Relaxed, confident in his decision, he scrutinized her, his black eyes impenetrable.
‘‘Look. You saved me. I’m grateful. But that doesn’t mean I want to stay here. I’ve got a job to do, and I intend to do it.’’ Deliberately she turned her back on him and walked to first one piece of her clothing, then another, picking them up and flicking the dust off them. She was wet and cold and she shivered, but she didn’t lie to herself. She shivered because she was afraid.
What had she gotten herself into?
She jumped when he strolled past her, silent as a cat, then watched to see what he would do next. And, because she couldn’t help herself, she observed the way the long, lean muscles of his back and butt and thighs coiled and stretched beneath the golden skin.
He opened the saddlebags of his motorcycle. He pulled out jeans and donned them, Comanche-style, and pulled a T-shirt over his head. Reaching back inside, he dug around and pulled out another T-shirt and tossed it in her direction. ‘‘It’s clean. Put it on.’’ He threw out another pair of jeans. ‘‘You can roll up the legs.’’
She stood still, trying to decide, for while his blunt commands offended her, her own clothes were dusty and sweaty.
Picking up his boots, he pulled them on, then reached back into his saddlebags. He turned to face her, a semiautomatic Glock steady in his hand. ‘‘Put my clothes on.’’
Her heart stopped—then raced. He
didn’t
mean it. ‘‘You won’t shoot me.’’
‘‘Because we had sex? I wouldn’t count on that.’’ Those strange black eyes watched her, and she hadn’t a clue what was behind them. ‘‘I’ve had a lot of women, and I don’t give a crap about any of them.’’
That she believed. Oh, God. She really believed him.
Should she fight? She held a black belt in jujitsu; in her line of work, in the places in the world that she visited, self-defense made sense. But her master was Vietnamese, a veteran of the war with the Americans, and he had taught her to assess a situation. This looked grim.
This looked impossible.
‘‘What are you going to do? Run naked through the meadow while I chase you down with my motorcycle?’’ Her lover straddled the seat and placed his free hand on the starter. ‘‘Climb the rocks while I use you for target practice?’’
A recent memory blazed through her fear-frozen mind.
The child sacrificed to evil and buried beneath a rockfall with gold jewelry and a holy icon.
Karen looked down at her hands. She held her coat clutched tightly in her fists, and she groped for the pocket. She felt the hard, small square . . . the child had passed the icon on to her for safekeeping.
‘‘I don’t want you to use me for target practice. ’’ Karen had to live to keep that icon safe. So she would have to wait for a propitious moment and surprise this monster with a kick that would knock him out or, better yet, kill him.
‘‘Then put on the clothes.’’ The gun remained steady on her. ‘‘And your coat and ...............boots. Leave the rest of that stuff here. You won’t need it again.’’
She did as she was told, dressing in silence, knowing she’d had no choice but to let him rescue her, yet cursing herself for being such a fool and giving herself to him.
The jeans were loose around her rear, and she rolled up the hems four times so she could walk. As she shrugged into her coat, she slipped her hand into the pocket and smoothed her fingers along the icon’s edge. The memory of the Madonna’s gentle face gave her the courage to ask, ‘‘Who
are
you?’’
‘‘Warlord. I’m Warlord.’’
‘‘You’re a warlord?’’ One of the ruthless murderers who preyed on the locals and the tourists?
Could her situation get any worse?
It could. He looked straight at her, his obsidian eyes empty of emotion. ‘‘Not a warlord. I
am
Warlord.’’
As the sun set, the man who called himself Warlord drove his motorcycle up the steep, narrow path and straight toward a sheer rock face. Karen wanted to hide her eyes, but at the last second the path swerved, Warlord followed, and the motorcycle roared into a camp protected on three sides by cliffs and on the fourth by a dropoff that tumbled away into space.
