Eight Days to Live (41 page)

“All I want from him is information. Faruk’s a pilot, not one of Millet’s killers. He’s no real danger.”

“We’ll see.” He was studying her. “You look as if you’ve been stretched on a rack. One touch, and you’d break. How long do you think you can go on?”

“Until we get Eve back.” She gazed out at the tarmac. “And I won’t break.”

His intent gaze remained on her face. “It makes me angry seeing you like this, you know.”

Her gaze shifted back to his face. “Why?”

He shrugged. “I’ve been wondering that myself. I thought I’d left all that protective bullshit behind me. But it appears that there are some tendrils of emotion that can’t be uprooted. You . . . stir me.”

She stared at him, speechless.

“I just thought you should know.” His lips twisted. “You’re always saying you don’t understand me. Now you can see in what direction I’m heading. I don’t think it’s just the sex. I wouldn’t have let you take me off the hunt for Faruk if it was only that.” He held her gaze. “Though I could be wrong. I keep thinking of all the ways I want to have you.”

She was suddenly vibrantly, physically, aware of everything about him. His hand resting on the doorjamb, the muscles of his chest and shoulders relaxed but possessing a catlike readiness, his eyes . . . Her chest was so tight that she couldn’t breathe. “And that’s supposed to make me understand you?”

“Maybe not. I thought I’d try. Sometimes, I think, I get lonely. Though I thought I’d put that behind me, too.” He suddenly chuckled. “But understanding me might cause you to shun me even more. Maybe I should count my blessings.”

She was feeling an aching, almost tender, impulse to reach out, to comfort. It bewildered her. Surely no one on earth had less need
for either of those emotions. He had even laughed at himself as he had said those words. Somehow that only made them more poignant. “ I . . . don’t shun you.”

“Because I keep coming at you. It’s easier for you to come to terms than push me away.”

Damn, he could read her. “Right now I can’t deal—”

“He’s here.” Caleb straightened, his gaze on the hangar across the tarmac. “Tall, a little plump, mustache. That’s the description I got from Nasra, the receptionist.”

Jane’s gaze focused on the man in neat gray trousers and brown leather flight jacket who was unlocking the door of the hangar. As Caleb had said, Faruk looked very ordinary.

If anything about this nightmare was ordinary. “What happens now?”

“Nothing radical. I do a little tentative probing, then I go talk to him. You don’t have to—” He stiffened, staring at Faruk.

Her gaze flew to his face. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He left the hangar. “Stay here. I should be back in a few minutes.” He strolled across the tarmac. “Captain Faruk, may I have a word with you? I spoke to the receptionist at the front office, and she said that you might be just the man I need to fly a very valuable shipment of rugs to Rome.”

Faruk turned and smiled. “Nasra is a smart woman. I’m the best, and I could give you a good price.”

“I’m sure we’ll be able to come to an agreement. I already feel a closeness that you—” Caleb bent double, his face contorted with pain. “No!”

Jane stiffened. What on earth was—

Faruk was staring at Caleb in bewilderment. “What’s wrong? Are you ill?”

“Stomach.” Caleb was stumbling back, his face white as a
tombstone. He gasped, “Later.” He turned and half ran, half reeled across the tarmac. The next moment he lurched into the hangar and fell against the wall where Jane was standing.

“Make sure—he’s not following. Mustn’t—see you.” His face was beaded with sweat.

Jane tore her gaze away from Caleb to glance quickly across the tarmac. “Faruk’s just standing there, looking confused. What the hell is wrong?”

“Can’t talk—give—me a minute.” He slid down the metal wall and leaned back, breathing hard.

Agony. The muscles of his neck were distended, his teeth clenched.

She grabbed his hand. “Shall I find a doctor?”

He shook his head.

“Dammit, what can I do?” She started to get to her feet, but his grasp held her locked to his side. “Let me go. I’ve got to—”

He shook his head. “No good.”

“There has to be some—”

“Be quiet.” He was shaking. “Quagmire.”

“What? I don’t—” Then she remembered what he had told her on the plane when she’d asked him if he ever ran across anyone he couldn’t mentally manipulate.

Quagmire. Intense pain. Smothering.

I went too deep and was unconscious for two days
.

“Quagmire,” she repeated. “Faruk?”

He nodded jerkily.

