The guard outside Jo’s room knocked briefly and stuck his head inside. “Call from the gate, sir. Could be trouble.”
“Excuse me, ladies,” the major said politely, and left the room briskly.
“Beth, what—”
“Shhh!” Elizabeth glanced around quickly. “Did Thorn bother with bugs in this room?”
Jo blinked. “I know every inch of this place,” she said with some feeling. “Four walls, a locked door, no windows, an army cot, and a stack of very old magazines. There’s a bathroom through there—” she pointed toward a closed door “—without even a mirror. Believe me, this place is empty.”
It hardly seemed reasonable to Elizabeth that Thorn would have bugged the room: what could he hope to gain by doing so? But she kept her voice low on the off chance. “Listen carefully, Jo. Two federal agents are going to try and bluff their way into the compound; we have to be ready.”
After a moment, Jo backed up and sat on her cot, staring blankly at her sister. “You’re serious?”
A little dryly, Elizabeth said, “Thorn has a nuclear missile pointed at Pinnacle—what do you think?”
“Okay, okay.” Jo shrugged, the expression on her face revealing her sense of helplessness. “This whole situation’s felt unreal to me since they tossed me in here and started serving me lousy meals on a tin tray three times a day. What’s Blaine doing?”
“Helping the agents. I hope.”
“You don’t know?”
“I left before he got to the house. They were waiting for him there.”
Jo gave her a look. “Want to tell me why you’re not Blaine’s woman anymore?”
“I never was,” Elizabeth said mildly. “It isn’t my fault that people assumed.”
Slowly, Jo started to smile. “The federal agent! In two weeks? You fell in love with a federal agent in two weeks?”
Elizabeth had a sudden impulse to burst out laughing. It all sounded so insane! “No, not in two weeks. Since Friday.”
“This past Friday?”
“Uh-huh.”
Jo’s smile became a grin. “Must be some federal agent!”
Elizabeth smiled in response, unaware that her eyes had softened. “He is. He certainly is.”
Jo studied her for a moment, then nodded. “Great. Can’t wait to meet him. But, for now—what do we do? Do they know where we’re being held?”
“Blaine knows, doesn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Then he’ll tell them.”
Jo frowned. “Will he? Blaine isn’t exactly a team player, you know.”
“He’ll tell them.”
“Your federal agent won’t take no for an answer, huh?”
“Something like that.”
Jo accepted Elizabeth’s opinions. “Okay. So how do we help them get us out of here and take the teeth out of that fanged monster in the next room?”
Elizabeth took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, thinking of the makeshift “plan” she had devised on the swift ride to Meditron. Risky. Lord, yes, it was risky. But the right amount of confusion at a judicious moment could just tip the scales in their favor—and in Kelsey’s.
“We create a diversion,” she said calmly.
Josh peered through the binoculars, watching the unobtrusive dark car approach the gates of Meditron. “Everybody cross your fingers,” he said softly.
Beside him in the concealing shelter of the trees, Raven, Derek, Teddy, and Blaine Mallory waited tensely.
Raven had one eye on her watch, but murmured, “Nobody’s seen Kelsey’s car, right?”
“Nobody here,” Derek answered. “It’ll work.”
“They’re soldiers,” Mallory protested. “It’s too simple a trick to fool them—”
“They’re men,” Derek corrected calmly. “Name me one man who wouldn’t abandon more than a guard post to help two lovely ladies in distress, and I’ll show you a statue.”
“Zach’s going to have a fit,” Teddy noted, but not as if the prospect of her very large husband in one of his rare bursts of anger frightened her.
“That’s why we didn’t tell him about this part,” Raven said dryly. “Ready?” she asked Zach’s wife.
“Yes, just—Derek, hand me that gun, will you?”
He did, rather gingerly.
Raven grinned at him. “Still the phobia about guns?”
“They make a lot of noise,” he said severely, apparently not noticing Blaine Mallory gazing at him in astonishment.
