Gina was intimately acquainted with Alyssa’s deadly accuracy with a rifle.
Her eyebrows were raised. “You bring up your former girlfriend, because . . . ?”
Max shrugged, looking out through the binoculars again. “We could use a marksman. I’m decent, but . . . Although, even Alyssa would take too long—twelve shots? Even if she could do it relatively quickly, once the lights went out—after all that noise? Sneaking past the troops is one thing when they’re sleeping. Wide awake . . . That would be a challenge. Maybe we could dress in Emilio’s clothes, try to make it look as if we’re all in uniform, try to blend in . . .” He shook his head, handing the binoculars to her. She was closer to the floor, and his entire leg was starting to stiffen up. “There’s got to be a way out of here, but that’s not it.”
Gingerly, he lowered himself down beside her, onto the pillow. “I guess we’re on first watch,” he said from between clenched teeth as he tried to find the right balance of pillow and air.
“I’m sorry I can’t shoot like Alyssa Locke,” Gina said. She sounded far more annoyed than sorry. Annoyed with him for bringing her up.
Jealous, even.
Good. Better she was jealous than scared to death about the coming dawn.
Max reached over and took her by the chin, turning her so that she faced him. She had such beautiful skin, so soft. He leaned close.
Kissed her.
She resisted—for about a tenth of a second. Many, many tenths of seconds later, he was the one who finally pulled back.
First watch meant
watch
—which meant his eyes needed to be open. He used the mirror to look out the window. Everything was exactly the same. No movement, no change.
“God, I hate that you can do that,” Gina said after she’d caught her breath. “You’re just too good at kissing. It should be illegal. You get me all pissed off by talking about your old girlfriend and then you’re like,
kiss me,
and I’m all
no, no, yes, yes, yes.
”
“She wasn’t really my girlfriend,” Max told Gina. “Alyssa. I loved her, yeah, but I didn’t really
love
her. Not the way I love you. I was attracted to her, but it wasn’t . . . And I stayed away, because she was working for me. You know, bad policy to sleep with subordinates? Anyway, I knew I had to keep some distance, and I did. It just wasn’t that big a deal for me.
“But when I tried to stay away from
you . . .
” He laughed. “Any other woman in the world, I could walk away from. But not you.”
“Well, yeah,” Gina said, her annoyance visibly fading. “Because I chased after you.”
“No,” Max said. “It was more than that. You know that couples counselor we visited?” He glanced at her.
Gina nodded. “Rita.”
Max nodded, too. “After you left the room, she asked me what I was so afraid of.” He glanced at her again. She was definitely no longer annoyed. In fact, she looked downright stunned that he’d brought this up.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about that and . . . I’m not trying to make excuses, but . . . In my world,” he told her quietly, “it doesn’t pay to love something or someone that much. It’s too . . . risky. You love it, you’ll lose it. So there you were—scaring me to death. Being with you seemed wrong for all kinds of reasons, so I built those reasons up, in my head, into huge problems—so I could pretend that the biggest problem wasn’t really me being terrified. And then, there was Alyssa—beautiful and smart. Strong enough to deal with all my bullshit. And best of all I loved her, but I didn’t love her too much. I knew I could live without her.
“I asked her to marry me because I thought it would keep me away from you,” Max confessed. “Because I was afraid of how much I loved you.” He cleared his throat. God, there was a time in the not-so-distant past when he would have done anything to keep Gina from knowing the truth. And now here he sat, just blurting it out. “I just wanted you to know that.”
They sat in silence for several moments.
“Feel free to kiss me,” Gina said. “Any time you have the urge.”
He had to laugh. “Yeah, well, I’m supposed to be on watch.”
“Watching what?” she said. “They’re not going to move until that tank arrives.”
“Still,” he said.
“Have you ever tried making love with your eyes open the entire time?” Gina asked.
He looked at her.
“What?” she said. “I’m just making conversation.”
“Right.” Max glanced at her again, and she gave him that smile. That promise-filled, next-stop-heaven little smile, and he knew that
she
knew he was actually thinking about . . .
