“I know. The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 and it still took years to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphics with the knowledge available at that time.” Caitlin frowned thoughtfully. “Obstacles. Suppose he wanted his words to be lost but not forever.”
“You’re guessing,” Alex said.
She knew it was only guessing, but she kept on, feeling her way. “If it was Andros, it would explain why he started the tradition of having the family history recorded. It would be a clue to those following after.”
“And how could he be certain that either the history or the family would survive?”
“The Wind Dancer. He made sure the family fortunes were irretrievably bound to the Wind Dancer. If the Wind Dancer survived, so would the family.” She looked down at the tablets. “And so would the legends that led us here. It would be a circle that ended at the same point and—” She stopped, her gaze lifting to his face as she realized what Alex had been doing. He had been feeding her questions and arguments to make her stretch, reach down deeper. “Why are you letting me ramble on? You’ve probably figured all this out for yourself.”
“Maybe.” He began to gather the tablets carefully into a pile. “But you let me know up front the Wind Dancer was your exclusive property. I didn’t think you’d appreciate any help.”
But he had found a way to help her and still let her keep control of the situation. Warmth stirred within her as she looked at him in the lantern light. His expression was intent, his brow furrowed as he painstakingly placed the tablets on top of each other like a small boy stacking blocks. How strange, she had never thought of Alex in connection with boyhood. He had always been the totally adult male, projecting intelligence, humor, and sexuality.
She could sense that sexuality now.
She became acutely conscious of the strength of his hands moving the delicate tablets with such exquisite care, the way the muscles of his thighs pushed against the soft denim of his jeans as he squatted, the bunching of his shoulders beneath his black shirt as he reached for the final tablet and put it on top of the pile. She suddenly wanted to reach out and touch him, run her hand down the inside of his thigh. . . .
He stood up and took a step back. “I’ll carry the tablets and you lead the way with the lantern. I’d hate like hell to stumble and drop—” He tensed, and she could see the muscles of his stomach contract.
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t look away from him.
“Caitlin?”
He could see it. She felt the panic rise within her as she scrambled to her feet and grabbed the lantern. “You’re right. I don’t want any help.” She swung past him, walking quickly toward the front of the cave.
She heard him say something, but she was already too far away to discern the words. Then he swiftly followed her, the pounding of his boots on the rocky ground echoing through the cave. On the wall of the cave, magnified to giant proportions, she could see his shadow behind her, stalking her, and it added to the panic flooding through her.
She was already on her knees, rummaging through her backpack, when he got to the front of the cave. Without looking at him she pulled out a blue shirt and threw it to him. “Wrap the tablets in this and then give them to me. I’ll carry them in my backpack.”
He picked up the shirt from the ground and wrapped it around the tablets. Then he carefully set the tablets down by the wall of the cave.
“I said, give them to me.”
“Come here.” That faintly Slavic intonation in his voice.
She knelt with shoulders hunched, staring blindly down into her open backpack. “I don’t want to.”
He crossed the cave to stand beside her. “The hell you don’t.”
He reached down and turned out the lantern.
Darkness. Heat. Alex.
Her heart was pounding so hard, she was sure he could hear it. “It was nothing. I was excited about the tablets.”
“Which lowered your guard and let me in. I’m not one to quarrel with hows or whys. I’m going to stay in, dammit.”
“Turn the lantern back on.”
“I don’t want you to see me. I just want you to feel.”
He touched her.
A light brush on her throat, but a primal shudder went through her. “No,” she whispered desperately.
“You want it.” He pulled her to her feet and began to unbutton her shirt. “Tell me you want it.”
She could smell him in the darkness, lime and musk and maleness. He unfastened her bra and drew it and the shirt off her. Why was she standing there? Why wasn’t she fighting him? “You’re wrong. I didn’t want this.”
“You’re not surrendering anything.” His lips lowered to her breast and his mouth closed on her nipple. Heat flashed through her, the muscles of her stomach clenched.
