Darkness before the Dawn (17 page)

“Open your eyes, Maggie,” he said softly.

She had no choice but to obey, opening her dazed eyes to stare up at him. His gray-blue eyes looked silver in the moonlight, and his mouth was a thin line of desire. “I want you to know it’s me,” he said, punctuating his words with a thrust of his hips. “I don’t want you to lie there and pretend it’s anyone but me filling you. You feel that, don’t you? You know it’s me, deep inside you, wanting you, having you. For six years I’ve been waiting for you, and I’m not going to have you mistaking me for anyone else.”

She lifted her hands, running them down the sides of his tense, sweating body. It took all her effort not to clench her fists in his sleek skin. She raised her hips to meet him, tightening around him, and watched with satisfaction as his eyes
glazed. “Who am I, Maggie?” he whispered, thrusting into her, his voice raw with passion. “Who do you want? Who do you need? Who do you love?” He pulled away, waiting, demanding her answer, and desperately she clutched at him.

“Answer me, Maggie,” he said, his voice a thin thread. “Who do you love?”

Some small, distant, conscious part of her brain told her that now was the time for her revenge. Now she could wound him as he’d wounded her, years ago. All she had to do was say Mack’s name.

She looked up at him, shivering with desire and frustration. “You, Randall,” she said. “Damn you to hell. You.”

He moved then, thrusting into her with a force that shook the flimsy bed, once, twice, three times, and went rigid in her arms, in the same instant that she shattered around him. Together they were swept away, lost in a maelstrom of love, passion, and despair still tinged with fury. Maggie held on to him, her fingers slippery on his sweat-slick shoulders, burying her face against his neck, hiding, as the last of the tremors shook her body.

He held her for a long, timeless moment. He didn’t say a word, just held her, and she felt his body relax slowly into the stillness of sleep.

Darkness was all around them. The moon had set, and there was a soft wind whispering through the leaves and dancing across her damp skin. The feel of Randall’s strong body pressed up against hers was a mindless comfort that she refused to examine. She was too weary, too replete for second thoughts and recriminations. For now, she would take what he had given and worry about it tomorrow.

She yawned, pressed her body back against him, and rubbed gently like a contented kitten as she sank into the velvet blackness of the summer night. One last thought flitted through her mind before she closed her eyes and gave herself up to much-needed sleep: She could learn to like the darkness.

Randall felt the last bit of tension leave her body. She lay in his arms completely at ease, trusting. He didn’t have to look
to know what her face would look like. Wet with her tears, her smooth skin would be relaxed in sleep with that look of surprise still lingering around her bruised mouth. He had managed to surprise her with her response to him. He had known that response was there, waiting for him to tap it. Sooner or later she’d accept it, too.

She wouldn’t like the confession he’d forced from her. She’d hate him for that, she’d hate him for making her want him. He could live with her hatred—he had for years, because he’d always known it was tied up with wanting that she’d only recognize as love. And making her admit it, even if she denied it like crazy tomorrow, was the only way to tie her to him.

And that was what he’d planned all along; to tie her to him so completely that she could never break free, not until he was ready to let her go. And as the blackness of the Gemansk night closed around him, he wondered for the first time if that day would ever come.

Maggie sighed in her sleep, snuggling closer. Slowly, almost of their own volition, his arms moved around her, cradling her against him. And he realized with a flash of despair that he didn’t want to let her go, ever. Resting his chin against her silky mane of hair, he allowed himself a short, troubled sleep.

Maggie sat in the doorway, fully dressed, her bare feet tucked under her, and watched the approach of dawn. It came silently at first, with an infinitesimal lightening of the eastern sky. Probably somewhere over Russia, she thought. Odd that a place she thought of as dark and shadowed would get the sunlight first. The sky began to swell with peach and pearly-gray and crimson stripes that reached into the darkness and banished the night. For once Maggie watched the blackness go with regret. With the darkness went the last of her illusions, the last of her comfort. Daylight would bring stark reality crashing in on her.

