LITMIR.BIZ

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This time she acknowledged, to herself at least, the terrible lie that was. “Besides, even without the words, I think the people we love know how we feel about them.”

      But that wasn’t good enough for you, was it? You had to have the words.

      “God, I hope so,” the pilot whispered.

      She nodded, unwilling to trust her voice. For a long time neither of them said anything. The light faded from the entrance to the cave and with it the daytime warmth.

      Night would fall quickly now. A cold, black eternity during which she would lie on the clammy rock floor, listening to the breathing of the man who, in these short weeks, had become a friend.

      Listening also to the measured pace of the guard outside. To the noises of the encampment. The restless movement of the horses. The occasional unrestrained laughter of their captors.

      Listening until it all faded like a familiar soundtrack behind the images that would parade through her mind for hours as she slept. Landon’s hands on her body. His mouth lowering to claim hers. His laughter, rare and far more precious for its rarity.

      What would it hurt to try? Mike Mitchell had asked her.

      Maybe it wouldn’t, but she knew she couldn’t take the chance. All she had to measure that risk by was how very much it had hurt before.

      “They’re planning to move us again,” Stern announced from the doorway where he’d been watching the activity outside.

      She glanced down at Mike to gauge his reaction and found his eyes closed, his breathing shallow but regular. It was just as well he hadn’t heard, she decided as she got carefully to her feet, leaving the damp cloth lying across his brow. She didn’t want to think what it would cost him to make another relocation. He had been measurably worse after the last.

      “How do you know?” she whispered to Stern as she crossed to the entrance.

      “They’re packing. They aren’t hurrying with it, and the cooking utensils are still out, so it won’t be tonight. Probably tomorrow before dawn.”

      That had been the timing of the first two moves. The third had occurred shortly after midnight, a hurried scramble that had obviously been the result of some last-minute decision or threat.

      “Do you think that means someone’s located us?”

      Without lifting his eyes from their contemplation of the camp, Stern said, “If we’re lucky. Except that every time they do…”

      She knew what he meant. Every time the people searching for them got close, they were moved. It was like a game of chess. Or like the children’s game of hide-and-seek, with their captors knowing all the best hiding places.

      Neither she nor Stern could figure out why they were still dragging the three of them around. The best-case scenario was that the men holding them were in the process of negotiating an exchange. The fact that they didn’t appear to care if Mitchell died, however, seemed to counter that hopeful theory.

      The worst case was probably that she and Stern were being offered for sale to someone, maybe Al-Qaeda, for whom they would have value as sources of information. In that situation, Mike would clearly be expendable.

      “Maybe this time they’ll find us.”

      And maybe pigs really will fly, she thought, negating her own comment.

      After all, she was here because she had conveyed this exact reality to Congress: Human intelligence gathering in this region had been virtually nonexistent for years, and it was impossible to identify from satellite images what the people hiding in these caves were doing.

      “I don’t understand why they haven’t mounted a larger-scale campaign to get us back,” Stern said.

      Maybe because you had the misfortune to get captured with me.

      Grace had never expressed that feeling aloud, but her conviction—that the people in charge of “special activities” here had just as soon she never be found—had grown with each passing day. It would be a shame if Stern and Mike were to be sacrificed because of her supposed sins, but there was very little she could do about it if that were the case. Not here. And not now.

      “How is he?” Stern finally looked up, pulling his attention briefly from the flurry of activity outside.

      “I think he’s dying,” Grace said softly.

      “Then I hope to God he does it before morning.”

      GRACE HAD NO IDEA how long it had been since she’d lain down. Long enough that she was deeply asleep when the hand on her shoulder roughly shook her awake and short enough that it felt as if she’d had no rest at all.

      She opened her eyes to find a man she’d never seen before stooping beside her. Although his mustache was coal black, it wasn’t very full, almost as if he might recently have been clean shaven.

      A patch covered his right eye. Glittering in the light from the dying fire, the remaining one seemed as cold and as black as the night.

      He had said nothing, simply crouching beside her. Of course, he didn’t need to issue instructions. By this time she knew the drill.

      She shrugged her shoulder away, freeing it from the touch of his hand, and began to rise. He grabbed her arm, turning her toward him again.

      She looked up in shock and found that he had one finger across his lips, the universal sign for silence. She nodded her understanding and immediately he released her.

      As she began to roll up her blanket, he stood, the move accomplished in one smoothly athletic motion, and walked over to where Stern was wrapped in his own blanket, his back to the fire. Grace was surprised that the colonel, usually a light sleeper, hadn’t already awakened, but then, the man moved virtually without sound across the floor of the cave.

      He bent, touching Stern on the shoulder, just as he had her. The colonel rolled over, looking up at him in the dim firelight. Again the man put his finger over his lips.

      He said something, his tone so low that Grace was unable to distinguish the words, although she had managed to pick up a little of their captors’ dialect since the crash. In response to the man’s comment, Stern pointed toward the heavily shadowed interior portion of the cave where Mitchell slept.

      They had moved him there themselves that afternoon in an attempt to get him into a cooler area during the fierce heat of midday. Tonight they hadn’t had the heart to try to move him back nearer the fire. They had simply piled the remaining blankets around him, despite the heat that emanated from his ravaged body.

      Before the man who had awakened them went back to the pilot’s pallet, he said something else to the colonel, who nodded. Grace watched as he walked by her, headed, she assumed, to arouse Mitchell.

      “Come on. We have to get ready to go.”

      She turned to find Stern standing beside her, close enough that she had understood his whisper. She nodded, reaching down for the blanket she’d already rolled up.

      “Leave it,” the colonel said, taking her arm.

      “But—”

      “Shh…” he cautioned, drawing her across the cave to the entrance where he crouched, pulling her down beside him.

      It took Grace a second or two to realize why it seemed so eerily silent outside. The tread of the guard stationed at the entrance to the cave, so familiar it had become like the noise of her own heartbeat, was missing.

      “Where’s the—”

      “Shh…” Stern whispered again.

      She closed her mouth, considering the possible implications of his repeated warnings and the absence of the guard. The only logical conclusion for both—

      “Let’s go.”

      The man with the eye patch was back, standing behind them. That was her first realization.

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