“Ow,” he said, knowing that there was only one way to put on the brakes. “My leg’s really hurting.”
“All right,” Gina said. “You win. I mean, I
could
say I’ll kiss it and make it better, but I won’t.”
Yeah, okay. Max nodded. “Good plan. To not. You know, say that.”
He wanted to laugh. It was so screwed up—this feeling of total contentment.
They were in serious trouble here. If that tank wasn’t just a bluff—and his gut was telling him it wasn’t—he was going to have to consider throwing Grady Morant to the wolves.
If he did that, Gina would never forgive him.
They sat in silence for about twelve seconds this time.
“Can I tell you a funny story?” Gina asked. She didn’t wait for him to say yes or no. “It’s about, well . . . You know the whole age-issue thing?”
“The age-issue thing,” Max repeated. “Are you sure this is a funny story?”
“Does it still bother you?” she asked. “Being a little bit older than me? And it’s more funny weird than funny ha-ha.”
“Twenty years isn’t exactly ‘a little bit,’ ” he said.
“Tell that to a paleontologist,” she countered.
Okay, he’d give her that one. “Just tell me the story.”
“Once upon a time, when Jones first came to Kenya,” Gina said, “I didn’t know who he was. Molly didn’t tell me, and he came to our tent for tea, and . . . Maybe this isn’t even a funny weird story. Maybe it’s more of an ‘I’m an asshole’ story, because I immediately jumped to the conclusion that he was there because he was all hot for me. It never occurred to me—it never even crossed my narrow little mind—that he might’ve been crushing on Molly. And she’s only maybe ten years older than he is. I remember sitting there after I figured it out, and thinking,
shoot.
People
do
make assumptions based on age. Max wasn’t just being crazy.” She smiled at him. “Or at least not crazier than usual. I guess . . . I just wanted to apologize for mocking you all those times.”
“It’s okay,” Max said. “I just keep reminding myself that love doesn’t always stop to do the math.” He looked at her. “I’m trying to talk myself into that. How’d I sound? Convincing?”
“That was pretty good.” They sat in silence for a moment, then Gina spoke again. “Maybe I could get a T-shirt that says, ‘I’m not his daughter, I’m his wife.’ ”
Max nodded as he laughed. “Yet still you mock me.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Because I really don’t care what other people think, and I don’t think you should either.”
He watched the night, reflected in that mirror. “So, was that wife comment a roundabout way of telling me that you’ll marry me?”
“Hang on.” Gina took the binoculars and crawled over to the door. Standing up, she looked out the window, adjusting the lenses. “I’m just making sure we’re not going to be interrupted again,” she explained.
“You were going to tell me something important,” Max remembered.
“Yeah, and it’s kind of weird and complicated,” she said.
“Are you pregnant?” he asked.
Gina was clearly surprised. “How did you . . . ? That’s kind of part of it, but I don’t really know if . . .” She crawled back into the room, sat down beside him again. “I don’t know for sure, but yeah, I guess I could be.”
Max nodded. Don’t be jealous, don’t be jealous. “Don’t get mad, but when I was trying to find you, I searched your hotel and . . . There was a receipt from the clinic where you had that pregnancy test.”
Now she was looking at him funny. “I
meant
I could be pregnant because when we, you know, in the kitchen . . . ? Hot sex, no birth control?”
“But . . . You had a pregnancy test. In Germany.”
“I didn’t have a test because I thought was pregnant,” Gina told him. “I
knew
I wasn’t pregnant.”
Okay, he was really tired, but this definitely didn’t make sense. Max knew he should be relieved, but he was too confused. “So why’d you have the test?” he asked her.
“You really thought I was pregnant?” she asked, realization dawning. “You thought . . . ? God, Max, who’d you think the father was?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. It didn’t matter. I mean, unless you still loved him, which it seemed as if you didn’t, so . . .”
“God,” she said again. She turned to look at him. “How many people have
you
slept with since I left for Kenya?”
Was she serious? “You mean you couldn’t tell from the kitchen table thing?” he asked.
