Hope
whooshed
through her. But also disbelief. “You mean, like, go in and
talk
to those people? You really think you can get them free?”
His eyes sharpened. “Them?”
“They have another prisoner, too. Besides Kick. Another Westerner.”
Concern whipped across Virreau’s face. “You have
seen
this man?”
She shook her head. “No. But Kick did. That’s why he went down there, to—”
“
Mon dieu.
” Virreau suddenly became furious. “This is very bad.”
“I know. I have to do something—”
“
Non!
” His vehemence shocked her to silence. But his face immediately smoothed in apology. “You must not risk your life,
chérie
, attempting anything foolish.”
Where had she heard
that
before? “But I can’t just sit here and—”
“Yes. You can. You must.” He gripped her arms fervently. “Let
me
go instead.”
“But—”
“They know I am a doctor. I have met them. They wouldn’t dare hurt me.”
She wasn’t so sure about that. Not after they’d found Kick on their doorstep. But if Girard was willing, she had to let him try. Still . . . “What do I do if they take you prisoner, too?”
“They won’t.” He smiled so confidently, her desperate heart chose to believe him, even though her head told her this plan of his could only end in disaster. As Kick’s had.
Out of options, she exhaled. “All right.”
“But you absolutely must promise me to stay here. Exactly here. Do not move, not for anything. Do you promise me?”
She nodded. Another order she was used to. “I will. How do you—”
But before she could ask him what, exactly, he planned to do, he kissed her on both cheeks and slipped out from behind the boulder.
And once again she was left behind. Which was really, really starting to annoy her. She could have helped him. Done something. At least told him about the—
Oh, my God!
She
definitely
should have told him about the explosives rigged to blow. In case he needed to use them, or—
She jumped up and went after him.
She scrambled up the shallow wadi slope and started to climb over the rocky rim.
To her surprise, Virreau was hurrying toward a Jeep that was parked in plain sight, in a shallow ravine several yards away. It was dirty white, with a large red cross painted on the hood. How could the terrorists possibly have missed it?
To her even bigger surprise, suddenly the tail of Virreau’s shirt flapped up in a gust of wind. Under it, the unmistakable shape of a large black gun stuck out of the waistband of his khaki shorts. It looked just like the one Marc had had hidden under his pillow. Okay, well, at least Virreau was armed.
But then it hit her. With just as much impact as it had the first time she’d seen Kick pull out a gun in New York.
Doctors for Peace didn’t allow their volunteers to carry guns.
Ever.
She stopped dead in her tracks. So what did its presence mean about Virreau? Surely, not . . .
Pulse pounding, she ducked back down under the protective rim of the wadi to think.
Okay. This
couldn’t
be what it seemed. It just couldn’t.
Could it?
The thought that Virreau was somehow in league with the terrorists . . .
Kick and Marc had been totally convinced that Nathan Daneby was also working with them. Some kind of photographic evidence had been mentioned. When confronted right before she and Kick had left the DFP hospital, Daneby hadn’t denied the allegation, either. Which was why they’d left him tied up.
Maybe he and Virreau were working together.
And
with the terrorists.
That would explain the lie about Marc. . . .
Marc!
Oh, God. What if Virreau had freed Nate and they’d hurt Marc!
The Jeep’s engine coughed and sputtered to life and she heard it take off with a spin of tires in the sand.
Virreau was on his way to the insurgent camp, and God knew what he was planning to do once he got there.
She didn’t even want to imagine what would happen to Kick.
She had to do something. And quickly.
TWENTY-THREE
“CAN
you walk?” Kick asked Alex after they’d both recovered their composure. Well, Kick had. Mostly anyway. Alex was still shaking like a Chihuahua, clinging to the edges of that disgusting pile of filth pallet of his, peering at Kick in unfocused anguish, as though he expected him to disappear any second.
He also didn’t answer the question.
Kick hesitated to touch the man for fear of losing him completely. “Alex!” he repeated. The sound of his name snapped his friend’s attention up.
