Sons of Thunder (39 page)

She kicked him and rolled out of his arms.

Landed on the floor beside the bed.

With a roar, he leaped at her. She managed to fling herself away from his fist, and he cursed as his knuckles exploded against the wooden floor. She hoped every one of those wounds opened, bled hard.

“Get away from me!” She scrambled to her knees, but he shackled her ankle. “No!” She kicked at his face. Blood spurted from his nose.

“You little—”

He dragged her toward him, but she caught the edge of the bed, gripped it. “No!” She needed a weapon—a stick or—the pistol! She spied it under the bed—on the other side.

The colonel rose above her, but she turned, kicking at him. She managed another kick that doubled him over.

She rolled and scrambled to her feet.

He caught her hair, pulled her back.

She covered her face with her hands as he picked her up by her arms and flung her onto the bed.

She hadn’t even landed before she sprang off.

Crashed onto the floor.

Swooped up the gun. “Stop!”

He froze, his eyes narrowing at the barrel, now shaking, pointed at his naked chest. “What are you going to do, Sofia, shoot me?”

“Stay back.”

“You can’t pull the trigger. I know you. You don’t have it in you.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s
all
I have in me. You took the rest.” The gun shook in her grip.

He leaped at her then, and she screamed.

The pistol recoiled in her hands as the shot cracked the morning air.

The colonel howled, pitching onto the floor, holding his leg. Blood surged from his knee and he rolled in agony. “You—you—!”

She didn’t have to know the nuances of German to understand that word.

“Poison is the word you’re looking for,” she said as she backed out of the room.

Sofia had watched Markos enough during the days when he drove for Uncle Jimmy to know how to put the colonel’s scout car into drive, how to maneuver it out of the courtyard onto the dusty road to town. Without a telephone, without a vehicle, he hadn’t a prayer of getting to the taverna before dawn.

Please let her arrive before Lucien.

The pistol lay in the well of her lap. She picked it up and placed it on the seat next to her, her thoughts scandalous.

Did she think she’d just hold Lucien at gunpoint and make him give her Markos?

Maybe.

Adrenaline prickled her—her stomach, arms, legs—even out to her fingertips. She saw the colonel, clutching his leg—she thought the shot had hit his knee, but she couldn’t be sure. Did she want him to die?

She shook the thought from her head. She hadn’t killed him. That should count for something.

The faintest hint of morning nudged the shadows in the alleys she wound toward the taverna. Grapevine hung from wooden porticos. Now and again she passed a goat wandering the streets, chased a dog from the road.

She parked the scout above the taverna. If Lucien saw it, he’d assume the colonel had kept his part of the bargain.

Swiping the pistol from the seat, she tucked it into her sweater—the one she’d retrieved from the windowsill of her room on her dash from the house. The colonel’s voice had chased her down the stairs, into the cool morning.

Now she held her breath as she tiptoed into the dark taverna. Ava had covered the remaining bread and cheeses from the day before in pots on the wooden chopping block. The smell of olive oil, fresh basil, and dill embedded the stone walls. She crept out of the kitchen, onto the portico, half expecting to see Markos and Lucien—perhaps one of them bleeding on the stone floor.

Odd that Lucien would pick this place to betray Markos—or perhaps not odd. She stood on the cold porch and memory caught her.

Markos, watching her from the table until he had the courage to get up, reach out his hand to ask her to dance. The band, the taste of celebration in the air as they danced. Markos’s hand in hers, roughened by the sea, his eyes shining.

Lucien stood in the shadows. She’d spotted him as they danced, seen fear in his eyes. Then Kostas—angry. Loud. His fury exploding.

She pressed her hand to her stomach, shuffled out into the sunlight.

A fiery sun simmered on the horizon, crimson upon the gray waters. Frothy waves gulped at the shore. The golden sand seemed almost black even as the light clawed at it. And, on a lick of wind, she could taste a storm.

Still, the coming sunrise heated the air, and she lifted her face to it, let it soak her bones. For a second, she held her hand out, opened her mouth to it. Drank it in.

“You came.”

She closed one hand over the ring in her pocket.

The other over the pistol.

She half-turned. “Of course.”

Lucien stood just outside the portico—where he’d stood so many years ago, only this time without a trace of fear in his dark eyes. He still wore the garb of partisan—or, perhaps, now traitor.

“Did you bring the money?”

“It’s a ring—a topaz ring. You can—sell it. Or give it away. Did it work—did you free Markos?”

All those years playing the vamp for Uncle Jimmy, the sparrow to the colonel, paid off. Not a quiver in her voice.

He entered the portico, his boots scuffing on the stone. “Of course.”

“I want to see him.”

Lucien’s eyes narrowed.

“Please. To say good-bye.” She looked away, as if embarrassed. Slipped the pistol from her pocket.

She’d made up her mind on the way down the mountain. Saw it in her head.

She’d already shot one man. Certainly—

“Sofia.”

Markos appeared in the corridor of the taverna. She winced at a bruise on his cheek, the way he held the wall as he eased down the steps.

Still, seeing him here, in the taverna, standing across from Lucien, it brought tears to her eyes.

She wiped them away with more violence than it merited.

“I’m okay. Lucien and his men did some sort of miracle—I’m not sure how—”

“I know how.” She took a breath, listened to her heart pound in her head—and lifted the gun from behind her. “The SS never had you, Markos.”