The birds came next. Starting with a quiet little chatter of noise overhead, it soon expanded into a full-blown symphony of sound as they called to each other through the trees. Maggie wondered if they were calling to their mates. Did those soft gray-brown Eastern European swallows mate for life?

A soft breeze began to pick up, rustling the trees and rumpling Maggie’s hair around her bleak face. It was as gentle as a lover’s caress, soft and warm and sweet. Maggie shivered, hugging her arms around her knees.

She knew he was awake, knew he was watching her as he lay perfectly still, his own clothes still a tangle on the floor beside the cot. She could sit there and wait, or she could run from what she couldn’t face. He’d stripped her of everything last night, her clothes, her pride, her defenses. She could deal with that—pride and defenses could be rebuilt, clothes were easy to put back on. But he’d done the worst thing possible—he’d stolen Mack away from her.

“It’s almost dawn.” Her voice was admirably cool and dispassionate in the stillness as she kept her gaze outward. “I’ll go find Tomas while you get dressed.” She rose in one fluid movement, keeping her back to him.

“Maggie.” His voice was deep, smooth, and rich—so unlike Mack’s cracked shell of a voice. “Look at me, Maggie.”

“Leave me alone, Randall,” she said gently, and she closed the door behind her as she ran out into the deserted, dawnlit street.

He watched her go through the gaping shell of the window, watched her race away from him as if a thousand devils were at her heels. And slowly, savagely he began to curse.

It was all much easier than anyone would have expected. Leopold’s cousin, Tomas, proved to be the dour member of the family. He was waiting for Maggie with a gloomy expression on his face, with forged papers in his back pocket, in a Mercedes pickup truck of prewar vintage. Maggie didn’t even want to consider which war.

The three of them rode for hours, crammed together in the front seat, sharing cheese and fresh bread and very strong coffee for breakfast as they bounced along toward the border. After one look at her shuttered, set expression, Randall had left her alone, keeping up a running conversation with the serious Tomas. Lost as she was in her own dark thoughts, Maggie didn’t even notice when they crossed the border into Austria and were finally safe from the long arm of the secret police.

It was still before noon when Tomas dropped them off at the train station with their original passports, complete with forged exit stamps. They made it to Vienna and on to the airport in less than an hour and were on a plane to New York by midafternoon. During all those hours, Maggie didn’t speak one unnecessary word to Randall and never once looked him in the eye.

He seemed content to let her be. His curious eyes were on her, but his conversation, too, was restricted to the essentials.
He slept during the long flight back to New York, his long legs stretched out in the first-class seats. He slept while Maggie stared out the window, hollow-eyed, empty, for the seven-hour flight.

The massive sprawling bulk of JFK greeted her weary eyes, and a thousand memories hovered around her like angry bats, waiting to strike. So many times she’d stumbled wearily off a plane; so many times the huge airport had witnessed turning points in her life. There was the time Peter Wallace had met her, sending her off to see Mack Pulaski for the first time. And there was the time she and Mack had flown in from Central America and been reduced to stripping off their clothes in public, courting arrest to keep them safe from one of Mack’s many pursuers.

It had bought them some time—two years, in fact—until those pursuers had caught up with him. She moved through customs in a fog, hating the memories that swept over her, hating the throbbing pain. From now on, she wasn’t going to fly into JFK anymore. If she couldn’t get an international flight to another local airport, she’d fly into Philadelphia and drive up. It might even have been worth the wait for the next flight from Vienna to Chicago.

But that would have meant more time in Randall’s company, and she couldn’t get away from him fast enough. She was desperate to get back to her apartment, away from him, away from everyone and everything but her memories of Mack. Somehow she had to get him back.

Randall caught up with her as she was heading toward the rows of waiting taxis. His hand was rough on her arm, exerting just enough pain to let her know his calm voice was a ruse. She still refused to meet his eyes, but stood, head down, waiting until he released her.

He made no move to do so. “Where are you going?”

“To my apartment. I need a good night’s sleep, Randall.”