“You want it. You’re taking from me. Take me, feel me.” His hand reached between them. “Here.”
Her spine arched and she cried out. She was barely conscious of him unfastening her jeans, but in another moment both the jeans and panties beneath them were down at her ankles. “Step out of them.” Alex fell to his knees on the ground, kneading her bare buttocks in his palms. “Do it.”
His tongue . . .
She stepped out of the clothes, her fingers reached out, blindly digging into his hair, her spine curving backward. He widened her thighs and pushed her back against the wall of the cave. The stone was cool against her naked hips and back, and yet she was surrounded by heat—Alex’s warm hands cupping her buttocks, the heat inside herself. She could hear the harsh sound of her breath echoing in the hot darkness. “I can’t stand it.”
“Yes, you can. It’s what you want. Take it.”
She felt like howling, screaming, as sensation after sensation burned through her.
He pulled her down and she felt the cool, silky polyester of her sleeping bag beneath her naked flesh. He was on top of her, parting her thighs. He wasn’t taking off his clothes, she realized dimly.
Then he was deep inside her.
“Alex!”
“Forget who I am,” he muttered. “Pretend I’m a stranger. Take what you want. Forget everything but this.”
What was he saying? No stranger could make her feel like that.
He thrust shallow, then deep, not letting her get used to the rhythm.
She writhed on the sleeping bag, her breath coming in gasps.
“It’s all right. Do you feel me?” He was drawing out and plunging deep. “Is it good?”
“It’s not—”
He withdrew until he was barely within her. “Is it good, dammit? You don’t have to care anything about me. Just care about this.”
She lunged upward, trying to take more of him.
“That’s right.” He withdrew a little more. “Do you want me deeper?”
“Yes!” The affirmative was a savage explosion of sound.
He didn’t move. “More?”
“More.”
He went wild inside her, thrusting, rotating, digging into her with a force as primal as the whimpering cries she found herself uttering. It was like lightning striking, striking, striking. . . .
He pushed her legs up above her head to further deepen the thrust. She was open, every muscle clenching, responding. Sensation streaked through her, building, spiraling until she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hear anything but the sound of his harsh breathing above her in the darkness.
“Give it to me,” Alex said thickly as he buried himself in her. “Now.”
She spasmed in an agony of climax and felt him flexing within her as he released.
He collapsed on top of her, his breathing harsh and strained, his chest moving in and out as he took great quantities of air into his constricted lungs.
Then he was moving off her, leaving her. She could hear him in the darkness, but she couldn’t arouse enough energy to be curious. The lantern flared in the darkness, and he thrust it into her hand. “Hold this.”
He was carrying her, she realized vaguely. Where were th
ey going?
“Sit here for a minute.” He had set her on a rock bordering the warm spring. He took the lantern from her and set it on the rock beside her. Wisps of steam floated around him, the moisture curling his dark hair and burnishing the tan skin of his face and throat. Their twin giant shadows on the wall of the cave looked odd, not frightening as Alex’s had appeared to her before, just strange. . . .
He tested the water with his hand and then slipped her into the warm, bubbling water. The pleasant, sensual shock brought her out of the exhausted lethargy and back to full awareness. Her gaze flew to his face.
“I was rough with you.” He smiled crookedly. “An understatement. I nearly ripped you apart. I don’t want you blaming me tomorrow for any soreness.”
And she had helped him. She had gone crazy, behaved like a wild animal copulating in the darkness. “It . . . didn’t mean anything,” she said haltingly.
“It meant something.” Alex sat down on the rock, watching her in the water. “It means you’re alive.” He met her gaze directly. “It means though your mother is dead, and you think Vasaro is dead, you’re not. You have needs and desires, strengths and weaknesses, all the things you had before. It means life goes on.”
Caitlin gazed at him, stunned. “You’re saying you did this to help me?”
“Hell no.” He smiled recklessly. “I did it because I wanted inside you so badly, it was killing me. I thought you knew better than to expect noble motives from me.”
