And gee, he really hoped Emilio Testa wasn’t a good friend of theirs.
Molly awoke to find herself alone in the bed.
But she wasn’t alone in the room. Jones was hunkered down on the floor just inside the door, a shape in the darkness, watching her.
“Hi,” she said groggily, pushing her hair out of her face. “What’s happening? Is your shift over already? Is it time for me to take a turn?”
“No, it’s . . . no,” he said. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“You didn’t.” There was a candle on the table next to the bed, and she found it by touch, found the matchbook. The light didn’t quite reach as far as the wall, though. It didn’t make it any easier to see his face. “What are you doing over there?” She propped herself up on one elbow.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.
“If that’s the beginning of an apology,” she told him. “I accept. You’re forgiven.”
“I am sorry,” Jones said. “I should have stayed away from you. I never should have gone to Kenya.”
While Molly hadn’t been looking forward to this conversation, she’d been expecting it. Jones’s spirits had taken a real nosedive when he’d found out that Max couldn’t use their knowledge of the planned terrorist attack on the Jakarta embassy as a bargaining chip, because the attack had already happened.
It was possible he’d been chugging along in dire situation mode, but that Max’s idea had given him real hope.
Hope that had quickly been dashed.
“Well,” Molly said now, “okay. Maybe if you’d skipped the Kenya trip, neither of us would be right here, right now—”
“Damn straight.”
“—but you have to know that I wouldn’t trade the past four months with you for anything,” she told him fiercely.
“You’d really rather die,” he said flatly. “For four lousy months of living a lie?”
“No,” she said. “I’d really rather
not
die, thanks. And what exactly was the lie? Your name? Your fake accent? Big deal. Stop beating yourself up for making me the happiest woman in the world. Well, except maybe for Gina, when she was on the kitchen table . . .”
Jones didn’t laugh. He didn’t even crack a smile. He put his head down, resting it on his folded arms.
“Come on,” Molly said. “What’s with this defeatist attitude?”
She pulled back the sheet, took the candle from the table, and with it, crossed the room. Naked. With all of her forty-something jiggles, and that maybe-she-just-ate-too-much-chocolate-cake of a soft, round belly that didn’t quite look pregnant yet. With her breasts expanding by the minute. She’d always been full figured, but pregnancy was turning her into a burlesque star anomaly. At least it felt that way.
But when Jones looked at her, she felt beautiful. Sometimes even svelte. And always unbelievably sexy.
Even despite the bandage covering her Frankenstein-looking biopsy stitches.
Problem was, he didn’t want to look at her right now. He was frightened and angry, and he had no room in his soul for anything but his misery and self-loathing.
“I should have died years ago,” Jones said, as she sat down on the floor, next to him. “I think I was probably supposed to, but I was too much of a son of a bitch to realize it.”
“If you were supposed to die,” she pointed out, “then you would have. Assuming there’s such a thing in life as
supposed to.
But okay, let’s run with that. When were you supposed to die?”
“When I got that infection,” he told her. “I almost did die.”
Molly nodded. She remembered.
She’d first seen his souvenir of that event—a new scar in his vast collection—on their wedding night. It was on his back, jagged and still angry looking, long after he’d been injured.
Stabbed, actually.
He’d told her that he’d gotten that scar while on his way to Africa. Years earlier.
It had happened right after Molly had left Indonesia, in fact. After she’d been shot, and he’d been beaten half to death. After they’d both messed up their lives and their relationship by mistrusting one another.
Jones had gotten aboard a ship heading east, intending to do whatever it took find her, to grovel and beg for forgiveness.
But Chai’s men had tracked him down. They’d found him and nearly killed him, and as he fought for his life, he’d been stabbed in the back.
And it was then, as he crawled off that cargo ship in Sri Lanka, bleeding from a knife wound that would damn near kill him a second time when it became infected, that he came to the realization that Chai would not rest until he was dead.