“So do I.”

“I hope you get one,” she said in her most polite voice. “You won’t be getting one with me.”

“I know,” he said, and the double entendre sent a red flush into her pale face. She raised her head and focused on a point somewhere beyond his left shoulder. “All right, Maggie,” he said finally, his long fingers biting into her arm, “I’ll let you go this time. I have a few things to check on in the city anyway. I’ll make arrangements for us to fly to Chicago tomorrow afternoon.”

“I’d rather take care of it myself.”

“I’m sure you would. That, however, is not an option. I’ll give you some time to yourself, but tomorrow I’ll be at your apartment and you’d better be ready to go.” His voice was calm, unmoved, but through her numbness Maggie could feel the tension, the anger vibrating through him. “Understood?”

She considered fighting, she considered turning and taking the next flight to Chicago, but in the end the numbness and exhaustion won out. “Understood,” she muttered, dropping her eyes again. “May I leave now?”

“Snotty as ever,” he said, but there was an oddly gentle note in his voice. “Yes, you can leave now. I’m presuming you don’t wish to share a cab with me?”

“You’re presuming right,” she snapped. “What time tomorrow?”

“I’ll call you.”

“I won’t be answering the phone.”

“It wasn’t that bad, Maggie,” he said softly.

“Go to hell, Randall.” She yanked her arm away from him.

“Are you going to be answering your door?”

“Not if I know it’s you.”

“Locked doors won’t keep me out, Maggie. Nothing will.”

She took a deep, steadying breath. “Not even the knowledge that you’re not wanted?”

“It might. But that’s not an issue right now, is it? Your problem isn’t not wanting me. It’s wanting me too much.”

It was enough to make her head shoot up again. For the first time since they made love, she looked into his eyes, and what she saw there shook her. His eyes were dark, almost pleading, in his weary, unshaven face. Randall Carter, the
immaculate, impeccable, invincible, invulnerable Randall Carter looked hot, dirty, sweaty, and tired. And he looked as if he needed, wanted, nothing more than her arms around him.

A trick of the light, a trick of her own exhaustion. But one thing was no trick at all. In his scruffiness, with his shirt hanging loosely around his narrow hips and his grubby face, he looked so damned sexy that her wall of numbness began to crumble. And that was the last thing she could bear.

“I don’t want you, Randall,” she said, the lie clear and cold in her voice. “I’ll travel back to Chicago with you, and I’ll see this through to the end for my sister’s sake. But I don’t want you to ever touch me again. Do you understand?”

The emotion had vanished from his eyes so swiftly, she knew she’d imagined it. “I understand better than you think. Go home, Maggie, and sleep.”

As swiftly as the hot anger rushed through her, it vanished. She couldn’t even summon up the energy to form a snide retort. All she could do was turn her back on him and head out to the waiting taxis.

He watched her go, his face now showing his anger and threatening despair. She was so damned strong, walking away from him, her shoulders back, her tangled blond hair swaying slightly in the evening breeze. She was strong enough to turn so far inward that he’d never be able to break through. He’d seen it on her face this morning, and he cursed himself for an idiot not to have foreseen her reaction. She was pulling away from him, but there was no way in hell he was going to let her do it.

But right this minute, he had to let her be. He would find a shower and decent clothes, and then he had to track Bud Willis to whatever slimy hole he was lurking in. The first step in cleaning up this mess was stopping Admiral Wentworth and sealing the leak before the media discovered it. The American public wouldn’t take kindly to an admiral living off his fat military pensions and selling out his country. But what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

* * *

Maggie’s apartment had the dry, musty smell of a closed-up place. She wandered through it, stripping her clothes off and leaving them where they lay, turned on the air conditioner full blast, and headed for the shower.

She stood under the pounding streams of hot water for half an hour, letting them beat against her skin as she scrubbed every last trace of Gemansk—and Randall—off it. She thought of Francis Ackroyd lying in her sister’s tub and shuddered, then turned up the hot water until it stung her skin in scalding drizzle. And still she scrubbed her body, rubbing it raw, until finally she felt clean and turned the shower off.