“Zero?” she asked. “Because I just spent over a year with absolutely zero sex, which would make my pregnancy pretty special. And for the record, the kitchen table thing
rocked.
I hope we don’t have to go without sex for another year before we can do that again.”
He had to laugh. She totally cracked him up. “It was over pretty quick,” he pointed out.
“I love quick,” Gina said. “And come on, I’m getting jealous here. Was it zero sex last year for you, too?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “I love you, you weren’t there—what was I going to do?”
“Are you actually
embarrassed,
” she asked, “because you weren’t some kind of man-ho and—”
“No,” Max said. “I’m embarrassed that it took me an entire fucking year and a half and the worst scare of my life to figure out that I can’t live without you.”
Gina’s eyes were shining—she looked amazingly happy, considering they were surrounded by an army of people who wanted to kill them.
“Actually,” she said, “it took you an entire non-fucking year and a half. Here’s the deal with the pregnancy test, okay? When Molly found out
she
was pregnant but that she might have breast cancer, I did some research, because I knew that Grady was flipping out. He really wants her to have the full treatment—chemo, radiation—as soon as possible, which she can’t do until after she has the baby. Unless she terminates the pregnancy.
“I read about something called a ‘gestational carrier,’ where a third party, me for example, would carry the baby to term for the parents. It’s different from being a traditional surrogate, because the baby—both the egg and sperm—would be Molly and Grady’s. I’d just provide the uterus and, well, nine months of my life. At first I thought they could take the baby out of Molly and, you know, just transplant it, but that’s not possible. Maybe someday they’ll have that technology . . .
“Still, one of the things that was freaking Molly out about the idea of chemo and radiation was that afterwards, she might not be able to have a baby,” Gina continued. “The whole process might send her into early menopause or God knows what. Anyway, I wanted to give her as many options as possible, so I offered to be her gestational carrier—if she ever wants or needs one. I just thought it would lighten her burden, even just a little, if she knew I’d be there to help if . . . God forbid, you know?
“Pregnancy tests are necessary for gestational carriers, along with a clean bill of health. Makes sense, right? So I went to the clinic when Molly did, had a checkup, got the ball rolling. Although, while I was there, the doctor told me it was a little early. They recommend cancer patients wait a certain number of years after they’re clean, before having children.”
Gina took a deep breath. “So. I made Molly a promise. Which means there’s a chance that in a couple of years we’ll have to add the lines, ‘and she’s pregnant with her best friend Molly’s baby’ to that funky T-shirt I’m going to be wearing.”
Max didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He managed to do neither. “I’m good with that,” he said. “And by the way, I think I love you now more than ever.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder. Now she was the one trying not to cry. “Can I ask you one more thing?”
“Sure,” he said. He couldn’t imagine the question that was coming. Knowing Gina, it was bound to be a good one.
“Did you ask me to marry you only because you thought I was pregnant?” she asked. “With someone else’s child?”
Oh, shit.
Max knew he had to tell her the truth.
“No,” he said. “I asked you because I love you.” He paused. “And because I thought you might be pregnant with someone else’s child, and I didn’t want you to have to deal with that all alone. And because it really didn’t matter who the someone else was, but I kind of hoped that it was someone that you liked at least a little, rather than someone that you didn’t like at all. And I also hoped that, either way, you would know the only thing that really mattered to me was that you were safe and alive and in my life.”
She was silent several long moments. But then she spoke. “Good answer,” she said. “If we die tomorrow—”
“We’re not going to die tomorrow,” Max told her.
“Yeah, but if we do,” she said, and he knew she believed it was a real possibility, “at least we had tonight.”
She used her toe to push the door, and it closed with a click.
She gave him the binoculars. Along with her trademark smile.
“Gina,” he said.
“Shhh. I have to check your bandage,” she said, her fingers unfastening his pants. “I’ll be gentle, I promise.”
And Max discovered that keeping his eyes open was, indeed, something of a challenge.
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-THREE
Jules had
the
most godawful hangover of his entire life.
The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was light. Too much of it.
