Point of No Return (5 page)

Seeing him now in the subway, steeling himself against what could only be a flood of memories, still wearing that mysterious chain, her frustration drained.
Of course
he wanted to send her home. He feared the worst. He had to—it was built into him.

Chet looked down at her, as if measuring her words.

Then he took her hand and enclosed it in his own.

So maybe he did miss her, just a little.

Mae still couldn't believe he'd come all the way to Tbilisi. She hated the feelings that knowledge sparked, the thrill that had her heart thrumming in overdrive.

Perhaps she shouldn't have hit him…that
last
time.

The subway stopped and he released her hand. “This is us.”

She followed the crowd off the subway, a tight clutch on her bag. A real pickpocket would have a heyday with the American dollars she'd kept unchanged to use in barter.

“Let's see if we can track down some transportation,” she said as they emerged a block away from the market.

“Please tell me that food is included in your agenda,” Chet said. She glanced at him—he did look a little pale.

“We'll grab a
shashlik
on the way.”

“You're worse than David.”

She smiled at that. David, Chet's undercover teammate back when they both served Uncle Sam, had a reputation for job first, food and fun second. Although hanging out with him at Moscow University could easily be counted one of the happiest times in her life.

“Hey, he's my hero, so don't be dissin' him.”

“He's my hero, too. Just has a problem with the fact that the humans around him have to eat,” Chet said, touching her elbow as they entered the market.

The odor of grilled meats, rotting fruits, truck exhaust and garbage spiced the air. Rock music pulsed from ancient bookshelf speakers bracketing kiosks selling pirated CDs; between the beats rose the noise of horns, dogs barking, customers bartering.

Vendors, Caucasian men wearing dark pants and leather jackets or wool-wrapped babushkas, perched behind stacks of potatoes or apples, bins of walnuts, and trays of
hochapuri,
and haggled with customers, making change out of black fanny packs. They passed a group of men, hunched on the ground, watching passersby and drinking dark Turkish beer.

Mae kept her bag in front of her, wrapping an arm around it.

She stopped in front of a vendor wiping vegetable oil on a skewer of char-darkened lamb. “Two, please,” she said in Russian, holding out a
lari.

The man wiped his hands on his crusty apron, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around one end of the cheap aluminum skewer. He handed her one and Chet the other.

Mae took her skewer. “Now you aren't the only one who has ever bought lunch.”

Chet pried one of the meat chunks off the skewer. “I like buying lunch. But thanks.”

They threaded their way past piles of unnamed red meat, whole chickens with their legs poking into the air, plastic bags filled with flour or kasha, burlap sacks of rice, piles of fresh herbs, garlic, radishes, carrots and rutabagas. She didn't meet the eyes of the numerous leather-coated men standing sentry, smoking away their days as market mafia.

Chet kept his mouth shut as he walked behind her, his profile low.

She located the trucks in the back of the market, their tailgates open as the men from the outlying villages sold fresh eggs and dairy products—milk and creamy white chunks of cheese.

She studied her choices—rounded older men with
teeth rotted from black chew, younger guys, wearing the black garb of their urban peers. One teen, however, stood out to her, a boy of about seventeen, wearing a ratty brown sweater and fraying tennis shoes splattered with mud. He unloaded eggs from the back of a green pickup, the sides shuttered with rickety fencing.

He greeted her with wary dark eyes as she approached.

“Dobri deen,”
she said softly, the Russian for “good afternoon” rolling off her tongue easily. Although the official language was Georgian now, fifteen years ago, under Communist rule, the schools all taught Russian.

Beside her, Chet scanned the other merchants like a Doberman.

The boy nodded his response.

“We're looking for a ride to Burmansk. Are you going there?”

He regarded her for a moment, then hopped down from his truck. His eyes darted beyond her, then back again. “Maybe.”

“Maybe” was always a good answer. She lowered her voice. “I have dollars. And we need to leave soon.”

Chet tensed beside her. She heard his slow intake of breath. She didn't move, keeping her gaze on the boy. He tightened his lips, darted another look around, then nodded. “I have to finish unloading.”

