he spoke again, was a bleak rasp. “She may have gone willingly, Vincente. She may have run away from me again.”

Durant couldn’t deny the possibility. “She must be found.”

“Yes. Yes, she must be found.” Andres’s mouth twisted bitterly. “So that I may
protect
her.”

Every breath Andres drew burned in his chest and caught raggedly in his throat. Every passing
second was an eternity filled with anguished terror. She was gone, taken from him. She was gone, and he could barely think, could hardly feel past the numbing cold of his fear for her. He was vaguely aware that Durant protested when he got into an open jeep but ignored his old friend’s worry over enemy snipers.

The jeep all but stood on two wheels as it shot through the open gate and turned hard onto the harbor road, then shuddered with the strain when it was almost immediately turned again at right angles onto the rougher road Morales had indicated that led to the beach before swinging back inland. It was a little-traveled, treacherous road, marked by hard-baked hillocks thrown up by the mud slides of the rainy season and by eroded gullies that were invisible until a vehicle was quite literally on top of them and unable to stop.

From the moment Morales had indicated Teo’s choice of route, Andres had been conscious of desperate urgency, and he pushed the old jeep to its straining limits. They could, if they were quick enough, catch up to Teo before he even
knew he was being followed. But if he saw them and increased his own speed in an effort to escape … He was an inexperienced driver, and his chances of avoiding all the dangers of the road at high speeds were virtually nil.

But if they didn’t catch him, if he reached the jungle’s edge ahead of them, then he was gone. After years of war Andres knew only too well how easily an army could be hidden in those impenetrable depths; a lone vehicle would seem to disappear completely.