Candles, in what was no doubt meant to be a romantic arrangement, but somehow they seemed way too bright. He had to keep his eyes mostly closed. Slits, to keep his brain from splitting.
There ought to be a way to say that so it rhymed more perfectly, but his head was throbbing and his stomach—God, he hurt. His entire side was on fire.
He was in a room he didn’t recognize, in a bed he couldn’t remember seeing before. What the hell was wrong with him? He’d given up this sort of behavior shortly after college.
Voices. Laughter, distant—as if from another room, or maybe . . . Outside? Was the party still going on?
Someone stirred beside him in that bed, and he turned his head, but God
damn,
it hurt so much he had to close his eyes until his brain settled back into place.
Slowly, he opened his eyes, just the narrowest bit . . .
Who the hell was . . .
she
?
He opened his eyes wider, which nearly caused his head to break in two, but he had to look more closely because there was definitely a girl in bed with him.
Yes, she was probably the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, with long dark hair and delicate Indonesian features, but on top of being female, she was also maybe sixteen at the very most and . . .
His memory returned with a whoosh that hurt like a son of a bitch.
He remembered this girl, leaning close, concern on her pretty face as she spoke to the men who were carrying him. Her words were in a language Jules didn’t understand.
She pushed his hair back to look at his face, chattering away, as they put him on this bed. She was giving orders to the men, no doubt. But then she saw that his eyes were open. Or at least more open than they had been. And she smiled.
“You’ll be all right now,” she said in close to perfect American English.
He remembered feet. Faces. An Indonesian man with a moustache and goatee.
The accident, the car crashing down the steep hillside.
Emilio.
Falling dead.
Emilio, not Jules. The pain he was feeling now was proof that he was still quite alive.
He’d broken his leg and hit his head in that not-quite-accidental accident. He’d taken a bullet from Emilio’s gun.
Yeah, that was why he hurt so much.
He remembered Max. Back in Emilio’s garage. Max would be worried about him.
That is, if he and Gina and the others had managed to avoid Emilio’s trap.
If they weren’t already dead.
Jules realized that the leather jacket was gone, and with it his cell phone and sidearm. His pants were missing, too. He was even wearing someone else’s underwear.
God, he hoped Junior Miss Indonesia over there hadn’t been the one playing with him, like a giant Ken doll. Not for his sake, but for hers. What was she doing, in bed with him, anyway?
Okay, she was sleeping. On top of the sheet that covered him. Close at hand, in case he awoke.
She was babysitting him, he realized, much to his relief.
He reached out to touch her, to nudge her awake, but the movement made him hurt like a bitch. Although he didn’t quite scream, the sound that came out of his mouth was pretty damn close.
It did the trick. The girl sat up, wide-eyed.
“Hey,” he rasped through a throat that was dry, through lips that were split and swollen. Had someone actually kicked him in the face? “May I borrow your telephone?”
She started to speak, loudly and rapidfire, in that language he didn’t understand.
Ah, crap.
That memory he had of her speaking to him in clear, precise English must’ve been a hallucination.
“My name,” he said slowly, hand on his chest, “is Jules Cassidy. I need—” he made the international hand signal for telephone, which was very similar to the ASL sign for “I love you” held up to one’s ear “—a telephone?”
Maybe if she had paper and a pen, he could draw one for her.
God, his head hurt. Just what he needed—to play Pictionary with what felt like a fractured skull, for life and death stakes.
An older woman came into the room, carrying a tray with a glass of what he hoped was potable water. She set it down near his bedmate, who was still rattling on.
The girl held the glass out for him so that he could drink.
And then she surprised the hell out of him.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cassidy,” she told Jules in crisp perfect English. “We don’t have a landline, and the cell towers are apparently still out.”
“Man, you should be asleep,” Jones said, as Max came into the room where he was keeping watch.
Dawn was coming. It was a matter of minutes, maybe a half hour, before the sky would turn to pewter instead of black.
“Or at the very least,” Jones added, “showing Gina how much you love and worship her.”