“Dear God.”

“A minute. Give—me a minute.”

She didn’t know if he could stand another minute of that pain, she thought desperately. The skin was drawn tight over his cheekbones as he fought the spasms. She had never felt so helpless.

She couldn’t help him.

She had to help him.

She had to
do
something.

She slid her arms around him and drew him close. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.” She stroked his hair back from his face. “I can’t take this. Tell me what to do.”

He didn’t answer. Lord, he was cold. She held him closer and tried to share her warmth. “Relax. We’ll stay like this for a while and you’ll be okay.” She prayed she was telling the truth. “Just relax . . .”

Five minutes passed.

Fifteen minutes.

He was no longer shaking.

Thank God.

Twenty minutes.

He lifted his head and looked down at her. “Hello.”

“Hi.” She drew a relieved breath that came from the depths of her being. “You scared me.”

“I can tell.” The corners of his lips quirked. “At the moment I don’t feel in the least bit shunned. But I don’t believe I want to go through that again. We’ll have to work on some other kind of solution.”

She rolled away from him, sat up, and gazed at him searchingly. He might be joking, but he was still very pale. “I didn’t know what to do. Are you better?”

He nodded. “It wasn’t bad. I got out soon enough.”

“That wasn’t bad?” She shook her head. “It seemed damn bad to me.”

“Maybe I was just making a bid for sympathy,” he said lightly as he slowly sat up. “You know you can’t trust me.”

He still wasn’t entirely normal. She wanted to touch him, stroke him, make all the pain go away. “Stop joking. This isn’t funny.”

“No, part of it was hell but the last part was kind of nice. There’s always a balance.” He put his hand out to the metal wall and levered himself up. “But I think I need a drink. Let’s go find a bar.”

“We don’t have a car.”

“Of course we do.” He took her elbow and headed for the entrance. “One of the mechanics I talked to insisted that he lend me his car while I was in the city.”

“How convenient. Another long-lost best friend?”

“You’ve got it. I think I saw a little coffee bar about two miles down the road. Let’s see if they have anything stronger under the counter for the Westerners.”

THE COFFEE BAR WAS SMALL
, with only a few tables and almost empty except for four Arabs who stared at Jane coldly when they walked through the door.

“Prejudice seems to be raising its ugly head,” she murmured. “The locals don’t approve of women outside their homes. So much for freeing the masses.”

“Do you want me to have a talk with them?”

“No!” She sat down at a corner table. “I don’t want you to hunt, and I don’t want you to manipulate. I just want you to rest and have your drink.”

“How protective you sound.” He motioned for a swarthy, young waiter, who was glaring at Jane. “It wouldn’t hurt me. Faruk was one of those freakish exceptions. What do you want?”

“Just a coffee.”

A few minutes later the waiter set a whiskey in front of Caleb and a tiny glass brimming with steaming black coffee before Jane.

“That looks stronger than my whiskey,” Caleb said. “Want to switch?”

“No.”

He downed the whiskey. “You’re smart. Foul stuff.” He motioned the waiter for another one. “But it keeps the blood going.”

“Is whiskey a cure-all for this . . .” She searched for the word again. “This quagmire.”

“No, it just causes the chill to go away.” He looked down into his whiskey. “I’m sorry, Jane. I told you it would be no problem. It was a big problem.”

“You’re sorry? How could you help it? You’re the one who went through more pain than a victim of the Spanish Inquisition. What if you’d gone into shock?”

“I didn’t.” He frowned. “And there has to be a way to control it and do the job. I’ve just been too wary to play around with it. It’s so rare, and it was easier to walk away.” He grimaced. “Or crawl away. I wasn’t a very admirable specimen, was I?”

“Play around with it? That’s like playing Russian roulette with every chamber filled with bullets. You just have to wonder which one is going to kill you.”

“There has to be a way.”

Dear God, he was actually serious. “The way is to use Faruk like a normal person would do it. Maybe we can bug his plane when he takes those other members to the temple.”

“Millet will kill Eve as soon as he knows the temple is under attack. We’ll still need the layout of the temple if we’re to get to Eve before he knows we’re there.”

She knew that he was right, and the alternative of blundering around searching for her was terrifying. “I thought about trying to get Roland to give me the information as part of the deal, but I
couldn’t trust him.” She paused. “But there’s something else that could work.”

