Her Kind of Trouble (19 page)

Rhys's carefully weighted body began to slowly sink.

No!

I reached him first, encircling him with my arms, kicking desperately for the surface. Once there, I lifted his head out of the water, pulling free the regulator that at this point was as likely to suffocate him as help him. In a moment Niko was there, helping support Rhys's shoulders. I couldn't think. I didn't dare feel. For a moment, as I saw Catrina cutting away through the water to the Zodiac, I thought she was just being a coward—and that it figured.

Then she swam back with a life vest, which wasn't half-bad thinking.

Somehow we got Rhys to the boat, first the Zodiac and then the cabin cruiser, where a concerned crowd had already prepared a litter frame and lowered it over the side for him. As they pulled him up, doing their best to minimize bumps against the hull, the rest of us climbed to the deck, leaving our swim fins and tanks in a forgotten pile in the boat.

They'd laid Rhys out on a blanket, and d'Alencon was holding a towel to his heavily bleeding shoulder. Rhys's face looked even more pale than usual, contrasted against the hood that framed it. Eleni had gotten out the big first-aid chest and opened it, but she didn't seem to be sure what to do next.

"I don't think he's breathing," she sobbed. "What if he's dead?"

And since nobody else was moving fast enough, and since I'd taken first-aid courses for student emergencies, I stepped forward and searched for a pulse. He felt so clammy…

"I've called a water ambulance," d'Alencon insisted. Where was his heartbeat?
Where…
?

There. I found one. But it was faint.

Did I imagine his pulse getting fainter, in those few seconds that I held my fingers to my friend's pale throat?

"Do CPR," suggested someone.

"Not if he has a pulse," I argued, trying to think clearly—a few afternoons with representatives of the Red Cross did not a doctor make. "But—he might have swallowed water, in the impact. He may need air."

"You should not move his neck," warned d'Alencon. Too late, since he didn't say it until I was tipping Rhys's head back. Crap! The other day I'd automatically assumed Catrina needed a neck brace, and yet for some reason, stupidly, with Rhys…

I swallowed back panic at the thought that I might have just complicated a spinal injury. I told myself that if he didn't get some air—
now
—paralysis would be the least of his problems. Oh, Goddess.
Rhys
!

I checked his airway, to make sure he hadn't swallowed some piece of equipment. Then I bent over him, pinched his nose, pressed my lips to his in one way I'd never fantasized about—and breathed. Hard.

Did his suited chest lift under my free hand?

I gasped a breath of my own, then breathed it into his mouth again. His chest did move—but only with my air. I did it again. Then again. In the necessity of the moment, I could concentrate only on the repetitive action. Everything else from the past five or ten minutes became a blur of background thought, echoing through my shock-numbed mind.

Rhys silently asking, with gloved fingers, if I was okay.
Inhale
.

Me taking the half-kneeling posture of "seated
Isis
."
Exhale
.

Isis
… Oldest of the Old… though You may find me unworthy… Inhale.

Who the hell had been driving that damned speedboat?
Exhale—

And on that last exhalation of mine, when Rhys's chest expanded—he coughed against my mouth.

I drew back, eyes widening.

Rhys coughed harder, spitting water—then rolled to his side, to better cough the rest of it up. He wasn't paralyzed. He was alive and breathing!

I looked upward at the sun, idiotic fragments still tumbling through my head.
Thank You
, I thought dumbly, to whatever god or goddess had helped save Rhys's life. Very possibly, the god had been his own.
Thank You for this man, for this life
.

I thought I heard some kind of bird cry as I turned back to Rhys. "Lie still," I insisted, reaching out for a blanket that Catrina, of all people, had fetched from below deck. "You were hit by a speedboat. An ambulance is on its way."

He looked confused, and why not? Whoever had been driving that boat had been deliberately reckless, if not murderous. And this wasn't the first time Rhys had been injured, here in
Alexandria
.

But this time, Rhys may not have been the target.

The first words Rhys managed to murmur from his cough-roughened throat were, "Did you just give me…mouth-to-mouth…resuscitation?"

"Yeah." I lay a hand on his cheek and marvelled at how precious he was to me. "My pleasure."

He drew a shaky breath, then asked, "Emergency?"

"I think this counts as an emergency, yes—" But I stopped as Rhys shook his head and glanced at Catrina.

Oh. She'd beckoned us up in the first place with the claim of an emergency phone call.

