LITMIR.BIZ

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      His words sounded more like a threat than a promise.

      “I’m sorry, Kate,” he said then, and his face softened marginally before he looked away from her.

      And damn him, her heart softened, too, which was the last thing she needed. She had to keep her wits about her.

      “Why are we going in the opposite direction?” She was still suspicious.

      He dragged her on. “We can’t start an open battle where we’re outnumbered twenty to one. If we do anything, it has to be guerilla warfare. Once again, here is what we are doing. I’m taking you out. Through the roof, if possible. We are going up. The hostages are on our way. I’ll get them free of their guards and help them to the basement, where they have a chance to hide out until this is over. Even if they’re found by the rebels again, they’ll have a well-defendable position and I’ll make sure they have some guns. That’s the best we can do. The two of us sneaking out of here is going to be difficult as hell. Twenty people sneaking out is impossible. If we try, everybody dies. Do you understand?”

      That made sense. She gave up resisting. He looked as though he knew what he was talking about, not that she was over the shock of his commando persona yet.

      “I would appreciate if you didn’t question every move I make,” he bit out as they stole along the corridor in a hurry. “Our lives could depend on split-second decisions and your split-second responses.”

      “You think I’m putting us in danger by not following you blindly like some robot? Like you’ve given me reason to trust you and your almighty judgment in the past? Hardly.”

      His eyes flashed thunder. “Do you really want to get into all this right now?”

      Okay. No, not really. She bit her tongue. Not at all. She would just as soon see their past buried if not forgotten. “What do the rebels want, anyway?”

      “Probably troop withdrawal from their republic. They’ve been fighting for autonomy for the last seven years.” He seemed to calm a little. “The violence slowed lately, since their leaders were captured, but apparently someone else has taken the helm.” He thought for a second. “Strange, really, when you think about it. Their ethnic leaders are pretty divided. Some are turning into outright warlords. Mashev and his bunch.” He shook his head.

      “How on earth do you know all this?” She worked for the State Department and the Tarkmez struggle was barely a blip on her radar screen.

      “CNN,” he said, bland-faced.

      “Yeah, right.”

      The corner of his mouth turned up in a grin.

      “Not funny,” she said, breathing a little hard since they were moving at a fair speed; it had nothing to do with his smile. Nothing whatsoever. “You have no idea how much I hate it when you lie to me.”

      His grin melted away, his face growing somber. “You have no idea how much I hate having to lie to you. Do us both a favor and don’t ask me any more personal questions, okay?”

      He was asking a lot.

      “Are they going to get it?” She asked something he wouldn’t consider personal. “Their independence?”

      “Not anytime soon,” he said.

      She didn’t like the sound of that. It didn’t bode well for the hostages. “How desperate are they?”

      “Over a hundred thousand have been killed so far in the sporadic fighting. Women and children included.” His gaze hardened. “Carpet-bombing is not an exact science.”

      God. She’d nearly lost it at the sight of Jeff going down, and the two dead rebels back there in the gym. She couldn’t picture a hundred thousand dead. She blinked hard.

      “They have nothing to lose,” he added.

      “I get it.” When it came to fighting, which would probably come soon enough—either the French or the Russian government would try to get the hostages out—the battle would be savage. “Why isn’t help here yet? Didn’t anyone hear the gunshots? Didn’t anyone call the police?”

      “It’s not a residential district,” he said. “Nobody is here at night. And even if they were, the weather is drowning out most of the noise.”

      They turned down a hallway and rushed to the end, flattened themselves against the wall as Parker checked around the corner to make sure they wouldn’t run into anyone that way. Then they were off again.

      “Where is the rest of the embassy staff? The security?” he asked.

      “Some of them were killed when the building was taken. I don’t know about the rest. You think they were murdered, too?” She didn’t even want to think about that.

      “Probably. The rebels wouldn’t want to leave anyone alive who might prove to be a danger later. They have the office and kitchen staff for bargaining. They would want to neutralize anyone trained to fight.” He paused for a moment. “But if we knew for sure that some of the security staff are still alive, it would be worth spending time on finding them. We could use help with the hostages.”

      “If some of the security was still alive, where would they be?”

      “Anywhere,” he said after some thought, never slowing down. “There could be a man or two who had avoided capture, hiding out. Or there could be a few of them in the custody of the rebels, held in a different location from the rest of the hostages. Or they all could be dead,” he added on a somber tone.

      And since they were talking about missing people, another thought popped into her head, and she couldn’t believe that she had let it slip her mind earlier. “Where are the children and Tanya?”

      He looked at her as if she’d gone off her rocker. “What children?”

      “The ambassador and his wife have two girls. One’s five, the other’s seven. They were at the dinner. Wasn’t that in your briefing?”

      He swore under his breath. “My briefing was rushed. It focused on you and on the weak points of the building. When did you see the kids last?”

      “At dessert. Then Tanya took them to some rec room to play. The nanny was supposed to watch them. The whole family was supposed to go home together later,” she said miserably. But her mind was finally settling down enough to take stock of the situation. “I’m going to need a weapon.” She eyed the rifle that hung from his shoulder and the handgun tucked into his belt.

      “You have the flashlight,” he said without looking back. “So there’s a nanny, too? That’s at least four civil ians missing.”

      “I can shoot.”

      That gave him enough pause to slow and stare at her, his dark eyebrows sliding up his forehead. “Since when?”

      “Since I decided to take the consul position. U.S. embassies have been known for being attacked in the past. I’ve taken some firearm courses and a few months’ worth of self-defense lessons.”

      Mostly she’d done it to set her mother’s mind at ease. The consulate was in Paris, France, not in some third-world country. The worst crisis she had expected was an overdrawn credit card from too much uninhibited shopping.

      For the first time, she was actually glad that she had a mother who saw doom lurking everywhere, and who had forced her to take extraordinary precautions. The only time, ever, when her mother’s paranoia had failed was with Parker. She loved the man to death. Not a word of warning there, just when Kate would have needed it most.

      They came to a row of doors and he tried the first. Locked. Tried the next one and the next one, too, before he found one that was open. He moved in low, the handgun held out in front of him.

      “All clear.”

      She went in behind him and closed the door. They were in a large storage room with nothing but boxes

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