“Are you real?” Alex asked for at least the tenth time.
Kick gave him what he hoped was another reassuring smile. Not that he’d be able to see it in this dark hovel. “Yes. I’m real. Do you think you can walk, buddy?”
Alex slowly nodded. “Home.”
“Yup. We’ll get there, but—”
All at once the door banged open, blinding Kick with sunlight that poured in like a klieg light.
“Pigs!” someone yelled.
Alex covered his head and ducked
. Holy fuck.
What the hell had they been doing to him to make him constantly react like that?
A handful of gravel pelted through the air, catching Kick painfully in the neck and shoulder, answering his question.
“God
damn
it, you sons of bitches!” he yelled, batting the stinging rocks off his cheek. One of his captors lunged in and clipped him in the temple with a rifle butt. Stars burst through his head as he toppled over. He sensed more than saw Alex roll next to him, shielding Kick’s head with his body.
The next blow landed on Alex’s back. He screamed.
Fuck.
Kick untangled his limbs and shook the stars from his eyes, then threw himself at the asshole with the rifle. Two more assholes were on him in a flash.
Damn. This was going to hurt.
He was right. His head felt like it exploded.
Then blissfully, everything went black.
RAINIE
couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
She’d run to fetch the hidden camel and ridden as fast as she could back to this morning’s observation post on the ridge overlooking the terrorists’ training camp.
She was so appalled she could barely see straight. Girard Virreau had driven right into the middle of the camp and was now being greeted like an old friend.
She told herself to calm down. This might not be what it seemed. It could be just as Virreau said—they trusted him because he belonged to Doctors for Peace.
The ugly terrorist leader guy came striding out of the mysterious cement hut, went straight to him, and shook his hand.
Or because he was a goddamn traitor.
Her heart literally stopped when two guards came around the corner of the shack, hauling Kick between them. His seemingly lifeless body hung limp, his boots plowing uneven furrows in the dirt as they dragged him along. Another man limped after them, prodded by a third guard with a bayoneted rifle. At least she thought he was a man. He looked more like a feral creature, dirty, tattered, crazy-haired and wild-eyed.
The prisoner
.
The two men turned to watch. Ugly Guy jerked his thumb at the hostages, said something, and Virreau laughed.
Fury burned through Rainie’s insides like a firestorm.
Oh. My. God.
The motherfucker had lied through his teeth.
Okay. Now she was
really
mad.
Not only would she save Kick and the other hostage. That pompous frog was going to pay.
ALEX
winced as Kick—his friend, Kick—was thrown onto the floor and his head bounced off the bare cement.
Damn.
Even a blind man could tell that had to be painful.
Although, much to Alex’s surprise, this time he could actually see inside this hut. More than fuzzy shadows. Jesus, there were electric lights!
Electric lights.
How was that even possible? He was so shocked he almost gave himself away by staring. So he deliberately walked into a table.
His guards leapt at him, yanking him backward.
A vicious slap bit across his cheek. “Pig! Do not move!”
He put his chin down and didn’t move . . . as much as possible, since his legs were shaking like a newborn’s and could barely hold him up.
Appropriate
, he thought wryly. He
felt
like a newborn.
Finding out his name was like being given new life.
Christopher Alexander Zane.
The name didn’t sound the least bit familiar to him, nor had any of the stories Kick had told of their friendship and the many dangerous jobs they’d done together for something called Zero Unit. But Kick was sure he was this Alex person. That was good enough for him. Kick wouldn’t have made up all those stories. And why would he have come to take Alex home if he didn’t know him?
Of course, at the moment, it didn’t look like anyone was going home anytime soon. He’d been in this hut before. He recognized the foul smell. The memories of it were filled with pain and torture. But tonight it smelled like death.
God
fucking
damn it. He did not want to die. Not now. Not when he finally knew his name. When he’d at last learned he really
did
have a friend in the world. When freedom was so close he could taste it.