She expected Lucien to flinch, but his lips tightened into a knot of anger.

Markos, however, came at her. “Sofia, what are you doing?”

Lucien raised his hands, glanced at the door where Markos had appeared.

“He’s not coming,” Sofia said on a sliver of breath.

Markos stopped. “What are you talking about? Who’s not coming?” He reached out for her but she slipped away.

“Tell him, Lucien. Tell him how you betrayed us all.” The weapon shook. She put both hands on it. This time she wouldn’t miss. Beyond her, the waves roared onto the shore, seagulls cried.

Lucien shot a look at Markos, then back, shook his head, as if to say
this crazy woman
—

Fine. She glanced at Markos. “He was going to sell you to the Germans. To the colonel.”

Markos gave no indication that he comprehended her words.

“She’s lying, Markos. She just doesn’t want me to tell you the truth.”

“What truth?”

Now. She should shoot the traitor now. “I am telling the truth—Lucien has betrayed us!”

“Her son belongs to your brother—she seduced him.”

She couldn’t look—not with Lucien so close to the entrance of the taverna—but she heard it, in the swept breath, in the strange sound Markos emitted.

Oh—see…

“You betrayed us, Lucien?” Markos voice cut through her, even as he stood beside her.

Lucien recoiled, one eye closing as if he’d been slapped. She saw it then, the years of anger, stewing for this moment, as Lucien’s face twisted.

“Why?”

She wouldn’t look at him—oh. Her gaze went to his—out of her peripheral, she just had to know—had he even heard Lucien?

Lucien kicked a table. It barreled toward her and she jerked. A shot ripped through the thatch in the ceiling.

Lucien speared the sky, frozen in his escape.

“Lucien.”

“I’m finally giving you what you should have had years ago—justice. You don’t just get to come back here, steal Sofia away, leave us with your mess again.” This Lucien she recognized—the one who’d come running to the end of the dock so many years ago.

Markos didn’t move, his body so tight she thought he might snap. Sofia waited for him to explode, perhaps dive at Lucien. But he just stood there, breathing Lucien’s words in and out.

She tightened her grip on the pistol.
Shoot!

“You’re right. I don’t.”

Markos’s calm words shook her. “I
don’t
deserve to make it right. But I learned long ago that God doesn’t give us what we deserve. If that were the case, we’d all be in prison. We’d all be—dead.”

Markos wore an expression like she’d never seen—almost as if he’d been turned inside out, shaken, put back fresh and new. “But see, I learned that God is also the giver of second chances, and third and fourth—not because we deserve it, but because that’s who He is. We are that valuable to Him.”

Redemption.
So that’s what it looked like.

“As you are to me, brother.”

Lucien drew in a breath, his eyes black. He shook his head.

“Let him go, Sofia.”

What? “No! He is just going to betray us—”

“Give me the gun. I’m not going to let you shoot him. You’re not this person.” His calm voice threaded through her, reached deep.

“No! You don’t understand. He was going to hand me over to the Nazis too!”

Lucien jerked.

“Is that true?” Markos’s voice, low, lethal, scared even her.

“You love her,” Lucien said simply.

“Give me the gun, Sofia. If anyone should kill him, it should be me. I already have my hands bloody in this taverna.”

She glanced at him, the dark slice of fury on his face, and something inside her died. So much for the possibility, the miracle of redemption.

Her throat filled as she handed the pistol to Markos. She turned away, her hand closing around the ring, waiting for the shot to echo against the stones. Perhaps it would be fitting for it to end here.

The gun clattered on the stone floor.

“Go, Lucien.”

She turned in time to see Lucien’s face, whitened even in the gold of the dawn. Then he turned and fled the taverna.

CHAPTER 29

She didn’t know this Markos—the one who had lost his mind.

“Why did you let Lucien go? He’ll run straight to the colonel—and they’ll find us!” Sofia chased Markos through the kitchen of the taverna.

“Maybe. But hopefully we’ll be gone by then.” He grabbed her hand, pulled her out into the street. The sun had just begun to boil away the moisture from the morning.

“By then? What’s happening—where are we going?”

“You’re coming with me.”

She had no words for that. “You still want me to go with you—after—Markos, didn’t you hear Lucien?” She hated the terrible burning in her throat, but—“I
seduced
your brother, Markos.
I have his son
.”

Markos stopped then, looked at her, and she knew. Oh—his gaze went right through her.

She knew it. He could no longer see her, really.

Just her crimes.

The sun cleared the house, burned the back of her neck, sweat driving down her spine. For a second she longed to slip back into the cool shadow of the taverna. She started to pull away, but he reached up and touched her face, ran his thumb down her cheek.

“Zante is about to be liberated by the British. I received a message from the OSS before the rescue mission, and they’re commencing liberation at 0600. We have to get off this island.”

“Not without my son.” She stepped away from his touch. “And Zoë. And your mother.”

She couldn’t read his eyes.

“We’ll take them
all
with us. Where are they?”

“Your mother hid them in the caves beneath the olive grove. They’re waiting for me—us.”

He turned, started up the gravel path.

“Wait—we don’t have time.” She pulled him up the hill to the colonel’s scout, gleaming in the sunlight. “Drive.”

Markos stared after her then caught up quick, jumping into the driver’s seat. “Do I want to know where you got this?”

“No.” She slid into the passenger seat.