The smoke of a dozen campfires twisted into the clear air. A hundred men, dressed like Warlord, with hair and beards as wild and knotted, squatted in groups around the flames, cooking, chatting, playing video games on their handhelds, drinking, and reading.
Every head turned in their direction. Silence fell. The men observed them—observed her— with acute interest. Then they turned back to their meals, their conversations.
It was as if the couple on the motorcycle were invisible. As if . . .
she
were invisible.
Warlord slowly drove the bike through the camp, twisting and turning among the men. They drove past a huge central fire pit, now cold and blackened with charcoal.
Karen clutched Warlord’s leather jacket with sweaty palms. She heard snatches of English spoken with every accent, of French, of German, of Asian languages, and of languages she could not identify. In a low voice she asked, ‘‘What is this place?’’
‘‘Our base.’’
‘‘For what?’’
‘‘Our raids.’’
Warlord. He said he was Warlord.
‘‘You can’t be the only warlord,’’ she said.
‘‘I’m successful. I’m brutal. I’ve vanquished all my rivals. I’m the only Warlord who matters in this part of the world.’’
Like a dumb animal, she’d blindly run with him, trusted him to keep her safe, and she’d stumbled into this trap.
‘‘They’ve all seen you now,’’ Warlord said. ‘‘They know what you look like. They know that if you run, they’ll get to stop you. I would suggest that you not run. They would enjoy it too much.’’
He made her sick with his threat, but she answered steadily enough. ‘‘When I run, I won’t let them catch me.’’
For a second he let go of the handlebars, caught her hands, and jerked her forward until she rested against his back, cheek to groin. ‘‘Then I’ll catch you—and I promise you won’t like that.’’
‘‘Are you under the quaint impression that I’m having a good time right now?’’ she snapped. ‘‘Put your hands on the bars, you fool.’’
He laughed, a rumble deep in his body, and took control of the motorcycle again.
She squinted through the deepening dusk, trying to guess which tent would be hers. Hers . . . and Warlord’s. Until she could escape.
Because no matter what he said, what threat he made, she would escape. She was smart, in good health. The winter she was sixteen her father had sent her out into the Montana mountain wilderness with only minimum gear, and she had survived a brutal week alone. And Warlord couldn’t watch her every minute of the day.
Yet the farther they went into camp, the more her hopes sank.
Perhaps Warlord couldn’t watch her, but unless the camp emptied when the troop went on raids, she would be watched.
As they approached the end of the valley, he stopped the bike and pointed. ‘‘That’s where I live.’’
Her gaze traveled up and up.
A wooden platform was built twenty feet above the valley floor, and into the cliff. Atop the platform was a tent larger than any she had ever seen, and she’d seen plenty.
‘‘It’s custom-made, warm in the winter, cool in the summer. I live there—and now you do, too,’’ he said. ‘‘You’ll be comfortable.’’
‘‘No, I won’t.’’
‘‘Then you’ll be uncomfortable. Your choice.’’ He drove the motorcycle into a cleft in the rock and got off, then steadied her as she stood.
Her legs were shaky—from hunger, from fear, from the long trip to this place. Leaning against the stone, she realized how truly trapped she was. While they rode she should have twisted off his ears or gouged his eyes. Yes, they would have wrecked, but she would have had a chance of leaping free. . . .
‘‘Come on.’’ He took her hand and tugged her after him.
She dug in her heels.
Without looking back he said, ‘‘Do you want me to carry you? That would provide the men with entertainment.’’ With his free hand he gestured up the rickety stairway that led to the tent. ‘‘And if we fall, it’s a long way to the ground.’’
She stumbled forward under the pressure of his grip.
He pushed her the first few steps up the stairway.
It was steep, almost a ladder, and to steady herself she bent to clutch the wooden treads above her.
‘‘Don’t step on the third step. It will break under your weight.’’ When she hesitated, he pushed her again. ‘‘Go on. I’m not interested in you now. Exhausted women have no life in them. I’ll wait until tomorrow, when you’ve eaten and slept and you’re able to fight.’’