He could not hide, he could only run. And if he continued on to Africa, he’d told her, he knew he’d lead that son of a bitch right to Molly, putting her into terrible danger.
Jones had vowed then and there that he would not make that mistake again.
Molly knew he was thinking about that now. “You weren’t supposed to die,” she told him. “Stop blaming yourself—this isn’t your fault.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re not going to convince me of that. Damn it, Mol, I feel like I’ve killed you. One way or another. If you survive this ordeal, well,
shit
! Then it’s time to battle cancer—except, if I’m alive, where am I? It’s hard to hold your hand from jail.” His voice shook. “If I hadn’t come to Kenya, then I wouldn’t have gotten you pregnant, and you’d be worrying about your own health, instead of the freaking spawn of Satan inside of you!”
“Wow,” she said. “That was pretty harsh.”
“God, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Do you think he heard me? Shit, it’s probably better that I’m . . . I would’ve made a lousy father—”
“No,” she said, purposely ignoring his defeatist verb tense, focusing instead on the fact that, for the very first time, Jones had acknowledged the life—their baby—that she was carrying as a person. “I don’t think he even has ears yet. And if he does, his English needs work. I
meant
that was harsh on
you.
I mean, come on. If I’m carrying the ‘freaking spawn of Satan,’ what does that make you?”
Jones turned to look at her. “You’re naked,” he said, as if the fact had only just registered.
“This is how it starts,” Molly said, with an exaggerated sigh. “The beginning of the end. At first it’s all, ‘Ooh, you’re naked!’ ” She put a lot of excitement into her voice. “Then, after just a few months of marriage, you turn around, and it’s ‘What, are you naked? Again?’ ”
He finally smiled. “That’s not how I meant it,” he said. “I’m just . . . Mol, I’m scared shitless.”
“That doesn’t mean we should just quit,” she told him softly.
And then there it was. Again. The baby. Moving.
Molly took her husband’s hand, placed it on her belly. “Do you feel it?” she asked him.
“I don’t know,” he breathed. He looked at her, searchingly, as if eye contact would help him feel what she was feeling.
“It’s this . . . flutter. Like something’s almost . . . flying around inside of me. Like my dinner is doing a little happy-dance.”
“That?” he asked.
Molly smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Isn’t that amazing?”
“Jesus,” he said. He had tears in his eyes. “Holy God. That’s . . .”
“Our baby,” she said.
“Jesus, that’s incredible.”
“There’s someone inside of me who’s alive, Grady. Someone who wouldn’t exist if you didn’t love me, and I didn’t love you. It’s amazing. It’s fantastic. We did this. You didn’t do it, I didn’t do it—we did it together. Think about that. If we can do something like this, then surely we can handle some of these other mundane problems that we’re facing.”
He laughed at that. “Mundane problems? Like surviving a tank attack? And beating cancer? God, I love you.”
“Good. Hold that thought. Let’s find Max,” Molly suggested. “See if he’s come up with any more ideas for getting us out of here alive.”
“Can we just . . . sit for a minute?” Jones asked her. “I just want to . . .”
He wanted to feel the miracle of their baby moving around inside of her again.
And Molly knew at that moment, that if this baby turned out to be a girl, she was going to name her Hope.
Providing, of course, that her daddy agreed.
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FOUR
Gina couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Should I be worried,” she said, “that Grady’s alone, in the other room, with Molly, right now?”
Max shook his head. “I don’t think he could really do it. I think he was trying to see—if it came down to it—whether
I’d
be willing.”
“ ‘Kill my wife for me, will ya?’ ” Gina shook her head. “That’s nuts.”
“No, it’s not,” Max said as he gazed out the window through the binoculars.
In just a short amount of time, the sun had climbed into the sky. It was already incredibly warm, and getting warmer.