“I’m ready,” Teddy announced, having secreted the wicked little automatic.
Josh reached a long arm to hug his wife hard, and kissed her very thoroughly. “Watch yourself, darling.”
“Always.” Raven touched his cheek, and then she and Teddy disappeared into the woods, heading for the main road.
“I thought all federal agents carried guns,” Mallory said, clearly baffled.
“You’ve been watching too much television,” Derek told him.
Zach was driving, as comfortable in his major’s uniform as he had been wearing sergeant’s stripes. He glanced at Kelsey as he turned the car into the drive leading to Meditron. He didn’t like the look of his friend, whose white face and stricken eyes revealed too well the fear that gripped him.
Intentionally harsh, Zach said, “If you want to give the show away, just keep looking like somebody kicked you in the stomach, Kelsey.”
Kelsey turned to him. “You’re a bastard, you know that?”
“You won’t get an argument.”
After a moment, Kelsey stared straight ahead and, seeing the guardhouse, tensed. “Sorry, Zach,” he murmured.
“Don’t mention it, Colonel.”
Slowly, Kelsey squared his shoulders. His face, though still pale, relaxed and became somehow faintly arrogant and impatient. His posture altered subtly. And within seconds, he seemed to become a colonel.
Watching from the corner of his eyes, Zach was impressed. “Raven said you were good,” he muttered.
“Let’s just hope I’m good enough,” Kelsey said, and even his voice had changed, becoming cool and authoritative.
Zach rolled down his window as the car stopped at the gate, and watched the cautious approach of a very young “security guard.” Two more men remained inside the bulletproof guardhouse, watching alertly. In a slightly bored tone, Zach said, “Open the gate, soldier, and tell your CO he has visitors.”
“Identification, please,” the soldier requested, torn between wariness and dismay as he looked at the car and Zach’s formidable bulk.
Zach flashed his and Kelsey’s ID cards, making certain the soldier couldn’t get his hands on them. “Damn these inspections, sir,” he said to Kelsey, but loud enough for the soldier to hear. And then, more directly to the soldier, “The colonel hasn’t got all day.”
“I’ll just call Major Thorn,” the young soldier said nervously. “Standard procedure, sirs.”
Kelsey leaned over to give the soldier a good look at him, and his voice was impatient. “Open the gate, soldier.”
“Begging the colonel’s pardon, sir, but I’m under orders to admit no one without Major Thorn’s—”
Very gently, Kelsey said, “Son, if you don’t want to be walking guard duty at our embassy in Moscow, you’ll open the damned gate.”
The soldier saluted hastily, his face wiped clean of expression. “Right away, Colonel.”
Zach, who had gazed meditatively through the windshield throughout the exchange, smiled a little as they drove through the open gate. “Sure you were never military?” he murmured.
Kelsey was glancing back over his shoulder. “They’re calling Thorn,” he said.
“We knew they would.” Zach frowned a little as he pulled the car into a parking place fairly close to the building they were most interested in. “What bothers me is that those kids back there are awfully jumpy. If something goes wrong—well, they just might shoot first and think about it later.”
“Chance we’ll have to take.
” But Kelsey wasn’t happy about it either. Elizabeth was in there.
With fifteen years of autonomy behind him, Kelsey had never wasted much time in thinking personal thoughts during these infiltrations of enemy territory. He just concentrated on his job, untroubled by flashes of things left undone and regrets and memories that other agents dealt with.
The chameleon, once solidly in his camouflaged skin, was autonomous, invulnerable, alone.
But not this time.
He had known from the moment of reading Elizabeth’s note that everything had changed. The walls inside him, protecting his inner self from even his own examination, had crumbled. And what he saw inside those fallen walls, though still not entirely focused because he’d hardly had time to consider, was himself.
Stripped of all ability to hide where she was concerned, he was achingly vulnerable, raw. He was …
He was the man who loved Elizabeth.
“Kelsey?”