“We'll get supplies and meet back here in an hour,” Chet said, sounding nearly native with half-Arabic, half-Slavic tones.

The boy looked at him with surprise, as if he'd just materialized there. Fear ringed his eyes.

So maybe Chet would come in handy, just in case a village boy considered ulterior motives.

They scoured the market for food, blankets and
equipment. Chet turned all business, bartering prices down, adding to their supplies things she hadn't considered—matches, cups, rain ponchos, a medical kit.

“Are we going camping?”

“You never know what's out there, and what we might find,” Chet said as he added a can of sardines to his pack.

She dearly hoped it would be Josh and his new girlfriend.

And that, no matter what they found, she wouldn't be losing her heart along the way.

“M
ae, wake up. Wake up.”

“I'm awake.” She hadn't been until the last nudge, when the strident, panicked tone in Chet's whisper sliced through her dreams.

She'd been reliving their goodbye on her apartment balcony overlooking the sound, the air crisp and heady with fall, Chet's strong arms around her. How had she fallen so totally for this man in the space of a week? She felt as if she'd known him nearly all her life—knew his smile, knew the look in his eyes that made her feel like the only woman in the room. In the universe. And finally,
finally,
the night before he would leave—for who knew where or how long, thank you, Uncle Sam—he decided to pull her to him, wrap those muscular arms around her waist, curve one hand behind her neck to draw her face—

“We're at a checkpoint,” Chet said, his lips close to her ear. Because, of course, as if her heart had a homing beacon, in her sleep she'd curled up and pillowed her head on his chest. Good grief. She went to push away, but he held her, his arms tightening. “Don't move.”

She remembered climbing into the truck—the back of course, because Chet wasn't about to get trapped in
the cab, or worse, be banished to the back while she squished in between the teenager and his overweight, leering uncle who had joined them for the trip home.

Chet had instead made a comfy travel compartment for them between two stacks of wooden boxes, atop a folded blanket just large enough for them to sit on with their legs drawn up. To shield them from view, he'd pulled over them a red and white tarp he'd found wadded up in the back.

Under which, she'd fallen soundly asleep. And Chet played right along, apparently, stretching out his legs to cradle her in his embrace. She tried to whisk his smell—masculine, strong—from her thoughts.

“Who are they?”

“Russian soldiers, from the sound of it. They're patrolling the area south of Ossetia. It's officially Georgian country, but they are the so-called peacekeepers.”

She listened to the voices, one of them demanding passports from the teen and his uncle. “Peacemakers?”

“AKA thugs. Shh.”

Okay. She slowed her breathing and tuned her ears, but she'd heard only the churn of Chet's heartbeat as he held her tight. If she didn't know better, she'd think he might be sca—

“What's in the back?”

Footsteps.

Chet reached behind him and his hand emerged with a gun.
A gun?
Clearly someone had expected more than a camping trip. She looked up and met his eyes. He shook his head ever so slightly.

“Nothing. Egg cartons. Boxes. Check for yourself.”

Chet drew a breath. Mae froze.
Please, God, please, please. Oh, why did I get Chet into this—

The boxes moved, the tarp rustled. A horn blared from behind them.

“Nichevo zdes.”

Yes, nothing here.
Mae closed her eyes.
Nothing here.

Beside her, Chet's breath leaked out.

The truck lurched forward, spilling out exhaust.

Chet safetied his gun and tucked it back behind him.

Mae tried to push away from him, but his arms locked around her. “Just a minute longer.”

They must have turned off the main drag onto something gravel because the truck lurched, the wooden side rails chattering like teeth as they rumbled down the road.

Finally, his arms loosened and he helped her sit up.

She finger-combed her hair and fished around in her pocket for a breath mint. “How long was I out?”

“Less than an hour. But long enough. Look for yourself.” He edged the tarp back to reveal the terrain.

She didn't know what to do with the chokehold of emotions. Where there had been rolling countryside dotted now and again with blue, yellow and green houses, great trenches furrowed the land, uprooting it in ugly channels filled with mangled trees and the charred carcasses of tanks, rocket launchers and jeeps. Fences lay in splinters and fire-blackened windows mourned, peering across the land from houses with imploded roofs or walls reduced to rubble.