“He’s lived through something awful,” Max continued, still not looking at her. “Really unbearable, I think. He was talking about it, just a little, and . . . I don’t know for sure, but I think it hurt him more to watch other people being tortured than it did to be tortured himself. I think his captors knew that and used it against him. I’ve heard some really chilling stories about the prison he was in. Stories about men being forced to watch as their wives and children were systematically raped and murdered.” He looked at her. “I can relate, to some degree.”
Gina reached for him, and he took her hand. But then the walkie-talkie crackled.
“Grady Morant,” a voice said through the static. “How nice of you to come all this way to talk to me again.”
Max keyed the button. “Is this Colonel Subandrio?”
“You recognized me, you foul shitrag, did you?”
There was name calling and then there was name calling. Gina made a face at Max, trying to pretend that she was freaked out by the colonel’s nasty compound word, rather than the fact that she could well be listening to the voice of the man who was going to kill her.
Painfully.
While Max was forced to watch.
“Do you hear that sound?” the colonel continued. “That is the sound of the approaching tank that is going to blow you to hell.”
“I don’t hear it,” Gina said. “Is he bluffing?”
“Listen,” Max told her. “It’s a low pitched rumble.”
Oh, God. There really was a tank.
“For the record,” Gina told him, “I’d rather take my chances with the torture. As long as we’re alive, there’s a chance that we’ll stay alive. If you—”
Max kissed her. “I know,” he said. “I’m with you on this. Now, shh. Let me talk to this guy.”
He hit the button.
“Sir,” he said. “My name is Max Bhagat, I’m an American citizen and a top-level team leader in the FBI. We’ve never met, but I was told by my superiors that you would be coming here to discuss the situation regarding Heru Nusantara and Grady Morant. Right now, sir, I’m going to have to ask you to hold, because I’m receiving an incoming radio message from President Bryant.”
He cut the connection.
Wow. “Liar, liar, green pants on fire,” Gina said.
“Speaking of pants,” Max said, “I need mine. I don’t care if they’re still wet. Will you get them for me? And see if Emilio has a jacket and shirt that’ll fit me. Oh, and a tie without hula girls on it. Now, please.”
Gina scrambled. And as she went down the hall, she heard Max shouting for Molly and Jones.
Jules was the new hero of the day.
Apparently, the discovery of Emilio Testa’s dead body meant it was party time in Dr. Ernalia’s house.
Her brothers had towed Emilio’s battered car into their yard, and were already starting to strip it down so they could sell the parts. It was their final act of revenge against a long-despised enemy.
“I need to get to a telephone,” Jules said again. “And I could use something to wear.”
The doc said something to the three brothers who were still inside the house, and they all started taking off their clothes.
“Okay, whoa,” Jules said.
But the young woman was already stopping them—after taking her youngest brother’s Hawaiian print shirt and her mustached brother’s black shorts. She issued a command, and the other brother took a knife to the shorts, cutting them so Jules wouldn’t have to pull them on over his splint.
The doctor and her youngest bro helped him into the shirt and pinned the shorts onto him, while mustache went into the other room and returned with a pair of crutches.
“My brothers think the nearest phone is down at the harbor, at the police station,” she informed him. “And we also think if that phone isn’t working, you could rent a seaplane and head for Soe or Kupang. My brother, Daksa, suggests that you avoid Dili. Rexi’ll give you a ride to town in his Mini.”
God, his head was still pounding. Standing up was a challenge, forget about balancing on crutches.
But he’d already wasted far too much time unconscious.
Jules started for the door, but two of the brothers came back inside, shouting about something. And holding . . .
“I know you’d prefer a telephone,” Dr. Ernalia said, “but would a radio do? Umar found this shortwave in Emilio Testa’s car.”
“We’ll need rope,” Max said as he straightened his tie.
“I saw some in the kitchen,” Gina said, and thundered down the stairs.