Holding consciously to his chameleon’s skin for this one last vitally important interlude, Kelsey opened his door and got out of the car. “Ready,” he said to Zach, and hoped he was. Hoped with everything inside him.
“Could you help us, Lieutenant?”
“Corporal, ma’am.” The very young soldier didn’t even realize he had betrayed himself; he was supposed to be an ordinary security guard rather than a military man. But then, no part of his training had covered this situation. What was he supposed to do when fate deposited two stunningly beautiful women at his post and had them appeal to him with lovely, helpless gazes?
The redhead with the huge amber eyes was standing on one side of the car looking down at a very flat tire and chewing her bottom lip, and the tall, striking brunette stood on the other side smiling at him.
“Ma’am—”
“It just went flat,” the brunette explained with a shrug. Her violet eyes were glowing. “And neither of us has ever changed a tire in our lives! Do you think one of you could—?”
The young corporal found himself elbowed aside as both the other guards left the guardhouse. “But—”
“Come on, Phil,” one of them said sarcastically, “d’you really think these ladies are a threat? They need help, for Pete’s sake!”
Unhappily, Phil followed them. What was a good soldier supposed to do?
“Got a jack?” one of the others asked the redhead.
She handed him the car keys with a smile. “I guess it’d have to be in the trunk, wouldn’t it?”
Phil’s two comrades opened the trunk and bent forward to get the jack and spare, conveniently shoved far back in the trunk, neither of them noticing that the brunette quietly approached them from behind.
Phil opened his mouth, but froze when he felt something poke him in the middle of his back.
“I wouldn’t,” the redhead said softly as her free hand nimbly plucked his automatic from the holster. Phil saw a potentially glorious career going up in smoke.
“I can’t find—” one of the other men began, then banged his head on the trunk lid as he straightened hastily in response to his own gun being efficiently removed from its holster.
While he was holding his head and swearing, the second man tried to pivot and draw his gun. A hard kick to the back of his leg sent him to the ground in a cursing heap. And he looked up at the striking brunette with sad, disillusioned eyes as she held a hand out commandingly for his gun while holding his buddy’s pointed at him.
Approvingly, Teddy said, “You do that very well.”
“Thank you,” Raven said politely, sticking the second gun in the waistband of her slacks. “I’m just glad they don’t patrol with dogs in the daytime. We could have been bitten or something. We’d better keep an eye on the compound until Josh and the others get here; somebody might get curious and come out to see what’s going on.”
“Right,” Teddy agreed.
Raven gave the soldiers a tiny smile. “On your bellies, guys, arms spread. And try to remember today won’t be a good day for heroes, huh?”
“What are we going to do?” Jo asked. “We’re locked in here, no weapons, no way out. How can we help?”
Elizabeth’s delicate chin rose. “I won’t just sit and wait to be rescued, dammit! There has to be a way.”
She caught sight of something on the floor near the cot, and asked, “What’s that?”
Jo looked, shrugged. “A packet of ketchup. It came with one of my lousy meals.”
Elizabeth smiled slowly. “I think I have an idea.”
“What?” Jo asked, eyeing Elizabeth with foreboding. “Beth, you’ve got your wild look!”
“Listen, the missile’s in the next room, right?”
“Right.”
“And it isn’t guarded?”
“Doesn’t have to be. The whole building’s guarded. But Max the maniac is standing by to launch the thing.”
Elizabeth remembered the rather wild-eyed man who had been tinkering with the wicked-looking missile Thorn had proudly shown her before leading her in here. “Is his mind totally on his lethal toy?” she asked.
Jo grinned suddenly. “Are you kidding? He’s propositioned me on an average of every other day since Thorn locked me in here. The man’s a frustrated playboy.”
“Are you afraid of him?” Elizabeth asked searchingly.
“Him? Lord, no. His toy scares the life out of me, but I could handle Max with both my hands tied.”
“Good. That’s good. And what’s a little sacrifice for a worthy cause?”
Jo’s eyes narrowed. “What am I going to sacrifice?”
“Your clothes.”