Beyond that lay the jagged cityscape, the closest apartments raked raw, as if a great hand had clawed down their faces, exposing the insides to the world. Curtains fluttered in the wind, and a bed and mattress
falling out of a gaping hole, seemed as if they might be leaping to safety.

The inhabitants surely hadn't found safety.

Mae pressed against her stomach, unsure if the roiling meant horror or hunger.

“They were already poor, struggling people, just finding their feet after the last civil war.” Chet lowered the tarp. “What was your nephew doing here?”

“Humanitarian aid for a local mission with a group from college. He came for a month this summer. The others returned about a week ago, in time for classes—we don't know why he stayed.”

“Love can do that to you—make you forget your priorities.”

Mae glanced at him. “Maybe his priorities changed.”

“Yeah, so much that he was willing to risk another civil war. Or worse.”

“Or worse?”

She flinched at his sharp look. “Do you understand the stakes here, Mae?”

“Yes, I understand the stakes.” Good grief, she wasn't naïve. She'd been in the military herself, if he cared to remember. “Josh fell in love with the wrong girl. Apparently, she didn't tell him that she was some tribal princess, or he never would have jeopardized ‘international peace.'” She bracketed the words with her fingers. “I assure you that once we find him, we'll explain to him that he needs to set things right with her family and everything will work out.”

“Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea who this ‘princess' is?” Chet mimicked her gesture, clearly to mock her. “She's the daughter of one of the CIA's top ten terrorists. And she's agreed to marry in order to keep
the world from plunging into World War Three. If your nephew doesn't accidentally start it first.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about the CIA. Your nephew's girlfriend works for them, and she's just reneged on a deal to go covert for them in Iran. So, unless we track them down and convince her to marry her betrothed, the world will be a much more dangerous place. Not to mention that Akif will probably blame the U.S., and by proxy, Georgia, for the loss of his bride price. Which means that he'll figure out a way to break the cease-fire. Probably with more bombs. And that's just one of the many scenarios that could happen here. So, yes, I think your nephew has completely lost sight of his priorities, sweetheart.”

She didn't know where to start—with the “sweetheart” or the glaring, abrupt fact that he
hadn't
come here to help her, at least not in the way she'd thought. Clearly, he'd been sent here on his
own
mission, maybe even by the CIA—a truth she felt like a backhand to her heart. A mission that had about nil to do with her, and everything to do with forcing some girl to marry against her will.

Somewhere in the back of her consciousness, she was picking up the bleeding remains of her too-easily wooed heart, but in the forefront, all she could see was the brutal truth.

Chet Stryker was exactly the male chauvinist jerk she'd pegged him to be—a guy who decided a woman couldn't fly airplanes for him, who didn't allow women choices, making their decisions for them.

Like the kind of career they could have.

Or the men they should marry.

She should be glad she'd gotten away from him when she did.

She retreated as far as she could from him, drawing up her knees, holding them against herself. “I'll tell you right now, Josh's priorities are the same as mine. Save the girl from letches like you.”

He flinched but said nothing as they jolted down the road.

She buried her head in her arms, hating that she'd let herself—for even one second—think he'd come here for her, that he might have changed, that he respected her, believed in her.

Loved her.

Maybe
she
had lost sight of
her
priorities.

The truck hit a pothole, banged them hard against the metal surface, and then, with an earsplitting squeal, lurched to a stop. As Mae lifted her head, the truck gave a final shudder, burped its last and died.

 

“End of the road,” Chet said quietly as he listened to the boy and his uncle mutter over the engine. “And the longer we sit here, the worse the odds of us picking up another ride.” He peered again from under the tarp. The sun bled through the jagged mountainscape of the northern Caucasus to the west, casting bruised shadows into the valley and gullies and over the broken city of Gori, now to their south. Their ride must have turned onto a side road, a shortcut, perhaps, off the main Georgian highway, now under reconstruction.

“How far are we from Burmansk?” Mae asked, her tone glacial. Yeah, this trip had turned extrafun since he'd offered up a dose of reality. But maybe Mae Lund needed to pull her head out of fairy-tale land and start realizing that her actions had consequences. And in this case, the potential consequences involved war—possibly a world war at that.