He studied her, then smiled faintly. “The other reason why you came to Damascus after me. You need me to help you dream.”

“I can’t take a chance on doing it on my own. What if my sleep isn’t deep enough to dream? You kept me asleep for a long time. We have to do it together.”

He shook his head, still smiling. “And is this your idea of how a normal person would handle the situation? My, how your viewpoint has changed.”

She couldn’t argue. “Everything is different now. I’m just trying to keep everyone alive.”

“So am I,” Caleb said quietly. “That’s why I think I should work on overcoming this—”

“No!” She finished her coffee. “Let’s get out of here. It’s almost time for Millet to call me, and I don’t want to take it here with all these men in the bar looking daggers at me.” She stood up. “One bastard at a time.”

JANE AND CALEB HAD BEEN
sitting in the car outside the bar for only fifteen minutes when Jane’s phone rang.

“Have you been waiting for me?” Millet asked. “I imagine you’re very torn. It’s not every day that anyone is given the opportunity to make the ultimate sacrifice to save another. You’re very special.”

“And you’re very nuts.”

“Ugly.”

“Did you hurt Eve?”

“I’d like to say yes, but I decided that I should save myself for you, Jane.”

Relief surged through her. Roland must know Millet very well to be able to manipulate him to this extent. “May I talk to Eve again?”

“No, I’m not feeling generous. No contact until the exchange.” He paused. “If there is to be an exchange. Is Eve going to live, Jane?”

“Yes.” She moistened her lips. “But I don’t trust you. You’ll kill Eve, too, if you get the chance. I’m not going to walk into your trap until I’m sure Eve is out of it.”

“I have no use for Eve Duncan.”

“That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t enjoy tearing her limb from limb. I’ve seen your work, Millet.”

He chuckled. “Yes, you did. I was exceptionally artistic when I was working on Celine Denarve. I did enjoy that evening enormously.”

Poor butterfly, caught, pierced, pinned.

“It’s not going to happen to Eve. What are your plans?”

“I’m going to have you flown here to the temple and send Eve Duncan out on the same plane.”

“Good God, do you think I’m that gullible?”

“No, but I thought I’d try. Sometimes desperation robs one of common sense. Suppose we meet somewhere in the desert and do the exchange. That should be safer for both of you.”

“I’ll consider it.”

“Arrogant bitch.” His voice had harshened. “If I weren’t short on time, you’d have no choice at all. I’d kill Duncan, then go after you. It wouldn’t be long before I’d have it all.”

“But I do have a choice. Not much of one, but I’m not giving it up.”

“I need you at the temple by seven tomorrow night for the Offering. The exchange has to take place in time for me to get back to the temple before that. Five, six, at the latest. Do you understand?
I
need
an Offering and I won’t quibble about taking Eve Duncan if I can’t have you.”

“I know you won’t.”

“I’ll call you in four hours, and you’d better have set a place for the transfer. I’ll need to send my men ahead to make sure you’re not setting a trap. That wouldn’t be wise, Jane. One sign, and I slice your Eve’s throat.” He hung up.

Her hand was shaking as she pressed the disconnect. It was what she had been expecting, but the violence and ugliness was striking hard at her. Millet’s vicious intensity had been like an exploding bullet. Everything had been leading up to this time and she had a crazy feeling that it was inevitable that Millet would triumph no matter what she did.

Tomorrow was the first of April.

Judas’s birthday.

The day of her death.

“Jane?”

She turned to look at Caleb in the seat next to her. “Four hours. I have to tell him where we’ll meet in the desert. He wants the exchange by five tomorrow evening.” She tried to keep her voice even. “He doesn’t want me to be late for the Offering. That wouldn’t be polite.”

Caleb muttered a curse. “He got to you.”

“No . . . Yes.” Her lips were trembling. “He’s such a monster. They’re all such monsters. Sometimes I can’t believe it.
Blasphemer
. They keep using that word. Cults and sacrifices and archaic words that shouldn’t even exist any longer. They should all be in the Dark Ages. It doesn’t seem real. I thought it was bad the night that Celine died, but it’s been going on so long. Tomorrow will be eight days, Caleb. Every minute has been like a dagger stabbing at me.” She tried to keep her voice steady. “I’m ready for it to be over.”