Two men came in behind him. One set of heavy footsteps he recognized immediately. The Sultan of Pain.
God, no!
Not again, so soon!
Alex kept his head down and forced back a wave of despair clawing at his throat.
He couldn’t do this. Not again.
He glanced furtively at Kick, still on the floor unconscious. There’d be no escape now, no help from that quarter.
The Sultan and his sidekick were speaking in intense undertones. In Arabic. Except . . . the sidekick couldn’t speak it very well. Definitely not a native—And they were talking about . . . diamonds? Diamonds and blood? Had they invented some kind of new torture device? If so, the Sultan didn’t seem pleased with it. He snapped out an impatient retort, and the other man wheedled unhappily.
Suddenly Alex remembered. That whiny, out-of-place voice. He’d heard it before, a few days ago when he’d been totally delirious with fever—aftereffects of his injuries or some disgusting malady. Or the constant abuse. Take your pick.
But there was something else about the scumbag. Other than being a spineless traitor. Alex studied the cracks in the floor, straining to think. A pair of brown leather boots walked across his field of vision.
That was it.
Boots, not sandals.
It
was
the same man. A Westerner. A doctor, or someone acting like a doctor.
And now Alex was close enough to see his face.
Excitement made him light-headed. He staggered against one of his guards, earning him another backhand. But just before he crumpled, he saw the traitor’s face. Hitting the floor, he made a ball and rolled up against the closest wall.
Brown Boots and the Sultan continued past him, and Alex pressed himself tighter into the wall. His pulse took off. This was where the fun and games would start.
But they paid him no mind. Instead, they stopped in front of Kick. And were joined by a third man who had apparently been sitting quietly behind the desk at the back of the hut. All three stared down at Alex’s would-be savior.
Oh, shit.
No.
No, no, no.
What were they planning? He couldn’t let them hurt Kick. Kick was his only way out of this hell.
“Hey!” he called, to distract them. It came out little more than a croak. “Leave him alone!” he yelled. Whispered.
The evil triumvirate turned to stare down at him cowering there on the floor like a wounded bird. Then they all smiled. Evil smiles.
The third man, who was older, with white hair and a dark, wrinkled face, opened one of two small metal briefcases sitting on the table Alex had collided with earlier. From it the man carefully lifted a vial, and then a hypodermic needle. He stuck the needle in the top of the vial and expertly filled the tube part with a brownish liquid. Then he turned back to Alex with eyes that twinkled.
“Do not worry, infidel,” he said quietly in English, in a strange accent Alex didn’t recognize. “You won’t die alone. You will just be the first. The first of millions.”
THE
sun was going down.
Finally.
God help her.
Rainie attempted to tame her nerves by rolling onto her back on the rocky ridge and gazing up at the stars that were just beginning to emerge in the darkening sky. The same stars she and Kick had watched together just a few short nights ago, when he’d shown her a handful of constellations and taught her how to find the North Star. The same stars they’d made love under, exchanging silent vows that neither dared voice aloud. Could he see the stars now? Was he watching them, too, thinking of her?
Oh, Kick.
Kyle.
She squeezed her eyes shut. What did she think was she doing?
Just last week she’d been a simple ER nurse, unwilling to stray from her safe, circumscribed, ten-block world. Shun ning love because she didn’t want to be hurt so badly again. Afraid to really live because she was afraid of dying like her parents. And now here she was, running around a dangerous foreign country, riding camels without a second thought, desperately in love with a man she knew very well she could never have, about to gamble her very life to save him from merciless terrorists.
This was
insane
.
She had no flipping idea how to do this stuff. She could
die
tonight if she messed up, even a little. They could
all
die.
But what choice did she have?
Visions of that other prisoner haunted her. He’d been so gaunt, so filthy, so feeble. And yet for all that, it was obvious he’d once been a tall, robust warrior like Kick. The agonizing thought of her lover ending up in that same awful condition gave her the motivation she needed to break her paralysis.