“Hey,” Jones called after her. “New York, I’m not done with your lesson here—”
Molly took the submachine gun from his hands. “Always keep the muzzle pointed down and away from other people,” she recited as she did just that. “Do this . . . and . . . pull the trigger. Fire out the window, down into the street, not up into the air because someone might get hurt. Don’t fire in the house. It’s not just bad luck, like opening an umbrella, but the walls are reinforced so the bullets will bounce off and we could end up like Max did, with one in our butt. Or worse. Extra ammo’s in the backpack. Fire the weapons for a count of four, no more, then get the hell down.” She gazed at him. “Hon, if I’ve got it, Gina’s got it.”
What a crazy sight—Molly, cradling a firearm. Jones resisted the urge to check out the window to make sure that it wasn’t snowing. It wasn’t quite July, but that cold day sure seemed to have come early. As far as hell freezing over went—he prayed he wasn’t going to get the chance to verify that. At least not for a long time.
He turned to Max. “I still think they should go into the escape tunnel until it’s over.”
“Excuse me,” Molly said, waving. “This half of the
they
you’re talking about is standing right here. We’re ready and willing to help, although I’d like to point out that usually when group A opens fire on group B, group B tends to turn around and shoot back. Isn’t that a problem since you’re going to be standing right in the middle of the square?”
Max had been fixing his hair, but now he pushed the mirror back into place. “Actually,” he told her. “The very first thing they’ll do is dive for cover. From what I can tell, there’s only one person invested in this operation, and it’s Colonel Subandrio—who’s definitely working for Heru Nusantara. Everyone else is far more interested in not getting killed.” He turned to include Jones in his pep talk. “We’re going to use this to our advantage.”
“Here’s the rope.” Gina was back.
“Good,” Max said. “Cut it into three pieces. Tie one around each of Grady’s wrists and loop the third around him loosely—we want it to look as if he’s tied up, but we don’t want to make it hard for him to get his hands free, okay?”
He put on Emilio’s suit jacket, checking all the various weapons he had hidden in his pockets and at the small of his back as Jones held his hands out.
“Let’s talk tank,” Max said.
Jones had had an opportunity to examine the tank in question through the binoculars. “It looks like it’s something that might’ve been made in Russia in the late 1980’s. The crew definitely has a limited visual of what’s going on outside. They rely on radio contact for both directions and orders.”
“Good,” Max said.
Molly put down the weapon and helped Gina with the rope. She caught Jones’s eye. “Admit that you’re enjoying this—two women tying you up . . . ?”
“I’m too scared to,” he told her. “But after this is over, if we live, would you mind very much doing this again? Just the two of us, though. I mean, Gina’s cute, but if we invite her, we’d have to invite Max and that would kind of ruin it for me.”
Molly laughed, but there were tears in her eyes. Probably because she knew how goddamn hard it was for him to make a joke about any of this.
“We’ll need something that looks like blood.” Max was either not paying attention or purposely ignoring their conversation.
“I’ve got it handled,” Jones told him, turning the knots to the inside of his wrists.
“There’s catsup in the fridge,” Gina volunteered.
Catsup not only looked like catsup, but it smelled like catsup. That wasn’t good enough. If this was going to work, if they expected to fool Ram Subandrio, it had to look real. Subandrio had seen a freaking river of blood in his life.
“Do you want me to get it?” Gina asked him.
“Oh,” Jones said. “No. Thanks. We’ll have to go out that way, so . . . Might as well keep it fresh.” He looked up to meet Max’s eyes. “Let’s do this.”
Molly stood there, looking significantly less ferocious without the weaponry. She was so worried she was practically wringing her hands. But still, she managed to smile for him. “Thank you for loving me enough to take this chance,” she told him.
“Yeah,” Jones said. “Well.” He didn’t want to tell her, but he and Max had a backup plan that she would’ve hated, had she known about it. “If something goes wrong, hide in the tunnel. Maybe they won’t find the entrance.”
“If the baby’s a boy,” Molly said. “I think we should name him Leslie.”