“It’s been six months since your last inspection, Major Thorn,” Kelsey told him briskly. And he was uneasy that Thorn showed no signs of nervousness whatsoever.
“I’m aware of that, Colonel. I am, of course, at your disposal.”
“Then let’s begin here, shall we?” He gestured to the building they were standing beside. The one that counted.
“Certainly, sir. Sanders, would you—”
“We won’t require the lieutenant’s company,” Kelsey said smoothly, nodding to Thorn’s escort. “Just the three of us, Major. I have a few questions.”
Thorn’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded a dismissal to Lieutenant Sanders, turned, and rapped smartly on the door. There were two cameras poised above the door, both pointed at them, and after a moment the door hissed as it swung open.
“Questions, Colonel?” Thorn inquired as they went inside the building.
Kelsey kept his voice casual. “Later, Major Thorn. I want to see how your operation’s set up first.”
“The weapons due to be shipped are stored in this building,” Thorn explained, leading the way along an aisle between tall stacks of wooden crates.
Kelsey and Zach exchanged a glance, both understanding the significance of that information. No wonder Thorn was undisturbed by their entrance! In this maze of crates he could hide half the building and they’d never miss the space. Unless, that is, his visitors came armed with a little extra information—such as the floor plan drawn by Teddy and Blaine Mallory
Both men set themselves to looking as keenly as possible, searching for the several small rooms secreted away on the north side of the building. And both of them held on tight to their patience as Thorn guided them through the maze.
Jo wiped the ketchup off her arm with a grimace, watching as her sister tugged the guard’s limp legs into the room and pushed the door partially closed. “I’ve never seen you hit anybody before,” she noted with interest.
A little pale but determined, Elizabeth tossed Jo’s shoe back to her and then bent to remove the guard’s holster. Gritting her teeth, she unbuckled his belt. “I never had to. The belt will do for his ankles; find something to tie his arms and gag him, will you, please?”
“How about his shirt? And he probably has a handkerchief.”
“Fine. And hurry. I don’t think we have much time.”
Jo, fascinated by this ne
w side of her sister, knelt and began working the guard out of his shirt. The first part of Elizabeth’s plan had gone like clockwork, with the guard responding immediately to Beth’s cry that her sister was hurt. A child’s trick, of course, but Beth’s distress had sounded damned real, and the guard had heard that.
And, Jo reflected, her usually sweet and calm sister had laid that guard out as pretty as you please with a shoe. Beth! And now she was busily binding his ankles as if she’d done things like this all her life.
Jo shook her head, but said, “We could get out of here now, probably.”
“Not with Max poised over that missile. If you can distract him long enough for me to get close, I can push him away and hold him off with this gun. Then Kelsey and Derek will only have Thorn to worry about.”
Jo sighed. “Him and about thirty soldiers. They’re all over the compound, Beth!”
“Thorn can call them off.”
“Will he?”
“He will if Kelsey tells him to.”
“You have a lot of faith in that man of yours.”
Hers. Elizabeth worked to help Jo finish binding the guard’s wrists behind his back, her thoughts tangled. He wasn’t hers, not really. Maybe not ever. She understood a little better now, what he was.
Despite fear and anxiety, despite the deadly danger posed by Thorn and that missile in the other room, she felt the attraction of danger. Her mind had never worked so clearly as when she had planned this series of moves, and there had been a sense of exhilaration in disabling this professional soldier by using her wits and a well-placed shoe.
And, after fifteen years … how could Kelsey give this up? Oh, she could imagine the drawbacks to his brand of dragon slaying—she had heard the pain in Kelsey’s voice when he had talked of his father, and knew there had been others lost over the years. And that kind of pain could weigh down even a strong man.
Maybe especially a strong man.
And she thought she could see him now, clearly. She realized, finally, that he was exactly what he appeared to be. A dozen men, maybe a hundred men. He was a part of every role he played, every face he briefly wore, a gifted and instinctive actor who had chosen a deadly stage for his roles.