“She’s asleep,” Max told him. He’d slipped out of bed as soon as her breathing had turned steady. He’d . . . worshipped her quite nicely before that. Not that he was going to tell Jones about it. But shee-yit, as Gina might’ve said.
Max found himself grinning into the darkness.
“You
do
love her, right?” Jones asked from his seat beneath the window. He threw Max the pillow, so he could sit, too. “Message from Molly: if you’re just fucking around with Gina, you better stop right now. If you hurt her, I’ll fucking make you sorry you were born.”
Message from Molly, huh?
“I’m paraphrasing,” Jones told him.
“I love her,” Max said, as he sat down. Ouch.
“Yeah, it’s actually kind of obvious,” Jones told him. “But I promised Molly I’d do the tough guy threat thing. She’s awesome, by the way. Gina. You’re one fucking-go-lucky son of a bitch.”
Max just shook his head. There must’ve been a military training course in Creative Swearing that, as a civilian, Max hadn’t been required to take.
“So, you’re actually human,” Jones said. “And, as far as total bastards go, you’re . . . okay. Imagine my surprise.”
“Yeah,” Max said. Although wasn’t that supposed to be his line?
Gina was right—Jones was, if not quite a good man, a decent one. It was interesting, too, to see how quickly he’d morphed back into a highly efficient professional soldier.
There was a saying in the counterterrorist world: “Proper training is permanent training.”
But Max wasn’t at all surprised by that. His years of experience with operators from all branches of both the military and the civilian sector had provided him with his own adage. “Expect the absolute best from everyone, and prepare to be surprised at how far they’ll surpass those expectations.”
“If this colonel who’s coming,” Jones said, getting down to the serious stuff without any further small talk, “is the colonel I think it is . . .”
Max waited.
“It’s important,” Jones said quietly, “when you turn me over to him—his name is Ram Subandrio—that I’m already dead.”
Max cleared his throat. “I don’t think—”
“Yeah,” Jones said. “Well, I don’t think either. I know. And I’ve been figuring out the best way to do this. To make it . . . easier for Molly . . . But, fuck. It’s not going to be easy whatever way . . . All I know is that I’m going to need you to do it, because I’m a fucking coward, and I won’t be able to do it myself.”
Christ. “Look,” Max said. “Grady. Maybe—”
“Here’s what I think we should do,” Jones told him. “You should walk me out there. Get me out of the building. We can tell Molly and Gina to go into the escape tunnel, so they won’t be able to watch. I’ll have my hands up as you take me into the square. You’ll have a weapon and—”
“Tell me about Subandrio,” Max said. “If he is the colonel who’s coming, he’s the man I’m going to be talking to.”
“He’s a fucking maniac,” Jones said. “Chai found him in the same prison where he found me. Only he was working there. By choice. Will you just promise me—”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Max told him. “We’ll figure something else out.”
Jones was silent. “Like what?”
“Jesus. Like, anything.”
Max couldn’t see the other man’s face clearly from where he was sitting, but he could see that Jones was shaking his head.
“How about if I told you that Subandrio will strip the skin from my body to get me to tell him where I brought Nusantara’s mistress,” Jones said, his voice low. “What if I tell you he’ll keep me alive for weeks? Months. Kill me just a little and then let me heal. What if I tell you that as long as I’m alive, he’ll try to get to Molly. Gina, too. He’ll have me, and he’ll still blast a hole in this house with his tank, so he can peel the skin from them—in front of me, to make me suffer even more. And you, you’re not immune to this, either, friend. He’ll make you watch as he tortures them, too. He’ll cut my baby out of Molly’s body—you want to watch him do that? Believe me. He’s done it before. He’s probably looking forward to it.”
God.
“I don’t know,” Jones’s voice shook as he continued. “It’s entirely possible that Subandrio will torture Molly and Gina anyway. Even if I’m dead. The kindest thing might be just to make sure the end comes quickly for them.”
“Maybe it’s not this Subandrio who’s coming,” Max said.
“Yeah,” Jones scoffed. “And maybe Molly doesn’t really have breast cancer.”
“Maybe she doesn’t.”
“Right.” He laughed, and it was an ugly sound.