The apartment was icy, thanks to her efficient air conditioner, and the blasts of cold air prickled her wet skin. She ignored it. She ignored the telephone, knowing she should call Kate and warn her about Alicia, knowing she should call Sybil and make sure everything was all right, and knowing she would do neither.

She ignored the front door and the second and third locks that she hadn’t bothered to fasten. If someone wanted to break in and rape and murder her, she wouldn’t stop them. They could be her guest.

She ignored the clothing on the floor, the overworked air conditioner, the lights throughout the apartment. She went blindly into her bedroom, found another one of Mack’s old chambray shirts and sank into bed with it. In moments she was asleep.

The sound in her living room awoke her. She glanced up at her digital clock and groaned. It was only five o’clock in the morning, and someone had clearly taken advantage of her unspoken offer to come and murder her. She raised her head off the pillow, then dropped it back again. She only hoped he’d be quick about it.

Her bedroom door opened, letting in a blaze of light. “Rise and shine, Maggie.” Randall’s hateful voice penetrated her mists of sleep.

She gathered enough energy to raise her head and glare in
his direction. “Go away, Randall,” she muttered. “We aren’t going to Chicago until tomorrow.”

“It is tomorrow, Maggie. Five o’clock in the afternoon, for that matter. Get up, or I’ll come over there and get you up.”

There was no doubting the threat in his voice. With an immediate surge of energy Maggie rolled off the bed, only then remembering she was wearing absolutely nothing.

At least Randall was unmoved by her nudity. She was still clutching Mack’s shirt in her fist, and with remarkable aplomb, she pulled it on, buttoning it with calm fingers. “When’s our flight?”

“Later,” he said, his voice flat. “I’ll make coffee.” And he closed the door silently behind him.

She stalled as long as she could while getting dressed. She was chilled from the night in an icy apartment, and only with effort did she remember that it was probably steaming hot outside. When she finally emerged from her room, she was wearing faded jeans and Mack’s shirt still around her. She could hear music, faint and jarring, and she followed the sound.

Randall was standing in front of the television, absorbed in a videotape. He was dressed like Randall again, though his linen suit wasn’t buttoned and he’d dispensed with his knotted silk tie. Another time, another place, and she might have teased him about it. But with the numbness still on her, she took the cup of coffee he handed her and stared blankly at the television.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what tape I’m watching?” he asked her.

“I don’t give a damn.” She turned away from him. Hordes of brightly dressed gypsies wandering around a field didn’t interest her; the random, dissonant chords of music didn’t hold any fascination, even as they coalesced into the opening strains of something eerily familiar.

And then there it was: a voice, deep, rich, beautiful, and throbbing with life and warmth, singing a stupid song about
being free. Slowly Maggie turned, her face frozen, to stare at the television set.

There was Mack, in his guise as Snake, lead singer of the Guess What, his blond hair hanging to his shoulders, his hazel eyes just the tiniest bit doped up, his mouth wide and sexy as he whirled and strutted, danced and pranced over the stage at Woodstock.

Randall was watching her. “Do you play this every night before you go to bed, Maggie?” he taunted gently. “Do you sit there in Pulaski’s shirt and masturbate, pretending he’s still alive? He isn’t. He died two years ago on a sidewalk in Maine. He’s gone, and you’re left behind, throwing your life away on a memory—on a dead man.”

She stood very still, watching the screen. The small, numb part of her that had atrophied since Mack had died came back to an aching, horrible life. She moved toward the television, mesmerized. Randall’s voice was only an irritating buzz in the background as she stared at Pulaski’s flying form.

Then Randall’s hands caught her shoulders and twisted her around to face him, and there was no hiding from the rage and sorrow in his face. “He’s dead, Maggie,” he said again, his rich voice bleak, “and you’re alive.” His strong hands took hold of Mack’s chambray shirt and ripped it down the middle.