“I don’t expect them.”
“No, you expect me to be the villain in the piece. I might just as well have burned down Vasaro with my own hands.”
“I don’t blame you for—”
“The hell you don’t.” He shrugged wearily. “But no more than I blame myself. Stand up.” He was taking off his shirt. “Come on, stand up.”
She stood up in the pool and found he was right. A dull aching throbbed between her thighs.
He lifted her from the pool and began drying her briskly and impersonally with his shirt. “Don’t worry, I know I rushed it. Everything is back to the status quo until you change it.” He handed her the lantern, lifted her again, and carried her back to the front of the cave. He tucked her naked into her sleeping bag. “Or until I can’t stand it again.”
He picked up the lantern, crossed the cave to his own sleeping bag, and Caitlin watched him settle into it before reaching over and turning out the lantern.
Caitlin lay for a long time before she went to sleep. The lining of the sleeping bag was a sensual abrasion against her naked flesh. Her body was still throbbing and tingling. . . .
From the hot spring, she assured herself quickly. Not because she wanted him again.
She had made a terrible mistake. She should never have let this happen. The barricades were down and she didn’t feel safe any longer.
She felt confused, lonely, vulnerable . . . and alive.
The woman was too nervous. She would have to die.
Hans watched Jeanne Marie Neunier scurrying around the room, carefully avoiding looking at him lying on the bed as she carried the paper sack full of groceries to the cabinets across the room. He could almost taste the whore’s fear, and for an instant it brought him a smug sense of satisfaction. Jeanne Marie had been afraid of him since that moment he had allowed her to pick him up in a sidewalk café over six months earlier. Her fear had been a balm to his ego when he had come to her after bending his head beneath Brian’s yoke. “Did you get the newspaper?”
“Yes.” She grabbed the newspaper out of the sack and hurried toward him. “Krakow’s team is still looking for you.”
And so was Ledford. Hans smiled as he thought how frantic Brian must be after three frustrating weeks of searching futilely for him all over Paris. How lucky that he had kept Jeanne Marie’s presence in his life a secret from Brian. There had been no doubt in his mind that Brian would have disapproved of Jeanne Marie. With her, Hans was the master.
“You’ll have to leave here.”
Hans glanced coldly at Jeanne Marie.
“I mean it. I can’t have you here any longer. I have to earn a living, and I can’t bring my customers to my pension with you in my bed.”
“I’m not well enough to leave yet.”
“What if they find out I’ve been hiding you? Krakow’s men could burst in here and kill me.”
“How can I leave?” Hans reached for the newspaper she was clutching. “I’ll need false papers to leave the country, and I have no money.”
“I’ll get the money. I have a little set aside.”
“Oh?” He paused in the act of opening the newspaper to look at her with fresh interest. “And I’ll need plastique and timers. I’m planning a little surprise package for Ledford and Krakow.”
“Just tell me where to buy them and I’ll get them for you.”
“You’re so eager to see me go.” He pouted mockingly. “Don’t you love me anymore?”
“Of course I do. Didn’t I take you in and get a doctor we could trust?” She swallowed. “I just think we’d both be safer if you left Paris.”
“Perhaps you’re right.” Hans’s tone was abstracted as he caught sight of the headline of the newspaper. The stupid slut hadn’t told him about Krakow’s announcement. She had thought Hans would be interested only in news pertaining to his own situation.
KRAKOW INVITES EUROPEAN OFFICIALS TO MEET ON THE CONSOLIDATION OF A UNITED EUROPE
This was the big one. The meeting Ledford had told Hans about. He scanned the newspaper article quickly. The meeting was not scheduled until November twenty-sixth, three weeks away—and in Istanbul. Though Krakow’s current popularity was putting considerable pressure on Cartwright to make at least a token appearance, there was strong doubt she would accept the invitation.