Max exhaled hard. “Grady, look, I know you’re scared, but I’m not going to—”
“You’re a fool—still believing in miracles. Thinking . . . What? I don’t know what I’m talking about?”
“No,” Max said, but Jones wasn’t listening.
“I’m a coward, I’m less than,” he ranted, “because I
let
myself be broken? Jesus, you’re a fucking arrogant prick! You think you’re better than me. You think
you
wouldn’t have broken in that prison, don’t you? Three years of torture—shit, you could do that standing on your head, couldn’t you? Well, fuck you, Bhagat. Despite what you think you’re human, too. And just like every other man on this planet, you’ve got a breaking point.”
“Look, Grady,” Max tried.
“You really want to find out where yours is? Let them slice the skin off the bottoms of your feet. Let them whip you til you’re one more flick of their wrist from dead. No fucking problem. You’re indestructible. Your goddamn self-righteousness will keep you alive. But wait. What about when they bring Gina into the room? How you feeling then, champ? Having to watch them rape her, hear her scream and be unable to move, let alone help her? How’d you like to sit through that? Because you’re going to have to.”
Silence.
Max didn’t know what to say. Like,
Yeah, actually, I’ve done that.
Hearing Gina scream, being unable to help her.
He hadn’t realized, while he was living through it, while he was suffering from the aftereffects, that there was a name for it.
Torture.
In his life, he’d only had one experience that was more horrific.
And that was believing Gina was dead.
Jones stood up. Right in front of the window.
“Get down,” Max ordered him.
But he didn’t. He just walked upright, out the door. “Finish up my shift,” he said. “Let me know when you’ve finally run out of options. I’m going to go spend the rest of my life with my wife.”
Jules looked from Dr. Dewi Ernalia to her three gorgeous brothers and back, praying that they were going to believe him.
Hell, if anyone deserved to be skeptical here, he should be first in line. This skinny little girl supposedly had a medical degree from Tufts University?
Of course, she
had
set his leg and stitched him up, so it was probably better to believe the degree thing. The alternative was slightly less confidence-inspiring—that she was a precocious teen working on her ER Surgeon Girl Scout badge.
As Dr. Ernalia’s trio of brothers gathered at the foot of the bed, she’d told Jules that she was the only doctor on this side of the island, and this little cottage without electricity was the closest thing there was to a hospital for miles.
She was worried because brother number one had told her there were terrorists holed up in a house further up the mountain. Brother number two apparently reported that rumors were afoot that the military was bringing in a tank to blast those terrorists out.
Which meant, according to the Doc’s experience, that there was a potential for some serious casualties.
Yeah, no kidding.
And the worst of those casualties were going to be Max, Gina, Jones, and Molly. Those were no terrorists, holed up in that house. Those were Jules’s friends.
Of course, the doctor told him, the potential for serious casualties would be even greater if the Americans were involved.
But apparently the Americans were being kept away because it was believed that these terrorists were part of a cell that had attacked the American embassy in Jakarta—where a beloved statesman from Pulau Meda had been killed. If the Americans became involved, they would take the terrorists into custody, instead of dishing out immediate and just punishment.
“I’m an agent with the American Federal Bureau of Investigations,” Jules told them, wishing he was wearing something more dignified than borrowed underwear—a pair of boxers bearing the logo for the Boston Red Sox. They were pinned precariously together on one side, to accommodate the splint on his lower leg. “I came to Pulau Meda investigating the kidnapping of two American woman.” He waited while the Doc translated for her brothers.
And then he waited even longer, while another man came into the room. He was another of the young doctor’s brothers—these people could not look more like siblings if they tried. They were all exotically beautiful.
There was more discussion, lots of gesturing, many furtive glances in his direction.
Dr. Ernalia finally quieted them down. She turned back to Jules. “My brothers want to know,” she asked him, “whether you killed Emilio Testa.”
Jules looked at that row of faces at the foot of his bed, and he could not read them. Not even slightly. Blank expectation. That was all he got. This family could have been the most successful team of Texas Hold “Em players in the world.