“By truck? Maybe an hour. By foot?” He lifted a shoulder. “I hope you brought your hiking shoes.” He reached out his hand to help her up. She ignored it and found her feet on her own, stretching.

Fine. No one asked her to like him. Probably it was better this way. Letch, huh? Well, maybe. He felt like one a little, hating the facts.

Yes, he was going to bring Miss Runaway back to her village.

To be sold into marital slavery, CIA deal notwithstanding.

In order to save lives.

Just when was one life worth more than many?

He couldn't let himself ponder that as he hopped out of the truck. Instead, he focused on the fact that Mae believed he was exactly what she'd called him. A letch. A man who used women. Clearly she'd forgotten his emails to her, written during his years working undercover, fighting human trafficking on the other side of the world. They detailed how it chewed him up to see women abused. And later, how he'd nearly given his life to help David take down the trafficking ring. Words of pain filled those emails, churned out from the horrors he'd seen.

Maybe that was all they were. Words. She'd never really seen the man he was, or wanted to be.

He hadn't either, actually. Not for a long time, at least.

Now he saw the truth in her demeanor as she stalked away from him on the dirt road. She despised him.

Frankly, that hurt more than his aching muscles or the fatigue weighting his bones. Because, for approximately forty minutes, as she'd slept in his arms, he let himself believe that maybe they could put things right, and find
their friendship again. That maybe he could connect with someone who knew him, understood him.

Or at least understood the Chet he'd edited into the man she wanted.

“Spaceeba,”
Mae said to the teenager, and handed him a wad of dollars. Chet kept his eyes on the uncle, who'd edged toward her, as if he might decide to up the fee.

He moved next to his nephew, spitting on the ground, his doughy stomach swelling from his button shirt.
“Zhenshina!”

Mae turned, and Chet took a step toward them. Wonderful. Apparently, the old man wasn't quite done with them. Which meant that Chet would have to step in. He saw an ugly scenario materializing before his eyes, one where he'd have to stop the old man and his nephew from alerting the authorities to their presence. In front of Mae, no less.

So she could add “brute” to her list of identities.

“Eta carta.”
The man extended to her a grimy pack of paper. A map?

Mae took it, opened it. “It's a map of the region. He's marked Burmansk.”

Oh. Apparently he'd jumped to conclusions.

Mae held out her hand.
“Spaceeba.”

The old man took it, leaning in to kiss her cheek. She let him as Chet cataloged his every movement, just in case he might be emptying out her bag while he did it.

“C Bogom,”
the uncle said, drawing away.

Go with God. Well, a guy couldn't be too careful.

The glittering lights of the city behind them beckoned, tiny stars luring them in the wrong direction. Chet briefly considered turning back, slipping into the city
under darkness, maybe boosting a car. But with Russian brown boys armed, restless and roaming, and Mae ready to bolt, hoofin' it west into the dark beyond seemed the best option.

“Ready?” he asked Mae, who had flicked on her penlight and was studying the map.

She stared at the stars as if orienting herself. Of course, being a pilot, she would know the sky. Then she set off. No words, not a backward glance to say,
Hey, you coming?
Just off she went, over the embankment, into the brush.

With him scampering after her.

He could barely make out her outline against the velvety night, but the wind mercifully picked up her scent and twined it back to him. He followed the scuff of her boots on the grass and quickly caught up.

“Don't wait for me or anything.”

“I told you—keep up.”

He clenched his jaw, wanting to hit something, hard. Like maybe himself, for losing his temper with her in the truck. Or for thinking that she might still care about him. Clearly, his heart hadn't quite scabbed over.

They walked in silence as the night canopied them, the stars winking above, spectators to his misery. The wind turned brisk, curling down from the far mountains, and after a while, she pulled a blanket from her pack and wrapped it around her like a Bedouin.

But she kept walking—the energizer bunny—whereas he could probably flop down next to a boulder and sleep for the next year. He rubbed his hands, sticking them again into his pockets.

“Are you still flying?”