Shades of Gray (11 page)

Andres pulled her into his arms and held her very gently. “As much as you need,” he murmured huskily. “Even if I have to steal it.”

Sara knew what he meant. Time was a luxury in Kadeira; Lucio and his army made every single day’s survival a victory. She also knew that this new and fragile understanding between them had to be protected and nourished if it were to survive, and that they were both raw and vulnerable right now from everything they had fought their way through. They both needed time. Even if they had to steal it.

She drew away slowly after a moment, smiled at him before moving around the desk, putting needed space between them. And her voice emerged more naturally than she would have believed possible when she spoke. “You and Vincente were working on something when I interrupted. Why don’t you get him back in here, and I’ll just sit and listen.”

Andres was watching her, smiling, his face more tranquil than she had yet seen it. And his black eyes were burning, intense, hungry. Softly he said, “I can barely think when you’re in the same room.”

Sara caught her breath, felt the leaping response of her heart. But she was light, careful.
“You’d better learn to,” she murmured, and wandered over to the shelves of books he kept near his desk. She heard a quiet laugh from him, then his footsteps as he left the room. She chose a book at random and went to sit in an overstuffed chair.

How easily he makes love with words! Like no other man she had ever met. He held her captive. Intrigued. Enthralled. Was it Donne who had said something about never being free until—? She frowned a little, then looked at the title of her book and laughed aloud. She wasn’t surprised to find Donne among the pages, and to find the quotation she had half remembered. “Take me to you, imprison me, for I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free.…”

She slowly turned the pages of the well-thumbed book, wondering how many times Andres had searched here and found, as she did, the words of kindred spirits struggling with similar baffling emotions. They shared a love of words, but Andres had the better command of them. Probably he could talk the devil out of
hell, she thought, given a few moment’s grace and a fan to hold back the flames.

She looked up as Andres and Colonel Durant came back into the room, faintly amused to see the colonel eyeing her a bit warily. “I won’t blow up in your face, Vincente,” she told him gravely.

Andres chuckled as he moved to his desk, and Durant followed his president, murmuring, “No. You already did, I think.”

Sara smiled and bent her head over the book again, reading a line here, a verse there. And she listened as Andres and his colonel went back to work, quickly realizing they were trying to pinpoint Lucio’s most recent camp from their knowledge of previous ones and of the terrain. It was a slow, frustrating business, hampered by the sheer size of Kadeira’s jungles and by Lucio’s almost magical ability to hide within them.

She only half listened at first. Gradually she felt more and more of herself drawn toward the desk. And Andres. She felt his gaze on her from time to time, as tangible as touch. She heard, as always, his voice give him away at such moments with tiny breaks, almost infinitesimal lapses in
the rhythm of his sentences to Vincente. And she could feel, as if her own mind had wandered, his struggle to gather strayed thoughts into coherency.

“I can barely think with you in the same room.”

It was desire. She knew that because she felt the effects of it herself. But it was also more. It was an affinity, a
connection
between them. The unnerving awareness of being a part of another mind and heart, less alone than before, and so vulnerable because of it.

No wonder she had run. Cut Andres and she would bleed; hurt him and she would feel the pain. And she knew it was the same for him, knew it from an anguished voice in her memory saying broken prayers at her bedside.

And from other voices, other memories.

“ ‘I do love nothing in the world so well as you; is not that strange?’ ” His voice had been rough with feeling.

Yes, strange. How very strange, she thought. They hadn’t been looking for it, either of them.
In truth they hadn’t wanted it. But it had them, captured, compelled.

She hoped she was strong enough for this, hoped it desperately. Because, just like Andres, if she lost this, she would lose the best part of all she could ever be.

W
HEN IT BECAME
obvious that Andres and the colonel were going to be up very late working over their maps, Sara quietly excused herself, deciding to go to bed. Andres came out into the hall with her, closing the office door behind them.

“You should rest,” she told him, anxious.