“
What
?” This was only the first of all the disasters they had to survive, but she was already thinking of names for the baby? But, shit, surely she could come up with something a little more . . . normal. When he was growing up, he’d always wished for a name like John or Jim. Tom. Dan.
She was smiling at him as if she knew exactly what he was thinking—which, come to think of it, she probably did.
Jones realized she’d started a little early with that diversion she was supposed to create, pulling him out of a future where he was dead and she was hiding in that tunnel, and into one where they had a baby who needed a name. “I’ve always been fond of David,” he said, because he wanted that second version of the future so badly he could almost taste it.
But then, across the room, Max picked up the walkie-talkie. “Here we go.”
Max was one heck of a talented liar.
Gina watched him as he spoke into the walkie-talkie, as he ordered the interpreter to let him talk directly with Colonel Subandrio.
Wearing a tie and jacket with that crisp white shirt, he looked more like the Max she’d first met four years ago.
Although a jacket and tie with jeans and sneakers—that was something she never thought she’d live to see. But Emilio’s pants didn’t fit him.
He caught her looking at him and, as he waited for the Colonel, he said, “I wish I had a real suit.”
“You look good.” Gina tried to smile through her fear. “Please don’t die today.”
“That would be bad,” he agreed, and then the colonel’s voice came through.
“We’ve picked up no radio signals from this area,” the man said, just jumping right in. “If you think—”
Max held down the talk button, and the walkie-talkie squealed.
“Colonel,” he said, when the squealing stopped. “Surely you know that the United States’ latest comm system doesn’t use conventional radio waves. It was down for a while, but we managed to get it back up and running. I’ve since spoken to President Bryant, as well as his top advisors in Indonesian affairs. I have been briefed on this situation completely. I understand fully why the matter is of utmost importance to Mr. Nusantara, and why it’s in need of being handled immediately.”
Max didn’t take a breath. “I’ve apologized to the President, and I wish to do the same to you, sir. When I became involved in what seemed to be a mere kidnapping, I didn’t realize Grady Morant was wanted on so many different counts, both by your government and ours. Please pass along my apologies as well to Mr. Nusantara, and reassure him that President Bryant and the United States of America remain in full support of his candidacy. We believe he’s the best man to lead this country, despite his past indiscretions. President Bryant, and myself as well, are prepared to do whatever we can to ensure Mr. Nusantara’s election.”
And still, he allowed no opportunity for the colonel to get in a word edgewise. “With that said, sir,” Max continued, “please be advised that I’ve been ordered to sidestep the American embassy, and surrender Grady Morant directly to the Indonesian authorities, of which you are their representative. Are you prepared to take him into custody, Colonel, or do you need to make arrangements to transport him off the island?”
Max released the talk button, and Gina held her breath.
“Here’s where we find out,” Max told her, told Molly and Jones, too, “if Nusantara really is behind all this.”
But there was only silence from the other end.
Jones had the binoculars. He was looking out at the tank. “No movement,” he said. “They’re just sitting there.”
“Why is he taking so long to answer?” Gina asked.
Jules’s head was throbbing as he attempted to communicate to the moron at the CIA office in Kupang.
“Yes, I know everyone’s on standby,” he said, “but isn’t this
why
they’re standing by? To be ready to help in the event of a situation?” Enough already. “Let me talk to your superior. Over.”
“I’m it right now. We’re stretched thin. Are you reporting a terrorist situation? Over?” The voice on the other end of the radio suddenly sounded as if he’d woken up.
“Affirmative.” When Jules died, he was going to hell. He’d cinched it now by lying. Except maybe this wasn’t really a complete lie. “I’ve had numerous reports of a terrorist cell pinned down in the mountains here on Pulau Meda. Are there any aircraft carriers in the immediate vicinity? Over.”
“Sir, these airwaves are not secure. I can’t disclose that information, over.”
Yeah, as if every hostile government around the world didn’t have access to satellite images pinpointing every American naval vessel on the planet.