He was such a bastard. Such a completely right bastard.
She was hungry, thirsty, and tired. The pants he’d given her were drooping, the cuffs she’d made unfolding. She used one hand to keep the waistband up, and kept the other on the ladder, and her eyes resolutely lifted to the platform and the tent.
If he did as he promised and left her alone tonight, tomorrow she would have the energy and intelligence to find a way out of this.
It would probably include a ransom.
Eerily, he echoed her thoughts. ‘‘I imagine your father would pay well to get you back.’’
‘‘What do you know about my father?’’ she lashed.
‘‘I know he owns the company you work for.’’
At last she understood his motivation for taking her.
Ransom. Of course.
Nothing else made sense.
‘‘You ought to do a little more research on your intended victims, because my father wouldn’t pay a dime to get me back.’’ There. She’d given him the unvarnished truth.
‘‘Are you asking me to believe he doesn’t care about his only child?’’
‘‘I don’t give a damn what you believe.’’ She wished the steps had a handrail, anything to give the illusion of protection from a hard fall.
He laughed, a low sound of amusement that licked along her spine. ‘‘If your father is truly indifferent to you, that’s good to know. I won’t have to worry about him sending help.’’
‘‘No,’’ she said bitterly. ‘‘You don’t have to worry about that.’’
‘‘Don’t step on the fourth from the top.’’
She wavered, counting, then took a long step up. ‘‘If you’ll get me a hammer and some nails, I’ll fix that for you,’’ she said sarcastically.
‘‘In case of attack from a mercenary group with aspirations to my valley and my territory, those steps will give me the extra seconds I need to slaughter a few more of them.’’
‘‘Oh.’’ She used her elbows to inch her way up on the platform. The two-by-eight boards were springy, the nail heads were rusty, and when she looked down she could see the ground through the gaps in the boards.
He grinned as he watched her get as close as possible to the tent and stand, half stooped over, ready to drop in case the platform—or the world— tried to send her tumbling over the edge.
She looked out. ‘‘Is that likely? An attack? And slaughter?’’
‘‘Slaughter is a time-honored tradition on the border.’’ Lightly he sprang up to stand beside her, observing every minuscule movement down in the valley and up in the mountains. ‘‘But don’t worry. The valley is almost impenetrable. Attackers have to climb the mountain that surrounds it before they can rappel down the cliffs, and while they do, we’ll pick them off like ducks in a shooting gallery.’’
‘‘What if they use helicopters?’’
‘‘No mercenaries here are so well funded.’’ Catching her wrist, he pulled her along the narrow ledge toward the entrance.
For one alarming moment she looked over the edge and all the way down. Just as in her nightmares, the ground rushed up to meet her. She took an unwary step back, stumbled on a tent peg, and almost went over onto her rear. As her arms windmilled, she swallowed a scream.
Warlord dragged her forward, into his arms, and steadied her. ‘‘You’re afraid of heights.’’
‘‘No, I’m not.’’ At least, she shouldn’t be. Not when there was so much more immediate to be afraid of.
‘‘That’s the nightmare that wakes you from sleep.’’
She denied it automatically. ‘‘No, it’s not.’’
‘‘These are the highest mountains in the world. The most dangerous. If you’re afraid, why did you take this job?’’
‘‘I’m not afraid,’’ she said, her teeth gritted.
The sun was gone. The stars’ light barely glistened. The campfires flickered far below, and she couldn’t really see his face. But by the tilt of his head she knew he studied her, and just as it had been on those nights when he visited her tent, she thought he saw clearly in the dark.
She didn’t want him to see her afraid. Fear always unleashed that awful mockery, so she tilted her chin up and smiled tightly. ‘‘I have a question. Will you share me with your men?’’ She shouldn’t have suggested it, but she had to know.
There were too many men out there, and she’d take that nosedive off the mountain if it came to a choice between that and them.