He was leaning back against the door, looking down at her. “Lucio is a threat to you, Sara. I have to remove that threat.”

She was tired and knew she should go to bed, but she lingered, wanting to look at him, talk to
him. “When you do defeat him, what effect will it have on the revolution?”

“It will be over.”

Sara was surprised. “Is he so strong a leader?”

Andres shook his head. “Only partly. He is a strong leader, but the point is, he fights out of hate, Sara. There’s no burning sense of injustice driving him, no all-consuming dream of a better world. It’s said that in every revolution there’s one man with a vision; Lucio isn’t the man.”

“Then why do his men follow him?”

“Sheer habit.” Andres sighed tiredly. “They’ve known nothing else, most of them. Only fighting. And he’s the flag they follow into the only life they know.”

“Then, when he’s gone?”

“He hasn’t a single lieutenant strong enough to take over as leader. His army will scatter into the jungles and hills. After a time, when they learn that I mean to exact no vengeance, they’ll come out of hiding.”

“You won’t punish them?” She wasn’t surprised somehow.

“How could I?” He smiled faintly. “I followed a leader into revolution, became one myself.”

“But you had a vision,” she said in a soft tone.

“I thought so.” After a moment Andres said quietly, “In any case, with Lucio gone, the fighting will end. For a while,” he added with faint bitterness. “Until someone else comes along, full of hate. Or seduced by a vision.”

“Does it have to be that way, Andres?” She was trying to understand. “On and on with no end—just moments of peace and hours of war?”

“Without change, yes. And change takes time, Sara. If I can keep the peace long enough, if I can show my people there
is
a better way … If. Always
if
.”

Sara instinctively reached out her hand to him, hearing first the passion of commitment and then a return of the faint bitterness of frustration in his remarkable voice. She reached out her hand and touched his lean cheek, feeling a muscle go tense beneath her touch, seeing his black eyes flare briefly before they were half hidden from her by lowered lashes.

“If anybody can pull this country together, you
can,” she told him. “Some things are worth fighting for.”

Andres didn’t move to touch her, but his hooded gaze was a tangible caress. “This is,” he said huskily.

Sara forced her hand to leave him, nodding half consciously. “I know. Good night, Andres.”

“Good night, my love.”

He stood still, watching her move down the hall toward the stairs. When he could no longer see her, he turned, finally, and returned to his office and his colonel.

In the penthouse office of a gleaming high-rise in New York City, a group of people sat around and talked with the easy camaraderie of those who have been through much together and emerged with close ties. It was late; outside the floor-to-ceiling windows the lights of the city glittered, and inside the building the normal hum of brisk business was muted by night.

The conversation had been going on for some time, and it had, finally, more or less come down
to who would go to Kadeira and how. It had come down to what they knew and what they could do. The “if” had been decided long before.

Josh Long turned away from the windows and rested a hip on the corner of his desk. “It’s no use calling Rafferty and Sarah back from Australia even though we could use their help,” he said to the others. “I’m guessing that by the time they could get back, it would be finished. Besides, they haven’t been there long enough to get over the jet lag.”

“We can’t all go to Kadeira, anyway,” Zach pointed out mildly. “That is, if any of us goes at all.”

Josh looked at him, his flickering smile an indication of the understanding that Zach would prefer at least two certainly not to go, that Zach still thought there was an “if” in the matter. Then he looked at Kelsey, lounging in a comfortable chair and frowning at nothing. “Kelsey, are you sure that captain of Hagen’s came clean with you?”

Kelsey stopped frowning at nothing and nodded. “Sure as can be. Siran wasn’t happy
about the situation at all, and he’s—well, sort of an old friend. He told me all he knew. This enemy of Sereno’s, this Lucio, has the ability to intercept radio transmissions. And Hagen sent a coded message to Sereno by way of the captain, warning that you just might be en route to Kadeira. Or words to that effect.”