The old lady would come. Krakow and Ledford would see that they all came like sheep to the slaughterhouse.
But Ledford wouldn’t be the only butcher present. In three weeks’ time Hans knew he would be well again. In three weeks he’d be ready for Ledford.
“When will you leave?” Jeanne Marie’s voice was quivering with eagerness.
“Three weeks. If you can get me the papers.”
“Three weeks?”
He could see the disappointment in her face, and it suddenly filled him with fury. Did she think he wanted to lie there helpless in her crummy pension? He muttered an obscenity and saw terror replace the dejection in her face. That was better. She had to realize who was in control. If he had learned one thing from Brian, it was the intoxicating feeling being in control of another human being could bring. He had seen the pleasure on Brian’s face every time he had subjugated Hans. Now it was Hans who was doing the subjugating.
“First I’ll need a passport, a visa for Turkey, and as much cash as you can scrape together. Then we’ll talk about the plastique. You understand?”
She nodded quickly.
“Now bring me your hand mirror and my knife.”
Her eyes widened nervously. “Your knife?”
“Hurry!”
She moved quickly across the room, grabbed her makeup mirror, and brought it to him. “Your knife is in the drawer of the nightstand.”
“Get it.”
She took out the leather holster and gave it to him.
“Now hold the mirror for me.”
She sat down on the side of the bed and held the mirror in front of his face. “What are you going to do?”
The mirror shook in Jeanne Marie’s hands. How the hell did she expect him to see himself? “Just hold the mirror still,” he said impatiently.
He looked at his face in the mirror. Only a faint golden fuzz stubbled his cheeks, but in three weeks it should be a full beard. He glared at the cloud of golden hair framing his face. He unsheathed the knife, grabbed a handful of hair, and whacked it off with the razor-sharp blade.
“No!” Jeanne Marie flinched as Hans turned his cold gaze on her. “I mean . . . it was so jolie.”
He ignored her as he reached for another handful of hair and began sawing through the soft mass. Jolie. He wasn’t pretty. He wasn’t the weakling Brian had tried to make him. When he was through making himself look decent again, he would show the whore who was boss. He was still too ill to have her sexually, but there was no reason he couldn’t tease her a bit and see those mournful eyes stare at him in the way that made him feel like a real man.
A sudden thought occurred to him that brought a smile to his lips. Perhaps after he finished his haircut he would give one to Jeanne Marie. A very thorough haircut. It would amuse him for a while, and she offered little enough in the way of entertainment. But he knew the very nervousness and timidity that had attracted him to her would be a disadvantage once she was out of his range of control.
Yes, as soon as he had wrung all he needed from her, the woman would have to die.
Snow flurries began near dawn, and by the time Alex and Caitlin got down from the mountain at noon, there was a light dusting of snow on the jeep.
Another jeep was parked next to theirs, and Kemal was sitting on the hood, swinging his foot.
“Ah, you’ve come at last.” He hoisted himself down from the hood with a lithe spring. “I was wondering if I was going to have to come after you. I’m glad you spared me.”
“What are you doing here, Kemal?” Caitlin asked.
“You did not call.” He grinned. “So I came to rescue you. Who is that raving maniac in the shack? I was afraid he might have killed you and devoured your bodies.”
“Did you let him out?”
“Am I a fool?”
“Why did you come?” Alex repeated as he unstrapped his backpack.
“You do not believe me? After I gave up the comforts of your house to travel thousands and thousands of miles on that dusty road, breathing pollen and fumes and then to face this horrendous snow?” He took a newspaper out of his back pocket and tossed it to Alex. “I thought you should see this. Yesterday Krakow came out for a united Europe and invited all the powerful figures of the EEC for a meeting at a house he’s leased.” He smiled as he finished softly, “In Istanbul on the Street of Swords.”
“Then you were right, Alex.” Caitlin looked over Alex’s shoulder as he opened the paper. “Is that what this says? It’s in Turkish. All I recognize is the name Krakow.”