A chill shook me as I realized the significance of that. She was the one who had drawn us up top, just in time for the boat to veer right at us!

"Yes, Catrina," I said coolly. "What was that about a phone call?"

Ms. Dauvergne said nothing, she just sneered. But Eleni said, "They left a message for you, Ms. Sanger. Someone named Tala?"

I frowned in her direction, more confused than ever, as she handed me a note.

Scribbled in French she'd written, "Emergency. Come at once. Kara to be married."

Chapter 12

It's either a testament to my selfishness, or to how deeply I did care for Rhys, that I ignored Tala's plea for help until my friend was cleared by a doctor.

In the meantime, it was enough to learn that for the second time in a week, Rhys's injuries were not as severe as I'd feared. Maybe I should believe in coincidence after all?

"I never knew being a priest came with those kinds of perks," I teased, my arm around him to help him from the hospital to a cab so that I could take him back to the Hotel Athens.
Not severe
meant only that he was neither dead nor staying in the hospital. He still had a terrible headache and his arm, which had taken fourteen stitches, was in a sung. Both the doctors and d'Alencon ordered a day's bed rest before he even thought about going back to work, much less to diving. "I guess the Big Guy watches out for his own, huh?"

"Don't… blaspheme," warned Rhys through the painkillers, but he also smiled a loopy grin. "What was…the big emergency?"

I got him settled in the cab, even buckled his seat belt, then came around to the other side and told the driver our destination. "Something about Kara getting married."

His eyes widened. "
She's barely twelve
!"

"I'm going over there as soon as I get you settled at the hotel," I assured him.

"Hotel be damned. We have…we have to… "

He was wincing more with each word, and his good hand fisted as if he were trying not to put it to his head.

"
You
have to get better," I warned. "I'll find out everything I can while you're resting, then I'll report back. I promise."

He looked suspicious.

"I
promise"
I repeated. "We'll figure something out."

"Maggi." For a moment I thought he was losing his balance as we turned a corner; then I realized he was trying to lean closer to me. I stretched closer to him instead.

"If we must get her out of the country, I'll do it," he whispered—I guess to keep the cabbie from hearing, which wasn't a bad idea. "Let Tala and Jane know that."

He meant he would risk imprisonment on kidnapping charges if we failed—or would risk doing something martyrlike to make sure we succeeded. I stared at him, overwhelmed by how blatantly, flat-out
good
he could be.

Uncomplicated. Unquestionable. "Rhys—"

"
If
we must. You and Jane have livelihoods to protect. I threw mine away—"

"You did not! If the church allowed priests to marry, you'd be saying mass today!"

"Tell them," he whispered, closing his eyes to rest them.

Luckily, we arrived at the hotel before I had to make yet another promise.

I still wasn't wholly comfortable returning to Tala Rachid's villa, especially not on my own. My memories of what had happened that first time were still a mysterious blank.

Even when I'd visited with Rhys a few days ago to report what little I'd learned in
Cairo
, I'd declined the offer of a drink. Just in case.

This time, Tala's servant opened the door to me even before I finished paying the taxi.

"Come in, please," the girl said softly, bowing. "The
sitt
is anxious."

Anxious didn't begin to describe the mood in the parlor to which I was led. Jane's eyes were wild and puffy from crying. Even Tala's usual well-groomed composure, as she stood at my appearance, had a brittle edge to it.

Kara, looking particularly frail on the sofa, glanced from one adult to the other with nervous suspicion. The child actually had a doll on her lap!

Not exactly your standard bride-to-be.

"Hello, Kara," I greeted awkwardly, unsure how much the girl knew. "I need to talk to your mother and grandmother for a little while about some grown-up things. Could you—"

"
No
," protested Jane, but Tala interrupted.

"Perhaps you can listen to your new CD, dear?" Kara's stepgrandmother suggested.

Kara rolled her eyes but obediently drew a Discman from her tote bag and put on earphones. A moment later, we heard rhythmic white noise whispering from her music—and she began to make her doll dance.

"I'm sorry," said Jane softly, as Tala showed me to a seat across the room. "I'm afraid to let her out of my sight, afraid he'll snatch her again. I'll d—" She glanced back at Kara, then to me. "I'll die before I let him do this. I mean it."

Tala said, "Then she would have nobody to go home
to
, Jane. You must stay calm."