“Which means Lucio also might know,” Zach said in a determinedly conversational tone, apparently to the room at large.

“If he broke the code,” Josh added.

Derek Ross, the most recent arrival to the penthouse, along with his new wife, Shannon, said lazily, “Not a hard code, if I know Hagen.”

Josh looked at the big blond man sitting on one of the two long couches beside the delicate Shannon. “How hard is not hard?” he asked.

“That,” Derek replied, “depends on Lucio. If he knows anything at all about codes, he’ll find Hagen’s pretty much child’s play, particularly if he speaks good English.”

“He does,” Kelsey said. “Quite good English.”

“Damn,” Zach said.

Josh was frowning. “Okay, look at it this way.
Maybe Lucio could and did decode the message.

So what?”

Zach swore again. “So you’d make a hell of a valuable hostage, that’s so what.”

“You have a one-track mind,” Josh told him dryly. “Think, Zach. What the hell would Lucio want with me?”

From her comfortable and usual seat in Zach’s lap, Teddy asked, “If he can get Sara, you mean?”

“Exactly.” Josh gazed around the room at his friends. “From all we can find out, this so-called revolution is just a feud to Lucio. He wants Sereno deposed and destroyed—period. And yesterday wouldn’t be fast enough to suit him. If he can get his hands on Sara, that’ll do it. And you can bet he knows it. I’m not saying that under normal circumstances he wouldn’t think of a lucrative kidnapping to help fill his war chest, but I’m willing to bet his mind is on Sara right now.”

“Willing to bet your life?” Zach asked.

“What about
your
life?” Josh retorted.

“That’s different.”

“No. You just think it is.”

Lucas Kendrick spoke quietly as he leaned on the back of a couch behind his wife, Kyle. “For what it’s worth, I agree with Josh. There’s a risk, but not much more than usual.”

“Traitor,” Zach muttered.

Luc grinned faintly. “Sorry, Zach. Look, we can minimize the risk; we always do that, no matter what.”

“Place is a fortress,” Kelsey commented almost idly.

“Sure,” Lucas agreed. “But we can’t change that, not without declaring—and winning—an all-out war. So we’ve got two choices when it comes to getting into that fortress. We take the
Corsair
and hope Sereno’s navy doesn’t have orders to sink any approaching ships. Or we take the jet helicopter and drop right down in his lap.”

“Antiaircraft guns,” Zach said in objection.

“Why would he have them?” Lucas asked reasonably. “Lucio doesn’t have a plane to his name; there isn’t even a landing strip on the
island. And God knows nobody else has bothered to attack Kadeira by sea
or
air.”

“There’s a relatively easy way to find out,” Derek said. “General Ramsey thinks the sun rises and sets on this crowd after the mess down in Pinnacle was cleared up so fast. Call in the favor. He can have a reconnaissance plane do a flyover of Kadeira and take some nice clear pictures. Infrared and the like. Within a few hours after he sanctions it, we’d know exactly what’s on the island.”

Josh smiled in approval and looked at Zach. “Well?”

“It’s all right as far as it goes,” the big security chief said. “But how about all the guns that’ll be pointed our way once we get out of the bird? Lucio is one thing; what about Sereno? Think he’s going to stand tamely by while we offer Sara a lift out of there?”

Kelsey, frowning at nothing again, said quietly, “I think he will. Not tamely, no; he isn’t a tame man. But if she wants to leave, especially in Josh’s charge, he’ll let her.”

Raven, who was sitting in her husband’s chair
behind the desk, said suddenly, “She loves him, you know.”

Josh looked back at her. “Yes, that was my impression. Still.”

“Still,” she agreed, “she wasn’t asked, she was taken. And Siran said she was mad as hell.”

“It’s the revolution,” Shannon said suddenly. She looked up to find everyone gazing at her quizzically, and she flushed slightly. She was still new enough to this group to be a little shy among them, a little uncertain, but her own recent experiences made her feel deeply for Sara Marsh.